Fic: A Matched Set (Sam/Dean, Explicit) 2 of 3
Back to Part 1
****
“Just let you grow old and die like normal humans?” Chuck asks. “Even though you’re not.”
“Explain what you mean by that,” Sam says.
“Like I said before, both of you, I made you differently. You’re more than normal humans, it’s hard to quantify in a way you’ll understand, but basically you’ve been made to live for what will end up being the span of several human lifetimes. I made you both in such a way that you’ll last longer. I’ve been experimenting with a few new designs, and you’re the best pair so far.”
“Well, if we’re this new kind of human or whatever, then that changes things as far as this apology gift thing goes. How about this, the gift Amara gives us is that you both let us be for the remainder of our lives.”
“That’s open-ended and specific, well done, Sam. You know, you really could have been a great lawyer.”
“Thanks, I think? Uh…what are the chances that she’ll go for it?” Sam asks.
“Yeah, I think she will, actually,” Chuck says. “You sure you don’t need to ask Dean before I put this in motion?”
“No, I know what he’d say. Even though I’m sure he’d love the chance to be in his twenties again, he’d still want to be the real Dean, which is the Dean that he is right now.”
“Well, okay then, I’ll tell her what you’re proposing and just as a heads up, she’ll probably want to come see you two in person,” Chuck says.
“Thanks for letting me know. It’s going to be hard for Dean to see her. Uh…she doesn’t think she has a claim on him anymore right?” Sam asks, knowing he sounds jealous, because he knows he is, always has been, always will be. As messed up as that might be, it’s the truth. Maybe only he happens to know that truth, or maybe not. Sam tries his best not to think about it, that’s not something he wants to talk about with Chuck.
“Oh no, she definitely got the message on that one,” Chuck says. “Your claim on Dean has been well and truly established, Sam.”
“Can I ask you something?” Sam asks.
Chuck nods as he finishes his coffee, this time the cup is empty when he sets it down.
“When you heard me, praying back then, was everything I was asking for, was I asking for all that just because you made us soulmates?”
“No, that was all up to you, that was truly your decision, what you were feeling and asking for was all you. Soulmates is more of a category kind of thing, it doesn’t determine what the individual humans think or make them do something just because they’re soulmates. No, Sam that was all you. Being soulmates means that your souls are literally connected, they need each other to survive and thrive. You might unconsciously know that, but you wouldn’t necessarily act upon it.”
“Okay…uh, thanks,” Sam says.
“Finish your pancakes, and then we can go,” Chuck says, gesturing at Sam’s still very full plate.
Sam forks up a big bite and chokes it down with a swig of coffee which is impressively not cold even after that long conversation. The pancakes don’t taste of bitterness and regret anymore, more like hope and possibility. Not the type of meal he’s had in a while. He wishes Dean were there to share it with him.
“I’m sorry, this is a one person at a time kind of meal,” Chuck says, smiling as he drinks out of his World’s Best Dad mug which is full once again.
This doesn’t surprise Sam, but he still wishes Dean were there, this is going to be hard to explain to him without revealing everything he’s worked so hard to keep on lockdown all these years. Shit-he wasn’t supposed to think about it, not with the World’s Greatest Eavesdropper sitting across from him grinning like a fool.
“You probably should just tell him,” Chuck says.
“That’s not happening,” Sam says. “And I’d really rather not discuss this with you.”
“No, really, Sam, I mean it, tell him the whole truth. For you to get what you were praying for way back then, that’s what you need to do. I’m not going to offer to fix that for you,” Chuck says, setting his empty coffee mug back down. He stands up from the table and looks like he's about to clap his hands which means this is likely just about over.
“Wait, you mean it would be okay with you?” Sam asks in a sudden frenzy to know.
“Sam, those rules don’t apply to either of you boys, don’t you know that by now?” Chuck asks, clapping his hands and sending Sam back.
****
Sam wakes up, back in his bed, he stares at the ceiling and wonders if that was all a dream or what. He can still taste the pure maple syrup left on his lips and the coffee in his mouth. It was real. That means he has to warn Dean that Amara’s coming. And maybe actually talk to him like Chuck had just advised.
He gets up slowly and is getting dressed when his door slams open, Dean in the doorway, eyes ablaze with something…
“Did you get up early and make me pancakes? What is it, my birthday?” Dean asks.
“No…uh, those are leftover from Chuck actually,” Sam says.
