fic: I can feel a dream down there (1/2)

[glovered]

Masterlist - Art - Part 1 - Part 2

"Hey, Dean? Why is there a Google search about angel possession on my computer?"

Kevin's lucky Dean’s just wearing slippers this morning, because otherwise he'd be out the door in a second. As it is, when Dean smacks the laptop closed Kevin almost loses a hand.

Kevin jumps up from the table, holding his computer out of reach. "Hey!" Then he narrows his eyes at Dean. "What are you hiding?"

"Nothing," Dean says quickly. "Nothing at all. I didn’t use your computer to search for that. Why would I need to know about angel possessions?" He laughs. Loudly. "It’s not like Sam's been possessed by an angel of dubious intention to save his life or anything."

"Sam’s possessed by an angel?" Kevin says.

Dean shakes his head. Then says, "Maybe?"

"Holy shit." Kevin slumps in a chair. "Holy shit. Oh god."

Dean goes to make coffee, but only after threatening Kevin’s currently-hyperventilating self with certain death should he breathe one word of this to Sam.

"What do you mean ‘there’s an angel in him’?"

"In him," Dean repeats between gulps of coffee. "He's got an angel in him."

Kevin’s eyes widen.

Dean waves a hand. "Touched by an angel, whatever." Telling someone feels almost as good as it feels bad. A thick dread dredges up inside him and grows stronger when he sees his horror mirrored on Kevin's face.

"But," Kevin says. "That's not possible. Sam shouldn’t be able to support angel possession- His body should be all sick and explodey and-"

"Hey, hey, hey. No one’s exploding."

"It’s just…" Kevin finishes weakly. "Not possible."

"Of course it's possible. Sam was a vessel before this."

"Before?" Kevin repeats, voice faint.

Dean makes a vague gesture indicating it’s all over and done, moving on. "There was a- Lucifer. Thing."

And like that, Kevin's out for the count for the next hour.

"Useless, I swear," Dean mutters.

Dean looks up from his very important work to Kevin, who’s conscious now.

"So, how do we get it out?" He’s all sweaty and nervous like he spent the last hour jerking off while Dean pored over the Bible.

"Porn?" Dean asks anyway, supportive.

A weird expression passes over Kevin's face, almost like he thinks Dean's the one who's been wasting time. "No. I have, uh," he says. "Look, I’m trying to get my head around this but I have some questions. Say Sam is possessed. How do we get the angel out of- mph."

"Shut up," Dean hisses, clamping a hand over Kevin's mouth and most of his face. He looks around the main room and up the stairs to the landing. Sam could walk in from his run at any point, and this place echoes.

"Mrmhphmhm," Kevin continues.

"Ok, fine." Dean nods to the hall. "Let's go talk somewhere private."

He gets up and Kevin follows. Dean’s not sure yet how much he’s going to explain. All he knows is he’s been keeping this one under wraps for two months now, and it’s eating away at him. He hates lying to Sam. He thinks, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to tell someone. Plus, if he gave Kevin the low-down on Ezekiel, explained how that was the only thing that could save Sam’s life, at least maybe he wouldn’t feel so goddamn guilty all the time.

Dean opens a door and gestures for Kevin to get inside. As Dean swings it shut, Kevin looks around, wide-eyed. "This is your room?"

"Yeah."

"It looks like the arsenal," Kevin breathes.

"There's a bed," Dean points out. "Anyway. I'm not gonna try to take the angel out of Sam."

"Why not?"

"Because it’s impossible," he says. Because Sam needs the angel in him, healing him. Because Sam is dead if Ezekiel leaves and because Dean was the dumbass who couldn't find another way to heal him. "Sam's hurt," he explains. "Real bad."

Kevin looks at him like he’s crazy. "He seems ok to me."

"Ok, I know it doesn’t look like it, but believe me on this one."

Kevin frowns. "But… he's eating. He’s healthy. Not like before, during the trials. And he’s really tan and really built. He seems taller almost. And, like, hotter, too. Way hot."

Dean rubs at the bridge of his nose. "Kevin, man, keep it together."

At least Kevin looks sheepish. "He's healthier than I've ever seen him, is all I’m saying. He's on a run right now. He's fine."

"He's not fine," says Dean. "There was the church, and then he was almost dead, in the hospital." Dean hates hospitals. He hasn’t been able to get this one out of his head. "Sam wasn’t going to make it, but then this angel, Ezekiel-"

As Dean tells him, the incredulity on Kevin’s face dissolves into false hope, then eventually takes on the same sick feeling that Dean’s been carrying around in his chest everywhere.

"Ok," says Kevin at last. It’s clear he believes Dean now. "Ok. So...that’s terrible. But what if there’s still a way?"

Dean shakes his head. "There’s not. I’ve been trying to find some way, but all we can do is wait it out."

"No, you said it had been two months, right?"

"Yeah. So?"

"So, shouldn’t he be healed by now?"

"Well, there’s this deal where every time Ezekiel heals someone it takes longer to heal Sam. Something about angel juice and recharging his batteries."

"I...ok." Kevin crosses his arms over his chest. "I need to read up on this, but I don’t think that’s how it works."

"What?"

"Well," he says. "If an angel touches a soul, it’s like the angel’s being supercharged. You said Ezekiel’s weak, right? Well, that doesn’t really make sense. Touching Sam’s admittedly weakened soul should at least rev him up a little. It shouldn’t only be dependent on time."

"You’re saying Zeke’s pulling one over us?" Because Dean’s been getting this bad feeling every time Zeke comes out, like he’s only getting half a story, like maybe Zeke’s not entirely putting Sam’s health first.

"Uh, it’s possible?" Kevin squeaks.

