SPN: see light where others cannot (Sam/Dean, NC-17) (Part 2)

[nilyn]

Part One

It's always been him and Dean against the world. Partners in crime, soulmates, whatever name Sam chooses to put to it, the point is-the world is him and Dean, accept no substitutes. For a while, it was John too, but it hasn't been for many years, now. It's just the two of them, and Sam likes that.

The months pass away, slipping through his fingers, and no one else comes in at the cracks. Maybe it should bother him. Maybe they are too close-maybe they should find someone else to be with once in a while, but they're getting to the point in their lives where it's too much effort to reach out. Some days, the only person Sam even sees is Dean. No one else would understand that sometimes Sam sees things he shouldn't, that sometimes Dean meets reapers in gas station candy aisles. Their lives have a thousand threads of complication, and they've worked out how to work with them. Anyone else would get tangled.

One night, Dean pulls to the side of the road in a nothing part of Wyoming, too tired to keep driving but with no motel for probably another fifty miles in any given direction. Dean's been yawning, which makes Sam yawn, which makes Dean yawn worse, and it's a miracle that they haven't drifted off the road already. There are no towns for miles around, and the highway is an absolute pitch-black, stars so clear and crisp in the sky that once the dome light goes off in the car Sam finds his gaze fixed upwards, marveling at them.

“I'm getting in the back,” Dean announces, and for the first time in a long time, he motions for Sam to follow. Sometimes, in the past, they would curl together in the backseat when Sam was having nightmares every night, or when one of them was injured and they needed to remind each other that they were still alive. Sometimes, Sam would be shaking, and Dean would whisper, “Ssh, it's alright, it's alright, I got you.” It wasn't something they talked about; in the mornings, they pretended nothing happened and kept their contact to a minimum, like by keeping their distance they could pretend they hadn't spent the night half on top of each other. The backseat isn't big. It's certainly not big enough for two grown men to be comfortable, but they've been finding ways to be comfortable in the Impala since they were children and they've adapted over the years.

This is the first time that Dean's motioned for Sam to follow him when there isn't anything wrong. It feels like a new beginning, like the start of something, maybe. He's probably reading too much into it. Whatever Dean's reasons, the car is growing cold from the chilled air outside and Dean is warm and comfortable. He's not about to turn that down.

He climbs over the seat, narrowly avoiding hitting his head on the ceiling, and he half-falls onto Dean. Dean swears, elbowing him in the ribs for good measure, and the two of them jostle in the confined space until they can find a position where they'll both be able to get some rest without killing each other in their sleep. Dean mutters something about cuddling and Sam grins at that; only Dean can offer to share the backseat of a medium-size car with someone and then get grumpy when they actually take up the amount of space a person would. Cuddling is inevitable. If Sam doesn't hold onto Dean, he'll fall off the seat entirely.

When Sam blinks back into awareness five hours later, Dean's flush against him, hips pressed tight to his. Sam doesn't register the movement he feels for a solid thirty seconds, at which point he realizes that Dean is rubbing off on him. Dean's breathing hitches, but he looks dead to the world, still sound asleep, and Sam doesn't try to pull away. Doesn't try to second-guess the sudden twist in his gut, the way all of his breath leaves him in an instant. His eyes drop to Dean's lips and stick there, and he can't shake the thought of kissing him. It flashes through him like electricity, shameful heat rising in his cheeks. Dean might go with it, for a while at least, until he woke up fully and figured out what the hell was going on.

Sam wouldn't, would never take advantage like that, but he's thinking about it anyway. What it would feel like, how good it could be.

He's shaken out of his thoughts when Dean blinks back into awareness. Dean goes absolutely still against him and then he wrenches himself away, swearing as he falls right off the seat into the footwell below. His head connects with the side of the car with a solid thunk, because that's just how their lives work, and Sam grins down at him.

“Morning, Dean,” he says, not even attempting to hide his amusement.

