Archive of Our Own

Dean takes a sharp right turn, driving about twenty miles faster than he probably should be, but it’s okay. The Impala knows that she’s Dean’s baby but Sam always comes first, so her tires don’t squeal or protest at the abuse even though she rightfully should be.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Dean is muttering, one hand gripping the sleeve of his brother’s shirt so hard his fingers ache. They’re in the ass-end of nowhere, about thirty miles from civilization, and although Sam’s stopped yelling, he’s gone inhumanly still and silent. Dean’s ears strain to hear the soft cadence of Sam’s shallow breaths above the sound of the Impala taking them down the road, and Dean tackles another bend erratically, using only his left hand to control the wheel.

“Fucking Michigan,” he snarls, flooring it in an effort to get back to the tiny motel they’re staying at as quickly as humanly possible without driving them off of the road.

This wasn’t even supposed to be a tough gig--just some stupid teenage girls praying to Satan for who-the-fuck-knows-what, conjuring small-time curses and remedies. Hell, Sam wouldn’t even have caught wind of it weren’t for their untimely decision to cause the entire cheerleading team to come down with the flu the night before state finals. Had they not already been in the area, they would’ve missed it completely, and before he made the drive, Dean already thought that it was a waste of time.

If it hadn’t been for one of the bitches getting wind of what Dean and Sam were looking for, it would have been as easy as any hunting job could get--just a routine lecture and confiscation of how-to-become-Hell’s-whore manuals, and they would’ve been good to go. Except Bitch A told Bitch B and before Sam and Dean knew it, they’d walked into an archaic demon-summoning ritual, sheep’s blood, pewter chalice, the whole shebang.

Okay, so that might’ve proven to be a little snafu, but by this time, Sam and Dean are pretty well-versed in the habit of kicking demonic ass. Out of the group of five, three girls ended up being possessed by what seemed like low-grade demon scum, but Dean had the knife, and Sam had a shotgun full of rock salt, so when the demons scattered, so did they, darting off in opposite directions into the woods.

Dean hadn’t been worried, especially since he ganked the first one in a little under five minutes. One clean stab between the ribs, and the demon was dead, along with its host. Dean felt a jolt of guilt, but she brought it upon herself, the stupid kid, so he ran along after the other one, following the noises it made as it crashed through the underbrush.

Looking back, Dean realizes he was being kind of retarded. Since when did demons run first without even using a minute (or sixty) to try and fuck with them? But the adrenaline of the chase had caught up with him, and he didn’t register much beyond the wind against his face and his footing on the ground, sure and steady as he kept her pace.

When he caught up to her finally, she feinted to the right, and he almost lost his balance, stumbling into a tree with a bitten off curse. She smiled widely, her eyes dark and vacant, but then she didn’t do anything but look at him, crazed and evil.

“You know, you should really keep a better eye on that brother of yours,” she said baldly right before Sam’s voice pierced the air, low and keening and hurt.

“Fuck,” Dean swore, his stomach twisting unpleasantly as his heart tried its best to break his sternum in half. He didn’t take time to think or plan but instead plunged the knife into the girl’s chest, yanking it out and running before she even had time to finish falling to the ground. Sam was still yelling, and it was setting Dean’s teeth on edge because he’d never heard anything like that from his brother. The sound echoed around, and Dean broke into a dead sprint in the direction he thought Sam went when they’d first gotten separated.. The other girls had vanished from the clearing, but Dean literally could not give a shit.

It took him almost fifteen nerve-wracking minutes to find Sam, and even though his voice had gone hoarse, he was still making that sound. Possibilities were running wildly through Dean’s mind (ambush, maybe, or Alistair-style torturing) but when he literally tripped over Sam, Sam was utterly alone, shaking on the forest floor as though he was having a seizure. The demon’s gone--skipped out--and the girl’s lying in the brush too, but right then, Dean didn’t give a flying fuck about the meatsuit or the girl who’d been stupid enough to give up her body for a demon.

Sliding to his knees, Dean grabbed both of Sam’s shoulders, having some difficulty getting a good grip on his shirt due to the way that Sam’s entire body wa jerking. “Sam,” Dean said loudly, and then more desperately, “Sam, what the fuck is it?” But Sam’s eyes had rolled back into his head, the whites showing unnervingly, and even though he was making noise, there was no doubt that he was unconscious.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,” Dean muttered, looking around at the trees as though they’d tell him what happened or what he should do next. He tried to shake Sam himself, even though that wasn’t the brightest idea, considering how much Sam is twitching all on his own, and when that didn’t work, he tries yelling in Sam’s ear. Nothing.

Dean tried to quickly catalogue the condition of Sam’s body and found nothing wrong that he could see apart from the obvious, and he was more confused than ever. He chanced slapping Sam across the face to try and wake him, but nothing happened apart from Sam’s cheek reddening from the blow.

Eventually, Dean had no other choice than to try and get his brother out of the woods and to the relative safety of their motel room where he could try and get a handle on what the fuck just happened. Sam’s too big to sling over his shoulder, so Dean steeled himself, took a hold of Sam’s wrists and started pulling, apologizing silently because Sam’s going to be scratched to hell and sore if he ever wakes up. It was slow work, dragging Sam across the uneven ground back to the Impala, and Dean spent the time alternating between berating Sam and asking the air for Castiel.

Sam never woke and Castiel never appeared, and by the time Dean got to the Impala, his nerves were shot.

It takes some difficult maneuvering, especially since they’re not the motel’s only guests, but eventually, Dean manages to get Sam on one of the double beds. He’s sweaty and desperate and his arms and legs are shaking from overexertion, but Sam is still not moving, and that’s the only thing that matters right now. Without taking his eyes from his brother’s face, Dean locates his phone and thumbs through the contacts until he gets to Bobby’s name.

It’s late, maybe two in the morning, so when Bobby answers on the fifth ring, he sounds sleepy and grumpy.

“It’s me,” Dean says, the introduction rendered unnecessary due to the sheer number of times Dean has had to call Bobby in a panic.

“This better be damn good, boy,” Bobby grumbles. “What have you gotten yourself into this time?” It’s the same thing he always says whenever Dean calls at an ungodly hour, but the normality of their routine isn’t as soothing as it normally is.

“It’s Sam,” Dean says, and then his throat closes up on him. He takes a few deep, steadying breaths, and then says, “I don’t know what happened. We split up after a few low-level demons and when I found him again he was--Jesus, Bobby, he was screaming and he wouldn’t stop.”

Bobby’s silent for several seconds. “Only you two idjits would muck up a simple demon hunt. Let me talk to him.”

“You can’t,” Dean says, his voice low and gruff, “because he’s not waking up.”

Bobby lets the quiet linger again, heavy and crackling along the phone’s connection, maybe waiting for an elaboration. “That’s all?” he asks. “You call me and tell me that Sam’s gotten himself cursed or whatnot by a demon, but the only detail you have is that he was yellin’ like a stuck pig? Nothing else?”

“No!” Dean explodes. “There was nothing there. The demon was gone, and he was fucking screaming his head off like he was burning alive. And now he won’t fucking wake up!”

“Stop cursing at me, boy,” Bobby says sharply. “I’m trying to help here.”

“There’s nothing,” Dean says desperately. “There’s nothing else wrong with him, no marks or runes or anything. He’s just not moving.”

“Was it the demons you were hunting or something else?”

“Just a stupid satanist coven,” Dean says. “When we found them, they summoned a couple of demons. Nothing that’s not normal though. Same black-eyed sons of bitches as always.”

Distantly, Dean can hear Bobby flipping the pages of a book. “So he was screaming?” Bobby confirms. “And now he’s not moving or nothing?”

“For the millionth time, no,” Dean says. “It was like he was having a seizure and now--now he’s just lying there and he’s barely breathing. It’s like he’s in a coma.”

“I’ll see what I can find,” Bobby says distractedly, “but you’re not giving me much to go on. Where are you? I’ll be down as soon as possible.”

Dean relays the motel’s address, hangs up, and sits on the other bed, facing Sam’s prone body. For a moment, he puts his head in his hands as his mind works furiously as to what could’ve happened to make his brother like this. It’s only been one year since he got his soul back, but trust fate to go ahead and fuck them over.

After ten minutes, Dean manages to put himself straight. Panicking isn’t going to help anyone, especially not Sam, and he’s not entirely out of options. His voice shaking with anger, he looks up to the pocked ceiling and begins to speak.

“Castiel, if you don’t get your winged ass down here, the next time I see you, I’m going to shoot you so full of rock salt, you’ll be picking it out of your teeth for weeks. I don’t care if it doesn’t hurt. Would you fucking come already?”

He doesn’t expect it to work, especially since he spent at least a half an hour in the forest dragging Sam coming up with more and more inventive ways of trying to force Castiel to get his celestial ass into the game, but there’s a quiet whoosh of noise, and Dean knows that Cas has finally decided to pay attention to him.

“You know,” the angel says drily, clearly annoyed, “I am not your servant. It is not my place to come at your every beck and call.”

“I don’t fucking care,” Dean grinds out. “Something is wrong with Sam, and you’re the only one I know who could probably figure out what, so stop being so fucking high-handed and help me out here!”

Castiel shoots Dean a withering glance. “I come when I can, Dean. I do not deliberately ignore you. I implore you to stop thinking that my only reason to exist is to assist you in your every need.” That said, Castiel straightens his shoulders and walks over to Sam anyways; for all of his pretended coldness, Dean knows that Cas wouldn’t actually leave Sam to whatever hell he’s in. Dean doesn’t offer up an explanation, because chances are Castiel won’t need it, and Dean doesn’t think he has the strength tonight to recount the tale another time.

“Oh,” says Castiel, very quietly.

“What?” Dean demands. “What is it?”

“Something has broken down the wall,” Castiel says, placing one hand on Sam’s cheek and the other on his breastbone.

“What are you talking about?” Dean says, standing up to stand behind Cas, but he thinks he already knows the answer.

“The wall that was erected in his mind to keep him from his memories of hell,” Castiel explains softly. “It has been destroyed.”

Dean feels his stomach sink to his toes, because to think it is one thing; to hear it confirmed is in another fucking ballpark. “How is that possible? Fix it,” he says stiltedly.

“I do not know what happened, but I cannot,” Castiel says. “I am not as strong as Death, and by this time, your brother has entered a profound state of psychic agony. It would be impossible to separate the memories from his psyche.” He steps away from Sam and haltingly places a hand on Dean’s shoulder, something he must have picked up somewhere else, because Dean thinks it’s meant to be comforting. It isn’t.

“There has to be something,” Dean snaps.

“If there is, I do not have the power for it,” Castiel says gloomily. “Even if I were to try and kill him only to resurrect him, there is a definite chance that his soul would scatter into an infinite number of pieces and never be able to be put whole again.”

Castiel’s words swim in Dean’s mind, and he has to sit down on the bed before he falls down. “What are you trying to tell me, Cas?” he asks.

Castiel removes his hands from Sam and turns so that he can look at Dean properly. “I cannot save your brother, Dean. He is lost.”

Dean only allows Castiel to leave after eliciting a promise from him that he’ll exhaust every measure he has to try and bring Sam back. Castiel keeps telling Dean that there’s not much he thinks can be done, but Dean doesn’t like this answer. Dean’s built his life on making bad decisions to keep Sam alive, and there’s always been a point where he thought he could go no further only to be proven wrong. It’s the only thing he can hold onto right now, and he finds himself making bargains with a God that disappeared a long time ago for some sort of miracle.

Bobby’s waylaid by a snowstorm, and after a terse conversation on the phone, Dean tells him flat-out not to try and drive through it. With their luck, Bobby would end up upside-down in a ditch, and he isn’t much use anyways. He just doesn’t have the cure-all that Dean needs at this point.

Dean thought he’d gotten used to hopelessness by now, but apparently not.

He spends the night running through every possible solution he can think of in his head but nothing comes close. Short of finding an unfindable God and trying to force him into fixing Sam, he has nothing. He’s very tempted to look for Death again and try to strike another deal, but even though Death may be powerful enough for such a task, Dean highly doubts that he’ll be generous enough to help him out again. Once was enough, and Death has made it clear that he’s no one’s play thing.

Dean can feel the desperation under his skin, and once, in a pique of rage, he whips the lamp off of the weathered nightstand between his and Sam’s bed. The crash is loud and jarring, and Dean chances a look to see if maybe it’s managed to rouse his brother and Sam will sit up, saying, “Jesus, Dean, what’s your problem?” But Sam is as still as ever, and Dean has to resist the urge to get up and break something else.

Bobby calls sometime around seven in the morning to let Dean know that he’s on the road again. “You haven’t done anything stupid, have you?” he asks, worriedly, and Dean can faintly hear the uneasy sound of Bobby’s truck struggling through a thick layer of snow.

“No,” Dean answers shortly.

“Well don’t,” Bobby warns, but Dean knows that Bobby’s not under the impression that Dean will keep this particular promise.

“I won’t,” Dean lies. Bobby’s silence speaks louder than any words he could say, and Dean clenches the phone tightly in his hands.

“I’ll be there soon, as long as no damn-fool idiot crashes their car and causes a back-up,” Bob by says finally. Dean doesn’t say goodbye as he shuts the phone. He wants Bobby here now, to share in the awful situation, but at the same time, he wants him to stay away because Dean’s not sure he can deal.

He’s not paying attention and starts when someone’s hand rests on his shoulder. Whipping around, managing to grab his knife from where he left it next to him on the bedspread, he just barely manages to keep from stabbing Castiel in the throat. Castiel acts like he hasn’t noticed, as unruffled as always, and steps away to set an old jar and an even older book on the table.

“Tell me you found something,” Dean says flatly. He doesn’t want any platitudes, and if that’s what Cas is here for, he can take his ass somewhere else.

“It’s possible,” Castiel says, “but very risky. I am unsure of whether it will work or not.”

Immediately, Dean’s heart soars, and he can feel a tiny bit of tension leave his shoulders. “What is it?” he asks. “Risky how?”

Castiel pauses for a second, staring at Dean in a way that makes him feel uncomfortable, almost as though Castiel can see straight through him. “It is a ritual,” he says finally. “I did not remember its existence, but one of my garrison is well-versed in such areas.”

“What kind of ritual?” Dean’s aching for more information, even though he’s already pretty sure that he’s going to go through with it, consequences be damned. At least this way when Sam blows a gasket, he can truthfully say that he got the details before going through with another half-formed plan.

“An angelic one,” Castiel retorts. Dean resists the urge to scoff and snap at that answer and instead, he stands up and darts over to the table where Cas is currently flipping through the book, which seems to be written entirely in Enochian.

Castiel seems to find what he’s looking for because he stops turning pages and presses his fingers down to keep the book from closing. He then turns and uncaps the jar that Dean is pretty sure is filled with holy water.

“C’mon, man,” Dean says, “Spill.”

Castiel is quiet before he answers, one of those full-bodied silences that Dean absolutely hates because they almost never mean something good.

“Sam’s soul,” Castiel says slowly, “is too damaged to survive on its own. It has been tainted by its time down in the pit and is mangled with the damage Lucifer has rendered on it.”

“Yeah, I know,” Dean says. “Get to the new information already.”

Tilting his head slightly, Castiel continues. “Even though Sam’s soul is next to useless, there is a possibility he can survive. This ritual--it results in the bondage of two souls for eternity. Where one is damaged, the other can feel the empty spaces and make it whole. In theory.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Dean says, holding up a hand. “Are you trying to tell me that I have to bind my soul to Sam? Is that what I’m getting here? I’m not making this shit up, am I?”

“If you are a compatible match, then yes, that is how it would work. But I am not sure that this is a veritable solution, Dean. This ritual has not been used in over a millennia, and never on someone purely human.”

The suggestion crashes over him like a well-placed blow to the head--dizzying and all-encompassing. He has to take a moment to get a grip, cover his options. What Cas is talking about--Dean doesn’t even know all the details, but it sounds like it would be an absolutely awful idea. Not to mention that it sounds like Sam will commit fratricide when he wakes up.

For just a second, Dean flirts with the idea of not going through with it. But as he darts a look to Sam, resolve blooms in his stomach, stubborn and heavy. No matter what it does to Dean, no matter how it fucks Sam up, there’s no way Dean can leave his brother comatose in that bed. The thought of it is enough to spin Dean into an web of panic. His mind was made up the moment Castiel said he had a possible solution.

“I don’t care,” Dean says, meeting Cas’ gaze. “What do I have to do?” His answer hangs in the air for several seconds as Castiel looks at him in a way that makes Dean’s skin crawl. Almost as if Cas is testing his resolve. Dean doesn’t let himself look away.

“It is very complicated,” Castiel says warningly. “And there is a chance that it will render your soul useless as well.”

“I. Don’t. Care,” Dean says again. “It might work, right? I can’t just sit here and watch him die.”

“There is a chance,” Castiel agrees reluctantly. “However slight it may be. If you are willing.”

“I am,” says Dean, steel in his voice. “Unless you have another option, stop trying to convince me not to go through with it.”

Castiel blinks slowly and then turns his head so he can read the book, presumably refreshing himself on the steps to whatever ritual he’s suggesting here. Hope has burgeoned in Dean’s stomach, thready and weak but there, and Dean ignores the twinge of uncertainty as he readies himself to hear the consequences.

“It involves several invocations of ritualistic chanting,” Castiel says, following along a line in the book with one of his fingers. “You must paint sigils on your body in holy oil. That is merely for preparation for the binding. After that, you must share your blood with that of your brother.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” says Dean, thinking back to blood-letting that he and Sam had to do before in numerous hunts to draw evil to them.

“That’s only the beginning,” Castiel continues. “I must then open a psychic channel between your minds. What once was his will be your’s and vice versa. This connection will remain with you even into the afterlife.”

“What, like Sam’s gonna be able to read my thoughts?” Dean asks skeptically. It looks like they’ve finally hit the sacrificing part of this whole shebang, but it isn’t enough to make Dean reconsider yet.

“Not precisely,” Castiel corrects. “You will be forever tied, but you won’t get more than surface thoughts, impressions, perhaps feelings.”

“Well, okay then.” Dean runs a hand through his hair. “Is that all?”

“Not in the least. You will find separation to be very difficult, almost painful. You will lose all sense of self and instead know only the sensation of being bound. When he is tired, you will want to sleep, and when you are hungry, he will want to eat. It will not matter if you have slept for twelve hours; as long as Sam is exhausted, he will pass that onto you.

“That is only what I know to be fact,” Castiel says. “There are several other possible side effects, but as I said before, this ritual has never been attempted on someone who was purely human. I cannot say for certain.”

“So that means that some of this stuff might not happen at all?” asks Dean, feeling relieved.

“On the contrary,” Castiel says. “If the ritual is successful, there is no doubt in my mind that you will suffer these effects. Furthermore, since humans are decidedly weaker than the divine, I suspect that you will see a greater change than even I can anticipate.”

Dean is silent for several moments, but then he looks at Sam and feels his resolve tightening. “I don’t care,” he says for a third time.

Castiel looks up from his book, completely unsurprised, and pulls the stopper from the bottle of holy oil. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t.”

Castiel helps Dean move Sam to the ground and then does something to make the beds disappear so that that have enough room to work. Dean hopes that he can get them back in relatively okay condition so he doesn’t max out Steven Tyler’s credit card, but it’s a worry that’s at the back of his mind right now.

“No way,” he says flatly.

“Dean,” says Cas impatiently, “this ritual will not work if either of you are clothed.”

“It’s just a little weird, Cas, okay?” Dean says. “Now if you were in the body of some hot chick, maybe then I’d be alright doing it.”

“Fine,” Castiel says, huffing. “If you do not want my help, I will go back. In case you have forgotten, I am in the middle of a war. You are lucky I ever deigned to come down and help you.”

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Dean says, grabbing at Castiel’s arm so if he poofs away, Dean will likely be transported with him.

“Then you must cooperate!” Castiel is so incensed his nostrils are flaring, and under normal circumstances, Dean would find it funny. However, he feels that if he were to laugh now, Castiel might disappear and refuse to answer another summons for a month. Cas is petty like that sometimes. Sighing, Dean goes to work on the buttons of his shirt.

“You owe me so big for this,” he says to his brother’s body. Predictably, Sam doesn’t respond. Satisfied at Dean’s compliance, Castiel goes about placing a number of candles that he got out of nowhere into a large circle. He lights them all at once without even blinking and Dean sighs again as he pulls his undershirt free from the waistband of his jeans and chucks it somewhere near the bathroom.

“This looks like it’s the beginning of a bad porno,” he tells Castiel, and the angel pauses from where he’s rereading the ritual for the umpteenth time to give Dean a puzzled look.

“But there is no pizza man,” he says uncomprehendingly. “I do not understand.”

“Never mind,” says Dean, trying not to think about the fact that he’s about to take off his pants. When he’s finally naked, he resists the urge to cup his hands in front of his dick and instead sinks into a sitting position on the floor, legs crossed to try and provide him with at least a little bit of modesty. Thankfully, Cas still hasn’t looked up from whatever he’s doing.

Cas starts to sprinkle stuff in an circle inside of the candles, forming another ring of what looks to be crumbled herbs. It smells slightly spicy, almost like incense, but Castiel doesn’t explain what he’s doing, and Dean doesn’t care enough to waste energy by asking. When that task’s done, Castiel approaches Sam and touches one of his shoulders. Without so much as a how-do-you-do, Sam’s clothes vanish, leaving him as naked as the day he was born. Dean would defend his brother’s privacy, but it’s the only thing amusing that’s happened to Dean in twelve hours, so he can’t quite muster up a rebuke.

“Once I start, I will not be able to stop the ritual completely,” Castiel warned. “If we are interrupted, you will still feel the bonding to some extent. Considering Sam’s current mental state, if we do not finish the ritual within a certain timeframe, there is a possibility that your soul will become as damaged as his and you will go insane from the pain.”

Dean set his jaw. “Make sure we aren’t interrupted, then,” he said.

Castiel furrowed his brow and stepped out of the circle to grab the bottle of holy oil. “I cannot ensure anything,” he said, “but I will try.”

“Okay,” replied Dean, feeling a rush of nervousness and anticipation run through his entire body. “Let’s get this over with. What first?”

“It will be easiest for me if you lie down next to your brother.” It’s on the tip of Dean’s tongue to refuse because he doesn’t exactly want to lie naked next to his brother for Christ’s sake, especially in front of an angel. He hopes Castiel enjoys the peep show.

Grumbling to himself, he gets on his knees and scoots over to where Sam is lying, arranging himself carefully that he’s in the same position as his brother but not close enough to be touching any part of his body to Sam’s. Resisting the urge to cover himself with his hands, he forces himself to stay still.

“The sigils are first,” Castiel says from somewhere to his right. Dean can’t see him, which is making him slightly uneasy. “Then the invocation and then I shall open your minds. This will not be pleasant, Dean. I expect it to hurt a great deal.”

“Okay,” says Dean. “Whatever. Let’s just get this show on the road.”

Castiel sighs deeply, and Dean can hear him sloshing the oil onto his fingertips. Suddenly, Dean feels Cas next to him, and his body tenses as Castiel starts tracing symbols onto Dean’s skin with an oil-wet finger.

This is so gay he thinks, but he doesn’t say it aloud in case talking would fuck everything up and like, switch his and Sam’s bodies or something. Castiel’s movements are lightning quick, and the oil burns into Dean’s body unpleasantly. First his chest is covered, and then his upper thighs and calves, and Dean comes close to kicking at Castiel when his pelvis is practically violated.

Finally, Cas traces a final sigil onto his forehead and then moves onto Sam. Dean closes his eyes and feels the power begin to thrum around him. He feels uneasy, like his mind is buzzing, and the oil isn’t cooling but instead getting hotter, burning like heated wax or scalding water. He opens his mouth to ask Cas if this is normal, if it should feel like this, but nothing comes out.

Castiel seizes Dean’s hand but he barely feels it through the warmth of his skin. Absently, there’s the brief sting of a blade and then something cool under his hand as Castiel moves his fingers around something--Sam’s hand? Maybe? It feels like something is seeping through his flesh, into his blood. Castiel’s grip loosens, but Dean doesn’t let go of Sam, needing that connection.

Castiel’s voice fills the air, rising and falling as he speaks in a foreign language Dean assumes to be Enochian. His voice is soothing and disarming, lulling Dean into lightness before making the hairs on his arms stand up. It goes on for a long time, and Dean feels something heavy press down against him, making him unable to even twitch a finger. Something is clutching his head in a vise, and Dean is almost scared that his skull is going to explode like an overripe watermelon.

