Fic: All The King's Horses (4/4)
Title: All The King's Horses
Author: safiyabat
Artist: d00lface_hooker
Beta: tumblr user queen-of-carven-stone
Written for: Sam Dean OTP MiniBang 2014
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Pairing: Gen, with one brief het scene (Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC)
Wordcount: 16,012 (full fic)
Summary: When Sam is unable to restrain Demon!Dean to cure him on his own, he tracks down Gabriel and makes him an offer that makes even an archangel blanch. Instead of giving Sam what he wants, the Trickster enlists the help of Castiel and Flagstaff to help both brothers remember that it was their love story that saved the world once... by sending them on a quest through Sam's mind. AU after 9.23.
Warnings/tags: Descriptions of extreme violence, Demon!Dean, Mark of Cain and associated issues, mentions of suicide and suicidal tendencies, two very damaged guys trying to work out their issues
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, and I own neither Supernatural nor the characters.
Previous
Dean wasn’t sure if the human mind could literally spin, but “literal” was kind of relative when you brought angels into the picture. Especially archangels. Especially Gabriel. He remembered being a demon. He remembered being a Knight of Hell - in fact the feathery douche had been pretty insistent about how absolutely vital it was that Dean remember every minute of his brief time as one of the things he hunted. He remembered the urge to kill, to draw blood from everything he saw. He remembered the need to make everyone and everything suffer and he wanted to vomit because he couldn’t deny it, even though he hated it. That burning need to turn Gabriel’s wings into luxurious bedding, though - that he stood by. Someday he was going to make good on that.
When the day had begun he’d been a demon - the most powerful demon on the planet, the only Knight of Hell left. There had been nothing that could stop him, or so he’d thought. Then he’d been summoned with a summons he couldn’t deny, and then he’d been restrained by the diminutive puffball, and then the Mark that made him who and what he was had been burned away with more pain than he’d ever felt in his life (and he’d studied under Alistair - he knew pain), and then he’d been forcibly cured and returned to a pathetic conscience-riddled human. And then - and then! He’d been forcibly inserted into Sam’s brain.
Because one tour of Hell wasn’t enough.
He knew - well, he didn’t know but he knew - what lay inside his brother’s mind, all those centuries of torment that he kept bottled up and never talked about ever. The stuff that had been locked up in his own brain hadn’t exactly been suitable for public consumption before his stint with Crowley, never mind now. The stuff Sam had locked up in here, the stuff he’d experienced second-hand when the kid couldn’t keep his realities separated anymore, well - there was a reason Sam had almost died from it, right?
Wherever he was now, though - this part didn’t seem so bad. He wasn’t sure where they were. It had to be someplace northern because of the trees, and it had to be somewhere rural because the trees lined the horizon and framed endless cornfields. Somewhere someone burned leaves. The crispness to the air suggested October. No moon marred the perfection of the night sky; no light pollution from any nearby city or town offended the stars either. He looked around. The road stretched out behind him with no clues as to location or timing. This could be any time before he became a demon or it could be no time at all. He patted himself down but Gabriel had deposited him here with no weapon, nothing to fight whatever monsters lurked in Sammy’s freaky, damaged little mind. He turned around and looked in front of him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he finally spotted her: the Impala, only visible because the chrome reflected the occasional star.
He strode forward. Now he could see better. Sam was sitting on the hood. He was the only guy in the world who could use a ’67 Impala as a goddamn lounger and that was the truth; his stupidly long legs stretched out on the hood and his stupidly long back was all splayed out on the windshield. He looked like himself, or like he had when Dean had taken the hammer to his arm. He wasn’t alone, though. Dean saw himself beside Sam, snuggled up right beside his brother with his head on his shoulder. He looked a bit younger but it was hard to tell by how much.. The scene definitely dated to some point after he’d gotten Sammy from Stanford; definitely before he’d become a demon.
Dean - real Dean, not the facsimile of himself that Sam seemed to enjoy using as a body pillow or whatever - cleared his throat. “All right, Sammy. Cuddle time’s over. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” In a way he didn’t want to interrupt. Sam looked happy. He looked peaceful. He looked content. None of those three words could be used to describe Sam in… well, in all the time they’d been hunting together, and now it was on Dean to break that happiness and peace and contentment to draw him back into the misery and crap once again. Christ, no wonder the kid had been so eager to go running off with Death.
Sam startled. His eyebrows drew together in that hurt-surprised look he got sometimes, more often lately than when they were younger, and he got off the car. The construct of Dean didn’t move, which was creepy as Hell. Dean shuddered before both the human and the car faded away. “Dean?” Sam frowned. “What the Hell are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass. Again.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on. Let’s get your Sasquatch ass out of here.”
“No no no.” Sam stood back, shaking his head. “You’re… you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to know me. You’re not supposed to remember. What’s really going on here?”
“What the hell do you mean I’m not supposed to remember? You got Gabriel to freaking cure me, remember?” Anger coursed through him. “You’re in a dream, Sam. Your body is rotting on a couch in a shitty apartment in … is it Toledo? I think it’s Toledo.”
“It’s Cincinnati,” he frowned. “I know it’s a dream, Dean. It was only supposed to last long enough to get rid of the stupid Mark. There was a plan. You’re not supposed to remember me. You’re not supposed to know who I was. I’m … you know what? Forget about it.” His eyes narrowed and his lips folded in frustration. Dean wasn’t stupid, no matter how many people pointed out that he was a blunt instrument. He could see that his brother was shutting down, shutting him out.
A burst of white light blinded them both briefly as Gabriel appeared before them. “No, Sam. No forgetting. Sorry, kid. If Dean wants to forget everything he’ll have to do it the old fashioned way - cheap vodka.”
Sam’s nostrils flared. Sometimes an angry Sam reminded Dean of an enraged bull. “We had a deal, Gabriel.”
“Yeah, well, I lied. Things change. This is what’s going to happen. You boys are going to work your shit out. Here.”
“In my head.”
Dean would not have wanted to be Gabriel in that moment. “Yep.”
“That’s not what we agreed to.”
Dean looked at Sam. “You cut a deal with Gabriel?”
“Apparently it doesn’t matter.”
“Nope. Look. I took the Mark off him. We got him cured. All I want from the two of you now is for you to remember what it is that brought you together and kept you together in the first place. There is a timer. If you can’t get your shit together by then…” He raised one eyebrow.
“Then what?” Dean scowled. “We’re trapped in Beautiful Mind territory forever?” He could feel the bitchface scalding the back of his neck but didn’t look, couldn’t look.