Dean keeps up the blurry-eyed, muttered curses for the next hour or so, and a few times Sam hears something about 'fucking octopus limbs.' That one's entirely unfair though; Dean was the one who invited him into the backseat in the first place, and it's hardly his fault that he latches onto whatever's nearest to him if it's either that or fall off the seat. Besides, Dean was the one grinding against him, not the other way around.

Dean's awkward and vaguely flushed for the rest of the day. Sam likes it more than he should.



Sometimes, Sam thinks it's not right to be as happy as he is right now. With the way his life goes, something awful is sure to be around the corner, but for the time being, he's got Dean beside him and the memory of Dean's warmth against him. The sun is shining bright and there's a soft breeze in the trees, late-summer warm that makes everything feel just right, vivid blue sky shot through with yellows and pinks as the sun fades away for the night. They've been making their way across the heartland for a week now, just looking for cases, ambling along and stopping wherever looks interesting on the way. It's the slow season and Dean's managed to find five different bakeries with good pie in a row, so Sam's not complaining about the detours.

Something awful's bound to happen. Any day now.

Dean licks a crumb of pie from the corner of his mouth and grins over at Sam, a bit of cherry filling still smeared across his bottom lip.

Yup. Any day now.



This time, he's the one who sees Tessa. Maybe the reapers talk; he certainly didn't react favorably to the last one, and she doesn't seem like the type to start giggling at the obituaries page. Maybe she's taking a liking to them. Maybe she was just in the area for no apparent reason. He doesn't seem to be able to find any rhyme or reason to when new changes happen in his life.

It's another locked-room murder to look into; Dean's already inside, interviewing the neighbors, and Sam's following a few minutes behind in his electrician's uniform. He still feels stupid wearing it, but he's not twenty-two anymore, and it doesn't feel as much like dress-up as it used to. He's mulling over what little facts of the case they've managed to cobble together when he looks up and sees her. She's leaning against a streetlight pole, and she smiles at him when his eyes widen in recognition.

“Hey there, Sam,” she says. She's always seemed strangely otherworldly to him, enough that she stands out from everyone else on the street in an instant. No one else is looking at her, but no one else seems to notice him talking to nothing, either.

“Hey, Tessa,” he says. “Checking up on us?”

“Babysitting,” she corrects, and judging by her tone, she's not here because she's taken a shine to the two of them. “I'm supposed to ease you two into this.”

“... Into what?” Sam asks, frowning.

She raises an eyebrow. “Ask Dean,” she says, and holds out a brown paper sack, weak with grease. “These are for him, by the way. I think they're onion rings.” And with that supremely helpful bit of information, she leaves Sam standing there, baffled.

“Great,” Sam mutters. He's got the beginnings of a headache, and apparently Dean knows more than he's letting on but didn't feel the need to clue Sam in. At least both things are familiar by now.

“Hey, move it,” someone calls, jostling him as they move past. The street is packed with people and Sam's stationary, an easy target for the short-tempered. And yet, he wasn't having a problem with it a minute ago.

Huh.



There are werewolves prowling the streets in a tiny backwater Louisiana town, turning the sleepy community into a huddled mass of terrified residents. Either there's more than one or the one they've got is more vicious than most; there are five attacks on record by the time they arrive, and they've only got two more nights to take the thing down. Sam keeps referring to the werewolf by its French name, just on general principle-it's not like he has an excuse to in any other region-and Dean jostles with him, calling him a freak and a nerd. Sam's okay with it. He's been a freak long enough to own up to the fact now. It's harder to be uncomfortable with the label after you've died four times, prevented the Apocalypse, been the vessel for the Devil, and developed a taste for demon blood.

As it turns out, there's only one werewolf. By the time they catch up to it, it's taken one person down; they're not quick enough to see it, or stop it, but by the time Sam reaches the gashed and torn corpse the spirit is already standing by its body.

“Which way did it go?” Sam asks, looking around wildly for some sign. A blood trail, a bit of fur snagged on something, anything-if he lets the trail go cold the man in front of him won't be the only casualty tonight.

He's not actually expecting the man to answer. He isn't sure what he is expecting, truthfully, and he startles when the man looks down at himself and asks, “Am I--”

“Yeah,” Sam says, trying on the best sympathetic smile he can muster under the circumstances. “I'm sorry, but--please. It's important. If we can find it soon, we can stop it from hurting anyone else.”