As soon as Dean is sure that he can’t take anymore, it keeps coming. The chanting has turned the oil from liquid fire into a chilling cold that Dean can almost feel in his bones. He wonders if it has seared tattoos into his flesh, but the thought is fleeting, chased away by the pain that has seized his entire body. The air around him is overheated and heavy and practically vibrating with the force behind Castiel’s words.

Suddenly, Castiel’s voice stops, but the pain doesn’t, intensifying even though there are no more words to draw the power out. Faintly, Dean can feel someone’s hand on his head, burning through the cold there, but he doesn’t register it until he feels something twinge in his mind and sharply break open.

The pain is intense. He can feel the onslaught of memories that aren’t his own, the flaying of flesh and twisting of bones. It doesn’t stop, never will, and he can hear a honeyed voice whispering accusations and benedictions into his ear, telling him that he was never loved. Enumerating how he was a burden on everyone who ever knew him. Hissing how he killed everyone he’d ever cared for.

Dean thinks he might be screaming, but he can’t hear anything besides the rush of pain and those cold, harsh words. He feels dark despair, and a desperate hungry want for something that he can’t have, and it’s so intense, so all-consuming, that for a moment, Dean can’t remember who he is or what he’s doing.

The slew of memories keeps barraging at his head, turning from the silver-tongued serpent to someone tall and scolding that Dean thinks he should recognize but can’t, yelling at a small boy that Dean wants to protect. Sammy, he thinks, the only coherency he’s’ been able to pinpoint since his brain broke, but he can’t figure out what that word means or why it makes him feel the way that he does, desperation and longing and love and overbearing, but everything floods his chest until he thinks he could drown in it.

And he’s feeling something else, something foreign, emotions that are coming from someone outside of him, directed inside. Adoration, frustration, and a fierce connection pierce him down to his marrow, and he wants to get away from the intensity of it, run until he doesn’t feel anything that’s not his own. There’s this abstraction, this feeling of something wrapping around his brain and taking hold, making itself permanent, and then the same thing imbeds itself into his chest, his stomach, situating itself so that it’ll never be apart from Dean. He tries to rip it out, force it away, but it’s persistent, clinging, and besides, now that Dean has had a second to get used to it, he feels like it’s appropriate. Like it should be there. Like it always has been.

With a white flash, everything goes still again. There’s pain, but Dean is finally aware of himself, of his back arching against the grimy hotel carpet. He can feel Castiel’s presence above him and knows that he has a question he needs to ask, but his mind is fumbling, pain-fogged and fighting against what just transpired, and for the life of him, he can’t remember what it was.

His eyes shoot open, focusing on the uneven stucco of the ceiling above him before everything goes blurry again. A dark shadow drops across his vision and he blinks several times, but it’s no use. He feels a cool hand against his forehead, calming him, and then Castiel’s voice comes, as though from a million miles away, faint and almost indistinct.

“Sleep,” he says. “When you wake, it will be better.”

Dean wants to ignore him, disobey his command, but his eyelids are so heavy and his head is beginning to ache fiercely, and sleep sounds so good, so welcoming. He lets his eyes flutter shut again and doesn’t have time for another thought before he feels the heavy weight of unconsciousness pulling him under.

When Dean wakes again, he doesn’t feel that much better than he had before, despite Castiel’s assurances. His limbs are leaden, his skin is too sensitive, and there’s this tickling, alien sensation at the back of his mind that doesn’t go away, growing stronger the longer he prods at it. Mentally, he feels exhausted with the burden of something that he can’t decipher yet, but he has the strangest feeling that he’s experiencing a reaction to something that never happened to him. Groaning, he shifts, feeling the drag of sheets against his skin, and with a great effort, he manages to pull both of his hands up to cover his face, blocking out the world in a hazy, pink glow.

“It will not help,” says someone at the foot of the bed, and Dean starts. He recognizes Castiel’s voice but hadn’t realized that he was still there in the room. Things are coming back in bits and pieces now that he’s had a chance to gather his thoughts, and when he finally remembers what happened, what he’d done, he bolts upright in the bed, not able to keep his punched exhale of pain silent.

“Did it work?” he asks, his words clumsy in his mouth, as the room comes into focus. Castiel is sitting at the little table near the window, running his fingers over the pages of his book idly.

“It did,” Castiel says drily, finally looking up to meet Dean’s gaze. “Although, I am astonished that the effort of it did not damage you beyond repair.”

Dean’s heart soars in his chest, because everything, all the pain and the wrenching feeling of invasion, that was all worth it if it’s made everything right again. “Sammy?” he says groggily. “Sam? Is he awake?”

“Not yet,” Castiel responds, looking over to the opposite bed. “But that is to be expected. He came into the ritual quite a bit more damaged than you. He needs a longer time to heal.”

“But you’re sure?” Dean asks desperately. “His soul’s okay? It’s not fucked up anymore?”

“I did check,” Castiel says, sounding irritated. “His soul is still not entirely whole, but through the ritual, your soul bind has managed to make it so he can function. He will be the brother you have known your entire life.”

Dean would whoop if he didn’t feel so sore. He rotates his shoulders once, trying to alleviate the pain in the small of his back, and slumps back against the headboard.

“I could eat a horse,” he says as his stomach grumbles demandingly.

Castiel looks puzzled for a second and stands up. “I did not know that horse was a normal part of the American diet,” he says thoughtfully. “I thought it mostly revolved around beef and chicken.”

“Never mind,” says Dean. “Just, I need some food.”

“In a minute,” Castiel says absently. “You have not told me how it feels yet.”

“Um, what?” says Dean, non-plussed. “How what feels?”

“Your bond. I must know that it has not affected your mental ability to deal with the physical world. You are not feeling depressed or overwhelmed? Perhaps inundated with too many memories that are not your own?”

“No,” says Dean. “Nah, just I can feel something at the back of my head. Like there’s a hole there that wasn’t there before. But I’m not gonna off myself here. Everything worked--it’s fine.”

Castiel’s forehead furrows and he seizes Dean’s head in both of his hands in a singular motion.

“W-wait,” Dean splutters. “Personal space, dude. Jesus!”

“It has not fully settled yet,” Castiel says, releasing Dean abruptly. “When Sam regains consciousness, you will get a flood of his memories. It will likely be hugely incapacitating. I will have to stay to ensure that you both do not have a psychotic breakdown.”

“Thanks,” says Dean humorlessly, rubbing at his temple where Castiel gripped a little too hard. “Glad to know you care so much.”

“I should never have agreed to help,” Castiel says lowly. “I am wasting valuable time. Raphael has redoubled his efforts and it has been very difficult to hold our ground.”

“Don’t even fucking start,” Dean warns. “I helped you with your fucking apocalypse. It’s your turn.”

Castiel sighs deeply and starts mumbling in Enochian, but Dean doesn’t care enough to tell him off. Shifting his legs from under the covers, Dean plants them on the floor. He feels oddly weak but he’s craving a burger like no other and he’s gotten up under worse circumstances than this. Castiel is ignoring him again, so he doesn’t notice when Dean stands up, gripping the side of the nightstand for balance, too engrossed in whatever he’s doing with his book.

The first few steps are hard but not impossible, and Dean manages to get over to the dresser without much effort, grabbing his coat from where he slung it, thankful that Cas had at least had the forethought to reclothe him before putting him into bed. He feels the dig of his keys in his pocket, and he’s just about to turn the knob to the door to their motel room when something throbs within him, stopping him as effectively as a brick wall.

No, something tells him, and a fissure of pain rips down through his entire body. He feels his knees buckle and he falls to the rough carpet, breathing deeply through his nose until he feels like he can look up and not vomit.

“What the fuck,” he mutters, pressing his palm to his forehead and he regains his composure.

“I warned you,” says Castiel from somewhere behind him.

“About what?” Dean says crossly, because he’s pretty positive that Cas never told him that he’d be in pain if he tried to leave the room for some fucking dinner.

“Separation between the two of you will be incredibly painful,” Castiel says long-sufferingly. “If you work at it, it may be possible to leave each other’s presence for a short amount of time, but it will take practice and you must both be conscious before you’ll be able to do it.”

“Fuck,” Dean mutters. “I’m fucking hungry.”

“Use your phone,” Castiel suggests. “I believe it can contact certain establishments that would be willing to deliver sustenance to the door.”

“Smartass,” Dean says under his breath but he digs his cell from the pocket of his coat, and then, after a moment of thought, locates Sam’s laptop in the duffel that Dean thankfully had the foresight to bring inside before he went and tethered himself to his brother.

By the time Bobby arrives at the motel, Dean is systematically working his way through some kind of vegetable stir fry. It was a far cry from the burger that he’d thought he wanted, but it assuaged some part inside of him, and he barely stopped shoveling it into his mouth to greet Bobby after Castiel let him inside. Vaguely, he wondered if this was another side effect of the binding, craving Sam’s stupid rabbit food, but in any case, it was fucking good.

“I see you’re feeling better,” Bobby says cautiously, taking off his coat and throwing it onto Dean’s unmade bed.

“Yup,” Dean says through a mouthful of rice.

Bobby spends a few seconds staring at him, looking between Dean and the bed that Sam is still asleep in before he sighs deeply. “What damn fool thing did you do now, boy?” he growls.

Dean takes the time to swallow his food before he answers. “Hey,” he protests. “Who says that I did anything?”

“Because I know you,” Bobby says, matter-of-fact. “And you have this expression on your face that tells me you went and did something you shouldn’t have without thinking it through.”

“I’m not going to hell again, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Dean defends. “I didn’t make a deal.”

“Thank God for small favors,” Bobby says and then narrows his eyes. “If you didn’t make a deal with a demon, then what did you do, exactly?”

“Nothing,” Dean lies, but his resolve falls under the dirty glare Bobby sends his way. “Well, maybe I did do something.”

“And?” Bobby asks menacingly.

“He used an ancient evangelical ritual that enabled me to bind his soul to Sam’s and thus repair the damage that occurred while Sam was in hell,” Castiel butts in, a casual bystander to the conversation.

“You did what?” Bobby explodes, taking a step closer to Dean almost as though he’s about to clock Dean in the face.

“Calm down,” Dean says quickly. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“What does this entail exactly?” Bobby says, directing his question towards Cas in a deliberate snub. Castiel relays the information emotionlessly, telling Bobby everything he told Dean.

“Is it reversible?” Bobby asks resignedly, rubbing at his face with his hand.

“Almost certainly not,” Castiel responds. “This is quite permanent.”

“Of course,” Bobby mutters and then whirls on Dean again.

“I swear, boy,” he growls. “I can’t leave you alone for one second, can I?”

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Dean says defensively, his food abandoned and growing cold by his right elbow.

“You’re right,” Bobby concedes. “It was a terrible idea. Sam is going to kill you when he wakes up.”

“If I hadn’t done it, Sam wouldn’t be waking up at all,” Dean points out.

“Think about it,” Bobby continues. “Just spend one damn second thinking about what you’ve done. You and your brother are going to be connected in a way that you’re never going to be able to escape. You’ve made yourself vulnerable in a way I don’t think you understand.”

“I’m not stupid, Bobby,” Dean snaps. “I get what I did. And I don’t care. You understand? I don’t fucking care”

“You will someday,” Bobby says darkly before whirling on Cas. “And you! What got into your fool head, anyways, telling him about this thing in the first place.”

“He had a right to know that I’d found something useful,” Castiel says. “I am not his keeper. I merely gave him the knowledge that I had and trusted that he had enough sense to know which was the right decision.”

“Obviously not,” says Bobby.

“I am right here,” Dean says angrily. “Stop talking about me like I can’t hear you.” Bobby sighs deeply but gives up complaining, instead taking a seat heavily on the remaining empty chair.

“I hope for your sake things work out, Dean,” he says instead. “God knows you deserve it after all this time.”

“It’ll be fine,” Dean says, mostly to reassure himself rather than Bobby. “Everything will work out. You’ll see.”

When Sam wakes up, Dean almost can’t take the influx of emotions and memories and he very nearly falls unconscious himself. He can feel Sam’s pain through their link, hopes that he isn’t sending his own memories of Hell through that connection, but he can’t concentrate from everything he’s trying to process.

Sam and Lucifer and Michael and Adam, in the cage.

Lucifer flaying the skin from Sam’s bones with a white-hot, dulled butter knife.

Michael forcing Sam to watch Adam being dismembered again and again before moving onto disembowelment, Adam’s intestines spilling wetly over the darkened, blood-stained floor of the cage.

It’s all coming at him in rushes, the memories of Sam’s time in the pit, and before. He feels resentment towards their father, and a thirst to get revenge on the things that hurt him most. He feels the most desperate, aching hurt and this dark, dark hunger for blood.

It’s entirely overwhelming, and by the time he comes back to himself, he’s sobbing tearlessly, every breath wrenched from his throat with tearing force.

“What happened?” he hears Sam say hoarsely from the other bed. “What’s going on? Dean?”

It takes an inhuman amount of effort to pull himself up against the headboard of his bed, but Dean does it, his head lolling so that he can properly see Sam, who’s pale and drawn but awake and alive, looking as though he’d just traveled about a thousand miles to get back to Dean.

“How are you feeling?” asks Castiel, all business from Sam’s side of the room. Bobby looks on, concerned and interested, from his place at the table.

“Like shit,” Sam says promptly. “I feel--I don’t even know how I feel. Like there’s something scratching at the back of my head? What happened?”

“What do remember about before?” Castiel presses, standing closer to Sam and pressing his hand to Sam’s chest.

“Um,” Sam stalls, closing his eyes briefly before opening them again. “There were some demons? In the woods? I chased after one and she spouted something about how I should know everything I went through and then she touched me.” He blinks once or twice and then comprehension dawns on his face.

“Did she break down the wall?” he demands, looking from Dean to Cas to Bobby and then back to Dean again. “Did she? She said that’s what she was going to do.”

“Yes,” says Castiel when no one else answers. “Dean found you in a state of incredible psychic pain. It seems that she was more powerful than you realized.”

“But how am I awake?” Sam asks, still looking at everyone in the room in turn. “Was it just not as bad as everyone thought it would be?”

“No,” Castiel says as Dean struggles to find words to answers his brother’s questions. “It was exactly as bad as I feared. You are incredibly lucky to be conscious. It took a great deal of effort to restore your soul to a working condition.”

“How did you do it?” Sam asked, immediately suspicious. “Before you said you didn’t even know where to begin. How did you know how to fix it now?”

“There was a ritual,” Castiel says slowly, looking over to Dean as though asking for assistance. Dean is still struggling with words and can only open his mouth like a fish.

“What kind of ritual?” Sam says cautiously. “What did you do to me?”

Castiel is silent, and Dean feels his throat unstick. “We had to bind your soul,” he says roughly. “It was the only thing that would work.”

“Bind my soul?” Sam says, his voice booming. “You bound my soul? To what?”

“To mine,” Dean admits, looking down at the nondescript yellow of the comforter on his bed rather than meet Sam’s accusing stare. Dean can tell without looking that Sam has his most offended bitch face on, the one he only uses when Dean has really Fucked Up.

“Dean, what the fuck?” Sam says quietly, deadly calm. “Why would you do something like this? Bobby, why didn’t you stop him?”

“Wasn’t here,” Bobby says promptly, and Dean gives him a sharp glare at his lack of help. Stupid bastard. “I would’ve stopped him if I coulda.”

Sam turns his attention back to Dean, and Dean forces himself to meet his brother’s gaze head-on.

“What does this mean?” Sam demands. “What happens now?”

Dean repeats the side effects woodenly, having memorized them after hearing them about fifty times in the past day. Sam’s face grows paler as each one is listed off, and by the end, his hands are fisted so hard in his sheets that Dean’s surprised they don’t rip.

“You stupid asshole!” Sam yells. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“You were gone, Sam,” Dean shoots back. “Nothing was ever gonna wake you up and if you died, your soul was gonna scatter to fuck knows where. I did what I had to.”

“You always say that!” Sam yells. “You didn’t have to do anything! You should’ve just let me go! Jesus!”

“Would you have let me go?” Dean points out, breathing harshly. “Tell me that you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing in my shoes.” Sam’s face contorts in on itself and he presses one hand over his eyes.

“Oh, fuck you, Dean,” Sam snaps, and he shoves the blankets away from him, getting up in an unstable way that reminds Dean of a colt. He’s not wearing anything besides the ratty t-shirt and jeans, but he immediately makes a beeline for the door, shoes or no shoes. Dean can feel his fury--would be able to, even without the soul bind seeing as Sam’s radiating with it--but before Sam can even get to the door, he feels the same pang that he was incapacitated with when he tried to leave before. Sam looses his balance and stumbles sideways into the wall. It’s an effort for Dean to even remain in an upright position, and pain is radiating up his spine and piercing his skull.

As soon as Sam takes two steps backwards, aided by the wall, the sensation disappears. “What the fuck did I just tell you?” Dean snaps. “Can’t too far away from me now, Sam.”

When Sam turns around, his eyes are blazing. Bobby and Castiel are watching with muted interest, though Bobby’s pretending he’s not listening.

“And once again,” Sam hisses, “you’ve made a decision for me that fucks everything up. Thanks for that, Dean.”

“Anytime, Sammy,” Dean says wearily, and Sam proceeds to ignore him for the rest of the night.

Castiel disappears after he makes sure that Dean and Sam aren’t going to go on a psychotic killing spree, warning Dean not to bother him again unless things are urgent. Dean’s pretty sure that it’s an empty threat, but he makes a mental note to stay on the angel’s good side for the next month or so and only call if things get really fucked up.

Bobby stays and gets an adjoining room to theirs because he’s apparently not as convinced as Cas was. Sam is still in a mood, not talking to Dean unless he has to and when he opens his mouth, he only gives monosyllabic answers. His forced silence doesn’t mean as much as it used to though; Dean can still get glimpses of what his brother is feeling through the new link in his mind--muddled impressions of anger and irritation and, funnily enough, despair. Dean’s about to tease Sam for being such a fucking girl, but he’s not sure how well that will go over and he doesn’t want to unnecessarily piss Sam off, not when it’ll inadvertently piss himself off as well.

It takes a little while, but eventually he tempts Sam into trying to see how far away from each other they can get before they can’t move anymore. They use the parking lot of the motel, walking in opposite directions along the doors.

They make it about twenty feet before Dean feels as though a giant invisible rubber band is trying its damnedest to pull him back to Sam. His whole body quivers with it, a spike of pain ramming its way through his head, and he can’t make himself take another step forward. Bobby, who has been supervising, lets out a disgusted sigh as Dean takes one step backwards and feels the pain immediately subside.

“Dammit, boy,” he says, and when Dean turns around, Bobby’s face is lined and Sam’s expression is murderous.

“Again,” Sam says shortly, and Dean wants to tell him that it’s no use, but there’s no arguing with Sam when he gets this way. He and Sam start again and it’s the same thing. About twenty feet and then he can’t go any further. Sam makes him do it ten more times before he’s convinced, breathing hard, and massaging his head against a headache that Dean feels too.

“Great, Dean,” Sam says. “That’s fucking perfect. We’re stuck together for the rest of our lives.”

“Cas said that we could practice and it would get better,” Dean points out.

“Who knows how long that will take,” Sam says under his breath and storms into their room without a second glance, sequestering himself in the bathroom. Dean goes inside too and Bobby follows resignedly.

“A little help here would be nice, Bobby,” Dean says, Sam’s irritation bleeding into his voice.

“You dug your own hole,” Bobby says dryly. “Can’t do nothing about it.”

“Thanks a lot,” Dean says.

The next few days are eventful, to say the least. Sam gets even more annoyed when he realizes that all he ever wants to eat is the greasy fare that Dean frequented before everything went down, but he’s slightly mollified by the fact that Dean feels like shit if he doesn’t force down the healthy crap that Sam liked. It’s like their taste buds have switched, and goddammit, Dean would be really fucking sick of eating rabbit food if it didn’t taste so damn good all of a sudden.

The sleeping thing isn’t too weird, because Sam and Dean traditionally slept on the same schedule anyway, excluding the time when Sam didn’t have a soul and didn’t sleep at all. But the influx of emotions that constantly filters through the bond is disorienting as hell, and the first time Dean jerks off in the the shower, Sam throws a pillow at him when he comes out of the bathroom.

“Dude, you’re fucking disgusting,” Sam exclaims. “Don’t do that.”

“Just because you’re a prude, Sammy,” Dean says, but he feels a little embarrassed because fuck, that is fucking personal. He is about to apologize when he sees that Sam’s holding a pillow in his lap, and he cackles.

“Maybe you need a little shower action there too, Sammy,” he crows, and Sam scowls and gets off of the bed, stalking over to the bathroom and slamming the door. Dean knows just when Sam finishes the job in the shower because he can feel a rush of satisfaction and pleasure that’s really distant from what he’s feeling as he pulls on his socks.

“Atta boy, Sam,” he says when Sam comes out, toweling his hair dry and searching through his duffel for a shirt.

“Shut the fuck up, Dean,” Sam says crossly.

It becomes par for the course for them both to ignore what the other is feeling, because some things just shouldn’t be talked about. Every night, Dean dreams of Sam’s Hell, or his own, and when he snaps into consciousness, he knows that Sam’s just awoken too, startled out of the nightmare. Or is it more of a memory? Dean doesn’t know, but he doesn’t want to talk about everything he’s never told Sam about his time in the pit, and Sam seems to be having enough trouble coping with all of the memories of the years his soul spent in the cage, so between both of them, there’s this huge mountain of issues that never see the light of day.

And it’s straining them to the breaking point, because there are times during the day when Sam is all but incapacitated, shaking with Hell, and every time Dean feels like his skin is on fire, like he’s back down there, burning. Sometimes, it’s enough for Dean to stumble across the room and lay a hand on Sam’s forearm, struggling to see straight through an impending migraine, but there are other days when Dean can’t do anything but shake alongside his brother, reliving how it felt to be down in the cage.

And they still don’t talk about it.

By the time five days have passed, Bobby has left to go back to South Dakota. “Ain’t doing no good here,” he’d said as he tipped his hat in an informal goodbye. Dean wanted to protest but he didn’t really have any good reasons that would make Bobby stay besides the fact that he really wanted Bobby as a buffer between him and his brother. And he was sure that would go over real well.

So Bobby left, and Sam stalked back into the motel room as soon as his taillights disappeared, leaving Dean with a sour taste in his mouth. It was clear that Sam was trying to punish Dean as much as he possibly could, sending constant thoughts of irritation and anger through their link. Sam, for one, had figured out how to work the bond for his benefit, as a conduit for his annoyance and fury. Dean tried to reciprocate, but whenever he tried to send something along their bind, all he got for his efforts was a debilitating headache. Whenever that happened, he could feel Sam’s smug happiness, and it made everything just a little worse, even if he did take comfort in the fact that Sam must be at least a little affected by his discomfort.

Three days after Bobby left, Sam threw a book across the table. Dean looks up from what he’s reading, annoyed at the disruption.

“What the fuck, man?” Dean says exasperatedly.

“This is useless,” Sam says. “Why are we still here trying to find a way out of this? Cas said it was pretty much fucking permanent.”

“You’re the one who has his panties all twisted over it,” Dean points out, feeling his annoyance pass into outright anger, which is pretty par for the course nowadays.

“Well, I wonder why,” Sam says dryly.

“Okay, I don’t know about you,” Dean snaps, “but I’m really fucking sick of having this conversation over and over again.”

“Tell me about it,” Sam snarks back and then sighs and puts his head in his hands. “Look,” he continues, teeth gritted so he sounds at least a little more civil than before, “I’m gonna go crazy if we don’t leave this motel in the next hour. We’re not getting anything done, and we’re obviously stuck like this for at least a little while. We gotta learn how to live with it.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying all week,” Dean grumbles to himself, flinging an arm up to stave off Sam’s impending protest. “Well, what do you want to do now, princess?”

“What we’ve always done,” Sam says firmly. “Let’s find a hunt.”

Dean’s scoff of derision hits the air before he can stop it, and he can feel Sam’s irritation surge again. Forcing his voice into something that mimics politeness, even if it is faked, Dean says, “And how exactly should we go about hunting, huh, Sam? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’re not exactly well-equipped here. We can’t even get twenty feet away from each other before we go ballistic.”

“And whose fault is that, Dean?” Sam asks, just as faux-sweetly as Dean had been speaking before. “And I’m not suggesting anything big. Maybe a couple of salt and burns until we work on being able to be away from each other.”

“I dunno, Sam,” Dean says in an automatic disapproval. “What happens if the ghost flings one of us away from the other? We could end up pretty fucked.”

