Archive of Our Own

This is a thing about Sam almost nobody knows. Kid couldn't talk worth a damn until he was five, maybe six. Sometimes Dean thinks even Sam's forgotten it, the memory of not forming perfect words and perfect arguments the sort of horror his mind can't handle. Probably repressed it, right along with Hell. "You could talk, and getting four words out of you at once was something like impossible," Dad used to say, this unusually affectionate look on his face, "And Sam couldn't, and getting him to shut up was twice as hard."

Dean doesn't know how quiet he was; that part's sort of faded, but he remembers Sam, talking with his whole body even before he could speak, and then when he learned, all his words tumbling out over each other, in a messy stream of lisping S's and mispronounced R's. Probably it was what came of being really fucking badly socialised; Dean didn't care, because Dean always understood him, and there weren't many other people who needed to. But the first kid who teased him for it--a skinny little brat with a perpetually dirty face who lived two doors down from them in one of the better places they ever stayed--that got Sam all worked up, and Dad had been on about it for a while, anyway. Dean thinks there might even have been a speech therapist at some point, though that was obviously doomed to failure, given that, as far as Dad was concerned, there were bigger things to hunt down than Sam's wayward Rs. It was just practice, like learning to read, he said, with a ferocious determination that forbade it to take anything else.

So they taught him to talk while they taught him to read: Dean and Sam sitting in the back seat, a book (Dr Seuss most of the time) open between them, Sam reading each sentence with a sort of ponderous intensity that cracked Dean up, even then. The theory was, he'd get a new story whenever they'd run through the stupid voice exercises Dad had picked up from a book in a library somewhere, or maybe from that speech therapist. Sam hated the exercises and loved the reading, like some vocab junky always jonesing for his next fix. He'd read until he was a tired, droopy mess, but they were lucky if they could get him to repeat the stupid phrases more than twice. No point, Dean supposed, once he'd learned the new words, filed them away for later deployment when he wanted to make his elaborate case in favour of cookies for dinner.

Rabbits run really rapidly, racing rather than resting, Dean would say. And Sam would say it back, dutifully, his face all screwed up and serious, like he was reciting some of those rituals Dad was always talking to Bobby or Pastor Jim about. Or he would the first time, maybe even the second, but inevitably he'd start asking why, and didn't they get tired, and what were they doing, anyway? Were they going somewhere, Dean? Was it nice there? It was all just very typical, the sort of thing that made Dean wonder if maybe they shouldn't work harder at preventing him talking entirely.

"We just aren't doing it right," Dad said, when Dean suggested it, laughing and ruffling Sam's hair. He'd been in a strangely good mood for weeks, though Dean doesn't remember why now, just that there had been a lot less smiling than yelling, and even then, that had been rare enough to be a relief. "We just gotta give him what he wants."

At eight, Dean could already draw perfectly straight salt lines and take a gun apart, but that was the summer he learned to tell Sam stories, ones that didn't come from a book. Dad was better at it. In his telling, the rabbits were always going off to strange, improbable places Dean had never heard of, doing dangerous, heroic things rabbits weren't supposed to do, but, good mood or not, Dad was driving and hunting and sometimes actually working a lot of the time, so Dean got to be pretty good at it, too.

"The Easter Bunny was loved by all the rabbits, except for his younger brother, who was jealous that the Easter Bunny was so much cooler and awesomer than he was," And Sam would listen, eyes wide. Give him a story and he was instantly pliable. It was Dean's secret weapon for years, not just then. Even later, when Sam hated everything else about their lives, he'd get sucked into whatever case they were working. Small towns had histories, and vengeful spirits had reasons, and Dad and Dean had to know them to put the bad thing down, but Sam, Sam just wanted to know them. As if why was as important as how.

Somehow, it never changed, sticking around long after it should've been obvious that there was no point and no reason and no sense to anything that had ever happened to them. Stanford didn't change it, and neither did Jess, or Dad. If anything, all of that just made it worse, Sam imposing order on everything, even chaos, the only way he knew how. Dean didn't doubt there was a story of him in Sam's head, too: Dean all heroically messed up from running out the door the night of the fire, saving Sam because he couldn't save their mom, something something psychobabble bullshit. Even Dad: one noble, self-sacrificing act, right at the end, to make up for all the other stuff Sam couldn't forgive him for. Find the story and you could find the meaning in it all. If you just looked hard enough, you could.

Only then there was Hell, and Dean couldn't talk about it, no matter how much Sam wanted to understand, because--well, because he didn't want Sam to know that maybe he wasn't a hero, so much as he was cruel and sadistic and weak--but even without that, he couldn't because he didn't know how. He could say pain, and Sam would think about getting his leg cut open by the harpy that time he was fifteen, or maybe getting stabbed in the back if he remembered that at all. He could say shame, and Sam would think of demon blood and raising the devil. And none of it was close to saying what Dean meant, because Sam understood those things with limits. Like stories, they had endings, and sometimes they were even good ones. You could beat the devil and save the world even if you had to die in the process, or your brother could stitch you up when you were hurt until all you had left was the scar and a phantom twinge now and then.

There was no room for an idea like that in a place where they could flay your skin off and make you play skip-the-rope with your own intestines, and you could still walk and you could still talk, and you'd still go on walking and you'd still go on talking right until you went crazy, or they gave you the chance to make it stop. That's Dean's story now, the truth of it right at the center, the rot that spirals out through the rest of him. It used to feel like a miracle that it didn't infect everyone else, and he supposes now that it was.

Because Sam didn't get it, before, and that was fine by Dean, even when his questions hurt, when his conviction that Dean could be fixed made Dean want to put a bullet in his brain. Not getting it was exactly what Dean wanted for Sam, and now that Sam doesn't ask about hell anymore, it kills Dean, worse than anything. Because Sam was the greater goal, the thing Dean went down saving. And that was a good story. The kind Dad always liked--late night war movies with suicide runs, soldiers taking hits because it was okay to die for something if it meant enough.

"It's a better ending than a lot of people get," he said, mostly when he was drunk, the good, mellow kind of drunk, and Dean told himself the same later, and he didn't always have to be hammered to believe it. Even after demon blood and setting the devil free, he didn't have to. Sam was Sam, capable of building himself back up from almost anything. Almost, of course, not including all that Hell had to offer. Now there's no bigger meaning and no saving, Dean's suicide run just a suicide run, after all.

"At least you can't claim my failure came as a shock to anyone, Sammy," he tells Sam, in the quiet of three o'clock in the morning in small town middle of nowhere. His voice sounds alarmingly broken, even to himself, but Sam doesn't hear him, anyway, so it doesn't much matter. Sam's asleep, just asleep. A bad day and a few too many hallucinations, but nothing Dean has to lose his shit over. Dean can't be sure, anymore, though; he never is, when Sam crashes now. He'd looked like he was sleeping the first time Cas put him down, and the second time, too, after it had all gone to shit again. The world's given them plenty enough to worry about, without Dean freaking that Sam's gonna be out for weeks whenever he crashes. Dean does it anyway, watching him from his own bed, with a bottle held tight in his hand, until exhaustion and liquor put him under.

In the morning, Dean's got a pounding headache and a crick in his neck, and Sam's awake and apparently fine, unless you count disapproving and bitchy as evidence of trauma, rather than long term personality defects. Since Dean's met him before, he's in no doubt which one it is.

"So what?" Dean asks, because the length of Sam's silence suggests maybe he should've been paying attention before now. "You think she left something behind?"

"It's a hair salon, Dean," he says, like maybe Dean's the one with the faulty brain these days. "All those hair and nail clippings and fuck knows what else. We'd probably be better off just burning the place down. Come to think of it, it's weird more of them aren't haunted."

His voice takes on this musing quality Dean's heard a hundred million times, feels like. And sure enough, when Dean looks up, Sam's got his interested, college kid look on his face again: eyebrows drawn together and eyes narrowed, bottom lip between his teeth. The familiarity of it makes Dean's chest ache a little. Which is better than the cold numbness spreading through the rest of him.

"I don't know," he says. He chews and swallows the pancakes he'd been engrossed in moments before; they could be the napkins by his plate for all the enjoyment they bring him now. "Good cleanup, I guess."

"Only the decent ones," Sam says, still thoughtful. And his fingers go on pressing, so goddamn hard, down on his palm, ragged nails carving grooves in that cut that never gets a chance to heal. Stabbing at his poached eggs with his fork, preparing his thesis on the undead and their haircutting habits, warding off Lucifer or Michael or another Dean, or some other horrorshow his brain's lined up. Just a standard Sam Winchester breakfast these days, and Dean would never have known, if he hadn't looked up because Sam had sounded so fucking much like Sam.

***

So, yeah, Sam's not fine. Not like Dean's surprised, or anything. When Death suggests there might be weather, it's probably best to plan for a couple tsunamis. And there's no denying that Dean isn't likely to be recognised for his incredible feats of deduction lately, but that Sam wasn't going to come through nearly two hundred years of hell unscathed--that he was pretty clear on.

What he hadn't been prepared for was Sam, freshly souled and walking around and smiling and making promises to Dean, more like Sam than he'd been in years. Looking at Dean like Dean should trust in it, like Dean could afford to do that, now. In some ways, the coma, even melting down and shooting at crap that wasn't there, came as a relief. Everything until then had been as weird and unlikely as Charlie Brown getting the football, if Charlie Brown had been worried the football was going to develop claws and fangs and rip his heart out, or blow up and take half the world with it. Sam's wall coming down--Sam's wall being brought down by Dean's own fucking guardian angel--Sam not believing Dean was real, having to be talked into the idea: that was Winchester luck. Shitty and getting shittier, and so familiar it was almost comforting. Dean would lose Sam, because Dean always lost Sam. It was the one constant he could still rely on.