The man seems to come to a decision. He nods and points, and Sam takes off at a full sprint in that direction, gun held ready. He can hear the slap of Dean's footsteps behind him but underneath that, there's a lower sound, like a growl. In the shadows, halfway down an alleyway, there's a slumped figure, blood-stained and panting, and when it turns to look at Sam its fangs catch the light and glint white.

Five minutes and two silver bullets later, the town's werewolf problem is gone. They don't stick around; the gunshots are bound to draw attention in a town this small, and being blood-spattered in an area with two bodies in it isn't the way Sam wants to spend his Friday night. Instead, he and Dean make their way back to the motel room and clean up, stripping out of the blooded clothes. Sam stretches, savoring the ache in his muscles, and he's halfway into a new shirt when Dean calls from the bathroom, “We should go out.”

“It's midnight, Dean,” Sam points out. He shrugs the shirt the rest of the way on and starts buttoning it up, not looking up as Dean comes closer.

“C'mon, Sammy, you wouldn't be going to sleep until three anyway. Let's go get a beer.”

Sam has some choice words about Dean being a functioning alcoholic, but he doesn't push it. He doesn't mention, either, that not fifteen minutes ago they just killed someone. Actually, he thinks, that's a damn good reason to get drunk. He'd rather not think about the morality of putting down weres or the fact that the spirit actually answered him this time. Smoothing over his thoughts with a little self-medication isn't the worst idea of the night.

Two hours later, they stumble back to the motel, grinning at each other. Dean's been cracking dumb jokes to keep Sam from getting maudlin-drunk, and Sam keeps bumping up against him as he tries to get the door open. It's close to perfect, for a moment or two, and Sam lets his worries fade away for a while, focusing on Dean's flushed cheeks and little grin and the way he keeps knocking into Sam like he needs a full-body reassurance that Sam's still next to him.

How it goes from that to kissing Sam isn't sure. One moment, he's pressed to Dean's side and the next he's slammed up against the door to the motel room and Dean's mouth is all over his, long, deep kisses that make something burn low in Sam's stomach. He grips onto Dean's hair hard and holds him there. It's nothing close to perfect, sloppy and bitter around the edges from the lingering beer in their mouths, but Sam wants more of it. Just the initial spark and already he wants more, more, more, and then all he can think of is Rebel Yell and he's laughing against Dean's mouth despite himself.

Dean pulls back, then, eyes big as saucers, like he doesn't know what the hell just happened and definitely wasn't responsible for any of it. Sam says, “It's okay, Dean,” and Dean moves backwards, gets the door open, collapses onto his bed. Sam's still staring openly, taking in Dean's kiss-reddened mouth and spreading pink flush. He takes a deep breath and then another, trying to pull himself back together, and then he drops down onto his own bed.

His head is swimming, and all he wants to do is crawl over to Dean's bed and get in with him, but Dean's turned away from him, back tense. Nothing more's going to happen tonight.

He sighs, staring up at the ceiling, and tries to make sleep take him.



They don't talk about it, the next morning. They don't really need to. Sam knows perfectly well that Dean was sober enough to remember what he said. They both remember it just fine, the hot, sweet press of his lips to Dean's, the way Dean melted into him, went loose and hot and pliant like he wanted Sam to just roll him onto the bed and take him apart piece by piece. Sam wants to. He's wanted to for a long time, but it's the first time in years that there's no hesitation at the thought. Dean's the best and most forbidden thing he's ever wanted, and damn if that doesn't make the thought better. He's wanted to in some way or another since he was a teenager; it's only natural. Dean never had an awkward phase, just went from one type of beautiful to another. Dean would kick his ass if he knew Sam thought of him as beautiful (it's too close to 'pretty') but it's true. He is.

He wants to, and Dean wants to, if how he acted that night was any indication. He won't push it, not when there's even a chance of scaring Dean off, but when Dean's ready to cross those lines Sam will be there, waiting on the other side.



