Archive of Our Own

Click.

“Hello?”

“Oh thank god,” Dean slouches against the car, throat closing in a spasm. He swallows hard, and squeezes his eyes shut. They ache and burn, and Dean knows that it’s because he hasn’t slept in…days?

“Ellen, it’s me again,” Dean says, and he opens his eyes. “Any chance you’ve heard from him?"

It’s drizzling outside, miserable and wet and dark. Dean had swerved under this overpass a few minutes ago before pulling out his phone and calling everyone in his contact list again. It's just eight names: Annie, Ash, Bobby, Dad, Ellen, Jo, Missouri, Sam

One of ‘em is dead, and two of them aren’t talking to him. 

And one is Sam.

Sam, who had been gone for a week.

“No, I’m sorry, son. I haven’t heard from him.” Ellen says, for maybe the sixth time this week. Dean’s body is running on the dregs of adrenaline at this point, and Ellen’s words are another blow. He had hoped—foolishly, perhaps—that Sam would’ve gone somewhere safe. He's been calling Bobby and Ellen, alternating between the two over and over for days, just to check.

“I swear, it’s like looking for my dad all over again.” Dean says, because it’s true. It’s post-Dad, pre-Sam, when Dean had been wandering aimlessly back and forth across I-50, fear and dread building in his stomach as days turned into weeks. Before Dean let his Baby take him where he wanted to go, before he went home to an apartment he had never been to before in Palo Alto.

“I could try calling him.” Ellen offers, and Dean hears the strain in her voice. She’s worried about him, and Dean wonders how wrecked he has to be sounding for Ellen to let anything slip past her Winchester stonewall. 

“No,” Dean says, and now that he’s listening for it he can hear the deadened quality of his tone. "I've called him a thousand times, there's nothing but voicemail. I don't know where he went, or why. Sam's just gone.”

But that’s a lie.

Dean knows exactly why Sam left.

In San Angelo, Texas, he and Sam had been out at a bar. It was a typical post-hunt trip. They had both been tired and aching and agreed that a bottle of beer couldn’t hurt matters. Sam had been quiet and tense all day, so Dean had really put on a production, hurling jokes and bits his way like a solider throwing grenades into a foxhole.

“I know just what’ll loosen you up, Sammy,” Dean had said eventually, when Sam had half-heartedly snorted his way through another classic thigh-slapper. He raised an eyebrow at the gaggle of women in too-tall heels that just stumbled in. Sam had rolled his eyes. 

Sam had gone to the bathroom and Dean had gone on the hunt, eventually sidling up to a blonde girl and her friend at one of the tables. The blonde girl was just Sam’s type, green eyes and plump mouth, and her brunette friend with long, long legs and thick thighs under her miniskirt kept drawing Dean’s eye like a magnet. What a perfect coincidence.

Dean had just been about to seal the deal when Sam had come out of the bathroom like a bat out of hell. He had stormed right up to Dean and hauled him out by his bicep.

“What the hell is your problem?” Dean had asked, when Sam had dragged him to the Impala. The night had been unseasonably warm, and Dean felt sticky and hot just standing still. The cars around them seemed to carry an ambient heat, and Dean could feel his skin prickle under his leather jacket.

“Dean,” Sam had said, slowly, like he was trying it out in his mouth. A flicker of tongue as he wetted his lips. He cleared his throat. “Dean.” He said, and this time, something heavier and deeper slid into it.

Something big was happening, and Dean stepped forward a little, despite the fact that Sam’s radiant body heat did nothing to soothe the flushed sweat already building at Dean’s hairline.

“I—“ Sam had tilted his head down, eyes big as he looked up at Dean—and he had looked so young in that moment, shoulders hunched and unsure and this was Sam at age fifteen and Dean would’ve done anything for him.

Sammy, Dean had said, or maybe he breathed it, or maybe it didn’t come out at all. Sam swayed on his feet, like he thought about stepping forward but didn’t.

“Dean.” Sam said again, low and rough and Dean could feel himself being sucked into his orbit, and pressed a little forward. Everything had been happening so fast, an inexorable push to the end—that even now, when Dean tries to think about everything that they had said, he can’t. When he thinks of it now, the rest of it was a blur, just his heartbeat in his ears and Sam so close that Dean could see individual lashes framing eyes that were almost black in the dim light.

“I don’t want…I don’t want those girls.” Sam had said.

“What do you want?” Dean had asked, because that was Dean’s north. What did Sammy need from him right now? What did Sam want? What could Dean do to make sure he was taken care of?

“I want…” Sam’s mouth had twitched. He looked Dean up and down, like he had been assessing him, and his eyebrows furrowed, like something was physically painful. “I…I want—“

Dean could feel Sam’s hot breath on his face. And then Sam had pushed away. Only then did Dean realize how close they had gotten, how Dean’s mouth was tingling like Sam had kissed him, but he hadn’t—just his breath in Dean’s mouth and eye contact that sparked like lightning in Dean’s fingers.

“God, nothing. Never mind.” Sam avoided Dean’s reaching hand. “Sorry. I’m tired. Let’s go back to the motel.”

Dean had finally managed to snag Sam’s wrist, but Sam twisted out of it so fast that he almost dislocated Dean’s wrist.

“Get your hands off of me!” Sam had snapped, so much raw anger, so much disgust in his tone that Dean had backed off immediately. He had stumbled back a few steps.

He remembers feeling shocked. Horrified. Sam had been a lot of things with him, but he was rarely truly disgusted. It was like he had found exactly which reaction to whatever had just happened would hurt Dean the most.

His head had spun, and he felt like he was going to be sick. So much had happened so fast that Dean had lost the plot. They rode back to the motel in silence. Sam hadn’t looked at him, not even once.

Dean had fallen asleep, self-hatred and anxiety and nausea turning his stomach like a goddamn washing machine.

When he woke up, Sam was gone. He had been gone for a week and two days.

So—like most things in this goddamn world, it was Dean’s fault. Dean is the reason that Sam left.

Dean had tried to press girls on Sam, like he always did. He knows why he does it. It’s a self-punishment, almost. Sam likes girls. Sam fucks girls. Sam is normal. Sam breathes normal, and he lives normal, and he loves Dean normal. Like he should.

Whenever Dean gets too close, he takes Sam out to a bar and shoves him at any girl that will bite. Look at him, Look at him, Dean’s mind chants as Sam takes stray girls back to the car. It’s normal. It’s fine.

Dean had gotten greedy. He’d been getting drunk of Sammy’s smiles, off of his quiet contentedness over the past few months. Sam was happy to be here, Sam was happy to be with Dean.

He sniped at him, and he rolled his eyes, but he had Dean’s back again. Sam had allowed Dean to bleed back into his life, colors mixing and paint running. It was the closest thing to home that Dean had, really, at Sam’s side. He had gotten cocky. He had gotten greedy.

Dean must’ve let himself look too long.

Sam must’ve picked up on it somehow—the looks. The eyes on him a second too long when he laughed, when he ate, when he brushed his teeth, when he combed his hair in the morning. 

Dean must’ve let something slip—the quiet devotion, the extra bags of trail mix or the touches at his back, or the stupid shit Dean had let slip the past couple of months (“So what, so you're just going to give up? You're just gonna lay down and die? Look, Dean, I know this stuff with Dad has—“ “You’re wrong. It's not about Dad. I mean, part of it is, sure, but…” “What is it about?” Dean can’t say anything, can just stare at his little brother’s face, sick with the Croatoan virus, the divot in his brow, the tears in his eyes, and he can’t say anything).

And Sam…Sam split. Sam hit the road, the second he had seen whatever he had seen in Dean’s face that night. Sam had leaned in, ready to hit him or yell at him or tell him to back off or something and Dean had leaned in and Sam saw.

So Sam hit the bricks.

God, he should, too. He should’ve run the second Dean showed up at his doorstep in California. But Dean needs him. He needs Sam to be okay and to be here and to be with Dean.

At the very least he can’t leave it like that. He needs to explain, or just to see that Sam is alive. Hating him, okay, but alive and healthy and alright, because some scary sons-of-bitches have Sam on their radars.

Sam doesn’t have to like him, but he should allow Dean to start taking his bullets for him. It’s the least he deserves.

The phone at his ear buzzes. A two-tone be-beep lets him know that someone else is calling him.

It’s Bobby, Dean thinks wildly. He’s found Sammy.

“Hang on.” Dean barks to Ellen, and pulls the phone away from his ear to check the display.

Sam’s Cell Calling

Dean switches over calls so fast that he almost hits the wrong button with his thumb and ends all calls. His heart stops and then starts again so fast that Dean feels his knees go weak.

“Sammy?” Dean croaks, hands shaking as he shoves the phone to his ear. “Where the hell are you? Are you okay?”

Silence, for just a second.

“Dean?” It's Sam.

Dean rocks back on his heels, so goddamn grateful, so goddamn relieved, that he feels like he might pass right the hell out. But then,

“Dean! Oh thank god. I need your help. Please. Please, Dee. I’m in…I’m at a motel, and I think—I think I’ve done something—“

It’s Sam like Dean hasn’t heard him in months, not since Dad, not since the car accident. The nail in the coffin, the signifier that something is Not Right in big neon letters is Dee. Sammy hasn’t called him Dee since he couldn’t pronounce his “r”s or "n"s correctly all the time.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Dean interjects as Sam continues to ramble. “Calm down. Where are you?”

“I’m…I’m at a motel. In Twin Lakes, Colorado. At the Lakeside Inn. It’s…I think it’s room 109.”

Dean’s shaking, can’t feel his toes in his boots anymore, but this is it. Sam needs him. Whatever’s happening, Dean is there.

“All right, don't move, I'm on my way.” Dean says, moving to slide into the car.

“Okay.” Sam says, quiet and small and Dean prepares himself to do anything. He hangs up, and he drives like Hell is chasing him.

~~~

When he gets there, Sam’s a mess—literally. When Dean walks in, he can’t think because Sam is covered in blood, Sam is covered in blood, Sam is—covered—in—blood—but he can’t find a wound and “I don’t think it’s mine.” and Dean can breathe again.

Sam doesn’t remember anything, is shaken and quiet and small and his eyes are big from where he looks at Dean through his bangs. 

So Dean does what Dean does best: he takes care of Sam. He grabs Sam’s duffle from the car, grabs some groceries (Sam’s favorite, pretzel chips and red gatorade and cashews), and hassles the desk guy for information.

Sam barely eats, tucks his shoulders in. When they step outside, Sam walks normally until Dean looks at him, and then he folds under Dean’s gaze, like wilting three sizes when he sees Dean’s looking. Like he’s ashamed or something.

Dean walks closer to him, makes their shoulders brush to bolster him, as a silent support. Sam won’t look him in the eyes.

And then they find the car. And the knife. Dean doesn’t waver.

~~~

Dean doesn’t waver when they find the body, either. He destroys the computer, smashes the hard drive to dust. He goes through the house and wipes Sam’s prints off of anything he could’ve touched, including the doorhandles. Even upstairs, in case he went up there for recon.