Only this time, it isn't going to be like every other time. No knife in the back, no fall into the centre of the earth, brutal and final and over before Dean's heart can even start to cave in. Just this: a parking lot in Des Moines, Sam on the hood of the car beside him, gesturing with the beer in his hand and saying, "There's a festival of the dead in Denver. This frozen dead dude they wheel out every year and--"

And Dean says into the quiet, "Sammy, what?" hoping that maybe this time the hanging sentence is the result of something simple, like narcolepsy or supernaturally induced muteness. But when Dean leans over and taps him on the chest, Sam looks at him and doesn't see him at all. "Bet the frozen dead guy is a better conversationalist than you," Dean says, giving him a shake, and then gripping hard, just to feel Sam's solid bone and muscle. Sam's the one having the hallucinations, but Dean's the one who feels tenuous. Like a tulpa, he thinks, only real so long as Sam believes he is.

Just this: a motel in Nebraska even the roaches are too good for, holes in the ceiling and cigarette burns on the bedspread, a really fucking violent argument going on in the room to the left and a screaming kid in the one to the right, and over it all, the sound of Sam throwing up from a nightmare so bad Dean couldn't wake him. Saying it's fine, it's nothing, and not letting Dean touch him. Not sleeping for nights after that, like he's roboSam again, only he's not so he inevitably crashes, strung out and shaking, hands knotted tight in Dean's t-shirt. Somehow smiling a little as he says, "I get breakfast in bed again, right?" As if anything here is good or normal.

Just this: a diner in Peoria, Sam twitching and helpless on the floor, under Dean's hands and trapped miles and miles away in his head where Dean can't reach him at all, a three minute and twenty second recap of that fucking year when Dean tried everything and Sam went on staying in Hell as stubbornly as he's done anything else in his life. Sam zoned out in Jacksonville and Barlow and Salt Lake City, his fingers curled around a knife or a gun or a cellphone. Sam in the car, fucking smiling, all reluctant--like he does at Dean when Dean's making him laugh while he's pissed--at something only he can hear.

And somehow, in every state and every diner and every motel room, Sam's still saying he's fine. Over and over and over in the face of all available evidence, like it's some kind of incantation. Say it three times and it'll come true, no more huge, irreversible mind break for him. Dean undergoes an incredible urge to punch him in the face every time he says it, or maybe to set the world on fire, but inflicting more head trauma doesn't seem like the best strategy, and the world's fucked enough without Dean lending a hand.

What he does, instead, is spin a line of bullshit just as impressive. For every line Sam feeds him, Dean feeds him one right back. Of course you're fine, he says. Never expected anything else, he says. There wasn't a lot of brain to fuck up, anyway, he says. On and on. He remembers when his lies used to be weapons too. Like salt circles around Sam, big brother protection, because if Dean believed it, then Sam would,. Now they're just words, regular bullets when it's consecrated iron and blessed silver he needs. He fires them, anyway. That's rule number one of hunter school--you keep firing, right up until you can't.

And he drinks, of course he drinks, which maybe isn't a lesson of hunter school generally, so much as John Winchester school specifically. Cheapass whiskey that burns his throat and makes his eyes water; it's not as if they can afford the good stuff, the way he's going through it. Could be, that's a thing he should be concerned about, but Dean's got more than enough of those as it is. And anyway, Sam's concerned about it enough for both of them. Kid's priorities have always been a bit suspect, if you ask Dean.

He's usually content to stick to disapproving glares and pointed comments, but tonight, in the rain, in a graveyard that's more mud than anything else, he gives that up.

"We're going to have to talk about it, you know," he says. The hair salon didn't burn, but Ruth Foster's bones are a damply sputtering blaze behind them. Sam got them going just as she was about to slit Dean's throat with the world's sharpest and biggest pair of scissors. Dean's still on the ground, flask in his shaking hand. But Sam's looking at him. Normally, he makes himself look at the flames these days. Ten, twenty, thirty seconds, never longer than that yet, before he's turning away. Sometimes, he touches his face, after--quick, furtive touches. Now, though, his attention is all for Dean, disappointment as obvious as the chill settling in Dean's bones.

"It's cold," Dean says, "and she's gone." Dean's not stupid; he waited for the bones to catch before he started.

"Dean," Sam says. The beam of the flash light in his hand obscures the expression on his face, but Dean doesn't need to see it to know it. Mouth pinched and tight, like he's pissed, eyes big and pleading, maybe a little scared, like he's a kid again, asking for Dean not to go off hunting with Dad. "You're a fucking mess," he says, not unkindly.

The same probably can't be said for Dean, when he answers. "Yeah, well," he says. "Look who's talking." Because fucking Sam. Trying to get the demons out of Dean when he's got the devil in his brain.

He takes a swig of the whiskey, aiming for defiant when all he feels is hollowed out, an engine running on nothing but that sludgy shit at the bottom of the tank. And Sam says, "At least I'm trying," barely loud enough to be heard over the sound of the rain and the snapping of the flames, not unless you're Dean, and you've been listening for him your whole life. He just doesn't answer.

Sam says, "I must be out of my fucking mind, not just leaving your ass here."

He should, Dean knows. He should, and for a wonder, he doesn't--at least if Dean ignores that week after Amy, and since Dean hated every second of it, he's entirely on board with never thinking about it again. He stays, for months, while the Leviathans seem unbeatable and Dean wonders what the point of trying is. He drinks his smoothies and runs for miles, watching Dean with tired, worried eyes. Apparently he's intent on going crazy and remaining infuriatingly supportive and understanding. Dean's proud of his multitasking, in a distant, confused sort of way.

"You gotta give him points for his persistence," Bobby says, one of the last things he ever says on the subject. "And his fucking patience."

Which is true, because patience has never been Sam's most notable quality. A month later, it runs out, and Dean doesn't even see it coming.

They're in Oklahoma. in a town with five shops, two bars, three churches, and one disturbingly lopsided motel. As of thirty minutes ago, it also has zero lake monsters. Saving the world might be beyond them, but murky ponds with delusions of grandeur are totally in their pay grade. Even Sam's brief foray into fruitcake territory didn't slow them down much, no matter that having Sam grab him and say, "You'll drown I've seen this before this is what always happens," still makes Dean feel like he actually is drowning, no air in his lungs, and no surface in sight. Of course, now Sam's acting like nothing happened. He's bitching about his ruined phone, like that's the biggest wrong the universe has ever done them, walking around with his shirt off and his hair drying into haphazard clumps.

"I fucking hate Tuesdays," he says. He does, in this absurdly irrational way that even Hell hasn't shaken. As if it's reasonable to hold the day of the week rather than Gabriel responsible for what happened in Broward county.

Dean opens his mouth to say something--anything; he doesn't know what. There's most of a river in his boots and the mud it left over is caked on his skin like it's trying to make a mould of him. He's cold and he's tired and that doesn't even feel like anything new. Bobby's been dead for three weeks, and the Impala's half a country away, and there's no one left in the world who knows anything real about them. He's really all out of things to say, at this point.

He says, "Make that all days that end with a y," mostly not meaning a whole lot by it. He's vaguely aware of Sam's sigh, of Sam stepping away from the bathroom and moving back across the room towards him, but he's more focused on getting out of his clothes than anything else.

"You can't say I haven't tried talking to you," Sam says, and that's all the warning Dean gets. He's standing on one leg, his freezing fingers fumbling clumsily with his boot. So when Sam kisses him, it knocks him offbalance, in every possible way. There's half a second of Sam's chapped lips on his, a dangerous, hopeful feeling in his chest, and then his part-liberated foot catches on the trailing bedspread as he tries and fails to right himself. His elbow knocks into the flimsy nightstand behind him in a bright burst of pain. The nightstand topples to the ground right along with him and Sam; from the splintering crack that follows, Dean assumes it got the worst of the landing. The dusty lamp and the historical artifact of a telephone it was supporting roll and bounce. At least the bedspread has the decency to be quiet as it slithers down over them.

"What the fuck?" Dean says. Or tries to, anyway. It comes out kinda wheezy. One of Sam's knees is jammed painfully into Dean's thigh, and his whole gargantuan weight seems to be crushing the air out of Dean's lungs. In the quiet, he's laughing, little hiccoughing bursts against Dean's shoulder. Dean shoves at him, and Sam shifts back a bit--not a good, safe brotherly distance away, but far enough that Dean can breathe.

"What the fuck?" he says again. "You totally wrecked our room."

He kicks ineffectually at the cover still tangled around their legs for emphasis, and Sam responds with this pleased, lopsided grin. Combined with the bruise swelling on his cheekbone and the torn and filthy clothes he's wearing, he looks perfectly deranged. "When you say you," he says, "I know you mean i. You looked really cool, by the way, flailing around like an over-excited headless chicken."

Dean splutters, in a way that's almost certainly very dignified. "And why was I--fighting for balance? Maybe because I was being molested." It comes out easy, like it's nothing for Sam to kiss him now, after so long.

"I understand," Sam says, in his most comforting tone. "You were overwhelmed by me. It's nothing to be ashamed of, Dean. I'm pretty overwhelming."

This is easy, too. No different from any other time they've given each other shit. Which one of them is the better shot (Dean, obviously), or which one of them is the better tracker (Sam, maybe). Only Sam's demolishing the distance between them again, reaching out a hand and brushing his fingers along Dean's jaw, his filthy, mud-splattered thumb catching and rubbing on the stubble he finds there.

"You're fucking delusional," Dean says, unthinking as Sam's palm curves around his cheek, and he's panicked, sure, but not as much as he should be.

Sam huffs out a laugh, and he's so close now that Dean feels it more than he hears it. "I think we've established that," he says, and it's that--not the part where Sam's his brother, but the part where Sam's lost at least a couple of cards from his deck--that's what makes him tip his head back, away from Sam and all that intent. He tries shimmying out of reach, but the goddamn blanket betrays him again, and Sam's pushing him down, anyway.

