PART ONE: Fixing a Hole
“Before Dad died he -- he told me something - something about you.” Dean shifts awkwardly from foot to foot.
Sam stares. “What? Dean, what did he tell you?”
Dean glances away, then back at Sam, and Sam can sense his nervousness, his discomfort with whatever he’s trying to say. The beauty and tranquility of the landscape around them contrast starkly with the turmoil inside Dean. The brothers have beers in their hands, celebrating the resolution of their most recent case.
“He said that he wanted me to watch out for you, to take care of you.”
“He told you that a million times,” Sam reminds him.
“No, this time was different,” Dean says. “He said that I had to save you.”
Sam feels a shiver go up his spine. “Save me from what?” he asks.
Now Sam can see the pain in Dean’s eyes. “He just said that I had to save you, that nothing else mattered; and that if I couldn't, I'd . . .”
“You'd what, Dean?” Sam’s almost afraid to ask. He thinks he knows.
“That I'd have to kill you.” Dean’s voice almost breaks with anguish. “He said that I might have to kill you, Sammy.”
Sam stares, stunned. But instead of reacting with an outburst of anger, he lowers his eyes and says, “I know.”
“You know?” Dean frowns. “What do you mean you know?”
Sam takes a deep breath. “I -- I had a dream. A nightmare, really. I didn’t think it was an actual premonition until you said what you just said, right here in this very place.” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t believe it.”
“What was your premonition, Sammy?”
“This. This moment. What you just said.” There’s more, but Sam wants to take it slow. It’s too much for one conversation.
When Dean keeps staring at him, half-anguished, half-clueless, Sam throws up his arms.
“In the dream, I got really angry. I’m angry now. I mean, what did Dad know? Why didn’t he tell us? He obviously knew something about the demon that he didn’t tell us, and now we find out -- what? That he thought the demon had plans for me? That I might turn evil and need to be killed? By my own brother?”
“I don’t know,” Dean shakes his head, obviously freaked out. “I don’t know. Your freaky visions, you’re immune to the demon virus...”
Sam glares, accusing. “So you believe him. You think I’m just gonna turn evil?”
“No!” Dean practically shouts. “That’s not gonna happen!”
Sam deflates, helplessness and fear washing over him. He’s had time to adjust to what Dean’s just told him, since he dreamed it last night, but that doesn’t make the reality of it any easier.
“Why didn’t you just tell me, Dean? Why did I have to find out about it in a dream?” Sam gestures helplessly with his beer, fighting back his bitterness and frustration.
“‘Cuz he made me promise not to, Sam,” Dean says, obviously pleading with Sam to understand.
Sam sets his jaw. “Dad never should’ve said that to you,” he growls.
“I wish to God he hadn’t,” Dean acknowledges.
Sam shakes his head, paces away from Dean, stares at the water as if it might give him answers.
“We just gotta figure this out,” he says finally.
“Hey, man,” Dean steps closer, reaching out to touch Sam’s shoulder, and Sam can’t help leaning into the touch, resisting the urge to pull away. “Maybe we should just lay low for a while, huh? Take a little side trip to the Grand Canyon or something?”
Sam can read the panic in Dean’s face as Sam shakes his head.
“No, I gotta figure this out,” he says again. “I need to understand what’s going on. If the demon has plans for me, I need to know what they are.”
“Sam.” Dean’s pleading now. “Please. Let’s just lay low for a while. Please.”
Sam closes his eyes, recalling the images from his dream last night. When he opens his eyes, Dean’s gazing up at him, fear and panic making him seem young and helpless. Vulnerable.
“That wasn’t all,” he says, swallowing hard. “In my dream. There was more. It all starts here, with you telling me what Dad said. I’m supposed to leave, go searching for intel about the other special children, and that leads to -”
He turns and stares across the water, unable to look at his brother’s naked fear and uncertainty.
“To what, Sammy?” Dean steps closer, staring up at Sam with so much love and concern Sam almost can’t bear it. He can feel Dean’s guilt and protectiveness, takes some comfort from it as he steels himself to confess.
“To you selling your soul and going to Hell, Dean,” Sam says, clenching his jaw. “Like Dad did for you.”
