hard to the horizon

[candle_beck]

first second third fourth

Two days later, they were still running.

Dean had gone through a state of bizarre catatonic hysteria all through the length of their third afternoon out there. He couldn't speak to Sam and he couldn't think of him, for some reason his mind kept veering away, darting and dodging. Dean got confused, and he thought that maybe Sam had very recently died and this was self-preservation, it was that insanity thing again, and then his thoughts fuzzed out again and he forgot he had a brother.

He forgot other things too, vast chunks of experience lifted away from him. There was no such thing as civilization, no saloons or brothels or libraries, no tax clerks or baseball players, no cities or photographs or bicycles. Only the frontier, the drummed land beneath his horse beneath him, stretching out all around colored like rust and clay and breathing heat. Dean had never been anywhere else, never done anything but ride, his body dense as slag, this terrible burden he had to carry.

Sam broke him out of his trance by throwing the canteen into his back. Dean came back to himself, dread and despair rising up hard but he grabbed hold, hurled them down. They'd been in worse fixes. Dean pulled his defenses together and sneered at his brother, his priorities falling back into place.

They caught glimpses of the demon posse from time to time. The six were always moving at the same rate, implacable and almost unhurried. They had all the time in the world to hunt down the Winchester brothers; it was still a thousand miles to the ocean.

Over the course of the two days, Dean thought the posse might have closed about two miles of the gap. Sam and Dean were slowing, pushing as hard as they could but slowing all the same.

The sun went down again. Dean watched it happening and it was like his heart was breaking, a cratering feeling in his chest and he would have given anything to keep night from falling. And then it seemed so unfair, such a hopeless thing to wish so intently for, and Dean could have almost wept from the frustration.

"Sam," he tried to call out, but it wasn't really working, and he coughed, cleared his throat. "Sammy."

It was close to full dark now, and Dean heard more than saw Sam ride up beside him. "Y'all right?"

Dean shook his head. "Askin' a stupid question."

"What is it?"

"We, we gotta do something." His voice cracked hard, and Dean winced. "Can't keep this up much longer."

Sam, mostly a shadow beside him, nodded. He sounded worse than Dean felt, and that was almost unthinkable.

"Been thinkin' on it," Sam said. "Thinkin', we let one of the horses go and ride double up to some cover, get 'em to split up and then we take out the ones that follow. We can take out three, right?"

"Colt's got four bullets in it," Dean told him, though of course Sam knew; they both always knew. "How long before the moon's right to make some more?"

"Six and a half years," Sam replied dutifully, and Dean heard him hawk and spit. "I ain't countin' on living that long, at this rate."

Dean bared his teeth at nothing, not liking it when Sam got fatalistic. "I'm 'bout ready to trade all four for a goddamn can of beans; let's try your stupid plan."

Sam punched his arm, then spurred ahead, searching the dark for a good ambush spot. Dean was honestly kinda dizzy from hunger and exhaustion, and he locked on his brother, the minute gleam of his metal in the moonlight, the steady rasp of Sam's breath barely audible over the hoofbeats.

Sam's mount would be the one to go riderless; they didn't even have to discuss that. Dean rode close, listening to Sam whisper apologies to his horse, promise to come find him if at all possible, and Dean didn't make fun because it wasn't like they had a lot of other opportunities for friendship out here.

Sam jumped between horses while they were both moving fast; probably no one else could have executed the transfer as seamlessly in the dark. Dean held his breath, felt his brother slam into his back, jolting him forward in the saddle as Sam clung to him, caught his balance. Dean exhaled, turning his head to watch Sam's horse peeling off from their trail, racing off into the black.

"This'll work," Sam shouted from behind him, his chin wedged into Dean's shoulder and his chest flat to Dean's back. He had his hands fisted in Dean's coat at his hips, and Dean suddenly couldn't remember it ever being cold.

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and led them on.

*

They got up above the trail and took cover. Dean had the Colt, itching to check the bullets over and over again but he restrained himself. His energies had picked up with the formulation of a plan, adrenaline matched up with debilitating fatigue and it made his vision sparkly at the edges, his mouth tasting of copper.

Far below them, the posse's chain of lights steadily advanced. There was something almost industrial about it, a machine created solely to track and kill. Dean was almost grudgingly impressed, caught himself wondering what it'd be like to ride with them. His mind kept stumbling hazardously into ill-lit corners best left unexplored, and he tried to focus on Sam, hard against his back.

"It's hardly a fair chase," Dean said, spinning the Colt's chamber restlessly. "They don't get tired, they don't get hungry. We're faster, we coulda shook 'em two days ago if they were playing by the rules."

"Rules?" Sam made a sound half-chuckle half-cough, pressed his fists in at Dean's sides. "In a knife fight? No rules."

Dean surprised himself by snorting. Their dad used to say that sometimes, because ghosts and werewolves and monsters all had defined ways that they could be killed, there were always rules, but people were a different story.

Demons, too.

They couldn't use the Colt very often, not only because the scarcity of bullets meant every shot had to be true, but because their father had taught them the only thing better than a weapon like that was your enemies not knowing you had it. The demons knew the Colt existed but they didn't know whose family held it safe, and Dean was already thinking through how they were going to cover their tracks after this little massacre, knowing Sam was thinking on the same.

"They oughta be coming up to it," Sam said, and he was somehow closer than Dean had expected, shocking warm breath right at his ear and Dean shivered. Sam felt it, went still, and then they both ignored it.

"Is. Is this the best spot?" Dean asked, almost completely normal-sounding. "Should we be higher up?"