Dean’s whole face and body turns into a literal human question mark.
“Really, he…uh brought me to a version of the bunker kitchen somewhere that wasn’t really here, and made me pancakes and coffee and talked my ear off. Basically, he was passing on a message from Amara. And I guess he left the leftovers for us here in the real bunker.”
“Amara?” Dean asks, now looking like a human exclamation point.
“C’mon, let’s go eat and I’ll tell you the whole saga,” Sam says, ushering his brother out into the hallway and heading him towards the kitchen.
“She’s not coming here, right?” Dean asks, as they sit down at the table that’s set for two, a heaping platter of pancakes, perfect and steaming along with a pot of hot coffee. The World’s Greatest Dad mug is back on the shelf and his favorite owl mug is on the table in its place.
“Yeah, unfortunately, she will be coming here, but only after he tells her what I said,” Sam says, he holds up a hand as Dean prepares to interrupt. “Just let me start at the beginning, okay? Chuck was asking me about what I’d prayed when you were in the helicopter ambulance. Apparently, all of them in Heaven heard me and stopped what they were doing just to watch the three of us. And according to him, we went three for three on making the unexpected choice which ended up stopping the scheduled apocalypse.”
“They watched us and what-didn’t do anything?” Dean asks.
“Yeah, pretty much. He told me about how we are his favorite pair of ‘test cases’ that we’re suited to being experimented on, partly because of being soulmates, and also that we’re a new version of human that lasts longer.”
“Lasts longer, as in lives longer than a normal human?” Dean asks.
Sam doesn’t point out that Dean skipped over the soulmate issue, like they always do, always have. “Yes, that’s what he said, we’re slated to last more than a few human lifetimes.”
“So how does Amara figure into all of this?” Dean asks.
“Apparently Chuck was instant-replaying our story and she seized on that whole bit of our lives. It was when they were debating fate versus free-will, and she heard my prayer from back then and kind of wanted to answer it for me to kind of apologize for her trying to take you away…from me.”
“Is she bringing mom back again?” Dean asks, hope bursting into view across his whole face.
Sam hates to break the news to his brother, but he’s got to do it anyway. “No, it’s nothing to do with Mom. Uh…Chuck said Amara has learned her lesson from how that all turned out, but what she was offering was, well it was a do-over for you, me and Dad. We’d go back in time to that point when you were getting transported in the helicopter and get to live our lives over from that point forward. No demons, no going to hell, no-one getting possessed.”
“What about the apocalypse though?” Dean asks.
“That wasn’t clear, seemed like it would have been postponed. The main point was that we’d be just regular guys, living regular lives. From the sounds of it, you would have survived your injuries without Dad making a deal with the demon, and none of us would have…you know, gone to Hell.”
“What’d you say?” Dean asks after a long quiet moment, struggling to maintain a somewhat neutral expression.
“I said no,” Sam says.
“Oh thank god,” Dean says in a rush, reaching for Sam’s hand across the table. He twines them all up together like they do with their bodies when they hug. Dean lets his hand go but Sam can still feel his touch. Dean’s eyes flash with so much emotion Sam can’t catch it all. “I wouldn’t want to go back and not be me, and have you not be you. And Dad’s in Heaven with Mom, right? So Amara needs to leave him the fuck alone where he is.”
“That’s pretty much what I said, and Chuck got kinda mad when I said he didn’t understand his favorite characters very well if he didn’t know what I’d be answering.”
Dean laughs, head back, full-on guffaw for a few moments that make Sam feel like he’s finally accomplished something good. Dean’s eyes are a little teary from all the laughing which makes it even better.
“That’s fucking awesome, Sammy,” Dean finally says once he’s done laughing.
“Thanks, and uh…I negotiated us a better deal since Chuck insisted that Amara was offering us something big and we needed to accept it,” Sam says, hesitating a little because of the tell-the-whole-truth advice from Chuck.
“I’m not one bit surprised that you got us a better deal, Sammy. So, what’d you get us? Please say a long vacation somewhere tropical,” Dean says.
“I asked for them to both let us be, to leave us alone for the remainder of our lives. Which are going to be a whole lot longer than we’ve been planning on living. We’re going to be off the hamster wheel, Dean, no more playing out Chuck’s stories, just us and what we choose.”
“Fuck, that’s…that’s really something. I never would have thought of asking for that,” Dean says.