“No. Sam goes to Heaven. You get to go try to clean up your mess by yourself.” The archangel gave him the nastiest grin he’d seen outside of Hell. “And you get to remember everything.”
“Damn it, Gabriel, he wasn’t supposed to remember,” Sam growled, stepping forward and grabbing the smaller man by the lapels. “That was the whole point!”
“Sam,” Gabriel told him gently, placing a hand on his face. “You’ve saved the world twice at least - personally. I’m sorry. I can’t… we’ve never been friends. But you’ve been too valuable to let you do that to yourself. Sorry, kiddo. I’m a dick. I know.” He stepped back. “Anyway. Clock’s ticking.” He disappeared again.
Dean turned to his brother. “So,” he snarled, unable to help himself. “Gadreel making sure you wouldn’t eject him before you were ready - that wasn’t okay. That was me messing with your memories, screwing with your mind. But your deal with Gabriel, that was you messing with my mind and that was just fine?”
Sam gave a snort. “No one was going to touch your mind, Dean. Believe me.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Sam. Because that’s what I just heard.”
“No. It isn’t.” He started off down the road.
Damn it. How was he supposed to fix whatever Gabriel wanted him to fix if the kid kept taking off? “That’s what it sounded like to me. Why don’t you tell me what he meant, huh? What the hell kind of deal did you make where I wasn’t going to remember anything if it wasn’t going to mess with my memories?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You remember Anna? Her plan to go back in time and make sure I never happened?”
“Yeah, but that was stupid, Sammy. Cas said so at the time.” He blinked. “I mean, come on.”
“Cas was lying, Dean. He was lying for your sake. The deal I made with Gabriel, the one he reneged on, was to go back and erase me from history. “ He glared at the space where the angel had last been. “Your mind would have been left intact. There wouldn’t have been anything to erase.”
Dean’s mouth went dry. “Jesus, Sam. Why would you…” He couldn’t feel his fingers, couldn’t feel his toes. Sam had tried not only to end his life, but end the fact that he’d ever existed. Again - he’d tried it before, even reminded Dean that he’d tried it before. Sam hated him so much that he couldn’t stand to have even been around Dean in his past.
“You were a demon, Dean! You turned yourself into a demon because you couldn’t trust me to get the goddamn job done! And because you couldn’t just let me go when my time came, even though you had a better brother and better backup and better everything. No Sam, no demon. No Apocalypse, no soulless guy, no nothing. You would have had a perfectly normal, perfectly good life with both Mom and Dad. I couldn’t save you from being a demon by curing you but I could save you this way.”
A chill ran through Dean’s veins, but he couldn’t let Sam know. “So much for not saving me.”
“Not what I said,” his brother snapped. “I said I wouldn’t have had you possessed, because there are some fates that are worse than death. Come on. I know you don’t want to be stuck in here any longer than you have to be.”
“You shouldn’t have made that deal, Sammy,” he chided, scurrying to catch up to his brother’s long strides. “When has a deal ever gone right for us?”
“Figured Gabriel hated me enough to be willing. Never thought I’d get the ‘so much to live for’ bullshit from him.” He snorted.
“What the Hell, Sammy? It’s not bullshit,” Dean blurted. “It’s fact. You don’t just cash in your chips.” Nothing from the ramrod-straight back. “Sammy - hey. What’s the deal? It’s not like we can go anywhere. Not until Chuckles’ ‘timer’ runs out.”
“It’s my dream. There has to be a way to get you out of it. It’s not like this is my first dreamwalk, you know? I’m not letting you get stuck in my screw up again.” A crowbar appeared in his hand.
Dean winced. Who knew what the kid could unleash if he started hacking at his own dreamscape? “Okay, look. We know that he wants us to, uh, remember what brought us together. Right? So, whatever we see in here is probably going to be the good stuff?” Was there going to be good stuff in Sam’s brain, in his memories? There sure hadn’t been good family memories in his Heaven, just flight and isolation. They had to find something, or else he was going to lose Sam forever. “You go messing with things, I mean, we know what’s locked up in your head ain’t exactly pretty. Let’s just see where the memories take us, man.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You want to just sit back and wait.”
“I think it’s a better idea than you hacking up your own brain and bringing Lucifer back.”
Sam shook his head, but he slowed down. “Whatever.”
“So what happens next?” Dean wanted to know. “Is it just, like a replay? Do we have to interact?”
The scene changed. Dean recognized it; they were in central Jersey somewhere on a hunt. He’d been all of what, eighteen? And Sammy would have been maybe fourteen? Thirteen? Scrawny and all hair and eyes and angst. The case was a vengeful spirit - the ghost of a little girl who had been killed some two hundred years ago over a ceramic doll or something. Dean remembered fighting the thing and having left Sammy at the motel some three towns away - it was way too dangerous to have a kid like Sammy, all little and still growing into his body and everything and it wasn’t like Dad trusted him.
Still, the girl might be dead and tiny but she had enough strength to pick him up and throw him bodily into a tree. He sagged, stunned, to the ground. And there was Sammy, running through the woods. “I remember that now,” Dean grinned. “How’d you get there again?”
“Stole a car,” Sam admitted. “Stole the doll, too. The museum where it was kept had crap security. It was easy.”
The memory-Sam held the doll out to the ghost, who paused in her attempt to slay Dean. “I don’t remember this part,” he admitted.
“You were in and out of consciousness. Dad was pretty pissed that I left the room.” He shrugged. “It was the first time that I felt like I’d contributed. You didn’t really know - I mean, you were out for most of it and Dad didn’t give a crap because I broke orders - but I still knew, you know?” He looked away and kept walking. “Let’s just get you out of here.”
“So you really didn’t… want me to remember you at all.” Dean looked away. His brother’s best memories of him included having braved their father’s wrath to have felt like he’d done something to be part of the team, and he wanted to erase it all. To make everything disappear. How did that even happen? How did that even work?
“I don’t want to have existed at all. I’ll find another way. Gabriel seemed like the best way to make it happen but there has to be another way, right?”
They strolled into another memory. This one was of a pool hall, a nameless dive in a long list of nameless dives that Dean had pretty much long since forgotten. Sam was playing the clumsy drunk and scamming people out of their money, filling up the Winchester coffers the only way they knew how. Dream-Dean watched, ready to stand in if things got ugly. “Not gonna happen, Sam,” Dean declared, watching the scene unfold. “Jesus, it’s been a long time since we’ve hustled pool together hasn’t it? You haven’t even had that shirt since before you jumped.”
