PART TWO: Fixing a Hole

[amypond45]

Sam’s not in control of his body. Again. Someone else is making him kill a hunter. Someone else is uttering vile threats, using his hands to grab Jo Harvelle, knock her out. Someone else is using his voice to taunt Dean, urging him to shoot when Sam knows damn well Dean won’t. Something else is using Sam’s hands to pull the trigger on his brother. He watches helplessly as Dean falls off the dock into the water below.

“No!” Sam wakes up screaming, his voice his own again.

Dean hovers over him, his beautiful face lined with concern. Sam’s biceps and shoulders ache. Dean’s been trying to wake him up for a while.

It’s almost a month since Sam saved Susan’s little girl from drowning in the pool at the haunted inn in Connecticut. Sam hasn’t had so much as a nightmare since then, but this is -- was -- another vision. Definitely.

“We need to get anti-possession tattoos,” he tells Dean.

Dean’s eyebrows go up. “You had a vision about that?”

Sam swallows, nods. “Something like that.”

“Okay. Sure, Sammy. Sure thing.”

Sam nods and turns over, hugging his pillow. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, watching him with concern and maybe something more. Sam hasn’t pushed things since that night in Connecticut, but he’s caught Dean looking at him a few times. He knows Dean wonders how much Sam remembers about that night. Sam’s pretty sure Dean will never mention it again if Sam doesn’t, but he’s also pretty sure Dean hopes he will. Dean wants him to.

Sam’s psychic abilities seem to be getting stronger. Reading Dean’s moods has always been something he could do pretty easily, but now he’s getting snapshots of Dean’s thoughts, his desires. Dean definitely wants what Sam wants. He’s just afraid of what that could mean for them, for their relationship. He doesn’t want Sam to have yet another reason to doubt himself.

Sam’s pretty sure there’s nothing monstrous or evil about his love for his brother. If anything, it’s the most pure thing about them. They love each other with the kind of devotion that doesn’t often exist, even between old married couples. From Sam’s side, it’s a love that’s enhanced by his abilities, which is how he’s fairly certain that they don’t all come from the demon. They can’t. The way Sam loves his brother has nothing to do with anything evil, he’s more certain of that than anything.

The demon may have triggered his psychic abilities, but they must’ve been his to begin with. That’s the only explanation for the way his psychic abilities allow him to love Dean even more than he did before. Sam’s able to love Dean with an understanding and empathy that isn’t completely normal, but definitely isn’t evil, either.

Sam’s love for his brother is a very good thing. Sam thinks it just may be the clue to saving Dean from whatever seems to be coming, if Sam doesn’t stop it.



At Sam’s insistence, they find a tattoo parlor the next day, get matching anti-possession tats.

Dean doesn’t ask questions. He seems to understand. He thinks it’s smart.

“Given our line of work, possession’s a constant threat,” he says as they talk about it over breakfast afterward. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this before.”

Sam shrugs and puts his coffee cup down. “I guess we thought the charms were enough,” he notes, referring to the wristbands and belt buckles they wear. “Only now we know they ain’t.”

Dean nods. “Those visions of yours,” he says with more than a little pride in his voice. “Who knew they could be so helpful?”

Sam winces, but says nothing. He still hasn’t figured out how to prevent Dean’s death. Or to prevent his own death, for that matter. All he knows is that his death triggers Dean’s, which is why he has to stop it.

Sam’s not afraid to die, especially if it means saving the world, saving Dean. But Sam’s visions are telling him that his death causes Dean to make a demon deal for his own soul, and Sam can’t allow that.

He won’t.



The night after the Winchesters defeat a trickster, Sam has his worst vision dream yet.

In the dream, they’re in Florida on a case, looking into some sort of roadside attraction called The Mystery Spot, when Dean dies. It’s utterly random and completely meaningless, and Sam immediately wakes up but he’s still dreaming. The day follows the events of the previous day exactly, up to the moment that Dean dies again. Sam wakes up again, but he’s back at the beginning of the dream and he’s still stuck inside the nightmare vision which simply will not end. This goes on for days, and deaths, until Sam starts to go more than a little insane with grief and desperation.

Sam finally wakes up in the bathroom of the motel they checked into after the trickster case in Ohio, which he barely remembers at this point since it feels like months ago. He’s fully dressed in the bathtub and the shower is running, cold water filling his ears, nose, and mouth. Dean’s shaking him, soaking wet in his own sleep t-shirt and boxers, expression of desperation and fear like Sam’s never seen in his eyes before.