“As if we aren’t already,” Sam points out. “And I’m not sitting in a motel room for the rest of my life either. So let’s just suck it up and try it out first.”

“What if we die, Sam?” Dean points out angrily.

Sam shrugs and slants his eyes away from Dean, looking out of the grimy window. “Not like it hasn’t happened before,” he says softly, and Dean has to concede to that logic. “In any case, I don’t think one of us will survive very long if the other dies, so we won’t have the problem of stupid decisions, will we?”

And Dean can’t argue with that at all.

They find a vengeful spirit pretty quickly--by far, ghosts are the easiest and most plentiful hunt they come across anyways. Somewhere in South Carolina, there’s a Confederate soldier wreaking havoc after someone disturbed its grave, and that’s that. It sounds pretty uncomplicated, fairly straightforward. Dean is again reminded of how irritated he gets when people decide that messing around with grave sites is no big deal. It’s like no one has seen Poltergeist.

Anyways, after throwing a quick heads up to Bobby, they’re on their way, Dean driving as Sam reasons with Bobby over his cell phone. Dean feels better than he has since Sam collapsed, grounded and calm, and it might be because they finally left that godawful motel or it might be because Sam is forced to sit closer to him in the car than he had all week. Dean isn’t going to expend too much energy worrying about it.

It’s clear to Dean that Sam, although relieved that they’re finally back on the road, is still holding a major grudge towards Dean. He’s thumbing through a book, deflecting every attempt Dean makes to start conversation, even going so far as to grind out, “I don’t care, Dean,” when Dean tries to start up a game of “Where I wouldn’t like to be stuck if the world ends”. Although, to be truthful, that game had kind of lost its allure once they had to deal with the real, Honest to God apocalypse anyways.

They have to cut through the Midwest to get en route to South Carolina, cutting through Ohio to make their way towards West Virginia and on southwards, and they get stuck in a fair amount of snow, the cold bitter and biting on their hands and faces. The roads are slick, but Dean is well-practiced, and they make good time, rolling into a motel sometime just before dawn. They’re both exhausted, and Sam had been utterly annoyed to realize that he wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore when Dean was driving unless he wanted Dean to fall asleep too and crash them into a ditch.

Annoyance was beginning to become something that Dean wasn’t sure he’d ever live without again.

Sam gets out of the car without saying anything, heading towards the office, forcing Dean to scramble out after him or risk being hit by an unfortunate hit of pain if Sam got too far away.

“Wait up,” he calls after Sam, but other than a slight tightening of his shoulders, Sam doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard Dean and just continues towards the door of the lobby.

Dean lets him check in, standing just outside, listening to the murmurs of his brother through the shoddy walls of the motel, feeling a pull to follow Sam inside and stand by him. Sam walks right past him when he gets out, and Dean is really fucking sick of Sam’s attitude about this whole thing.

Sam leads them to room number eight, and before he can unlock it, Dean’s boxing him up against the wood of the door, his arms on either side of Sam’s on the frame. His entire body sings with how close he is to his brother, and things feel better than they have all day.

“Move, Dean,” Sam says tersely, shifting so he’s as far away from Dean as he can manage.

“No,” Dean says. “You’re being a fucking dick, Sam, and I’m sick of it.”

“I don’t care, Dean,” Sam returns, very quietly. “Wasn’t that what you said when you started this in the first place?” Dean can’t help it--he steps closer until he’s right up against Sam, effectively pinning him.

“Can we just fucking let it go? For a little while? We’re going to have to live with it.”

“I am living with it,” Sam explodes. “It’s just--you gotta give me some time, man. I’m not used to this.”

“And I am?” Dean demands. “Dude, I’m not hunting with you if you can’t even stand to be around me. It doesn’t work like this.” Sam lets his head fall backwards onto Dean’s shoulder, almost unconsciously, and Dean can feel a shudder go through his brother at the contact. He feels it too, warm and soothing in his stomach, and some of the irritation he’s been feeling ekes away as through it’s being siphoned through his feet.

“I’m trying,” Sam sighs.

“Try harder,” Dean says, and he’s so close to his brother, feeling like he should be doing something else right now, but he doesn’t really have an idea what he really wants.

“Okay,” Sam breathes and then, “Can you move now?”

Dean starts, stepping backwards, suddenly aware of just how close he’d moved into his brother’s space without even thinking about it. “Sorry,” he mutters, stepping back and giving Sam room to unlock their door.

“Me too,” Sam says, almost under his breath, but Dean can feel his guilt, radiating off of him almost strong enough that he doesn’t need the mental bond to see what his brother is thinking.

“Let’s just work through this,” Dean says as they step into the room.

“Okay,” Sam agrees dully, throwing his duffel onto one of the nondescript beds.

Suffice it to say, the hunt is an unmitigated disaster. They aren’t able to split up to interview witnesses, so they have to go as a pair, making the job take twice as long as it could have, seeing as the ghost had been taking its rage out on whomever it could over the past month, leaving several families as witness to its attacks. Then, as if that weren’t bad enough, hampered by Dean’s hatred of anything resembling research, it took Sam a helluva lot longer to find who they were looking for, locked away in the bowels of the library, paging through dusty books that hadn’t seen the light of day in decades.

By the time they knew where the body had been moved, both Dean and Sam were at the end of their tempers, snapping at the littlest things. Dean even went so far as to chuck his salad at the wall of their motel room right before they were about to leave to dig up the grave.

“I’m fucking sick of this fucking food,” he rages, even though he isn’t and is now mourning the loss of his dinner.

“Like I’m happy about clogging my arteries with this shit you call dinner,” Sam retorts, giving Dean a nasty glare. “Grow up, Dean.”

“Fuck you,” Dean says eloquently, stalking to the bathroom until it was time to go. These days, motel bathrooms were the only sanctuary they got from one another.

By the time they get in the Impala to head out to a remote graveyard, their anger is like a palpable third passenger in the car. Sam gives terse directions the entire way, as they follow a curving road out of the city into the dark outskirts, streetlights abandoned. Once or twice, Dean accidentally let the Impala slide outside of the road and skitter on the gravel, which is not only annoying in and of itself but Sam feels the need to punctuate every mistake with aggravated sighs, which sets Dean’s teeth on edge.

When they finally stop outside of the graveyard, Dean has to leave the Impala on so they would have the headlights to see by. Dean gets out of the car as soon as he can, eager to be as far away from his brother as he can manage. He’s pretty much looking forward to wasting the stupid ghost in the hopes that he can dispel some of his anger on it instead of taking the butt of his Glock to Sam’s head and kicking him into a ditch while his attention was still focused on the blow to the head. Sam seems to be following along the same lines because he gives the weapons in the trunk an askance glance before he bypasses the more dangerous items for a shovel and a rifle filled with rock salt. Dean firmly wishes that Sam won’t go off his rocker and shoot him full of salt again, because that shit hurts.

Thankfully, things go smoothly for the most part until they’ve dug their way down into the grave, their shovels moving in perfect counterpoint as they unearth the dirt, which thankfully hasn’t been well packed. It feels familiar, like routine, and Dean soon gets into the groove of it, hoisting dirt over his shoulder and out onto the ground above them. It isn’t until they hit the coffin, so shoddily made and cracked that Dean’s surprised it even survived the move, when the shit hits the fan.

As they are wont to do, the ghost materializes as soon as Sam breaks the top of the coffin open to get at the bones underneath. He’s shimmering eerily in the air, appearing right between them, with his face pulled back into a grotesque grimace. Without warning, it hoists Dean’s up by his neck, and Dean has the briefest, faintest hints of fetid blood and the shit-stink of death before the ghost is hurling him out of the grave and up onto the ground above it. Dean can feel the instant he gets too far away from Sam because mid-air, his head gives an almighty throb, and by the time he lands on the ground, cracking his head sharply on a protruding rock, he isn’t so much concerned by the ghost or the pain of impact as he is by the agony of being separated from Sam. Without thinking, he immediately pulls himself to his knees, crawling in the direction he feels Sam to be, feeling minutely better with each passing inch. Blood is running into his eyes from the wound on his head, stinging and blurring his vision, but the only thing he cares about is Sam, Sammy, getting closer with every second.

The ghost isn’t giving up that easily, though, and it materializes again, glaring down at Dean, who doesn’t stop moving towards the grave even though it’s probably a better idea to play dead than to taunt the vengeful spirit out for fucking revenge. It swings its makeshift bayonet down, trying to spear Dean right through the belly, and Dean just barely manages to roll to the side to avoid becoming a shish-kabob.

“Hurry up and burn him,” Dean yells as he rolls again.

“I’m trying,” Sam shouts back, but if he feels anything like Dean due to the separation, there’s no way he has a steady grip on the situation. Dean tries to propel himself backwards with an huge shove of his legs, and he’s successful to a certain point: his head ends up hanging over the grave, but the ghost finally manages a direct hit, spearing Dean right through the shoulder with his rusted bayonet.

Dean lets out a sharp cry of pain as the blade sinks through his flesh and grinds against the bone, and the ghost rips it out, its smile grotesque on its sunken face. It raises the gun, this time in preparation to shoot Dean in the face with his musket, and for a second, Dean is certain that he’s going to die here, fucking killed by a vengeful spirit like the most idiot hunter that ever lived.

Then, with a flare of yellow light and the singe of heat on the back of his neck, the ghost goes up in flame, filling the air with its unearthly shriek as Sam finally sends the bastard back to hell or purgatory or where-the-fuck-ever.

Dean wants to complain, wants to tell Sam he’s fucking useless for taking so long to torch the bones, but his shoulder is in agony, and his head is still pounding, either from the prolonged separation from his brother or the way that all the blood is rushing to it from being hung over a hole. In any case, he can’t even find the will to move, let along talk, and he barely notices it when Sam hoists himself out of the grave after a couple failed attempts.

Sam manages to get Dean’s head back on solid ground, though the movement almost makes Dean want to upchuck. “Dean,” Sam says faintly, pawing at Dean’s face.

“Fuckin’ hurts, Sam,” Dean says, his voice muddled from the pain.

Sam gives a short, humorless laugh. “I know. Believe me, I know. But we gotta get outta here, man.”

“Can’t move,” Dean mumbles.

“You have to,” Sam says, and if Dean had a better handle on his own head, he might’ve thought that Sam’s voice was clogged with pain too.

It took a few aborted attempts, but Sam eventually manages to sling Dean’s uninjured arm over his shoulder and get him to his feet, half-carrying, half-dragging Dean back to the Impala.

“C’mon, Dean, move your fucking legs,” he complains, grunting with exertion. “You’re fucking heavy.” Dean is focusing too much on not vomiting to give an answer, but he gives an honest try to get his feet underneath him, managing a couple of steps before his knees give out. His head is muddled, probably concussed from where he hit the rock, and he’s definitely walked out of hunts less damaging than this one, but there’s something wrong that he can’t place.

Sam leans him against the door as he goes around to the back, getting a towel to cover the passenger seat with. Dean feels proud through the muzzy haze of pain, because if there’s one thing he’s taught Sam it’s that the upholstery of the car should never be ruined by something as petty as blood.

It takes a couple of minutes, but Sam eventually gets Dean arranged inside of the car, and then he gets in himself.

“You gotta stay awake, Dean,” Sam says desperately. “If you don’t I’m gonna fall asleep too and crash the car.”

“‘Kay,” Dean mumbles, but he can feel himself sagging sideways in the seat, unable to muster up the energy to stay awake. His eyelids feel so heavy and his shoulder is throbbing and he just wants to fucking sleep and is that too much to fucking ask?

“Dean,” Sam says sharply as he slams the door after getting into the driver’s seat.

“‘M awake,” Dean says, even though it’s almost a lie.

“Just hold on twenty minutes, okay?” Sam says as he starts the car and jams it into drive. “Talk to me, okay?”

“Don’ wanna,” Dean protests. “Don’ know why I feel so bad.”

“I don’t know either,” Sam says placatingly. “Just hang on, okay, man? Just a little while longer.” Dean feels this inexplicable urge to get closer to his brother’s voice, just a little bit. He’s so cold and he feels drained and his fucking shoulder, jesus. He lets himself slip further sideways, falling down until he’s lying awkwardly on the seat, his head pillowed on Sam’s thigh. He’d try to move, but it feels so good, and Sam is warm and right there, and Dean just wants to go to sleep, but Sammy said no, so...

“So tired,” he complains instead. Sam’s hand has dropped from the steering wheel to land lightly on the back of Dean’s neck, a steady unmoving presence. A shiver goes down Dean’s spine, an electric tingle that heartens him just a little bit. He can feel the warmth seep into his belly from the touch, and things don’t hurt as much as they did just a moment ago.

“So am I,” Sam says, and Dean can hear it in his voice, the flagging exhaustion there. “But we gotta get back to the motel and patch you up.”

“It can wait,” Dean slurs, because it’s torture enough staying awake right now. He’s not sure he can manage it if he’s lying on a bed waiting for his brother to finish bandaging him up.

“Or maybe the hospital,” Sam babbles. “You’ve been hurt worse than this, man. I don’t know why you’re so fucking tired.”

“Dunno,” Dean agrees, burrowing himself closer to Sam even though the movement causes his shoulder to hurt like a motherfucker. Dean can feel Sam’s worry tickling at the back of his mind, and the Impala roars beneath him as Sam shoves down on the gas, urging her to go faster along the twisting road.

“God, what would we tell a hospital,” Sam frets, twisting the wheel sharply in a movement that Dean hopes didn’t fuck his car up too bad. “Sorry, doctor, I accidentally stabbed my brother with a sword?”

“Don’t need a hospital,” Dean protests. “Just you.”

“Dean, it’s pretty bad,” Sam argues. “I don’t know how deep he got you.”

“Just you,” Dean repeats, struggling to open his eyes again from where they’d fallen closed.

“I’ll try,” Sam says quietly. “But if I can’t do it, we’re going to the fucking ER, okay?”

“‘Kay,” says Dean affably. “We almost there, Sammy?”

“Yeah, Dean, just a little longer,” Sam says. “Just hold on a little longer.”

Dean just barely manages to hold onto his consciousness until they get back to the motel, mostly buoyed by the thought that Sam would total the Impala if Dean let himself fall asleep. By the time Sam parks the car, jerking to a stop and grinding the gearshift in a totally unacceptable way that Dean’s going to give him shit for tomorrow, Dean’s body feels incredibly heavy and he’s decidedly light-headed, whether from blood loss or lack of energy, Dean’s not sure.

When Sam hoists him out of the car into the dim orange light of the motel’s parking lot, Dean blacks out for just a second, and judging by the nauseating way they both stumble sideways, so does Sam.

“Stop being a girl, Dean,” Sam says as he hoists them both up into a standing position and drags Dean to the door to their room, which he’s thankfully had the forethought to unlock before trying to get Dean to his feet. The jab doesn’t hold the same power as it usually does, though, because Dean can feel what Sam’s feeling, and it’s not so much exasperation as it is anxiety.

“You’re the girl,” Dean says, giving a silent cheer of joy when Sam finally manages to sling him onto the bed. He’s ready to fall asleep just like this, bloody and grimy with grave dirt and grass stains, his boots still on and his feet hanging off the edge of the bed, but Sam pokes him hard in the back.

“Don’t,” Sam warns. “We needa get your shoulder cleaned up or you’re gonna get an infection and you’re gonna lose your shoulder and I can’t deal with you being a bitch about it for the rest of our lives.”

“Drama queen,” Dean accuses, but he tries to summon the rest of his dwindling energy reserves to stay awake. It’s an almost inhuman task, and it practically hurts to stop himself from falling asleep. He can vaguely hear Sam ruffling in their bag, presumably looking for their first aid equipment, and then Sam’s there, cutting his shirt, his hands feather-light on Dean’s back.

“This is a good shirt,” Dean protests half-heartedly.

“It’s completely ruined. Shut up and let me do this.” Sam is concentrated on his task, and Dean’s slightly worried that he’s gonna fuck something up, because if he’s even half as tired as Dean is, there’s no way he’s operating on full brain power right now.

“Turn over,” Sam says softly. “You’re lucky. It didn’t go through your shoulder completely. I don’t even think it’s that deep.” With Sam’s help, Dean manages to get onto his back, and Sam finishes peeling his shirt off of him, his fingers lightly brushing Dean’s skin whenever the fabric pulls painfully, sticking on the tacky drying blood.

Dean falls into a kind of a lull while Sam washes the wound clean and applies the hydrogen peroxide, and the sting barely registers. Sam has to keep yelling his name to keep him from really falling asleep, and every time Sam yawns, Dean gets even tireder, until he’s at the point that he’s about to tape Sam’s mouth shut. Finally, he feels the pulling of the needle as Sam sews his skin shut, and after a few minutes, Sam is smoothing a bandage over Dean’s shoulder.

Sam gave him a couple of shots of whiskey before he started his field-medic routine under the caveat that Dean made sure to stay awake, and although he’s feeling pleasantly warm from the alcohol, he can’t help but arch into Sam’s touch whenever he moves his hands away. His brain is muddled enough that he can’t think, but whatever Sam’s doing feels good, even through the haze of pain. He has to stop himself from falling asleep more than once, lulled by the brush of Sam’s hands over his skin and the warm comfort they bring.

“We needa make sure that you still have mobility in your arm tomorrow,” Sam says, startling Dean out of his mental rambling. “If something’s wrong, we really need to go to the doctor. I don’t know if the ghost did more damage than I saw.” He’s still touching Dean, his hand resting in the small of Dean’s back, and it feels like the go-ahead to let go and stop resisting unconsciousness.

“Okay,” Dean says, not really listening. “Gonna go to sleep now, Sammy.” He’s out before Sam can even respond, burrowing into the softness of his bed.

When Dean comes to again, he’s completely disoriented for a second. For one thing, he’s warm--really warm, and the motel lamp’s still on, even though Sam hates sleeping in any ambient light. And he feels good, so much better than he did when he fell asleep, and even his shoulder is only a faint ache, easily ignorable. Dean feels like maybe he should get up now, but he’s so comfortable that he never wants to move again.

“Thinking too loud,” Sam complains, and whoa, why does Sam sound so close. Dean tries to move his head so he’s staring at something other than the ceiling and the answer immediately is clear, because instead of being in his own bed like he should be, Sam is fucking slung over Dean, his leg wrapped over Dean’s waist and his head pillowed on Dean’s sternum.

“Dude, what the fuck,” Dean blurts, coming instantly awake.

“What?” Sam says, annoyed, and then the situation must fully register with him, because he scrambles off of Dean, managing to fall off of the bed when he tries to untangle his limbs.

“Why weren’t you in your own bed?” Dean accuses.

“Hey, don’t pin this on me,” Sam shoots back, picking himself up from the floor. “You’re the one who conked out as soon as I was done last night. I didn’t have time to get to the other bed.”

“You shoulda tried harder,” Dean says.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Sam snarks. “Like I wasn’t having a hard enough time staying awake while I was patching up your mangled shoulder.”

Dean sighs deeply and stretches, belatedly aborting his movements so he wouldn’t rip out his stitches. “Whatever,” he says, slightly mollified. “I’m fucking starving. Let’s get something to eat.”

Sam’s poking moodily at his eggs with the tines of his fork by the time Dean’s done with his own breakfast, which is fucking stupid, because Dean just ate an entire omelette plus hash browns, and he’s still freakin’ hungry because Sam hasn’t eaten his food yet.

“Stop playing with it and eat it,” Dean says and then inwardly cringes at how much he just sounded like their dad.

Sam gives him a dirty glare but forks up a big bite and shoves it into his mouth. Dean can tell from the look on his face that he wants to Talk, and Dean fuckin’ hates talking. Sure enough, when Sam swallows, he resolutely looks Dean in the face.

“Dean,” he begins.

“What now, man?” Dean complains because it’s too early for this kind of crap, even though it’s edging on eleven in the morning. As far as Dean is concerned, there is never a good time to get involved in one of Sam’s girly-as-shit heart to hearts.

“Stop being a dumbass,” Sam snaps in his no-nonsense tone of voice. “Dude, we need to talk about what happened last night.”

“Hell, Sam,” Dean gripes, flashing the waitress a bright smile as he pulls his wallet out of his back pocket, a sure sign to her that they’re ready for their check. “Do we have to?”

“Yes, Dean!” Sam is sounding more and more irritated by the second, and if his voice raises any further, he’s going to be causing a scene.

“Wait until we’re in the car at least,” Dean says. “Jesus.” The waitress must sense the tension at their table because her grin flags as she comes over with their check, and she barely even lets Dean glance at her cleavage. Across from him, Sam’s face tightens, but he goes back to his breakfast, finishing up just as Dean lays down the proper amount of money to cover their food and the tip and stands up, shouldering his jacket gingerly.

Dean really should have just let Sam get on with it in the diner, because now Sam’s all huffy, and these stupid talks are even harder when Sam is in a mood. Dean stalls as long as he can, but there’s only so much time someone can take leaving a restaurant and opening a car, so it’s not long before they’re on the road, heading aimlessly west. Sam’s supposed to be scouring the local newspapers for any close-by hunts, and when they stop for lunch, he’ll probably have to resort to using someone’s wi-fi to google until they come across something, but Sam’s sitting stiffly in the passenger seat, newspapers unopened in his lap.

“Get on with it, then,” Dean says as the silence stretches into something uncomfortable.

“Fine,” Sam says stiffly. “I think it’s safe to say that last night’s hunt was an unmitigated disaster.”

“C’mon,” Dean wheedles. “It wasn’t that bad.”

“Dean,” Sam says, implacable, “you got yourself speared by a bayonet on a routine ghost hunt. I couldn’t even burn the bones until you’d gotten close enough so I didn’t feel like my head was going to explode.”

“It worked out in the end, though, didn’t it?” Dean protests. “We salted and burned the old bastard, and my shoulder’s fine, Sam.”

“How long has it been since we had so much trouble with a vengeful spirit?” Sam asks, plowing on. “Years, right? I mean, that was practically the easiest hunt we’ve gone on in ages, and we couldn’t even get through it without rookie mistakes.”

“Hey,” Dean says, stung. “They weren’t rookie mistakes. Every hunter gets flung by ghosts sometimes.”

“But not every hunter is completely incapacitated when that happens!” Sam explodes. “I don’t think we should go on any more hunts until we get this thing under control.”

“Make up your fucking mind, Sammy,” Dean says, exasperatedly, keeping his eye on the road even though it’s very hard not to meet Sam’s gaze. “You’re the one who wanted to go hunting in the first place.” This back-and-forth thing that they’ve got going on is really starting to wear Dean down.

“Because I was so fucking sick of being in that motel room trying to find a way out of this stupid soul bind you thought was so necessary,” Sam shoots back. “But newsflash, Dean! We still don’t have the first clue of how to get on with our lives now! I think we should hole up somewhere and figure out how to fucking live instead of trying to find a way out of it.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Dean says, incensed.

“Saying it and doing it are two different things,” Sam accuses. “We need to stop and work together if we’re going to be able to do this.”

“Yeah, that’s a great plan, Sam,” Dean says. “Let’s work together even though every time we end up trying to do that, we want to bite each other’s heads off.”

Sam takes several deep breaths before he speaks again, and he seems at least a little calmer before opening his mouth. “Look,” he says, “if we try, if we’re maybe a little more patient, it could be better. I can’t help that I’m angry with you for making another stupid decision without even talking to me about it first--”

“Hey!”

“--but I’ll work on it. Dean, we don’t even know what this soul bind entails, not really. Last night, you were so tired, and I have no idea why. And your shoulder’s healing up way faster than it should, and I don’t get that either. Maybe if we take some time, we can make it so we’re not walking into this thing blind anymore.”

“Okay,” says Dean, “I guess it’s worth a shot. But, Sam, you gotta stop being such a little bitch or this is never going to work.”

“Right back at you,” Sam says, but he’s smiling ever so slightly as he settles back into his seat.

Sam calls Bobby and asks him if he knows of any safe houses they can use for the time being until they get their soul bind under control. Dean can hear Bobby’s grumbling, tinny through the cell phone receiver, but he points them in the direction of a house somewhere in rural Mississippi, which isn’t the greatest of places, but it will have to do. Sam and Dean don’t have any new credit cards, and staying in a motel for an extended period of time always raises unnecessary suspicion. Dean adjusts their route so they’re headed in the right direction, and lets the road lull him into a familiar sort of peace.