“I’m pretty sure you salted and burned it before the ground closed behind me. And yeah. We haven’t hustled anything together since before… before Lilith.” Dean would have had to really have his head in the sand to miss the way Sam hesitated before continuing with that thought. “You prefer to do your hustling alone these days.” Dream-Sam finished his game and collected his winnings, “stumbling” off toward the exit.
Of course the memory was Sam’s so the dream only followed him outside, to where he climbed into the Impala and waited patiently sprawled all over the passenger seat waiting for his brother. Dean had waited a respectable amount of time before showing up to come get him. It would have been dangerous to show up and be obvious, but when he did the brothers’ shoulders touched.
God how he missed those days - it was like there was an invisible wall between them, a duct-tape line down the center of the front seat of the Impala, and he couldn’t pretend that it had only existed since Sam found out about Gadreel. It had been there since Purgatory, maybe even before. Maybe since Ruby, maybe since Dad had - no, not since then. “It’s not like you ever liked kind of thing anyway,” Dean dismissed. In the light from the overhead the brothers counted their haul. It would be enough to get them through for a little while at least. “You loathed the hustling, the credit card scams.”
The million-watt grin on Dream-Sammy’s face made the words taste like ash. “Yeah. I did.” He turned away and kept walking.
“So, why is this showing up now?” Dean scrambled after him again. Geez, it sometimes felt like he spent his whole life scrambling after Sam. He’d always moved a mile a minute. “I mean, these are supposed to be your good memories, right? Seems like it’s more like one of mine.”
“You think I’m running this ride?” He gave that little huff that passed for laughter these days.
He grabbed Sam’s arm and found himself startled to feel the guy tense up. The contrast to the relaxed, laughing Sammy from the most recent memory was not lost on him. “You don’t think it might be important?”
“I think it doesn’t matter, Dean.”
The dream shifted. Another unidentifiable, crappy town, another unidentifiable, crappy motel. Dream-Sam was sitting alone at the crumbling, tilting table looking at the laptop. This was an old one, Dean couldn’t even tell how old. Again, it was post-Stanford but pre-demon, probably pre-Apocalypse if the hair was anything to go by. A key turned in the lock. “It’s just your life at stake, Sammy,” Dean groused, rolling his eyes.
In the memory, Dream-Dean entered the motel room with a woman on each arm. One was blonde. One was a redhead. Dream-Sam rolled his eyes and began shutting the laptop down. “Just gimme a minute,” he muttered.
“Oh no no no, Sammy,” Dream-Dean shook his head, laughing a little bit. “You weren’t coming out to the party, so big brother brought the party to you.”
Real-Sam studiously ignored the memory being played before him. “My life,” he pointed out. “My life, my choice. Let’s just get you out of here, okay? I’m pretty sure this is the last thing you want to be reminded of.”
Dean snorted. Dream-Dean was still speaking. “This is Louise, and this is Kendra, and they’re both kind of kinky. Kendra here has a real thing for overly tall nerds who don’t know how to have a little fun once in a while. You do remember fun, right?”
“I remember this,” Dean admitted after a moment. “Man that was a good night. It’s been a real long time since we did anything like that.” In the memory Kendra sauntered over to Dream-Sammy and straddled him right on the chair. “That Kendra - she knew what she wanted all right. And you knew how to give it to her.”
The scenario continued to play out. Dean watched. Sam did not - in fact, he kept his back turned the entire time. “It really bothers you to remember a good time that much, huh?” Dean shook his head. “But your Heaven was all about getting away from your family so I guess I’m not surprised.”
“Oh would you give it a rest?” Sam kept walking down the road. “That half-assed Heaven was completely engineered by Zachariah to drive us apart and it worked. Perfectly. You couldn’t wait to give it up for Michael as soon as we got back.” He shook his head, still walking. “This whole thing is a waste of time.”
“So what, you’re going to pretend that those weren’t part of your Heaven?” Dean challenged.
“Did I look particularly enthusiastic about any of them?” He thought about that one. “Well, maybe seeing Bones again. That was pretty nice. But Dean, you have to know that my even being in Heaven was a last minute thing, an opportunity for the bad guys. I was never going to Heaven.”
“Joshua seemed to think you’d been there before.”
He shrugged. “So what? Angels lie, Dean. If they didn’t you wouldn’t freaking be here. You wouldn’t remember me at all, because that was the whole point. Let’s just keep moving, all right? I’m not exactly thrilled about having you in here.”
The next memory was older, but Dean had it too. This one was the night in the field with the fireworks. Only in Sam’s version, there was a lot less of Dean-the-hero and a lot more of the brothers almost getting caught and running off together. “Why not?” Funny how they could both remember the same thing in such completely different ways. If he thought about it objectively yeah, they’d almost gotten caught. They’d had to do a lot of running and a whole lot of sneaking to get out of trouble for almost burning down that whole field. But those weren’t the parts that had made him happy, that had welcomed him to Heaven. It had been all about Sam looking up to him with those shining hazel eyes and knowing that he was his brother’s hero. For Sam, apparently, it was the two of them together, alone in evading the authorities and come to think of it Sam had been pretty damn creative in getting them out of some jams that night.
“It’s my mind, Dean. They’re my memories.” “Obviously they don’t mean a lot to you since you wanted to obliterate them from existence.”
Dean made a face. Sam stopped in his tracks and for a moment Dean thought his brother might hit him. It wasn’t something Sam usually did - that was generally Dean’s thing, his right as an older brother. He got himself under control. “You don’t get it, do you?” Sammy growled.
Dean could see those giant hands balled into fists. “Why don’t you educate me, Sam?”
“They’re memories that are important to me. Not to you. I remember these times. You don’t. I remember hanging out together, having fun together. I remember the good times. I remember the times when I felt like I was useful to you, that I could help you. That I was more than some burden, something you were saddled with. A job. That was all an illusion, my own arrogance shining through. All of this? It’s a lie. There was never a point when you saw me as your partner, as someone you just cared about because I was useful or valuable for my own sake. Okay? I was just a problem that needed to be contained. I get it. I got it a long time ago and I’m sorry you had to put up with that.”
Dean’s throat ran dry. “Sammy, no.” He shook his head, not sure if he could deflect the words just by moving his ears or maybe convince his brother that they weren’t true with a simple gesture. “It’s not like that.”
Sam snorted and kept walking. The dream changed again, shifting to another memory. This time it was that room in that warehouse in wherever-the -fuck, when Cas and Uriel had him torturing Alistair. What a clusterfuck that had been, because Uriel had been a traitor and Alistair had gotten away from him, beaten him to within an inch of his life and apparently Sam had shown up to tear him to shreds. He’d been horrified at the time because Sam had used his powers and then he’d known what the source of those powers was. “This - this is a good memory for you?”