“Yeah you would have, maybe not in the same words or whatever. You’d have gotten there though,” Sam says with a full confidence he feels down to his toes.
“When’s all this happening? Wait-has it started already?” Dean asks, eyes darting around the room as if there would be a physical sign.
“I’m not sure, Chuck said he was going to go talk to Amara, whatever that entails, and then he said she’d probably want to come talk to us in person. Bestow her gift on us and all that, right?”
“Like she did before, when she brought Mom back,” Dean says with a shudder. “She’s not going to try and connect with me or whatever again, right?”
Sam realizes he doesn’t know about that moment when Amara brought their mother back, they’d never talked about it, he’d been kidnapped and so much had happened after that. And the revulsion Sam sees on Dean’s face now just thinking about seeing her again makes him carry on with the full story.
“I asked Chuck, about whether Amara still had a claim on you, and he said no, she understood now what she’d done by trying to separate soulmates. So, you don’t have to worry about her coming here and putting the mojo back on you or whatever. She’s basically just coming to bestow an apology gift.”
“Soulmates, huh?” Dean asks.
Sam tries not to visibly react to Dean finally saying that word. After all this time it’s strange to finally hear from his brother’s mouth.
“Yeah, I asked him about that, and it was one of the variables he’d tried with all the versions of us he’d made. And get this, he told me that in some of his versions of us, we were women sometimes, or not even related.”
“Soulmates,” Dean says again, like none of the rest of it is even worth commenting on.
“What?” Sam asks.
“You know I think about that all the time? That we are that-you know…soulmates,” Dean says in a halting tone.
“He told me that you did, when I was wondering if you ever thought about it, because we never really talked about it,” Sam says.
“He was doing the mind-reading thing, huh. Fucking annoying,” Dean says, expertly changing the subject.
Sam yanks it back to the soulmate issue though, because he needs to do this. What Chuck had told him to finally take a chance and do. “I do too, every single day, I’m thankful for that fact, and that we know it and live it. Honestly, I can’t imagine it being any other way for us,” Sam says.
Dean looks at him in surprise, usually they don’t come out and say stuff like this. But this is God-level business, serious, maybe life-changing even.
“He said that being soulmates doesn’t determine exactly what we do or say or think or feel, that’s still up to us. It’s more like a category of connection between our souls. One that’s deeper or even necessary for us to survive.”
“Like I said, soulmates,” Dean says with a bare grimace of a smile.
“He also gave me some advice, to be honest with you about something…uh, something important,” Sam says, barely stopping himself from blurting it all out.
“Oh really? You’re taking advice from Chuck now?” Dean asks.
“Well, he is…you know, God and all, seemed like I should at least consider what he had to say,” Sam says. “It’s about how I really feel about you.”
Dean rolled his eyes, the unspoken oh-god-here-we-go sarcasm plain on his face.
“I haven’t been honest about that, and I thought…well, I thought with all the other stuff we were just talking about, I ought to be.”
Dean rolls one hand in the air, the snarky oh-do-go-on also silent.
“We’re soulmates and we’re also brothers, which is not how it usually goes. And I don’t know how you’ll take this, but I’ve held this in for a long time. I love you, Dean,” Sam says, suddenly breathless with the effort of baring his heart.
Dean’s eyebrows shoot up and stay there.
“I really do, but more than just…you know, as just a brother. It would be more accurate to say, I’m in love with you. And it not’s just because we were made as soulmates, I asked Chuck, it’s not an automatic thing. It’s…it’s you and what you mean to me, what you’ve always meant. I’ve wanted you since I was thirteen, Dean. And I’ve always hidden it, because I didn’t know what you’d do if you knew. I didn’t want to hurt you, or us, so I’ve stuffed it down. But now I think it might have hurt you more not knowing all these years.”
So there. It’s done. He’s done it. He’s actually done it. He’s been completely honest. About everything, how he feels now, how he’s always felt and then he stops talking and really sees Dean’s face. It’s gone all red and kind of sweaty, like he’s been exerting himself from not screaming maybe?
Dean gets up and leaves the kitchen without a word.
Not a single one.
His silent exit is enough of an answer or a discussion for Sam.
Sam sits and looks at the stupid salt and pepper shakers. He hears more than a few doors slamming and the Impala starting up and roaring out of the garage.