Dean’s eyes widen, but Sam can tell he’s not surprised. “To bring Dad back?”
Which is how Sam knows that Dean’s thought about it. Probably already came close to doing it, when he had that crossroads demon trapped down in Mississippi.
“To bring me back,” Sam says, choked with emotion. “I can’t let that happen.”
“Wait a minute.” Dean paces away, then turns back, frowning. “You had a premonition about your own death?”
“Yeah,” Sam breathes. “One of the special children -- one of the other special children -- stabs me in the back.”
“Where was I when that happened?” Dean’s indignation is palpable. He’s freaking out again, but now he’s angry, too.
“We got separated,” Sam says. “You weren’t there. And then you were, but it was too late.”
Dean stares, green eyes huge in his pale face. “Well then, we just have to stick together,” he blurts out. “Not get separated.”
Sam shakes his head. “I don’t think we separated deliberately. I get the feeling something took me.”
“Took you?” Dean breathes, devastated. “Oh man, this thing is spinning outta control. We need to go somewhere, think this through, figure out our next move. This whole thing is getting way too personal.”
Sam swallows. “Yeah.”
He remembers the beer in his hand, raises it to take a sip. He’s relieved to share the burden of his dream visions with his big brother. Glad he didn’t follow his initial urge to keep them secret.
Dean’s protective instincts are turned up to eleven. Dean will help Sam get through this, whatever it is. Sam never doubted that. His faith in Dean has never been broken. Never will be. Not even John’s warning can shake that faith.
Sam loves his brother fiercely. Probably too much. And he’s certain that Dean feels the same way.
Which brings up another thing Sam needs to tell Dean.
But now isn’t the time for that, Sam decides. The time for that particular confession may never come.
At least not today.
Back at the motel, the brothers share a pizza and a bottle of whisky as they discuss their next move.
“We should go to the roadhouse,” Sam says. “Ash can do a search for other special children.”
He can tell Dean doesn’t like the idea, but he doesn’t argue. “Besides Max and Andy, you mean.”
“Yeah.” Sam nods, taking a swig of the whisky. “Who knows how many of us there are? We could start with kids born in 1983 whose mothers died in their nurseries on their sixth-month birthdays. Go from there.”
“What if you three are the only ones?” Dean asks.
Sam shakes his head. “In my dream, there were others. The demon’s trying to create an army.”
“An army of human psychics,” Dean growls. “I hate it. He can’t have you. I won’t let him.”
Sam reaches for Dean’s hand, squeezes it on instinct, then realizes what he’s doing and lets go. He can feel Dean staring at his profile, but he doesn’t return his gaze. Better not to mention it, even with an apology, he decides. Better never tell Dean about that part of his dream.
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam says when he finally lifts his gaze to Dean’s face.
Dean looks away then, muttering, “Sure, Sammy. Of course.”
As he takes a sip of whisky, Sam can see the flush in his brother’s cheeks and the tips of his ears.
Sam’s drowning. He can’t breathe. It’s dark and cold and he’s not alone. There’s someone with him. Some thing. It’s whispering something, deep inside his mind.
Sam struggles to swim to the surface before his lungs burst, but it’s no use. He can’t feel his arms and legs, can’t see even though he knows his eyes are open.
Then he blinks and he’s free, breathing hard with effort. He’s standing next to the car, Dean kneeling in front of him, his face battered and bloodied. Sam’s knuckles ache.
He can still feel the thing inside him, slithering and whispering, struggling to pull him down into the dark water again.
“Dean!” He reaches for his brother, who gazes up at him with his good eye, the one that isn’t swollen shut.
Sam sees the blood on his own knuckles, knows he did this to Dean. It was his hands beating the life out of his brother. The thing inside him used his body to do this.
Memories of kissing those swollen lips crowd forward, inappropriately and randomly, making Sam’s body flush with need.
“It’s okay,” he gasps, voice wrecked with his earlier efforts to scream, to break free of the thing holding on inside him. “It’s gonna be okay. I got him.”
Then he feels himself falling, falling endlessly, mortally. He knows he won’t survive the fall. No one could.
But Dean’s okay. Dean will live.