The next body they find isn't from a violent death. It's just an old man in Indiana quietly going to sleep and not waking up. He's relaxed onto a park bench, cane propped up next to him, and he closes his eyes against the bright summer sun and the sounds of children playing in the background, birds in the trees, a thousand quiet, pleasant sounds slipping away into nothingness as he lets the world go. He rises up out of his body, and Sam's there beside him.

The man looks down at himself. “Wasn't a bad way to go,” he says, and he smiles, a soft, peaceful sort of smile. He's old enough that he's accepted the possibility of death a long time ago. He's not the type that will linger on and be twisted by the ravages of time. In that moment, Sam knows exactly what to do, deep in his bones, and his body moves on an instinct that isn't his own. He takes the man by the hand and leads him away from his body, walking into the bright afternoon sun.

“It'll be alright,” Sam tells him, and he smiles. “I'm not supposed to tell you what comes after; I couldn't, even if I wanted to. It's different for everyone, so I don't know what'll be waiting for you.”

The man says, “I've had a pretty good life,” and he looks skyward, hope lighting him up.

“You'll be fine, then,” Sam says. “They let me in. And if there's somebody-if there was somebody, they'll be waiting for you there.”

Age melts off the man's face as he smiles, and for a moment Sam sees the young man underneath, full of life and vitality and pure, unsullied joy. He looks like he's been given a gift, and with a last nod to Sam, he fades away into blinding, pure light. Dean watches from a distance but doesn't approach, and Sam turns to face him after he's sure the man is gone.

“...Oh,” he says, when Sam comes back. Tessa's presence makes sense, now. They understand why they're not getting older, why life has slowed down for them a little. People can still see them-maybe people will always be able to see them-but they're something different now, not quite two ordinary Kansas boys anymore, if they ever were.

That night, Dean crawls into Sam's bed without even asking. He doesn't need to ask, and they both know it. Dean presses his mouth to Sam's, cold stone sober, and Sam kisses back.

“You sure this is alright?” Dean asks.

Sam grins. “You don't even need to ask, Dean,” he says, and he guides Dean's mouth back down to his.

They spend more than an hour just kissing, enjoying the slow slide of their mouths against each other until they're both short of breath and thrumming with energy. Dean rolls out from under Sam when Sam lets his hips press down against Dean's, and Sam frowns. Before he can ask, Dean makes the universal motion for jerking off and disappears into the bathroom. Sam can deal with that, for now, especially since Dean doesn't bother to muffle the noises he makes.

He slides a hand into his own boxers and closes his eyes, straining to hear the sounds Dean makes through the door.

It works.



And so, they let it happen, all of it. The days pass by, each one not so different from the rest, and Dean never gets more than the handful of gray hairs he had to start with. Sam never gets any at all.

Sam takes the hand of a little girl in a hospital while Dean cons his way into the morgue in the basement, checking out the latest gruesome death in a string of several. She's no more than seven or eight, and he can't look her parents in the eye as the two of them walk down the hall. No one can see him, right now; he gets a headache when he goes from visible to not, but hasn't figured out any way of controlling it past that when someone dies near him he tends to disappear from everyone's sight except Dean's. She looks up at him with big eyes and he crouches down, a gentle hand on her shoulder. Dean's better with kids than he is, honestly, but he tries to tell her that it'll be alright; she's going someplace good, somewhere she's going to be happy.

“I don't wanna leave,” she says, looking back at her empty body, at her parents sitting by her bedside.

“I know,” Sam says. “You need to, though. They're going to miss you, but you'll see them again, okay? You will.” He hopes so, at least. He doesn't know how memory-based heavens work when there are only a few years of memories to draw from; still, with a few more reassurances, he sends her on, and she goes. He sighs, making his way back down the stairs to Dean, unable to shake the guilt. It's the age thing. He and Dean don't get a say in who they take and who they don't-sometimes it's a general sense of who to take, just people they encounter on a case, and sometimes, it's honest-to-god post-its that appear stuck to their motel doors or inside their wallets-but neither of them like it when it's kids.