He knocks the salt and pepper shakers off the table and goes to bed before he breaks anything that’s really important. He tries not to cry, fails miserably, and then falls into a fitful sleep where he has a dream about the time between when Dean’s helicopter took off and when he saw him in the hospital. The one that Chuck had replayed for him earlier that day, it’s all so fresh in his mind that it gets mashed up with Sam’s current worries.
He’s right back there in the moment, strapped to the ambulance gurney, watching his Dad and then his brother get loaded into the helicopter. It takes off and then he’s alone. All alone, and he has to get to them, has to get to Dean-now. The raw, pulsing urgency makes him struggle against the gurney restraints and the paramedic tries to calm him down, telling him how much more time until he’s at the hospital. Yes, it’s the same one they’re going to, he swears. Sam makes him. And then he’s in the ER, and they’re working on him, and he can’t-he doesn’t want to be fixed-he just wants to know. He keeps begging for information on his family, Dean’s name in his mouth over and over again like a prayer. It is a prayer, it’s a plea, it’s a demand, he’s bargaining and begging with God or anyone who’ll listen to help.
Finally a nurse takes pity on him and comes back with the word that they’re both alive, but it’s Dean who’s really struggling. He’s finally released from treatment, Sam insists he’s good to go, signs all kinds of waivers so they’ll let him walk, no run straight to Dean’s room. He doesn’t even think of finding his Dad’s room first. He needs Dean. And he’s there, Dean’s still alive, his bigger than life big brother so damn small on the bed, so many tubes and wires connected to him. His face is a mess, they worked on his chest, it was so torn up by the demon, and blood is soaking through the new bandages. It’s been almost two hours since he last saw Dean. The longest two hours of his god damned life. He blows out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and then he finally thinks. The demon-what if there are more coming?
Then, because it’s a dream, Amara and Chuck are standing in the corner of Dean’s room, their arms crossed, like they’re angry. Sam can see a reaper hovering over Dean, reaching out for him, to take him away from Sam. He falls to his knees, clutching at his brother’s body on the bed, begging the reaper to take him instead. Amara and Chuck laugh at his pain, at his lame begging. Azazel strides into the room, and approaches the bed, he smokes out of the body Sam had gotten used to interacting with and swarms up through Dean’s nostrils. Dean’s eyes open and click to that evil yellow that Sam has never been able to see without feeling ill.
Azazel sits up in the hospital bed and rips all the equipment from Dean’s face and yanks the IV out of his arm. The blood drips down and Sam’s mouth waters, it’s demon blood now. He’s still kneeling there next to the bed so he reaches up for Dean’s arm, bringing the drip of crimson to his mouth. And he feeds, while God and Amara laugh. Azazel pets his hair and coos Sammy at him in Dean’s voice and Sam is going to vomit all the blood up.
He wakes, panting and sweaty all over, he runs to the bathroom and throws up. The nausea left over from the dream makes him think there’s going to be demon blood, but it’s just the Chuck-damned pancakes. He slumps next to the toilet, laying his head against the cool tile of the bathroom wall.
As he rinses his mouth out in one of the sinks he wonders if that was just a plain old dream, a vision, or maybe it was a memory that Chuck is supplying to aid Sam in working things out with Dean? Sam’s not sure, but reliving all that pain shakes him up enough that he seeks out Dean in the middle of the night, because nothing else seems like it would work to calm him down. He’s got to be back by now, right?
Dean is awake in his room, wearing only his hot dog pajama pants and his Send Noods socks and his noise canceling headphones. He sees Sam’s stricken face and immediately makes room for him on the bed, switching off his headphones and setting them on the bedside table.
Leaning against the door for support, Sam briefly tells him about his dream and when he finishes, Dean turns back the covers and silently invites Sam to lay down.
Sam shakes his head, refusing. He can’t, not after what happened earlier in the kitchen. It wouldn’t be right, they haven’t talked about it. He can’t even bring himself to say anything from that list of things they should have gone over. But Dean had left.
Dean raises his eyebrows when Sam shakes his head. “C’mon, dude you’re really shaken up, I can see it from here. Just get in under the covers, we both need to get some rest, maybe they’ll be coming tomorrow, right?”
Sam nods and crosses the room. As he lays down and pulls the covers over him, he can’t help himself, he has to say something. “I uh…I promise I won’t make a move or anything like that, okay?”
Dean doesn’t say anything, he just grunts and punches Sam in the side.