They get caught up in traffic a couple of times, but Dean manages to get them to Mississippi with a minimum of trouble. Bobby wasn’t lying when he said that it was a piece of junk, but it’s better than some of the shit holes they’ve squatted in before, and besides, it’s relatively warm and the roof’s intact. There are two rooms, each with sagging full size mattresses, but they’re too far apart to work for them, so together they push one of the beds against the wall and drag the other mattress into the room. Secretly, Dean’s relieved because he always has a harder time sleeping when Sam’s not in the room.

They throw their duffels into the corner but don’t bother unpacking because they’re not sure how long they’ll be there. The cupboards are stocked with canned food that Sam turns his nose up at, so they’ll inevitably have to go to the general store about ten miles up the road to stock up, but they’re relatively prepared for now.

Dean settles into the dusty couch and Sam sits in a spindly rocking chair, almost, but not quite, out of the limits of their bond. Dean can feel an almost imperceptible pull to get closer to his brother, and he shifts on the couch until he feels it lessen. Sam looks at him for a second, and then scoots the rocking chair forward, close enough so that they’re in touching distance. Unconsciously, Dean knocks one of his feet against Sam’s.

“What now, genius?” he asks as Sam studies his hands.

“The mental bond,” Sam says immediately. “I want to know just how much we can pick up. Plus, you’re complete shit at controlling it.”

“Well excuse me for not being an expert in mind control like you are,” Dean grumbles. “How are we supposed to do this, exactly? Since you’re the expert and all.”

“I want you to try and send me something down it,” Sam says, ignoring Dean’s jibe. “To see if you can. Maybe then we can try to see if we can block things.”

Dean concentrates on a picture of a sandwich, piled high with everything he used to love to eat and tries very hard to send it Sam’s way.

“Anything?” he asks after nearly five minutes of furrowing his brow and trying to relay the picture to his brother. His head is beginning to ache, and he almost wishes that they’d decided to do something else first.

“No,” Sam says shortly.

“This is useless,” Dean says. “We’re wasting our time.”

“If you’d just try,” Sam says exasperatedly.

“I am trying here,” Dean protests. “I’d like to see you do any better!” Sam furrows his brow, drawn in by the call to action, and almost instantly, Dean sees a flash of the Impala in his mind’s eye.

“Show off,” Dean mutters as Sam smirks at him.

“It’s not hard,” Sam explains. “You just have to project.”

“Oh, is that it?” Dean asks sarcastically. “I just have to project? Well, no wonder I was doing it wrong!”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Sam says. “Just--try--” And then, Sam’s concentrating again, and Dean feels impressions of something in his mind, Sam showing him what to do. It’s odd and completely foreign to Dean, and try as he might, he just can’t wrap his head around it.

“Not happening, Sam,” he says. “I’m just not a freak like you.”

“Stop being so stubborn,” Sam says. “Maybe if you think about it like this...”

It takes almost five hours of solid effort before Dean manages to give Sam a fleeting image through their bond. By the time he manages it, his head is aching so fiercely, he can barely see straight, and he feels like he’s just run six miles uphill.

“No more,” he says. “Sam, seriously dude, I’m gonna ralph.”

“Baby,” Sam says, but he’s rubbing his temples in a way that makes Dean sure that he’s just as uncomfortable.

“Bed,” Dean says shortly, and he’s stumbling up before he’s even given Sam a chance to respond. He almost thinks that Sam’s going to be an asshole and stay put, but Sam pulls himself up from his own chair and follows after Dean.

“Later we should try and work on the separation thing,” Sam says yawning. “That’s the biggest problem we have right now.”

“Whatever, I don’t care,” Dean grumbles, nearly tripping over a step because he’s dragging his feet.

“And we should keep working on the mind thing too because that could be really useful if you ever get a hold of it.” They’re almost to the bedroom, and Dean gives up the pretense of listening as Sam rambles on about everything he wants to try, flopping down on the bed face-first. Sam is probably complaining about being relegated to the mattress on the floor, but Dean seriously doesn’t give a flying fuck as he wills his headache to die down to a level that will allow him to fall asleep.

They spend the next few days trying to work on both getting as far away from each other as possible, with a healthy helping of psychic training. Dean hates every second of it, especially since they’re making very little progress. The first day, they manage to widen their distance by about ten feet, but it takes almost an inhuman effort, and every inch of Dean is aching by the time they manage it. Sam seems pleased with their progress, but Dean’s not sure it was even worth the time it took. By the time Sam finally concedes defeat and lets them go to bed, they’ve spent almost eight hours in the yard walking away from each other, and Dean’s wholeheartedly dreading the rest of the week.

When Dean wakes up the next day, he’s still inexplicably drained, feeling as though he might have the flu. He tries to relay this thought to Sam, but Sam is nothing if not stubborn, and even though he must be feeling just as shitty as Dean is, he still makes Dean get out of bed. A couple strong cups of coffee make Dean feel marginally better, but he’s still not entirely sure he’s up for a day of bullshit, test-the-bond training.

“We have to, Dean,” Sam says angrily, and that’s that. They end up back in the yard, Dean shivering slightly at the cool chill in the air, and Sam doggedly begins walking towards the front of the yard. Dean stays put, because if Sam’s going to be such an ass about it, he can do all the work.

However, during the night, it seems that all the progress they made the day before had disappeared. Sam kept trying to go further, straining against the boundary time and time again, but by lunchtime, he’d actually managed to make it even worse than before.

“I don’t get it,” Sam pants, sweat beading on his forehead as he leans against a tree, after a failed attempt left them only fifteen feet apart before Dean was unable to keep moving.

“I dunno,” Dean grumbles.

“Are you just not trying?” Sam demands.

“Oh, fuck you, Sam,” Dean says tiredly. “It’s not like I want to be chained to you either.”

They eat in silence, poking at their measly fare of canned food morosely. Dean makes a mental note to try and force Sam to go to the local general store for some real fucking food, because there’s only so much canned soup he can take before he wants to burn things. As soon as Dean lets his spoon clank to the bottom of the empty bowl, Sam is up, out of his seat and heading back outside.

“It’s a lost cause, Sammy,” Dean calls, but he follows after him.

Eventually things get so bad that Sam has to concede defeat on that particular front, at least. He forces Dean to go inside and try the psychic shit for a little while, but that goes just as well as the separation, and Sam is swearing a blue streak while Dean slumps in his chair.

“I thought this was supposed to get better with practice,” he keeps saying. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t ask me,” Dean responds, which sends Sam into another tirade about Dean always making big decisions without thinking things through, which leads to yelling, which leads to them ignoring each other for the rest of the night, Dean leafing through an old car magazine he’d had in his bag while Sam played solitaire on his computer. They never made it to the store because Dean didn’t even want to talk to Sam once they’d stopped arguing, and they go to bed in silence.

The next few days are, if anything, worse. Dean feels progressively crappier with each hour that passes, but Sam just keeps trying, switching from spending countless hours in the yard trying to get away from Dean to spending even longer amounts of time in the dusty living room trying to coerce Dean into getting better at controlling their mind link. No progress is being made, and each day it seems like things are just as bad as before. Sam’s frustrated as all hell, and Dean’s pretty much at the end of his rope, and they’re arguing more than ever, little cutting comments that pierce the air and result in hour-long silences punctuated by dirty looks and heavy sighs.

Dean convinces Sam to try sparring for a little while, but even that isn’t as it used to be. Dean keeps making mistakes that he hasn’t since he was very young, leaving himself open to Sam’s punches, and Sam’s much the same way, stumbling and misreading Dean’s moves. They give up after only a little while, and Sam just keeps complaining about how nothing makes sense about what’s happening to them. Dean’s just about to call Castiel and demand a fucking explanation, but he’s not so sure that Cas won’t flip his shit at the interruption, so he just barely resists from doing so.

They’re sleeping more than they should be considering that they’re not doing anything particularly taxing in the physical sense. Sometimes they go to bed as early as eight in the evening and don’t wake up until the next afternoon. Dean’s feeling drained all of the time, and as each day passes, he loses more and more energy. Sam keeps speculating that it’s due to mental exhaustion, or maybe they caught a bug or something, but it never gets better.

One day, they wake up and it’s still dark outside, which throws Dean for a loop because he’s still so fucking tired even though he doesn’t think he could sleep anymore. Groggily, he checks his phone and nearly drops it when he sees that they’ve been asleep for nearly twenty-four hours.

“Dude,” he croaks. “Something is seriously wrong here. Maybe we should call someone.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sam says for what feels like the millionth time, sounding equally as tired as Dean feels.

“I feel like I did after that stupid ghost stabbed me,” Dean complains. “So fucking tired.”

“We can’t just lie here,” Sam says pragmatically. “We’ll feel better if we get up.”

“Yeah, you can get right on that, Sammy,” Dean says, mashing his face into his pillow. “Let me know how that goes. I’m gonna stay right here.” He hears Sam’s fumbling attempts to disentangle himself from the covers, and it takes Sam nearly three minutes to even get his feet under him. Dean can feel the effort it’s taking him, and it just makes him want to move even less. Sam manages a couple of stumbling steps but then he trips, or maybe his legs give out from under him, and he ends up sprawled on Dean’s bed.

“Don’t fall, dude,” Dean says, groping blindly with one of his hands until he can get a hold of Sam’s shirtsleeve. “If you hurt yourself, I’m not helping you up. You’ll be on your own.” He gives a tug and Sam falls backwards, practically on top of Dean.

“Sorry,” Sam mumbles.

“Get off of me, idiot,” Dean says, but with a jolt, he realizes he doesn’t want that at all, despite what he said. Sam’s heat is leeching into him, and Dean hadn’t even realized that he was cold before now. Sam starts to move, but he’s not getting off of Dean so much as he’s getting closer, worming his way under Dean’s blankets.

“What are you doing?” Dean asks as Sam settles down, his back practically pressed to Dean’s chest, and it feels good, just right in a way that Dean doesn’t understand. He resists the urge to let his arm fall over Sam’s side but it’s a very close thing.

“Dunno,” Sam says. “I feel better like this.” Now that he’s said it, Dean notices it, a very marginal sense of the exhaustion being lifted off of him.

“What’s going on?” Dean yawns, pressing as close to Sam as he dares. Sam relaxes back into him, sighing deeply and curling in on himself.

“Dunno,” Sam says again, yawning. “Don’t move though.”

“Okay,” Dean says, even though that’s not what he meant to say at all. His eyes are falling shut even though he thinks he should be all slept out, lulled by the steady rhythm of Sam’s breathing.

When they wake up again, it’s dawn and they’re facing each other, pressed extremely close together. Sam’s sort of manipulated it so he’s curled in around Dean’s body, and somehow while he slept, Dean let his arm fall around Sam’s middle. There’s no other word for it--this is bona fide cuddling right here--and for a second after he opens his eyes, Dean wants. He wants to kiss Sam, his baby brother, wants to press him into the bed and map out his body with his tongue. The pang of lust that ripples down his body shocks him into stiffening, and he can feel Sam’s resultant shiver.

“What the fuck,” Dean says, as his mind finally gets back to him, and he struggles upright, hampered by Sam’s heavy limbs and the tangle of blankets around them. Sam is trying equally as hard to get away, and it’s like the last time they woke up like this, only not, because last time Dean didn’t want to fuck Sam.

By the time Dean finally gets his feet under him on the floor, his chest is heaving and his thoughts are a muddled mass of confusion. Sam seems equally as unbalanced, his hair sticking up wildly as he blinks at Dean from his spot on the bed.

“What the fuck,” Dean says again, running his hand through his hair as he tries to get a hold of himself.

“I don’t know,” Sam says slowly.

“We gotta stop waking up like this Sam. It’s not right.” Dean glares at a spot just above Sam’s shoulder, resisting the urge to cross his arms in front of his chest protectively.

“I feel better,” Sam says, ignoring Dean completely. “This is completely weird. I mean, you feel better too, right? Not tired anymore?”

Vaguely, Dean realizes that he does feel like himself again, no hint of the incapacitating weakness and exhaustion that had slowly been riding him down into the ground. He thinks he could run for hours, completely energized and rested.

“Must’ve gotten over that bug we had,” Dean grumbles. It’s a weak excuse, even to his own ears.

“I don’t think so,” Sam says calculatingly. “I mean, this is what happened last time, you know? We were exhausted and I fell asleep on you, and when you woke up, you were perfectly fine. Your shoulder was even healing faster than it should’ve.”

“I was tired last time because a freakin’ ghost rammed me through with his bayonet,” Dean says hotly.

“No, that’s not right,” Sam says. “We were off all day. I think your injury just made it come on faster than it should’ve.”

“Made what come on?” Dean demands.

“The exhaustion, the feeling like crap,” Sam muses, trying to piece things together in a way that Dean’s seen a million times. “It always happens when we’re mad at each other, or when we haven’t been touching.”

“Newsflash, Edison,” Dean snarls. “It’s happened twice. That doesn’t count as always. I think this little theory of yours is for shit.”

“Then explain it, Dean,” Sam says. “Tell me why I felt like I was going to go into a coma and as soon as I touched you, got close enough to you, things were all of a sudden better? This is the only way that makes sense!”

“Think about what you’re saying here, Sam,” says Dean. “You’re trying to tell me that we gotta cuddle every couple of days or we’ll go batshit again.”

“Nothing about this soul bind has made sense so far, Dean,” Sam says stubbornly.

“Well, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree here,” Dean responds. “Let’s just get this day over with. I’m getting sick of this fucking cabin.”

“Tell me about it,” Sam mumbles, but he gets up all the same, abandoning the conversation, much to Dean’s relief.

They eat their way through the last of the canned food for breakfast, plowing through the fruit and the soup like it was nothing. Dean refuses to try and get any work done before they go into town to get some real grub, and although Sam gripes and complains, he gets in the car without too much of a struggle. They use most of their cash paying for their groceries, too wary to use a stolen credit card in case they have to stay longer than anticipated, and Dean’s wondering where he can beef up the contents of his wallet before they have to spend a week sleeping in the car and shoplifting from stores to get by.

By the time they roll back into their makeshift safe house, Sam has made Dean thoroughly uncomfortable with all of the staring. Sam’s starting to put something together, Dean can tell, coming up with a plan, but Dean wants nothing to do with it. Before Sam can ever open his mouth, Dean is suggesting that they try the pacing thing again as soon as they put the food away, eager to keep Sam from divulging whatever it is that he’s been working on in that freak head of his. Sam agrees, still staring at Dean in this completely disconcerting way, and by the time they’re back out in the yard, Dean doesn’t want anything to do with their freaky bond any longer.

Sam turns and starts to walk, and so does Dean, opposite directions as always. Dean eyes the tree that’s been their makeshift boundary for the past couple of days, preparing himself for the inevitable pain he’ll feel once he approaches it, but nothing happens apart from the stretch of their connection that he always feels when he tries to get away from Sam. He manages about five steps further than he’s ever gone before when he feels the strong pull and the pain behind his eyes and turns around before he can fall to his knees from the intensity of it.

“That’s the farthest we’ve ever gone,” Sam calls staunchly from across the yard. “Let’s try it again.”

It takes several hours before they’re able to one step more than what they’d done the first time they tried it, but Sam looks triumphant when he calls for a halt. “This is good,” he says. “We’re getting better at this.”

“Only if it lasts,” Dean points out, which is a valid truth to make, seeing as though they had significantly more trouble earlier in the week going even half as far as they’d managed before.

“We’ll work on it,” Sam says, and there’s a gleam in his eyes that Dean isn’t quite sure he likes. Sam makes him go back into the living room to try and work on the psychic shit for about the trillionth time, and Dean tries to protest, tries to get Sam to want to do something else that they haven’t already done (and failed at) before, but Sam isn’t hearing any of it. He sits across from Dean, same as always, and looks his in the eye, concentrating. Dean can feel the familiar sensation of Sam in his head, trying again to show him how to communicate without using words, and somehow, it’s marginally easier to see what he means today. The roadblock that’s always been there is still impeding something, still making it difficult for Dean to get the gist of what Sam’s trying to show him, but he can feel something different, something clearer.

Sam lets his thoughts retreat from Dean’s head, and Dean squints, ready to concentrate again. His first couple of tries yield no results, and Sam keeps trying to show him what to do. Dean is about to snap at him that this plan of action obviously isn’t working, but he takes a deep breath instead, steadying himself for another attempt.

“Here,” Sam says exasperatedly, and suddenly he’s on the couch, next to Dean, so close that Dean shivers from it. Sam uses both of his hands to turn Dean’s head, ignoring Dean’s protesting squawk, and puts his big forehead directly against Dean’s skin. Dean tries to pull away, but Sam’s grip is tight, and it feels oddly, intimately good. There’s a flash of something, and then it’s almost as he can feel Sam in his head, entirely there, like he’s just walking around.

“Close your eyes,” Sam breathes, and Dean doesn’t even think not to comply, just lets his eyelids slide shut. It’s a sudden whirl of images and feelings, and Dean sees it in a way he hadn’t before. Sam is helping Dean coax something down the link, sure and slow but impossibly there, and before he knows it, Dean is struggling to follow Sam’s lead.

“I saw something,” Sam says suddenly, his hands slipping from Dean’s face. “Clearer than before. Try it again.”

When they wake up the next day, buoyed by the accomplishments made the day prior, Dean expects things to get better again, but they don’t. They seem to hit another roadblock, trying again and again to surpass what they’d done the day before but ultimately failing again. By the time dusk breaks, Dean is feeling the beginnings of the exhaustion that had plagued him earlier in the month, and he’s thoroughly sick of the effort they’re using to go absolutely nowhere.

“This is stupid,” Dean snarls, massaging his temples to try and ward off the headache he can feel building behind his eyes. “We’re getting nowhere.” Sam hasn’t been doing anything for the past quarter hour except staring vacantly out of the window, and Dean can’t tell if he’s frustrated or if he’s finally checked out of the whole damn situation.

“We should just leave,” Dean says when Sam doesn’t give any indication that he’s heard what’s being said to him. “We can do a lot more hunting than we can holed up in the middle of nowhere like this.”

“No,” says Sam sharply, coming out of his reverie with a suddenness that almost startles Dean. “We’ve almost got it.”

“We don’t almost have anything,” Dean says hotly.

“It’ll be better tomorrow,” Sam says.

“No it won’t,” Dean says. He turns to look at the wall, presenting Sam with his back, and he can feel Sam’s presence behind him. He can feel Sam’s hands press tentatively to Dean’s shoulders, massaging away some of the tension there, and even though Dean feels like he should shrug it off, it feels so good that he doesn’t want to. His headache is ebbing away already, soothed by the way Sam is working the kinks out of his muscles.

“Let’s just go to bed,” Sam says, his hands stilling.

“That’s your answer for everything,” Dean grumbles, but he can’t deny that he really, really wants to go to sleep right now. This stupid soul bind is turning him into a geriatric; soon, they’re going to have to start staking out diners for early-bird specials. The thought is quite depressing, and Dean sighs loudly as he follows Sam up to their bedroom.

As always, they change with their backs to one another. Privacy was one thing that Dean wished hadn’t been so completely obliterated with the soul bind. It’s his turn to take the mattress on the floor, but as soon as he crawls under the worn sheets, he feels the pressure on his bed shift as Sam sits down next to him.

“Dude, what are you doing?” Dean says, but it’s a feeble protest. He can feel Sam, closer than he’s been practically all day, and his body is singing for the heat of his brother pressed close next to him.

“Trying something,” Sam says, which isn’t even a worthwhile explanation. He’s worming his gigantor feet under the sheets too, and even though he doesn’t want to, Dean sits up and shifts to the far side of the mattress.

“You have your own bed, man,” Dean says. “Get out of mine.”

“Stop being so stubborn,” Sam says. “We did better with this whole working out our soul bind after we slept together last time. Maybe it’ll work again.”

“First off,” Dean says, holding up his index finger, “we didn’t sleep together last time. You fell into my bed and somehow didn’t move. Second off, I’m not sharing with you, Sam. We’re not little kids anymore.”

“Just one night,” Sam says, lying down and rolling over until he’s firmly in Dean’s territory and practically forcing Dean to roll off of the bed onto the dirty floor.

“Sam, no,” Dean says, but it’s a weak protest, because something in him really, really thinks that it’s a good idea, and that part of him is winning out over the denial.

“Stop being a pussy,” Sam says. “It’s just one night. If it doesn’t work, I promise I’ll never do it again. You were the one who was so gung-ho to do this soul bind in the first place. I’m just trying to live with it.”

“I’m taking you up on that promise,” Dean yawns. “When we wake up and it hasn’t helped--and it won’t--you better keep to your own bed.” Dean can already feel himself moving minutely towards Sam even though he’s still awake to keep control of his own actions. It just feels like he’s fighting something he shouldn’t by keeping away, and he can feel his eyelids slipping closed.

“Scout’s honor,” Sam says from somewhere very far away, but Dean’s too far gone to even comprehend the words.

They wake up in quite the same predicament as they found themselves the last time this happened, wound around each other like some freaky pantomime of post-coital cuddling. Dean thinks he should cringe at the thought of even putting together the words sex and Sam in his head, but he’s incredibly content with his head pillowed on Sam’s shoulder and Sam’s arms around his waist. For several minutes, he lies there, half awake and languid in the morning sun, lulled into a calm by the heat of Sam’s body all around his. He can feel something waking up in his bones, something insistent and hot, but he just shifts his face further into Sam’s skin and ignores it, not quite ready to face the day.

Sam is moving minutely beneath him, stretching as he comes awake in steady increments, just as Dean is. Dean wants to tell him to stop twitching, but the early morning is already seeping into his skin and making him restless just lying in bed. He can smell something on Sam’s skin, something that makes heat pool in his belly, and for one oblivious moment, he closes his eyes and lets it fill his senses. Sam’s hand ghosts down Dean’s side, and it makes him shiver pleasantly from the almost-touch of it. He wants to arch into Sam’s fingers, let him run his hands all over Dean, and Sam does it again, almost as if he can sense Dean’s thoughts. Which, come to think of it, he probably can.

Sam moves again, more deliberate, and Dean makes a noise at the interruption. He’s been trying to elude the sun for a solid five minutes, and the thought of leaving bed to spend another endless day pacing the yard makes him want to throw things in disgust.

“Um, Dean,” Sam says, and his voice is almost a squeak, something that only happens when Sam is on the verge of major embarrassment. The big brother in Dean wakes up instantly with malevolent intention, ready to gauge the situation and how to best exploit it to its fullest advantage when Dean suddenly understands what’s going on. With difficulty, he rolls away from Sam onto the cooler edge of the untouched part of the mattress, breathing heavily than perhaps is necessary. Sam sits up, hunched over himself, and Dean pulls the sheet up so it’s pooled around his belly and hiding things that he’s sure he doesn’t want Sam to see. Which, come to think of it, is a pretty unnecessary gesture given that he’s pretty sure Sam’s already noticed.

“We’ve gotta stop waking up like this, dude,” Dean says weakly, ignoring the elephant in the room, because that’s what they do when things get to be like this.

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, and Dean can tell that he’s trying to be calm even though panic is radiating off of him pretty obviously.

They spend the rest of the morning as far away from each other as possible, nursing the remnants of humiliation of waking up like they had, but eventually even Dean can’t find another excuse to not do what they came here for, so they end up back outside.

“I feel better today,” Sam says, squinting against the sun.

“I don’t,” Dean says, but it’s a lie. “Let’s just get this over with.” Sam doesn’t call him out on it, only turns around, and it’s just like the last time they woke up around each other--easier to get away, easier to stay away. By the fifth time they try it and manage further than they’ve gone before, Sam is beaming in this self-satisfied way that puts Dean’s teeth on edge.

“I was right,” Sam says. “I mean, we’re better today, just like the last time...” He trails off, maybe reluctant to say what he means, and Dean scowls.

“Lucky coincidence,” he says.

“No it’s not, Dean,” Sam says staunchly. “Three times is not a lucky coincidence.”

“Think about what you’re saying, Sam,” Dean says hotly. “So, what, in order for this thing to be livable, I gotta start sharing a bed with my brother every night? That’s kind of fucked up, even for us.”

“We used to share beds all of the time,” Sam scoffed. “Stop being so dramatic.”

“Yeah, when we were little,” Dean says loudly. “I don’t know if you noticed, Sam, but you aren’t six anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a little weird,” Sam retorted, even though Dean could feel how uncomfortable Sam was getting from thinking about what he was actually implying. “It’s the only thing we’ve found so far that actually helps.”

“I’d rather feel like crap,” Dean mutters, scuffing his foot in the dirt.

“Well, I wouldn’t,” Sam says. “I’m sure it’ll get better with practice and we won’t need to be so...close...all of the time.”

“Easy for you to say,” Dean says. “I’m not a girl.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Sam says. “Here, come inside. I want to try something.”