"You seriously have to stop doing this," he says, and the exasperated look on his face is nothing to the exasperated tone in his voice. That tone could write novels. He keeps a hand on Dean's shoulder, and he swings one leg over Dean's thighs so he's got Dean trapped under him, looking at Dean like he's daring him to try dislodging him. And God help him, but Dean likes that. Not just Sam's muscles shifting against Dean as he moves, not just the strength and the size of him, but just Sam, fifteen and a half feet of challenge and entitlement and irritation.

"I'm not seeing anything else right now, okay?" Sam says, unruffled and calm and reasonable, as if Dean can't feel how much Sam's liking it, too. "Just you, and the six or seven layers of mud you're hiding under." His fingers slide under Dean's t-shirt; they find the space between his shoulder and his neck and settle there. "Clearly nobody sane would want you in your current state, but I don't think we can hold Hell responsible for this particular disfunction." Dean opens his mouth, and Sam actually waves him quiet. "If you don't want this, fine. But don't make it about me."

Which is honestly just the stupidest thing Dean's ever heard. As if he could ever know how to make everything not about Sam. As if he's not like some creepy-ass stealth ninja plant--kudzu, or something equally freakish--wound so tight in every part of Sam it's a wonder Sam still breathes at all. That's why he shouldn't do this, and it's why he will, because Dean's never learned the knack of letting Sam go.

"Do you ever shut up?" Dean says, and Sam says, "Maybe if you weren't--" And Dean kisses him, Sam gasping surprised and pleased into his mouth.

It's a mistake; obviously it's a mistake. Dean knows it even as he's licking into Sam's mouth with desperate neediness. He knows, and he doesn't give a shit, not right now, because he's been pretending for years like he's forgotten how Sam tastes, how fucking huge his hands are, and how possessively they tug and touch, like all of Dean's is his. He's been pretending he doesn't know the way Sam feels pressed up against him. There's more of him now, harder lines and angles, and his hair's somehow got longer and stupider, but it's still that same feeling when Dean's hands are under his shirt, pulling him in tight until there's no space at all between them. A devastating rout of joy and relief all through his body, stripping him down until he's nothing but his wildly beating heart and his infinite, boundless need for Sam. How he gave it up, that's the mystery now.

Just once they did this. Right after the devil's gate had opened, when Sam had still been sure that he could save Dean. Kissing him had been a lot like getting tangled up with gravity: this irresistible force it was as pointless as it was stupid to resist. Hell hadn't seemed important, then, because Sam was brighter and fiercer than anything, and Dean's whole world was lit by him. But after, Dean said no. Dean was going to hell, and Sam couldn't--Dean wouldn't let him--get tangled up in this one other, impossibly fucked up way. But Dean loses himself in Sam now, and he doesn't care. He pushes him onto the bed, and he opens him up, one finger at a time, until Sam's writhing and gasping underneath him, his voice full of this wrecked urgency Dean's never heard before, and Dean thinks maybe he can have this. This one good thing, for as long as Sam's his.

Sam says, "I've wanted--Dean. Dean, Christ, do you--fucking--" and it's maybe the most inarticulate he's been in his life, so Dean's smiling as he pushes his way inside him. Sam's hands claw at him, nails scraping over Dean's shoulders, trying so hard to hold, and Sam says, "Come the fuck on, Dean," his face hardly like Sam's anymore, all wonder and awe.

The rhythm comes without work, a hard, slow beat that feels more vital than Dean's pulse. Everything is narrowed down to Sam. Nothing matters but the feel of him all around Dean, the sweat on his skin and the taste of his mouth, and the dangerous shock of his dick, hot and heavy and already leaking when Dean takes it in his hand. The knowledge of Sam floods him, and for a stretch of time that Dean can hardly believe in, there's power crackling inside him, like there's magic here strong enough for anything.

"Knew this would be awesome," Sam says, pushing himself down harder, gripping Dean tighter. "Should've done this years ago, you moron," and Dean can't speak, because Sam is completely here with him, as focused on Dean as Dean is on him. And Dean is inside him, harbouring wild and plausible ideas about taking him back. All he's got to offer is Sam's name, and he can't even say it. He keeps it, small and heavy in his mouth, like a secret the world doesn't get to hear.

***

Fucking his brother and not saving the world. These are the things Dean excels at now. For a few glorious seconds most nights, he gets to forget about the second thing, because Dean can't think when he's got Sam's dick in his mouth, or when Sam's shoved him against the wall, taking him apart with all the intensity of a knife fight or a shootout. On filthy mattresses and sticky carpets, crammed into stinking restrooms and down deserted alleys, Dean is ambushed by light, brought down by all the colour rushing in. And Sam knows it, is endlessly, insufferably pleased about it, like he's going to fuck Dean into a better tomorrow.

"You're so fucking easy," Sam tells him, in Ohio. There are people dropping dead, no signs of trauma, just like they kinda stopped living. Dean honestly doesn't care, not right now. Sam sounds delighted, as if Sam's not the one bucking into Dean's fist, his mouth slick and shiny from trying to devour Dean's face only moments ago. Country music and the smell of frying food is spilling out of the diner behind them; if the truckers follow suit, it's possible they won't like the view.

Dean says, "Whatever," because he's always overcome by extreme generosity of spirit at times like this, and Sam smiles at him, fond and not bothering to hide it. Goes on smiling after, like he always does. It could be enough, Dean thinks, Sam smiling like that. A stone of his own to build on.

Except there's always another after. This time there's a broken mirror, Sam with shaving foam drying on his face and glass ground into his palm. Dean only went to hustle a little pool, and now he's sticky with Sam's blood, and Sam's huddling and shivering, knees drawn up and shame written all over him.

"It's not like I think you're dead that often," he says, and fuck if he isn't trying to be reassuring. "It's just, you know. You have been, kind of a lot. My brain doesn't have to work too hard to believe it's real, so I gotta work harder to convince myself it's not."

"Yeah," Dean says, because he really does get it. He wraps the gauze around Sam's palm, pulls it tight. Sam grinds the heel of his uninjured hand into his forehead; his eyes are dulled and his mouth is tight with pain. Pressure, Dean thinks, too much, all the time. His head is full of explosions and tripwires. 

He still manages to glare at Dean, though, when he catches him looking, seeming a whole lot steadier with that pissy slant to his mouth. "You're Sam's a freak look is making an appearance again. I might not be done punching things."

Dean jerks away from him. "Jesus, Sam," he says. That probably didn't help any, him channeling Dad like that, but Sam's so smart and so fucking dumb. Always, it comes back to this, like Dean's nightmare scenario is Sam dropping off the bell curve for normal. It's insulting, really, this staggering lack of understanding he keeps on displaying. Take out evil and soulless, and there's almost no version of Sam he doesn't want, and soulless was still a step up from dead. Demon blood in his veins and faulty construction work in his head; freaky visions and obsessive compulsions: Dean just doesn't give a shit. It's all Sam, every bit of it. Losing that is the nightmare scenario; watching the crap in his own head wear him away to smooth blankness. 

"I'm not," Dean says, quieter now. "Okay. You just scared me, is all."

Which is like saying Hell was just unpleasant, but whatever. Dean doesn't have the words for how scared he is, wouldn't use them even if he did. He roots around in the kit, and he's got his game face back on when he hands Sam the pills. Sam takes them in silence, but he doesn't pull away when Dean curls his fingers around his wrist.

"The real surprise is that you don't smash more mirrors," Dean says. "I would, if your face was looking back at me every day."

Sam's mouth quirks up some, more in relief than amusement, maybe, but Dean will take what he can get. "You're funnier when I hallucinate you," Sam tells him. He knocks his knee up against Dean's and leaves it there, heat bleeding through his jeans. Dean doesn't argue when Sam crawls into bed beside him later. Not much, anyway.

"I have a sleep disorder, you know," he says. "I tend to stab people horribly when they cuddle me." Sam just pushes him farther over in the bed, laying claims everywhere. It's new, even with all the sex they've been having. Irrevocable now, Dean thinks, this thing between them. But Sam's always been that. Dean closes his eyes, Sam breathing slow and steady behind him. That sound has lulled Dean to sleep for years; still does, even now.

"I'm not checking out on you," Sam says, just as Dean's drifting off. "Not for Lucifer. I don't know how to make you believe it."

Stop doing it, then, Dean wants to say, but it seems counterproductive. Sam's always been the one with the long-odds faith, is the thing: in angels and in Dean, and some better ending to all of this. Dean says, "That's not what I'm thinking. And anyway, it's not like I'd let you," And Sam laughs a little, warm against the back of Dean's neck.

"I know," he says, like he actually does. Probably because he's crazy. "Why do you think I'm so sure?"

Dean groans, as dramatically as he possibly can. "Go the fuck to sleep," he says. "We've got a whole day of hunting ahead of us. Probably it'll be very eventful and full of danger."

"Probably we'll survive it," Sam says. "We've got a history of that kind of thing."

***

The day turns out to be full of cold, rain, and dead-ends, which is no more than Dean expected from a hunt in Ohio. The victims' families can't tell them anything, except that three people went into church--for choir practice, and flower arranging, and casserole delivery--and they never came back out. They just lay down and died; no good reason for it. The church is clean, at least in the morning. They circuit it twice, the EMF meter blank and quiet in Dean's hand.

"So it's like. They went into a coma?" Dean asks, while Sam peers at dead people like he's important and qualified. The bodies are no more help than the families. There are no marks on them; if they've been the victims of something supernatural, they're the least bloody versions Dean's ever seen.

The pathologist says, "Yes." And then, "No. That's not right. More like their brains just shut down. I've never seen anything like it. No head trauma at all."

Dean touches his fingers to the flask in his pocket, and resolutely doesn't think about people just going offline. "Maybe it's just not our thing," he says, back in the car. "Maybe it's just a--I dunno. Bacteria. Poison. Something."