****
To Part 3
****
“Just let you grow old and die like normal humans?” Chuck asks. “Even though you’re not.”
“Explain what you mean by that,” Sam says.
“Like I said before, both of you, I made you differently. You’re more than normal humans, it’s hard to quantify in a way you’ll understand, but basically you’ve been made to live for what will end up being the span of several human lifetimes. I made you both in such a way that you’ll last longer. I’ve been experimenting with a few new designs, and you’re the best pair so far.”
“Well, if we’re this new kind of human or whatever, then that changes things as far as this apology gift thing goes. How about this, the gift Amara gives us is that you both let us be for the remainder of our lives.”
“That’s open-ended and specific, well done, Sam. You know, you really could have been a great lawyer.”
“Thanks, I think? Uh…what are the chances that she’ll go for it?” Sam asks.
“Yeah, I think she will, actually,” Chuck says. “You sure you don’t need to ask Dean before I put this in motion?”
“No, I know what he’d say. Even though I’m sure he’d love the chance to be in his twenties again, he’d still want to be the real Dean, which is the Dean that he is right now.”
“Well, okay then, I’ll tell her what you’re proposing and just as a heads up, she’ll probably want to come see you two in person,” Chuck says.
“Thanks for letting me know. It’s going to be hard for Dean to see her. Uh…she doesn’t think she has a claim on him anymore right?” Sam asks, knowing he sounds jealous, because he knows he is, always has been, always will be. As messed up as that might be, it’s the truth. Maybe only he happens to know that truth, or maybe not. Sam tries his best not to think about it, that’s not something he wants to talk about with Chuck.
“Oh no, she definitely got the message on that one,” Chuck says. “Your claim on Dean has been well and truly established, Sam.”
“Can I ask you something?” Sam asks.
Chuck nods as he finishes his coffee, this time the cup is empty when he sets it down.
“When you heard me, praying back then, was everything I was asking for, was I asking for all that just because you made us soulmates?”
“No, that was all up to you, that was truly your decision, what you were feeling and asking for was all you. Soulmates is more of a category kind of thing, it doesn’t determine what the individual humans think or make them do something just because they’re soulmates. No, Sam that was all you. Being soulmates means that your souls are literally connected, they need each other to survive and thrive. You might unconsciously know that, but you wouldn’t necessarily act upon it.”
“Okay…uh, thanks,” Sam says.
“Finish your pancakes, and then we can go,” Chuck says, gesturing at Sam’s still very full plate.
Sam forks up a big bite and chokes it down with a swig of coffee which is impressively not cold even after that long conversation. The pancakes don’t taste of bitterness and regret anymore, more like hope and possibility. Not the type of meal he’s had in a while. He wishes Dean were there to share it with him.
“I’m sorry, this is a one person at a time kind of meal,” Chuck says, smiling as he drinks out of his World’s Best Dad mug which is full once again.
This doesn’t surprise Sam, but he still wishes Dean were there, this is going to be hard to explain to him without revealing everything he’s worked so hard to keep on lockdown all these years. Shit-he wasn’t supposed to think about it, not with the World’s Greatest Eavesdropper sitting across from him grinning like a fool.
“You probably should just tell him,” Chuck says.
“That’s not happening,” Sam says. “And I’d really rather not discuss this with you.”
“No, really, Sam, I mean it, tell him the whole truth. For you to get what you were praying for way back then, that’s what you need to do. I’m not going to offer to fix that for you,” Chuck says, setting his empty coffee mug back down. He stands up from the table and looks like he's about to clap his hands which means this is likely just about over.
“Wait, you mean it would be okay with you?” Sam asks in a sudden frenzy to know.
“Sam, those rules don’t apply to either of you boys, don’t you know that by now?” Chuck asks, clapping his hands and sending Sam back.
****
Sam wakes up, back in his bed, he stares at the ceiling and wonders if that was all a dream or what. He can still taste the pure maple syrup left on his lips and the coffee in his mouth. It was real. That means he has to warn Dean that Amara’s coming. And maybe actually talk to him like Chuck had just advised.
He gets up slowly and is getting dressed when his door slams open, Dean in the doorway, eyes ablaze with something…
“Did you get up early and make me pancakes? What is it, my birthday?” Dean asks.
“No…uh, those are leftover from Chuck actually,” Sam says.