“Sammy, wake up! Oh, thank God.”

Without thinking, Sam grabs Dean’s face and pulls him in for a kiss. Dean stiffens but doesn’t pull away, allowing Sam to kiss him thoroughly before releasing him, hungry and desperate and shivering.

“I’m changing it. Right here, right now,” Sam gasps as he releases his brother’s lips.

“Okay, okay,” Dean growls. “Whatever. Let’s just get dried off first.”



After they dry off and change into warm, dry clothes, Dean’s too keyed up to sleep.

“You didn’t wake up, Sam,” he wails, pacing the floor in front of Sam, more upset than Sam’s seen him since Dad died. “I tried everything. That cold shower was a last resort, man. I was gonna call 911 if you didn’t wake up soon.”

Sam’s keyed up too, but for a different reason. His lips still tingle from kissing Dean. He wants to do it again. And again. He sits on the edge of the bed, clasping and unclasping his hands between his knees, watching Dean.

“So, you mind telling me what that was in there?” Dean gestures at the bathroom, and for a moment Sam thinks he means the kiss.

But he can sense Dean’s panic at not being able to wake Sam up. That’s what this is about for him.

Sam shakes his head. “Another dream-vision. Worst one yet. I can’t -- I can’t talk about it. I just know I have to stop it.”

“And you have an idea how to do that?”

Sam nods. “You and me -- in the apocalypse vision, we didn’t -- we hadn’t -- we weren’t together.”

Dean’s eyes widen, then drop to Sam’s mouth, then look away. Sam watches as red spots appear on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He stops pacing.

“So you -- so you’re saying -- “ Dean shifts his feet, scrubs a hand over his jaw, then rubs the back of his neck. “Sam, I can’t -- this isn’t -- we don’t -- “

“I’m in love with you, Dean,” Sam says, figuring it’s best to just lay it out so there’s no misunderstanding. “We’re consenting adults. It’s not like there’s a good reason.”

“To fool around with your brother?” Dean shouts. He raises his eyes to Sam’s face and Sam can sense his indignation, but then he looks away again.

Sam can sense Dean’s internal conflict. Sam’s his responsibility, his little brother to protect and take care of and never, ever to let anything bad happen.

“It’s not fooling around if we’re in love,” Sam reminds him. “It’s not just sex if we love each other.”

Dean stares, mouth open, obviously unable to form a coherent response. He’s so adorable Sam wants to hug him, but he waits while Dean composes himself. Dean closes his mouth, frowns, blinks a couple of times as he finally drags his gaze away from Sam’s face.

“And your vision showed you us,” he waves his hand between them, keeping his eyes lowered to Sam’s chest. “You and me.”

Sam tilts his head, fudging. “Not exactly, but I’ve figured it out. It’s the one thing that’s different. Somehow we stop trusting each other, and then all the terrible things happen. I think somebody -- or maybe more than one somebody -- comes between us. If we don’t let that happen, if we’re already together, I think it’ll stop. I won’t die, and you won’t make your deal, and then you won’t die and go to Hell, and then I won’t have to do something terrible to try to get you back -- “

“Jesus, Sammy, that all sounds so -” Dean’s eyes are wide again, staring at Sam like he’s lost his mind.

“Crazy?” Sam laughs humorlessly. “Of course it’s crazy. It’s totally insane!”

“So all of this stuff with the demon and the special children -- it’s all about us? You and me?”

Sam nods vigorously. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. The powers of Hell or whatever are laser-focused on us. You and me. But I think we can change that. I think we can stop it, right here, right now, if we just refuse to play the game that sets the whole chain of events in motion.”

“And if we do that, we stop the apocalypse,” Dean confirms. “We save the world.”

“Right,” Sam lies, but it’s only a little lie, he tells himself. A lie of omission. Not telling Dean that Sam jumping into Hell prevents the apocalypse is just a tiny detail, after all. If they stop it now, that won’t happen anyway.

“And nobody else has to die in our place,” Dean clarifies, because of course he does. He wants to be sure that anything they do won’t cause others to die, like what happened with that faith healer in Nebraska last year.

Leave it to Dean to make sure that all responsibility rests squarely on his broad shoulders, the brave big brother that he is. Any plan that saves their hides can’t be at anyone else’s expense. That’s just the way he thinks.

Sam sighs. “No, Dean. Nobody else has to die in our place.”