"It's good enough," Sam answered, muffled and Dean felt Sam bite his shoulder through his coat, making a hoarse cut-off sound and Dean jerked, but then Sam was saying, "There," and he let his eyes refocus on the trail, where the posse's lights were splitting into two groups.

"It's working," Dean said, sounding a little surprised to his own ears, and elbowed his brother back. He needed to catch his breath, get ready.

He checked the bullets in the Colt, unable to help it, tipped the gun up into the broken moonlight. Four bullets and six years before they could make some more; if God was on their side they'd manage an exorcism or two, if Sam's power could hold them long enough.

"Fuck," Sam said too loud, hands dragging on Dean's coat.

Dean snapped his head up, watched with slow-growing horror as the posse lights melted back together, turning from the false trail and coalescing back into that inexorable formation. For a second it was quiet enough that Dean swore he could hear the barrage of hoof falls, echoing clear as a bell in his empty mind.

"They're not going for it," Sam said, and Dean growled, "You think?" and then Sam slid his arms around Dean's waist, a gasp pressed out of him as Sam leaned in close to hiss, "Ride."

It was all Dean ever did anymore.

*

They got through the night, through the mountain pass that Dean was sure was going to dead-end on them, through the meteor shower on the high plains that threatened to strike them blind, all the way through to a dawn that broke so soft and pretty Dean wished he could shoot it.

Sam was mostly non-responsive, crashed on his brother's back heavy as a coat of mail, arms still wound around his waist and Dean was allowing it because maybe at least one of them could get some rest that way. Sam wasn't really asleep, not longer than five minutes at a stretch before Dean felt him snag, jolt upright before sagging back. Sam buried his face in Dean's shoulder, deep rumbling moan.

Dean had narrowed down and become elemental, the killing straits of the world brashly revealed. They were out of water. They hadn't eaten in two days. They were riding his girl to death, her eyes rolling back white and dry and desperate, and she wasn't even breaking a sweat anymore. Dean couldn't worry about how the fuck they were going to get out of this one; he needed to find them some water.

They were in high country, if Dean had to guess he would have said Montana but the specifics weren't of any importance. The sky was pink as a girl's ribbon, thin thready clouds in shallow arches, the land purple and gray and shaped like artwork and it was beautiful. They were going to die out here but at least it was beautiful.

"Dean," Sam mumbled into his shoulder. Dean wasn't sure Sam was fully conscious, so he didn't respond, but Sam tightened his arms around Dean's waist, said, "Hey Dean."

"What, man?"

"You know why?"

Dean shook his head, shrugging to feel Sam's chin jostle and come to rest again. "What?"

"This. Them." Sam pressed his forehead down and his hair rustled on Dean's neck, rough and gritty and Dean's stomach flipped over slow. "Know why they're after us?"

"Sammy-" Dean started to say, choked, but Sam didn't let him.

"It's Denver," Sam told him, voice shaky and so close. Dean shuddered, felt it run through his brother and back into him, shaking his head automatically. "Hunting us down because, because-"

"No," Dean broke in, urgently sure that he couldn't let Sam speak it aloud, something terrible would happen, something even more terrible than everything else that was happening. "We, we didn't mean to, we never did anything."

"They can see it in us," Sam whispered, and Dean could feel his mouth moving against his shirt collar, his breath on Dean's neck. "See it in our souls."

Dean kept shaking his head, squeezing his eyes shut. Sam was all around him, legs bracketing his and one hand open on Dean's stomach and the point of his nose brushing Dean's throat. Dean could hardly breathe.

"It doesn't work like that," he managed.

Sam kissed the place where his jaw met his throat, reckless and hot with a promise of teeth, but quick, too quick and then gone, sinking away from his brother, shifting his hands back to Dean's hips. Dean was motionless, scared stiff, and Sam told him, sounding pained:

"You don't know how it works."

*

What had happened in Denver the day their father was murdered, what had happened was that Sam and Dean had gotten drunk.

There was nothing unusual about that; they'd been getting drunk together since Sam was thirteen years old. But it was different because they'd been raised on home brew and rotgut made of raw alcohol, burnt sugar, and chewing tobacco, and the bar at the Denver hotel had everything else. They came to an early agreement that they would try every bottle, stayed loaded for days on end.

They were flush from a string of paid jobs, mostly homesteader stuff, ridding the land of curses and whatnot, and Dean won enough money gambling the first night that they could have stayed a month. It was all going really well.

Then one afternoon the girls they were with left them to go dress shopping. Sam and Dean were in the casino in their best suits; it might have been a Sunday. It wasn't even two o'clock yet and Sam was already grinning dumbly and making idiot bets, his eyes glazed and his hair dark with sweat. Dean took him up to the room for his own good, laughing so hard at Sam's befuddled expressions that he almost couldn't get the key to work.

Dean was pretty drunk himself, tripping over his feet and the unnaturally thick carpet, ash-colored and vaguely unstable but that might have just been his equilibrium, shot like a cattle rustler. He barely made it to the fancy velvet chair by the window, collapsing and still kind of laughing. Sam was still grinning, calling Dean names as he stripped out of his coat and vest, whipping his dusty hat for his brother to bat down.

It had come about so strangely, such an odd angle. Sam had stood over him, kicking at Dean's boots and flicking his cuffs open, and a button had snapped off, disappeared into the carpet. Sam had dropped to his knees to look for it, combing his fingers through, and Dean was looking at him, Sam on the floor in his crisp snow-white shirt and the golden spill of sunlight, his curved mouth and high cheekbones, the mess of Sam's hair washed with soap for the first time in months a couple days ago, falling weighted and thick and smooth over his forehead.