He wakes up with a start, the sensation of falling still filling him with fear, making his heart pound and his palms sweat. He blinks into the near-darkness of the stuffy motel room, struggling to control his breathing.
It was just a dream, he reminds himself, but he knows better. It was too visceral for a dream. Too real. Another vision, then.
Sam takes a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. He turns his head toward Dean’s bed, takes comfort from the sight of his brother sleeping there, alive and well.
Light from the street shines on Dean’s face, and Sam realizes he’s awake, eyes open, watching Sam.
“It’s okay,” Sam says, using the words he used to reassure Dean in the dream.
Dean nods, then turns over, pulling the blankets up to his chin as he curls up on his side, back turned to Sam.
It’s a long time before Sam falls asleep again.
At the roadhouse the next day, Ash tells them there are only four children whose mothers died in nursery fires in 1983, and two of them are dead.
Sam shakes his head. “There are more than four of us,” he says. “The others must not fit the pattern.”
“Welp, dead end, I guess,” Dean announces almost cheerfully, swinging his arms like a loon. “Time to head to the Grand Canyon, Sammy.”
“Lafayette, Indiana, you mean,” Sam says. “We should check into Scott Carey’s murder.”
Dean clenches his jaw but doesn’t argue. They’re working a case, after all. What happened to Scott Carey might just be a coincidence, although Sam doesn’t think so.
In Lafayette they meet Ava Wilson, who tells them she had a vision of Sam dying, which tips them off that Gordon Walker is in town, looking for Sam. Working in sync, the brothers make quick work of Walker, although Sam can tell that Dean is less than pleased to leave the man alive.
“Dude wants you dead, man,” Dean grumbles. “Reason enough to waste him, in my book.”
Sam takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. He both loves and finds deeply exasperating his brother’s overprotective instincts. But Gordon Walker is human. He can be handled. Killing him isn’t necessary.
They send Ava Wilson home, despite Sam’s misgivings. Something about her doesn’t sit right with Sam. He thinks she might’ve been part of his vision of his own death, and that alone makes him uneasy around her.
When she doesn’t call to let Sam know she arrived home safely, Sam decides not to follow up. The creepy sensation whenever he thinks about Ava rises to the surface when he considers driving to Peoria to make sure she got home safely. His imagination feeds him dark images of blood and sulfur. He doesn’t need confirmation, not after Scott Carey, Andy Gallagher’s twin brother, even Max Miller, that one more of the demon’s special children went dark-side.
So instead of driving west to Illinois, they head East to Connecticut, to a quaint country inn that has recently experienced a couple of mysterious deaths.
That night, Sam has another nightmare. He’s learning to recognize the dream visions now, to distinguish them from normal nightmares, but this time it’s Dean’s death in a suburban home in Indiana that makes him wake up screaming.
“Sam! Sam! Wake up!”
Dean’s shaking him, fear making his eyes seem unusually wide, his cheeks flushed with exertion.
“Dean!” Sam grabs him, heart still pounding, veins still flooding with grief and horror from the vision. He grabs so frantically that Dean loses his balance, falls on top of Sam on the bed, face pressed against Sam’s. He’s naked from the waist up, his bare chest warm and solid and alive against Sam’s, not shredded and bloody and dead, dead, dead.
“You’re alive!” Sam breathes into his brother’s ear. Dean gasps but lets Sam hold him, understanding instinctively, even if he’s never had to hold Sam’s dead body in his arms. He’s thought about it, Sam realizes. Dean’s thought about holding Sam’s dead body in his arms, probably since the moment he told Dean about his death vision.
“Dude,” Dean murmurs finally, squirming in Sam’s hold. Sam reluctantly lets him go, trying not to think about how good it felt after the initial relief, just to hold Dean close.
“You having another vision?” Dean asks, voice hushed, like he’s afraid to say it too loudly. Afraid to conjure its bad mojo.
Sam nods wordlessly.
Dean purses his lips. “Bad one, huh?”
Sam nods, still shaking. “You, this time,” he says, dreading to articulate it out loud: You, dead.