Sam’s despondent, won’t look at him. He joins Dean in the living room after Dean tells him to wipe his prints, but Sam’s in a shaky headspace. So Dean goes back and wipes down the surfaces again.

They drive back to the motel in silence. Sam has tears in his eyes, and Dean can see him shake in fits in starts, like his body is forgetting how to. It’s jarring, and frightening, and Dean has never been more sure in his life that this man next to him is innocent.

When they get back to the motel, Sam still hasn’t said anything. He walks into the motel room silently, lets Dean shepherd him in first. Dean watches the tense line of his shoulders.

"All right, we get a couple hours sleep and then we put this place in our rearview mirror.” He says, forcing a casual tone. Sam doesn’t say anything. Dean tries again. “Look, I know this is bad, okay? You gotta snap out of it.”

Sam has a hard set to his mouth, like he’s trying not to say something, like he’s fighting to keep his mouth flat.

“Sam, say something!”

Sam’s huffy when he says, “Just get some sleep and leave in the morning? Murder, Dean. That's what I did.”

Dean doesn’t have anything to say to that.

“Maybe…?”

Sam scoffs, so Dean is quick to add.

“Okay? Hey, we don't know...shapeshifter!”

Sam is shifting on his feet, anxious and upset and ready to pick a fight.

“Oh, come on. You know it wasn't, you saw the tape. There was no eye flare, no distortion—“

“Yeah, but it wasn't you! All right?” Dean’s desperate, itching and aching and not ready for whatever Sam’s trying to say. “I mean, yeah, it might have been you, but it wasn't you.”

Sam’s eyes go distant, like he’s lost somewhere in that head of his.

“Well, I think it was.” He sits down heavily on the bed. “…I think maybe more than you know.”

Dean can’t help his shift forward. He feels pulled to Sam by something unnamable, by the same thing that finds Sam in a sea of faces and lost in a dark room. Sam’s words make something hard and dark and scared settle in Dean’s stomach.

“What the hell does that mean?” He hopes his voice doesn’t shake.

Sam is so goddamn small. He looks lost, like he’s twelve and waiting for Dean to find him in a crowd. There’s a tiny divot in his forehead, and Dean wants to press his thumb there, smooth the hard lines of his face. He’s too young. Too fucking young.

“For the last few weeks I've been having…” Sam looks up at Dean, and Dean can tell Sam’s been sitting on this for weeks. Months, maybe. He looks sick. “I’ve been having these feelings.”

Heat—panic. Dean sits down on the bed opposite of Sam because his legs are failing him. Feelings? Sam’s been having…Dean’s brain spins. No. Are they going to talk about why Sam left? Are they—

“What feelings?” The words fall from numb lips, but Dean can’t look away from Sam’s face.

“Rage. Hate.” 

Dean can’t stop his flinch, scrambles to reconnect his brain to the real world, and not a goddamn teenager twirling her hair around her finger. He feels foolish.

“And I can't stop it.” Sam continues. "It just gets worse. Day by day, it gets worse.”

Dean knows he’s frowning. Concern blooms, familiar and nauseating. Rage? Hate? Sam’s been normal, for the most part. That’s what’s most concerning. Sam isn’t that good of an actor, which means that this is his new MO now, that he’s been feeling it longer—a lot longer—than he’s been letting on. To sit with it this long? Alone?

“You never told me this.” He tries not to sound accusing.

“I didn't want to scare you.”

Dean scoffs, nods. The terror of the past week is probably enough to power the whole state. Sam’s put him through more sleepless nights and shaking breakdowns in the past seven days than Dean’s had in a long, long time. He slaps his knee when he stands up, and can see Sam flinch out of the corner of his eye.

“Well, fuckin’ bang-up job on that."

Sam’s not done, and stands up to follow Dean as he messes with their duffles.

“Dean, the yellow-eyed demon, you know he has plans for me. And we both know that he's turned other children into killers before, too.”

Dean rounds on him, because No. Sam is…Sam.

“No one can control you but you.”

Sam is shaking his head, looks away from Dean before laying back into him.

“It sure doesn't seem like that, Dean, it feels like no matter what I do, slowly but surely I'm, I'm just becoming…”

Tension pulls thick and heavy between them. It’s so dense that Dean can hardly breathe. He doesn’t want Sam to finish that sentence, because if he does…

“What?” Dean asks, because he can’t help himself. If it’s real, they can take it on.

“Who I'm meant to be. I mean, you said it once yourself, Dean. I gotta face up to who I am.”

“Bullshit. I didn't mean this!”

“But it's still true. You know that. Dad knew that too. That's why he told you, if it ever came to this—“

And how dare he? How dare he bring up Dad here? His fucked up demand. He never should’ve asked Dean for that, knew before he died that Dean would fail. Dean didn’t promise Dad shit. If Dad had stopped a second, Dean doesn’t know what he would’ve said. Since Dad’s death, Dean has been able to actually step back and look at the man. See him for his shape instead of just his shadow. Dean…Dean doesn’t know what he would’ve said if Dad had asked him to promise to waste Sam.

Dean…Dean might’ve told him to go to Hell. And fuck, isn’t that something?

"Shut up, Sam.”

Sam has started to crowd Dean’s space. He’s still advancing, and the hard glint in his eyes melts. This is his I want face, and he’s been gently prying pieces of Dean away with it for years.

“Dean, you promised him. You promised me.”

Dean remembers that night, remembers Sam’s wet eyes and his grasping hands. He remembers Sam’s hands scorching holes into his chest, into his jacket sleeves. His breath hot and whiskey-laden on Dean’s face. Dean would’ve promised him anything, Dean would give Sam anything.

But Dean won’t—can’t—is unable to, structurally, on a molecular level—give Sam away.

"No. Listen to me.” Sam turns away, disappointment lining the hard set of his jaw, but Dean plows on. “We’re gonna figure this out. Okay? I mean, there's gotta be a way, right?”

Dean doesn’t say that even if Sam had killed this man in cold blood, even if he had waited outside of his house for days and waited until he was vulnerable, even if Sam had slit this man’s throat for no reason at all, even if he had enjoyed it, Dean wouldn’t condemn him. Dean would’ve still wiped his prints from the scene. He still would’ve destroyed the hard drive. 

Sam is so eager to condemn himself, to get Dean to turn on him, but it’s a losing fight.

It’s a battle that had been lost twenty-three years ago.

Nothing could turn Dean on Sam, not even Dad, not even Sam.

This is Sammy, this is his boy. Dean knows Sam. He trusts Sam. He loves Sam. Sam is good, and right, and honest. Sam is brilliant and hurtful and annoying. Sam puts Sam first, a lot, and he should, because Dean will keep him if he’s given the chance.

Dean will lock him away and keep him, and nothing could take Sam away. Not even Sam.

Nothing could make Sam bad, or wrong, or corrupt. Nothing could make him past Dean’s love. Nothing could take him away from Dean.

Dean’ll scheme his way out of this. He and Sam, if they put their heads together, can find something. A way out.

Sam’s jaw is still set, and a determination, a spark, lights his eyes. Please be a determination to live. Please be a determination to stay.

“Yeah, there is.” Sam turns, and pulls his gun from the pocket of his duffle. Dean freezes, as Sam turns back to him, steps the few feet closer, and holds it out. His hands shake. His eyes are filmed-over with tears, and his mouth trembles as he holds back something. Sam’s tilted his face down looking down at the gun, and Dean can see moisture building up on his lash line.

When he speaks, his words are quiet but fierce.

“I don't wanna hurt anyone else.” Sam swallows, heavily. He looks up at Dean. I don't wanna hurt you.”

The words—that last word, that you—are loaded with so much weight that it almost takes his breath away. Sam couldn’t hurt him. Sam could rip his lungs from his chest and not hurt him. Dean can’t even imagine that. If Sam needed his liver, Dean would take it out himself. Dean tries to imagine what world Sam lives in, where the worst thing he could imagine is hurting Dean.

Dean looks at the gun, then back up at Sam.

“You won’t.” He makes no move to take the gun, hasn’t moved a muscle since Sam stepped close. “Whatever this is, you can fight it.”

Sam’s tears almost spill over, and Dean can see the reddening of his eyes as he holds back tears. His voice is thick.

“No. I can't. Not forever.” He shoves the gun at Dean again, an offering like a sacrifice on an altar. “Here, you gotta do it.”

But Dean’s not a god. He doesn’t have an altar. He’s a man, and he worships at one temple. He believes in two things. And one of those things is dead.

Dean doesn’t move an inch. Nothing—nothing—could make him reach for this gun. Sam could lunge at him, talons sprouting from his fingertips and Dean wouldn’t grab this gun. This is Sammy. Sammy, whose jaw is setting, hard, as irritation starts sparking behind wide hazel eyes.

Sam’s hand—cool, almost cold to the touch, and when has Sam ever been cold? Sam is always a human furnace, something is—grabs Dean’s and shoves the gun into it.

It’s heavy. Heavier than any gun Dean has ever held. Sam drops his hand, and the gun almost slips out of his hand because he can’t curl his fingers around it. Dean looks up at Sam, betrayed. Shocked. Sam wants him to…

Sam inhales deeply, tears building over his lashes and beading up in the corners of his eyes. It’s then that it hits Dean, what Sam wants him to do.

Sam wants him to…Sam wants Dean to kill him. Murder him. Right here, right now, in cold blood. Take him out back and put him down like a rabid dog.

Sammy.

His baby brother, who once cried so hard he threw up after watching a stolen VHS of The Secret of Nimh. Sammy. Because he thinks he’s dangerous. Because he thinks he’s going to hurt Dean.

Sam is bracing himself, like he’s expecting Dean to press the barrel of the gun to Sam’s temple right now. Blow his brains out in Lakeside Inn, room 109, at four a.m. on a Tuesday in April.

What could that even look like? Dean, killing Sam. He’d clean up Sam’s body, maybe? Pick pieces of his brain off of the scratchy motel blanket? And then what? Go about his life? Go for a beer? Keep hunting? What fuckin’ delusional hellscape does Sam live in?

If Dean pulled the trigger—if Sam had somehow managed to say the exact right words in the exact right tone and convinced Dean that somehow, someway, the people in their lives (not even the world, Dean wouldn’t give up Sam for the world) would be safer—he’d pull it twice. One bullet for Sam. One for him. Let the maid come in and find them like this, fallen side by side on a motel bed. Died how they lived, and all that.

“You know,” Dean says slowly, because if that’s the way that Sam wants today to go…Dean is tired. Dean’s made no secret of it. “I’ve tried hard to keep you safe.”

Sam’s mouth quirks in a little half-smile before falling again. He nods, teary.

“I know."

Dean can feel his head shaking. There’s his answer. Dean’s not a weepy, suicidal maniac. But if Sam’s got an idea that this is a ticket for one, he’s mistaken.

“I can’t.” He says, and because Sam’s not getting it, he adds, “I’d rather die.”

He tosses the gun onto the bed and pushes past Sam, needing the room to breathe. Dean would turn that gun on himself before he’d turn it on Sam, and the admittance of that, out loud, makes him shaky and ill. Things like that are meant for deathbeds, for bleeding out. Dean feels like he is.