Dean was looking at him, no reason for it other than that he was almost always looking at Sam, and the warm laughing feeling in his stomach solidified, tightened, coiled hot. Dean was confused, idly frightened, but mostly so drunk.

Sam went to straighten and he was going to rack his head on the little table so Dean reached out, wove his hand in Sam's hair and pulled him free.

And then Sam turned up to him, his eyes wide and his mouth open and soft and Dean didn't think, this crazy buzzing thing happening in his mind as he sat up and kissed Sam hard.

Sam came at him like he was dying for it. He reared up on his knees, one huge hand wrapping around the back of Dean's head, Sam's thumb nudging at his jaw. Swiftly, immediately, in the space of a breath they were open to each other, kissing deep and fast and greedy, pressed together white-knuckled.

Dean had a hand lost in Sam's hair and a hand shoved up his shirt, skidding over the slick skin of his back, and Sam was leaning over him, pulling at Dean's hips and mouthing across his face. Dean was struggling for air, too hot to speak or breathe, the sunlight drenching and the flat of Sam's palm rubbing his thigh, long fingers hooking, tugging at his fly.

And Dean would have let him, let him take it as far as he wanted, whatever he wanted. One thing he'd never doubted once he'd sobered up was that he would have let Sam do anything in that moment.

But instead the girls had come back, rustling and chattering in their bright voices, and Sam had wrenched himself away from Dean, fell back on his hands on the carpet gaping at his brother with this godawful look of petrified shock. Dean could see how Sam's mouth was red and swollen now, how his eyes were almost black. It had taken more strength than he'd known himself to possess, staying in the chair.

Sam had scrambled to his feet, his face gone a furious cherried color, and he'd rushed to the girls, leaving Dean staring at the spot where he could see the carpet giving up the shape of Sam's knees.

That was what had happened in Denver.

It didn't have anything to do with their father dying alone in a saloon a couple hours later. It didn't have anything to do with the demons after them now.

Dean knew that they'd suffer for it, and dearly, but he had to believe that it wouldn't happen in this life.

*

The sun was as high as it was going to get in the sky, and they had to let Dean's girl go.

They were back in the mountains again, the angle of incline forced steeper until she was staggering back every three steps, whistling and whining with the corners of her mouth chafed bloody from the bridle. Dean could feel her trembling beneath them, his own body shaking in sympathy.

They had to let her go. Dean was weeping as they climbed off, and even though they didn't have the time to spare he unbuckled the saddle with his face pressed to her neck, shoved it off her back to let her run completely unburdened. Sam pretended like he couldn't see and Dean pretended like it wasn't happening.

She tried to follow, stumbling and halfhearted, and he didn't have voice to holler her away and so Sam did it for him. Then Sam grabbed Dean by the collar and got him running himself.

Dean's legs didn't want to work, wavering under him and cramping, but he had to keep moving, he had to keep up with Sam. Sam was crashing through the brush, almost losing his footing on the loose ground. He looked back for Dean over his shoulder, snatching glances feverishly, his mouth panting and at some point he'd lost his hat.

Dean fell. The world gave out under his boots and slammed him down, slicing his hands on small sharp rocks, his wind gone. His ears were ringing but he could faintly hear Sam saying his name, then shouting it.

Dean was just going to lie here for a minute, facedown on the rough ground with dirt in his mouth and blood on his palms. His heart was beating so fast, making his chest hiccup and rattle against the earth.

Sam turned him onto his back, pressed his hands to Dean's face and hunched down over him. Sam tried to wipe the dirt away but his hands were no better and Dean wanted to laugh at him but he didn't have the wind for it. Sam looked so scared, seven years old again all of a sudden and spending days at Dean's bedside waiting to see if he'd die of snakebite, and Dean fisted a hand in Sam's coat, gave him a shake.

"'m all right," he mumbled.

It was supposed to make Sam feel better, but instead his face collapsed in gradual stages, the line of his eyebrows breaking and then his eyes darkening with despair, his jaw going slack and frail. Sam crumpled, curled down over Dean, burying his face in his throat.

Dean coughed weakly, feeling like he'd been kicked in the chest. His hand went to Sam's head instinctively, fingers working through his hair and Sam let out a shuddering breath, scalding across Dean's skin.

"We're gonna die, aren't we," Sam said, muffled.

Dean's hand closed into a fist. He dragged Sam's head up, too hard and Sam cried out a little, his eyes thinned but sharp on Dean's, glittering with exhaustion and pain.

"No," Dean told him, his voice stronger than it had been in days. Certainty bloomed in him suddenly, out of nowhere. They could run them to the ends of the earth; no more Winchesters were getting killed on his watch.

Dean shoved up, pushed his mouth against Sam's and kissed him fierce and sure, said against his lips, "No, goddamn it."

Then he hauled himself to his feet, got hold of his brother and kept going.

*

They were climbing hand over hand up the rocks, digging their fingers and boot tips into crevices, losing fingernails and layers of skin. There were little shoots of vibrant green poking out of the stones, lizards with black and yellow diamond patterns on their backs skittering up the walls as they clambered near.

Dean's lungs felt punctured, only half-inflating. He kept breathing in dust, hardly able to tell it from the air. He kept his eyes on Sam, the sparks of his spurs flinting off rock.

They could see the posse all the time now. The six were maybe half a mile back, probably less, and they still had their horses.

Dean stared at his brother's back, kept repeating in his mind, not gonna die, not gonna die, like he could think it true.

They broke into a clearing and for a second Dean's hopes pricked because there was blue sky and flat ground and maybe, maybe a corkscrewing path shrouded from view, a way out, but then Sam was shouting, "Damn it!" because the land went absolutely nowhere; they were standing at the edge of a cliff.