Dean’s whole face and body turns into a literal human question mark.
“Really, he…uh brought me to a version of the bunker kitchen somewhere that wasn’t really here, and made me pancakes and coffee and talked my ear off. Basically, he was passing on a message from Amara. And I guess he left the leftovers for us here in the real bunker.”
“Amara?” Dean asks, now looking like a human exclamation point.
“C’mon, let’s go eat and I’ll tell you the whole saga,” Sam says, ushering his brother out into the hallway and heading him towards the kitchen.
“She’s not coming here, right?” Dean asks, as they sit down at the table that’s set for two, a heaping platter of pancakes, perfect and steaming along with a pot of hot coffee. The World’s Greatest Dad mug is back on the shelf and his favorite owl mug is on the table in its place.
“Yeah, unfortunately, she will be coming here, but only after he tells her what I said,” Sam says, he holds up a hand as Dean prepares to interrupt. “Just let me start at the beginning, okay? Chuck was asking me about what I’d prayed when you were in the helicopter ambulance. Apparently, all of them in Heaven heard me and stopped what they were doing just to watch the three of us. And according to him, we went three for three on making the unexpected choice which ended up stopping the scheduled apocalypse.”
“They watched us and what-didn’t do anything?” Dean asks.
“Yeah, pretty much. He told me about how we are his favorite pair of ‘test cases’ that we’re suited to being experimented on, partly because of being soulmates, and also that we’re a new version of human that lasts longer.”
“Lasts longer, as in lives longer than a normal human?” Dean asks.
Sam doesn’t point out that Dean skipped over the soulmate issue, like they always do, always have. “Yes, that’s what he said, we’re slated to last more than a few human lifetimes.”
“So how does Amara figure into all of this?” Dean asks.
“Apparently Chuck was instant-replaying our story and she seized on that whole bit of our lives. It was when they were debating fate versus free-will, and she heard my prayer from back then and kind of wanted to answer it for me to kind of apologize for her trying to take you away…from me.”
“Is she bringing mom back again?” Dean asks, hope bursting into view across his whole face.
Sam hates to break the news to his brother, but he’s got to do it anyway. “No, it’s nothing to do with Mom. Uh…Chuck said Amara has learned her lesson from how that all turned out, but what she was offering was, well it was a do-over for you, me and Dad. We’d go back in time to that point when you were getting transported in the helicopter and get to live our lives over from that point forward. No demons, no going to hell, no-one getting possessed.”
“What about the apocalypse though?” Dean asks.
“That wasn’t clear, seemed like it would have been postponed. The main point was that we’d be just regular guys, living regular lives. From the sounds of it, you would have survived your injuries without Dad making a deal with the demon, and none of us would have…you know, gone to Hell.”
“What’d you say?” Dean asks after a long quiet moment, struggling to maintain a somewhat neutral expression.
“I said no,” Sam says.
“Oh thank god,” Dean says in a rush, reaching for Sam’s hand across the table. He twines them all up together like they do with their bodies when they hug. Dean lets his hand go but Sam can still feel his touch. Dean’s eyes flash with so much emotion Sam can’t catch it all. “I wouldn’t want to go back and not be me, and have you not be you. And Dad’s in Heaven with Mom, right? So Amara needs to leave him the fuck alone where he is.”
“That’s pretty much what I said, and Chuck got kinda mad when I said he didn’t understand his favorite characters very well if he didn’t know what I’d be answering.”
Dean laughs, head back, full-on guffaw for a few moments that make Sam feel like he’s finally accomplished something good. Dean’s eyes are a little teary from all the laughing which makes it even better.
“That’s fucking awesome, Sammy,” Dean finally says once he’s done laughing.
“Thanks, and uh…I negotiated us a better deal since Chuck insisted that Amara was offering us something big and we needed to accept it,” Sam says, hesitating a little because of the tell-the-whole-truth advice from Chuck.
“I’m not one bit surprised that you got us a better deal, Sammy. So, what’d you get us? Please say a long vacation somewhere tropical,” Dean says.
“I asked for them to both let us be, to leave us alone for the remainder of our lives. Which are going to be a whole lot longer than we’ve been planning on living. We’re going to be off the hamster wheel, Dean, no more playing out Chuck’s stories, just us and what we choose.”
“Fuck, that’s…that’s really something. I never would have thought of asking for that,” Dean says.