At least, not that he knows of. And whenever Sam thinks back on saving Dean last year in Nebraska, he’s one hundred percent sure he’d do it again, maybe even if he knew it would kill another human being.

If that makes him a bad person, or evil, well. Sam will deal with that if it comes to that. Right now, the most important thing is preventing Dean’s death. Deaths. Whatever.

“Okay, I’m in,” Dean says, surprising Sam by sitting down next to him on the bed, close enough for their knees to touch. “What do we have to do?”

“Well, for one thing, if I suddenly disappear, you can find me in Cold Oak, South Dakota. Bobby knows where it is. But you’ll need to get there fast. In my vision, we were there two days, but things might go faster if the demon reads my mind.”

Sam takes a deep breath. “He doesn’t know about our psychic connection, I’m pretty sure. In my vision, I had to get Andy to use his psychic projection to show you where we were. Now I’m telling you, so you already know.”

Dean frowns. “Wait. We have a psychic connection?”

Sam smiles. “Pretty much since birth, yeah. It’s been enhanced since the demon triggered us last year, but it’s always been there. You were able to use it to communicate with me in the hospital, after the accident.”

“I don’t remember that,” Dean reminds him.

“Yeah, I know,” Sam nods. “But it happened. Your spirit was in that hospital, while you were in the coma. You were hunting a reaper.”

Dean smiles. “Of course I was.”

Sam grins despite himself. “Such a badass.”

Dean surprises him again by reaching over to cup his cheek. Sam shivers as his brother leans in, his intention clear less than two seconds before his lips touch Sam’s.

Dean kisses with all the skill and emotional sensitivity that Sam had long expected. He’s gentle and questing until Sam responds with hunger and desperation. Then Dean’s kiss turns masterful, claiming, somehow completely reassuring, as if this was always something that Dean would give to Sam, if he ever asked for it.

When he pulls back, he murmurs, “Now it’s just you and me, in every way.”

Sam nods, leaning in for more kissing, greedy. “Just you and me.”

They undress quickly, kissing and laughing and taking turns exploring each other’s bodies, familiar and yet new at the same time. They lie facing each other on the bed, kissing and stroking, then Sam scoots their hips together so that their cocks touch, making Dean gasp.

“Okay, okay, ground rules,” he pants, batting Sam’s hand away when he reaches down between them.

Sam blinks, drunk with desire, struggling to focus. “Okay.”

“Hand jobs are okay, maybe blow jobs, but no butt stuff,” Dean pants. “I’m just not -- I don’t think I can -- “

“Okay, Dean, that’s okay,” Sam assures him. “How’s this?”

Sam slides his hand down Dean’s belly, wraps it around both their cocks, and gives them a tentative stroke.

“Yeah, okay, that’s good,” Dean gasps, tipping his head down on Sam’s shoulder, turning his face into Sam’s neck. He kisses and sucks Sam’s neck as Sam strokes their cocks, squirming closer, making delicious little gasping noises against Sam’s throat. He’s got one hand tangled in Sam’s hair, the other one holding onto Sam’s bicep like his life depends on it. Sam can sense Dean’s inner turmoil, his desire to chase after pleasure in any form warring with his protective, big brother instincts.

“It’s okay, Dean,” Sam assures him. “It’s okay. It’s just us.”

“Just us. Yeah. Oh God, Sammy, I’m gonna.”

Dean tips his head back and grips Sam’s hair so hard it hurts. Sam can feel the tightening of Dean’s balls, knows he’s close, so he increases his strokes, chasing his own orgasm in sync with his brother’s. At the last second, he tips his face down to capture Dean’s mouth, swallowing his moan as he comes hard and long over Sam’s hand and his own belly.

Sam comes shortly after, kissing Dean through his aftershocks, the hand not holding their cocks on Dean’s cheek.

“Love you, big brother,” Sam gasps as he pumps himself through his own aftershocks. “Love you so much.”

Dean falls asleep immediately afterward, so Sam gets up to grab a warm washcloth from the bathroom to clean them off. Dean makes a muffled sound in his sleep as Sam washes his belly, then curls around Dean from behind, pulling the blankets up over them both. He drifts off to sleep with his nose in Dean’s hair, his arm hugged against Dean’s chest like a teddy bear.

He doesn’t dream.



In the morning, they’re awkward and shy around each other, Dean for reasons Sam doesn’t ask about, Sam following Dean’s lead.

Over breakfast at the local diner, Dean leans forward across the table.