It was a hundred feet high. Way down below a white-boiling river cut its way through a narrow canyon, dotted with vicious-looking rocks.

Sam spun on Dean, eyes blazing and frantic, something snapping like a bone. "We, we can't-"

"Hey," Dean said, gripping his brother's forearms. "Stay with me, Sam, we gotta, we, we gotta-"

It hit him suddenly and his mouth fell open in shock, staring at his brother.

"We gotta jump," Dean told him, sounding kinda amazed.

"What?" Sam was practically screaming, the madness of the chase catching up and wrecking down on him, his face bright red. Dean shook his head, casting fearful glances back over his shoulder.

"We gotta, man, and we gotta do it right now before they catch up." Dean tried to pull Sam over to the cliff but Sam wasn't having it, his heels dug in. "We jump without them seeing, and the water's deep enough we don't get squished to death, then we lose 'em, Sammy, they won't have the first fuckin' clue, come on."

"Are you crazy!" Sam ripped away from Dean, flattened himself against the rock wall. "The fall'll probably kill you!"

"Better the fall than fucking demons," Dean shouted back. He shoved his brother into the rock, drilled his fists into Sam's chest and leaned close. "I told you we're not gonna die, and you're gonna listen to me for once in your goddamn life."

Sam stared at him for a moment, hollow-eyed and dazy with panic. His hands were in the bends of Dean's elbows, bearing down hard. His throat ducked as he swallowed, and Dean saw the determination set in Sam's eyes, his jaw tightening. Sam nodded, curt and jerky.

Dean stepped back. He shed his coat and tied the Colt to his belt with his handkerchief, tucked inside his shirt, and then unbuckled his gun belt, ditched his other metal, Sam following suit. They watched each other, eyes locked and hands moving fast. Dean's breath was drawing ragged, wondering if he'd maybe gone crazy hundreds of miles ago, if he was maybe about to get them both crushed and drowned and killed.

Dean offered his brother one end of the empty gun belt with a little grin, and he wasn't surprised when Sam took it and pulled him close, kissed him on the mouth, hot open press that Dean was starting to know by heart, and he kissed back pretty sure that this was the last time.

They each wrapped a hand in the leather strap, bound together, and ran for the edge of the cliff, leaping high and far and Sam was howling, one clarion soaring note and then they were falling a very long way, plummeting through the open air. Dean had just enough time to feel bad about lying to Sam when he said they weren't going to die, terror gone deeper in him than ever before, and then he exploded into the water.

He shot to the bottom, pinned by his boots, and the current gripped him tight, flung him swirling through the rapids. Dean broke the surface gasping, trying to drink and breathe and swim all at once, and he ricocheted off a rock, realized he was no longer holding onto the gun belt.

"Sam!" Dean screamed. He was pulled under by the current, half-drowned before he came up sputtering, hoarsely trying to call his brother's name.

If Sam was dead then Dean would be dead directly after, the demons' work done for them. All this would have been for naught, all the years and miles and blood Dean had given to keep his brother safe, every promise he had ever made. Dean's clothes and boots began to drag him down like a kelpie, and he allowed it, gave himself over to it and was towed under, too tired to fight anymore.

Sam hauled him up, back into the air and the sunlight. Sam was laughing, open-mouthed and kinda delirious but Dean could hardly blame him. He clung to his brother, forgetting how to swim, conscious of nothing but Sam and the river, bearing them cleanly away.

*

The river took them down out of the mountains, fetched up at the outskirts of a broad adobe-colored stretch of ranch land. Dean could have fallen where he stood and slept for three days, but they had to put more distance between them and the demons. They weren't being followed anymore but Dean couldn't stop checking their trail.

They ran a few miles, until their clothes dried stiff and were sweat through again. There was a persistent fiery lance in Dean's side, his back seizing up on him. Sam was ahead, long legs eating up the land.

They came upon the ranch house, the barn and livestock pens, and with absolutely no remorse Dean jammed open the latch of the chicken coop, stole a bird right off her nest and broke her neck before even getting outside. They sprinted for the tree line, the hair on the back of Dean's neck standing straight up waiting for the coarse outraged shout, the eruption of a shotgun aimed at their backs.

But luck was with them again, at last. They got under cover and Dean fixed the bird with his knife, which had rather miraculously survived the whole ordeal, while Sam got a fire going. They roasted pieces on sticks and their hands were shaking, both of them faint with hunger. They ate savagely, like kings.

Somewhat revived, the silvery sparkles gone from the edges of his vision, Dean and his brother staggered into the small town, both of them looking like they'd been drug behind a train, which wasn't too far from the truth. There was a church and a mail post and a saloon and Dean could have cried with relief. Everything still existed.

There was a roulette wheel in one corner of the saloon and Dean was endlessly thankful, not at all confident in his ability to beat anyone at cards right this second. Instead he got to slump at the bar and watch Sam glare at the dancing white ball, his fingers twitching against his legs. Sam won three times in a row, about the limit for a stranger who didn't want to get the shit kicked out of him later, and then they had some whiskey, Sam licking at the lip of the glass like it was candy.

Dean was almost all the way back to normal by then. Still hadn't slept in a few days, but that wasn't anything new.

He struck up with the barkeep and learned that they were in Idaho, which was apparently a state now and had been for eight years, to Dean's considerable surprise. The Union was just letting in anybody these days.

Sam was lingering ever-so-slightly too close, heavy awareness at Dean's back and his elbow bumping Sam's chest every time he shifted. Dean didn't say anything, didn't wonder if it looked odd to the other men. His mind was clicking and whirring, kept snagging back to Sam's mouth on his, that perfect fit.