“Not more of the psychic shit, Sam,” Dean protests. “I’ve already dealt with enough crap this morning.

“No, it’s just something I thought about this morning,” Sam says over his shoulder, leading Dean into the kitchen.

“What, you aren’t going to let me into the picture?” Dean asks as Sam starts rifling through the kitchen drawers for something. Dean tries to figure out what Sam is going for, but his mind is drawing a complete blank, and the mind-link is stubbornly unhelpful.

“Here we go,” Sam mutters, unearthing a large, serrated knife that looks like it hasn’t been used in at least twenty years.

“What are you going to do with that?” Dean asks suspiciously, taking an unconscious step back from Sam.

“Don’t be such a baby,” Sam says. “I won’t touch you with it. I just want to see something.”

“See what?” Dean asks, but Sam doesn’t answer, turning his hand over so his palm is facing up, and then, with only the slightest bit of hesitation, draws the blade over his skin.

“Jesus, Sam,” Dean sputters and the blood begins to well up, fast and thick--Sam cut deep. Dean starts throwing the cupboards open, looking for a towel or something to staunch the blood flow, and he can hear Sam hissing through his teeth at the sting. Dean finally finds and old scrap of fabric, yellow with age, but it’s the best he has, so he grabs Sam’s hand and presses down on the wound, keeping a firm hold on Sam’s wrist as Sam tries to pull his hand away from the pressure.

“It’s fine,” Sam says.

“What the fuck, Sam?” Dean demands. “What are you trying to do--give us both tetanus? Come on, we gotta find the fucking first aid kit. I swear to God, if I have to stitch you up because you cut yourself too deep with that thing, I’m gonna kill you myself.” Dean can feel a phantom pain starting in his own hand; looking down, he’s sure that he’ll find an identical cut across his palm, but there’s nothing there.

“I’m not stupid, Dean,” Sam says.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Dean snaps.

“I just wanted to see if this soul bind affected wounds, you know? I mean, your shoulder healed a lot quicker than it should’ve.”

“So you decide to slice your hand open?” says Dean angrily. “Yeah, real smart Sam.”

“It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore,” Sam says. “I think it stopped bleeding.” He pulls his hand from Dean’s, leaving Dean free to go rifling for the first aid kit, and when Dean unearths the bandages and the suturing thread (just in case), he sees that’s Sam’s right. The towel is scarlet, but Dean can’t see any more new blood seeping from the cut.

“Doesn’t prove anything,” Dean says gruffly, pulling an adhesive bandage away from its covering and sticking it on the edge of the table so he can get it as soon as he douses Sam’s hand in hydrogen peroxide. He soaks a cotton ball liberally in the stuff and grabs Sam’s wrist maybe harder than he would’ve otherwise, rubbing the cotton firmly across Sam’s palm. He feels the sting of it on his own hands, as though he’s grinding peroxide into a cut that he’s sustained, but it’s barely there, barely noticeable. The cut doesn’t look as deep as Dean first thought it was, so he covers it with a bandage and gives Sam a fierce glare.

“Don’t do something like that again,” he says. “There’s stupid, and then there’s stupid and I don’t want to have to deal with it when you’re acting like a retard.”

“Stop being so dramatic,” Sam scoffs. “It was a good experiment.”

“You would,” Dean mutters.

“It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore,” Sam placates. “And it’ll come in handy, don’t you think? If we ever get hurt on a hunt? We won’t be waylaid as long as we usually are when one of us gets hurt.”

“If we’re ever good enough to go hunting again,” Dean points out, still holding Sam’s hand, unwilling to give up the connection. Sam hasn’t even seemed to have noticed that Dean isn’t letting go.

“We will be,” Sam says confidently. “We’re getting there.” Which may or may not be the truth, but Dean doesn’t want to give Sam the satisfaction, so he just rolls his eyes.

“Whatever, bitch,” he says, finally letting Sam’s hand fall from his. “Let’s just do some more of this shit so I can eat sometime this century.”

Sam won’t let Dean sleep alone anymore, no matter how much Dean protests that it’s fucking gay and stupid besides.

“I’m not going to feel like shit because you’re too much of a baby to acknowledge that this actually helps,” Sam says every time that Dean tries to kick him out of his bed. Dean can tell that Sam’s not entirely comfortable with it, and once or twice, Dean thinks he’ll be able to convince Sam that sleeping alone every once in a while is a great idea, but Sam’s nothing if not stubborn.

It’s extremely weird, getting used to the fact that he’s essentially sharing his bed on a regular basis for the first time in, well, forever. Every morning, it gets just a little bit harder to get up, because even though he knows that it’s freaky as shit to like waking up spooned next to your brother every morning, it feels good. Him and Sam have made this unspoken pact to not mention anything about it past the arguments that occur every time they decide to go to bed, but Dean still can’t escape the fact that he feels a little thrill in his stomach every time Sam’s skin touches his, and that’s fucking Not Okay.

Despite Sam’s protests of how gross it is, Dean tries to remind himself that he fucking likes girls and tits and all of that shit, looking at his skin mags unabashedly before he takes his shower, with Sam grumbling outside disgustedly.

“A man’s gotta keep some of the simple pleasures,” Dean says, but it’s not the same as it used to be, and that’s really freaking Dean out, because he should be thinking of fucking that hot chick he met in Tampa a couple of months ago when he’s jerking off and definitely not flashing to how he felt lying next to his brother in the morning. This whole thing is starting to really drive Dean crazy, and on top of everything else, it’s something that he definitely doesn’t want to live with anymore.

And he can’t even think up a good excuse to himself half of the time, because Sam’s right. Their continued contact at night has made for their weird training to go much smoothly than it has before. They’ve been able to spend extended periods of time away from each other, at opposite sides of the house, and Dean can’t exactly say that he’s not a fan of the privacy. The psychic thing is still hard, but Sam’s figured out how to block a lot of what he’s feeling from Dean, and Dean’s almost getting the hang of sending things down their link if he’s concentrating hard enough. What’s more, Dean realizes with a pang that Sam’s memories from Hell are fading, not affecting them as strongly as they had been before, slowly ebbing from their dreams until nothing’s left. It should be reassuring, but Dean’s suspicious of it.

The shack is getting claustrophobic, confining, and although Sam thinks that they’re not ready to leave yet, Dean is looking for anything to get them out of it. He keeps trying to tell Sam that the only way they can get better hunting with this thing is if they actually go on hunts, but Sam has the idea that they need to master the basics before they can actually do anything else, which is frustrating in a way Dean can’t even begin to put into words. He’s never been one for sitting around and doing nothing, and with each passing day, he feels more and more like he’s going to go stir-crazy if he doesn’t get some action in soon.

Well, he does get action, but maybe not in the way he was hoping.

One morning, Dean wakes up and Sam’s face is there, right fuckin’ there, and that heat that’s been smoldering low in his belly, the want that Dean has been trying so desperately to ignore is their, insistent. He’s barely aware of himself, still half-asleep, and Sam’s eyes flutter open, so close to Dean that his eyelashes almost brush Dean’s skin.

Dean opens his eyes, whether to complain about their proximity to one another or to issue a comment about Sam’s atrocious morning breath he’s not sure, but something stops his voice from working, lodging in his throat. And Sam’s just looking at him, not moving back, still right there in Dean’s space, and before Dean knows it, before Dean can even comprehend what’s going on or who moved first, Sam’s lips are brushing dryly against Dean’s open mouth.

It sends a jolt of something straight down Dean’s spine, the contact between them, and the fire in his stomach intensifies to a full-blown blaze. He lets it go on for one second, two, three, kissing back, breathing in Sam’s air, before reality comes crashing down again, and he pushes Sam away from him.

“What just happened?” Dean says shakily.

“I don’t know,” Sam blurts, just as unhinged.

“Fuck,” Dean says, struggling to sit up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

“Seriously, Dean, what was that?” Sam demands, falling back against his pillow and running his hand through his hair.

“I don’t know,” Dean snaps. “I don’t fucking know, all right?” Before Sam can say anything else, before Dean has even had the time to comprehend what just happened, he’s out of bed and in the hall. He can feel the tug of his connection to Sam beginning to make itself known, but they’ve gotten good enough that he’s able to make it all the way downstairs before he feels like he’s going to trigger something.

He half-expects Sam to come down to talk about it, maybe to ask why Dean decided that today would be a fine and dandy day to engage in some heretofore unmentioned incest, but Dean’s paced the room at least a hundred times before Sam makes his appearance, dressed and trying his best to look like nothing happened.

“I’m hungry,” he says bracingly. “Please tell me you didn’t eat all the cereal.”

Dean can feel his mouth open and close like a fish as Sam’s words penetrate. “No-o,” he says slowly. “There’s still some left.”

“Good,” Sam says, and he disappears into the kitchen. Dean almost wants to follow him but instead sits himself down in one of the sagging armchairs. Unless he’s much mistaken, it’s going to be a long-ass day.

The next few days pass in a haze of uncomfortable silences and unsaid things. Much to Dean’s surprise, Sam doesn’t avoid him like Dean was expecting him to, just continues pulling the task-master routine that Dean’s been so used to. Sam gets back to the feverish point he’d been sporting when they first got to the cabin.

But no matter the trouble it got them in before, Sam still insists that they share a bed. Dean tries to scrunch himself to the edge of the mattress every night, but he inevitably wakes up the next morning just as wrapped around Sam as he always is. They manage to not have another incestuous episode, but it’s a close call almost every morning.

Dean spends an inordinate amount of time in the shower, trying to clear his head, but the only thing it’s good for is annoying Sam, who seems to think that the best way to deal with things is to ignore it. Which is actually refreshing, considering that it’s Sam, but Dean sometimes feels like he’s going to explode from the pressure of so desperately wanting something he can’t have.

Dean’s nerves are so shot that he almost jumps a mile when his phone rings mid-afternoon. They’ve been checking in with Bobby every so often, but no one’s bothered to actually call them, so Dean had almost forgotten what his cell phone ringtone had even sounded like.

“Hello?” he says. “Bobby, is that you?”

“Who else would it be?” Bobby asks gruffly, the crackling connection timing in and out.

“I dunno,” Dean says. “What do you want?” Across the room, Sam is looking at Dean curiously, and Dean turns in his seat so that he can’t see him.

“I gotta problem here,” Bobby says, and Dean’s heart leaps in excitement.

“Yeah?” he says.

“Think I might need your help. You guys got your heads outta your asses yet?”

“Pretty much,” Dean says, even though he’s not perhaps being entirely truthful.

“I’m outside Vegas, researching a string of demons,” Bobby says, and Dean groans, half in anticipation and half in sympathy. “They’re causing havoc every which way, and the one I talked to yesterday had something to say about the Mother.”

“The Mother?” Dean says.

“Well, yeah,” Bobby responds, as though Dean’s about the stupidest person he’s ever talked to. “That’s why I think you two should get out here, unless you’re still actin’ like a bunch of idjits.”

“No, we’re good, we’re good,” Dean hastily assures him. “We’ll be out as soon as possible.” He can feel Sam’s eyes boring into the back of his skull and he could tell that Sam was employing his bitch face for about the tenth time that morning. Well, Sam could just deal, because Dean was sick and fucking tired of the stupid fucking cabin and the stupid fucking training, and he was ready for some bona fide demon hunting, goddammit. He wrote down the coordinates Bobby relayed him on a scrap of paper he found hanging on the refrigerator, and by the time he hung up, he was quite ready to get going.

“What did Bobby want?” Sam sighed, as if he didn’t already know.

“Hunt he needs us on,” Dean says promptly. “C’mon, Sam, let’s get a move on.” Sam kept up a steady litany of how they weren’t ready for any kind of hunt, let alone demonic possession, the entire time Dean was packing, but Dean could tell that it was mainly for show. He was pretty sure that Sam was just as sick of the cabin as Dean was and quite ready to get out of it.

They locked up behind them, Sam in a huffy silence after Dean had proven to him that he was going to Nevada whether Sam wanted to or not, and Dean gunned the Impala, driving about twenty miles too fast over the speed limit in his excitement to get out of Bumfuck, Mississippi.

By the time they rolled into Nevada, Sam had abandoned his mood to talk to Dean about how they were going to be able to fend off a group of demons that apparently worked for the all-encompassing Mother that they’d been looking for for the better part of the year. Dean could tell, behind all of his warnings and strategies, that Sam was itching for this hunt just as much as Dean was, so he went along as good-naturedly as he could.

Sam let Dean check-in to the motel that Bobby was staying at, but he spent a whole ten minutes bitching about the fact that Dean requested two queens instead of a king.

“Stop whining,” Dean said out of the corner of his mouth. “We don’t want Bobby to know about our new sleeping arrangements, do we?”

That shut Sam up for all of two seconds before he started telling Dean that if he fell out of bed, Dean better look out. Dean found the whole look-at-me-I-can-be-intimidating act to be rather funny, and even though Sam pinned him easily in the ensuing scuffle, Dean couldn’t pretend that he was too annoyed.

When they meet up with Bobby, he has nothing new to add. There are at least five demons in town, but they keep jumping from host to host without warning, and Bobby’s having trouble pinpointing them down.

“What have they been doing?” Sam asks, concentrated on the details as Dean’s getting used to the big picture.

“Raping, killing, havoc,” Bobby says. “You know, everything that demons do. As far as I can tell, the got a leader here, someone who’s close to power, but I haven’t found it yet.” He gives Sam and Dean a list of people who’ve been possessed and of victims of the demon and sends them off to the east side of town while he works the west. It would be easier if Sam and Dean split up, working on victims who were at least relatively close, but Sam was under the impression that they’d need to conserve their strength if they were going to come face-to-face with a demon bad-boy, and Dean did have to admit that their separation, even though it was coming easier and easier these days, did take something out of them.

The first couple of people they talked to couldn’t really provide any insight besides a bird’s eye view into what it felt like being trapped inside their mind as a demon played fast and loose with their body. One of them was in the local prison awaiting trial for the murder of his best friend, and it looked like his lawyer was going to have him plea for insanity.

“It’ll work though,” Dean says as they leave the prison gates. “The guy was bat-shit.”

“He’d just been possessed,” Sam protests.

“C’mon, he was totally out there,” Dean says, twirling his finger in the universal symbol for lost-his-marbles. “Who’s next?” Sam scoffs but pulls out the list of names he dutifully took down when they’d last seen Bobby.

“Lara Mueller,” he said, his brow furrowing as he scanned his list. “She lives about five minutes away. Says she was raped by her boyfriend but he had black eyes. She didn’t press charges.”

“Good thing,” Dean said. “I’m sick of this bounty hunter shit. It’s like half of this town’s getting themselves locked up for one thing or another.”

“Because half of the town has been possessed, Dean,” Sam says.

“Whatever, let’s just go,” Dean says. “Before they think we’re being suspicious and lock us up too.”

“You’d probably deserve it,” Sam mutters, but he’s smiling into the sun, and he doesn’t even complain when Dean blasts his music too loudly on their drive over to Lara’s apartment.

Lara proves to be a mousy, skinny twenty-year old who blinks at Dean owlishly through a crack in the door for three minutes before he convinces her to let him inside. She’s skittish and she keeps shifting looks up at Sam as she ushers them inside to sit on her ratty, second-hand sofa.

“I already told the police I don’t want to press charges,” she says into her lap.

“I know,” Sam says, ever sympathetic. “We were just sent here to make sure that you hadn’t changed your mind.”

“No-o,” Lara says, and then she starts to cry. “Brent--he--he didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t mean to hurt me.”

“Of course he didn’t,” Sam says, reaching into the inner pocket of his suit jacket for a tissue. Dean tried to convey his disbelief that Sam actually carried those things around, but Sam stoutly ignored him, handing Lara the kleenex over the coffee table.

“His eyes were black,” Lara said dramatically, looking up wildly.

“Are you sure?” Sam asked gently.

“I’m not crazy! Everyone thinks I am but I’m not!” Lara stands up suddenly, her shoulders trembling.

“We believe you,” Sam says quietly, standing up to place a hand on Lara’s shoulder. She sniffs and then breaks into a fresh round of sobs, burying her face in Sam’s shoulder. Sam’s arms go around her awkwardly, cautiously, but she clings to him steadfastly, clenching his shirt like it’s the only thing tethering her to sanity. Dean feels a flash of anger at her closeness to his brother but he dismisses it as annoyance, and giving that her sobs are reaching banshee-like decibels, that isn’t far off.

With difficulty, Sam manages to extract himself from her embrace, keeping her at arm’s length while she wipes her face on her sleeve. “I’m sorry,” she says “It’s just so hard sometimes.”

“Where is Brent now?” Sam asks, still using his sympathetic tone of voice that he saves for civvies.

“I don’t know,” Lara hiccups. “After it--happened--there was all of this black smoke, and I was really out of it, you know. And when I woke up, he wasn’t there anymore and his parents haven’t heard from him. I just want to talk to him. Is there any way you can find him?”

“We’re doing our best,” Dean says brusquely. “Where did this happen, exactly?”

Lara points a shaking finger down the hall. “In my bedroom. I haven’t been able to go in there since...since it happened.”

“I’ll check it out,” Dean says. “Sam, stay here.” Sam glares at him out, but Lara is crying again, moaning about Brent and how she just wants to talk, that’s it, so Sam has to turn on the caring-and-sharing attitude that he employs so well, leaving Dean with an escape route.

Lara’s room is predictably girlish--lace curtains and knickknacks all over the dressers with a number of picture frames on the walls. Dean wrinkles his nose at the garishly pink blanket on her bed, which is rumpled and half on the floor. He begins a preliminary search for sulfur, even though this is pretty cut-and-dry, considering her firsthand account of black eyes and all. He tries all of the normal places first--windowsills and the baseboards, runs his fingers along the surface of her nightstand, but he doesn’t find anything that looks remotely like it was left by a demon.

He can still hear the girl wailing down the hall, so he figures it’s okay to do a little snooping while she’s sufficiently preoccupied. He pulls the blanket off of her bed, still looking for a clue or a sign, but other than the wrinkled pull of the sheets, there’s nothing off. He checks under the bed, paws through a couple of her drawers, and even looks in the grain of her hardwood floors for a sign. Nothing.

Dean sighs and tries to think of a reason why a demon wouldn’t leave any sulfuric residue behind when something twinges hard behind his eyes and he nearly blacks out. Still kneeling on the floor, he throws a hand out to keep himself from falling over, and his vision dances with colored spots.

“Sometimes I wonder how you and your brother even survived to be this old,” someone says amusedly from behind him, and then he’s being pulled up by the collar of his shirt and manhandling him onto the bed. There’s a hand wrapped almost lovingly around his throat, squeezing just hard enough to cut off Dean’s air supply just a little bit, and as Dean’s vision focuses, he realizes that Lara--pathetic, weepy, tiny Lara is kneeling on top of him and her eyes are black as pitch.

“If you wanted me this way, all you had to do was ask, sweetheart,” Dean rasps, kicking out without finding any purchase.

“Feisty, Dean,” she purrs. “Just how I like it.”

Dean starts clawing at her hand as she tightens it, trying to pull it away from the vulnerable expanse of his neck. “What did you do to Sam?” he growls, digging his nails into her skin when he finds he can’t get purchase on our fingers.

“Don’t worry,” she says, bending down to lick at his ear. “Sammy’s okay. He might have a little headache later on, but such is life.”

“Bitch,” Dean snarls, and he gets one of his knees under her and gets her pretty hard in the stomach. It’s enough to get her off balance, giving Dean the leverage to flip her over. She’s laughing, though, even when he’s switched their positions, this full-throated cackle that sets Dean’s teeth on edge.

“Aren’t you wondering, Dean?” she asks. “Why you’re still awake when Sam’s unconscious?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dean snaps, trying to crush her windpipe, but she uses the same trick Dean had employed and kicks him off of her and straight into the wall hard enough that the plaster cracks. Dean doesn’t allow himself any time to savor the pain running through his back, just rolls off to one side, getting his feet under him before she can advance on him again. Sam has the knife, of course, but Dean has a gun tucked in the back of his jeans, because he’s not stupid enough to go anywhere without packing, thank you very much.

He pulls out his gun and levels it at her, even though it will do little more than slow her down if he shoots--normal bullets in here, no rock salt.

“Oh, come on,” she scoffs, dusting off her shirt as she advances on him, only giving the gun the most cursory of glances. “You didn’t think we wouldn’t know about your little trick, did you?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Dean lies, keeping the gun trained on her head. Even the best demons would have difficulty if their meat-suit was missing half of its skull.

“Don’t lie, Dean,” she says, tsking like an irritated schoolteacher. “I don’t like it. Especially since we both know I’m talking about that little soul-bind you did to make Sam come back to his senses.”

Dean laughs harshly. “Man, you’ve been getting some wrong information from somewhere,” he says. “You shouldn’t drink the kool-aid, you know?”

The demon’s eyes narrow, but she stays put, maybe a little more concerned about the gun than Dean thinks she is.

“Mother has been watching you,” she says instead. “And so have I. And we’re not too happy about what you’re doing, Dean. So stay away.”

Dean wants to laugh at her, mock her for being so cheesy, but suddenly the girl’s mouth opens wide and expels a plume of purple smoke that lingers in the air for only a moments before evaporating through the ceiling. Lara crumples to the ground, and Dean follows her fall with his gun before he assesses that she’s not a threat any longer.

Dean’s vision is dancing harder than ever, and he stumbles into the wall at least three times before he reaches his brother. He can’t wrap his head around why the demon hadn’t tried to kill him, because demons weren’t usually used as glorified messengers unless they had something bigger on their agenda. Whatever--he’d talk to Sam about it, if he could even get Sam to wake up.

Sam was sprawled on the floor, a goose egg forming on his forehead. Dean was going to give him shit about it when he woke up, but for now, it took all of Dean’s concentration just to get over to Sam.

“Fucking pathetic, dude,” he muttered and then began to slap Sam’s cheek lightly in an attempt to wake him up.

It took a minute or two, but Sam eventually stirred, making a number of sleepy, confused noises before he finally slapped Dean’s hand away. When Sam managed to open his eyes, Dean felt a little bit of the haze that had slipped over him fall away, but his body felt heavy and exhausted all the same.

“Wha’ happened?” Sam slurred. “Fuck, my head hurts.”

“The crybaby was possessed, and you let her get the drop on you,” Dean said. “C’mon, we gotta go before she wakes up and raises holy hell.” It takes a couple of attempts to get both of them on their feet, but they stagger out of Lara’s apartment and down the stairs without any incidents.

Sam lets Dean call Bobby as he sits on one of the beds in their motel room, holding a washcloth full of ice to his forehead, wincing. Dean gets an earful from Bobby about being reckless and not paying attention, but Dean hardly hears a word Bobby’s saying. He’s freakin’ tired as all hell, and Bobby’s voice is grating on his nerves. Finally, he manages to get Bobby off the line by promising to be better after they get some sleep, and he collapses backwards onto his own bed, chucking his phone somewhere in the vicinity of the bathroom.

It doesn’t surprise him when Sam gets up and join him, and it takes a couple minutes of maneuvering to get under the covers. Sam immediately twines himself around Dean, and Dean can’t get the energy up to complain, just lets his hand fall into Sam’s hair and falls asleep himself.

When they wake up, Dean still feels like shit, even after he separates from Sam to take a shower. His shoulders hurt more than they should from the impact he took with the wall back at the girl’s apartment, and there’s a ring of bruises around his neck that are beginning to turn a mottled purple. Sam’s hardly better off, and Dean can feel the echo of his headache the entire morning, even after they meet Bobby and Sam swallows three tylenol dry.

Bobby tails them that day, even though Dean tries to protest that their failure the day before was only a fluke from being off the job for so long. Bobby only pretends to hear what Dean has to say, but he’s in his pick-up following them anyway, and they scour the town together, pretending to be the subordinates to Bobby’s FBI boss.

Sam’s headache gets increasingly worse as the day wanes, and Dean can’t stop rotating his shoulders to alleviate some of the tension that’s settled there. Bobby keeps giving them sidelong glances, but Dean refuses to admit that the demon did any lasting damage, and Sam is unnervingly quiet the entire day.

They catch a demon almost by accident: she’s their waitress in the diner they’re eating at, and when Sam accidentally spills a glass of water and Dean spits a “Jesus Christ” into the air when his jeans are soaked through, her eyes flash black for the briefest of seconds. Bobby helps them corner her behind the restaurant where she’s trying to make a run for it, but the demon explodes from the waitress’s mouth before they can even do anything about it.