“I told you I’m not driving the bus here.” Dream-Sam killed Alistair as Castiel watched in horror, and then the scene morphed into the hospital. Dean watched as his brother lit into Cas for his incompetence, advocated for a miracle healing for Dean. This, then was the moment he’d truly lost his awe of the angels.
“You were standing up for me,” Dean realized. Funny how Cas hadn’t mentioned that part.
“Yeah well someone had to.” He kept walking.
“Sam,” Dean called out.
“What?”
“When did we get so wrong?”
He heaved a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Dean.” He turned around. “I sometimes think… we were never really right, you know? I mean, when I was younger I thought it was good for a while. But I mean… we both know that Dad never saw me as anything but a problem to be solved. And I don’t think you ever saw me any differently. You know?”
Dean reached out to grab his brother’s hand. “Sammy, no.” He felt tears stinging his eyes. “I mean, there were some problems. And they did kind of, you know, center around you there, for a while. But you’re my whole world, Sammy. I mean, I killed -“
“Yeah. But I didn’t ask you to sacrifice for me. I didn’t want you to suffer for me. Kind of the opposite. And you’ve held it against me every time you did.” He dropped Dean’s hand. “All I’ve tried to do is prove myself to you. I had a chance to stay in here, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“After my wall. You know. I had to choose. Assimilate the Hell memories and lose my mind and all that - and come back to you - or stay here, in the good memories. Stay dreaming until my body finally just quit.” He gave a little laugh. “I thought - I said, ‘I can’t leave my brother alone out there.’ You’d have been so much better off if I had.”
“Sammy, no.” He felt a shock run through his body, leaving numbness in its wake. How long had his brother felt this way? Hadn’t their talk in the church, when he’d stopped Sam from sealing up Hell, solved this? “Come on. I’ll grant that it’s been a crappy few years but we can get back to the good times if we try.”
He had tried. He’d tried to bring Sam out to bars once or twice, once when he’d gotten back from Purgatory anyway. Sam hadn’t been interested. He’d thought Sam was just too stuck up or maybe just too hung up on his girl and his dog. Maybe he’d already been too lost. Maybe Dean himself had been too angry, too bitter. Had pushed him away.
“Not if they were only in my head, Dean.” He shook his head. “Look, you’d rather spend your time with Crowley or Cas. That’s fine, I’m not jealous.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not. I mean, it bugs me a bit because I’m not really sure where I went wrong but whatever. People grow apart -“
“Sammy, shut up and listen for a second okay?” He sighed. “Maybe I’ve been scared, okay?”
“Scared? Of what?”
“You think I haven’t noticed your… uh, tendencies? They’ve always been there, Sammy. They’ve just gotten worse over the years. And it ain’t like there’s ever been anyone who hasn’t gone off and left me before. Even you.” He sighed. “So I mean… it’s like… I mean I love you but it’s not like you want to be hunting. So maybe I’ve been… more distant. Not really wanting to be… shit, Sammy this is the weakest talk ever.”
Sam sighed. A bench appeared behind them and Dean sat on it. “Look, Dean. There’s a lot going on in here. You’re not responsible for all of it. And you can’t fix all of it. Don’t you think it would be better for everyone if it just… had never been there? I mean, you could be a fireman like you always wanted. Or a mechanic. Or an engineer.”
He laughed. “An engineer? Really Sammy?”
“Really, Dean. I always figured you’d be a decent engineer. MIT, probably. Caltech would just piss you off.” He offered a shy grin. “If it weren’t for me you’d have had that.”
“Nah. I wouldn’t be me without you, Sam. I mean it,” he added when he saw the eye roll. “I mean, yeah. There was too much responsibility put on me. And that was… well, Dad did what he had to.” He held up a hand when he saw the thundercloud on Sam’s face. “What’s done is done. But I mean, how much of what you’re calling smart is because I had to figure out how to answer your constant ‘why’ and ‘how?’” He chuckled. “Maybe it’s not great to be so wrapped up in another person that you wouldn’t be you without them. But what’s done is done.”
“But Dean, you’d be healthier. If I weren’t here you could at least heal, have a life. Be happy.”
“Sam,” Dean frowned, “I don’t think Feathers is going to make that an option. And frankly I don’t want him to. I want to see you smile again, Sam. I want to see some good memories that happen after you got out of that fucking cage.”
“Dean -“
“I mean it, Sammy. You’re going to have a lot of crap to slog through to get there. Me too. But we’re going to get there.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Yeah well this time I’m giving you permission to kick me in the nads if I get off track, okay?”
Bright light filled the scene. Dean felt the sudden wash of peace that came with the application of Grace.
*
Gabriel looked at the other angels. “Really, Gabriel? You don’t think the penthouse at the Waldorf-Astoria is a little much?” Flagstaff demanded, raising an eyebrow.
“What?” He adopted a posture of angelic innocence. “They’ve had a long day. Both of them. And the beds are nice.”
“There is one bed,” Castiel intoned. “Not two.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve had to double up,” the archangel waved. “They’ll be fine. It’s a king. Loosen up, Cassie.”
“Don’t call me Cassie.” He sat down on the couch.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“For them? Sure. For normal people? No way in Hell. But they never were.” He shrugged. “They weren’t ever healthy in the first place. But they should be able to get back to saving each other and the world, instead of destroying each other and the world, once they wake up.”
Flagstaff sighed. “I still don’t like the idea of leaving them alone like this.” She went to check on the slumbering brothers. “We’ve disengaged their minds, correct?”
Gabriel frowned. “Yeah, I made sure. I mean, it’s possible Sam’s psychic crap might have reached out and -“
“They’re cuddling.”
“Cuddling,” Cas repeated.
She held the door open and gestured.
Sam was sleeping on his side, arms wrapped around Dean. Dean had curled into his brother’s body, arm pillowed not on the high-luxury pillows provided by the hotel but on his brother’s arm.
Gabriel sighed and relaxed into the couch. “I think this calls for a few celebratory drinks.” He snapped his fingers and a full tray of mimosas appeared on the coffee table.
Castiel frowned. “I hardly think imbibing around humans is the best idea.”
“Castiel?” Flagstaff suggested.
“Yes?”
“Have a drink.”
“I - of course.”