Sam makes a noise, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. It's not the most encouraging he's ever sounded. "One day, law of averages means we'll say that and it really won't be our thing." He slaps the radio off, like Metallica is the source of all his problems. "There's no profile," he says, aggrieved. There are newspapers littering the footwell, and Sam's getting crumbs everywhere, waving his Subway around the way he is. "Gladys Roundtree. Fifty-eight, divorced, three children. Nick Romski, twenty-two, single, back from New York for the week. Rachel Tamsworth--"

"Thirty-three, engaged, lawyer. I know. No pattern, no connection. I know."

"We should go back to the church again," Sam says, and it's as good an idea as any. The light's bleeding out of the sky, and sometimes that's enough to make a difference.

The Blessed Mother is lit up in welcome as they approach, a bright beacon in the damp and dark. Sam's striding ahead, not looking back, which is as unsettling as it always is. There's frustration and determination coming off him in waves, though, so Dean doesn't argue.

"When I'm right and it's some sort of deadly chemical weapon," Dean says, raising his voice like he can tether Sam to him that way, "I'm going to want a blow job." Sam pulls at the thick double doors, and flashes a quick, reluctant smile at Dean over his shoulder as he goes in. "Maybe a couple. If I'm not dead, obviously."

The doors are already swinging closed between them, and probably that's why Sam doesn't answer. Dean yanks on them, hard, his heart rate already picking up.

"Sammy?" he says, as he steps through.

***

The world spins, dizzying and maddening and familiar. Dean thinks of falling, of panic tearing through him like an infection. Of monsters in the dark. Of Florida, hurtling back into a crazy slice of memory he’d forgotten he still had.

Because in Florida, back even before Sam knew about hunting, it must have been, they lived in this old apartment building. From the outside it looked like shit, and from the inside it was worse. On good nights, the lights would crap out; on bad ones, they worked, and the dingy glow from the bare bulbs on the ceiling served as stage lighting for the biggest insect troop in America. The ceilings themselves bulged downwards, like some moldy monstrosities were biding their time before they hatched. Half the windows didn't open, which made the height of summer in Florida unbearable. The water ran in sludgy trickles, and the walls were white with damp. By the time Dean was eight or nine, he'd gotten used to living in places that weren't necessarily liveable, and maybe this one wouldn't have stood out among all the rest, but firsts always stand out, and that building was Dean's first hunt. It didn't matter that it was never anything more than a kid's over-active imagination, or even that nobody but him ever knew about it.

There'd been a basement. Pretty much scary as any other basement: dark and dank and maybe more than usually smelly. Like, the girl across the hall from them had said, things had died down there. There was a boiler--though Dean hadn't known what it was at first--probably still running even now, this monstrous thing that beat like the heart of the world. Dean had been scared of it, lying awake at night listening to it threaten and growl below him, and because Dean had been scared of it, he'd gone to see it. Name the things in the dark, and you found out how to kill them. That's what Dad said, and Bobby, too.

So Dean had snuck out after dinner, Sam asleep and dad out tracking whatever it was had led them here. He'd had a torch and a knife and that was it, because it would be another year before he got his own gun. There'd been no monster, of course. Just rats and what looked like junk from a hundred years ago.

Dean had crept back upstairs to Sammy, feeling stupid, maybe a bit relieved. But what he remembered long after they’d put the apartment in the rearview was his foot catching on the top step, toppling head first into the dark. Only it hadn't been dark, then. For an instant it had been the black and yawning void Dean had expected--the mouth of the monster, opening wide and greedy to swallow Dean hole, to keep him there forever.

He hadn't remembered that when the hellhounds came for him, but that's what he's thinking of now as he falls, because that's how he feels again: a scared little kid out of his depth, tumbling helplessly into oblivion.

It's not dark, of course. It's bright with fire and blood, a light show of pain, and Dean feels devoured in blackness, all the same. He's never going to get out, he knows, because there is no out. He's been here before, after all; he knows this story.

At the center, there's Sam, caged within a cage. The one holding him is small, even for a normal-sized person; the one holding it is boundless, and no less a prison for that. There's plane after plane stretching far beyond what Dean can see, a rolling landscape of flame, but that's not what makes him start to shake. It feels big, emptiness so great it's like a presence. Hell has always been full of horrors, screams and despair built on top of each other until there wasn't space for anything else. This is new, a terrible pressure of silence already pressing down on him.

"It's like a family reunion, Sammy," Dad's saying, affable in a way Dean's never heard before. He's standing behind Sam's cage, his hands stretching out towards it; he shoves it away, hard, when it comes in reach. "You did get every one of us killed, after all. Only fair we should be here to see you now."

Jess is above him, suspended from nothing, her blood dripping between the slats onto Sam's bent head. It drips over his neck, and Sam doesn't move, doesn't look up. Dean doesn't blame him. Mom's sitting behind Lucifer, just watching Sam. Her face is unmarked, but the venomous hate in her eyes transforms her into something new and awful. Dean feels scoured raw just looking at her. He's compelled to do it, though. Better that than looking at Sam.

The cage that holds him rocks back and forward, from side to side, as easily as an empty swing in a summer breeze. Lucifer glances over his shoulder, just long enough to smile at Dean, batting the cage back to Dad without looking. He's humming something under his breath; Knocking on Heaven's Door, could be. It's the one pleasant sound in this place, and it's all the more horrifying for that.

"Sam doesn't like it, either," Lucifer says. "But then, he never did appreciate good music, am I right? Though he used to indulge in a little of it himself, in the beginning." He’s turned away from the cage, now, and he rocks forward, leaning a little into Dean's space, as if they're sharing secrets. "Terrible voice, your brother. And so irritatingly stubborn." He reaches up, rubbing faintly at his ear. When he takes his hand away, there's a streak of red smeared on his cheek, and a lump of something lying wet and glistening on his palm. A tongue, ragged and bloody. Lucifer raises his arm in a sweeping flourish, sketching a little bow for an imaginary crowd.

"Sometimes conventional methods have their uses," he says. He holds out the tongue to Dean, his mouth twitching up at the corners. "I've held every part of him in my hands, you know," he says. "I know him so much better than you do. He can't ever be yours. Not now. You let him go. You left him here. Handed him over to me, practically gift-wrapped. Gave him up, Dean." And it's Sam's voice, right there at the end, saying Dean's name just the way Sam always does.

This time, when he reaches up, he plucks eyeballs straight from the air, and he's grinning for real as he bounces them on his palm. The same ones Dean works so hard to avoid in the mirror these days. For a moment, Dean's convinced they're actually his; the blood and the flames fading a little as he goes blind. The relief isn't as strong as it should be when the world comes back into focus, this place of boundless fire and the desperate, shambling corpses of everyone they've loved.

"You don't mind, do you?" Lucifer asks. He walks one of the eyes over his fingers, smooth and practiced while the jelly squeezes and oozes between his knuckles. "He always did react best when I borrowed your face. Even after he'd stopped believing you'd come for him." He looks Dean up and down, and it's like looking into a vortex, mad and cold and laughing. "You don't really seem worth the fuss, to me," he says. "Handsome, in a pretty boy sort of way, I suppose, but not much else."

He turns his back on Dean, all his attention focussed on Sam. His hand wraps around the metal of the cage, pale fingers standing out against the black metal as he holds it steady. He strokes the bars with his other hand, level with Sam's face, slow and gentle, before he feeds the eyes he'd holding through the cage, like dropping coins into an arcade game, only instead of the satisfying chink, there's a sludgy squelching plop. "You pays your money and you takes your chances," he sing-songs, and he shakes the cage, as if it's a present he's trying to guess. "I can get you out, Sammy," he says, and the hair on Dean's body prickles. "Why don't you make it easy, huh? Like you used to?"

Sam doesn't move. Lucifer looks almost hurt, and he sounds disappointed, the way Dad did when Sam missed a shot or skipped out on training. "I can put your brother back here, too," Lucifer says. "Misery loves company, right? And God knows, he's got misery enough to share."

Sam looks up, then, and the right side of his face is gone, a mess of rotting flesh, falling away to show blackened, crumbling bone beneath it. "You can't," he says, garbled and slurred through half his mouth. "Not to him." And Lucifer laughs, a bright, joyous peel; the sound of it makes it easy to believe he was once an angel.

"Sam. Sammy. I can do anything. You know that. I've done it before. And besides," he says, drum rolling his hands on the cage, "it's not me doing it."

There's a shift in the air (like that one time Sam made Dean get on a plane and the pressure in his head tightened every time they plunged closer to the ground) and Lucifer's turning a key in a lock that didn't exist a moment ago, and there are hands on Dean's face, long-fingered, strong, terrifying. Alistair's voice is a low, hissing sweetness in his ear, same as it always was, same as it always will be.

"You were always my favourite," he says. "You knew I'd come back for you," and he's got a razor in his teeth as sharp as his smile. "You wanted me to come back for you."

In the cabin, all those years ago in South Dakota, the yellow-eyed demon bleeding him dry, it had been a bit like this, except this time everything floods out of him in an instant, and there's no one he can beg for help, because there's never anyone. Not here. Alistair slides the razor against his skin like a caress, like Dean is something precious, handle with care marked on him where only Alistair can see. When it finally bites, right between his collarbones, it's a relief. Alistair leans forward, still smiling.

"I'd almost forgotten how good you tasted," he says, and his tongue is a warm, wet tingle on Dean's skin as he licks the blood away. In hell, there were days when that was the only warmth Dean knew. The razor tears into his face, a clean cut from the top of his ear to the bottom of his jaw, first one side, and then the other. Blood begins to puddle on the ground, and pain thuds into him, a club that'll go on swinging for an eternity. Dean doesn't raise his hands to protect himself. Alistair's got an order, a strategy; he'll get to Dean's fingers soon enough.