The girl who was being possessed immediately breaks down sobbing, and Dean leaves Bobby and Sam to interrogate her because he’s had enough tears to last him forever by this point. It doesn’t take long before they can assess that she doesn’t know anything past the point of possession, but Dean can’t quite dredge up the energy to care.

Bobby mutters about how they’re getting useless without him, which is a depressing thought in and of itself, and Dean has to deal with Sam’s tired smugness filtering through their bind at being right that it had been too soon to leave the stupid cabin. Well, Dean’s not giving Sam the satisfaction of knowing that Dean thinks maybe Sam’s not wrong about this, so he doesn’t say anything as he drives them back to the motel. Dean collapses into bed just like he did the night before, with Sam on top of him, but it takes them a long time to fall asleep, even though they’re exhausted.

They only wake up the next morning because Bobby calls Sam’s phone sometime around noon, irate that they haven’t been around doing anything useful. Sam yawns six times as Dean rifles through his duffel for a clean shirt, and Dean’s too tired to even think about showering, his fantasies about a strong cup of coffee reaching almost disturbing heights.

They’re more off than they’d been the day before, stumbling over things and missing signs, and by the time lunch rolls around and they’ve proven to be more of a hindrance than a couple of freshly-minted hunters, Bobby stands outside of the driver’s side door of the Impala and fixes them both with a harsh stare.

“I thought you said you were up for this hunt, Dean,” he accuses. Beside him, Sam shifts uncomfortably, and Dean resists the urge to rub the back of his neck.

“We are,” Dean says, but the protest is weak, even to his own ears.

“Not from where I’m standing,” Bobby says gruffly. “Never seen so many screw-ups from a pair of experienced hunters in my life.”

“We’re still trying to work things out here, Bobby,” Sam says when Dean is unable to come up with a suitable response.

“Well, you gotta do better than this,” Bobby says resignedly. “Go back to the motel. I’ll finish up today, but if you guys aren’t better tomorrow, I’m sending you back to that infernal cabin so you can get a hold of yourselves.”

“I don’t want to go back to the room,” Dean complains loudly. “I want to do something, dammit.”

“From the looks of things, the only thing you’re good for right now is getting yourself killed by a demon,” Bobby says dryly. “I’m serious. Go back and figure out what the hell’s going on with you too.”

“You know what’s going on, Bobby,” Dean says sharply. “It’s a lot to deal with, okay.”

“It’s your own fault,” Bobby points out, stepping away from the Impala so that Dean can finally unlock it. “Wasn’t no one’s decision but your own.”

“We’ll go back, Bobby,” Sam says, uncharacteristically meek as he lays a hand on Dean’s shoulder in a placating sort of way.

“You’d better,” Bobby says darkly. “If I catch you following me, I’ll knock you out myself. And don’t give me that look, Dean. You know I’m good for it.” Much as Dean is loathe to admit it, Bobby usually does good on his threats, and he scowls at the keys in his hand for a good thirty seconds before Sam shuffles around to the opposite side of the car.

“C’mon, Dean,” he says. “You know Bobby was right.”

“Traitor,” Dean mutters, but he unlocks the car and drives them to the motel anyways.

It’s only midday, so Dean is damned if he’s going to take a nap even though he’s longing for one and Sam keeps looking at the bed as if he wants to molest it. Dean systematically attacks some takeout they picked up before returning to the room, but he finds that he really isn’t that hungry, and the food he thought he wanted doesn’t taste as good as he’d hoped it would. Sam barely touches his own burger, instead ripping pieces off of it that he leaves in the wrapper rather than eating.

“Something’s wrong here, Dean,” he says when Dean gives up on his own lunch and goes searching for the remote for the television.

“No shit, Sherlock,” Dean says, locating it under one of the beds and switching the TV on.

“Well don’t you think we should talk about it?” Sam asks, sounding irritated.

“Nope,” Dean says, flicking through the channels until he comes upon what looks to be a trashy documentary about plastic surgery and fake boobs, which makes up for its educational aspects by displaying a bunch of truly glorious plastic tits.

“Dean, I’m serious,” Sam says in his don’t-ignore-me voice, which, true to form, Dean ignores. “That demon could have done something to us. This isn’t normal, even for the soul bind.”

“Don’t care,” Dean says, not taking his eyes from the glow of the television screen. “We’re not dying, as far as I can tell.” Even as he says it, he has to suppress a yawn, and he can tell that Sam isn’t fooled.

“Stop being so fucking blase,” Sam snaps, standing up so abruptly that he knocks his chair over. “This is a big fucking deal.”

“To you, maybe,” Dean says. “I just can’t bring myself to give a fuck.”

“Goddammit, Dean,” Sam swears, sweeping across the room so he can snap the television off manually. Dean tries to use the remote to turn it on again, but Sam is standing in the way, his arms spread, blocking the signal.

“Fucking move,” Dean says, standing up.

“Not until we talk about this,” Sam retorts, planting his feet and not twitching a muscle.

“So we’re a little fucking tired?” Dean snorts. “Big fucking deal. It’s not like it hasn’t happened before, you know.”

“I thought we’d figured out how to stop it,” Sam says, agitated. “But, in case you didn’t notice, we slept in the same bed last night, and the night before, and I still feel like shit.”

“I don’t fucking know, Sam,” Dean says. “You’re the one who didn’t want to go with Bobby to find the demon to ask her what the fuck she did to us.”

“Because Bobby was right,” Sam shouts. “The way we’re going, we’d have gotten ourselves killed if we tried to go for a demon without figuring out how to make this fucking right again.”

“Oh, bite me, Sam,” Dean says. “I’m not an answer guide here.”

“And that’s another thing,” Sam continues, pacing.

“What’s another thing?” Dean asks cautiously, because he’s not quite sure where Sam got anything from “bite me” or “answer guide”.

“The kiss,” Sam says throwing his hands up in the air, and Dean takes a convulsive step backwards, the back of his knees hitting the edge of the bed.

“I though we weren’t talking about it,” Dean says, glaring at a point somewhere to the left of Sam’s arm.

“I’m sick of not talking about anything that you think is too uncomfortable,” Sam says, stepping closer to Dean so that’s he’s almost intolerably in Dean’s space.

“You haven’t been talking about it either, oh righteous one,” Dean shoots back. “What about your stint in hell? I keep dreaming about it but you’ve never once mentioned it.” He’s trying wildly to change the subject, but he doesn’t quite think that Sam’s going to take the bait.

“I’m talking about it now,” Sam says, taking another step closer so Dean’s forced to sit on the bed to get away from Sam. “Maybe it’s something we should discuss, Dean, seeing as ever since you did this stupid soul bind you’ve wanted to do things to me that brothers shouldn’t necessarily do.”

“I--you’re lying,” Dean says automatically, because if anything, that’s not true. Sure, he’s woken up a couple of times and wanted to kiss his brother, or do...other things, but it certainly hasn’t been around since he did the soul bind in the first place, and he hasn’t exactly been spending too much time thinking about.

“I can feel it, Dean,” Sam says. “Every time you think about it. You really haven’t gotten too good at hiding things you know.”

“Bullshit,” Dean says, propelling himself backwards until he reaches the headboard. Sam’s still getting closer, and he’s kneeling on the bed now. Dean feels distinctly like prey, but there’s something in him that makes him want to stay still because that’s what Sam wants.

“Isn’t,” Sam says. “And guess what, Dean. I feel it too, sometimes. Kind of fucked up, isn’t it? I mean, Castiel never warned us about this, did he?”

“I don’t know,” Dean says dumbly, because Sam’s crawling up the bed like a fucking lion, and he’s much too close, and Dean can’t make himself move, for Christ’s sake.

“Neither do I,” Sam says, and his voice is low, controlled. He puts his hand on Dean’s belly and chuckles as Dean twitches at the contact, the warmth of Sam’s hand sinking into his skin like a brand.

“Stop it, Sam,” Dean says, almost gasps, but Sam just slides his hand down, wrinkling Dean’s shirt as he does so, deftly ignoring how close to the edge he’s coming.

“I don’t want to,” Sam says in an almost-whisper, and then his face is close, right there, in Dean’s headspace and physical space, and what the fuck else. Dean can’t help it, he just fucking can’t, Sam is too fucking close, and the heat that Dean’s been fighting for a month surges up within him, and Dean can’t do anything but close the distance between his mouth and Sam’s.

Sam inhales sharply, almost as if he wasn’t expecting Dean to do anything more than just lie there, but his lips part almost instantly, as if it was what he was aiming for the entire time. It’s so different than what Dean was expecting, not weird or fucked up, but good and right and everything he wants, wrapped up in the gentle press of Sam’s lips against his. He arches up, or maybe Sam lets his weight fall, and then Sam’s on top of him, and they’re kissing, fucking making out like the world is going to end if they let themselves come up for breath.

Dean’s too fucking out of it to even register the taste of Sam, the kiss desperate and wet and perfect. Sam’s let his hands frame Dean’s face, his fingers cupping Dean’s cheek almost reverently, and Dean just lets himself fall into it, his heart beating wildly in his chest. He’s barely aware of anything except the slide of Sam’s tongue against his, the way it feels to be so fucking wrung out just from kissing his brother.

Sam must have more control of his mental capabilities than Dean at the moment, because he pulls away for the briefest of seconds, and gasps, “God, Dean, so fucking good,” before Dean’s following the retreat of Sam’s mouth, taking control of the kiss. Sam lets his hands fall to either side of Dean’s shoulders, bracing himself, and Dean slides his fingers beneath the fabric of Sam’s shirt, mapping the contours of Sam’s back with every pass he takes.

Sam’s making little moaning pants that are sexy as all hell, pushing his tongue into Dean’s mouth and letting his mouth fall open so the kiss can get as deep as Dean can possibly manage. Detachedly, Dean realizes that he’s hard, fucking fit to burst, and he doesn’t have to think about how screwed up it is, or how wrong, before he pulls his hands out from under Sam’s shirt and moves them so he can put pressure on Sam’s ass so their hips are together, snug and right and perfect friction.

Sam’s hips jerk involuntarily, and it feels so good, the drag of fabric against Dean’s cock. Sam is hard too, Dean can feel it, thick just how it should be, and Dean bucks up against it, seeking the pressure, goading Sam into actually fucking moving instead of pulling this prissy bullshit that he’s got going on.

Sam gets the picture and starts thrusting downwards raggedly, without any sense of rhythm, and Dean gets it, he really fucking does, because it feels as though things are about to explode out from him in a million different pieces and he can’t even get a hold of his own mind, get a sense of what he’s actually doing with his brother. They’re still kissing, furiously now, and Dean can feel himself approaching the edge with alarming speed, and there’s something niggling and perfect and so turned on at the back of his mind, and he just fucking lets go, pulling away from Sam’s mouth and falling apart under Sam’s weight. And it’s like they’re connected more than Dean could ever have thought, because Sam’s coming too, and the pulse of his pleasure through their bind is almost overwhelmingly, catastrophically excellent.

Sam sort of collapses onto him, but Dean is too out of it to care, his chest heaving as he comes down from his orgasm. It feels like everything is tingling, and he can’t remember the last time he felt this good, this fucked out. Sam’s face is mashed against Dean’s neck, and he can feel the contact all the way down his toes, each inhale and exhale of Sam’s breath against his skin. It’s oddly comforting, and even though he feels like he should maybe be panicking, he can’t do anything but relax into the bed, his brother a heavy blanket on top of him.

“This is not fucking okay, Sam,” Dean says, red-faced, in some sort of stand-off with his brother the next morning. When they’d first woken, before Dean had been able to get a handle on the morning and why he felt so relaxed, it had taken just a moment to realize why he should be freaking the fuck out. Sam seemed to be taking it more in stride, and the reversal of roles in the after-effects of some very satisfying, very fucked up incest, was if anything, riling Dean up further.

“I never said it was okay,” Sam said calmly, still in the bed as though he wasn’t disgusted that he’d basically dry-humped his brother only twelve hours prior.

“I don’t see you spazzing out over here, Sam,” Dean shouts. “I mean, what the fuck?”

“If I freaked out over everything that’s been going on, I’d have had a mental breakdown by now,” Sam explains, but he looks as straight-faced as he has since Dean woke up.

“So this is all okay with you, then?” Dean demands. “Fucking your brother? Incest? That’s all fine and fucking dandy for you?”

“Of course it isn’t,” Sam shouts. “Nothing is okay anymore, all right, Dean? But as far as I’m concerned, we have to fucking live with this, and Castiel said there might be side effects that he didn’t know about.”

“So you automatically assumed that this is one of them?” Dean says, kicking viciously at one of the crappy chairs that adorned their motel room.

“Well, considering that I’d never felt like this before you had the need to fuck around with my soul, yes, Dean, I think it was kind of hard to not come to the conclusion that it’s part of the bind.”

“Fuck,” Dean swore, sweeping a hand through his hair. “This is not happening again, Sam, you hear me?”

“I’m not going to be fucking miserable for the rest of my life because you’re a stubborn jackass who doesn’t think things through before he does them,” Sam snaps.

“Oh, fuck you, Sam,” Dean says, kicking the chair again before he heads into the bathroom to take a long, life-affirming shower, during which he does not think of Sam or sex or incest or anything except the feel of the hot water raining down his back.

By the time they meet up with Bobby again, Dean definitely isn’t talking to Sam, and Sam is a big ball of tension, squaring his shoulders and clenching his jaw in a way that makes Bobby look back and forth between them a couple of times before he clears his throat.

“You sure you guys are ready for this?” he asks.

“Yes,” Dean grits out. “I can’t think of anything I’d rather do today than kick some demon ass.”

“Glad to hear it,” Bobby says, but he doesn’t let them go on their own again, insisting that they work as a team that day. Dean is hugely frustrated by this, especially since Sam is giving him the stink eye and Bobby is sticking too close for comfort, but if this is the only way he’s going to be allowed to shank some stupid son of a bitch demon, he’ll deal with it the best he knows how to.

Bobby fills them in as they drive to his newest lead, some girl that’s been missing from work for the past couple of days, but Dean lets Sam do all of the questioning. As far as he’s concerned, it’s wholly unfair that Bobby got to go after demons yesterday when he was busy doing...stuff with his brother, so by the time Bobby jumps in his truck and Dean climbs into the Impala, he’s not entirely sure about the details of what they’re about to do.

“Were you even listening?” Sam asks irritatedly as Dean pulls the Impala out of the motel’s parking lot and immediately jams on the gas, bringing the car into a noisy acceleration.

“What’s the point?” he says, in his I-don’t-give-a-rat’s-ass voice that he knows Sam loathes. “You listened enough for both of us, princess.”

He can practically hear Sam gritting his teeth, even though he’s set the classic rock on extra-loud. “I’m not saving you when you get your ass in trouble,” Sam says, shifting his gaze to look out the window, and Dean takes momentary pleasure in how good he is at pissing his brother off.

They roll into a driveway that leads to a lonely house on the outskirts of town. Bobby motion that he’s gonna take the lead as soon as they’re all standing on the porch, and he raps the door professionally, taking time to straighten his tie as they hear the unmistakable sounds of someone approaching. Dean’s shifting from side to side impatiently, and Sam’s giving him an annoyed look, but as far as Dean’s concerned, Bobby’s pretty sure that the woman inside is possessed, and Dean’s not one for professionalism in the face of some ass-kicking.

Sure enough, when the middle-aged woman finally opens the door, she takes one look at Bobby and springs backwards into the house before he can even say a word. Sam draws the knife and Dean his gun as they take chase, but she’s quick, and it’s not long before she’s banged open the back door and disappeared out into the overgrowth of her yard.

By the time they explode onto the back patio, she’s all but gone, somewhere in the green shrubbery that’s covering the ground as far as Dean can see.

“I thought Nevada was supposed to be a fucking desert,” Dean grumbles as he strains to hear her footfalls in an attempt to see where she’s headed.

“I’ll go this way,” Bobby thunders, already taking off to the left. “You idgits stay together and don’t get yourselves killed.” Dean immediately takes off in the opposite direction of Bobby, reveling in the thrill of the chase as adrenaline rushes through his body. Sam is on his heels, crashing through the uneven brush, and Dean has to resist the urge to whoop. He’s missed this.

They’ve been running for all of three minutes before Dean catches a glimpse of her shoe as she darts off to the side, and he puts on an extra burst of speed so they won’t lose her again. He knows he should probably yell for Bobby, but he wants this kill to be on his own grounds, goddammit, so he stays stubbornly quiet.

When they catch up with her, Dean executes some kind of running tackle that has her rolling on the ground underneath him. He pins her down with two hands around her throat, not tight enough to strangle her, and he plants his weight so she has to struggle even to move an inch.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she gasps.

“Cut the bullshit,” Dean snarls. “Christo.”

Her eyes immediately go black, and the pitiful, scared expression she’s been wearing immediately morphs into something more sinister.

“So you got me,” she says, her voice smooth and sinister. “Now what are you gonna do with me?”

Sam’s moved so that he’s standing in front of Dean, but even though she’s caged in physically, Dean knows that there’s nothing stopping her from getting out of the meat the same way she got in.

“Sam, knife,” Dean grits out, pressing his hands tighter around her throat in an attempt to keep her from smoking out.

“Dean,” Sam starts, taking a step forward.

“Don’t be like that, sugar,” the demon purrs. “We can play nice, can’t we?”

“If we don’t do something now, she’s gonna get away,” Dean says, not taking his eyes from hers. “Give me the fucking knife.”

“That’s not what I was gonna say,” Sam says. “She could fucking know something, Dean! We can’t kill her yet.”

“I’m not saying shit to you,” she gasps. “You’re in real fucking trouble here, Winchester.” With a bang, Dean is propelled five feet away from her and into a bush, thanks to her fucking demon mojo.

“Sam,” he yells, already pulling himself out of the brush, and by the time he’s righted himself again, Sam has the demon in a strangle-hold, the knife pressed against the vulnerable expanse of her throat.

“What are you doing here?” Sam asks. “Who’s in charge? What do you know about the Mother.”

“Fuck you,” she says and then laughs. “Oh, wait, that’s Dean’s job nowadays, isn’t it?”

“I’ll kill you,” Sam warns, pressing the knife down further so a trickle of blood runs down the demon’s neck into the white of her blouse.

“You’ll kill me anyway,” she says. “And I’m not as afraid of you as you’d like.”

“Just do it, Sam,” Dean says, and Sam looks at him for the briefest of seconds before he angles the knife into the soft skin of the demon’s jugular. There’s the familiar lightning, and a spray of blood as Sam lets the body slump to the floor.

“Cold, even for you,” Dean comments as he brushes the dirt off of her pants.

“The host was already dead,” Sam says, stepping around the body and back through the uneven track they’d made through the underbrush. “If you’d been listening to Bobby, you would’ve heard him tell us that someone saw this woman take a nose-dive off of her roof a couple of days ago.”

“You shoulda just let me kill her then,” Dean complains. “Since when has a demon been forthcoming about their evil plans and shit.”

“Shut up,” Sam says. “Let’s go tell Bobby we need to get rid of the body before anyone comes to investigate.”

Bobby seems pleasantly surprised that they managed to take care of the demon all on their own, which Dean finds to be just a little bit galling, to say the least. Dean wishes that Bobby would let him torch her, but the smoke would be too much of a giveaway, so they dig a grave for her instead, far enough away from the beaten trail that it’ll likely take a while for anyone to find her.

Bobby’s annoyed that they couldn’t get any information out of her that was useful, but as far as he’s concerned, there are at least two more demons hiding out in the town, for some reason or another. Dean’s itching to have another go at the demon who was possessing that Lara chick, the one who fucked him up so royally, but Bobby has no more leads for them to follow, so it’s back to square fucking one, looking for anything unusual that may point to demonic possession.

“What fucking use are you?” Dean says, fixing Bobby with a heavy glare.

“I’d watch my tongue if I were you, boy,” Bobby says dangerously. “I’m not the one who let the leader get away, now am I?”

Sam sighs, a heavy sound, and shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “I guess we should start looking around then, Bobby,” he says. “Dean and I will take some of the other victims in the town proper, so I guess you can handle some of the people here on the outskirts?”

Bobby’s still glowering at Dean, not that Dean’s not giving just as good as he’s getting. “If you think you and your idiot brother can handle it,” he growls.

“We’ll be fine,” Sam says, pulling Dean’s arm so they’re heading back towards the car. “We figured out what was wrong.”

Bobby grunts and then fixes the rim of his hat to shield his eyes from the sun. “You’d better hope so,” he says before wrenching the driver’s side door of his truck open. “Keep your brother from doing anything dumb.”

“No promises,” Sam says dryly, and Dean socks him hard in the arm before climbing into the Impala. It’s not as fucking good as it used to be, though, because Dean’s own arm hurts the entire way back into town.

Dean really fucking hates interviews when they don’t lead anywhere. He’s no bleeding heart like Sam is, and no one ever wants to trust him as readily as they do his brother, so a lot of the times, they play good-cop, bad-cop, and that gets boring really quickly, especially since most of the people end up hating Dean by the end of the day.

Bobby’s luck is equally unfruitful, so Dean doesn’t even have the prospect of a late night chase-n-kill to put him in a better mood. He wants to argue that after the excitement of the morning, all the demons in the town have probably booked it, but the sky is rumbling with an unnatural electrical storm, and even though Dean’s having probably the worst time ever on this hunt, he can’t deny that the demonic omens that keep cropping up are probably suggesting something sinister, if not important.

Dean refuses point blank to go back to the hotel after dinner, so Sam grudgingly follows him to one of the po-dunk bars that litter the main drag. Smoke is heavy and gray in the air, and Sam coughs like a prissy bitch as Dean orders them both a beer and settles against the bar.

The house draft is bitter and soothing against his tongue, and he’s finished half of his glass before Sam’s even taken two sips. Dean resolutely ignores Sam, focusing all of his attention on the two tittering girls at the opposite end of the bar, dressed in their Sunday sluttiest, which is the way Dean likes it.

He’s just about to go over and talk to one of them, the one with the bleach blonde hair, when Sam puts a restraining hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t even think about it,” Sam warns.

“Oh, fuck off, you big baby,” Dean says. “We’re allowed to have fun every once in a while.”

“Dean,” Sam says, but Dean puts his blinders up and slips out of his brother’s grasp, smoothly making his way to his target, his most charming smile affixed on his face. Sam stays put, and Dean can feel the tiniest of pulls and the not-so-small influx of Sam’s irritation and something else that Dean can’t place, but it settles into a toxic weight in the pit of his stomach that he has a hard time shaking off.

The girl (Lana, Lori, something like that) is everything that Dean usually looks for when he decides to clean the pipes with something other than his right hand. She keeps pushing her arms together so that her tits nearly pop out of the low-cut top she’s sporting, and she doesn’t even pretend to be affronted when Dean stares at her chest in admiration. She’s knocking back whisky sours like they’re candy, and Dean can see the inviting glaze of alcohol in her eyes and can’t say he minds when each drink makes her clingier than the last.

Dean’s gone with a simple story this time, disgraced reporter working local channels until he can get his breakthrough story, and she buys it hook, line, and sinker, catching his every word with a titter.

“You wanna get outta here?” she asks maybe an hour later, and damn, Dean really loves it when girls don’t play hard-to-get.

“Sure, sweetheart,” he says. “My car’s out in the parking lot.” She’s just drunk enough that she doesn’t think it’s trashy to get fucked in the backseat of a car, which is just what Dean needs considering his Sam-shaped problem. He wraps one hand around her wrist and is dragging her towards the front door when Sam literally steps right in front of them and dodges every attempt Dean makes to get around him.

“Whaddya want, sugar?” the girl says, almost slurring as she presses her tits against Dean’s side.

“Let go of him,” Sam says, his nostrils flaring, which is a sure sign that he is really pissed off. Dean snorts and tries to side-step him again, but he’s four beers gone right now, and knowing Sam, he’s probably as stone-cold sober as someone can be soul-tied to someone with a healthy buzz going on.

“I mean it,” Sam grits out, and he actually grabs the girl’s arm where it’s wrapped around Dean’s bicep and pries her fingers free.

“What’s your problem?” she demands, hitting him with her purse. “Don’t touch me.”

“Sam, what the fuck?” Dean says, ignoring the girl’s boozy pout.

“We’re leaving,” Sam says stubbornly. “Without her.”

“Oh, whatever,” Dean snipes. “Take a hike, Sam. Get yourself another beer or something.”

“I’m fucking serious, Dean,” Sam says, and whoa, Dean hasn’t heard that tone of voice in a while. Sam’s face is nearly set in stone, and he’s glaring so hard that Dean’s almost surprised the girl hasn’t run away yet.