Author: safiyabat
Artist: d00lface_hooker
Beta: tumblr user queen-of-carven-stone
Written for: Sam Dean OTP MiniBang 2014
Rating: PG-13
Genre/Pairing: Gen, with one brief het scene (Sam/OFC, Dean/OFC)
Wordcount: 16,012 (full fic)
Summary: When Sam is unable to restrain Demon!Dean to cure him on his own, he tracks down Gabriel and makes him an offer that makes even an archangel blanch. Instead of giving Sam what he wants, the Trickster enlists the help of Castiel and Flagstaff to help both brothers remember that it was their love story that saved the world once... by sending them on a quest through Sam's mind. AU after 9.23.
Warnings/tags: Descriptions of extreme violence, Demon!Dean, Mark of Cain and associated issues, mentions of suicide and suicidal tendencies, two very damaged guys trying to work out their issues
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction, and I own neither Supernatural nor the characters.
Previous
Dean wasn’t sure if the human mind could literally spin, but “literal” was kind of relative when you brought angels into the picture. Especially archangels. Especially Gabriel. He remembered being a demon. He remembered being a Knight of Hell - in fact the feathery douche had been pretty insistent about how absolutely vital it was that Dean remember every minute of his brief time as one of the things he hunted. He remembered the urge to kill, to draw blood from everything he saw. He remembered the need to make everyone and everything suffer and he wanted to vomit because he couldn’t deny it, even though he hated it. That burning need to turn Gabriel’s wings into luxurious bedding, though - that he stood by. Someday he was going to make good on that.
When the day had begun he’d been a demon - the most powerful demon on the planet, the only Knight of Hell left. There had been nothing that could stop him, or so he’d thought. Then he’d been summoned with a summons he couldn’t deny, and then he’d been restrained by the diminutive puffball, and then the Mark that made him who and what he was had been burned away with more pain than he’d ever felt in his life (and he’d studied under Alistair - he knew pain), and then he’d been forcibly cured and returned to a pathetic conscience-riddled human. And then - and then! He’d been forcibly inserted into Sam’s brain.
Because one tour of Hell wasn’t enough.
He knew - well, he didn’t know but he knew - what lay inside his brother’s mind, all those centuries of torment that he kept bottled up and never talked about ever. The stuff that had been locked up in his own brain hadn’t exactly been suitable for public consumption before his stint with Crowley, never mind now. The stuff Sam had locked up in here, the stuff he’d experienced second-hand when the kid couldn’t keep his realities separated anymore, well - there was a reason Sam had almost died from it, right?
Wherever he was now, though - this part didn’t seem so bad. He wasn’t sure where they were. It had to be someplace northern because of the trees, and it had to be somewhere rural because the trees lined the horizon and framed endless cornfields. Somewhere someone burned leaves. The crispness to the air suggested October. No moon marred the perfection of the night sky; no light pollution from any nearby city or town offended the stars either. He looked around. The road stretched out behind him with no clues as to location or timing. This could be any time before he became a demon or it could be no time at all. He patted himself down but Gabriel had deposited him here with no weapon, nothing to fight whatever monsters lurked in Sammy’s freaky, damaged little mind. He turned around and looked in front of him. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he finally spotted her: the Impala, only visible because the chrome reflected the occasional star.
He strode forward. Now he could see better. Sam was sitting on the hood. He was the only guy in the world who could use a ’67 Impala as a goddamn lounger and that was the truth; his stupidly long legs stretched out on the hood and his stupidly long back was all splayed out on the windshield. He looked like himself, or like he had when Dean had taken the hammer to his arm. He wasn’t alone, though. Dean saw himself beside Sam, snuggled up right beside his brother with his head on his shoulder. He looked a bit younger but it was hard to tell by how much.. The scene definitely dated to some point after he’d gotten Sammy from Stanford; definitely before he’d become a demon.
Dean - real Dean, not the facsimile of himself that Sam seemed to enjoy using as a body pillow or whatever - cleared his throat. “All right, Sammy. Cuddle time’s over. Come on, let’s get you out of here.” In a way he didn’t want to interrupt. Sam looked happy. He looked peaceful. He looked content. None of those three words could be used to describe Sam in… well, in all the time they’d been hunting together, and now it was on Dean to break that happiness and peace and contentment to draw him back into the misery and crap once again. Christ, no wonder the kid had been so eager to go running off with Death.
Sam startled. His eyebrows drew together in that hurt-surprised look he got sometimes, more often lately than when they were younger, and he got off the car. The construct of Dean didn’t move, which was creepy as Hell. Dean shuddered before both the human and the car faded away. “Dean?” Sam frowned. “What the Hell are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass. Again.” Dean rolled his eyes. “Come on. Let’s get your Sasquatch ass out of here.”
“No no no.” Sam stood back, shaking his head. “You’re… you’re not supposed to be here. You’re not supposed to know me. You’re not supposed to remember. What’s really going on here?”
“What the hell do you mean I’m not supposed to remember? You got Gabriel to freaking cure me, remember?” Anger coursed through him. “You’re in a dream, Sam. Your body is rotting on a couch in a shitty apartment in … is it Toledo? I think it’s Toledo.”
“It’s Cincinnati,” he frowned. “I know it’s a dream, Dean. It was only supposed to last long enough to get rid of the stupid Mark. There was a plan. You’re not supposed to remember me. You’re not supposed to know who I was. I’m … you know what? Forget about it.” His eyes narrowed and his lips folded in frustration. Dean wasn’t stupid, no matter how many people pointed out that he was a blunt instrument. He could see that his brother was shutting down, shutting him out.
A burst of white light blinded them both briefly as Gabriel appeared before them. “No, Sam. No forgetting. Sorry, kid. If Dean wants to forget everything he’ll have to do it the old fashioned way - cheap vodka.”
Sam’s nostrils flared. Sometimes an angry Sam reminded Dean of an enraged bull. “We had a deal, Gabriel.”
“Yeah, well, I lied. Things change. This is what’s going to happen. You boys are going to work your shit out. Here.”
“In my head.”
Dean would not have wanted to be Gabriel in that moment. “Yep.”
“That’s not what we agreed to.”
Dean looked at Sam. “You cut a deal with Gabriel?”
“Apparently it doesn’t matter.”
“Nope. Look. I took the Mark off him. We got him cured. All I want from the two of you now is for you to remember what it is that brought you together and kept you together in the first place. There is a timer. If you can’t get your shit together by then…” He raised one eyebrow.
“Then what?” Dean scowled. “We’re trapped in Beautiful Mind territory forever?” He could feel the bitchface scalding the back of his neck but didn’t look, couldn’t look.