"That dick," says Dean. "You know, he seemed shady as all get out, but at the time it was the only game in town."

As far as Dean knows, it’s still the only option they have. Even if it is true, it doesn’t change the fact that Sam’s getting better, Ezekiel didn’t lie about that.

"Look," he says. "I know it’s bad. But you can’t tell Sam." Kevin looks like he wants to argue, but Dean presses on. "You gotta promise me, man. I’ve been tripping over my feet to tell him too. But I can’t. He needs to heal, and there is no other way."

"I guess." Kevin frowns. "But let me at least take a look at the tablet. Angels haven’t exactly been straightforward with us before, right?"

"Ok, you come up with something, we’ll give it a try." Probably nothing’s going to come of it, but it’ll keep the kid occupied.

"You know, Ezekiel..." Kevin trails off. "Hm."

"What?"

"Nothing. Never mind. It just sounds familiar. Ok." Kevin stretches, then grabs a notebook. "Ok," he tells Dean. "You take care of Sam, ok? I’m gonna kick this thing in the ass!"

And he looks so excited sticking a pen behind his ear and hunching over the damn slab of rock again, Dean thinks he might have to do an intervention soon.

"You need a nerd hat or something?" he says. "You two want some private time?"

"Stop bugging me, I’m reading," Kevin says, smiling a little. Then, mostly to himself, "Hunters."

"Fussy," Dean mutters, and leaves him to it. He feels bad about dropping this on Kevin and then telling him there’s no way out. But part of him feels massively relieved.

And even if there’s about zero hope of extricating an angel who’s bent on staying in Sam, Kevin’s trying, and Dean goes away feeling a little lighter in his step.

Kevin is a total freaking badass. Kevin freaking Tran.

In under an hour, there are pages of scribbled notes spread out on the table in front of them and he’s got Dean mashing pelvis of newt into a fine powder.

"This is great," Dean tells him with feeling.

"That needs to be evenly smashed," Kevin warns.

Dean grinds mortar to pestle more vigorously, suddenly extremely hopeful. They’ve gone from zero chance to a decent percent probability. No freaking angel’s going to shack up inside his brother without Dean’s say-so. Not today, not ever.

The upstairs door clanks open, and of course it’s Sam. Perfect timing. When he comes down the stairs, Dean steps in front of Kevin so Sam won’t be tempted by the promise of research or something.

He looks from Dean to Kevin. Dean notices the sweat trickling down his jaw.

"You guys ok?" Sam asks, a mounting suspicion clear on his face.

"Men of Letters business," Dean tells him. "We’ll be done soon."

"Well," says Sam. "That’s convenient, because I am a-"

"Sam. Go take a bubblebath or something. You stink."

Sam shoots him a skeptical look even though Dean is pretty much offering him strawberry scented ecstasy. Sam always could see right through him.

Dean raises his eyebrows when Sam doesn’t move.

Sam raises his eyebrows back. "I ran twelve miles," he says. "Of course I stink."

"Exactly," says Dean. "Hup two."

Sam rips off his nasty t-shirt and throws it at him before he leaves the room, back muscles gleaming, and Dean, with hunter reflexes, easily ducks it.

"Anyway," he says, returning his attention to Kevin and their mostly finished spell. "This thing ready?"

Kevin’s got Sam’s shirt pushed to the corner of the table like he might swipe it, so Dean gives him a look and chucks it through the open door that leads to the kitchen before they continue.

Five minutes later, after mixing gunk with bone powder with other gunk, and reciting what sounds like a bad Enochian haiku, smoke begins to pour from the bowl. Dean has to squeeze his hand into a fist while he says the incantation, and the light that starts glowing out between his fingers looks super cool.

"That should be it," says Kevin, while Dean’s hand pulses. "That’s everything."

Dean thumps him on the back with his free hand. "Well look at you. You’re a regular Bill Nye."

"Who?"

Dean gives him a reproving look. "Anyway, that only took you like one freaking hour! You been dragging your feet this whole time or what?" Dean’s always wondered how it takes so long to translate one stone.

"I’ve told you before," Kevin says. "The tablet’s like a zip file! There’s a lot of information packed into each tiny piece. Sometimes it takes days. Weeks!"

"Alright, alright, chill your bacon. So how does this work?" The light in Dean's hand is getting kind of warm now, tingling a little. He doesn’t want to self-combust or anything.

Kevin gestures to it. "This spell acts as a sort of angel banishing sigil but less like it’s going to rip him out of Sam. It has something to do with friction and easing a something out of a human’s insides slowly."

"Ok, so I touch him," Dean confirms.

Kevin nods. "On the chest."

"And then Zeke zaps out of him? And Sam shouldn’t know what hit him?"

"I...think so."

"What do you mean, you ‘think so’?" Dean’s done a lot of iffy things, but playing Russian Roulette with Sam’s life isn’t something he wants to knowingly walk into.

"Well, there’s no mention of what it does to the vessel. But it keeps specifying gentle extrication, so it should be fine." Kevin squints at the stone, then surveys his notes. "Or at least that’s what it looks like."

"Dude," Dean says.

"Like, I’m only 99% certain it’s going to work."

Dean rolls his eyes. "That is certain, man."

Kevin’s face breaks into a smile. "Yeah?"

"Freaking perfectionist." Dean’s thrilled. "Kevin," he says. "You’re awesome."

"Ha ha, thanks." Kevin shuffles his papers. "Ok, you’re a conduit for the spell right now, so you have to go do it soon or it’ll wear off and we’ll have to do it all over again."

Dean does not want to spend another twenty minutes chanting in Old Enochian, and also that was their last newt pelvis. So he stalks down the hall, trailed slowly by Kevin.