“More ground rules,” he hisses, glancing around to be sure no one’s paying them any mind. “In public, we’re just brothers, like always. No public displays of affection or whatever.”

Sam nods. “Fair,” he agrees.

He’s pretty sure people have already noticed that they seem to be more than just brothers, but he bites his tongue and says nothing.

“It’s just -- nobody needs to know, you know?” Dean continues.

Sam tamps down on his annoyance as the waitress arrives with their food.

“No holding hands in public,” Sam snaps. “I get it.”



After breakfast, they head to the public library, where Dean finds a possible werewolf hunt in San Francisco.

Sam has a sudden, head-splitting vision-memory of a beautiful dark-haired woman, a woman he’s had sex with, begging him to shoot her.

“No! We can’t,” he practically shouts, leaping away from the table as if it burns.

“Sh!” A librarian hisses at them from the desk, but Sam’s already leaving, Dean on his heels.

“What?” Dean demands as they get outside. “What the hell, Sam?”

Sam shakes his head. “I can’t go to San Francisco,” he insists. “I can’t. Not that hunt.”

Dean circles around until he’s in front of Sam, grabbing his biceps, making Sam look at him.

“Did you have a vision about that hunt?” he demands. “Is that what this is?”

Sam nods frantically. “There’s a girl there. She’s beautiful and sexy and -- Don’t make me go, Dean.” Sam can feel the hot tears leaking from his eyes, sliding down his cheeks. “Please!”

Sam winces in pain and Dean helps him sit down on the library steps. “Okay! Okay! Just let me call Bobby. Maybe he can send somebody else.”

Sam nods gratefully, struggling to control his crying. He clasps the front of Dean’s jacket. “She made me kill her, and I did it. I did it, Dean! What’s wrong with me? Am I turning evil?”

“Nothing’s wrong with you,” Dean insists. “You’re not evil. Not gonna turn evil.”

“You don’t know that,” Sam says, holding onto Dean and shaking him. “I haven’t told you everything. I can’t!”

“Okay, okay.” Dean scowls at a couple of people who are climbing the steps beside them, glancing at them curiously. “Let’s go back to the motel. We can talk about it there.”

In the car, Sam blurts out the part of his apocalypse vision that he’s kept secret from Dean.

“There’s something evil that wants to use me as its vessel,” he tells Dean, grimacing as his headache throbs anew. “In my vision, it gets me, it gets inside me, and it’s about to kill you using my hands, but at the last minute I jump into a hole in the ground and ride it back to Hell.”

There. It’s said. Can’t be taken back now.

Sam’s almost relieved.

Dean gapes, green eyes wide. “A demon possesses you?” he guesses. “But you have the tattoo.”

Sam shakes his head. “It’s not a demon. It’s something worse.”

“What’s worse than a demon?” Dean demands, voice rising in fear and panic.

Sam shakes his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Dean! But I’m supposed to be its vessel when it gets out of Hell, and then I’m supposed to put it back there. I’m the only one who can.”

Dean shakes his head. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” Sam nods. “I didn’t want to tell you before because if I’m the only one who can stop this thing, then I have to, Dean. I have to. Whatever it takes.”

Dean shakes his head again, obviously in protest, then changes the subject as they pull into the motel parking lot.

“What’s this got to do with the girl in San Francisco?”

Sam takes a deep breath, lets it out on a long exhale. He wipes his eyes with the back of his hands.

“I don’t know. It just hit me when you pulled up the newspaper story in the library.”

Dean frowns. “What hit you? Another vision?”

Sam nods. “I killed her. She -- Madison was -- we --“ Sam closes his eyes, clenches his fists and his jaw, shakes his head sharply. “But that’s impossible.”

“What’s impossible?” Dean gazes at him, perplexed and fascinated, no longer just freaked out.

Sam lifts his eyes to Dean. “We’re together now, Dean. There’s no way I would betray that. No way.”

Dean’s expression turns cagey. He reaches for the door handle, not looking at Sam.

“Nobody said this is exclusive,” he mutters as he gets out of the car.

Sam sits in stunned silence for a moment, then follows.

“It is for me!” he declares as he slams the door and follows Dean into the motel room. The room hasn’t been cleaned. Both beds are unmade and it smells like sex and sweat and salty french fries from last night’s take-out.

“Ground rules,” Dean reminds him, lifting a finger, pointing it into Sam’s face. “Maybe we see other people sometimes.”

“No!” Sam shouts. “That’s the whole point! Nobody else! We can’t put anyone else in danger, Dean.”