Dean settled down at the faro table and played until he'd won them a horse and two new hats. They stuffed their pockets with food and rode all night, one more night, easy and unpursued, and Sam's arms were around him the whole time, Sam's cheek on Dean's shoulder, breathing steady and even and asleep.

Dean loved him so much it seemed dangerous, unwieldy. He saw the sun rise, for some completely irrational reason feeling blessed.

They made it into Green River and Dean was slurring, his sentences fractured and inverted, and Sam made him stop in the shadow of Castle Rock. Dean barely waited for Sam to get the blanket spread out before collapsing on it, already asleep before he hit the ground.

He dreamt that they were still being chased. The skew and illogic of a nightmare world couldn't make it worse than it had been, even when the flesh melted off his horse and they were riding on bones like the Apocalypse.

Dean woke up with a start. It was dark out now and Sam had a little fire crackling, sitting cross-legged champing on a hank of jerky. Dean watched him for a moment through his lowered eyelashes, Sam's distant thoughtful expression, head tipped back to study the stars.

Sam was magic, Dean thought foggily. Not cursed, nor tainted. There was no kind of corruption here, none of the slaughter and mercilessness of the range, just white light, grace made purely visible. If the world was inherently wicked then Sam was otherworldly; he was the balance of good. Dean smiled, a deep quiet burn inside. He didn't care if he went to hell for it. Sam was the only one for him.

Sam looked down at him and smiled back. Dean pushed himself up, his skin feeling jittery and too tight. Pleasant fuzz still in his mind, his body aching almost everywhere but it was okay, he'd slept and he was okay.

Knocking his brother on the shoulder, Sam offered him a biscuit, said, "We're at least a week from Bobby's, 'specially if we try to double-back it the whole way."

Dean's back spiked with pain at the very idea. He shook his head, mouth full of biscuit.

"What, last week wasn't enough fun for you?" he said. "We're holin' up, brother, not goin' anywhere till we've recovered."

Sam tipped his head to the side, smirk twisting the corner of his mouth. "You're always gonna be bowlegged, man, just make your peace already."

Dean smacked him, whapping his hat off his head, and Sam didn't try to duck away. He swayed closer instead, leaned into his brother. Dean let him, feeling Sam's shoulder notched into his own, bracing against him. He sighed, and Sam echoed it, both of them watching the fire, not looking at each other.

After a long moment of quiet, Sam asked hesitantly, "Hey Dean?"

"Yeah."

"I, um. Well." Sam fidgeted, rubbed his hand on his knee. "Y'know."

Dean pulled off his hat, scratched at his head, coughing. His heart felt wrung out, squeezed down small. "Yeah."

Quiet again, and then Sam telling him, "It wasn't just 'cause I thought we were gonna die."

"I know."

"I mean, I still, I always-"

"I know, Sam," Dean said, words sticking and clotting in his throat. He stared down at the unfamiliar hat in his hands, bending and worrying the brim. Slow curling thing happening in his stomach again, brought on by the unsure timber of Sam's voice and the solid press of his shoulder, this sneaking rush of anticipation growing in him like the shadow of a tidal wave.

"Dean-" Sam started to say, and then stopped, sucked in a breath and Dean crossed his fingers, bit the inside of his lip as Sam said all broken up and fearful, "Do you, did you still-"

Dean couldn't listen to him, couldn't bear it one second longer, and he turned on his brother, reaching clumsy and stupid-fast and jamming his finger on Sam's cheek, pulling Sam's face to his with no finesse, no skill at all. Sam moaned into his mouth at once, slung an arm around Dean's shoulders and tried to drag him over and their teeth clacked and they toppled, narrowly missing the fire.

Dean rolled them over and got Sam pinned beneath him, gasping hard and feeling crazed already, desperate. Sam blinked up at him, face lit up with astonishment, hands clutching Dean's shirt. Dean had to stop for a second, just breathe.

He went to touch Sam's face but then his hand hung up, caught in tremors. Dean couldn't really believe it, not the length of Sam's body twining beneath him or Sam's bitten mouth or Sam craning up against his hold, none of it. This was a hallucination brought on by the hundreds of miles behind them, that hundred-foot fall, and Sam was made of crystal or smoke or something impossible like that. Dean was scared to touch him, almost shy suddenly, his eyes cracking into his brother's.

"'s okay," Sam whispered, seeing the doubt in Dean's face because Dean could never hide anything from him. Sam tugged at Dean's collar, licked his lips. "Nobody knows but me and I want you to, swear to God I do."

Sam's hands so heavy and sure on his collar, the back of his neck, and Dean was drawn down irresistibly, opening his mouth against his brother's and sinking into him.

Dean learned some new stuff that night. Sam liked Dean's hands in his hair, wanted to be guided and led, brought back to Dean's mouth again and again. Sam liked it when Dean held him in place, forcing his leg over his brother's, elbows on his chest as Sam bucked and rolled his hips, trying to get away only so that Dean would keep him from getting away.

He learned that they fought for it, every moment of it, Dean sucking on Sam's neck until he shuddered and lost speech, and Sam's hands slid inside Dean's pants, under his smalls, rough fingers on the curves of Dean's hips and his palms set to the flats, bare inches from where Dean wanted him and driving him further out of his mind with every scraping second.

And when Sam got him on his back and got down to it, finally, finally took Dean in both hands and began working him slow and hard and careful, Dean learned that it was a stunning kind of torture, like drowning for days, so good he thought he might break apart, just dissolve. He learned to keep his eyes on Sam, Sam who was staring down at him raptly, open-mouthed panting as he watched what he could do to his brother.