“No,” Sam says quietly, and Dean can hear rustling. “You’ll live.”

Dean turns out, because fuck, the gun’s on the bed, what does that mean, Sammy—

“You’ll live to regret this.”

A hard crack across his skull, rattling his teeth and his eyes explode in white and—

~~~

Dean wakes up on the floor.

He checks his watch. 11:52 a.m. He doesn’t let himself think about the fact that Sam knocked him out until he’s already on the way to Duluth. The drive is eighteen hours, and it gives plenty of time for Dean to stew in his own rot.

What the fuck does it mean? Does any of it mean? Sam was scared, Sam was trying to convince Dean to kill him.

You’ll live to regret this.

Dean doesn’t know what’s in Duluth, knows that the closest hunter to there is Bobby, but he’s in South Dakota. What the fuck is in Duluth? Dean can’t even remember what the last hunt in Minnesota was. Maybe a haunting, somewhere near Roseau?

No, you’ll live. Sam had corrected.

There was the crux of it. Sam had begged Dean to kill him. Dean hadn’t. Did that mean…Sam knocked him out, ran off. Was Sam going to…

No, Dean has to slam his hand into the steering wheel a few times as he flies through Nebraska just to get his heart rate to slow down. No, Sam wouldn’t go to Minnesota just to kill himself.

You’re going to regret this. It was a promise. Sam was going to hurt someone else, and when they got through this, whatever it was, Sam would never forgive himself. Dean won’t let that happen. 

Dean doesn’t think he breathes until he pulls onto the road that holds the lean-to bar. He checks the address he had written on the motel stationary a couple of times, just to make sure he’s gotten it right. 

And sure enough, the Impala is parked in front. Dean pulls Sam’s stolen car around the back, sneaking around the side of the building with short, slow steps. Whatever Sam wants—whatever Sam was willing to hurt Dean to get to—was in this building.

It’s 4:58 a.m., and Dean can hear a raucous crowd get shuffled out the front, as a loud man’s voice shouts, “We close at five boys, you know that. Get the hell out, and we’ll see ya’ again tomorrow. Shelley’s probably worried sick.”

Dean slides in the back door, timing it so the front door closes as he opens it. It creaks and moans, and Dean closes it centimeter by centimeter so it stays mostly quiet.

“Good Lord,” the man’s voice says again, as Dean shuffles behind a crate. He crouches, and his heels stick to the tiled floor. He wrinkles his nose. The bar is kind of a shit-hole, all sweat and stale beer and industrial cleaner.

The back is dark and dusty, stale from the wet air outside. Being dockside has clearly not helped with the wet-rot smell that permeates the wooden walls here. Dean listens carefully for Sam’s voice, but only hears two people moving around. Neither of them are Sam—one tread is heavy and shuffling (an older guy maybe), and the other is light (a younger guy, a girl?).

“Remind me again to stop letting Jeff talk me into closing shifts."

“Aw, but Sal, I’d be lost without you.” A woman’s voice says. No, not a woman. Jo.

Dean stiffens. They hadn’t parted on the greatest of terms.

Dean’s stomach sinks, and his neck breaks out in a cool sweat as he realizes what Sam wants in Duluth.

“Yeah, yeah.” The man’s voice says, and something shifts on wood, a chair creaking. “I'm gonna head out—you two got the rest?”

Dean listens, but the new steps aren’t Sam either.

“Yeah, we got it,” The new voice says, probably the man that had been sitting down. Dean knows that Sam, if he’s not already hiding here in the shadows, is waiting for the last person to leave, so Dean knows—agonizingly—that this is his chance.

Dean stands slowly, hands up in a gesture of surrender.

“Hey,” Dean calls. Jo whips around, hand going to her belt to grab something, but coming up empty. 

The guy standing next to her turns around slower—middle-aged, probably forties, balding in the back—and sizes Dean up.

“Hey, man, we’re closin’ up.” The guy steps aside to presumably let Dean by, but Jo still hasn’t moved. Her face has gone completely neutral, only a thin furrow in her brow giving away any emotion.

“I need to talk to you,” Dean says, just to Jo. The guy turns, confused, to Jo.

“You know this guy, Katie?”

Jo nods slowly.

“Yeah.” She blinks, shakes some animation into her body again like being waken up. “Yeah.” She tears her eyes away from Dean. “I’ve got the rest, Cam. You go on home.”

Cam turns to him with a suspicious gleam in his eyes. Dean drops his hands and puts them in his pockets. He rocks on his feet, hoping it makes him look unassuming. 

“Um. I’d be happy to stay and help.” He says, and help probably involves giving Dean the death glare for a few more hours. Jo shakes his concern off.

“Nah, I’ve got it. I like closing.”

“Whatever you say, Katie.” Footsteps to the door. “Have a good night…morning…whatever.”

The front door opens, and Jo calls,

“Good night, thank you.” 

She turns back to Dean. Silence stretches between them for a second.

“Look,” Dean starts. “We don’t have time to sit around looking at each other. Sam’s coming.”

“Excuse me?” Jo raises an incredulous brow, and Dean knows that if he lets her start, they’re going to start bickering, and they literally have no more time now. “Sam—“

“Sam’s not himself right now. Something’s wrong. He’s coming here—he’s waiting outside, and you’ve got to leave.”

“God—“ Jo throws her head back in a vicious bark of laughter. “Fuck off, Dean.”

Dean winces a little at the harshness. If he had more time, he’d like to hash this out with her. Dad was…Dad. Dean has so few people in his life that he’d like to keep the rest, but Jo has to be the one to reach out about that. Dean’s not a groveler.

“Heh, yeah,” Dean says, moving towards her. “I’d love to, but unfortunately I’ve got to save your ass real quick.”

Dean grabs her arm, and Jo looks so shocked that she allows it for a couple of steps as he hauls her to the back door. Dean starts talking as fast as possible, hopes that if he can keep her off-balance she’ll be confused enough to go.

“Sam’s going through an identity crisis, and he’s making it everyone’s problem. He could be dangerous to you, Jo, and I’m not gonna let that happen. Let me handle it.”

Jo finally wrenches her arm out of Dean’s grip, and Dean's wrist twinges as she slaps his hand away.

“Nothing goddamn changes with you, does it?” She challenges, and Dean can see that magnetic fire she’s got burn bright in her eyes. “Sam this, Sam that. After everything that’s gone down, that’s all you’ve got to say to me?” Dean doesn’t say anything for a beat. “You Winchesters are a real piece of work.”

Dean can only think, as he looks at her, that she’s so young. She’s…what? Twenty? Twenty-one? Dean doesn’t have time to coddle her feelings. He wish he could. Jo deserves…a lot. That life hasn’t given her.

“We can work this out later, okay?” Dean says, stepping behind her and moving his arms out from his sides so he can shepherd her to the door like a dog. “Seriously, Jo. I can’t wait for the ass-kicking you’re gonna give me later, but we don’t have the time. He’s been waiting outside for hours to get you alone.”

“You’re not going to kick me out of my own fucking bar.” Jo spins on him, swinging for a punch. Dean catches her arm, winces as he twists it behind her, and uses her momentum to push her all the way to the exit.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He mutters, over and over again, as she kicks and struggles. “We’ll talk about it later. We will. I’m sorry for my Dad, and for me, and for Sam. I can’t—“

Dean opens the creaking door, and sets Jo outside like a misbehaving cat. He feels like the world’s biggest asshole, for coming into her life again, for pushing her around like a playground bully. He feels…He feels like his Dad.

“Please.” Dean says, and tries to infuse as much sincerity and kindness into his words as he can. Jo whirls on him, and Dean holds a hand out. “Please, Jo. I don’t deserve it. I know I don’t. You don’t ever have to see us again, okay? But please. You have to be safe. Please just stay out here until you hear us pull away. Please.”

Jo blinks up at him, fury and indignation making her face pull up into a snarl. But slowly, just for a second, Dean can see her soften. 

“You don’t have to trust me. Just let me do what I need to do, and we’ll go. I need you to be safe, and I don’t think Sam is safe right now. Please.”

Jo’s mouth twists, and Dean hears the familiar sound of the Impala door closing in the distance. Jo’s eyes flick past him, and her jaw sets.

“Fine.” She grits between her teeth. “You…“

But she doesn’t finish. Her mouth closes. Dean gives her exactly three seconds, before whipping back around and closing the door behind him. He hopes it’s not the last time he ever sees her.

The front door opens as Dean reaches the middle of the bar.

Sam looks like a different person. His hair and clothes are the same, but he has a detached distance in his eyes, a predatory grace that makes Dean’s skin break out in bumps. Sam’s eyes scan the bar, looking at the ramshackle shelves, the empty seats, then finally, Dean.

Sam’s face crumples, and the hard lines of before are gone completely as he takes Dean in. He almost sags against the door in loose-limbed relief.

“Dean, thank God,” He says, weak and shaking. Dean knows something’s wrong, can tell that this emotion, at least partly, is artifice. “You’re alright.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you, Sam.” Dean says, annoyance rising. “A knock to the head’s not all it’s gonna take to keep me down.”

Sam winces empathetically, and crosses the room. He puts a hand up to Dean’s head, and Dean can’t help his flinch in the other direction. Sam’s hand drops with a look of genuine hurt. Dean feels an immediate pang of remorse.

“How’s your head?”

Dean gapes up at him. “How’s my head?” He shoves Sam back a step. “What the fuck is your problem?”

Sam looks off to the side, every inch the embarrassed little brother.

“I’m—I’m sorry.” Sam runs a hand through his hair, and Dean is a little shocked to see that tears are building in his eyes. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

His voice is so small, so quiet. Dean actively has to stop the instinct he has to go and comfort him. He didn’t realize it until now, but he had been preparing for a fight. He wasn’t ready at all to face a Sam that was small and quiet and scared.

Dean grits his teeth, and walks over the bar to sit down. He pulls one of the stools out, and sits heavily down on it. He rubs a hand over his face, feeling his fight-or-flight calm to a confront-or-walk-away-slowly.

“I’m so glad you found me,” Sam says, after silence stretches out between them for a second. Dean looks up, and Sam’s hopeful little smile falls. He swallows hard. “I was coming here to find Jo.” 

“I know.” Dean says, carefully tracking Sam’s facial expression, his guilty eyes sliding away from Dean’s own.

“Did you get her out?” Sam asks, and Dean can actually hear the tears building in his throat. Dean softens a little.

“Yeah, Sammy. She’s okay.”

Sam looks up, sharply, and Dean rears back for a second, but Sam quickly wipes tears from his eyes.

“She’s gone?” Sam repeats, and Dean nods slowly. “Thank god. I thought—“ Sam turns away from Dean for a second to pace, but abandons the venture quickly. He walks over to sit next to Dean at the bar, posture too-stiff.

Sam sits forward at the bar, like he’s going to order a drink. He doesn’t look at Dean, when he says, “I thought I was going to hurt her."

Dean’s stomach flips. It’s not a surprise to hear, but it makes Dean’s heart pulse strangely. Dean runs another hand over his face. Thank fuck he had gotten here in time. Dean doesn’t want to think about the alternate reality they just branched away from, in which he had gotten here to find…what? Jo, dead on the ground, Sam standing over her? Dean shudders.

“Why Jo? What did she do to you Sam? Is this that rage thing we were talking about?”

“She—“ Sam turns towards Dean, and looks at him for a second. His eyes are sharp, and he looks like he’s assessing Dean, picking him apart for weaknesses. Dean prepares for a blow, but nothing prepares him for, “She’s in love with you, y’know.”

“What?” Dean rears back, the words landing like a physical punch. If given a piece of paper, a pen, and ten minutes to write down all the reasons Sam would have given, this would not be on it.

“Jo. She’s carrying an Olympic-sized torch for you. And she’s…perfect.”

Dean leans forward so he’s looking at Sam head on. He checks his pupils, to see if they’re really small or big. He presses a hand to Sam’s forehead.

“What the fuck are you on, right now?” Dean demands, reaching a hand down to check Sam’s pulse. Sam lets him do it with a small smile on his face. When Dean has confirmed that Sam is not going into cardiac arrest, Sam’s smile falters as they make eye-contact again. Sam’s eyes are dewy.

Dean stands up, crowds Sam's sitting form against the bar so he can tilt his face up. He checks again for something unusual. Sam is…not right. Dean feels like he’s talking to another version of his brother, and if it weren’t for the confirmed no-shifter, Dean would be taking a silver knife to his arm.

Sam grabs Dean’s forearms, and holds them close, so Dean has no choice but to put his hands on Sam’s shoulders.

“You want to be happy so bad. And I want to give that to you, and she—she could take you away. From me.”

Dean feels the world tilt underneath his feet. His heart starts pounding in his chest. The casual ownership of that sets Dean back to a week ago, to all the months leading up to this one, of the touches and heavy glances and laden silences. Sam’s not in his right mind, but this—

“Sammy—“ Dean starts, not knowing what he’s going to say next.

“No, let me say it.” Sam interrupts, looking up at Dean with a kind of frantic earnestness that Dean hasn’t seen in a long time. “I…Jo loves you. And she’s…she’s a threat. To what we’re building together. I can’t—I can’t lose you, Dean. I want…”

Dean doesn’t realize how close they’ve gotten until his knees knock against Sam’s. Sam’s hands are cold on his arms, but Dean can feel the sharp, aching heat of the rest of him, can see the individual swatches of color in Sam’s irises, even as his pupils slowly expand.

“What do you want, Sam?”

Sam stands up, so Dean is forced to look up into his face. Sam turns them slowly, so the small of Dean’s back bumps into the polished wood of the counter.

“I want…” Sam says, eyes flicking down to Dean’s lips and Dean knows when something is too good to be true, knows that this can’t possibly be real, knows—

“Christo.” Dean rasps, just before Sam’s lips land on his, eyes open wide.

Sam’s eyes flash black.

“Whoops,” Sam says casually. A thread of tension stretches between them, almost interminable, and then they both move at once. The demon in Sam’s body slams Dean back, and Dean crashes against the bar. He whirls to counterattack, but the demon is already at his front, blocking his punch easily. It slams Dean against the counter again, using its height to its advantage as he forces Dean to bend back over it, hand slamming into Dean’s throat.

Dean gasps for breath, winded, and the demon gets close enough to reach for the gun at Dean’s belt. Dean knows that a struggle for a pistol at close range is only going to end in disaster, especially when the demon is carrying such precious cargo. If this were another fight, Dean would take his chances, but he doesn’t know where the bullet would land if it were discharged, and he doesn’t think for a second that the demon wouldn’t put a bullet in Sam’s skull willingly just to fuck him up.

So, in the culmination of probably all stupid fucking decisions he’s ever made in his life, Dean throws the gun. Genuinely, straight-out fucking chucks it across the room. It lands with a crash, slamming against the wall and falling into depths unknown.

The demon turns back to Dean with a look of incredulity, before its face flattens out into a look of “fair enough.” Dean tries to launch himself forward, but the demon is preternaturally fast, knowing Dean’s fighting and next moves like he’s memorized them.

Dean realizes, as the demon blocks a leg sweep, that it does. It’s probably rifling through Sam’s memories, picking out Dean’s fighting style as easily as flipping through a DVD collection.

Dean’s strong. Dean’s not a small guy. But Sam hasn’t used his full strength to spar since they got back together, and Dean hadn’t realized how goddamn big Sam had gotten. 

Their scuffle is almost embarrassing. The demon holds no punches, slamming Dean’s head into the bar with a crunch that sends sparks shooting across Dean’s vision. Dean spins and throws his elbow up, hoping to catch it in the jaw, but the demon spins away easily, using one of Sam’s massive arms to press him to the bar with one solid, unmovable forearm.

“Dean, Dean, Dean.” The demon says, placating and low, and Dean has to grit his teeth against it because it’s Sammy’s voice. It’s Sammy’s body heat soaking through their clothes, and Dean feels like a wild animal, or a butterfly pinned to a board: exposed, in the open.

Dean jerks against the hold, and the demon brings a hand to his face, a slow caress up his face and into his hair. Dean kicks out, and the demon just uses one of Sam’s impossibly long legs to trap his leg in between his own. 

“You know,” the demon says, only a thin string of strain in its voice giving away the fact that holding Dean immobile is a struggle at all. “This is the only way you’ll ever touch him like this. Do you want me to do you a quick favor?”

The demon leans down, and Dean rails against its hold, bucking wildly and trying to use his one free leg to kick at Sam’s thigh. The demon—Sam, this is Sam’s body—leans close over Dean, mouth brushing Dean’s neck.

His mouth stops over Dean’s pulse point, like he’s tasting the blood that pumps there, like he can feel its frantic rhythm against his lips. Like he’s going to bite down.

Dean smells Sam everywhere—can feel him everywhere. The trim line of his hips, bony hipbones jutting into Dean’s thighs from where Sam has him up and pressed backwards over the bar. The strong flex of his thighs trapping Dean’s leg. The hard, athletic curve of his abdomen, strong chest, corded arms. Dean feels like he’s going to explode.

He’s panting, frantic, because he knows that Sam is in there, somewhere, knows that Sam might be looking at him right now, looking down at Dean’s pink face and blown-out pupils. 

“Go fuck yourself,” Dean tries, but he’s not feeling brave. He feels like he’s about to cry, as Sam’s mouth trails up to his jaw, rubs against his face until it finds the jut of his chin.

“Oh,” Sam says, all pity like he’s talking to a child, and his soft quiet voice reverberates in Dean’s own chest. Sam clucks his tongue. “That’s no way to talk to someone just trying to help his older brother out.”

And Dean can do nothing as the hand in his hair tightens, and Sam slams their mouths together.

Dean’s brain whites out.

After the fact, Dean will realize that this is the cruelest thing that a demon could do to him. Force the knowledge of Sam on him, the velvet inside of his mouth, the taste of his tongue, the way his breaths feel in Dean’s own mouth. Dean will never forget it. Not as long as he lives. He knows that he will die with Sam’s taste in his mouth, that every wet dream will have the scorching slide of Sam’s chapped bottom lip against his own.

But in the moment, all Dean can do is burn.

It’s Sam. This is Sam’s mouth. This is his tongue trying to coax Dean’s limp mouth into action, trying to get him to kiss back. It’s like a blow to the head. The room spins.

Dean had jerked himself off til his dick chafed to this boy. For a taste of this mouth.

Dean tries to stay afloat, stay achingly present for every second because the second he lowers even one guard, it’s over. 

He tries to fight it, knows that the demon is assaulting Sam right now, more than it could ever be assaulting Dean, but doesn’t know how to do it without giving Sam some permanent damage.

John had given him one pointer how to fight off a sexual attack once after he had taken Dean, age twelve, into a bar and left him alone to talk to a witness and a guy in the corner booth said that Dean had “a cocksucker mouth.”

John had pressed a box cutter into his hand and stepped away anyway, slipping off through the crowd. “Aim to kill.”

But Dean couldn’t do that now, because this is Sam.

It’s perfect and it’s awful and it’s everything Dean’s ever wanted. Dean does not kiss back. He closes his eyes tight and prays that Sammy can’t see this.

The demon finally lets him go with a sigh, wet mouths parting with a noise that makes Dean’s insides shiver with revulsion.

“Fuck you,” Dean says, but it sounds like a sob. “You sick son of a bitch."

“There you go,” Sam taps Dean’s cheek with a patronizing pat. “You’re welcome, by the way. What a good boy you are.”

And then the hand in his hair tightens to agonizing, and Dean’s head is slammed into the counter with a brutal efficiency. The pain doesn’t even have time to register before Dean’s world is switched off like a lamp.