“I’m not talking about long-term relationships, Sam,” Dean insists.

Sam throws his arms up in exasperation. “Even a one-night stand could get somebody killed, Dean. We can’t afford that. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Plus, there’s the jealousy factor.”

“Oh, the jealousy factor?” Dean mimics snidely. “What is this, ‘Days of Our Lives’?”

“It means we can’t afford to make each other jealous,” Sam clarifies. “Anything that separates us is bad.”

Dean huffs out a breath. “Afraid that ship has sailed,” he mutters, rolling his eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“Where do I start?” Dean says. “You and Jessica, you and Sarah, you and that Lori girl in Iowa...”

Sam blinks. “That was ages ago, Dean. Doesn’t count.”

“Maybe not to you,” Dean mutters. He turns his back to Sam, starts packing his duffel.

“What about you and Cassie?” Sam counters, feeling pissy despite himself. Two can play this game. “You and Lisa.”

“That was years ago, Sam,” Dean says, obviously taunting his brother by repeating his words. “Doesn’t count.”

Sam huffs out an exasperated breath. “Pretty sure Cassie was really recent,” he insists. “And pretty fuckin’ demonstrative!”

“Oh, oh, listen to the professor and his nerdy big words,” Dean smirks.

Sam doesn’t hesitate. He grabs Dean, shoves him up against the wall, and shakes him.

“You’re mine, damn it,” Sam growls into Dean’s face, into his stupid wide green eyes and his full, parted lips and high cheekbones and damn freckles. “From now on, no more girls, you hear me? For either of us.”

Dean surprises him by grabbing the back of his neck and pulling his face down so Dean can kiss him, fierce and possessive. Sam’s knees turn to jelly under the onslaught. He thrusts his pelvis against Dean’s and grinds. Two can play this game, too.

“Ground rules,” Sam pants when he comes up for air. “No more girls.”

“Bitch,” Dean hisses as he pulls Sam’s hair, yanking his face down where he can reach Sam’s mouth again.

Sam rolls his eyes. All this, and Dean still needs him to be “the girl.”

Whatever.



They head south instead of west, pursuing a case that might have more to do with black dogs than werewolves. Bobby sounds disgusted when they tell him they can’t go to San Francisco, but eventually he finds other hunters who can check it out. Sam tells him everything he can about the hunt, including a description of Madison.

Sam follows the news reports about the deaths in San Francisco, apprehensive, terrified that he might actually be the only person who can do whatever needs doing there.

When he reads about a fifth victim, unrelated because her death happened in her apartment and appears to be part of a robbery gone bad, he sighs and shakes his head.

“Gunshot to the heart,” he reports out loud to Dean as he reads the police report. “Silver bullet, most likely. Her name was Madison, just like in my vision.”

They’re in a motel in New Mexico, having successfully completed the black dog hunt, which turned out to be a chupacabra. Dean just took the first shower. Sam leans back in his chair, recalling the beautiful woman he made love to in another universe. The woman he killed.

“You didn’t kill her, Sam,” Dean reminds her, making Sam jump.

Dean’s been reading his mind lately, or at least it feels like he has. Their bond has been growing stronger. Just last night, Sam dreamed he was at the Roadhouse with Ash, who was telling him that he and Dean were soulmates.

Sam isn’t the least surprised.

“Maybe not, but it was my vision that got her killed,” Sam says, petulant.

“She was a werewolf, Sam,” Dean reminds him. “She had to die. You know that.”

Sam clenches his jaw, nods once.

Dean throws his damp towel at Sam, hitting him in the face.

“Shower,” he orders. “You reek.”



Later, Sam lies quietly in Dean’s arms, letting Dean stroke his face, plant soft kisses on his brow. The loss of a woman he never even met throbs in his chest. Dean swipes a tear off his cheek, kisses him tenderly, and Sam’s grateful. In his vision of Madison, he and Dean weren’t together like this. He didn’t have this, he’s sure of it. He’d give up a million Madisons to have this with Dean, but that doesn’t lessen his grief. He should’ve been able to save her.

Which brings up his own damnation. He can’t reconcile his vision of jumping into the hole (with a monster riding him) with the series of events that begins with his own death in Cold Oak.

“Maybe it’s inevitable,” he mutters to Dean, who understands immediately.

“Hey,” Dean says, lifting Sam’s chin so they’re eye to eye. “Nothing is inevitable. Nothing. You’ve always got a choice.”