“No. Sam goes to Heaven. You get to go try to clean up your mess by yourself.” The archangel gave him the nastiest grin he’d seen outside of Hell. “And you get to remember everything.”
“Damn it, Gabriel, he wasn’t supposed to remember,” Sam growled, stepping forward and grabbing the smaller man by the lapels. “That was the whole point!”
“Sam,” Gabriel told him gently, placing a hand on his face. “You’ve saved the world twice at least - personally. I’m sorry. I can’t… we’ve never been friends. But you’ve been too valuable to let you do that to yourself. Sorry, kiddo. I’m a dick. I know.” He stepped back. “Anyway. Clock’s ticking.” He disappeared again.
Dean turned to his brother. “So,” he snarled, unable to help himself. “Gadreel making sure you wouldn’t eject him before you were ready - that wasn’t okay. That was me messing with your memories, screwing with your mind. But your deal with Gabriel, that was you messing with my mind and that was just fine?”
Sam gave a snort. “No one was going to touch your mind, Dean. Believe me.”
“Don’t you lie to me, Sam. Because that’s what I just heard.”
“No. It isn’t.” He started off down the road.
Damn it. How was he supposed to fix whatever Gabriel wanted him to fix if the kid kept taking off? “That’s what it sounded like to me. Why don’t you tell me what he meant, huh? What the hell kind of deal did you make where I wasn’t going to remember anything if it wasn’t going to mess with my memories?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You remember Anna? Her plan to go back in time and make sure I never happened?”
“Yeah, but that was stupid, Sammy. Cas said so at the time.” He blinked. “I mean, come on.”
“Cas was lying, Dean. He was lying for your sake. The deal I made with Gabriel, the one he reneged on, was to go back and erase me from history. “ He glared at the space where the angel had last been. “Your mind would have been left intact. There wouldn’t have been anything to erase.”
Dean’s mouth went dry. “Jesus, Sam. Why would you…” He couldn’t feel his fingers, couldn’t feel his toes. Sam had tried not only to end his life, but end the fact that he’d ever existed. Again - he’d tried it before, even reminded Dean that he’d tried it before. Sam hated him so much that he couldn’t stand to have even been around Dean in his past.
“You were a demon, Dean! You turned yourself into a demon because you couldn’t trust me to get the goddamn job done! And because you couldn’t just let me go when my time came, even though you had a better brother and better backup and better everything. No Sam, no demon. No Apocalypse, no soulless guy, no nothing. You would have had a perfectly normal, perfectly good life with both Mom and Dad. I couldn’t save you from being a demon by curing you but I could save you this way.”
A chill ran through Dean’s veins, but he couldn’t let Sam know. “So much for not saving me.”
“Not what I said,” his brother snapped. “I said I wouldn’t have had you possessed, because there are some fates that are worse than death. Come on. I know you don’t want to be stuck in here any longer than you have to be.”
“You shouldn’t have made that deal, Sammy,” he chided, scurrying to catch up to his brother’s long strides. “When has a deal ever gone right for us?”
“Figured Gabriel hated me enough to be willing. Never thought I’d get the ‘so much to live for’ bullshit from him.” He snorted.
“What the Hell, Sammy? It’s not bullshit,” Dean blurted. “It’s fact. You don’t just cash in your chips.” Nothing from the ramrod-straight back. “Sammy - hey. What’s the deal? It’s not like we can go anywhere. Not until Chuckles’ ‘timer’ runs out.”
“It’s my dream. There has to be a way to get you out of it. It’s not like this is my first dreamwalk, you know? I’m not letting you get stuck in my screw up again.” A crowbar appeared in his hand.
Dean winced. Who knew what the kid could unleash if he started hacking at his own dreamscape? “Okay, look. We know that he wants us to, uh, remember what brought us together. Right? So, whatever we see in here is probably going to be the good stuff?” Was there going to be good stuff in Sam’s brain, in his memories? There sure hadn’t been good family memories in his Heaven, just flight and isolation. They had to find something, or else he was going to lose Sam forever. “You go messing with things, I mean, we know what’s locked up in your head ain’t exactly pretty. Let’s just see where the memories take us, man.”
Sam rolled his eyes. “You want to just sit back and wait.”
“I think it’s a better idea than you hacking up your own brain and bringing Lucifer back.”
Sam shook his head, but he slowed down. “Whatever.”
“So what happens next?” Dean wanted to know. “Is it just, like a replay? Do we have to interact?”
The scene changed. Dean recognized it; they were in central Jersey somewhere on a hunt. He’d been all of what, eighteen? And Sammy would have been maybe fourteen? Thirteen? Scrawny and all hair and eyes and angst. The case was a vengeful spirit - the ghost of a little girl who had been killed some two hundred years ago over a ceramic doll or something. Dean remembered fighting the thing and having left Sammy at the motel some three towns away - it was way too dangerous to have a kid like Sammy, all little and still growing into his body and everything and it wasn’t like Dad trusted him.
Still, the girl might be dead and tiny but she had enough strength to pick him up and throw him bodily into a tree. He sagged, stunned, to the ground. And there was Sammy, running through the woods. “I remember that now,” Dean grinned. “How’d you get there again?”
“Stole a car,” Sam admitted. “Stole the doll, too. The museum where it was kept had crap security. It was easy.”
The memory-Sam held the doll out to the ghost, who paused in her attempt to slay Dean. “I don’t remember this part,” he admitted.
“You were in and out of consciousness. Dad was pretty pissed that I left the room.” He shrugged. “It was the first time that I felt like I’d contributed. You didn’t really know - I mean, you were out for most of it and Dad didn’t give a crap because I broke orders - but I still knew, you know?” He looked away and kept walking. “Let’s just get you out of here.”
“So you really didn’t… want me to remember you at all.” Dean looked away. His brother’s best memories of him included having braved their father’s wrath to have felt like he’d done something to be part of the team, and he wanted to erase it all. To make everything disappear. How did that even happen? How did that even work?
“I don’t want to have existed at all. I’ll find another way. Gabriel seemed like the best way to make it happen but there has to be another way, right?”
They strolled into another memory. This one was of a pool hall, a nameless dive in a long list of nameless dives that Dean had pretty much long since forgotten. Sam was playing the clumsy drunk and scamming people out of their money, filling up the Winchester coffers the only way they knew how. Dream-Dean watched, ready to stand in if things got ugly. “Not gonna happen, Sam,” Dean declared, watching the scene unfold. “Jesus, it’s been a long time since we’ve hustled pool together hasn’t it? You haven’t even had that shirt since before you jumped.”