Dean learned that he could finish with a drawn-out groan against Sam's neck, gripping his hair and hissing his name, and that could be enough for Sam too, something that small could have him jerking and coming all across Dean's bared stomach, blistering and inconceivable, nothing he'd ever imagined knowing the feel of. Then Sam flopped on top of him, mouth smashed on Dean's shoulder, and their bodies formed to each other automatically, and they rested like that for a minute.

The fire was almost all the way out, white ash and cigarette trails of smoke leaking up. There were coyotes howling but that was miles away.

Den blinked up at the night sky, which had gone a milky indigo color from too many diluting stars. There was a shelf of rock in his peripheral vision, the smell of rain on the air, and Dean picked out constellations of his own design, feeling Sam's skin cool down, his heart tick slower. Dean examined the opened-up feeling in his chest, the gibbering run of fear and excitement in the base of his mind, and he thought that he was probably happy right now.

After awhile, Sam started gnawing absently on Dean's shoulder. It tickled, damp and kinda strange, and so he rolled Sam off him. Sam made a discontented noise, tugging his clothes back into place gingerly, like his fingers weren't his own. Dean had his head turned all the way to the side, staring at his brother and not really trying to stop.

Sam looked back at him, gave him half a smile. "Hey Dean, you know," Sam said, all drawl and burr, splintering along Dean's oversensitive nerve endings. "We're obliged believe in everything. Anything they can think of, anything they put their faith in, it's real enough to kill people, and we gotta trust that."

Dean nodded, kinda lost in Sam's skein of thoughts but he was okay with that, he knew Sam would come around to an explanation he could understand.

Sam touched his wrist, his fingertips sticky. "So you and me, we put our faith in this. I don't care what they wanna call it. I know evil when I see it and I know. I know what this is too."

Something jagged in Dean's throat and he kept swallowing past it, crimping his mouth up into a smirk. "Real enough to kill people?"

It was self-defense and Sam knew that, Sam closed his fingers around Dean's wrist and squeezed tight enough that Dean could feel the thick sluggish prod of blood gathering. It throbbed, made him suck in a breath between his teeth and he was so wrecked on this whole thing, wished that Sam would never let go.

"Real enough, Dean," Sam told him, voice rasped down and cracking but indelible for all that, carving into Dean like he was stone. "They can have their monsters; we get this."

Dean was kept motionless for a long moment, held by Sam's heavy-lidded eyes searching his own. He felt quieted and still and small, cradling this idea of a faith all their own, a higher power to watch over them, at long last.

He smiled at Sam, proud of him and his brilliant lunatic's mind, his pretty turns of phrase. There were probably prayers for this moment, litanies and benedictions, temptations Dean should renounce, sins he should beg forgiveness for, but Sam smiled back at him and so he swore himself to his brother with a single word:

"Okay,"

as if Sam had even had to ask.

*

Wyoming was as much their home territory as anywhere, Wyoming and the Black Hills where Bobby lived, and they knew the right passes through the mountain ranges, the blue mirrored-sky rivers that ran east to the high plains. Nowhere was the scope of the country clearer, the lifetime of empty space spooling out in every direction, and Dean loved every inch of it, every grain of sand.

They had most of the state to cross but first they were going to sleep in the same place for a string of nights running. Dean considered their options, then rode them over to a coal miners' camp outside Rock Springs, asking around for a man named Clapp whose daughter had been witch-cursed blind deaf and dumb before the Winchesters had shown up.

That had been three years ago, but Clapp was still alive and so was his little girl; he showed them the thick gloves she'd knitted for him, the tri-colored wool cap with a heart of white thread stitched carefully into the side. Clapp said, "Anything you need, boys, name it," with his blackened hands fit around their arms.

Sam and Dean hung around until Clapp could leave the mines, went back with him to his shotgun shack with its tar-paper roof and incongruously cheerful curtains. The girl was twelve years old and riddled with freckles and evidently hadn't paused for breath much since Sam had broken the curse on her. She remembered them as the angel boys, the ones her mother had sent down from heaven to save her from the black silent nothingworld, and she kept stumbling over her words, not enough time in the day for all she wanted to tell them. After ten minutes she was pretty transparently in love with Dean's brother, too, which Dean supposed he could tolerate, not being much for hypocrisy.

They ate dinner with the Clapps, the best they had to offer, deep red venison and wild turkey with the pellets still in, making every bite an adventure. One dim-burning oil lamp bled gold over the scene and the girl kept making corncakes for them to take, the stack tottering and ever more precarious.

Clapp found an old coat with fist-sized moth holes that Dean made Sam take, and some blankets and a dented canteen and a sack of salt that had to have cost at least a dollar and they tried to refuse but Clapp wouldn't hear of it. The girl said she would knit them overshirts and socks and hats and gloves and Sunday suits, and her dad rolled his eyes at Sam and Dean, hugged his arm around her head while she squealed happily and battered her little fists on his stomach.

Clapp led them out a couple hours before sunset, into the woods aways to a small sturdy hunting cabin fixed securely among the trees. There were two narrow rack-cots and an old-fashioned stove, its pipe sagging and showing tears, but they probably wouldn't need it, the spring nights getting warmer and shorter. Clapp showed them where there was a small weatherworn pile of firewood with black rotted splits in some of the logs, and pried up a board in the floor to reveal an emergency stash of tin cans, beans and preserves. He lent them one of his own rifles, his initials branded on the stock.

"This is more than we coulda asked for," Dean said as they stood before the cabin saying their goodbyes.

Clapp shook his hand. "It's all yours. I'll keep the other fellas away for a couple weeks, but shouldn't be too hard; ain't the season for it."