“I let the thing loose,” Sam says miserably. “I don’t know how, but I know that much. I have to be the one to put it back in Hell.”

“So don’t let it loose,” Dean says, like it’s obvious. Like it’s that simple. “You said it before, if you change things, you stop the whole chain of events. We changed things. Big time.”

Sam’s chest fills with the warmth of Dean’s confidence. His reassurance.

“Yeah, we did,” he agrees, smiling through the film of tears in his eyes.

Dean’s gaze softens. “God, Sammy. How did you get so -” He swallows thickly, red spots appearing on his cheeks and the tips of his ears. He won’t finish his sentence, but Sam can feel his adoration anyway. It’s what saves him.

There was never gonna be a God, or a guardian angel looking out for him, Sam realizes. It was always gonna be Dean. As soon as he figured this out, it’s like the universe tilted a little.

It was always gonna be Dean.

He lowers his mouth to Dean’s chest, leaves a kiss there that’s definitely gonna show up as a hickey tomorrow.



The next few weeks pass without anything out of the ordinary. They put down vengeful spirits in Hollywood, some other vengeful spirits in a prison in Arkansas, and a djinn in Illinois.

“You should’ve seen it, Sam,” Dean says after Sam rescues him from the djinn. “Our lives were so different. Mom alive, you and Jess getting married. Mom was gonna have grandkids!”

Sam winces. “So you and me never...”

They’re sitting on separate beds, but Sam doesn’t even need to glance behind him at the rumpled sheets for Dean to get what he means.

“No, of course not.” Dean shakes his head. “We didn’t even get along.”

“I thought it was supposed to be a perfect fantasy.” Sam can’t help feeling defensive and more than a little jealous.

“It wasn’t,” Dean assures him. “It was just a wish. I wished for Mom to live. Mom didn’t die, so you and me never grew up hunting. So we never...” He looks up at Sam. “But I couldn’t stay there, Sammy. I couldn’t. Not once I figured out it was just a dream. You were probably out here looking for me.”

“You know I was,” Sam says.

“Yeah.” Dean nods. “I had to get back to you. The real you.”

He gives Sam a shaky smile, and he doesn’t have to say how much he wishes he could’ve stayed. Sam can feel it.

“I’m glad you did,” Sam says. “I’m glad you dug your way out.”

“Yeah.” Dean sighs, lets his gaze wander again. “You should’ve seen yourself, man. So happy.”

Sam shakes his head. “Not real,” he reminds Dean. “I could never be happy, in any universe, without you. Not with Jess, not with anybody.”

Dean looks up at him again, and Sam can feel his doubt, his fear of abandonment. The djinn experience rocked Dean to his core, made him relive all of his loss and pain. Made him vulnerable.

“You dug yourself out,” Sam repeats. “Most people wouldn't've had the strength.”

“It was all so normal,” Dean says wistfully.

“Fuck normal,” Sam says firmly. “I’d rather have us.”

“You really mean that?” Dean’s insecurity softens his features, makes Sam want to gather him close and kiss all of his doubts away. “After everything you’ve been through? After losing Jess, losing Dad, after everything the demon’s done, after all your freaky visions of horrible things that might happen to you, you don’t want a normal life?”

“Not if I can’t have you,” Sam assures him. “We were never gonna be normal anyway, Dean. It was never about that. Safe, maybe. I wanted you and Dad to be safe.”

He shrugs. “Obviously, that’s not happening. And I accept that, I really do. Hazards of the job and all. But I’m not doing it without you. I’m not letting you die, man.”

“Who said anything about dying?” Dean huffs out a chuckle, as if Sam didn’t just save him from the djinn, as if Dean didn’t just almost die in that warehouse. “Stabbed myself to wake up, that’s all.”

“Seriously?” Sam stares. “You stabbed yourself?”

Dean shrugs. “Figured if it didn’t wake me up, maybe it would kill me for real, you know? There’s lore that says if you die in a dream, you die in real life.”

Sam’s horrified. “You don’t mean that,” he insists. “Tell me you didn’t try to kill yourself for real.”

Dean huffs out a laugh, but it’s half-hearted, Sam can tell.

“Nah,” he says. “I was pretty sure it would just wake me up, not kill me.”

“How sure?” Sam’s still horrified. After everything he’s done to keep Dean alive, the notion that Dean would just throw his life away terrifies him.

“Pretty sure,” Dean repeats with a shrug, like it’s nothing, like he didn’t just try to remove himself from Sam permanently.