~~~

Dean comes to slowly, and knows immediately that he’s tied up.

Dad used to do this sometimes. Dean would fall asleep in a motel bed, and Dad would move him to a chair, tie him up by his wrists and ankles. Dean would wake up mid-abduction, and Dad would always say, “They have Sam. You’ve got five minutes to get out.”

The first few times, Dean would thrash and scream, but as he got older, he got good at it. Really good. He could get out of zip ties in five minutes. He could get out of rope in three.

The problem, Dean realizes now as he tries his binds, is that Sam is the one who tied him up. 

Dad made Dean train Sam as soon as he turned nine. Sam was a heavy sleeper, and would often wake up hours after Dean had tied him up. Sam knows exactly which knots Dean knows how to get out of, because he had taught Sam exactly how to break out of them.

It’s rope, Dean can tell, thick and scraggly and coarse. Probably rope brought from outside, the wharf. Dean must’ve been out for only a minute or so, because Sam is bent near his ankles, securing the final knot tying Dean’s ankles to the chair. 

The rest of it comes back to him: Sam’s heat, the kiss, his head cracking against the bar. The kiss.

Kiss.

Dean’s head explodes in pain, throbbing audibly in his ears. Fuck. Ow.

“Aw,” Sam is looking up at Dean, hands coming away from his bindings. His hand rubs up Dean’s thigh as he stands. Dean flinches. “Finally, you’re awake baby. We were getting worried.”

Sam rounds him, and Dean turns his head to follow. It’s then that he realizes that he’s sitting on a chair that’s tied around one fo the bar’s structural posts. It’s too big to see Sam when he walks around it, so Dean whips his head to the other side so he can see Sam when he comes around the other side.

“Y’know. That’s the second time in a day I’ve knocked you out like a little bitch. You gettin’ weaker, Dean-o? Or are you just alright with Sammy throwing you around like a Barbie doll?”

Dean jerks back as the demon leans down into his space, presses their cheeks together. Dean doesn’t say anything, just tries pulling at his wrists again. No give. Dean’s fingers run along the knots, trying to find out what Sam did, as the demon speaks again.

“Nothing to say to me? I’m kind of hurt, honestly.” A zing and a thud, and Dean sees a bowie knife an inch deep in the wood next to his face. Dean shuts his eyes tight.