“I’m pretty sure you salted and burned it before the ground closed behind me. And yeah. We haven’t hustled anything together since before… before Lilith.” Dean would have had to really have his head in the sand to miss the way Sam hesitated before continuing with that thought. “You prefer to do your hustling alone these days.” Dream-Sam finished his game and collected his winnings, “stumbling” off toward the exit.
Of course the memory was Sam’s so the dream only followed him outside, to where he climbed into the Impala and waited patiently sprawled all over the passenger seat waiting for his brother. Dean had waited a respectable amount of time before showing up to come get him. It would have been dangerous to show up and be obvious, but when he did the brothers’ shoulders touched.
God how he missed those days - it was like there was an invisible wall between them, a duct-tape line down the center of the front seat of the Impala, and he couldn’t pretend that it had only existed since Sam found out about Gadreel. It had been there since Purgatory, maybe even before. Maybe since Ruby, maybe since Dad had - no, not since then. “It’s not like you ever liked kind of thing anyway,” Dean dismissed. In the light from the overhead the brothers counted their haul. It would be enough to get them through for a little while at least. “You loathed the hustling, the credit card scams.”
The million-watt grin on Dream-Sammy’s face made the words taste like ash. “Yeah. I did.” He turned away and kept walking.
“So, why is this showing up now?” Dean scrambled after him again. Geez, it sometimes felt like he spent his whole life scrambling after Sam. He’d always moved a mile a minute. “I mean, these are supposed to be your good memories, right? Seems like it’s more like one of mine.”
“You think I’m running this ride?” He gave that little huff that passed for laughter these days.
He grabbed Sam’s arm and found himself startled to feel the guy tense up. The contrast to the relaxed, laughing Sammy from the most recent memory was not lost on him. “You don’t think it might be important?”
“I think it doesn’t matter, Dean.”
The dream shifted. Another unidentifiable, crappy town, another unidentifiable, crappy motel. Dream-Sam was sitting alone at the crumbling, tilting table looking at the laptop. This was an old one, Dean couldn’t even tell how old. Again, it was post-Stanford but pre-demon, probably pre-Apocalypse if the hair was anything to go by. A key turned in the lock. “It’s just your life at stake, Sammy,” Dean groused, rolling his eyes.
In the memory, Dream-Dean entered the motel room with a woman on each arm. One was blonde. One was a redhead. Dream-Sam rolled his eyes and began shutting the laptop down. “Just gimme a minute,” he muttered.
“Oh no no no, Sammy,” Dream-Dean shook his head, laughing a little bit. “You weren’t coming out to the party, so big brother brought the party to you.”
Real-Sam studiously ignored the memory being played before him. “My life,” he pointed out. “My life, my choice. Let’s just get you out of here, okay? I’m pretty sure this is the last thing you want to be reminded of.”
Dean snorted. Dream-Dean was still speaking. “This is Louise, and this is Kendra, and they’re both kind of kinky. Kendra here has a real thing for overly tall nerds who don’t know how to have a little fun once in a while. You do remember fun, right?”
“I remember this,” Dean admitted after a moment. “Man that was a good night. It’s been a real long time since we did anything like that.” In the memory Kendra sauntered over to Dream-Sammy and straddled him right on the chair. “That Kendra - she knew what she wanted all right. And you knew how to give it to her.”
The scenario continued to play out. Dean watched. Sam did not - in fact, he kept his back turned the entire time. “It really bothers you to remember a good time that much, huh?” Dean shook his head. “But your Heaven was all about getting away from your family so I guess I’m not surprised.”
“Oh would you give it a rest?” Sam kept walking down the road. “That half-assed Heaven was completely engineered by Zachariah to drive us apart and it worked. Perfectly. You couldn’t wait to give it up for Michael as soon as we got back.” He shook his head, still walking. “This whole thing is a waste of time.”
“So what, you’re going to pretend that those weren’t part of your Heaven?” Dean challenged.
“Did I look particularly enthusiastic about any of them?” He thought about that one. “Well, maybe seeing Bones again. That was pretty nice. But Dean, you have to know that my even being in Heaven was a last minute thing, an opportunity for the bad guys. I was never going to Heaven.”
“Joshua seemed to think you’d been there before.”
He shrugged. “So what? Angels lie, Dean. If they didn’t you wouldn’t freaking be here. You wouldn’t remember me at all, because that was the whole point. Let’s just keep moving, all right? I’m not exactly thrilled about having you in here.”
The next memory was older, but Dean had it too. This one was the night in the field with the fireworks. Only in Sam’s version, there was a lot less of Dean-the-hero and a lot more of the brothers almost getting caught and running off together. “Why not?” Funny how they could both remember the same thing in such completely different ways. If he thought about it objectively yeah, they’d almost gotten caught. They’d had to do a lot of running and a whole lot of sneaking to get out of trouble for almost burning down that whole field. But those weren’t the parts that had made him happy, that had welcomed him to Heaven. It had been all about Sam looking up to him with those shining hazel eyes and knowing that he was his brother’s hero. For Sam, apparently, it was the two of them together, alone in evading the authorities and come to think of it Sam had been pretty damn creative in getting them out of some jams that night.
“It’s my mind, Dean. They’re my memories.” “Obviously they don’t mean a lot to you since you wanted to obliterate them from existence.”
Dean made a face. Sam stopped in his tracks and for a moment Dean thought his brother might hit him. It wasn’t something Sam usually did - that was generally Dean’s thing, his right as an older brother. He got himself under control. “You don’t get it, do you?” Sammy growled.
Dean could see those giant hands balled into fists. “Why don’t you educate me, Sam?”
“They’re memories that are important to me. Not to you. I remember these times. You don’t. I remember hanging out together, having fun together. I remember the good times. I remember the times when I felt like I was useful to you, that I could help you. That I was more than some burden, something you were saddled with. A job. That was all an illusion, my own arrogance shining through. All of this? It’s a lie. There was never a point when you saw me as your partner, as someone you just cared about because I was useful or valuable for my own sake. Okay? I was just a problem that needed to be contained. I get it. I got it a long time ago and I’m sorry you had to put up with that.”
Dean’s throat ran dry. “Sammy, no.” He shook his head, not sure if he could deflect the words just by moving his ears or maybe convince his brother that they weren’t true with a simple gesture. “It’s not like that.”
Sam snorted and kept walking. The dream changed again, shifting to another memory. This time it was that room in that warehouse in wherever-the -fuck, when Cas and Uriel had him torturing Alistair. What a clusterfuck that had been, because Uriel had been a traitor and Alistair had gotten away from him, beaten him to within an inch of his life and apparently Sam had shown up to tear him to shreds. He’d been horrified at the time because Sam had used his powers and then he’d known what the source of those powers was. “This - this is a good memory for you?”