"Sam?" he calls.

His voice echoes. He can hear the sound of running water from the good bathroom.

"Well, no time like the present," Dean mutters, then says, louder, "Sammy?"

"What?" Sam’s voice is far away, like he’s under water.

"Let’s get this show on the road," Dean says half to Kevin but mostly to himself, and jimmies the bathroom lock.

He pushes the door open, steps inside, then closes the door again, pointedly on Kevin’s face. He scoffs to himself as he relocks the door behind him. Kevin may be a badass, but Dean’s not letting anyone objectify his little brother.

And if he hadn’t, Kevin would have gotten an eyeful of this: Sam sudsy and half-submerged in the porcelain footed tub by the wall, legs too long to fold completely into the water. Sam’s sexy eyebrow raise of annoyance. The way Sam says Dean’s name when he’s spectacularly unimpressed. This is not for public consumption.

"Hey," Sam says, looking for all the world like Dean’s healthy little brother, hair slicked back and bubbles sliding down his neck when he sits up.

"Hey," says Dean, stepping toward the tub, hand fisted behind his back. "So, how’s it going?"

"Uh, good?" Sam says. He purses his lips. "Are you trying to pull something? Because you’re not exactly being subtle."

"No, no," Dean takes another step toward him. "I just, ah, got something I need to do."

Sam sits up straighter. "Seriously, you’re not gonna pour froofy bath salts into the tub again, are you? Because that was so not Charlie in here last time you did that."

"No." Dean comes to a stop with his knees at the edge of the tub. "No, I’m not going to- Ok, just let me-"

As Dean leans toward the tub, Sam’s face changes, going uncertain. His eyes widen, almost expectant. He doesn’t look nervous because he has no way of knowing. In fact, if this were a movie it would look like Dean’s about to lay one on him, but it’s not and Dean’s hand is shaking, at the ready.

Sam, for his part, just slides down a bit in the water.

"Just let me-" Dean says, drawing his hand from behind his back.

He sees a moment’s shock on Sam’s face at the bright glow of Dean’s fist, and then Dean stumbles back when Sam’s eyes flash blinding, laser blue.

"Stop," Ezekiel says. He stands up to Sam’s full height, water sloshing everywhere, and Dean gets an eyeful of everything before he glares Ezekiel full in the face.

"Dammit." He pulls back, but doesn’t hide his hand. Ezekiel’s already seen it. "You’re done in there," he says. "Get out now or we’re taking you out."

"I'm here to help," Ezekiel says, looking for all the world like Sam trying to placate Dean. Except his pleading expression looks off, like a robot trying to work human emotions. "I’ve done nothing but follow the terms of our deal. I’ll leave your brother when he’s healed. Banishing me now could harm him irreparably."

Now that Dean’s looking for it, Ezekiel isn’t actually telling him anything.

"Ok look, I needed you," Dean tells him. "In an impossible situation. And you helped, and thank you for that. But we helped you, too. You were weak and we let you in. So as far as I’m concerned, we’re square. Now get out."

Ezekiel stares out blankly. "I’d advise against using that spell," he says, changing tack. "You don’t even know if it’ll work. Leave me in, and you’ll know he’s safe."

Dean grins. "No can do, compadre."

"Do you want your brother to languish?" asks Ezekiel, standing taller. "Think about it, Dean. You are lying to him, yes, but it’s for his own sake. Do you really value your fear over your brother’s life? Or are you going to do what’s best? What would Sam really want?"

That’s what clinches it. "You may be in his head," says Dean. "But you can’t play me. I know my brother better than you think."

Dean’s hand is pulsing in front of him like there are the last drops of Purgatory glowing in his veins. It’s now or never, he thinks, before throwing himself forward, into the tub with his boots still on and hands outstretched.

Sam’s fist comes at him, but Dean ducks it and his hand slaps sharp and wet on Sam’s chest just as his feet slip out from under him and he and Sam tumble into the water.

There’s a flash of blue and then a sickening jolt, like a dull shock of electricity running throughout the bath, the sort of thing health and safety videos warn you about with plugs and bathtime. It’s possible he blacks out for a second, because when he next remembers breathing it takes two tries to inhale, his lungs tight and skin tingling.

"Fuck!" Sam shouts over him. "Dean, what the hell?"

Dean struggles, happy as a pig in mud because Sam is, without a doubt, Sam again.

"You asshole!" Sam bellows and Dean gets a knee to the crotch and he takes on water.

"Arg! Sam!"

Dean fights back and then Sam gets Dean in a lifeguard hold, one arm under each of Dean’s, grabbing him by the shoulders to keep him up. They stop struggling in a tangled mess, in the tub that’s been emptied of all but a half foot of water and a lot of excess bubbles.

"What the hell, Dean?" Sam growls into his ear.

"You uh-" Dean says, slowly extricating himself and turning to face Sam. Sam jerks his arms around his knees in a belated attempt at modesty as Dean’s eyes roam over him. Everything looks ok, Sam just looks kind of freaked and pissed, too. "You ok, Sammy?"

"No!" Sam’s face is stormy and there’s water everywhere. It’s great. Dean is overjoyed. "You told me to take a freaking bubble bath!" Sam says. "And then I get in and you come in like you have something to tell me! Something important! Then you attack me!"

"I wasn’t attacking you," Dean says. The tingling in his skin has all but faded. Now he just feels an overwhelming relief of being near Sam, who is whole and angel-free.

He smiles and Sam squints at him. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, I just wanted to, uh. I just wanted to tell you-" That you’re fine now. You’re you again. "That I-" Sam pushes his hair back from his face. Dean watches him, then catches himself. "I’m just glad you’re ok."