“So am I,” Dean says. “Fucking move.”

“No,” Sam says and then turns to the girl. “You know, he’s just using you to affirm his questionable heterosexuality, and he’s probably not even gonna be able to get it up. You should just go back to your friend over there.”

“Sam,” Dean hisses, because he hadn’t been expecting Sam to stoop to such Dean-like levels. “Sweetheart, he’s lying,” Dean adds, turning to the girl, but she’s looking at him with that patented bitch-you’re-fucking-kidding-me-right? look, and she’s backed away maybe five steps.

“Maybe you and your butt buddy should just go back to wherever you came from,” she hiccups, and then she flounces off, which would have been more impressive if she didn’t stumble on one of her heels and keel headfirst to the floor. Deans’ torn between helping her up--she fucking insinuated that Sam was his fucking gay partner or whatever--but her friend is there in a flash, shooting Dean the nastiest of nasty looks, and then Sam is pulling Dean in the opposite direction towards the door.

“Dude, fucking let go,” says Dean angrily, trying to yank his arm out of Sam’s grip, but Sam is steadfastly hanging on, his fingers tight enough to almost hurt. His lips are pressed together in the way that let Dean know that Sam is seriously pissed off, but he’s too buzzed to care and angry enough in his own right. He was just fucking cock-blocked by his own brother, and if Sam thinks that he’s getting away with that shit without some kind of revenge, he’s sadly fucking mistaken.

Dean struggles against Sam the entire way back to the car, but his coordination is for shit, and Sam is putting all of his strength into getting Dean where he wants him to go. He stops by the driver’s side of the Impala, and then he’s all up on Dean, which makes Dean confused for a second before he realizes that Sam is trying to find the car keys in Dean’s pocket.

“Get off,” Dean snaps, but Sam snags the keyring and unlocks the door.

“Get in,” he says lowly.

“Fuck you,” Dean responds eloquently.

“I will knock you out, Dean, I swear to fucking God.”

“Except that won’t work anymore, genius,” Dean says, smug that he’s able to reason with Sam even when Sam has the clear advantage in non-muddled mental capacity, with the lack of alcohol in his system and all. “If you clock me, you’ll just end up unconscious yourself, and then we’ll both get thrown in the drunk tank.”

Sam’s eyes narrow dangerously, and Dean braces himself. “Try me,” Sam growls. “Fucking try me. I dare you.”

“What’s wrong, Sam?” Dean taunts. “Can’t stand that I’m getting some attention from someone other than you now? You think just because what happened between us happened, we’re now boyfriends or some shit? ‘Cause that’s fucked up, dude, even for you.”

Dean doesn’t see Sam’s fist coming before it smashes into his jaw, hard enough to be incredibly painful, but not quite at the point where it’ll make Dean black out. He stumbles back against the Impala, and if Sam caused him to dent his baby, he’s fucking dead. Dean’s mouth is flooding with blood from where he bit his tongue at the point of impact and he spits it onto the asphalt, wincing as he touches a ginger hand to his jaw.

“Is that all you got?” Dean asks.

“I am not doing this here, Dean.” Sam is practically shaking, and Dean feels just as on edge, just as infuriated. “Get in the fucking car.”

Dean wants to resist, wants to push Sam or clock him, and his fists are trembling with the urge to do so. But Sam’s right--they get picked up for fighting here, and they’ll probably be in a shit ton of trouble. As long as this is going to happen, Dean would rather they get it over with in the relative privacy of their motel room where Dean can yell and accuse and fight all he wants, as long as the lobby clerk doesn’t notice.

“Fucking fine,” Dean says, stumbling his way around the side of the car and wrenching open the passenger side door. He ends up sprawled awkwardly across his seat, and he doesn’t even bother to sit up straight as Sam slides behind the wheel, slams his door shut, and peels out of the parking lot.

When Sam jerks into park in front of their room, Dean barely waits for the car to stop moving from his abrupt braking job to throw open the door and get out. He almost falls, still buzzed from the bar, but he gets to their room okay and unlocks the door with the key. Sam is a solid weight right at his back, practically breathing down his neck, and Dean has the disconcerting reality that he can’t decide if he wants Sam to get closer or just stay the fuck away.

Dean strides into the room, turning around to face Sam as soon as he hears the click of the door closing. He spreads his arms, staring at Sam, who looks murderous in the dim light.

“What’s your fucking problem, Sam?” Dean says before Sam can start on his little bitch tirade.

“My problem?” Sam asks incredulously. “My problem? What’s your fucking problem?”

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” Dean yells. “Since when do you think you have the right to decide who I fuck? You’re the one who went fucking crazy in there, Sam, so don’t you dare fucking blame this all on me.”

Sam’s getting closer, looming into Dean’s space with only three steps, and Dean doesn’t back away, not willing to concede even the slightest hint of weakness.

“Since you bound your soul to mine, Dean,” Sam says, and he’s so quiet that Dean almost has to strain to hear the words. “Since you kissed me. Since you rubbed yourself off on me.”

“I’m not talking about this,” Dean snarls.

“Tough shit,” Sam says back, pushing Dean hard enough that he almost falls on the bed. “For the millionth time, we’ve got to talk about this, Dean! It’s not going away.”

“Maybe you think so,” Dean says, but that’s a complete lie, and he knows it.

“Don’t you fucking say that when you know it isn’t true,” Sam says.

“Fuck you, Sam,” Dean says, glaring, “You know what? Just fuck you.”

Sam’s all up in his space in under a second and Dean’s bracing himself for another hit, ready to dodge and get back a blow of his own, but then Sam’s big hands are framing his face and Sam’s lips are on his own, and it’s like he’s been hit on the head with a hammer. For one, blissful second, Dean surges into this kiss, feels it sear all the way down to his bones, and then reality catches up with him, and he pushes Sam away, hard.

“Jesus, Sam,” he spits, running the back of his hand over his mouth even though his lips are still tingling pleasantly from a kiss Dean’s pretty sure he wanted to keep going. “Have you forgotten that I’m your fucking brother.”

“Kind of a hard thing to do,” Sam points out, and his eyes are glittering with something between anger and lust and Dean just can’t fucking deal with this right now.

“You’re fucked in the head, Sam,” he says. “You know that? Stay away from me.”

“No,” Sam says, and he steps closer again, and even though Dean knows that he should be backing away and locking himself in the bathroom or something but he just can’t make his feet move. “No, I’m not going to stay away from you. Because I can tell that you’re fucking lying, and it’s all your fault in the first place, remember?” Sam taps two fingers against his temple in a mocking gesture that makes Dean clench his hands into fists.

“You’re the one who made me able to read your feelings,” Sam said. “And I don’t care if you want to keep lying to yourself, except you’re driving me fucking up the wall, and I just can’t take it anymore.”

“I’m not going to fuck my little brother, Sam,” Dean says, a little weakly.

Sam regards him stonily for a couple seconds before he shrugs his shoulders. “Fine,” he says, and then he’s dropping to his knees just in front of Dean.

Dean splutters, too shocked to do anything, and then Sam’s hands are back on his body, fumbling with the button to Dean’s jeans.

“Sam, Jesus, stop,” Dean says, but he doesn’t make any move away, just standing there dumbfounded as Sam pulls down Dean’s zipper. “What did I just fucking say?”

“You said you weren’t going to fuck me,” Sam said, “but I didn’t make any such promise. With one swift movement, Sam pushes down the waistband of Dean’s pants until they’re puddled around his ankles, and then Sam’s there, fucking nuzzling the line of Dean’s cock through his boxers, and Dean should stop this, he really fucking should, but he just fucking can’t.

“Sam,” Dean croaks, but he can’t tell if he means it to be a warning or encouragement. “Sam.”

Sam doesn’t answer, still mouthing along Dean’s cock through the fabric of his underwear, and when he reaches the head, he sucks hard and Dean makes a choked noise in the back of his throat. Sam keeps it up until Dean’s boxers are soaked through with Sam’s saliva and his cock is hard, blood thick and ready, and Dean can’t even form a coherent thought, let alone recall the reasons why this is a really fucking bad idea.

Sam finally takes pity on Dean and pulls his cock out so he can properly taste it, but Sam’s definitely acting out of revenge, because he’s not doing anything but pressing the tip of his tongue to Dean’s slit, and Dean needs so much fucking more.

“Sam,” Dean groans again, and this time, it’s definitely a call to action. He lets his hands fall into Sam’s hair, and Sam opens his mouth just a little wider and swallows the head of Dean’s dick.

It’s obvious that Sam doesn’t know what he’s doing, because Dean feels the scrape of teeth before Sam rounds his lips, and in the back of his mind, he can feel a niggling discomfort that can’t be coming from anyone else but Sam.

Dean wants to tell him to stop, to get off and go the fuck away, but even though Sam fucking sucks at giving head, it feels so fucking good that Dean doesn’t want it to stop ever. Sam tries to take more of him, swallowing around Dean’s dick, and it works for a second before Dean makes an aborted thrust that almost pushes past Sam’s gag reflex and causes Sam to back off.

But Sam is a stubborn son of a bitch, and he’s not done yet, using his tongue to trace the vein on the underside of Dean’s cock.

“Dammit,” Dean says, and it’s almost a sob. “C’mon--just fucking--Jesus” Sam has sucked him back into his mouth, doing the best impression of a hoover vacuum that Dean has even seen, and every nerve ending in Dean’s body is singing in pleasure, his head roaring with white noise, and Sam’s rubbing himself through his jeans. Dean can see the movement of Sam’s hand, the one that’s not wrapped around Dean’s own dick, and for a second, Dean wants to see it, wants to see Sam jerking his big fucking cock, coming from sucking Dean down like a two-bit penny whore.

Sam hums in the back of his throat, short and quick, as though he’s testing it out, and that is fucking it. Dean can feel Sam’s pleasure through their soul bind, can almost feel the phantom sensation of Sam rubbing one out, and Dean’s orgasm crests like a tsunami, blinding him against anything but Sam. Sam just opens his mouth and lets Dean come down his throat, looking up at Dean through his hair.

“Fuck,” Dean cries as Sam pulls off. “Fucking fuck.”

Dean’s practically shaking from the force of his orgasm, gasping as he comes down from it and things settle back into his head. The reality of it hits him like a freight train. That’s his brother on his knees, licking Dean’s come from the corner of his mouth, looking up at Dean obscenely, his pupils blown wide and his hand still working at the tent in his jeans.

Dean takes a step backwards, as if Sam’s gaze is a physical blow to his solar plexus, and falls over onto the bed, scrambling backwards as soon as he gets his arms beneath him.

“Dean,” Sam says, lowly, huskily, making an aborted movement to stand up.

“No,” Dean croaks desperately. “No, just--fucking stay away from me!” The words ring clear and loudly in the air, and Sam falls back on his knees looking at Dean with this expression that Dean doesn’t ever want to decipher. His heart is hurting in his chest, and his head is burning with everything he’s feeling that he doesn’t want to feel, and Sam’s hurting, and Dean did that, and he just can’t fucking take it anymore.

Dean rolls off of the bed and lands on all fours, which should be funny, but considering the situation, it really, really isn’t. He pulls himself up to his feet and is in the bathroom before he’s even fully standing, slamming the door behind him and leaning against it heavily.

It’s three hours before Dean gets the courage to leave his pretended privacy, and Sam is lying in one of the beds in the dark, hardly moving. Dean knows he’s awake, knows he has to be, but there’s nothing that Dean can say or do to change the situation. For the first time in what feels like forever, Dean climbs into his own bed, burrows into sheets that aren’t warmed by another body, and tries to go to sleep. It takes a very long time.

Dean wakes up bleary eyed in the dim light of morning as his phone rings incessantly on the bedside table. He doesn’t reach it in time to answer before it switches over to voicemail, but whoever’s calling tries again immediately, giving Dean the opportunity to pick the phone up.

“‘lo?” he asks, his voice groggy from sleep.

“Where are you?” says Bobby, obviously annoyed. “You boys were supposed to meet me half an hour ago.

Dean takes half a glance at the crappy alarm clock that’s sitting on the bedside table and lets out a bitten-off curse. Eight-thirty, and Bobby’s right--they are late. With everything that happened the night before, Dean had forgotten to set an alarm, and apparently so had Sam.

“Give us an hour,” Dean says grumpily. “Overslept. Just text us where we should go or whatever.”

“Boy, you know that I hold as much regard for texting as I do for a monkey with a ukelele. Just call when you girls are done gettin’ ready.” Bobby doesn’t even say goodbye before he hangs up, which is definitely an indication that he’s pissed, but Dean doesn’t really give a fuck. He knocks his knee on the nightstand as he passes to his duffel bag, and he can already tell that this morning is going to be shit.

He isn’t wrong. By the time both of them are dressed and fairly presentable, it’s obvious that Sam is just as willing to speak to Dean as Dean is to Sam, which is to say, not at all. They don’t share a single word between them, relying on nonverbal cues and annoyed gestures until they’re in the car on the way to a fast food joint for some quick grub before another full day of investigation.

Sam gets his normal breakfast--a yogurt parfait and orange juice, or some shit, even though Dean knows that Sam finds it about as appetizing as Dean used to. Just to be spiteful, Dean orders two bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits along with a danish to go with his large coffee, and even though they should be the best thing he’s eaten in months, they taste like sandpaper going down, sticking in his throat.

By the time they’re back on the road, and Bobby has sent them to do a little recon at an abandoned house somewhere just off the main drag of town, Sam’s irritation and hurt and frustration is buzzing in the back of Dean’s mind, almost driving him to complete and utter distraction. He misses the turn off once, and only Sam’s aggravated sigh and “Back there, Dean, Jesus” makes him realize his error.

The house doesn’t have anything particularly damning inside--no indication that it’s a hideaway for anything sinister or demonic. There is some sulfur scattered, but it’s been disrupted by wind or movement, because there’s not a heavy accumulation, and even though Sam insists that they wait there for a couple hours at least to see if anyone comes home, nothing happens.

After their little stakeout yields no results, Sam insists on talking to the neighbors about the house’s owner’s mysterious disappearance. Dean can’t be fucked to do anything but sit in the car, though, no matter how angry Sam is, and he slouches in his seat and watches Sam make his way to surrounding houses, pulling forward whenever Sam emerges and moves on but making no move to get out of the car. The separation is paining him deep in his chest, the connection straining, but Dean relishes it, takes it as evidence that he isn’t indefinitely Sam’s plaything and that eventually they’ll get over this whole soul thing and live normal lives again. It’s an empty lie to tell even himself, but Dean takes comfort in it.

All in all, the day is fruitless, which just aggravates Dean more. He tries to suggest to Bobby that maybe he can finish up the hunt on his own and let Sam and Dean go onto do something else, but Bobby is adamant that there’s a bevy of demons hiding somewhere and Sam backs him up, which gives Dean no chance but to grin and bare it.

Dean barely eats dinner that night as Bobby and Sam go over everything they already know, picking at his hamburger half-heartedly. Bobby gives him a few askance glances, almost concernedly, but Dean doesn’t care. He feels nauseous, like something roiling in the pit of his stomach, and considering the state of Sam’s dinner once the check is paid, he’s not the only one feeling a little off.

Bobby makes the suggestion that they go to the local bar after dinner to drink the edge off, but Sam immediately dismisses the idea, telling Bobby that they’re tired, which isn’t completely a lie, but Dean thinks it has more to do with what happened the last time they decided it was time for a little alcohol therapy. Bobby’s looking between them as if they’ve grown two heads, and Sam’s smiling his tight little smile that he only uses when he’s seriously upset and trying not to show it.

“You know Sam,” Dean says, even though his words sound fake and forced, just hanging there in the air. “Still thinks he has a bedtime.” Sam gives a short laugh that doesn’t sound natural at all, and Bobby’s still giving them this look but he lets them go with a half-wave and a shrug of his shoulders, trucking off to his car so he can get drunk on whiskey.

Dean’s holding the keys to the Impala so hard in his hand that they’re making an imprint on his palm, but he doesn’t feel the bite of the metal as it twists into his skin. Sam’s walking rigidly, five paces ahead of him, and waiting impatiently by the passenger-side door as Dean unlocks the car. The drive back to the motel is thankfully short and silent, but the tension in the air is making the hair on the back of Dean’s neck prickle uncomfortably.

When they get in their room, Dean makes a big show of picking out his clothes so he can take them into the bathroom with him as he showers, which is something he and Sam had never bothered with before. Living in each other’s pockets had made privacy practically nonexistent, and they’d never cared before about seeing each other in various states of undress, because that came with the territory.

Dean fervently wishes that things were still the same.

“Dean,” Sam says, his voice low and serious, and Dean feels his shoulders tense. He continues to rifle in his bag, pretending that he hadn’t heard Sam, which was maybe a mistake, because Sam took that as a reason to come closer.

“Dean,” Sam says again, laying one light hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean immediately whips around and whacks Sam’s arm away from him.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” Dean snarls.

“Grow up,” Sam says harshly, his nostrils flaring with irritation. “You can’t just ignore everything, Dean. Jesus Christ.”

“I shoulda known,” Dean says, glaring at the floor because it was easier to do that then meet Sam’s gaze. “What, Sam? What can we possibly talk about that will change what happened? Or make things better?”

“It happened,” Sam says staunchly. “And you’re freaking the fuck out about it.”

“Of course I’m fucking freaking out, Sam,” Dean grits out. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t seem to forget the fact that my baby brother was on his knees last night sucking me off.”

Sam’s face flushes when Dean chances a glance to see the effect his words had on his brother, but he looks as set and stubborn as ever. “We can’t ignore what’s going on, Dean,” Sam repeats with an air of forced calmness. “

“So what is it, then? What’s going on that’s made you certifiably fucking insane? What made you think that it would be a great fucking idea to have sex with me?”

“You feel it too,” Sam says, breathing as though he’d just run a marathon even though he was standing stock-still.

“What, Sam? What do I feel? Since you’re the fucking expert now.”

“You’re confused,” Sam says, and there’s a hitch in his voice that wasn’t there before. “You don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t know why you feel like this, and it’s driving you crazy. So you just ignore it but it’s getting stronger and I feel it too, and it’s all your fault in the first place. I shouldn’t want to do this with you, and you shouldn’t feel like this about me, but we do, Dean. We fucking do, and we’re going to have to deal with it.”

“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Dean says, but there’s this sinking feeling in his stomach, because Sam’s words are resonating truer than Dean would ever want them to. He thinks he’s going to be sick with it, with the feeling of dirty-bad-wrong, with the want that keeps boiling up even though it shouldn’t.

“How many times do I have to tell you that you can’t fucking lie to me, Dean,” Sam says, and he’s really starting to sound upset, which Dean hates. “I know what you’re thinking. I can feel it.”

“Just fucking leave me alone,” Dean roars. “Stop reading my mind, stop thinking about what I’m feeling, stop trying to fuck me. I don’t want that, you hear me? I. Don’t. Want. It.” With that, Dean grabs his clothes and practically runs into the bathroom. It takes him almost five minutes to calm down enough to get undressed and into the shower, and he can feel Sam’s hurt and anguish through the link, almost strong enough to make him want to give up everything he’s been fighting this with and go outside and back to his brother.

He doesn’t though, just sets his shoulders and lathers shampoo into his hair, wondering just when Lady Luck, fucking bitch that she is, is going to give him a goddamn break.

It takes another argument, loud enough that their neighbors pound on the wall to make them shut up, before Dean grudgingly gets into bed with Sam, with the condition that Sam stay on his own fucking side all night. The closeness feels good, and there’s a part of Dean that’s yearning to roll over and burrow into Sam’s heat, but that would be crossing the Line, and besides, Dean didn’t just spend a half an hour shouting at Sam to touch him the second he gets into bed. Instead, he just scrunches up to the very edge of the mattress and shoves both of his hands under the pillow to resist temptation.

It very nearly works.

When Dean wakes up the next morning, he feels groggy but rested, warm and content and unwilling to move. For a second, he doesn’t know why he’s feeling so content, but then he cracks open his eyes and his eyelashes brush against something that ends up being Sam’s cheek. Sam’s looking right at him, his mouth parted, and Dean can feel the soft exhalations of Sam’s breath on his skin.

It makes him want to arch into Sam’s body. It makes him want to taste the salt of Sam’s skin. The want is there, singing, thrumming until it’s almost unbearable, and Dean can’t move, he just fucking can’t, because Sam is right here, and it feels so good.

Sam makes the decision for both of them, like he’s been doing for the past week, and Dean’s eyes cross as Sam inches closer. Granted, Sam is giving him plenty of warning, plenty of time to get away, but Dean can’t, he just fucking cannot, and he’s able to take one sharp breath before Sam’s lips gently touch his, chapped and dry, and just what Dean needs.

There’s something in the back of Dean’s head that’s shouting at him about how wrong this is and how he didn’t want this to happen, and move, goddammit, why aren’t you fucking moving? but Dean can’t listen to it, can’t pay attention to anything but the press of Sam against him. He makes this tiny sigh, almost a moan, and he’s opening his mouth to Sam’s tongue, feeling it slide against him, sour with morning breath. Sam’s kissing almost desperately, as though he has something important to convey to Dean that he can only do this way, and Dean responds in turn. His hand clenches Sam’s bicep almost of its own accord, and that’s Sam’s hand at the back of Dean’s head, running through his hair and pressing Dean’s mouth even closer.

Dean’s lightheaded by the time Sam breaks away, breathing hard as though they’d been doing something much more strenuous than kissing. Dean’s face is tingling, rubbed raw by Sam’s stubble, and he wants to keep going, wants to make out in bed until it’s afternoon and he’s stupid with it.

“That’s why,” Sam rasps. “That’s why we can’t keep ignoring it. That’s how I know you feel it too.” Dean can’t think of a response, can’t do anything but stare at Sam, and then Sam’s rolling out of bed and heading to the bathroom.

Dean feels like he should be in a bad mood, should still be feeling just as shitty today as he did yesterday, but there’s something stopping him from it. He can’t tell if it’s him or Sam, but he feels good, like he always does after a night spent so close to his brother, and even though he knows that this fucked up shit can’t go on, just on principle, it doesn’t stop him from wanting it.

Just thinking about Sam’s mouth, about the way that it felt sucking Dean down, is enough to get Dean half-hard, and by the time he has his own turn in the shower, he’s definitely ready for it, if you get his drift. Sam had the nerve to come out of the bathroom with the smallest imaginable towel slung around his hips, and seeing Sam like that, wet and mostly naked, was more that enough to turn Dean’s crank. He doesn’t take his time, striping his cock until he’s almost moaning with it, fucking into his hand as the warm water beats down on the back of his neck.

He thinks that Sam is going to say something about it when he comes back out into the room, but Sam only gives him a look before bending over and tying his shoes. Dean’s almost affronted--he’d been expecting a confrontation of sorts and had prepared everything that he’d wanted to say in retaliation--and he’s off-kilter now that he doesn’t have to argue. He almost wants to start something, but he’s feeling good now, too good to get in a fight with Sam about something they don’t see eye-to-eye on.

Dean picks up some fast food for them and two large, strong coffees, as they go to meet Bobby, somewhere on the eastern edge of town in a crappy apartment complex. He had left a message, calm-as-you-please, but it sounded like he’d finally found something worthwhile, which was enough to make Dean excited. If he wasn’t allowed to stab something soon, he’d be really fucking annoyed.

Dean and Sam stand skeptically outside of the building as Sam checks Bobby’s message again just to make sure that they’re at the right address. The place looks like it should have been condemned a decade ago, and Dean’s doubting the structural integrity--if he falls through the rotting floor and breaks his leg or something, he’ll be fucking pissed, but everything checks out with what Bobby told them, so they go on only a little hesitantly.

The room the step in to has a definite feeling of neglect, and rot hangs heavy in the air. Dean is cautious, gun propped on his forearm in case something comes out from the bowels of the building, but nothing is stirring save for dust particles swimming in the air. It’s quiet, that oppressive silence that presses down on Dean’s ears, and instantly he knows that something is not right here, and his senses go on high alert. Beside him, Sam tenses, and Dean takes comfort in the fact that he’s there. That and that he can feel the cool press of the demon-killing blade tucked into his back pocket.

Their progression inside is slow, hampered by sweeps of their guns whenever they hear so much as a whisper of sound. There’s nothing there, as far as they can tell, even though Bobby explicitly directed them here, and with each passing second, Dean is more on edge.