Speaking of post-its, the fact that Death apparently has a thing for purple post-it notes really weirds him out.

“Is she gonna be alright?” Dean asks as Sam opens the door to the morgue and comes to stand by his brother's side.

“Yeah, she'll be okay,” Sam says, pulling on his gloves with a snap of latex.

“Bet she gets a teddy bear factory or something.”

“... a teddy bear factory? Really, Dean?”

“What? She's seven, come on.”

Sam grins and shrugs.



“What's it all mean?” the guy asks.

They are both getting so, so tired of that question.

“Honestly?” Dean says. “I don't know, and I've died-how many times have I died, Sammy?”

Sam frowns. “Are we counting the Groundhog Day experience or not?”

“Might as well.”

“I'd say around a hundred and fifteen times.”

The guy stares.

“So, yeah,” Dean says. “I've died a hundred and fifteen times, and I still don't know. Find meaning wherever you want, man. There's no right or wrong answer.”



One day halfway through November, they're at Bobby's, kicked back on the couch with beers in hand as rain pours down outside, a steady thrumming against the windowpanes. These days, they're almost as used to leading spirits on as putting them to rest by fire, and when Bobby asks them what they've been up to, Sam admits, “Some hunting, some reaping.” He didn't mean to put it that bluntly, but, well, he's definitely not on his first couple of beers anymore.

“Reaping.”

“Yeah, we were gonna tell you about that,” Dean says, taking another swig of his own beer. “Apparently Death decided to hire us and forgot to give us the memo.”

“You're not dead,” Bobby points out. “You boys gonna tell me Death just decided to put you on his team while you were still alive?”

“Got a theory about that one, actually,” Sam says, and Dean turns to him, an odd expression lurking at the edges of his face. Sam hasn't actually shared this one yet. “So, Hell wants nothing to do with us, right.”

“... Right,” Bobby says warily, and motions for Sam to go on.

“Heaven... I don't know what's going on with Cas but I don't exactly get the impression we're in his good books anymore. And Purgatory-well, we already killed Eve. So if we can die, we eventually end up in one of those three places, and none of them want us there.”

“So, what, Death played peacemaker?” Dean asks, eyebrows going up.

“Well, we are harder to kill like this,” Sam points out. He shrugs. “Actually, I'm not sure if we're killable at all without Death's scythe. So it's win-win for him. He gets more people to do his monkey work and we stop upsetting the balance by dying every five minutes.”

“Huh,” Dean says. He shrugs and takes another sip of beer. “I've heard worse theories.”



They're not monsters; they're never going to be monsters, but they're something else, something set apart from the rest of the world, something new and unique. Maybe it's that knowledge that finds Sam pressed to Dean in the middle of the night with only the moon as witness.

It starts out as just scuffling in the salvage yard; Dean starts making cracks about Sam's hair and Sam starts making cracks about how Dean's thirty-nine, and he's “gonna be over the hill soon, gonna be an old man,” and Dean calls him a little bitch and tries to tackle him. Sam twists out of his grip, and they tussle, thudding against the side of a car so hard that the breath gets knocked from both of them. Dean kisses Sam, then, and Sam kisses back, and the next thing he knows, they've gone from zero to one hundred sixty and Sam's hands are sliding up under Dean's shirt to press against hot, smooth skin, and Dean's fingers are fumbling for the button of Sam's jeans. Dean slides a hand in and pulls Sam out, grip tight enough to make Sam gasp like there's no air left anywhere as Dean starts to stroke him off. The friction is tight and perfect and Sam digs his nails into Dean's skin and pulls Dean closer to him, tugging at button-fly and belt and zipper until he can shove Dean's jeans down his hips and draw the two of them flush. Dean sinks teeth into the crook of Sam's neck in just the right spot, murmurs against the spit-slick skin, “I gotcha, Sammy, I gotcha. Come on, come for me,” and Sam's never been as good at following orders as Dean but he can follow that one just fine.