"Yeah?" Sam visually catalogs Dean for injuries, like they’ve just finished a job. Dean’s aware for the first time that his shirt is stuck to him all over, his arms goosebumping.

"Uh," Dean says.

Sam lounges back in the tub, eyes watchful and trained on Dean, whose heart is yammering now, some unnamed beat.

"Hey," says Sam. "You sure there wasn’t anything else you-"

There’s a loud pop. Dean jumps and yells, but realizes the next second that it’s just the plug. Dean just accidentally wedged it out with his shoe the way he’s sitting, and now the rest of the bathwater’s escaping down the drain.

"Ok, we’re done here," Sam mutters and clambers out, picking the sodden towel from the floor.

When he opens the door he pauses, and says, uncertain, "Uh, hi, Kevin."

"Hi," Kevin says. "Hi, Sam. You look good." He gives him a meaningful look. "Do you feel good?"

"Um," Sam says. "Yes."

Kevin’s face lights up. "Good!"

"I’m going to my room," Sam says, shooting both him and Dean sidelong looks. "Keep an eye on each other, will you? You’re both being weird."

He leaves.

"Whoo!" Dean pumps his fist as Kevin comes into the bathroom.

"You think it worked? What happened?"

"There were the sparks and the blue," Dean says. "Then this jolt, the whole shizzam. Zeke didn’t do anything crazy like blow things up or kill me or anything so I think we’re good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah! I think he’s gone." The reality settles in, and Dean gives another whoop. "Hell yes!"

"Then that’s it?" Kevin asks, looking a little shocked himself. "Just like that? Anything else happen?"

Dean thinks about Sam tipping his head back against the edge of the tub, watching him like he was about to start something.

"No, nothing," he says, and his mouth hurts from grinning. "The only thing is, I wish I could tell Sam, you know? This is like the best thing that’s happened all year."

"Yeah, that’s a good idea," Kevin says, rolling his eyes.

"You're sassy these days, you know that?" Dean punches him in the shoulder to show he’s joking. "You know, you could use a wash. You look like a feral rat."

Kevin scrubs at his shoulder. "So, can I finally use…." he looks around the wrecked bathroom hopefully.

"No," says Dean. "Use the other ones." But as Kevin slopes away, Dean calls after him, "Hey, Kevin. Good job, man. I owe you one, really."

Kevin brightens like someone’s handed him a top of the line graphing calculator.

For once, things are looking up. If Sam’s really fine, then Dean’s fine, then they can get past this and pretend it never happened.

To make sure, Dean watches Sam like a hawk that afternoon, but not once does Sam do anything particularly angely or show signs of noticing a difference. He does cough once, and then shoots Dean an uncomfortable look when Dean reacts positively.

He’s so normal that it starts to freak Dean out actually, normal to the point of complete annoyance with Dean, shoving Dean off his chair and stamping to the other side of the room when Dean asks if "anyone else is in there" for the third time.

Dean’s so relieved, in fact, that he feels on edge all day, and finally leaves Sam alone to practice shooting tin cans of of fence posts. He misses at least five.

He’s jittery like he’s received a full-body electric shock. Which he has, granted. But the ache in his chest is probably where that one swamp monster hit him last week, and the dull headache increasing in severity is probably just allergies from the bunker library Sam and Kevin are slowly uncovering, reams of dust showering free out of every book they crack open off the shelf.

But hey, Dean realizes after lunch, he doesn’t have a dust allergy, and his bruises from the swamp thing were minimal and healed quickly because Dean Winchester is a grown man and doesn’t feel pain, as anyone could tell you (except Sam, who would probably exaggerate). So there’s no ready explanation.

He feels weirder as the day goes on, and by the time he gets to his room that night he’s pressing a hand over his shirtfront to try to lessen the acute pain there and all but collapses onto the bed. His head feels like it’s a melon being split open.

"Dean, do you have any-" Sam’s voice comes in through his door. "Oh my god. Dean!"

Dean waves Sam away, blind with headache. "It’s nothing," he says, gritting his teeth, which helps for a second but not really. He squeezes his eyes shut. "Totally nothing-"

Sam grabs his shoulder and Dean flails like a lost squid in a lake, the memory foam mattress swallowing him whole almost.

And then it is nothing.

He stops struggling as the world rights itself. His head’s clear and his chest is back to normal.

Sam steps back, hands held up in front of him. "Are you-"

Dean clears his throat. "Totally fine. Fine. Yeah. Apparently."

"Ok, then," says Sam, cautiously.

Dean sits at the edge of the bed and rubs at his temple. He blinks a couple times, prods at his right pec, pushes the heel of his hand gently against his eyebrow while Sam watches. He has a stupid expression on his face and Dean tells him as much, and Sam says, "Oh my god, shut up."

Dean smiles and rolls his shoulders. It now feels like the headache was never there, his head clear and Sam looking uncertain by the door.

"So," asks Dean. "What’d you want?"

"Huh?"

"When you came in here. What were you going to ask?"

"Oh," Sam shifts from one foot to the other. "Nothing. I was going to ask you for advil, but it’s ok, I don’t think I need it anymore."

"You feeling ok?"

"Yeah, yeah," says Sam. "I’m feeling great."

Dean stares at him for a second, then clears his throat. "Well, great, then."

"Yeah, I’ll let you…" Sam makes a vague gesture to Dean’s bed, which might imply Dean’s going to do something other than sleep.

"Ok, yeah," says Dean.

"Yeah."

Instead of leaving, Sam stares at him some more, and Dean stares back. It’s an awkward, tense sort of silence.

"Uh, earlier," Sam starts, then clarifies, "In the bathroom."