By the time they make it to the back door, Dean’s neck is prickling unpleasantly with sweat even though it’s fairly cool inside. He’s about to turn around, cautiously following the barrel of his gun, and head up the creaky stairs to recon the top floor when Sam silently throws out an arm to stop him. Jerking his head towards the backyard, Sam creeps along the wall so he can look out the window. For a second, Dean is unsure of what he’s looking for when the glass suddenly shatters around Sam, peppering the floor with glass, and in an instant, Sam is being pulled through the ragged remnants of the window by something that’s inhumanly strong.

Dean can sense the pull of the glass on his brothers skin, can practically feel it as Sam’s blood begins to drip to the ground, and for a second, all he can do is stare in dumbstruck horror.

It’s only a second, but it may as well be the difference between everything and nothing, because Sam is gone, right out of Dean’s sight, and Dean throws caution to the wind. “Sam!” he bellows, and then he’s crashing out into the pale sunlight of the back lawn, overgrown with tangled weeds and pricker bushes.

It’s immediately apparent that they’ve fallen head-first into a trap, not for the first time, but Dean feels ashamed as is. Bobby is hog-tied to a tree, and his head is lolling with what looks to have been a heavy blow to the temple. It’s obvious that Bobby was the bait to get them there, and Dean is torn between standing his ground and running to help Bobby free. But it’s only a fleeting thought, because everything is once again focused on Sam, Sammy, who’s struggling against the hold of a demon who obviously chose his meatsuit for brawn rather than brains. Dean’s heart skips about three beats, and he needs to get Sammy free, but he’s only managed about half a dozen steps before someone else steps out from the scrub and positions herself in Dean’s path.

“Now, now,” she tsks, shaking her head as her eyes swim into a sickly white. “After all the effort I put into getting you here, we mustn’t let it end that easily.”

Dean feels nauseous with how much he hates her, even though he doesn’t even know who or what she is. He can feel the evil boiling off of her, making bile rise in the back of his throat, and if he thought he could get away with it, he’d be reaching back for that knife right about now. But as angry as he is, as desperate as he might be becoming very shortly, he knows that he can’t give away that trick yet.

“Oh?” he says, faux-calmly, giving a light little laugh in an attempt to gall her. “You should’ve called, sweetheart. It would have been easier.”

“But where,” she says slowly, her lips curling into a sinister smile, “is the fun in that? I’ve heard so much about you boys. I just had to see if the rumors were accurate.”

“Believe me, baby,” Dean says arrogantly, “you’ll know they are soon enough.”

She laughs full-throated, actually throwing her head back, and for a second Dean can see the pulse of blood in her jugular vein. He badly wishes for the chance the slice it open. “Such bravado,” she coos. “But entirely undeserved, I do believe. It was laughingly easy to get to the slip on you two.”

“Don’t count us out yet,” Sam grits out, and he’s still struggling against meat-head-Demon’s iron-clad grip.

“Better listen to him,” Dean says, cocking his head towards Sam.

The demon’s eyes narrow dangerously, but she’s still smiling, still amused. “If you knew what I was,” she says silkily, “you wouldn’t be so assured.”

Dean’s already doubting the odds of the situation they’ve found themselves in, and the unctuous tone of her voice is sounding alarm bells left and right. “I know what you are,” he sneers. “And you’re fucking stupid if you think I’m gonna be afraid of you sons of bitches at this point in the game.”

“Oh come now, Dean,” she snaps, and all good humor is gone from her voice quick as smoke. “You already know that I’m more powerful than the run-of-the-mill demon scum you’re used to dealing with.”

“Doesn’t mean we can’t kill you,” Dean says. “I don’t know if you got the memo, but it’s not like we haven’t fucked with our fair share of your high-and-mighties.”

“I’m not Alistair,” she says. “I’m not Lilith or Ruby or Azazel. I was commanded out of purgatory by my Mother, and she put me here to dispose of you.”

“Kinda full of yourself, aren’t you?” Dean says, but it feels like ice has slipped down into his belly.

“I think it is deserved,” she says silkily, “seeing how you have fallen so neatly into my trap with such little effort. But I tire of this, Dean.” She turns her head then, sharp and commanding, and at first, Dean doesn’t know what’s happened. He feels pain down to the tips of his toes, emanating through every cell, and if he had the presence of mind to be screaming, he’d be doing so.

He can’t comprehend anything through the thrill of it and the ache, and then the demon’s there, putting one hand on his shoulder right at the moment he thinks he’s about to pass out, to die, and it ebbs away to something tolerable but still present, burning right in his gut.

“What did you do, you bitch?” he snarls, half-kneeling in the dirt although he doesn’t remember falling.

“Nothing to you,” she says, smiling like the cat that got the fucking canary. Dean can’t place her words for just a second before he’s hit with a horrible thought, as sudden and terrible as being run over by an errant Mac truck would be. He doesn’t even need to look to know, even though he was oblivious only seconds before, and turning his head hurts more than he could imagine, and not in a physical sense.

Sam looks shocked, pale white and shaking, still firmly in place in the giant’s hold, but he’s stopped struggling, both of his hands clutching at his gut. Dean can already see the blood seeping through his fingers, splattering on the ground, and the piss-dark scent of death is so heavy on the air that Dean could vomit with it.

“A little barbaric,” the demon continues lithely, “but it gives you the message, doesn’t it? I wouldn’t doubt my little friend over there--it may be a gut shot, but he knows what he’s doing. I daresay your brother doesn’t have long.”

Each breath Dean takes feels as though it’s tearing through his throat. Things are filtering through their link now that he has the forethought to center his attention on it--pain, and grief, and something that feels a whole lot like No, I’m sorry, Dean, Dean, no, which is so fucked up seeing that Sam’s the one who’s dying.

“Your angel friend did quite a number on you two,” she says, each word piercing through Dean. “Soul bind? I must admit, it’s genius. Quite the solution there. Too bad it won’t do you any good now. I’m going to tear it apart and make you watch your brother die, see his soul scatter into so many pieces, not even the whole of Heaven’s army will be able to piece it together again.”

“No,” Dean says, and it’s almost like a moan, filled with a pleading tone that he wouldn’t have thought possible to come from his own mouth.

“Oh, please, you haven’t learned your lesson after all of these years?” the demon coos, bending down so she can whisper right in his ear. “A deal won’t get you out of this one, Dean. I’m afraid you’re going to have to suffer along with everybody else.”

Dean can’t formulate a response, he physically can’t, not when he can literally feel Sam fading with each passing second. Sam’s to his knees now too, too weak to stay standing, and his captor is looming over him, laughing ruthlessly. Bobby is still unconscious, still tied to the tree, and Dean has nothing but the knife at the small of his back and he can’t even find the strength to unsheathe it.

“Why?” Dean rasps, and he’s startled to hear his own voice, especially since he hadn’t been planning on saying anything, too focused on the sear of his brother’s eyes. “Why aren’t I dying too?” Even as he says it, he desperately needs to know, as though the thought had just occurred to him and wasn’t letting go. Sam was dying, so Dean should be dying too. It was the natural order. How things were supposed to be.

The demon laughs, high and tinkling and so damned evil, that Dean’s stomach turns at the sound of it. “Didn’t I just tell you?” she asks, running a hand through Dean’s hair in an almost loving caress. “I am going to tear you apart from the inside out. Let you feel every second of that little bond of yours fraying beyond repair as you see your brother die for the final time. And then you know what, Dean? I’m not even going to kill you. I’m going to let you live with what happened, because it will be your own special piece of hell on earth, won’t it?”

“No,” Dean says to himself, because he can see it and feel it, and she’s right, he can’t imagine anything worse. “You fucking bitch,” he spits.

“Why thank you,” she says. “I always enjoy an honest compliment. I say your brother doesn’t have long left now. You’d better say your goodbyes. Oh, and Dean? Make them good. They’re going to have to last for forever.”

Dean can see it, back like it was when Sam first died with his severed spinal cord in that ghost town, kneeling in the mud, his weight heavy on Dean. It still hurts--Jesus, more than almost anything--but Dean can’t stay here next to the demon-bitch--he needs to get to Sam. He can’t even get to his feet, and even though the demons find it absolutely fucking hilarious, Dean crawls until he’s within arm’s reach of his brother.

Sam’s skin is warm underneath his hands, burning through everything, and he’s bleeding from his mouth, but he seems oddly content as he lets Dean haul him steady so they can look at each other.

“Sorry,” he gurgles, and there’s blood on his teeth, making him look like a fucking zombie or something. “Didn’t mean to. It’ll be okay, Dean. I’ll be okay.”

“No it fucking won’t,” Dean says, only it’s more like a scream wrenched from his lungs to explode on the air.

The demon is laughing uncontrollably as Sam slumps over, unconsciously still and so pale that Dean can almost see the blood pulsing underneath his skin.

“How does it feel, Dean?” she asked vindictively. “To know that you’ll never see Sam alive again? His soul is scattered so far, I doubt even God himself could piece it back together again. Mother may, if you beg nicely, I suspect. It might take decades of servitude, but she could come around--you never know.”

Bile rises in Dean’s throat at her words, at the very thought that Sam is dying, but she’s wrong because he’s not gone yet. He might barely be holding on, blood might be seeping out of his belly, slow now but still steady, but Dean can still feel the thready presence of him at the back of his mind. The demon bitch hasn’t taken the bond apart yet, no matter how cocky she was about her ability.

She’s not paying attention, too convinced that Dean is insensate with pain or grief, and Dean can sense his chance as surely as if something was broadcasting it far and wide. It’s like a second wind, buoyed by the stubbornly clinging presence of his brother, hurt and fucked but still there and whole. The knife is burning a brand into the small of Dean’s back, and as she bends down to cradle Dean’s face, apparently preparing herself for another strike at Dean’s mental state, he lets his intent seep into his bones and in one swift movement, he brings his hand up, holding the knife in a steady grip.

She steps backwards in astonishment, but it’s too late. He catches her deep in the stomach, mimicking the wound her associate gave Sam, and there’s a flash of brilliant white light, brighter than Dean remembers it being, and the woman she was possessing falls to the ground limply, lifeless in a way Sam hasn’t managed.

Her lackey, now not reassured by her strength, takes a dozen paces backwards, and before Dean can even fathom getting to his feet to give chase, the demon abandons its host, spewing itself into the air in a spurt of noxious smoke before disappearing on the wind. Dean finds he couldn’t care less.

Now that the immediate threat has been taken care of, Dean’s newfound wave of strength ebbs as quickly as it appears, and he slumps over his brother. He can still feel Sam, even through all of that, even though Dean’s jeans are soaked through with Sam’s blood, and Dean tries with all of his might to keep Sam there and alive, pulling at him through their bond.

It might be minutes or hours of sitting there, Dean putting everything he has into their bond, and when he feels a hand fall heavily on his shoulder, he almost doesn’t realize that someone else is there.

“How bad?” Bobby grumbles, and Dean finds that he can’t even speak. He has the feeling that Bobby’s still talking, trying to get Dean to answer, but he can’t, he fucking can’t, and it’s not long before he hears the wail of an approaching ambulance, dim through the haze that’s settled over him.

Dean has enough sense in him to know that there’s no way Sam will make it if Dean even thinks about letting go, so even though the paramedics do their damnedest, Dean keeps on Sam as closely as possible, until they have no choice but to load them both into the back of the ambulance, working around Dean to get Sam’s vitals.

The hospital is a blur, a blaze of sensation and pain and Sam, and when Dean finally comes back to himself again, he finds that he’s been uncomfortably wedged into a hospital bed that’s actually two pushed together, and he’s pressed up tight against his brother with an IV line in his left hand.

“You always were too damned stubborn for your own good,” Bobby says gruffly from a chair besides the window, and Dean nearly falls off of the bed in surprise. He’d been so out of it that he hadn’t even managed to properly gauge whether he was alone or not.

“Whuh?” he says eloquently, because he’s not quite awake enough for this conversation, and the doctors must’ve put Sam on some strong shit, because he can feel the affects as strongly as if the medicine was dripping through his own IV.

“Doctors didn’t know what to make of it,” Bobby says blithely, yanking his cap down so it better shields his eyes. He almost looks as though he’s about to take a nap right there in the sun like a cat, right in the middle of the conversation. The image makes Dean want to smile for the first time in a while.

“Make of what?” Dean asks slowly, his tongue thick and clumsy in his mouth. He chances a glance at Sam, but the fucker is still asleep and therefore of no use to the conversation. Just looking at him makes Dean want to close his eyes, and he has to struggle to keep his attention on what Bobby’s telling him.

“You wouldn’t let go, not for nothing,” Bobby said, “and when they’d try to make you, both your vitals and Sam’s would go absolutely haywire. Sam flat-lined two times before they realized that the contact was somehow keeping him alive even though he should’ve died.”

“But he’s okay, though,” Dean says, and he almost doesn’t need an answer. Sam is there at the back of his mind, quiet perhaps, but definitely alive.

“You’re so damn predictable,” Bobby grumbles. “Don’t care that you nearly died and woulda made me dig two graves instead of one. But yeah, Dean, he’s okay. Or he will be. And so are you, if you were even wonderin’ at all.”

“Good, that’s good,” Dean says distractedly. He can feel the warmth of Sam’s skin underneath his palm, and it’s lulling him into a calm sort of peacefulness.

Bobby snorts and stands up. “Now that it’s obvious you’ll live to be a pain in my ass for another day, I’m gonna go make sure that the insurance is squared away so you two don’t end up putting me in jail.”

“‘Kay,” Dean mumbles, and Bobby’s gone before he knows it, and Dean finds that he really doesn’t care. Even though moving makes the IV line in Dean’s arm pull uncomfortably, he finds a way to pillow himself along Sam’s side and is asleep again in a handful of seconds.

The next time he wakes up, he’s curled around Sam, almost like a comma, and Sam’s staring back at him, blinking through his own haze of exhaustion, like they’d both awoke to each other in that instant. The only thing Dean can hear is the intermittent beep of the monitors in the background and the muted clatter of goings on in the hall outside of their door. Dean is so relieved he could cry.

“Don’t be so dramatic,” Sam says, his voice so torn up that it’s barely more than a whisper, but his lips are curled in a weak half smile that lets Dean know that he’s okay.

“Shut the fuck up,” Dean says, but there’s no ire in it. “I’m not the one who let a demon spill my fucking guts on the ground.”

Sam laughs and it sounds like it must hurt, and he winces almost immediately. Dean can feel the phantom pain in the back of his throat. “What happened?” Sam croaks, still pushing himself even though he probably lost twice as much blood needed to kill him.

“Stop talking, idiot,” Dean chides. “Do you want to make things worse?” Sam gives him a look, but before he can open his mouth to be a dumbass about things, Dean continues on explaining.

“Demon cut you open,” he says roughly, noticing for the first time that his voice isn’t that much better off than Sam’s, all low and gravely. “Just slit your stomach before you’d even noticed the knife. And it didn’t take long before you went unconscious, you big girl.”

Dean’s attempt at humor falls flat even for him, and Sam narrows his eyes. Dean thinks that Sam’ll just ignore his sore throat, but then he feels the push of Sam’s feelings through their connection, and he can hear a faintly niggling then what at the back of his mind.

Dean sighs heavily, but if Sam’s furrowed eyebrows are any indication, he’s picking up more than Dean wanted to share. “Demon bitch, the head honcho, she said she knew about the soul bind or whatever,” Dean says and Sam’s eyes go wide. “She thought she could pull it apart, or something, but she couldn’t, could she? Cas knows his shit. Anyways, I think that’s why I stayed awake. Hurt like fuck, but I could tell she was doing something inside of my head, I think. But she didn’t get it, Sam. She couldn’t. And when she was distracted ‘cause she thought you were dead, I stabbed her with our knife.”

How did you know? whispers the voice that’s Sam’s and yet not in the back of Dean’s head.

“Of course I knew,” Dean snaps, not even needing Sam to clarify. “Could feel you holding on, couldn’t I? I wasn’t fucking letting you die that easy, Sam.” He can still feel it though, the terror and helplessness and watching Sam bleed out for what felt like the millionth time.

Sam doesn’t respond, either physically or mentally, but he takes Dean’s hand and places it over his heart. It comforts Dean, the steady, strong thrum beneath his hand, and they stay like that until the nurse bustles in for her evening rounds.

It takes nearly three days before Dean gets sick of the poking and prodding and convinces Sam to sign out AMA. The doctor goes into a tirade about how Sam was lucky to be alive, Dean too, and that they were being incredibly cavalier by not following his orders. Dean doesn’t give a fuck. As far as he’s concerned, Sam’s fine enough to be getting on with things, and it’s not like they’re the ones who’re going to be paying for the medical bills they racked up on a fake insurance account.

Bobby’s there when they bust through the hospital doors, and he drives them back to the Impala, using the time to tell them that there’s jack shit going on any more, at least not where they were. Not that Dean was expecting anything. They separate as they usually do, without fuss or fanfare, and Bobby’s truck disappears down the street, heading northward.

It takes them twice as long as it should to get out of the state, mostly because even though Sam is healing faster than he should, he’s still groggy and in pain, and even their illegally-gotten stash of meds doesn’t dull that shit forever. Dean keeps getting them motel rooms with king beds, no matter the nasty looks he gets along the way, but it doesn’t really help besides enabling Dean to keep the closest possible eye on Sam, who grumbles even though he doesn’t mean it.

By the time they hit the east coast, the weather is mild and they’ve been traveling for a long time, but Dean can’t find it in him to complain. He knows that they should be looking for the Mother, or whatever, but Bobby’s on that, and he’s fucking tired. He knows it won’t take them long to dig up another case, hopefully something that’s easy and provides no risk besides the obvious, but he’d like to be on his A-game before trying anything like that. Sam seems to be in agreement, and they follow the Atlantic shoreline south into Georgia before they stop in a po-dunk town that’s, of course, known for its peaches.

He gets a room for them in a rundown little motel with peeling blue paint, quaint in a way that all seaside motels are when they aren’t marketed towards rich tourists, and Dean doesn’t look twice at the bed before he’s kicking his shoes off and climbing underneath the sheets. Sam is right behind him.

They sleep for maybe twelve hours, deep and uninterrupted, and as close as always. The next morning, Dean is lulled to wakefulness by the slightly annoying call of about a million seagulls and the more tolerable crash of the ocean on the shore. He thinks that he can probably convince Sam to kick around in the water today, even if it is too cold for swimming or anything of that nature.

Sam is awake too, of course, and for a minute, Dean just lets himself lay there, breathing in the salt-fresh air, too comfortable to move.

“Dean,” Sam says, and he’s brushing his lips against Dean, the first non-brotherly contact they’ve had since the shitstorm with the demon.

Dean thinks he should back away, knows that this is, as it always has been, a bad idea. But he still wants it, and Sam almost died, and things might not be different now, but they sure feel like it

Dean opens his mouth again, maybe for a protest, or perhaps an acquiescence, but Sam doesn’t give him the chance to even make a noise, just surges forward and kisses Dean soundly, covering Dean’s mouth with his own seamlessly. Dean’s nerves tingle with the contact, and he lets himself stop thinking as Sam’s hand falls onto Dean’s shoulder. The slide of Sam’s tongue against his, wet and sour with sleep and so intimately there, makes Dean shiver. He wants this, loves that he’s able to get so close to Sam so he can remind himself that they’re still together in this here and now.

Sam’s kissing frantically, almost as if he thinks Dean’s about to freak out and leave and he’s trying to give Dean every reason he can why this isn’t the shittiest idea in a long run of shitty ideas. Sam’s morning breath is awful, and he probably hasn’t brushed his teeth in days, but Dean can’t stop sucking on his tongue, kissing him like he’s dying for it.

Sam breaks away harshly, panting even though they haven’t done anything yet, and he looks at Dean, so close that his eyes almost have to cross for him to see Dean’s face properly.

“Please,” he says, so low and reverent that it’s like the most fucked up prayer Dean has ever heard.

Dean should say something like no or brother or fucking fucked up, Sam, but he can’t. “Okay,” he whispers, and the word hangs there in the air, heavy and meaningful, before Sam acknowledges it and starts kissing Dean again, so fast that Dean almost gets whiplash with the force of it.

Dean loses track of time as he opens his mouth wider, trying to give Sam just as much as Sam’s giving him. At one point, Sam maneuvers them both so Dean’s on his back and Sam’s on top of him, a reassuring weight that Dean should find to be stifling, but it really isn’t. He just spreads his legs and lets Sam settle there, the press of him waking Dean up, making his skin tingle.

They’re still mostly clothed, but after a little bit of making out, Sam seems to get it into his mind that they’re over-dressed for the occasion, and Dean has to agree even if a small part of him is still panicking over what’s happening. He lets Sam worm his shirt off, throwing it onto the ground before pulling his own shirt off of his head. The touch of their chests with nothing between them but skin and sweat is enough to make Dean’s head spin, and Sam doesn’t give him a break to adjust, just breaks his mouth from Dean’s so he can kiss down Dean’s neck, following the line of his body until his mouth is skimming the skin above Dean’s jeans.

Dean is hard in his pants, has been for a long time, and he knows that Sam is aching. Sam lets his mouth travel along the line of Dean’s cock, not doing anything but tracing it through Dean’s clothes, and Dean’s had enough. He uses one hand to unbutton his jeans, and then Sam’s immediately on him, crawling back up until he can kiss Dean properly again while helping Dean kick his pants off.

Dean doesn’t bother to keep up with the pretense that things aren’t about to go as far as they can, so he struggles out of his boxers and nudges them off of the bed with his foot. Sam, of course, isn’t about to be shown up, and it isn’t long at all before they’re naked, fucking grinding against each other as Sam devours Dean’s mouth and Dean makes little mewling noises in the back of his throat.

“Can I,” Sam pants against Dean’s mouth. “Dean, can I?”

There are a million things to say to that question, but Dean can only manage one word. “Yeah,” he says, moaning as Sam finds a particularly sensitive spot underneath his ear. “Fuck, Sam, yeah.”

Sam takes his time opening Dean up, but it’s still Sam’s gigantic fingers and spit, so it burns like a motherfucker and is damn uncomfortable besides. Dean squirms against the intrusion of it, wishes like fuck that Sam had something better than saliva to ease the way, but every time Sam gives him a look, that you sure? tilt of his head, Dean nods. Sam needs this, and Dean wants it, so that’s all there is to it.

When Sam pushes in, he tries to go slowly, but Dean has to take measured breaths against the pain of it. It’s not nearly as bad as half of the injuries he’s ever sustained, but it’s the weirdest feeling in the world, and he feels strangely exposed, lying on his back as his younger brother fucks him open.

“Feel so good,” Sam babbles when he bottoms out. “Can’t believe you’re letting me do this, Dean, fuck.”

And yeah, it still fucking burns on Dean’s end, too much dick and not enough of anything else, but he can fill Sam’s pleasure, licking at the back of his mind, and it relaxes him.

“C’mon,” he says as Sam looks at him to see how they standing. “Fucking move already.”

Sam’s first thrust is tentative, but when Dean doesn’t break or cry or do anything that would suggest that things weren’t okay, he lets himself speed up. His hands are gripping Dean’s biceps so hard that Dean will be surprised if he doesn’t have bruises tomorrow, and Dean likes this part. He raises his head enough so he can kiss Sam, needs that further connection, and Sam lets his weight fall so he’s able to kiss back, although he’s so far gone that it’s more like he’s resting his mouth on Dean’s

Sam’s mounting pleasure begins to override Dean’s pain, and it isn’t long before Sam’s thrusting frantically and Dean is going along with it, moaning breathlessly as Sam pounds him into the mattress.

“Gonna,” Sam grunts, breathing hard. “Jesus, Dean, gotta fuckin’ come.”

“Come on,” Dean says instantly. “Come already, fuck, Sam.”

If Dean was less out of it, he’d make fun of Sam for his o-face, but he’s too busy spurting himself, getting off on the friction of Sam’s belly against his dick. It takes forever to come down again, even as Sam slips out, and Dean can feel pleasure everywhere, leaking out of his body as he cools off.

“Thanks,” Sam says, rolling off.

“No,” Dean says, and he feels slightly angry through his haze of happiness. “You don’t get to fucking thank me, Sam. We’re in this together. You didn’t do anything that I didn’t want.”

Sam laughs against Dean’s shoulder. “Good to know,” he says, and Dean can feel himself slip into a doze just as Sam does the same.

It’s still early when they rouse again, and Dean still doesn’t want to move. He watches Sam watching him and thinks about how fucked up their lives have been. He figures that this is as close to a happy ending that they’re going to get--pursued by a fucking Mother of all evil, soul-tied to each other, trapped in an incestuous relationship.

All things said and done, Dean thinks that it’s good enough for him.

END