"Such a good boy," Alistair croons to him. The skin on his forehead splits with a whispering complaint. "So obedient." Somewhere off to his right, further away than he was, Lucifer's still humming, a song full of age and glee. Dean thinks Sam might be screaming, but it's a guttural, despairing sound, all the human scraped out of it.

"Gonna make something better out of you, boy," Alistair says, with a sort of hunger Dean doesn't remember from before. His fingers are unbuttoning Dean's shirt, one at a time. "Like the good old days. Only this time when you beg me to stop, Sammy's gonna be right here. Just think of it, Dean-o. You, me and Lucifer. All the fun we can have with him."

Dean's on his knees now, though he doesn't remember falling. The ragged flaps of his cheeks dangle in front of him, suspended on strings of skin, reminding Dean, incongruously, of those mittens Sam used to have hanging from his jacket when he was a kid. Dean's blood is pouring out of him as if it's the one part of him that can escape, a rich river of red deserting him. Alistair likes him like this, head down, leaving beaten a few hundred miles behind him. But Dean looks up at the mention of Sam. Not will power, not fighting, not really. It's just instinct, the one thing that couldn't be whittled away.

Sam's on the ground, feet from Dean or maybe lightyears, Lucifer braced above him, dripping blood into his mouth. "Never needed this to make you a monster," Lucifer's saying. "Not a drop. But you know me. I like my vessels primed in all the right ways." Sam's skin crackles and burns wherever Lucifer touches him, and Lucifer's touching him everywhere, like Sam is his. In the flickering orange glow of the flames that dance and swirl around them, Lucifer leers at Dean. I won, that look says; it was inevitable. And as Lucifer's smiling at him, Alastair works his blade down, tearing into Dean as easily as if Dean were dime store paper instead of flesh and bone.

"You'll get your chance with him," Alastair says. His fingers replace the blade, just for a second, stroking through the bloody wounds in Dean's face. Dean doesn't pull back. This is how it goes. Not even (three minutes, a month, a year, a full once over from Alistair), and already there's no fight left in him. Shame rises up in its place, hot and thick as vomit.

"Not Sam," he says. It's nothing more than a mumble, his mouth more full of blood than conviction. But he says it again. "Not Sam."

Alistair laughs, a snorting wheeze through his nose. "Still so brave," he says. "Like there's anything good I can't cut away from you."

And then Sam's voice. "Dean," he says. He shouldn't be able to talk, not through the ruined hole of his mouth, but his voice comes clear and loud to Dean, like it's inside him. "You know this isn't real," he says, and there's certainty there, like there was when he said he was leaving for Stanford, like there was when he said he was going to kill Lilith. "You know you can get us out of this. I can't. I've tried. But you can."

Dean shakes his head. Blood spatters onto his hands. "No," he says. "Never could."

"Yes," Sam says. "Yes, you did. You got me out before. You got me out twice."

Which doesn't even make sense, but he is where he is. Nothing has to make sense here. Alistair slices at his face, a random, haphazard stroke, and there's genuine anger in the movement, in his words when he orders Dean to look at him. Dean doesn't. He keeps his gaze focused on Sam, even as he feels that pop and shift again. Dean doesn't move, but Sam does. He's off the floor now, in a house Dean's never seen before. Hardwood floor and big bay window, pale blue curtains thrown back to let in early morning light just turning gold. Sam's there, stretched out on a cream-coloured sofa that looks cleaner and more expensive than any sofa Dean's ever sat on. And Sam's like that too: improbably hole and new, his face relaxed, his eyes wiped clean of that haunted sadness Dean's started taking for granted.

"You should bring me a beer," he says, happy like a Sammy from years ago, and at first Dean thinks he really is talking to him. But then he looks where Sam's looking, and sees himself ambling through an adjoining doorway. Himself but not, because there are flecks of grey in his hair, and his smile for Sam looks like it comes without any effort at all. That hurts, even now, even here, seeing the way Sam's face lights up for this better version of him.

"Two years here, Sammy. You'd think you'd have found your way to the fridge by now," that Dean says, and in the next breath he's on fire, going up from everywhere all at once. The flames change color as they consume him, like some monstrous party trick, and Alistair's still there, razor pressed against Dean's throat, almost twitching with delight while Sam screams and screams, pinned to the sofa by something invisible as the other Dean burns.

¿"Reality's what I say it is," Lucifer says, lounging in the doorway next to burning Dean, his hands in his pockets. Dean's skin is running, melting and roasting. All of him is.

"I could never do that," Alastair says, impressed and ashamed together.

Shift again. Alistair's splitting Dean open, his wrists deep in Dean's body. Dean's screaming as he watches his heart beat, and in time with it, Sam's saying his name. "Not real," he says in Dean's head, but Sam's hanging above him, spinning around and around while his face goes blue, and John says, "Should have done this at the start. After your mother. Died regretting that I hadn't, Sammy."

Shift again. Everything's quiet now. Big, empty room, no windows and no light. Alistair's carving his name onto Dean's spine, reaching through barriers of muscle and organs and bone to do it. Overhead, a loudspeaker comes to life. A tannoy in the world's shittiest airport, only there's no flight out, and it's Dean's own voice delivering the news. "I'm done trying to save you," it says, and the echoes pick up the hatred, bounce it around until it's filled every corner of the room. Sam's in one of those corners. Dean knows that now. Rocking back and forward, arms wrapped around his head. "I'm coming for you," his voice finishes, and for two seconds or so the only sound is the scraping of Alistair's knife, rhythmic and almost soothing. Then the chime of a new announcement sounds, and Dean's voice starts up again. Sam stays huddled by the wall.

Shift again. The ground is slick with blood, Dean almost sliding in it as he circles the woman in front of him--though she's hardly a woman now. She'd been his first; Alistair's always liked bringing him back to her. Alexandra. That was her name, back when having a name mattered. Her hair is matted with blood; there's bone gleaming white through the tears in her flesh. She hasn't begged him to stop for a long time.

"It's like peeling anything," Alistair says. "Only satisfying if you can get it all in one go." He slips a hand over Dean's, forcing his grip steady on the knife, and Dean remembers how Dad, and later Bobby, did the same thing, back when Dean had a name and a purpose, too, teaching Dean to shoot, to put in a line of stitches.

"He's never been here before," Sam says, as if that's important, even though it comes out garbled through his missing teeth, and Dean can't understand how he ever mistook Sam for anyone else. Alistair forces Dean's hand down, snagging a piece of Sam's skin and starting to pull.

Shift again. Sam in his Stanford apartment, Jess straddling him, her hair thrown back over one bare shoulder as she smiles down at him. "You don't think it was ever real, do you?" she says. Her eyes are livid with malice. "Jess was dead long before you got the nerve to ask her out. Romantic dinner by the ocean," she adds, like an afterthought. "So fucking lame."

Shift again, and Sam's in the panic room. Wrists raw and bloody, lips cracked and dry. His ribs show under his filthy t-shirt, and his eyes are too big in his gaunt face. He's calling for Dean, over and over, his voice a broken, painful husk.

Lucifer stands by the door, face smushed up against the grill as he peers in at Sam. He shakes his head, slow and sad. "Dean left you here," he says. "You can't even blame him, Sam. That's the worst part, isn't it?"

Sam wrenches at the cuffs, until he's gasping and shaking. Dean thinks, fierce and angry, I would never have done that, and Sam stops, goes perfectly still.

"I believed you the first time you did this," he says, to the face at the doorway. "I don't now. He never would. And anyway, it's not you. I was right about that. Maybe it's not even me. Not on my own. Codependent, isn't that what you always said?"

The walls around Sam start to crumble, collapsing easily without dust or sound, and then there's a series of dizzying jolts. Dean crawling on his knees from Alistair, a low, animal whine coming out of him. Sam raising his hand to kill Lilith, then turning to plunge Ruby's knife into Dean's throat. Sam on a lonely, dusty road, Dean in the distance and always walking away. Sam drowning, Sam burning, and Lucifer tosses a coin high into the air, says, "What next, Sammy? Heads its freezing, tales its dismembering." Sam with his eyes and his ears and his tongue gone, Lucifer in front of him, hands on his waist and laughing. Sam stretched out on a motel bed, the sheets rusty with blood, and Dean promising to excise the devil from him, just one more cut, Sammy, just this one last bit.

"Not real," Sam says. He sounds panicked. But then, Dean's gouging out his chest. How else would he sound? It's always been real; hell always waiting to take him back. It doesn't matter if Sam's here or not. Dean's destroying him either way. Alistair appears in his peripheral vision, a grinning bloody nightmare in the corner of his eye. He's got tongs in his hand, glowing red-hot and vicious.

"This was always what I wanted most for you," he says. He sidles up to the bed, holds out the tongs to Dean. He licks his lips, one long, slow move right around, and he settles on the bed by Sam. Dean's hands are shaking. The world seems to have lost its color. "It's only right it should end like this," Alistair says, and he sounds very far away. "He put you here, after all."

"No," Sam says. "Not this time." Alistair rolls his eyes, and Sam says, "Dean. Come on, dude," as if Dean's still someone he can argue with. And then he says, "Rabbits run really rapidly, racing rather than resting," like he used to. slow and ponderous, like it was a talisman. A ritual just for them, and a thing so weird and out of place that it stops Dean cold.

It doesn't hurt, not exactly, but the feeling of dislocation is immediate, a jolt like someone snapped his neck. Dean blinks, and it's not Sam on the bed, full grown and expertly carved. It's Sammy, five years old and tiny, looking at Dean with wide-eyed awe. Then it's just Sam, his face unmarked, except for the lines that never quite disappear anymore. He's still looking at Dean the same way, though. Trusting and sure, as if Dean's never given him any reason to doubt. "I can't do this by myself," he says. "Maybe you can't, either, because--because--"

His fists clench on the bed, and he bites down on his lip, as if what he needs right now is more pain. Alistair's flickering in and out, as erratically as any two-bit ghost. "You can't do anything to help him," he says to Dean. "Wy even try? Haven't you been doing that your whole life? May as well stop while you're behind."