“Yeah you would have, maybe not in the same words or whatever. You’d have gotten there though,” Sam says with a full confidence he feels down to his toes.
“When’s all this happening? Wait-has it started already?” Dean asks, eyes darting around the room as if there would be a physical sign.
“I’m not sure, Chuck said he was going to go talk to Amara, whatever that entails, and then he said she’d probably want to come talk to us in person. Bestow her gift on us and all that, right?”
“Like she did before, when she brought Mom back,” Dean says with a shudder. “She’s not going to try and connect with me or whatever again, right?”
Sam realizes he doesn’t know about that moment when Amara brought their mother back, they’d never talked about it, he’d been kidnapped and so much had happened after that. And the revulsion Sam sees on Dean’s face now just thinking about seeing her again makes him carry on with the full story.
“I asked Chuck, about whether Amara still had a claim on you, and he said no, she understood now what she’d done by trying to separate soulmates. So, you don’t have to worry about her coming here and putting the mojo back on you or whatever. She’s basically just coming to bestow an apology gift.”
“Soulmates, huh?” Dean asks.
Sam tries not to visibly react to Dean finally saying that word. After all this time it’s strange to finally hear from his brother’s mouth.
“Yeah, I asked him about that, and it was one of the variables he’d tried with all the versions of us he’d made. And get this, he told me that in some of his versions of us, we were women sometimes, or not even related.”
“Soulmates,” Dean says again, like none of the rest of it is even worth commenting on.
“What?” Sam asks.
“You know I think about that all the time? That we are that-you know…soulmates,” Dean says in a halting tone.
“He told me that you did, when I was wondering if you ever thought about it, because we never really talked about it,” Sam says.
“He was doing the mind-reading thing, huh. Fucking annoying,” Dean says, expertly changing the subject.
Sam yanks it back to the soulmate issue though, because he needs to do this. What Chuck had told him to finally take a chance and do. “I do too, every single day, I’m thankful for that fact, and that we know it and live it. Honestly, I can’t imagine it being any other way for us,” Sam says.
Dean looks at him in surprise, usually they don’t come out and say stuff like this. But this is God-level business, serious, maybe life-changing even.
“He said that being soulmates doesn’t determine exactly what we do or say or think or feel, that’s still up to us. It’s more like a category of connection between our souls. One that’s deeper or even necessary for us to survive.”
“Like I said, soulmates,” Dean says with a bare grimace of a smile.
“He also gave me some advice, to be honest with you about something…uh, something important,” Sam says, barely stopping himself from blurting it all out.
“Oh really? You’re taking advice from Chuck now?” Dean asks.
“Well, he is…you know, God and all, seemed like I should at least consider what he had to say,” Sam says. “It’s about how I really feel about you.”
Dean rolled his eyes, the unspoken oh-god-here-we-go sarcasm plain on his face.
“I haven’t been honest about that, and I thought…well, I thought with all the other stuff we were just talking about, I ought to be.”
Dean rolls one hand in the air, the snarky oh-do-go-on also silent.
“We’re soulmates and we’re also brothers, which is not how it usually goes. And I don’t know how you’ll take this, but I’ve held this in for a long time. I love you, Dean,” Sam says, suddenly breathless with the effort of baring his heart.
Dean’s eyebrows shoot up and stay there.
“I really do, but more than just…you know, as just a brother. It would be more accurate to say, I’m in love with you. And it not’s just because we were made as soulmates, I asked Chuck, it’s not an automatic thing. It’s…it’s you and what you mean to me, what you’ve always meant. I’ve wanted you since I was thirteen, Dean. And I’ve always hidden it, because I didn’t know what you’d do if you knew. I didn’t want to hurt you, or us, so I’ve stuffed it down. But now I think it might have hurt you more not knowing all these years.”
So there. It’s done. He’s done it. He’s actually done it. He’s been completely honest. About everything, how he feels now, how he’s always felt and then he stops talking and really sees Dean’s face. It’s gone all red and kind of sweaty, like he’s been exerting himself from not screaming maybe?
Dean gets up and leaves the kitchen without a word.
Not a single one.
His silent exit is enough of an answer or a discussion for Sam.
Sam sits and looks at the stupid salt and pepper shakers. He hears more than a few doors slamming and the Impala starting up and roaring out of the garage.