He glances at the door, feeling cornered. Dean does remember the bathroom earlier. He remembers pulling off the spell, yeah, but if he’s honest with himself, he’s been reliving what he can of one specific moment all day- touching Sam with both hands, palms flat to his chest before gravity dragged them both under.

"When you came in," Sam says, and Dean feels helpless to do anything but look back to him now, wondering at how Sam hesitates before he says, "Like I said, it seemed like you had something to tell me. What were you going to-"

"I slipped," says Dean.

"What?"

"When I fell in. It was so dumb. And I don’t remember what I was going to tell you."

"Really? Because it seemed like-"

"Just forget about it," Dean says. "The floor was slippery. You probably splashed water everywhere!"

Sam gives him a serious look. "Well, if you do remember-"

Dean blinks, remembering again how slick his chest had felt in the two seconds before oblivion, suddenly seeing there’s something Sam’s trying to get at.

"-then you can tell me."

The room feels charged. Dean can’t stop staring at him. "I mean, did you have something you wanted to ask?"

"Um," Sam takes a step toward him. "What if-"

And then Kevin’s voice echoes in from the hall. "Hey, Sam? Sam?"

Dean seizes a knife on the side table and starts sharpening it so he’s not that guy caught having a heated gazing thing with his brother. Again.

Kevin pops his head in, smiling. "Hey, Sam."

Sam nods. "Hi again, Kevin."

"I found something good- The research we were doing, I thought you’d want to see."

Sam smiles back, but it’s totally strained. Dean feels meanly validated. He can see the tightness by Sam’s eyes. "Yeah, thanks Kevin. I’ll be right there."

Kevin recedes. "Ok. You’re gonna love it."

"Jesus," Dean swears when Kevin's gone. He tosses the knife on the table, not looking at Sam.

"Try to get some sleep," Sam tells him, not unkindly, before he leaves. "You look like you need it."

Dean tries to remind himself that Sam is the one who should be feeling bad right about now. Sam is the one who was totalled in the trials and then had a dude riding around inside him for too long. Sam’s the one who’s needed a mainline to an angel to feel normal. He’s bound to start feeling like shit now that Zeke’s not in there healing things. All that, but damn it if Dean’s head doesn’t feel like a bag of bricks the next morning.

"What the hell?" he says, rubbing at his forehead. His throat is sore, too, and he can’t tell if he’s hungry or just sick. A vacant longing for something is hollowing out the space where his heart is.

Sam looks up when Dean trips over the step into the main room. Dean glances back at it. His balance must be off because of the headache.

"Everything’s fine," Dean says, half to himself. He pats his chest again where the feeling seems to be subsiding now. "Absolutely alright."

Sam squints at him, and a guilty flush heats the back of Dean’s neck. When Sam looks at him like that, he thinks Sam might actually know what Dean did.

Someone’s phone goes off, the South Park Theme.

Dean takes a step back, noticing Charlie for the first time. "Hey! You’re back!"

She waves from the corner. "Yeah, I’m back for the weekend. I needed more contacts. And I brought, like, zero clean underwear with me last time." She pauses and squints at him. "Woah, are you ok?"

"Yeah," he clears his throat, but the next still comes out on a croak. "Coffee."

"There’s some on the counter," she says, then, "Ok, only enough for one cup." Then, "Maybe a half cup. You snooze, you lose."

"You know, I bet they kill people for shit like that in Oz," Dean tells her, and goes into the kitchen to brew more.

He takes a few pills from the bottle he keeps in the inside pocket in his jacket, and watches the coffee drizzle into the pot. Images are coming back to him. Last night he had dreams where he and Sam had each other in octopus holds, limbs wrapped up tight around one another. It was unsettling, almost nice.

Yeah, Dean can’t wait for the coffee to clear that one away. He puts a mug under the stream. It fills the mug up hot and quick and he replaces the pot afterward to keep filling.

When he goes back into the main room, he deliberates for a second before he posts up directly across from Sam. Sam who looks fine, just like he claimed. The urge to ward off everything from Hell and Heaven and in between is embarrassing. Sam had the nearest brush with death, and that must be why Dean’s freaking out.

Well good, Dean thinks, blowing at his coffee. Now that he's identified why he's freaking out, he can tamp it down. He smiles to himself and drags a newspaper toward him.

Sam makes a displeased noise and shuffles his other papers back into order.

"Sorry, did I ruin your pile?" Dean says.

Sam holds out three minutes before he asks, "You sure you’re ok?"

"Swear," says Dean, crossing an X over his heart. His head feels a lot better actually. "Yeah," he says, smiling. "I am A-Ok. You’re the one who- I mean, how are you doing?"

"Good," says Sam. He rubs at his chest. "I feel good."

"Ok, ok," Dean nods. "Good’s good."

"What’s going on?" Charlie whispers to Kevin.

Sam shakes his head and looks back to his book. Dean ignores the peanut gallery tittering in the corner and starts reading about a possible mermaid spotted off the coast of Massachusetts. Which is bunk. For one, Mermaids do not exist, and two, mermaids do not freaking exist.

He can feel still Sam’s eyes on him. Dean gives him a look over his paper and flips the page, pointedly, after which Sam clears his throat. Dean kicks him under the table.

"Really?" Charlie mutters, but neither of them pay her any attention. The contact between Dean’s foot and Sam’s shin is nice and he does it again for good measure.

"Ow," Sam tells him before going back to reading. Then, "You grinning like that is starting to freak me out."

Dean doesn’t even try to hide it. "You know," he muses. "I suddenly feel like everything’s gonna be ok, you know? The trials are over, we’ve got this sweet bunker, and interns-"

"Hey!" Kevin says.

"You’ve got to finesse it a little so it looks good on a resume," says Charlie. "You could put down experience as a...library tech?"