But Dean gets it, Sam can tell. He nods, backs off the bed, clenching his jaw. He keeps his eyes averted as he says, “Not gonna happen, Sammy. I’m not leaving you, ever.”
Sam huffs out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, smile of relief making his face hurt.
“Yeah, I know,” he acknowledges. “I know you’re not, Dean. I won’t let you.”
Dean’s face softens. They both smile, tension dissipating.
“Think you can sleep some more?” Dean asks as he retreats to his own bed.
“Yeah, I think so.” Sam’s not sure at all, but he knows Dean needs to hear it, needs Sam’s reassurance, so Sam gives it to him.
He doesn’t fall asleep again until it’s nearly dawn, lying in the dark listening to Dean’s even breathing.
When Dean agrees to stop for breakfast in a small cafe in central Pennsylvania, it takes Sam a minute to realize he’s being humored. He’s supposed to be researching the Piermont Inn case, but he finds himself checking the newspapers in Illinois online instead.
Almost immediately, Sam finds what he’s been dreading since he first met Ava.
“What?” Dean asks, sitting across from him at the rickety little cafe table with his omelet and toast, already unhappy because this particular cafe only serves turkey bacon.
Sam sighs sharply and turns the laptop around so Dean can read the headline.
“Peoria Man Found Brutally Murdered. Missing Fiancé Wanted for Questioning.”
Dean reads it out loud, which makes it more real somehow. He raises his eyes to Sam’s.
“Ava?”
Sam nods miserably.
Dean’s eyes widen. “You think she did that?”
Sam looks away, hating his own instincts, the implications for his own situation.
“That sweet girl?” Dean prompts, obviously horrified. “No way.”
Sam clenches his jaw. “I don’t know, Dean. I just don’t know. She was in my vision.”
Dean’s expression changes. He gets it, believes Sam despite his own misgivings.
“Not in a good way, I’m guessing.”
Sam takes a trembling breath, shaking his head briefly. No sense in explaining out loud. Sam can see that Dean trusts Sam’s visions implicitly, as terrifying as they may be.
“I’m not letting anything happen to you, Sam,” Dean says firmly, and Sam believes him. Somehow, together, they’ll stop whatever the demon has planned. “Nobody else has to die, you hear me?”
Especially not you and me, he doesn’t have to say. Sam hears it anyway.
He nods again, grateful.
But the first night at the inn in Connecticut, Sam’s doubts crowd his mind.
“I should’ve stopped her,” he tells Dean when his brother returns from the scene of yet another mysterious death.
Dean frowns, confused. “Who?”
“Ava,” Sam clarifies. “I knew there was something off about her. I could’ve stopped her. And now there’s another death, right under my nose.”
Dean shakes his head. “You couldn’t have stopped that. It’s not your fault.”
“Everybody around me dies, Dean,” Sam points out.
“Yeah, well that’s the job, Sam,” Dean reminds him. “Death kind of follows us around, when we’re not out actively looking for it. You know that.”
Sam shakes his head. “I can’t save them, just like I couldn’t save Jess. Even with the visions, I couldn’t save them.”
“You saved Jenny and her kids,” Dean reminds him. “You saved Monica and her baby. Hell, you saved me, more than once. You do save lives, Sam, visions or not. That’s the good part of the job.”
Sam knows he’s right. He knows he shouldn’t wallow in self-pity about the ones he couldn’t save, but the vision of Dean’s death terrifies him, makes him doubt himself more than ever.
“It’s like the demon’s trying to wear me down,” Sam says. “The visions are like he’s taunting me, trying to make me feel terrible for not saving the people I love. It’s how he gets to us, makes us feel worse and worse until...”
Dean shakes his head. “Not gonna happen, Sam. There’s no way. You’re not gonna turn into Max Miller, or Andy Gallagher’s brother, or Scott Carey. Or Ava, if that’s what happened to her. Not on my watch.”
Sam lifts his eyes to his brother, pleading. “But if I do, Dean, if I turn into something I’m not...”
“No!” Dean throws his arms up, cutting Sam off. “Just no, Sam, you hear me? You are not evil, and you’re not going to turn evil!”
“But if I do, I need you to promise me you’ll do what Dad told you to do.” Sam blinks his sudden tears away, clenching his jaw till his teeth hurt.