“What gave it away?” The demon in Sam asks finally, and he pulls up a stool so he can lean into Dean’s personal space. Dean can feel his breath on his neck, and pulls away as far as his binds will allow him. “Was it the crying? I felt there like it was getting to be a little too much, but this kid is like a damn water treatment plant.”

“It was probably the voluntary incest.” Dean says casually, and finds the ends of one of the ropes. He trails his fingers over the complicated tangle of knots. “Pro-tip for future possession-slash-abductions: don’t start making out with direct family members. They might get a little suspicious.”

Sam snorts, and he stands up again, leaning forward as he stands up. 

“I know that’s not what weirded you out, freak.” He says, as he moves to stand in front of Dean. He raises a cocky brow, tosses hair out of his eyes. He leans forward, placing two hands on Dean’s lap so he can lean in close, whispers in his ear. “You’ve been wanting to fuck Sam since he got out of diapers.”

Dean shudders from the intimacy of it, can feel the moisture of his breath in his ear, the hair tickling his cheeks, the quiet rasp of his voice.

“You’re sick.”

Dean feels his quiet laugh, and his thumbs start to work a slow circle on the inside of Dean’s thigh. Dean jerks, and drops the edge of the rope. Fuck. He scrambles to find it again as Sam leans back a little. He tilts his head, like he’s considering Dean’s pathetic fucking face. Dean doesn’t even want to know what he looks like right now. He feels like he’s been gutted.

“Nope, that’s all you, I’m afraid. I can smell lust, y’know. Seven deadly sins are still sins. You reek of it whenever this kid wears short sleeves. Whenever you look at him, Hell!” Sam’s nose wrinkles, and Dean remembers kissing that wrinkle because it looked weird when they were both young enough to be allowed affection, when Mom would coo over it. “It’s like I’m choking on it.”

Dean’s having a fucking conniption. If the demon knows, if it’s saying this, does Sam know? God, god, fuck—

“Is lying like a sport for you? How do you score it? The more bullshit, the better?” Dean says, and can hear the way his own voice shakes. “Can I join? Do you have a league?”

The demon continues like he hasn’t heard Dean, and leans all the way back. Dean tries to hide his gasp for air. His head swims as he tries jerking on the ropes again. If he could only get the knife next to his head—

“You and Sammy are so incestuous I should start calling you European royalty.” The demon says, casually pacing around the post that Dean is tied to.

“Hmm.” Dean cocks his head thoughtfully. “Nah. That was bad. Three out of ten stars. Don’t worry kid, you’ll get ‘em next time.” 

“Hah!” The demon throws Sam’s head back, and Dean’s stomach curdles at how dead the laugh sounds. “You’re fun. No wonder this kid is so obsessed with you.”

Dean doesn’t say anything to that, and lets his hands fall limp again as Sam gets behind him. When Sam rounds the corner again, Dean starts back up. He manages to wiggle the end of the rope through one loop.

The demon, apparently, annoyed that Dean doesn’t have a witty retort, continues baiting him.

“It’s all I hear all day,” Sam’s voice changes, and it’s Sammy, just Sam, his pitch and his tone and his timbre. “‘Stay away from Dean,’ ‘I swear, Dean’s going to fucking kill you,’ ‘Dean,’ ‘Dean,’ Dean.’” The demon rolls Sam’s eyes, looking down at Dean with a curled lip. “It’s very annoying.”

The demon strides forward again, and Dean presses farther into the post, hoping uselessly to keep distance between them.

“C’mon big brother,” Sam says, and suddenly—Sam sits astride his lap, hands coming up to cradle Dean’s face between his hands. “Stop ignoring me. I promise I’ll be good.”

His voice is a purr, and Dean can’t help but shudder under his touch. Every point of contact—his ankles brushing Dean’s, his long legs keeping Dean caged, his fingers rubbing along Dean’s jaw—is aflame. Dean is choking on it, gagging with it, unable to catch a full breath.

It’s not Sam, it’s not Sam, he tells his body, but his heart is beating SamSamSamSam, and his skin is prickling, and he feels ready to explode. Everything is happening both in slow-motion and in fast-forward, speeding up and slowing down as the demon searches his face with Sam’s eyes.

Dean struggles against his binds uselessly, trying to yank his face out of his hands.

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” The demon coos, and that tone in Sam’s voice—Stop! Stop!—Dean’s head is screaming. “Don’t you want me anymore?”

“Sam, fight it.” Dean begs, hoping against hope that somewhere, somehow, his brother is fighting in there. He can’t fight this alone, can’t do this— “I know you’re in there, Sammy. Fight it!”

“Hmm.” The demon tilts his head as if disappointed. “Sammy’s not here right now. I’ve got him pretty deep in there.” The demon taps Sam’s temple. Dean wants to spit at him.

“I keep trying to feed him that one memory of you two skinny dipping in that motel pool in Tampa before Dad died.” The tender hand on his jaw turns into a claw, and Sam’s nails dig into his neck painfully. The demon uses his neck to pull him forward, the grip iron as he hauls him forward. The words are spoken directly into his ear. “He was choking on how much he wanted you. It sickened him. Because at the end of it, it’s your fault.”

Dean can’t help the punched-out noise he makes, as the moist air of Sam’s breath brushes Dean’s ear. This is a fucking nightmare. Dean doesn’t know what’s happening, his brain is spinning, all he can feel is Sam on his lap. It’s not Sam, but it’s Sam’s body, Sam’s voice whispering filth in his ear, truth or not.

His words are a knife carving into Dean’s ribcage. Dean is in agony. His vision is blurring at the edges. 

“You made me like this.” Sam’s voice hisses, and the nails dig further into Dean’s throat. “Made me in your image. Forced this sick want on me.” Sam pulls back, and he tilts Dean’s head up so their lips are inches apart. His eyes are glossy, glowing almost in the dim light. “Why, Dean? Is it so I couldn’t leave again?”

“Stop!” Dean can’t help but cry out, jerking under his hold again. It’s like the demon had crawled into Dean’s worst nightmares and dragged something out. Dean’s going to be sick. If Sam’s out, if Sam can see this, then he knows. It’s over. Everything Dean has fought for, years and years of hiding and biting down his want and hating and hating and hating himself is for nothing. Sam knows. He must. Dean gags.

The demon raises up on Dean’s lap, and Dean thinks it’s over, but it’s only so he can scoot closer. A hand fists in Dean’s hair and yanks his head back, slamming his head painfully into the post. Stars blur the world into a white haze. A thumb comes up and presses down on Dean’s bottom lip. A nail catches on Dean’s teeth.

“This is the only chance you’ll have to touch him like this—the only way he’d let you.” The demon whispers, but Dean can feel the words down to his marrow. Dean’s been burned and scratched and bitten and mauled, but this—Sam’s finger on his lip, his thighs cradling Dean’s waist, his nails scratching at Dean’s scalp—hurts more than anything he’s ever felt. “Don’t you want it? I can feel you.”

Sam’s hips shift and Dean knows he can feel Dean’s dick, hard and aching and full. Dean’s going to be fucking sick. White, hot horror flushes through him, full-bodied and bone-shattering. Shame floods Dean’s eyes with tears.

“I’m sorry, Sam.” Dean mutters, over and over and over again. “I’m sorry, I’m—“

Sam’s mouth crashes down onto his. It’s both better and worse than the first time. This time, Dean knows it’s coming, can brace himself. Sam’s thumb is already in his mouth and the demon uses it to pry open his jaw, to curl his tongue against Dean’s possessively.

Dean closes his eyes tight, feels his mouth move just a touch and he hates himself for it. It’s Sam. Sam is kissing him, and Dean is abusing every second. Wants it, in a way Sam never will.

Sam’s mouth is warm. Dean’s eyes are closed so tightly that coloured splashes of light dance behind them.

Sam pulls away with a gasp, and it’s a relief and torture as their lips part with a slick noise. Sam’s eyes are wide, and he looks down with a look of sick delight. Dean tilts his face away, gasping for breath over his left shoulder. His hands—Dean realizes that he had balled them so tightly that his own short nails had cut his palm. The cuts drag across the straggly rope and the pain grounds him.

His head is swimming, fuzzy, thoughts spinning. 

“Now…this thing is fun.” Sam’s voice coos, and Dean looks back without turning his head, thinking the demon is talking about his cock burning a hole into his thigh, but the demon is looking down at Sam’s body. It makes a tsk-ing noise, palming Sam’s own pants and—

Dean’s brain shuts down. Fully off. He has no thoughts in his head as the demon’s hand moves away, and Sam’s dick is straining against the zipper of his jeans. It’s not the first time Dean has seen his brother pitch a tent in his pants, but this is the first time that it’s been inches away from Dean’s own skin. 

This is the first time that it’s for him. And it’s not even Sam. Dean bites down on a wail, as the demon says chidingly, “Yikes, get a handle on yourself, Sam.”

Dean goes ballistic. He throws his body back against the post, then lunges forward, straining his arms as much as he can. “You get your fucking hands off of him, ya’ hear me?” 

Dean kicks out with his legs, but his thighs moving only succeeds in moving the demon closer, sliding Sam forward on his lap until they’re pressed chest-to-chest, and Dean can feel—Dean can feel—

“I’ll fucking kill you.” Dean snarls. The demon makes a sympathetic little noise, like it’s comforting a child.

“Hmm. But big brother,” Sam tilts his face down, and the demon twists his face into Sam again, voice going Sam, Sam, Sam, and Dean wants to scream—“won’t you take care of me? Please, Dean, I need—“

The back door slams open, and Sam is flying off of him, yanking the knife out of the post above Dean’s head and whirling around.

Jo stands outlined in the doorway, shotgun held at her shoulder. Dean lets out a strangled noise of relief-agony-joy as Jo advances into the room. Her eyes never leave Sam. She’s smaller than him by a goddamn lot, but she seems to loom in the room, strong and unmovable and Dean could just cry.

“Hey, Sam.” Jo says, tossing her hair out of her eyes. “You're about the last person I'd expect to see.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, just turns and runs. Dean jerks his head around in just enough time to see him crash through the window, tumbling into the night. It’s over.