They move together, slick and hot in the backseat of the Impala on a rainy day, pulled off to the side of a dusty backroad that doesn't even have a name, just county route 42. It's winter now, it's been months since that first time, and the air outside is freezing but Sam is burning with heat. Dean is underneath him, bitten-red mouth open wide as Sam opens him up slow, curling his fingers deeper and fingerfucking him with slow, deliberate motions, pressing and twisting until Dean is wordless and panting, fucking himself back onto Sam's hand, all shame lost. He pushes Sam onto his back and straddles him, closing his eyes as he opens himself up and lets Sam sink into him. Sam's skin feels like it's on fire, where they're pressed together, so hot it almost hurts, and Dean makes tiny, almost-hurt noises but he doesn't stop moving, wringing pleasure out of the both of them that's painful in its intensity. Sam holds onto Dean's hips so hard that Dean will have bruises for days, after, and he pushes up into Dean's body, trying to push himself deeper, get more, hold onto this feeling forever. Dean shudders around him, his whole body quivering with the motion, and the two of them move together, matching rhythm as easy as falling in stride with each other. Sam wants to mark Dean in some inarguable way, so that every time Dean looks in the mirror he'll know, he'll remember being claimed like this.

Sam comes so hard he forgets to breathe, and there are spots dancing in front of his vision when Dean laughs and says, “Don't die on me, Sammy.” He squeezes Sam's hip and brings himself off fast, mouth tipped open. It's the best thing Sam's seen all month.



Dean turns forty. Sam buys him an over the hill hat and a crappy cake from Walmart with a plastic tombstone. In past years, they wouldn't joke about dying, but now it's just another part of life. They see it every day, even more than they used to. Now, they're not sure they're ever going to actually die, so they can joke all they want. Dean picks the little plastic tombstone off the cake and licks off the icing before throwing it at Sam's face and Sam yelps, ducking. Somehow, somehow they have gotten their reward. They have persevered. They have dealt with Heaven and Hell and everything in between, spent years suffering one disaster after another, praying to stay alive, to stay together, to keep the world from falling apart around them. They have spent so long being afraid, being in pain, and they have survived long enough to see the fruits of their labors. They aren't the meek, and they haven't inherited the Earth, but they've got their corner and it's god enough for the both of them. Sam's got Dean and Dean's got Sam and neither of them are dying anytime soon. It's enough.



He and Dean lead the next spirit on together.

She's a beautiful girl, the sort Dean used to love. Young and beautiful and so scared, so confused and lost. Sam's seen the fear on her face in a hundred others, the fear and the anger underneath it. Maybe, if they weren't here, she might linger in this place forever.

“It's alright,” Sam tells her. “Things will be better now.”

Her father will get his just reward. They're not allowed to give out much in the way of detail about where she's going, but they can tell her the rest. Dean tells her what Hell is like, and she stops crying and lets herself smile.

“Like the DMV, only the line never ends,” he says, grinning in that disarming way that always works with girls Dean talks to. “You don't have to stay here to punish him. He's got his punishment coming.”

They stay and talk to her for a long time. Dean offers to buy her coffee-Sam isn't sure she could actually drink it-but she shakes her head. They've been walking along the road that leads away from her house, and she says, so quiet that they nearly miss it, “I didn't deserve this.”

“I know,” they both say, at once.

“What's it like?” she asks, and Sam and Dean exchange a glance.

“Well,” Sam begins, “it's like life, pretty much. It's whatever you want to make it. I don't know what yours will be like.”

“Have you seen it?” she asks, and he nods.

“Yeah,” he says. “Mine's mostly a lot of him.” He grins and jerks a thumb in Dean's direction and she laughs and calls them cute.

“Hey,” Sam says, just before she disappears into the light. “If you run into someone named Castiel-tell him I forgive him, and we'd like to know how he's doing.”

Just before she fades into the light, he sees her nod. Dean gives Sam a measured look, and Sam shrugs. He's been meaning to pass along that message for a long time now.

“You think we're ever getting back there?” Dean asks, and Sam thinks about it.

“I don't know,” he admits. “I kinda like it here.”

And Dean says, “Yeah.”

They don't need to replay old memories. They have new ones to make.

They drive on, into the darkness.