If Sam hears him, he gives no sign. "There was…" His face contorts, and he shudders all over. The tears in his body stretch with the movement, ragged edges of flesh yawning wide. Sam lets out a stifled cry, but he doesn't look away from Dean. "There was something. I don't--a woman. A djinn, maybe. Something put us here."

"That old line again," Lucifer says, like he's been here all along. He's perched on one of the posts, right above Sam's head. The world's scariest teddybear, Dean thinks. Sam flinches, but that's all.

"You taught me what was real, Dean," he says. "This isn't. It was, but it isn't. Not anymore. We just have to get out."

"That's very touching," Alistair says, and Lucifer's nodding. "Very sweet," he says. "And perfectly pointless."

He doesn't even twitch, but Dean still ends up standing by Lucifer. Another him stands where he used to be, and another sits by Alistair, all of them blood-spattered, hollowed out ruins. He couldn't even blame Sam for not telling them apart.

"There is no stone one," the Dean by Alistair tells Sam and he sounds very sure, all dosed up on big brother certainty. "There's only this."

Sam's face crumples, just for a second, and Dean's hated that look his whole life. Maybe Lucifer's right, but Dean's reaching out, anyway, when Sam glances over at him. Dean stays still, and Sam doesn't quite smile, but there's a suggestion of one as he looks back at Lucifer.

"This is me doing that," he says. "Or maybe him. He's not really much saner than me, and I'm talking to an imaginary devil." Sam can't sit up, not now, but he reaches out his hand, curls it around Dean's wrist. It's warm and strong; Dean shakes in his grip. "You and me," he says. "Come on."

Dean looks down at where Sam's fingers touch his skin. He expects to see them smeared and sticky with blood, and they are, but they're also familiar, the same hands that have pulled him up and out of danger a hundred times before. Dean's got nothing to lose. He takes a breath, and reaches out, finds Sam's shoulder and grabs on. There's a hazy fuzz of static, sight and sound going out of focus. This time it hurts. There's huge, unbearable weight pushing down on his skull, and his brains seem to be trying to dig their way out from the other side. This is going to kill him,, he thinks, as much as he can think anything at all. He'll get out of hell to send himself right back there. Sam's whimpering beside him, or at least that's how it sounds, so Dean grits his teeth, and tries to will the room away.

Nothing happens, not at first. He struggles, like he does when he's dreaming, trying to claw his way back to the surface, but that just makes the pain worse. But then, if Sam's right, he's not asleep, not in any way that counts. Up isn't where he needs to go. More like through.

"I don't know what to do," he says, and maybe he speaks the thought aloud, or maybe he doesn't. Sam understands, either way.

"Believe in something real," Sam says, and beneath the hurt and the fear, there's a definite and entirely Sam-like suggestion of annoyance, as if Dean should already know the answer.

And maybe he should. He thinks of telling Sam to make Dean his first stone. A stone isn't what he needs now, either, but maybe it's close enough. He stops struggling, and reaches out, searching without effort. His brain is full of Sam, colonised and laid waste to. It always has been. He gathers everything to him, a lifetime's worth of Sam Winchester, all the impossible ways Dean loves him spilling out into this shitty dark place. For once, Dean isn't scared at all by it. If there's another reality beyond this, Sam is it. So Dean makes a picture of him, puts him in the Impala for good measure, and he puts all his strength behind it. Sam. Sam Sam Sam. Over and over. A thought like a battering ram.

When the room starts to disappear, blocked out bit by bit, like there's a sliding door closing over, Dean just thinks of him harder. Alastair goes last, standing for an instant in nothing, whispering Dean's name into the quiet. He goes last, but he goes. When Dean's knees hit the floor, the agony is immediate, and so is the relief.

There's a woman standing above him, her face a disturbing combination of slack and shocked, and Dean remembers, clearly, all at once. Sam's on her other side. There's blood dripping from his nose, and the woman's still holding his hand, keeping him upright. Or maybe just keeping him. Fucking psychotic empaths.

"You two were fun," she says, in a voice that's surprisingly deep and soothing. "Horror I couldn't have dreamt of, feeding off each other so perfectly. Having you both was delicious, but he's got so much more for me to find. Layers and layers of it, and no big brother to keep him from it this time. Not like you're going to kill me, not while I've got him trapped with me." She starts to smile, but that's as far as she gets.

"He's pretty good at getting out of places he shouldn't," he says. The first bullet catches her in the chest; the second does the same, and Dean sees the life go out of her eyes. The third spins her around, her long hair flying out behind her. Momentum gives her another few tottering steps, and then she topples over. The thud she makes as she hits the ground is very quiet after the gunfire, though Dean supposes it would've hurt if she'd been able to feel it.

Sam's fall is much more dramatic, because he's Sam, so it would almost have to be. Dean can't make it to his feet yet, and he definitely didn't stand a chance of getting to him before Sam collapsed. He crawls to him, now, reaching out a hand that's shaking so badly he misses his grip on him the first time.

"Hey," he says, and his voice isn't any steadier. "Hey, Sammy."

Sam groans, scrabbles weakly at Dean's hand. When he opens his eyes, they're full of terror and relief. Kind of exactly how Dean feels.

"Guess that makes three times," he says, like it's perfectly normal to carry on a conversation begun in some version of Hell, and then he passes out, a messy, mostly hole heap on the stone floor.

***

As far as Dean's concerned, they're never going to talk about it. Ever. Dad had the right idea: a storage vault full of cursed objects, locked down and out of sight. Say what you will about the guy, but he taught Dean well.

Ohio and the empath are a week behind them, and as many miles as Dean could drive them. Not many, as it turned out, that first day, not with Sam out of it and Dean shaking like he was freezing all the way through, but the next days were full of long stretches of road, and longer stretches of silence.

The silence has mostly stuck. They're in Minnesota now, communicating with Frank through of excruciating codes even Sam isn't enjoying, and chasing down some more goddamn warlocks. The requisite Harry Potter jokes won't come, though. As it turns out, Dean can't talk about much of anything, and Sam's mostly given up trying to make him. Even the sex has stopped; Sam's barely touched him at all since he came around properly.

Except at night, of course. He's taken to crawling in beside Dean whenever they stay anywhere with a bed, barely touching, just fingers tucked up against Dean's shoulder. Dean doesn't know what comfort he can possibly be, but he never objects. It's not like he doesn't have nightmares of his own. In the morning, it's Dean on the wrong side, his face pressed firmly against Sam's neck or shoulder or whatever happens to be in reach. He's always up and moving as soon as he's conscious, too embarrassed and ashamed and just fucking needy to stay.

"Like a little hugging is the scariest thing that's happened to you lately," Sam says, as pissed off as Dean's heard him in a while. It's a Tuesday again--probably. Dean's not been keeping track all that much. He slams the door without answering Sam, puts the shower on as hot as it will go (which isn't very), and stays there until he hears Sam leave, presumably in search of breakfast.

Not Sam's fault, but Dean can't look at him. He doesn't even know what's worse. That he saw some of what Sam's Hell was, or that Sam saw some of what Dean's was. Stone number one. A drunk and a failure, and for the special bonus prize, Alistair's bitch. Torture methods, he thinks, maybe a bit hysterically: A for effort, F for originality.

The warlocks at least are a distraction. Sam might be pressing down on his palm almost constantly, but he's hardly likely to let a little thing like a failure to distinguish reality get in the way of research. And Dean's never had any problem with salting and burning a few witch altars, especially when it turns out destroying them destroys the warlocks, too. The knife cutting into his arm, he could've lived without, but their lives have reached a level of fucked up where even that's almost comforting, the sort of thing that can be fixed with a few stitches and some peroxide.

At least until he catches Sam looking over Dean's shoulder again. That's hardly new, not this week. Sam's gotten sloppy with his hallucinations, sort of the way Dean's gotten sloppy with his drinking. Too much effort to hide it when just getting through the day takes more than you've got to give. A familiar weight of fury settles in Dean's gut: at Lucifer or the empath or himself or maybe even Sam.

"Jesus, maybe I should do it myself," Dean says, like a perfect dick.

On the upside, it does snap Sam's attention back to him. "Shut up," he says. His mouth is a hard, stubborn line, his hands steady and sure as he works, but his voice wavers when he says, "Or, you know, be useful. I know you've got a whole vow of silence thing going on, but talking to me right about now would be good."

And because Sam's asking for help, and it's something Dean can give, he takes a breath. It's not the first time he's had to beat something he can't see. It's like before, telling Sammy stories in the dark. He talks right through the pain, maybe even through the anger, and somewhere along the way, while the row of stitches advances clean and steady down his arm, it eases something in Dean, too. "Remember that time Bobby tried to make you a birthday cake and mixed the salt up with the sugar? You were four and a demanding little fucker, even then." "Remember when you threw up that time in school assembly. Only time you ever wanted to get back on the road." It's funny, he thinks, the way this shit still makes him laugh, the way the memory of it still feels like something that actually happened to him.

"It was half a century ago for me," he says, because he isn't going to talk about it, just like he isn't going to think about it. His brain has been double-crossing him all week, hell coming back around like one of those leviathan sandwiches. He doesn't know why he should be surprised that his mouth's getting in on it, too. "A couple centuries for you."

Sam's putting the kit away, because Dean at least had the foresight to wait until he was finished to run his mouth. He freezes for a second; the light in the motel isn't much, an anaemic flickering in the dark, but Dean sees all the muscles in his shoulders tense. "Dean," he says, dangerous and edgy.

Dean ignores him. He feels dangerous himself, like the ground's coming up to meet him. "You're not fine," he says. He expects something sort of dramatic to happen. Not quite a thunderclap or the end of the actual world, but maybe for his heart to just stop beating, or for Sam to collapse in a broken, unreachable heap. Nothing does, unless Sam catching his hand in the zipper of his bag and squawking into the moment counts as something.