It’s over.

~~~

It’s telling—it’s really fucking telling—that the best part of Dean’s day is getting shot through the shoulder.

Jo grumbles as she patches him up, and Dean takes a twisted solace in the sharp jabs of a needle through his skin.

“God, you're a butcher.” Dean complains, because that’s what he thinks he would normally do in this situation. He doesn’t know how much Jo saw—how much she heard—so he’s trying to play it as close to his chest as he can.

Jo rolls her eyes, shooting him an irritated look.

“You're welcome.”

Dean’s skin is itching, it’s pulling too-tight on his bones, and not just because he’s been steadily bleeding for the past hour or so. Sam—the demon riding him—is out there.

“All right, are we done?” Dean tries pulling away, but she jerks him back to sitting.

“Would you give me two minutes to patch you up?” She snaps. “You can't help Sam if you're bleeding to death.”

Dean’s antsy, can’t take sitting here for much longer so he grabs the bottle of whisky on the table and takes four huge gulps of it. It burns the way Dean thinks hellfire must. Jo starts layering tape and gauze over his shoulder.

“So, how did you know?” She asks cautiously. "That he was possessed?”

Dean tenses.

"Uh, ah, I didn't, I just knew that it couldn't have been him.” He scratches the back of his head. He can’t look at her knowing eyes. Silence stretches between them. Dean itches to take the bottle back, finish it off.

But he needs his brain if he wants to find Sam, so he folds his fingers into his palm and rubs over the scabbing-over cuts in the skin there.

“Hey, Dean.”

When Dean looks up, Jo is looking at him the way that one looks at a child after a temper tantrum, or a ticking time bomb. 

“Demons…Demons lie. That wasn’t Sam.” She looks like she wants to say more, but her words trail off.

Fuck. Fuck. That means…that means that she heard enough. Dean searches her eyes for disgust, for a sign that she knows what Sam’s words mean, what that means Dean must feel. But he can only find a resigned sort of pity.

Dean remembers now, as he looks down in Jo’s face, what Sam—what the demon—had said.

She’s in love with you, y’know.

Jo had been a little sweet on him, but Dean…

Dean tries to picture if he had met Jo when he were younger. If her father were still alive, the Winchesters might have crashed with the Harvelles one summer. Would it have changed anything?

If Dean committed to anything with her, it would always be a lie. At least a little bit. Dean could sleep with her—Dean wants to sleep with her—but he could never give her more. She deserves more. The girls in Dean’s life, they were temporary. Always moving, always being left behind. Dean couldn’t sit down and love someone, not while Sam was in the picture. Dean doesn’t have any of himself left over.

And how twisted—how fucked-up is that—that this gorgeous, hilarious, fierce woman could stand him—could want him—and Dean…Dean can’t? Dean can’t.

He wants to. He wants to want Jo. He could, maybe. In another life.

Dean’s got other priorities. Dean’s got…Dean has Sam.

Dean clears his throat.

“Well, so far he's been going after the nearest hunter, so…closest one I know lives in South Dakota.”

Jo doesn’t seem disappointed in the topic change. She stands up, brushes invisible dirt off her jeans, and nods.

“Okay good, I'm done. Let's go."

Dean stands up and pulls his flannel back on. “Yeah, you’re not coming.”

Jo whirls on him, and there’s that adorable fury again. Dean wants to smile. He wishes that things were different, for a second, before he pushes it down.

“The hell I'm not. I'm a part of this now.”

Dean crosses his arms. She deserves more than this.

“I can't say it more plain than this. You try to follow me and I'll tie you to that post and leave you here. This is my fight. I'm not getting your blood on my hands. That's just how it's gonna be.”

Dean moves towards the door, and doesn’t hear her follow him.

“Wait,” Jo calls, and Dean turns just in enough time to catch a pill bottle that she’s thrown at him. “Take these, they'll help with the pain.”

Dean nods, and he looks up at her. Her jaw is set, her eyes are fierce. She knows. Jo nods. She knows.

“Thanks.” Dean opens the door, and the air outside bathes him in the wet, tacky scent of the lake. “I'll call you later, okay?”

And Dean leaves her there, in the ruins of his own mess.

~~~

Dean gets the call while he’s stuck in Minneapolis rush hour.

“I’ve got him.” Bobby says, and a tight, frantic knot in Dean’s chest slackens.

“Thank god,” Dean breathes.

“God got nothin’ to do with it, boy,” Bobby snaps, and Dean can hear something heavy dragging on the floor in the background.

“I called you fourteen times, ever heard of picking up and saving me the heart attack?” Dean snipes back, less irritation and more relief. If Bobby argues back, they’ll be alright.

“Little asshole clipped my telephone cord. It took me twenty goddamn minutes to figure out how to wire ‘em back together.”

Dean sighs in relief. Thank god that crotchety old bastard is so resilient. Dean won’t even let himself linger on the universe they just split from where Sam had gotten to Bobby. Dean squints as a blinding beam of sunlight burns his retinas, but feels like the luckiest damn son of a bitch anyway.

“Okay, David Lightman, I’m headed through Minneapolis now. I’ll be there…” Dean props the phone against his cheek and shoulder, and squints at his watch. “By noon.”

“You know I ain’t got no idea what you’re gabbing about, son. I’ll see you then. I’ll put something on the stove for ya.”

Dean’s stomach rumbles.

“You’re the best, Bobby.”

“I know.” Click.

Dean smiles for the first time in probably a week and a half.

When Dean finally rolls into Singer Salvage, he’s running on fumes. The only sleep he had gotten for the past…hmm…forty hours were the few times Sam had knocked him out. That first time had been a good six hours or so, but Dean still feels like shit warmed over.

He lets himself into Bobby’s front door, and sure enough, Bobby’s frying some bacon on his stove.

“I got ham in the fridge.” Bobby points the spatula over his shoulder. Dean walks in hesitantly, but sees Sam slumped, unconscious, in a chair in his living room. He’s under a devil’s trap, and wrapped in so much rope that Dean can’t see most of his chest.

“Y’know, Bobby?” Dean asks, shuffling over to the fridge and gathering the necessary weapons for making a ham sandwich. He kicks the fridge door closed and moves over to the kitchen table.

Bobby hums.

“I’ve never seen you and Chuck Norris in the same room at the same time.” Dean says sagely, and Bobby snorts.

“I prefer Jean-Claude Van Damme.” Bobby says, sliding some bacon onto a plate.

“Who are you?” Dean demands incredulously as Bobby turns around with his bounty.

“An appreciator of shotokan karate, ya little twerp.” Bobby pulls a flask out of his back pocket. “Speakin’ of secret identities,” He says, and shakes it in Dean’s direction.

Dean takes it and throws some of it back. Water. Holy water. Dean shrugs, and smacks his lips when he’s done.

“Fair enough.”

They eat their meal in silence, and Dean takes a proffered mug of coffee with grateful fingers.

Bobby doesn’t ask a lot of questions, and Dean is so grateful for him that he could cry.

In the end, they don’t have to wait long for Sam to wake up. Any levity that Bobby’s presence could offer fades slowly, as they stand and gather their materials. Dean blesses a few buckets of holy water while Bobby gathers the rest.

Sam wakes slowly, and Dean knows him so well that the second his breathing changes, he nods to Bobby solemnly.

He smacks Sam lightly on the face.

“Hey.” He snaps. The demons rolls his head, and blinks awake. He tests his restraints, and notices the devil’s trap on the ceiling. When he looks back down, all traces of Sam are gone.

This is just demon, smug and confident and smarmy. Dean’s skin is cold.

“Dean.” Sam says, chidingly again. His nose wrinkles, like he’s smelling something foul. “Back from the dead. Getting to be a regular thing for you, isn't it? Like a cockroach.”

“How about I smack that smartass right out of your mouth?” Dean snaps. Bobby stands behind Sam, and Dean is so relieved by his support that he forgets. For one second—just long enough to mess up—he forgets.

Sam’s mouth twists into a knowing smile.

“Oh, careful, now.” Sam flattens his palms out, as if showcasing something. He raises a brow at Dean, and his next works are slow and silky. “Wouldn't want to bruise this fine packaging.”

Dean flushes hot, and he can feel a spike of panic in his chest. He reaches for the first bucket of holy water, and throws it at the demon, not waiting for any other taunts to come out of his mouth. Dean looks up quickly at Bobby, who’s looking at Dean in concerned apprehension.

Dean cringes, tries to focus, as Sam screams and fizzles. It should be disconcerting to see Sam like this, but this is barely Sam. Dean has to remember that. He needs to remember that.

“Feel like talking?” Dean asks blithely. The demon in Sam’s body rolls his head back and shakes the hair out of his face. When he looks back at Dean, it’s with a look of undisguised hate. That shakes Dean a little, has only seen Sam like this in some very talented nightmares.

“Sam's still my meat puppet.” He spits. “I’ll make him bite off his tongue.”

This is the first act of real violence the demon has threatened, and it genuinely takes Dean aback for a second. He hadn’t thought when he had been tied up that the demon would hurt him, as fucking absurd as it sounds. And Steve Wandell, the body back in Colorado, he had thought that was Sam.

Dean feels his lip curl in disgust.

“No, you won't be in him long enough.” Dean looks up, and nods at Bobby. “Bobby.”

Bobby starts rapidly chanting the exorcism, and Dean leans up into Sam’s face, getting close and personal. It should feel victorious, reclaiming his dominance over a pest. But Dean should have realized that it would just feel like standing over his little brother.

“See, whatever bitch-boy master plan you demons are cooking up? You're not getting Sam.” Dean has never meant anything more, lets the unease at standing over his brother that’s now begun moaning in low, agonized spurts turn the embers into an inferno.

Dean can feel every emotion of the last few days melt and reshape into rage. The terror of Sam being gone. The guilt over his own part in that. The shock of seeing Wandell’s body. The resolution of cleaning Sam from the scene. The hot-panic-guilt-arousal of everything that happened in that bar. Dean shovels it all—transmutes it all—into resolution, resolve, devotion. 

Dean was built for one purpose—every training drill and drop of blood and bead of sweat and sleepless night and the very marrow that makes his bones, the very cells in his blood arch towards one purpose, one person. Sam. Dean was built to protect Sam. 

His shoulders were formed just wide enough to carry this family on his shoulders, and Dean would carry Sam out of every burning building they called home, even if they were the ones that set the fire.

“You understand me?” Dean spits. “'Cause I'm gonna kill every one of you first.”

He has never meant anything more. Dean has just the hands he was born with, just the hands that took his first gun from Dad at age seven. But he’ll rip hearts out, shred skin from bones. He won’t hesitate. 

“The master plan?” The demon repeats, and it tilts Sam’s head as it stares up into Dean’s face. “Ha! I don’t give a fuck about the master plan. This is all personal. Revenge, good and bloody!”

Its voice had escalated into a scream, and Bobby had to shout just to be heard. A smirk blooms across the demon’s face, and it sends shivers down Dean’s back.

“And I’ve learned a few new tricks since I saw you last, baby.” The demon’s head snaps down, and starts muttering frantically. The fireplace explodes into manic life behind Sam, and the flames roar as they leap to thrice their height. The room starts to shake, and Dean stumbles as he tries to brace himself.

It’s like the very Earth has turned into the sea, and Dean tumbles as he tries to get his legs working on a roiling wave.

“Bobby! What’s happening?” Dean cries as plaster starts to rain from the ceiling. Sam is still muttering, quick and fast and without intonation. Bobby’s eyes fix on Sam’s arm, and realization snaps across his face.

“It’s a binding link—like a lock!” Bobby points at a circle—a burn—on Sam’s forearm, and Dean realizes that this is the first time he’s seen Sam’s bare skin there. His jacket must have covered it up. “He’s locked himself inside Sam’s body! We need to—“

Dean doesn’t find out what they need to do, because the ceiling cracks with one, fatal snap. The devil’s trap is broken. When Sam looks up, his eyes are pure black, endless void.

Dean has woken up into one of his nightmares.