"And you’re good," Dean finishes. "Right?"

Sam rolls his eyes. "Yes, for the fiftieth time. Now, let me read."

"Yeah, you do that. You read."

"Oh my god," Sam says when he looks up to Dean watching him.

"What? Can’t a man be happy?"

"No, the other thing. Seriously, quit it. It’s distracting."

Sam knocks Dean’s leg away, which is when Dean realizes he’s been trailing the toe of his boot along Sam’s shin for the last five minutes at least.

"Oh," he says, and does some quick thinking. "I thought you were the table leg."

Sam gives him a look like he wonders if Dean normally strokes table legs. And if he’d of asked, Dean wouldn’t have been able to give him a good answer.

Dean reads three gas station rags half desperate after that and thankfully finds a tiny article that looks like something right up their alley. After a few calls to the station a couple towns over and phone conversations with two eye witnesses, Dean's found them an actual salt and burn. He all but grabs Sam by the scruff of the neck and drags him to the car.

The old librarian’s buried in an abandoned graveyard, the kind that’s been left to nature and dry grass. Headstones break the ground like teeth and blackberry vines climb every fence.

Sam takes in a deep breath once they get out of the car.

"You love old cemeteries," Dean says.

Sam shrugs and jerks his head to the iron wrought gate. "You think they build these things to keep the ghosts in?"

"Well, it’s obviously not working," says Dean.

They jump it.

"Back to the old stomping ground," says Dean, throwing Sam the shovel.

"Why do I always have to dig?"

Dean gives him a look. "Really," he says. "Remember Bertramius Finch?"

"Fine," Sam says. "Maybe."

"I guess there is such a thing as convenient amnesia." But Dean understands. It feels like he’s always digging graves. "Now where’s old Mrs. McGee?"

Sam digs for half an hour and then they trade off. By the time the sun’s burnt its way through to one o’clock, Dean’s taken two turns, then climbed out again to eat berries and play poker on his cell.

"Remind me again," Sam huffs at somewhere past five feet deep. "Why we decided to do this in the middle of the day?"

"Eh, no one’s around," Dean says. The graveyard’s a patch of nothing in the middle of more nothing. "Yeah," he says, laying back on the pillow of his jacket in the high grass. "Today just seemed like a really good day."

Sam pops his head out of the grave to glare. He has sweat-streaked dirt rubbed over his jaw.

Dean chuckles. "Ok, apparently not."

He watches him for a second, Sam bending out of sight then straightening to toss moist shovelfuls of dirt out of the hole. Their lives feel so uncomplicated. Yeah there are angels running around like chickens with their heads cut off, but Sam’s ok, and Dean has this wild urge to stop him shoveling, to move to the edge and do something. He doesn’t know what.

"You know," Sam says some time later, throwing a shovelful of dirt in an arc over where Dean’s lying. "If Mrs. McGee wasn’t killing school kids in the stacks, I’d almost want to let her haunt the place. Look at her headstone. ‘Devourer of books, lover of life.’"

"Be stuck in eternity, rereading the same ten pages? You’d want that?"

"I’m just saying, haunting a library doesn’t seem terrible," Sam says, his shovel hitting wood with a crack. "And you’re right."

"Huh?" Dean looks over in time to catch Sam’s quick smile.

"About today," Sam says. He reaches down to pry up a board. "Today’s not half bad."

Dean sits up to watch the pull of Sam’s shoulders, his soft expression in profile. The urge to go to him is so powerful it feels like it’s already happening. Dean flexes his fingers and gets to his knees.

Sam turns. He gives Dean an inscrutable look but only says, "Come help me with this."

Dean stands and pats himself down for his lighter, then goes around the perimeter of the grave to snag the large bag of salt - too large for this job. Then there’s a violent wind and he spins in time to see Sam thrown out of the grave.

Dean hurls salt and the ghost burns out of sight.

"Sam!" Dean yells, grabbing his knife.

He sees Sam in a pile by the next gravestone. Dean slices the entire bag of salt open into the grave, squirts lighter fluid, and drops the flaming bic. The ghost - high-collared dress and wire rims, half a foot behind him it turns out - looses a bloodcurdling scream, goes up in flame, and is gone. Crows take flight from the trees. Dean tumbles toward Sam.

"Don't worry," Sam tells him, getting up on an elbow. He winces and draws his arm up to his chest. It’s gashed, blood dripping from his forearm from where he’s pressing down. Never, never let your guard down on a hunt. Dean’s hands are sticky with blackberry. He’s so stupid.

"God dammit," he says out loud. "I should’ve been watching. Here, stay here. Let’s stitch that up."

"I’m ok, I’m ok," Sam’s repeating.

He sits, leaning back against Jeremy, age 14 with his legs stretched out in front of him. Dean leaves him and has to climb a crumbling tree to get back over the fence to the Impala, stupid and clumsy while Sam bleeds out.

It takes ten minutes and he only feels better once he’s jogging back toward Sam, whiskey in one hand, one of the small needles they kept stuck in an actual pincushion in the glove compartment in the other.

"Ready?" says Dean, kneeling by his side. "Stay still."

"Why’re you using the green thread?" Sam wheezes after the first stitch.

Once Dean stitched him up green on St. Patrick’s day and called him Leprechaun Threads for a week.

"This is not like some pointed thing," he says. "It’s the first one I grabbed!"

He finishes up in a minute flat, Sam’s hand warm on his thigh the entire time, a needed connection.

"You totally hit your head," Dean tells him.

"I’m fine," Sam says, grimacing. "I’m just anticipating the years of librarian jokes."

"Future me is a dick," Dean agrees. "Come on."