Dean tipped his hat back, swallowing. "Gotta ask you to keep our names out of it."

"Hell, boy, I ain't feeble." He spat chaw into the brush, gave the pair a brown-stained grin. "You come back to my place you can't find any game, hear?"

"Yessir. We'll probably go stir crazy in a few hours, but thank you." Dean held out his hand for Clapp to shake again, his chest feeling weirdly light. "Thank you for everything."

Clapp laughed. "Son, we ain't close to square yet."

He rode off waving, Sam calling behind him, "Tell her I said she was beautiful," and then Sam and Dean went inside, closing the door behind them.

It was hushed and poorly lit all of a sudden, smelling of must and old fires, and Dean looked at his brother, found Sam looking back and the moment became weighted. Dean took off his hat, rubbed the back of his neck and kicked at the floor, and Sam kinda smirked, rolled his eyes and went about laying the salt-lines and getting the stove going.

Dean made it about ten seconds sitting on one of the cots eyeing Sam's long legs bending and straightening as he worked, and then he grabbed the rifle and banged out into the open day, went looking for something to shoot.

He was out there until the light had gone opaque and the shallow carpet of leaves slippery, and he came up empty. He was distracted, wasting bullets on squirrels and small birds and scarring up trees within eyeshot of each other so that he could find his way back. Still jittery, trying to get the feeling of being hunted off him, Dean had more to think about than he was generally comfortable with. He was doing his best not to fear lightning bolts on top of everything else.

The trouble he was having at the moment was the permanence of the whole thing, the fact that he'd never leave his brother and never stop wanting him if he was around. They get into this and that was it for life, until one of them died, until the other could get hands on a loaded revolver and follow him over.

Dean had never had any expectation of a decent ending for them, but it all seemed awfully tragic all of a sudden.

He came back to the cabin discomfited, vaguely ashamed and pretty irritated at that. He set the rifle on its hooks and turned to snap at Sam about whatever first caught his eye, but Sam was lying on the cot in his undershirt with the soft sleeves pushed back to his elbows and his boots off. Sam was playing with a limber jack man, making him dance and clack and spin, and grinning at Dean, his hair matted, destroyed, his eyes as bright as shine off metal.

"Look what I found. His name is Lucky."

Dean couldn't help the stupid noise he made, laughing through his nose and strangling a weak groan, and he dropped back against the wall of the cabin. There were splinters coming through his shirt and he felt like he'd been punched in the gut.

"You named him?" he managed.

Sam only grinned bigger, pushed his hair back off his forehead with his free hand. His wrist flicked over and over, making the jointed manikin kick its sprightly wooden limbs.

"It's scratched on his back. Pretty appropriate, I thought."

Dean huffed, pulling himself under control and flipping his hat onto the other cot. "It wasn't luck, Sam, it was me being a genius."

Sam lowered Lucky, let him come clicking to rest, and gave Dean a look with his lip curled and his eyebrows raised.

"You made us jump off a cliff."

"Did it work? Tell me that. Is that air I see you breathing? Enjoyin' that? No need to thank me, Sammy, all in a day's work."

Sitting on the other cot, Dean commenced tugging at his boots, keeping his eyes down because Sam stretched out like that was doing unreasonable things to him, his mind flittering with all the criminally wanton things he could do to his brother. He pulled off his outer shirt and wound it between his hands, drew it taut.

"You hungry?" Dean asked his shirt.

"Nah," Sam answered. He sounded relaxed, calm. "First time in about a month, feels like."

"Yeah."

Dean tried to think of something else to say but he wasn't that kind of smart; people thought because he talked all the time he must be the brains of the operation, but talking wasn't anything, just getting rid of the quiet because who liked it when things were quiet? None of the stupid stuff he usually ran his mouth on seemed proper just now, didn't seem worth asking for Sam's attention.

"Hey Dean," Sam said, probably the one thing he said more often than anything else.

Easy to see why--it worked like clockwork, instantly brought Dean's head up and his eyes in line with Sam's. Sam was smiling a little, kinda knowing and pestered and heated all at the same time, making Dean reel, close his hand around the edge of the cot. Sam looked like he knew everything going on inside Dean's head, like he'd had it all figured out years ago, his foundations laid and his strategies in order, just waiting for his brother to catch up.

"'s a nice place you found for us to hole up in."

Dean blinked, sucked on the corner of his lip wondering what Sam's game was. "Clapp's good people."

Sam stretched, scratched at his belly under his shirt and watched Dean watching his hand. Dean let his own shirt drop onto the floor, his mouth dry. Sam just kept smiling at him, waiting for him.

"Sam, you know," Dean started, and he had exactly no idea where he was going with that, his eyes stuck on the slender strip of pale brown skin he could see low on Sam's stomach. Sam saved him from whatever idiotic thing he might have come up with, telling him:

"Whatever it is, Dean, yeah, I know." Sam sat up and stripped off his shirt, making Dean jerk, his mouth falling open and his carefully guarded defenses vanished like they'd never been. "C'mon, man, the day's wastin' and you're still way the hell over there for some reason."

Dean was gone, clean out of his mind from then on. He lost chunks of time and came back to himself straddling his brother's body, hands all over all there was of him, sharply aware of the hard edge of the cot digging into his knee, Sam's ribs bumping under his fingers. Sam slid his hands under Dean's undershirt and up his body and off in one deft move, and then brought his hands with the cloth tied between them behind Dean's head, pulled him into a kiss that didn't end for the longest time.

They lived in the cabin for a week.