“That’s better.” Sam says, and his head snaps to the left. Bobby goes flying, slamming into a bookshelf with a sickening crunch. Dean doesn’t have time to react before he’s being thrown up an invisible force back against the wall. Dean hears the demon approaching, crunching over glass and splinters of wood. He reaches for his flask of holy water, but it had been thrown out of his pocket when the room had started shaking.

He’s defenseless, he—Dean lunges for a knife that’s sitting on the bookcase to his right, but he’s slammed back into the wall by the demon, who crouches in front of him.

“Dean, Dean, Dean. I thought we had something.” The demon pouts. He shakes his head, and grabs Dean up by the shirt.

Dean flinches, as the demon’s legs slide against his. It’s got him pinned to the wall, half-crouched over him as he struggles to get his legs underneath him. As it is, only his shoulder blades are pressed against the wall, and his neck is craned at an uncomfortable angle just so he can look up into Sam’s face.

The demon’s arm rears back, and there’s nowhere for Dean to go as Sam’s fist comes down and cracks across his face.

“That’s for sending me to Hell.”

The demon rears back again. Crack.

“That’s for my father.”

Crack.

“That one’s for Hell again.”

Crack.

“And that one, my very special boy, is because I’m fucking sick of your melodrama.”

Dean’s world is a blur of colors, blood spilling out of his nose and flooding his mouth. Dean can’t feel anything but his surely broken nose, can’t smell or taste anything but blood, and can’t see anything through the filmy haze of tears that flood his eyes.

It takes him a second to get the world together again, and he spits out a mouthful of blood onto Bobby’s carpet. Sorry, Bobby.

Puzzle pieces click together in his mind, and Dean looks up at the demon again. He searches its face for something, and says,

“Sending you to…Meg?”

Meg smiles sharply, and Sam’s face looks all wrong, bent out of shape under that much malice.

“No. Not anymore. Now I'm Sam.” Meg hauls him closer, and Dean’s lip throbs, spilling blood down his chin as it splits anew with the lolling of his head on his neck.

“By the way. I saw your Dad there—he says ‘howdy.’” Meg slams him back against the wall, and Dean manages to struggle a little. It’s a low blow, sitting acrid and agonizing in his gut. Dean tries to muster the energy for a response, but Meg slaps him across the face, stinging and more painful than a punch would have been, as the cuts on his face shriek in agony.

“All that I had to hold onto, was that I would climb out one day, and that I was going to torture you. Nice and slow. Like pulling the wings off an insect.”

Meg digs Sam’s thumb into Dean’s bullet wound, and Dean cries out in anguish. It’s like someone had shoved a hot poker into his shoulder—Dean tastes ash. Blood pours anew down his arm, and Dean can barely feel the hot rush of liquid spilling across his chest through the blinding waves of hurt. Dean writhes as she digs her thumb in deeper.

“But whatever I do to you, it's nothing compared to what you do to yourself, is it? I can see it in your eyes, Dean.” Dean scrabbles for Sam’s arm and tries to pry his arm back, but Sam is immovable. “You’re worthless. You couldn't save your Dad, and deep down…you know that you can't save your brother. They'd have been better off without you.”

Dean bites off another cry of pain, as Meg slowly slides her finger out of him. It feels strange and awful, something moving out of somewhere nothing should have ever been. Her thumb is gory when it comes up to rest on Dean’s face. Dean doesn’t even have enough energy to jerk away from her touch.

“Even today, I barely had a lift a finger to torture you. You did it all to yourself, like a good little boy.” She pinches his cheek, and the cut on his cheek drips hot, salty blood into his own mouth. “I think we’ve made some real progress today, Dean. What do you think?”

“Fuck you.” Dean breathes, hatred bubbling in his gut. He doesn’t think he’s ever hated another being more, except maybe Yellow Eyes. He makes every promise he can think of, prays to any god that’s still got his number. I will make her pay. I will flay her alive. I will eviscerate her.

“Let’s recap: You want to fuck the daylights out of your own sweet baby brother. Can you imagine what that did to him?” She pouts exaggeratedly, and she slips some of Sam’s voice into her words next. The effect makes Dean’s vision roll in nausea. “Realizing that his big brother, the only person in his life that he felt loved him unconditionally, the only person he felt truly safe with, wanted to screw his lights out? He felt so violated! So alone!”

Sam’s face twists into an expression of scandal, of hurt. She pries Dean’s hand away from his wound, and presses both of his palms to Sam’s chest. Dean’s blood smears them both, dragging wet, heavy handprints to Sam’s forearms, his sternum. Dean can feel Sam’s heartbeat, as fast as a rabbit despite Meg’s calm exterior.

Is that Sam, somewhere in there? Controlling his heart-rate, if nothing else? Dean closes his eyes against another almost-blackout wave of pain.

“But then, oh ho! Then, he started to look at you and realize that this sick fucking thing you wanted—you poisoned him with it, too!”

She moves Dean’s hands up to her neck, trailing his fingers slowly over Sam’s pecs, his collarbones. Dean’s going to be sick. It’s every awful, dangerous thought he had ever had about himself.

Dean wonders if that’s possible, if she can read his mind. Dean can barely think through the haze of agony spiking through his torso. She had back in the bar that she can smell sin, can taste it. Loving Sam is the worst sin he’s committed. Dean’s been rotted from the inside out with this, with this want. 

“You’re miasmic, Dean! You break everything you touch!” She crows, and Dean knows that he makes a noise.

“I’m going to fucking kill you.” Dean swears, gasping for a breath that won’t relieve. He feels ready to burst, like he’s being held underwater. His lungs are going to explode and he can’t get any air into his lungs. He can’t—

“He might want you, but he fucking hates you. You make him sick.” 

Dean fights against her hold again, but her grip is iron, and Dean’s losing blood fast. Three concussions layered on top of each other aren’t doing him any favors, and Dean wonders if she’s using her powers to make the room shake again as Dean bucks under her wildly.

He’s fighting with everything he has, praying, instead, to Sam.

Sam, if you’re in there. Please. Please. Don’t be listening. Help me. I’m sorry. Sam. Fight this.  

Meg suddenly moves her gored hand back to Dean’s shoulder, and Dean inhales sharply as he feels her thumb swipe over the wound again. Dean fights to get her face back into focus, which takes longer than it should.

It feels like he’s looking at her over a fire—Sam’s face is waving in and out of focus. The fire is still roaring in the grate behind them, and Dean is sweating, over-hot as the sharp, burning pain of his blood rushing out of his nose, out of his lip, out of his shoulder. Rushing to repair wounds that will never heal, not now.

“Awh. You’re all lopsided.” Meg tilts Sam’s head, and bangs that Dean has spent months teasing Sam over fall into hazel eyes that Dean loves more than anything. A small, earnest smile makes Dean’s blood turn to ice. "I’ve got something for ya’ big guy. One more little gift for my favorite inmate.” 

Dean jerks away, but there’s no where for him to go, no escape, no—Sam leans down and bites hard on the side of Dean’s neck, the opposite side from where his bullet wound gushes blood like a fountain.

He bites down, hard, and Dean bellows. The sickening sharp sting of teeth melts into the sucking, wet pressure of tongue, of suction. She’s leaving a hickey, Dean thinks wildly, and if it weren’t the end of the world, Dean would probably laugh. Dean can hear Sam’s breath loud in his hears, can hear the wet-hot-slick noises of his mouth as he works the delicate skin of Dean’s neck between teeth and tongue. It’s intimate, more intimate than almost anything that’s happened in the past day, because this will last.

Dean will wear this, a mark made by Sam’s body, on his neck. Dean shudders under Sam’s hands, tears springing to his eyes and trickling out of the corners. This is all you’ll ever get, a taunting paraphrase of Meg’s words from the night before.

Dean’s chest hitches as his breath gets caught in his throat. She’s too close, everything's too much. Sam’s hair tickles his neck, and Dean can feel the plush skin of his bottom lip flipping out as he drags his mouth up, can feel the silky wetness of it as he parts his teeth around Dean’s carotid artery.

For one second, Dean thinks she’s going to bite down. For one second, Dean is okay with it. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if he’s forced to live with the look in Sam’s eyes when he realizes that he left a hickey, an outline of teeth, on his brother’s neck. When he realizes that Dean wishes he would leave more. That if one thing, just one, were changed about the circumstances, Dean would be arching up into his body, urging him on with hands and breathlessness and words. Dean has always been desperate to be owned by Sam, to be possessed, and this is no different.

“Prison of your own making, you poor, sick son of a bitch.” Meg hisses in his ear, and Dean is shaking, trembling under her hands—Sam hands—as they circle his neck.

Dean thinks that she’s going to choke him out, maybe kill him, and fuck—Bobby’s in the room. In everything that had happened, Sam’s breath in his face, his mouth on his neck, Meg’s hands cracking across his face, he had forgotten.

Bobby—Did Bobby see—Did Bobby hear—

Dean sees him struggle to his feet over Sam’s shoulder, looking down at Dean and Sam with a horrified fascination. His eyes are wide, and he stumbles over to the fireplace. Please have a plan. Please have a plan.

Dean almost wants to shout—as he’s seized with a realization—Don’t hurt him. Because this is still Sam, and even as he’s ready to kill him, Dean’s got one purpose.

He loses sight of Bobby behind Sam’s hulking figure, and Sam’s fingers trail from off of Dean’s neck to grab at the leather cord of the amulet. As if Meg had shot him again, Dean goes completely still. He looks up at her, at Sam’s face, eyes wide.

Sam’s pupils are blown, and he’s breathing fast. He looks down at the amulet in his hands, and then brings it up to his mouth. Dean thinks he’s going to snap it off of his neck, but the pull is gentle, as the cord cuts into the back of his neck. Dean has no choice but to lean forward if he doesn’t want it to break, as Meg kisses it gently. 

She lets Dean slump against the wall again, but plays idly with the pendant. She turns it over slowly in Sam’s fingers.

“He loves this thing on you.” She says conversationally, and what the fuck is happening? Dean braces himself, ready for another blow, but none comes. Meg twists Sam’s index finger into the leather cord, watching Sam’s finger go pale as the blood is cut off.

“It’s like a collar for us to jerk you around on. You’d do anything I asked, huh? Just because I wear your brother’s dewy eyes.” She makes her eyes go wide, and Dean can see the colors of Sam’s irises again around the thick circles of black. “Bark, dog.”

Suddenly, Bobby’s behind Sam. Dean watches in horror as Bobby raises a poker, jamming it forward. From where Sam’s forearm is stretched between them, as he holds the amulet, Bobby reaches the burn mark.

The hot, acrid smell of burning flesh surrounds Dean as the poker slams down on the mark, as Sam arches and screams in fury.

The amulet drops from nerveless fingers and Sam’s head snaps back and a tunnel of sulfurous, rotting black smoke pours from his throat, tunneling through the ceiling and out of sight.

Sam slumps to the side, like a puppet with its strings cut. Dean leans over, a hollow echo of what should have been fear pang in his chest, but Dean is so rung out that almost nothing registers.

“Sammy?” Dean’s voice is wrecked, and he winces as his movement pulls on his gaping shoulder wound.