They make it back over the fence. Sam is awesome and kind of a ninja and somehow manages despite a possible concussion and only having use of one arm.

"Ok," says Dean once they’re in the car, taking a deep breath. "Back to the lab."

He looks over to Sam and a crazy thought strikes him. Crazy and great.

"You still in a good mood after that?" Sam says. He touches his hair tentatively. Dean starts the car.

"You’re not healing," Dean wonders aloud.

Sam frowns. "No, I’m not. I’m bleeding out on the upholstery. I’m going to have a mean bump on my head. Stop smiling and drive."

Dean drives, but he can’t hold back the grin. Sam’s not healing, which means it worked. Where before Ezekiel would have healed him, Sam is all flesh and blood now, no angel in sight.

By mutual agreement, they don’t say much on the way back. After a while, Dean turns on some slow rock, and Sam does say, "That’s not going to work," but when Dean looks over, he’s dozing a little against the window anyway.

Sam’s surly all afternoon when they get back, which Dean blames for his own dip in mood, but despite this, Sam ends up shoving in to sit next to him at the long table.

Dean doesn’t mention it, just scoots over to give him room.

And a couple minutes later, he has to move over because Sam’s shoulder’s pressed back against his.

And then he and Sam reach for a pen at the same time.

Their fingers get all mixed up together and Dean snorts and drops it. It skitters away, and Sam says, "Dean," like it’s something he purposefully did.

"Sam," Dean says, feeling inexplicably winded.

Sam gets up to do something, finally, thank god, and Dean sits back in his chair, rubbing at the bridge of his nose, rubbing at his eyes until he sees stars.

"Dean," Kevin whispers. When Dean opens his eyes, Kevin's leaning over the table toward him. "How is he?"

"Pretty beaten up. Which is good."

Kevin’s face clears. "I can’t believe it worked!"

"Yeah, right?" Dean says, feeling distracted. "You know, I should probably go find him."

"Are you-" Kevin says.

Dean stands.

"Hey."

"What?"

"You look kind of weird," Kevin says.

"Wow, always with the flattery," Dean says.

Kevin raises his eyebrows. "No, you’re really pale. And it looks like your arm hurts. Did you get hit, too?"

Dean looks down and sees he’s favoring his left. "Huh, I think I must’ve bruised it," he says, feeling light-headed. Just another unknown injury. "You know," he tells Kevin. "I think I’m going to go take a power nap. Hold down the fort, would you?"

Waiting safe in his iron-trap room later that night, Dean stares into the dark. There’s this feeling, this deep feeling of trepidation, of something not right, and it keeps him up for hours. He can tell because the glow of the clock on the bedside table casts the long shadow of his shoulder on the wall and he keeps rolling over to check as the minutes blink by.

"Ok," he tells himself, when it’s four AM and he’s still wide awake. There’s a persistent, uncomfortable squeeze in his chest he’s trying to ignore. It feels like maybe he swallowed a lot of air, or almost like something very important to him has gone missing. Maybe if he goes to talk to Sam, he thinks, he’ll be able to sleep.

It’s only once he’s out the door, heading the three doors down the hallway to Sam’s room, that he realizes the time and query might be enough for Sam to wake up royally pissed.

He stops where he is, considering. He does feel better, now that he’s up and about. His chest doesn’t feel quite as tight, so maybe it was the air thing. He tries to burp, but fails, so tries again, and succeeds. He feels a bit better still.

He looks back toward his own room. But then he looks back to Sam’s door. He considers. There’s an appealing quality to waking Sam up after midnight, something fun. He thinks, it would be good to see him right now.

He takes a step in that direction and then stops. He remembers that Sam is not going to be very impressed when he asks Dean what he wants, and Dean can only come up with a shrug.

Dean nods to himself. That decided, he paces back toward his door, but then remembers he’s Sam’s brother and he can wake him up whenever he feels like it. There’s no reason to go back to his own room. It’s boring there, and Sam has all the best books.

There seems to be no easy decision. As he ponders this, the door he’s standing in front of cracks open.

"Dean?" Charlie asks. She’s limned by her room lamp, in pajamas. Past her, Dean can see a room that’s almost entirely nerd-themed.

"Oh, uh, hello," he says in a tone that says, fancy meeting you here. "Did I wake you up?"

"No, no." Charlie waves an arm. "My Diablo III guild is mostly based in Australia, so I’m up at this time of night all the time."

"Oh, good. That’s...that’s great," says Dean. "Hey, don’t they miss you when you’re in Oz?"

"Yeah, it sucks for them. I’m a barbarian and I’m super indispensable. So, what’re you doing?"

"Oh, you know." Dean shrugs, then says uncertainly, "Thinking about waking up Sam."

"Oh, that’s nice of you."

"Yeah?"

"No, he’s going to be totally pissed. Although the bonds between siblings are wholly a mystery to me, as I’m an only child, I saw how grumpy he got when you woke him up from a nap to ask him for a dollar a couple weeks ago, and it wasn’t exactly understanding if you catch my drift."

"Right," he says. "Thanks, Charlie."

"Yep."

She closes her door.

Dean stares at Sam’s door for a very long minute. There is no reason to go see him, he tells himself, once and for all. He’s fought the urge plenty of nights since they’ve started staying in the bunker so there’s no reason to give in now.

So he turns and trudges back to his room. It’s a hike, but he’s probably just getting tired. His head is starting to ache, and he goes to settle in for another half hour of staring blindly up at the dark ceiling.

It doesn’t do much, though. But even if he hadn’t been awake, he suspects, he’d have felt the quiet awareness of Sam entering the room at four-thirty.