“Dean, tell me you want to live,” Sam says, overwhelmed by sudden helplessness. “Tell me you wouldn’t just check out if you had the chance.”

Tell me you wouldn’t just leave me, Sam doesn’t say, but Dean reads it in his face anyway. Sam can tell he does because Dean’s face gets the reassuring big brother expression that Sam knows so well.

“Hey,” Dean says softly, reaching for Sam. He gets up and crosses the space between the beds, hand on Sam’s shoulder, sliding up to the back of Sam’s neck. He squeezes gently, reassuring, cupping Sam’s cheek with his other hand.

“I’m not going anywhere, you hear me?”

This close, Sam can feel Dean’s heat, the slight dampness of his recent shower. Sam nods, bites his lip as his eyes drop to Dean’s mouth. His fear ebbs away under Dean’s strong, capable hands. Dean’s parted lips are damp, like he’s just licked them. Sam feels a surge of love and desire blooming warm in his chest and hot in his groin.

Sam loves his brother more than should be possible to love another human being.

Sam looks up to meet Dean’s gaze but Dean’s looking at his mouth. Sam’s lips part as Dean leans in, kisses him soft and sure. He pushes Sam down on the bed, still kissing, running his hand over Sam’s chest and belly.

“Never leaving you,” Dean murmurs against Sam’s mouth when he comes up for air. “Never again, you hear me?”

Sam nods, wraps his arms around his brother, and holds on tight.



Sam’s birthday comes and goes without incident. Sam’s fairly sure that the demon had planned to transport him to Cold Oak sometime around May 2, so he’s vigilant and tense as the day approaches. But after a couple of weeks of nothing happening, he begins to allow himself to relax.

After a month passes, he and Dean drive to Cold Oak to take a look around but find no evidence of demonic activity.

“Ava was here,” Sam tells Dean. “I can sense her, but now she’s gone.”

On a whim, Sam calls Andy, who tells him everything’s okay.

“Okay as anything can be after what went down here,” Andy assures him. “Tracy’s still scared of me. I’ve been doing a lot of meditation. Reading a lot of Heidegger. Smoking a lot of weed. Same old, same old.”

Bobby tells them that demonic omens have all but disappeared over the past two or three months. When they visit the Roadhouse, Ash tells them he’s got a lead on a possible Hell Gate in Wyoming, but no demonic activity.

“I don’t know what to tell you. It’s like they’ve all gone to ground,” Ash says with a shrug. He looks up at Sam curiously. “Your visions telling you anything?”

Sam shakes his head as Dean glances around to be sure they’re not overheard.

“I haven’t had one in a while,” Sam admits. “Nothing since back before the werewolf thing in San Francisco in March.”

“That’s the same timeframe as the decrease in demonic activity,” Dean notes. “You think it’s related?”

Ash shrugs. “You did say you were gonna change things,” he reminds Sam. “Back in January, when you were here checking into Scott Carey’s death.”

Sam’s impressed. He knew Ash was smart, but his perfect memory always surprises him.

“That’s right,” Sam agrees.

“So what did you do? To change things, I mean?”

Sam and Dean don’t exchange glances, and Sam can sense Dean thinking the same thing. It can’t be that, Sam thinks, can it?

“I dunno,” he says lamely. It’s not like he’d tell Ash about him and Dean.

Although he has the weird feeling Ash knows.



“Maybe the demon got bored,” Dean suggests hopefully later, when they’re in the car again. “Maybe it moved on to another group of psychic kids.”

Sam frowns. “That’s a really terrible thought, Dean.” He shifts uncomfortably, guilt prickling his spine at the notion that the demon might be out there, manipulating other groups of people, just because Sam somehow managed to wiggle out of its crosshairs.

“Or maybe he just gave up, went back underground, like Ash said,” Dean hurries to add, obviously sensing Sam’s guilt.

“Then we have to find him,” Sam says. “We have to end this, once and for all.”

“Why?” Dean asks.

Sam stares at him in disbelief.

“Because it killed our mom, Dean, for starters,” he snaps. “Not to mention Jessica. Andy Gallagher’s mom. Dad! Because it’s evil and taking down evil is what we do.”

Dean shakes his head. “You said it yourself when I picked you up from Stanford, Sammy. How is killing that demon gonna bring any of those people back? Huh? What good is this revenge quest, anyway?”

“It’s not a revenge quest,” Sam insists, but he’s not sure, now that he thinks about it. “We’re helping people. If we gank the demon, no one else has to die because of it. No other family has to go through what we went through.”