He's got the tip of his middle finger in his mouth when he turns around, his face a hilarious mixture of outrage and concern. "Dean," he says, wiping his hand on his jeans. "I'm--"

"Don't say it."

Dean's got two big brother tones. There's the first one, the voice he uses to cajole and comfort; it's kinda been AWOL these last few months. This is the second one, the one that gets Sam moving when he's too hurt to do it on his own. the one, Dean believes on good days, that might have brought him back to Dean in that warehouse. "Don't say it," he says again, and Sam closes his mouth. "You're not fine." He looks at Sam, his jeans spattered with Dean's blood, his messy hair, and his tired eyes. Somehow, relief bubbles up, right along with the fear that's always just waiting to surface. Name the things in the dark, he thinks. "You're not fine," he says again. "You went to Hell. You went to Hell, and you're not fine."

"Well, no," Sam says, and that's his tone, the one that's been driving Dean crazy since Sam got old enough to do things for himself and started believing he could do them better than everyone else. "I sleep for shit and I routinely forget whether I'm alive or not. And I have running conversations with the devil, at least when I'm not hallucinating that you're dying right in front of me." He pauses, like he's telling a really good joke. "He'd like me to know this mopy, sensitive version of you is the hallucination. He's confused by my choices of escapism."

He makes his way across the room, big, socked feet scuffing along the fading carpet. He plants himself right in front of Dean, legs apart, arms folded across his chest. "of course I'm not fine. When I say I am, I mean I'm not shooting at imaginary you. It's a relative term. Because I can admit the shit that's wrong with me."

"It's not about me," Dean says, because it isn't. It's not the same thing, and Sam should know that. "If you don't--if I don't know. I can't--"

Sam sighs. It's typically dramatic and put-upon. "You can't fix it," he says, very flat and very certain. Dean wants to deny it, but Sam's staring at him like he's daring him to, so Dean stays quiet. "You can't make it go away. This is me, now. Like if I got hurt on a hunt and--I dunno. Lost a leg or something."

"Sammy," Dean says, pointlessly. His hands are balled into fists, pressing so hard against his jeans that the gash in his arm throbs even through the painkillers and the whiskey. Sometimes he's looked at Sam this week, and it's ragged flesh and hollowed eye sockets he sees looking back at him, the dusty white of his cheekbones. This can't be how Sam walks around; this can't be it for him, reality like a car reck for the rest of his life. "You weren't supposed to get this," he says, and he hates the shredded sound of his voice, as bad as it was, maybe, when he crawled out of that grave with a mouth full of dirt and a head full of Hell.

And Sam says, "For fuck's sake," but it's too gentle to have any bite. He folds down until he's bracketing Dean's knees with his own, his hands on Dean's shoulders, as if he can keep him together with just that. "Neither were you," he says. "Do you get that?"

Dean shakes his head. "I signed up for it." Fucking Sam, always turning the conversation around, because maybe he made a crappy lawyer that one time, but he's always been able to take Dean apart. "For you. And I--that was something--" You gotta have a reason, is the thing. Sam saved the world, and maybe that helps him, at least when he believes he's living in it.

Sam's quiet for a long, long time, or at least that's how it feels to Dean, caught under his stare, held firm under his hands. When he starts talking at last, his voice is firm and soothing, like he's the one telling the story this time. "When I was, I dunno--after Cas, that first time. There were different parts of me. My subconscious or whatever, making sense of it the only way it could. Soulless me and souled me, and Hell me, just kind of hanging out, and the only way to wake up was to take them all back. Like Humpty Dumpty. That's how I thought of it when I was there. Or how one of me did, anyway."

Dean nods, because it seems like Sam's expecting a response, and he supposes it makes as much sense as anything does. He stays very quiet, though. He's never asked what it was like, too scared, until he got a full colour version of it himself.

"He told me to stay under--the me that was in Hell. Stay asleep and not take him in. Said I didn't know what I would be taking on." His fingers slide, slow, back and forth across the material of Dean's shirt, the soft swishing sound of it loud when Sam pauses. "I didn't, I guess. Hundred and eighty years of hell, how could I? All I had was whatever I saw that time I passed out, and--you. What it did to you. I thought of the first time you sewed me up without anything, and you said it would hurt, and I said I knew, only I didn't. Because you don't ever know." He shrugs, and his face goes kind of tremulous. "And this doesn't go away. But I don't regret it, not really."

"Now I know you're fucked up." Dean feels like his own face is all question marks and disbelief, and probably it is, because Sam actually smiles at him, there and gone in an instant.

His hand has slipped its way around to the back of Dean's neck, his fingers now scratching in the short hair there. All the sex aside and the sleeping together, it's the longest Sam's touched him in years. That and the relentless, measured tone of his voice are doing a number on Dean, like the world's gentlest, most persistent beating. "I knew you were in trouble, for one thing," he says. "I wasn't about to let you take all the credit for stupid, self-sacrificing bullshit. And for another--" he pauses again, shakes his head and carries on like nothing happened. "I've been not fine kind of a lot," he says.

"Sam," Dean says. If Sam's about to start regaling him with the greatest fuckups of Sam, Dean's going to kill him right now, bad arm and shaking hands notwithstanding.

"No, really, Dean. I remember me, now, without a soul. You can't imagine what it's like to not feel anything, any more than you can what it's like to be in Hell. Even the memory of it's wrong. And on demon blood--dude, that wasn't me, either, which I guess is worse, because it was. All the worst parts of me, and I made them even worse."

"You were more than usually difficult, it's true," Dean says. He's leaning into Sam a bit now, because Sam is very warm and sort of comforting, even if he is talking like a crazy person. "It's still not the same, though. Not as having the devil across the breakfast table."

"No, his repartee could use a little work. It fucking blows, actually. Like the nightmares and the weird shit I don't even know is going to fuck me up until it does. And I could live without having to convince myself of what's real quite so often." He smiles, small but genuine, as if any of this is funny. "But the rest of the time, I'm me. For the first time in a long time. Hell's just a part of that now. There are worse things to be than that, Dean."

Dean laughs, weak and cracking, like he's a hundred years old. He drops forward, buries his face in Sam's shoulder, and Sam catches him, arms coming up and around to anchor him. "You're so fucking balanced," he says, muffled into the soft fabric of Sam's hoodie. "It's not normal."

"Right. That's the part of my life that isn't normal." He knocks his shoulder against Dean's forehead. "I got you," he says. "You can't fix it, but you make it better." Just like that, casual as anything. "And--" he takes a breath, tightens his grip on Dean. "You taught me, first, that Hell didn't have to be everything."

Which, again, is just typical Sam: get Dean vulnerable and caught and then play dirty. Though at first he thinks Sam's being reasonable and letting him pull away, but of course Sam isn't. He moves with Dean, crowding on to the bed with him, and fuck if Dean doesn't sometimes forget how freakishly huge his brother is. Even kneeling, he manages to loom at Dean. He's right in Dean's space, hands reaching for him again, like he's gone and developed some pathological habit.

"If you wanted to sample the merchandise, Sammy, you only had to ask," Dean says, but it's feeble, and he knows it. His back is pressed hard up against the wall. He's trapped and panicking when Sam puts his hands on his face, cradling him there.

"I saw what he did to you. Some of it, anyway," Sam says, so calm, so fucking earnest. "Back there, in Ohio. Memory or nightmare or whatever the fuck, it was probably true enough. I had some idea, even before that. It's not all you are. It never was. And I never told you that. In my defence, we've been pretty busy."

"Stop it," Dean says. His heart is beating slow and heavy in his chest, loud and rushing in his ears. "This isn't--stop it."

But Sam doesn't, which is hardly noteworthy. Getting him stopped once he's started has always been the problem. "You've still got terrible music taste and even worse interests when it comes to porn. You drink too much and your guilt complex is horrifying, and your martyr complex makes me want to beat the crap out of you." His grip tightens almost to the point of painful when Dean tries to turn his head, but his thumbs stroke over his jaw in this tender way that makes Dean feel a bit unhinged. "I saw what he did, and I've seen you keep trying to save everybody else. I've seen you carry little kids out of rivers, and beat down horsemen of the apocalypse, and wear stupid cowboy outfits that make you look ridiculous like it's a good thing. I've seen you not give up, even when you wanted to. I know who you are, Dean, and it's not that. Never was."

"You're probably having one of those reality breaks again," Dean says, but his voice splinters, the strength running out of it. He closes his eyes, so he doesn't have to see Sam's face, and all the understanding written on it. He's shaking and trying not to, which is just making it worse. He reaches out and grabs on to Sam, because that's about the only thing left he can do.

Sam's finally moved his hands. He palms down over Dean's neck, fingers trailing under Dean's t-shirt as he settles them back on his shoulders. "I trusted you," he says. "Back in that warehouse, I did. And I've kept on doing it. Time you returned the favour, Dean."

It sounds foundational when Sam says it like that. Almost easy. Maybe Dean is a tulpa. Maybe if Sam believes Dean can be more, it can be true. Sam certainly feels like the only solid thing in the world, right now. Dean swallows. He leans into Sam, the huge, steady warmth of him. "You gotta stick around, then." A small and desperate thing to ask, and probably dangerous as all fuck. He's been asking for that his whole life, and look where it's gotten them, but he can't stop asking for it, any more than he can stop all the bad shit that's always aimed right at them.

Sam's drawing him in, anyway, like he doesn't mind. His lips skate over his cheekbone, the beginnings of stubble scratchy against his skin. "I'll try if you will," he says, very quiet. "It would be one of the better deals we've made."