His headache suddenly disappears, for one. The door smooths soft over the floor on hinges that are mysteriously well-oiled given the age of the bunker, and Dean may have been half-asleep after all because it feels like a dream, a real good one, when Sam slides in next to him.

The mattress sinks as Sam arranges his giant body, and Dean fights against rolling toward him. After a minute of this, Sam whispers, "It’s really hard to move on this thing. There’s a you-shaped indent."

"Seriously?" Dean whispers back, disbelieving. "It’s my bed."

"Move over."

Dean does. The sheet’s twisting between them, and Sam’s warm up next to him, heating Dean everywhere. Dean scoots over the furthest he can until he’s got a knee pressed into the wall.

He keeps his eyes open and resists the warm call to touch Sam that moves over him like honey. He’s tired, he doesn’t think about it, he just squeezes his hands into fists, and after an indeterminate amount of time, realizes that he’s been holding his breath in efforts to remain flattened out of reach.

As he waits, tense, he pretends to fall back asleep. Sam’s obviously come here for a reason. They don’t make a habit of sharing beds, so there’s an inevitable conversation here, and Dean doesn’t want to have it.

Sam starts it anyway, whispering again in the dark. "Dean?"

Dean smashes his face into the pillow, rubbing his face against 170 thread count and feeling disgruntled. "Oh my god, go away."

This, of course, doesn’t stop Sam. "Dean, about yesterday-"

"Forget about it."

"No," says Sam. "I mean, I keep thinking- Were you going to, like...do something? You can tell me."

Sam doesn’t know about the exorcism, Dean tells himself. Here's hoping he's just talking about Dean falling in the bath with him.

"Leave it to you to make a normal bathroom thing awkward," Dean says, trying to infuse as much ‘you’re stupid’ into his voice as possible. It doesn’t help that everything in him wants to roll toward Sam, to press his body up against Sam’s with his face to Sam’s neck and grab him all over.

He manfully resists, to the point of tugging a pillow to hug between them.

"I mean," Sam says. "If you did have something you wanted to talk about, I wanted you to know that it’s fine."

"What?" Dean says. "No, nothing to talk about."

"If you had a secret-" Sam starts, and Dean freezes, doesn’t know what to do. So Sam does suspect something. "Don’t beat yourself up about it, ok?"

Dean could tell Sam everything, tell him that it was necessary and it saved his life, but he sees suddenly, and with great clarity, that Sam is not going to understand, not at all. He remembers Ezekiel, going into Sam’s head, and thinks hell, if he were in Sam’s shoes, Dean probably wouldn’t understand either.

"Believe me," Dean tells him. "I got that one covered."

Sam sits up, a sudden movement. "I knew it," he says. "What the hell is going on?"

Dean grabs his pillow like it’s a shield. "Um. Nothing?"

"Nothing-nothing?" Sam says, a dangerous edge to his voice. "Because I’ve been feeling weird all day, Dean. And not normal weird."

"What's normal weird?"

"Dean!"

This is the worst conversation to have. Ever. Dean briefly entertains just spilling the beans right there. Because maybe he’s stupid. Maybe he’s had enough of lying to Sam.

"You’re not going to like it," he says.

"I knew it." The wind goes out of Sam’s sails. He stretches out on the bed. "I knew there was something. What is it, a curse?" He sounds ready for any stupid thing Dean could’ve done. Which is fair, given the circumstances.

"Not a curse," says Dean, fumbling for a story that’s not too off the mark. "It was uh, a spell."

Sam takes a while to respond. When he does, it’s very incredulous. "A spell."

"Yeah, um," Dean says, and maybe he’s definitely not over lying to Sam, because next thing he blurts out is, "Yeah, Kevin was messing around, you know how kids are, and then something went wrong and I’m not sure exactly what, but, uh. That happened."

"Messing around?" Sam’s voice gets especially high at the end.

"Ok, calm your shit," says Dean. "I’m figuring it out. I’m sure Kevin was just trying to help."

"And you let him?"

"No! No, that’s not how it happened. Jesus, you think I’d-"

Sam throws himself back onto the pillow. "I knew all this was too good to- Do you happen to know what the intent of the curse was? Did it have anything to do with being...near each other?"

"It’s not a curse," Dean starts to insist, but it’s half-hearted and he pretty much just feels miserable. "I don’t know what it was for. Just ask Kevin I guess."

"Ok." Sam sighs noisily, then Dean can hear him change gears. "Ok, what’s important is, I’m fine and you’re fine, so we’ll deal with it. This isn’t the worst thing that could have happened." He rolls to the side of the bed like he’s about to get up. "Come on."

"No," says Dean, and reaches out and grabs Sam’s good arm. Which feels like the best thing since sliced bread. He grips tighter.

"Dude!" Sam jerks away.

"Uh," says Dean. "Morning. Ok?"

"What?"

This lie is so tenuous. Dean feels sick and tired, and just plain doesn’t want to deal with the fallout now when his head is all messed up. All he knows is Sam should stay in bed so Dean can spend another hour or five trying to feel less guilty and remember that he saved Sam when he let Zeke ride around inside him.

"Dean," Sam says, like a warning, but Dean reaches out to push him back down onto the mattress. Sam stills. Dean can feel his heart beating hard through his shirt front.

"Morning," Dean insists, searching out the glitter of Sam’s wide eyes in the dark. "Let’s just deal with it in the morning. Ok? Sammy?"

Sam snorts. "Because that always helps."

"Poor kid’s probably wracked with guilt already. We’re fine, like you said. Let’s talk to him tomorrow."

It might be Dean’s imagination, but he thinks he feels Sam scoot an inch toward him. In any case, he can feel Sam’s breath on his face when he finally says, "Yeah. Okay."

Part 2