“Dad’s an ass, Sam! He never should’ve said that! You don’t say shit like that to your kids, ever! As if. As if I could ever...”
Dean takes a deep breath, looms over Sam, who cowers in the room’s only armchair, feeling small and helpless and needy.
“I would rather die, Sammy,” Dean assures him. “I would rather die than let anything happen to you. I would shoot anyone who ever tried to make a move against you. You know that!”
Sam does. Sam remembers vividly the way Dean made that very threat, back in Oregon when Mark the Master Sergeant threatened to shoot him.
“I know,” Sam says softly. “I just...”
“And even if you did go dark, which you ain’t, I’d still be right there with you, doing what I could, even if it meant the end of both of us. You know that, too.”
Sam does. Dean stayed with him in Oregon when it looked like Sam was infected, when it looked like he was about to turn into a mindless murderer. Sam begged Dean to leave, to save himself, but Dean wasn’t having it.
“Thanks, Dean,” Sam says solemnly. “Thanks for always having my back.”
“You know it, little brother, you know it. Now come on. We got a big day tomorrow. You need your sleep.”
He reaches down to haul Sam to his feet, takes a whiff, and raises his eyebrows.
“Are you drunk?”
Sam shrugs. “Maybe. A little.”
Dean grabs Sam’s biceps. “Come on, big guy. Time to sleep it off.”
Sam rises to his feet unsteadily, trips and falls heavily into Dean’s arms, grabbing handfuls of Dean’s shirt with his one good hand.
“Oof!” Dean exclaims, bracing himself against Sam’s sudden dead weight. “You’re too big for this, Sammy. Come on.”
But Sam’s right where he wants to be, cradled against his big brother, chest to chest. He pushes his face into Dean’s shoulder, sniffling.
“I love you, Dean,” he mumbles, tears leaking from his eyes and running down his cheeks, into Dean’s shirt. “God, I love you so much, man.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.” Dean hauls him sideways, then tries to push him backward, toward his bed.
Sam clutches tighter and turns his face into Dean’s neck, parting his lips just a little so he can taste Dean’s skin, inhale his scent. Sweat and leather and aftershave and gun oil. Home. He mouths Dean’s skin, slips his tongue out to get a better taste.
Dean pushes, but Sam can tell he’s not using his full strength. He’s allowing this, whatever it is.
“Okay, Sammy, okay.”
Sam closes his lips, nuzzling and kissing up Dean’s jugular to the little hollow behind his ear, where the skin is extra soft and sweet. Dean shivers, making a sound that sounds like a cut-off moan, and Sam presses his advantage, grabs Dean’s face as Dean turns toward him, letting Sam kiss his cheek and along his jaw.
When he reaches the corner of Dean’s mouth, Dean finally resists, turning away and breaking free of Sam’s hand.
“No, no, that’s enough.”
He shoves Sam backward, and this time Sam goes with it, knowing on some level that he’s pushed this thing far enough, at least for now. The fact that Dean allowed it in the first place makes Sam stupidly giddy with hope, but he also knows that Dean thinks he’s drunk, even more drunk than he actually is, probably.
Playing the part of the overly emotional, drunken little brother isn’t difficult, given that he’s so full of longing for Dean it hurts. He falls backward onto the bed, lets Dean haul his legs up after the rest of him, gazing up at his brother with so much trust and love that Dean can barely meet his eyes.
“Okay, okay, time to sleep it off now, Sammy. Time to sleep.”
Sam obeys because he knows Dean expects it. Dean allowing the nuzzling and kissing deserves Sam’s cooperation, at the very least.
He flops onto his belly and wiggles his ass because he knows Dean’s watching. He knows Dean’s thinking about the feel of Sam’s lips on his neck, on the tender place behind his ear. Dean’s thinking about Sam’s kisses along his jaw to his mouth, Sam’s hand on his face.
Sam knows that Dean’s thinking about kissing Sam because, in his vision of his own death, the one where Dean’s lips are swollen and bloodied, they’d already done it.
Sam passes out with the taste of Dean’s skin on his tongue.
PART TWO