“I told you I’m not driving the bus here.” Dream-Sam killed Alistair as Castiel watched in horror, and then the scene morphed into the hospital. Dean watched as his brother lit into Cas for his incompetence, advocated for a miracle healing for Dean. This, then was the moment he’d truly lost his awe of the angels.
“You were standing up for me,” Dean realized. Funny how Cas hadn’t mentioned that part.
“Yeah well someone had to.” He kept walking.
“Sam,” Dean called out.
“What?”
“When did we get so wrong?”
He heaved a heavy sigh. “I don’t know, Dean.” He turned around. “I sometimes think… we were never really right, you know? I mean, when I was younger I thought it was good for a while. But I mean… we both know that Dad never saw me as anything but a problem to be solved. And I don’t think you ever saw me any differently. You know?”
Dean reached out to grab his brother’s hand. “Sammy, no.” He felt tears stinging his eyes. “I mean, there were some problems. And they did kind of, you know, center around you there, for a while. But you’re my whole world, Sammy. I mean, I killed -“
“Yeah. But I didn’t ask you to sacrifice for me. I didn’t want you to suffer for me. Kind of the opposite. And you’ve held it against me every time you did.” He dropped Dean’s hand. “All I’ve tried to do is prove myself to you. I had a chance to stay in here, you know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“After my wall. You know. I had to choose. Assimilate the Hell memories and lose my mind and all that - and come back to you - or stay here, in the good memories. Stay dreaming until my body finally just quit.” He gave a little laugh. “I thought - I said, ‘I can’t leave my brother alone out there.’ You’d have been so much better off if I had.”
“Sammy, no.” He felt a shock run through his body, leaving numbness in its wake. How long had his brother felt this way? Hadn’t their talk in the church, when he’d stopped Sam from sealing up Hell, solved this? “Come on. I’ll grant that it’s been a crappy few years but we can get back to the good times if we try.”
He had tried. He’d tried to bring Sam out to bars once or twice, once when he’d gotten back from Purgatory anyway. Sam hadn’t been interested. He’d thought Sam was just too stuck up or maybe just too hung up on his girl and his dog. Maybe he’d already been too lost. Maybe Dean himself had been too angry, too bitter. Had pushed him away.
“Not if they were only in my head, Dean.” He shook his head. “Look, you’d rather spend your time with Crowley or Cas. That’s fine, I’m not jealous.”
“Bullshit.”
“I’m not. I mean, it bugs me a bit because I’m not really sure where I went wrong but whatever. People grow apart -“
“Sammy, shut up and listen for a second okay?” He sighed. “Maybe I’ve been scared, okay?”
“Scared? Of what?”
“You think I haven’t noticed your… uh, tendencies? They’ve always been there, Sammy. They’ve just gotten worse over the years. And it ain’t like there’s ever been anyone who hasn’t gone off and left me before. Even you.” He sighed. “So I mean… it’s like… I mean I love you but it’s not like you want to be hunting. So maybe I’ve been… more distant. Not really wanting to be… shit, Sammy this is the weakest talk ever.”
Sam sighed. A bench appeared behind them and Dean sat on it. “Look, Dean. There’s a lot going on in here. You’re not responsible for all of it. And you can’t fix all of it. Don’t you think it would be better for everyone if it just… had never been there? I mean, you could be a fireman like you always wanted. Or a mechanic. Or an engineer.”
He laughed. “An engineer? Really Sammy?”
“Really, Dean. I always figured you’d be a decent engineer. MIT, probably. Caltech would just piss you off.” He offered a shy grin. “If it weren’t for me you’d have had that.”
“Nah. I wouldn’t be me without you, Sam. I mean it,” he added when he saw the eye roll. “I mean, yeah. There was too much responsibility put on me. And that was… well, Dad did what he had to.” He held up a hand when he saw the thundercloud on Sam’s face. “What’s done is done. But I mean, how much of what you’re calling smart is because I had to figure out how to answer your constant ‘why’ and ‘how?’” He chuckled. “Maybe it’s not great to be so wrapped up in another person that you wouldn’t be you without them. But what’s done is done.”
“But Dean, you’d be healthier. If I weren’t here you could at least heal, have a life. Be happy.”
“Sam,” Dean frowned, “I don’t think Feathers is going to make that an option. And frankly I don’t want him to. I want to see you smile again, Sam. I want to see some good memories that happen after you got out of that fucking cage.”
“Dean -“
“I mean it, Sammy. You’re going to have a lot of crap to slog through to get there. Me too. But we’re going to get there.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Yeah well this time I’m giving you permission to kick me in the nads if I get off track, okay?”
Bright light filled the scene. Dean felt the sudden wash of peace that came with the application of Grace.
*
Gabriel looked at the other angels. “Really, Gabriel? You don’t think the penthouse at the Waldorf-Astoria is a little much?” Flagstaff demanded, raising an eyebrow.
“What?” He adopted a posture of angelic innocence. “They’ve had a long day. Both of them. And the beds are nice.”
“There is one bed,” Castiel intoned. “Not two.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve had to double up,” the archangel waved. “They’ll be fine. It’s a king. Loosen up, Cassie.”
“Don’t call me Cassie.” He sat down on the couch.
“Do you think they’ll be okay?”
“For them? Sure. For normal people? No way in Hell. But they never were.” He shrugged. “They weren’t ever healthy in the first place. But they should be able to get back to saving each other and the world, instead of destroying each other and the world, once they wake up.”
Flagstaff sighed. “I still don’t like the idea of leaving them alone like this.” She went to check on the slumbering brothers. “We’ve disengaged their minds, correct?”
Gabriel frowned. “Yeah, I made sure. I mean, it’s possible Sam’s psychic crap might have reached out and -“
“They’re cuddling.”
“Cuddling,” Cas repeated.
She held the door open and gestured.
Sam was sleeping on his side, arms wrapped around Dean. Dean had curled into his brother’s body, arm pillowed not on the high-luxury pillows provided by the hotel but on his brother’s arm.
Gabriel sighed and relaxed into the couch. “I think this calls for a few celebratory drinks.” He snapped his fingers and a full tray of mimosas appeared on the coffee table.
Castiel frowned. “I hardly think imbibing around humans is the best idea.”
“Castiel?” Flagstaff suggested.
“Yes?”
“Have a drink.”
“I - of course.”