Sam’s eyes flutter open, and his brow twists in pain. It’s Sam. It’s Sammy. Dean doesn’t know how he knows, but it’s the pull again, the knowledge that Dean could find Sam anywhere. Dean scrabbles for the collar of his shirt, and winds a shaking fist into it. 

Sam’s wide eyes flick to Bobby above him, sliding over to Dean leaning forward into his space. He searches Dean’s face for a second, before asking:

“What did I miss?”

Dean winds back, and punches him across the face as he can manage. Sam cries out, jerking back, and Dean lets him, hand sliding out of his balled-t-shirt. Dean avoids Bobby’s eyes as he slumps back to the floor, closing his eyes tight against the pain.

~~~

Dean doesn’t look Bobby in the eye as they leave.

Bobby had asked about Wandell, about what Sam and Dean had known. Dean had covered quickly, holding a pack of peas to his head, as it had begun to throb.

Despite how fucking tired he is, Dean knows that he can’t sleep for at least another twelve hours. Concussions and sleep don’t mix, and Dean’s been knocked around so many times today that he won’t be surprised if the inside of his dome looks like a snow globe.

It makes him irritable, snappish. Sam sits like a kicked puppy, curling away from Dean at the kitchen table as Bobby gives his warning.

“Anything I saw today,” Bobby murmurs as they walk out of the door. Sam is already standing next to the Impala, and Dean turns back to Bobby outlined in the doorway. “No I didn’t. Ya hear me?”

Dean floods with embarrassment and shame. He can’t look at Bobby’s face.

“Okay,” Dean rasps, and turns away before Bobby can say anything else. Sam gets in the car without a word, and they don’t speak until they reach the highway. Dean doesn’t have any destination in mind, but knows that they’re going west, not east.

If Dean has to step a foot in Minnesota before he dies, he’ll be forced to raze the whole state to the ground.

Sam speaks first.

“I…” He clears his throat. “I was awake for some of it.” 

Dean doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t look at Sam—can’t look at Sam. He knew it. He fucking knew it. It’s over. It’s over. Dean shifts away a little so Sam doesn’t have to be close to him right now.

“For Wandell. I…I remember the how his blood felt on my hands.” 

Dean, shocked, turns back to look at Sam. He had forgotten, in all of this, about the man that died yesterday. The man with a daughter. Dean doesn’t know what that man did to deserve to die. Maybe nothing.

He had a family, but so does Dean. If it came between his family and Dean’s, Dean is glad it was his. He can’t bring himself to be sorry about it, even as Sam looks at him with a weak, watery smile.

Dean can’t say anything to make it better. He can’t fix this for Sam, and it eats him up inside. The road is abandoned at this hour, and Dean feels like he, Sam, and Baby are the only three alive beings in the whole world.

Sam sniffs, shifting in his seat so he can pull out the amulet that Bobby had given them. It’s a star surrounded by iconography of fire, like a devil’s trap. Dean can feel his own sitting heavily in his pocket.

“We should get matching tattoos,” Sam says, trying for levity, holding up the charm at eye-level. It winks in the light from the headlights in front of them. 

Dean winces—he can’t help it. He doesn’t know if he can handle anything else tying him to Sam. He’s already sewn their skin together, tied himself to Sam irrevocably. The suggestion that Sam wants more, even if he doesn’t, even if it’s a joke, Dean can’t handle it. A platonic mark of ownership—another, over the amulet hanging around his neck—Dean isn’t ready for it. Not after today. He needs to hack him and Sam apart, remember what’s him and what pieces he’s built for Sam.

“Sam.” Dean says, maybe a warning, maybe a sigh, maybe just acknowledgement, the need to say it out loud.

Sam lets the amulet fall into his lap. Dean shoots him a look, and sees the split skin where Dean had hit him. He looks back at the road, just as Sam's head turns to look at him.

“I…I was awake in Minnesota.”

Ice in Dean’s veins. Nausea, thick and heavy and oppressive, turns his stomach to rot. The split skin of his knuckles beads blood as Dean tightens his hands on the wheel.

“Don’t."

“No, please. I—I need. I need to say it.” Sam shifts towards Dean a little, and his voice is just the right amount of little-brother-whine that Dean knows he’ll be helpless to stop whatever Sam wants to say.

“I’ll crash this car.” Dean threatens, looking over at Sam, whose eyes are wide and round and dark.

“She was lying.” Sam says, emphasizing every syllable. Dean flinches.

He knows she was lying. Dean knows that Sam doesn’t want him, doesn’t love him. Sam loves him normal—that’s the whole point. That’s the whole reason Dean’s here. He hadn’t thought, not even for a second, that anything that came out of her mouth held any truth at all.

“I know. Fuck. Sam, I know.” The words are a plea, and Dean is actually considering crashing the car, just to escape this situation. Dean can barely hear Sam’s breathing, just his own stupid fucking heart trying to keep him alive, pumping away even thought Dean just wants a break.

“You…” Sam says, cautiously. He clears his throat, shifts, like he's bracing himself. “She was lying about me…about me hating it. Not about the rest.”

Silence. Perfect, total silence.

Dean’s head whips over to look at Sam. He’s put one leg up underneath him so he’s fully facing Dean, bangs falling in his eyes. He’s tense, taut as if pain is shutting him down. But Sam hasn't looked away from him, and they search each other’s eyes for a second. Dean looks back to the road, then back at Sam again.

“I don’t. I don’t hate you, Dean. I—Shit. I’m—“

Dean’s trying to process this. His brain scrambles for some kind of reason, trying to make Sam’s words fit with what he knows. Sam doesn’t hate him. Okay. That tracks, hopefully.

Meg wasn’t wrong…about Sam…about Sam wanting…

“In West Texas. It was me. Kind of. She was inside me, jumped me in the bathroom, but it kept switching. I felt like I was asleep…or sleepwalking. I didn’t—“

Dean’s eyes flick back to the road before he looks back at Sam. He doesn’t want to crash the car, doesn’t want a break anymore, doesn’t want to miss a single twitch on Sam’s face because…because the world is melting.

The world is reshaping around Dean’s desperate clenching fingers, and Dean is squinting, trying to see what shape it’s taking because—because—

Sam’s hand pries one of his off the steering wheel, fingers warm and callused as he rubs a thumb over the fresh blood on Dean’s knuckles.

“I’m in this. I’m okay with this.”

Dean feels like he's been hit—his whole face is numb. He wants—He wants—

“With what?”

Sam shifts closer. “With whatever this is. With whatever we have between us. Love. Family. Whatever it is.”

Dean wants to scream because holy fuck he’s dead. Meg killed him back there, strangled to death, and Dean is dead. Things like this don’t…happen to Dean. Life isn’t good or right or fair, and Sam is looking at him like Dean is holding his heart in his hands. Like Dean has the power to break him.

Dean’s hand is shaking. 

This is his pain-in-the-ass little brother. This is his best friend. This is everything that Dean wants to be, everything he can never achieve. This is Sammy, offering Dean something that Dean never knew how to accept, never thought he’d be allowed.

Dean wants to hit him again.

Dean swallows hard.

“Sammy.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry.”

Sam shifts nervously, lets go of Dean’s hand.

“Nothing to be sorry for. Seriously.”

“Bullshit. I…She wasn’t wrong. I’ve wanted you—Fuck, Sam. Years.”

Dean doesn’t look at Sam when he says it, so he misses the look on Sam’s face when he says,

“Pull the car over.”

Glass in Dean’s throat. Dean swallows. Dean knew it. He knew it. Sam was trying to be kind, trying to let Dean off easy. Dean was right for telling him that festered deeper than Sam had thought, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Sam gets out of the car.

“What? Sam, I—“

“Pull the car over.”

Desperation and aching, throbbing exhaustion almost make Dean burst into tears, right here right now like a goddamn preteen. Dean pulls off to the side of the road, puts the car in park. He turns to Sam slowly, mouth open ready to spill apologies, to beg, but—

“Sammy, I—“

Sam is in his space, and Sam’s mouth slides against his.

Sam is kissing him.

Sam.

This is Sam.

Sam doesn’t open his mouth, just lets their lips move dryly against each other, and that lets Dean know that holy fuck—this is Sam. His lips are cautious, careful, slightly off center to mind Dean’s split lip.

Dean’s thoughts are sliding out of his head, slow and syrupy, and Dean gasps because Sam’s hand moves to his jaw, and Sam tilts his head so he can kiss the corner of Dean’s mouth, the hinge of his jaw.

This is his brother. Sam—Sammy—knob-kneed and snotty nose and big eyes and reaching hands and home. Dean should be disgusted with himself for allowing this, for letting Sam do this.

But Dean’s melted into a pile of goo, along with the rest of reality and every cognizant thought he’s ever had. Things that are good don’t happen to Dean, but they might. 

Somewhere, the This Is Sammy, Don’t Touch Sammy, He Can’t Know alarms are ringing, but Sam’s nose bumps his and Dean could scream with it, with the hot tension building in his chest, slackening just as quick.

It’s like Dean’s finally gotten an answer to questions he’s been screaming since he was born. 

Where do I belong? Who am I? What do I do?

Here. Him. This. 

Dean doesn’t know what to do with this knowledge. Dean doesn’t even know how to breathe.

Sam pulls away, and Dean knows he’s gaping after him. Sam shifts back, putting space between them again that Dean wants to rip to shreds. He doesn’t know if he can stand to be farther than a foot away from Sam ever again.

“There. Okay. We’ve got that figured out.” Sam clears his throat and runs a hand through his own hair, pushing his bangs back on his head. “Can we stop as soon as we get into Wyoming? Like Beulah-soon? You’ve got one hell of a right cross.” Sam touches his own jaw again, and shoots Dean an indecipherable look.

“We can have the conversation about why you wouldn’t shoot me tomorrow.”

This, at least, jerks Dean into action. Dean knows this. He knows an answer to this, despite the fact that he can’t feel his toes and he’s pretty sure the world is a completely different one than the one he lived in three minutes ago.

Dean clears his throat, pulls the car back into drive and slides out onto the highway.

“Dad told me I’d have to kill you if I didn’t save you.” Dean says, and he can feel Sam sag against the door, relief or exhaustion or comfort. Dean shoots him a look out of the corner of his eye. “If it’s the last fucking thing I do—I’m going to save you.”

Sam’s voice is soft when he speaks next.

“I know.”

Dean’s hands tighten on the wheel.

“Sam—“

“Dean.”

Acknowledgement. As proprietary and claiming as his bite on Dean's neck, as his amulet on his neck, as his foot that shifts around the console to press against Dean’s ankle.

Dean exhales. Years of longing and hatred and sick, twisted recrimination start flaking off Dean like drying paint. It’s not enough, it’ll take Dean months, years maybe to parse this out.

But Dean’s only really ever needed three things.

One of them is dead. The other is roaring with life underneath him, taking him to safety. And the other slowly brushes a warm finger across the stinging mark of teeth that he left against Dean’s neck—his and not his all at once.

Dean shudders, licks his lips.

“Yeah. Okay. Okay, Sammy.”