There's a good reply to that, one that might answer all the ways Lucifer used Dean to hurt Sam in Hell, but Dean feels used up, excavated. Sam kisses him, so Dean doesn't have to talk. A slow, gentle press of his mouth against Dean's, his tongue slipping into Dean's mouth without urgency. Dean's hands are still fisted too tight in the back of Sam's shirt, and later, pressing too hard into his bare skin. Keeping Sam close is essential, like salt lines and holy water, all the protection against the dark Dean has.

Sam eases his palms over Dean's bare sides, the curve of his ass and the jut of his hipbones. "I got you," he says, whispers it into the tattooed skin of Dean's chest. "I'm right here," as if Dean isn't cataloging everything about him, following his every movement. He slides in close, spreads Dean's legs apart. "Let me," he says. "Dean." His fingers are already opening Dean up, and Dean's already aching for him.

"Only because you obviously want it so badly," Dean says, voice mostly sounding like he's in control, and Sam's smiling and rolling his eyes as his fingers slide in and out, determined and precise while his other hand trails all over Dean's bare skin, the inside of his thighs and the flat of his belly. Slow, all of it so fucking slow, touching everywhere but Dean's dic, which curves hard and throbbing towards his stomach. By the time Sam's braced against Dean, pushing inside him burning inch by burning inch, Dean's already half gone.

With Sam inside him, he comes apart, and with Sam all around him, that's all right. He closes his eyes, let's himself just feel Sam. There's a lot of him to feel, and that makes him smile a little, happy against Sam's sweaty skin. Sam's moving, long, deep strokes, hitting Dean just right every time.

For an instant, he's got a coherent thought left in him. Then Sam finally, fucking finally fists his cock, thumb tracing over the slit like he's holding something impossibly delicate, and whatever Dean had been going to say disappears with the rest of his mind. "Sam," he says, instead, and then Sam and Sam and Sam. That's the only word there is, because Sam's filling him up, rushing in to all Dean's empty, broken places. The world reduced to the way he moves in Dean, the hushed desperate babble of his voice in Dean's ear, full of promises and truth he'd never say anywhere else.

"Come on," Sam says. "Dean, let me," as if Dean isn't completely helpless in his hands. Dean's head falls forward, Dean gasping and shaking. "I got you," Sam says, repeats it over and over. Dean gets lost, then, pleasure that builds and spirals and incapacitates him utterly. That's okay. Sam's there when he's done, pressing him down into the mattress.

"I think I made you pass out," Sam says. He sounds the way Dean thinks other people might if they'd cured cancer or proved string theory. When Dean opens his eyes, he's beaming.

"That was blood loss, you moron."

Sam shifts, looking for the exact position, no doubt, that'll make it harder for Dean to breathe under his gargantuan weight. There's drying stickiness between them, more of it where Sam's easing out of him. They're both sweaty, and Sam, in particular, has hair he should definitely be ashamed of. Dean isn't contented, lying here beneath him, and Sam can't ever prove it.

"You're gross," Dean says. "And heavy." his hands don't shove at him when he raises them, though; they settle on his arms, holding, just a bit. And Sam says, "You've never met an afterglow you didn't want to ruin," but he's still grinning, still kissing him messy and sloppy. There's hail battering against the window, loud now that they've gone quiet. Dean's own head feels quiet, too. Maybe not for long, but for now. Maybe, he thinks, maybe that's how you do it, one good moment at a time. He should ask Sam.

Instead, he tugs on Sam's hair, until Sam looks at him. "I can make a list, if you want," he says. Sam raises an eyebrow, sleepily curious. "Of things I'd find affirming. I'm not totally unreasonable. It doesn't have to all be sex. Bringing me coffee. Doing my laundry. Showing an interest in Shark Week. Maybe if you weren't so tall."

"Jerk," Sam says. He rolls off Dean, awkward and painful as someone with forty-two elbows, and curls up beside him, instead of doing anything useful like getting something to clean them both up. "It's gonna snow," he says. "We could stay here." Edged with hopefulness, and Dean says, "Yeah. We could do that."

***

What's left of winter seems nothing but snow. There must be days without it, Dean knows, but he doesn't remember them. The rest of February and even into March: snow piled high on the side of the road, rising up in pure white defiance against the dark. Rundown places with dreams of being backwater towns turning to Christmas cards while Dean and Sam huddle in motels with dying heaters and stolen blankets. Blizzards out of nowhere, so that Sam comes back from outrunning Satan looking like some gigantically puffy snowman, and the flakes melt against Dean's fingers, later, while he kisses Dean and Dean imagines he can work the cold out of him.

Dean likes it, in spite of himself. Fuck knows why. Things aren't any better. Bobby's still dead, and Cas is still gone. Sam's still carving himself up to keep the devil out, or maybe just to keep himself in. All the same, there are days when he's bringing coffee back to the motel, kicking up white powdery snow and freezing his ass off, and saving the world again seems like not the most pointless thing ever. There are days, like when Sam falls and goes three feet downhill on his ass, shrieking all the way, when Dean inexplicably thinks they could do it. They've got precedent on their side, and maybe that counts for something.

They hunt, and they argue and they keep using the world's fucking ugliest cars, and Dean still refuses to let Sam drive. "Because you're reality impaired," Dean tells him when Sam bitches, and Sam says, "Whatever. You're sensitivity impaired." But he's smiling, even if Dean only catches it out of the corner of his eye, and he settles down in the passenger seat, and half an hour later, his face is all twisted up in annoyance because he doesn't know how to get comfortable in anything but the Impala.

They spend entire days doing nothing but running the numbers Bobby gave them and they get nowhere; when they finally find the field, they spend as much time watching it and learning didly squat. "Would it have been too much to ask for Bobby to have left us something useful?" Dean says in Colorado. "Money or property or some kind of trust fund."

Depending on who you ask, they're on the trail of something that's either a three-headed bat, a fire-breathing hummingbird, or a horse with wings. All they know for certain is that it's big, and it's dangerous. Sam's been researching it while Dean watches the field. He's given Dean monosyllabic answers all afternoon while he reads, but now he looks up. There are circles under his eyes, because last night wasn't a good one for him, but his gaze is sharp and focused, and he's smiling.

"You got that flask," he says. "You could get at least five dollars for that. I got this musty old book with no useful information in it whatsoever."

Dean smiles back at him, then. For the first time, the hurt is tangled up in fondness, and it doesn't feel like someone's cracking his heart open. "You know what he'd say, then," he says. "If you can't go in prepared, go in anyway."

So they do, that same night, armed with everything deadly they could think of. Sam's punchy, wound up on adrenaline and tiredness. He won't shut up, which Dean has no problem with, because it's not like they're staking out a fairytale dangerous forest for a murderous flying monster, or anything. Actually, he doesn't mind as much as he should. It's after midnight; he's probably going to get hypothermia any minute now, and he picked the least comfortable tree to lean against. If Sam talks loud enough that whatever they're hunting comes for them quicker, Dean's fine with that.

"NASA have a global snowflake association," Sam says, and if this is the standard of conversation he's hoping to lure the thing in with, they're going to be here for freaking ever. "You, like, take pictures of snowflakes and send them for analysis so they can figure out why they're all different." He doesn't sound like he approves.

Dean says, "Are you offended by the Global Snowflake Club, Sammy? Was your membership request rejected?" 

"I'd rather they were wasting their time reinstating Pluto," he says, because that's another thing he's never getting over, apparently, and sometimes Dean's sure Sam survived hell on petty spite and irritation. Dean snorts and scans the sky, and Sam says, "I guess it's cool. But it's sort of like--you know. A joke isn't funny when you try explaining why."

"I don't think snowflakes have ever been funny," Dean says.

"Jackass," Sam says, and he shuffles around in the snow, ridiculous fluffy jacket rustling loud enough to be heard in several South American countries. If Dean were doing any of this, Sam would be shushing him and bitching about drawing unnecessary attention. "I'm just saying," Sam says. "Sometimes the good stuff could just be good."

Sam does that sometimes. Surprises him, and maybe that's as close to a miracle as he's going to get these days. Maybe that's all right, come to that. Something suspiciously like hope digs its claws in, very gently, testing the ground and looking for a hold. And then he says, "Sam," very quiet, and for the next five minutes, he's busy trying not to be dragged into the sky by his hair.

When it's over, there's a stinking feathery corpse on the ground, bleeding sludgy red goo into the snow. It doesn't look like a bat or a hummingbird or a horse. It does have three heads, though, each of them adorned with a vicious-looking beak. Sam's circling it, with the air of someone judging prize specimens at some horrific aviary show of the year. 

"Naming rights are mine this time if this is something new," he says, as if the nomenclature of the latest deadly thing out to kill them is the reasonable thing to focus on. Probably he wants to call it Plutosorus or something equally stupid. His hair falls over his eyes every time he bends closer, and Dean has the urge to wrap a hand in his collar and yank him the fuck back whenever he gets too close, as if nothing has ever unexpectedly come back to life around them. This is the incurable side effect of being Sam's brother. This and the rest of it, like Sam's some freaky feeling generating machine. Sam cataloguing the ugly fucker on the ground, being pissed off at NASA, drowning out Lucifer's voice in his head with the stubbornness he keeps on mining from who the fuck knows where. Sam, who's been working as hard to save Dean as he has the world, like they're equivalent, somehow.

"Sam," he says, quiet again, but this time when Sam looks around, Dean's smiling at him. "Come here," he says. He's already tugging on Sam's jacket, but there's no need; it's not like Sam's fighting him.

"What?" Sam says, far too sure of himself. He's grinning, hard and wide, and he's already got one of his gigantic, freezing hands on Dean's cheek, his whole body leaning towards Dean in that possessive way he gets nowadays. Dean doesn't mind at all.

He says, "NASA also proved the world wasn't gonna end in 2012." They did, too. Dean read it, months ago. It had seemed highly improbable, then. "You should start paying them some attention." And he kisses Sam before Sam can argue, wraps his fingers around his shoulders as he pushes him down into the snow.