In the mornings they woke up in their separate cots, sunless icy drafts breaching the slivered cracks in the walls, and they ate a cold breakfast huddled up together for warmth, Sam in the moth-eaten black coat and Dean with a blanket shawled around his shoulders. They were neither of them very good when they'd just woke up, not up to making a fire or coffee or conversation. Dean's brain had to warm up like an engine, little cranks and gears snicking into their right places.

It was companionable, anyway, calm and unrushed as he bent to wash his face with water from the ewer, and Sam's hand set on his back, pattering along the ridge of his spine. Sam was waiting for his turn, yawning audibly and popping his joints, and Dean's first clear thought would be something about Sam's body, memories of the night before and hopes for the day ahead.

They went out once the air started to warm up, the sun breaking above the dense trees and haphazardly dribbling light. Dean hunted game different than he hunted everything else, the nervy agitation gone but all the grace still there, the innate joy he took in it. He barely made any sound at all, his boots keeping the secret for him.

Sam trailed behind, sometimes a dozen yards or so back foraging but always in sight of Dean when he checked over his shoulder. Sam found acorns and chokecherries and some strange flat seeds that he said were close to sunflower seeds but Dean wasn't quite buying it.

One day Sam tripped on a root and fell against a tree, smashing his sack against his body and crushing the cherries, and after that there was a bloody stain on Sam's shirt that Dean couldn't keep his eyes off.

Dean followed whitetail deer and pronghorn stags, thick tawny coats and the horns curved in towards each other like an incompletely drawn heart, and he had a few chances to bring one down, but at the last second the rifle barrel would jag almost infinitesimally and the bullet would shear off some of the animal's hair, give it the second it needed to wink away into the forest.

After the third time it happened, Dean turned on his meddling brother, eyebrows down and mouth set hard.

"Do you mind?" Dean asked, shaking his rifle at Sam. Sam bugged his eyes, biting back a grin.

"What? Don't blame me 'cause you can't shoot."

"Sam," Dean said threateningly, because though he loved his brother in a consuming and full-body sort of way, he still wasn't going to stand here listening to Sam denigrate his aim.

Sam's teeth flashed white, the grin escaping him for a split second. Sam grinned much easier out here in the middle of nowhere.

"Good-lookin' creatures, those pronghorn," Sam remarked. "Downright majestic, don't ya think?"

"Oh god." Dean plastered a hand over his face. "You've gone soft. No, soft in the head."

"Certainly would explain a lot," Sam said agreeably, rocking on his heels with his thumbs hooked in his belt, just smiling at Dean like he couldn't imagine a better day.

Dean asked if he could only hunt ugly animals now and Sam replied that there had to be some weasels or deformed cottontails around somewhere, and then Dean was grinning too, even though he shouldn't be encouraging Sam, and he didn't want weasel for supper, and nothing this good ever lasted.

They passed the long afternoons outside in the patchy sunlight, playing cards and Sam whittling and Dean practicing his knife throwing. Sometimes Sam fell asleep stretched out on the ground in front of the cabin, and when he woke up he'd have little twigs and leaves in his hair, and Dean never mentioned it to him.

Then when the light started to go, they had their supper, sitting next to each other on the floor with their knees touching and Lucky watching from the shelf, his red-painted mouth smiling down on them. Dean was allowed to look at Sam all he wanted now, any part of him he wanted, and that above almost everything else was the hardest thing to get used to.

And eventually Sam took his nicked tin plate and Dean's and set them aside, turned back to his brother and tipped his face up with one hand and kissed him deep, humming. Every night, every time, Dean felt the vast world around go as gray and flat as a photograph, a poor shadow of what existence was meant to be, what it was when he had Sam's mouth on his.

They did everything. Dean didn't even recognize half of it. They found their way by touch as the night built up around them, guided by gasps and moans. The cots weren't half as big as they needed to be, and so Sam and Dean piled their blankets on the floor, scraping their heels and knuckles on the scabrous floor.

Sam lay back with his legs crooked around Dean's body, his eyes slanted and eerie-looking and Dean figured it out after a minute, that Sam's eyes were blown with desire and ink-black, and that was the cause of the cowardly tail of fear curling in his chest. He shoved it aside, panting ragged and wild, skidding his open mouth on a line down the center of his brother's body.

Insane things Dean wanted to do, these pictures in his head that would be the ruin of a lesser man, but Sam just kept saying yes, yes, okay, please. Dean slid Sam's legs over his shoulders, the backs of his knees slotting into place and Dean's tongue scorching on the inside of his thigh. Sam had a hand in Dean's hair and a hand tight around the base of his prick, too close already and Dean hadn't even gotten started.

He needed to make Sam as crazy as Sam made him, because they could survive anything if they faced it together, and so Dean worked Sam open for him slow, mouth and fingers and Sam writhing in the gossamer light creeping over the cabin floor as the moon rose, found its way behind a cloud and doused them both in shadow. Almost blind, then, as Dean finally pushed to his knees and bent his brother carefully in half, seeing nothing but Sam's wide eyes, his mouth begging for it.

They spent hours at it, dozed shocky and limp sprawled across each other's bodies in the stretches between. Dean drifted into consciousness with Sam's head on his chest, his arm draped across his brother's broad back, and he allowed himself that for ten minutes, maybe twenty at the outside, fighting to stay still instead of trembling stupidly like he wanted to, before prodding Sam half-awake and getting them both into their cots so they could sleep for real.

Days passed. Towards the end of their stay it rained, and they burrowed in the cabin for the length of the storm, half-dressed and unable to keep away from each other, counting the seconds between lightning and thunder and craning their heads back to drink from the trickling leaks in the roof.

It was late April of Dean's twenty-eighth year, and this was as happy as he would ever be.

*

next