He knocks the salt and pepper shakers off the table and goes to bed before he breaks anything that’s really important. He tries not to cry, fails miserably, and then falls into a fitful sleep where he has a dream about the time between when Dean’s helicopter took off and when he saw him in the hospital. The one that Chuck had replayed for him earlier that day, it’s all so fresh in his mind that it gets mashed up with Sam’s current worries.
He’s right back there in the moment, strapped to the ambulance gurney, watching his Dad and then his brother get loaded into the helicopter. It takes off and then he’s alone. All alone, and he has to get to them, has to get to Dean-now. The raw, pulsing urgency makes him struggle against the gurney restraints and the paramedic tries to calm him down, telling him how much more time until he’s at the hospital. Yes, it’s the same one they’re going to, he swears. Sam makes him. And then he’s in the ER, and they’re working on him, and he can’t-he doesn’t want to be fixed-he just wants to know. He keeps begging for information on his family, Dean’s name in his mouth over and over again like a prayer. It is a prayer, it’s a plea, it’s a demand, he’s bargaining and begging with God or anyone who’ll listen to help.
Finally a nurse takes pity on him and comes back with the word that they’re both alive, but it’s Dean who’s really struggling. He’s finally released from treatment, Sam insists he’s good to go, signs all kinds of waivers so they’ll let him walk, no run straight to Dean’s room. He doesn’t even think of finding his Dad’s room first. He needs Dean. And he’s there, Dean’s still alive, his bigger than life big brother so damn small on the bed, so many tubes and wires connected to him. His face is a mess, they worked on his chest, it was so torn up by the demon, and blood is soaking through the new bandages. It’s been almost two hours since he last saw Dean. The longest two hours of his god damned life. He blows out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding, and then he finally thinks. The demon-what if there are more coming?
Then, because it’s a dream, Amara and Chuck are standing in the corner of Dean’s room, their arms crossed, like they’re angry. Sam can see a reaper hovering over Dean, reaching out for him, to take him away from Sam. He falls to his knees, clutching at his brother’s body on the bed, begging the reaper to take him instead. Amara and Chuck laugh at his pain, at his lame begging. Azazel strides into the room, and approaches the bed, he smokes out of the body Sam had gotten used to interacting with and swarms up through Dean’s nostrils. Dean’s eyes open and click to that evil yellow that Sam has never been able to see without feeling ill.
Azazel sits up in the hospital bed and rips all the equipment from Dean’s face and yanks the IV out of his arm. The blood drips down and Sam’s mouth waters, it’s demon blood now. He’s still kneeling there next to the bed so he reaches up for Dean’s arm, bringing the drip of crimson to his mouth. And he feeds, while God and Amara laugh. Azazel pets his hair and coos Sammy at him in Dean’s voice and Sam is going to vomit all the blood up.
He wakes, panting and sweaty all over, he runs to the bathroom and throws up. The nausea left over from the dream makes him think there’s going to be demon blood, but it’s just the Chuck-damned pancakes. He slumps next to the toilet, laying his head against the cool tile of the bathroom wall.
As he rinses his mouth out in one of the sinks he wonders if that was just a plain old dream, a vision, or maybe it was a memory that Chuck is supplying to aid Sam in working things out with Dean? Sam’s not sure, but reliving all that pain shakes him up enough that he seeks out Dean in the middle of the night, because nothing else seems like it would work to calm him down. He’s got to be back by now, right?
Dean is awake in his room, wearing only his hot dog pajama pants and his Send Noods socks and his noise canceling headphones. He sees Sam’s stricken face and immediately makes room for him on the bed, switching off his headphones and setting them on the bedside table.
Leaning against the door for support, Sam briefly tells him about his dream and when he finishes, Dean turns back the covers and silently invites Sam to lay down.
Sam shakes his head, refusing. He can’t, not after what happened earlier in the kitchen. It wouldn’t be right, they haven’t talked about it. He can’t even bring himself to say anything from that list of things they should have gone over. But Dean had left.
Dean raises his eyebrows when Sam shakes his head. “C’mon, dude you’re really shaken up, I can see it from here. Just get in under the covers, we both need to get some rest, maybe they’ll be coming tomorrow, right?”
Sam nods and crosses the room. As he lays down and pulls the covers over him, he can’t help himself, he has to say something. “I uh…I promise I won’t make a move or anything like that, okay?”
Dean doesn’t say anything, he just grunts and punches Sam in the side.
****
To Part 3