Dean huffs out a laugh. “Now you sound like Dad.”

Sam’s silent. They’ve lost Dad too recently. It’s only been a year. Plus, it still hurts to think about what Dad said to Dean, just before he died. Not to mention, Dean still feels guilty as hell that Dad sold his soul for Dean’s life. Sam can sense all of those emotions in Dean when he thinks about Dad.

Now it’s Sam’s responsibility to make sure Dean doesn’t sell his soul for Sam.

Maybe Dean’s right. Maybe they should leave it alone. Call it a win. Go on with their lives. Let sleeping dogs lie.

“Sammy?”

Sam starts, darts a quick glance at Dean, and smiles ruefully.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” he admits, surprising himself. “I just feel responsible, you know? Like it’s my job to find the demon and put it down.”

“Yeah, I get that,” Dean agrees. “And we’ll keep looking for it, and we will kill it, if we find it. I’m just saying, if somehow the thing has just -- I don’t know -- disappeared? Maybe we should just be grateful and move on.”

Sam makes a face but says nothing. He can’t help feeling uneasy where the demon is concerned. He has so many unanswered questions. And now that it appears that Sam is in no immediate danger of dying, Dean is in no immediate danger of selling his soul and going to Hell, and whatever horrible thing possessing Sam in the future may have been avoided, for now, Sam can’t help wondering what it was all about.

Why did it feel like he was at the center of something so big, so world-ending, so apocalyptic?

And now that they seem to have possibly prevented it from happening, why does that feel so anticlimactic? Sam should be feeling jubilant about averting whatever it was, yet instead he feels almost -- disappointed?

He tries to recall the feelings of desperation and sheer terror of his most recent vision, the one in which Dean kept dying and Sam couldn’t stop it. Now that it appears he may have stopped it, Sam should be feeling intense relief.

And he is relieved. It’s just a bit of a let-down, knowing that he’s no longer smack in the middle of whatever plan the demon had for him. And that other monster -- the one that possessed him and nearly killed Dean -- that thing felt huge, like a thousand times more powerful than the yellow-eyed demon. It expected Sam to feel proud of being worthy to contain such a powerful monster. Its pride and arrogance knew no bounds. It believed itself to be the most powerful creature in the universe, second only to its father, the king.

God.

Sam shivers and is grateful when he feels Dean’s hand on his knee, solid and warm and alive.

“Vision?” Dean asks.

“No, nothing like that.” Sam shakes his head. “Just thinking.”

“Oh, that’s never good,” Dean says, shaking his head. He gives Sam’s knee a squeeze before returning his hand to the steering wheel, and Sam immediately misses it.

Sam shakes his head again. “It’s nothing. Just weird. If we really did manage to banish the demon, we’ll never know what it had planned, that’s all.”

“Fine by me,” Dean says. “There’s still plenty of evil things to put down, Sammy. Getting something that big and nasty out of the way without more folks dying is a good thing, in my book.”

“I know, I know,” Sam acquiesces.

Dean takes a deep breath, which is how Sam knows that what he’s about to say takes real effort.

“Dad was an obsessed bastard, Sam, never forget that. Better not to go down that path, if you ask me.”

Sam nods. “I just can’t help wondering, that’s all.”

Sam feels Dean glance at him before returning his attention to the road.

“Not going dark-side is a good thing,” he says, as if he needs Sam to confirm it.

“No! Of course! Absolutely!”

Sam does his best to hide his doubts. He just doesn’t know. Doesn’t have enough information. He’ll never not want to figure it all out, that’s all.

“But if it ever came to that,” Dean adds, making Sam’s head swivel so fast it almost gives him whiplash. “I’d be right there with you. You know that, right?”

“Dean?”

“You heard me.” Dean’s voice is firm and fierce, not allowing for a second of doubt about his meaning.

A shiver goes down Sam’s spine. He has a brief not-vision of him and Dean slaughtering demons together while the world burns around them. Of breaking through the Gates of Hell to take the fight directly to that ugly yellow-eyed son of a bitch, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake.

“If he’s really gone, he’d better stay gone,” Dean growls as if he’s read Sam’s mind.

Sam looks at him, at the firm slope of his slightly crooked nose, his chiseled jaw and high cheekbones, his soft lips.

As if he can feel Sam’s gaze, Dean winks and revs the engine, peeling out on the little two-lane country road like a race car driver.

Sam grins.

fin