The Other Was a Star-Shaped Hole Part 3
When Sam wakes up, it’s dark, and no one is screaming.
That seems wrong to him, but he can’t quite figure out why. There should be screams. He remembers hearing them, or possibly making them, before he woke up here. Wherever here is.
Gradually, Sam realizes he’s lying down on something relatively soft. His eyes are closed- or possibly removed, he remembers something about missing eyes, blank sockets like black holes- and all his bones are broken. No, maybe not broken. Maybe they’ve been removed too, and replaced with butane, then someone shoved matches under his skin and watched him go up in a chemical fire. His edges still feel like they might be burning, little licks of flame in blue or green.
His face feels cooler than the rest of him and that’s when he realizes someone is touching him. Someone with frigid, clammy hands. The smell of death and decay is suddenly overpowering, and Sam thinks zombie. He remembers there was definitely a corpse involved.
He flails wildly, dislodging the hands, filling the too silent air with his own half-strangled yells. His eyes must not have been removed because they fly open now, and he takes in the sight of a water-stained ceiling and a single, milky eye. He yells again, tries to get his lighter fluid bones to work, then someone is saying “Sam. Sam.” He realizes it’s not one eye he’s seeing, it’s two. And they’re not white, they’re green, and full of everything Sam has ever wanted in his life.
“Sam,” says Dean. “It’s just me.”
“Dean,” says Sam. “I think I’m going to throw up.”
In a tightly coordinated series of movements perfected over dozens of stomach flus, concussions and hangovers, Dean gets Sam upright and leaning over a trashcan just in time for him to vomit up what feels like every meal he’s ever eaten, mixed in with a heavy dose of battery acid. Dean uses one hand to hold back the top part of Sam’s hair and the other to rub soothing circles up and down his spine.
Sam throws up until he’s got nothing left but bile, tinged pink with blood he’s pretty sure is coming from his throat or the back of his mouth. Even then his body keeps retching like it’s trying to turn itself inside out. Sam feels ridiculous, helpless tears start to slide down his cheeks. They don’t stop even when his stomach resorts to painful cramping and Dean takes the trashcan away, easing Sam back down on the bed.
“Sam,” Dean says again. He’s gone back to touching Sam’s face with his fingertips as if to reassure himself that Sam is actually there, still in one piece.
I’m not in one piece though, Sam thinks as he closes his eyes again, a few more tears leaking out. You should see what it looks like in here. Fucking Jenga. The tower’s built but there’re holes all over. Pretty soon the wrong piece is going to be pulled and then the whole thing is coming down.
Sam finds the dark, writhing pit in his mind. It’s hot and swollen like a bruise, and when he prods it the pain is enough to have him arching off the bed, head pushed back and neck straining. It’s several long moments before he sinks back into himself, limp and exhausted, and feels Dean’s hand clutched tightly on his shoulder.
“What happened?” Sam mumbles once he relocates his tongue. Dean snorts, but rubs his thumb gently back and forth across Sam’s collarbone.
“You want to tell me? Cause one minute I’m fighting a zombie, then the next minute a fucking… Balrog is trying to rip my lungs out, then you’re stabbing yourself in the leg and going into cardiac arrest.”
Even with his eyes shut, Sam can hear the fury stamped on Dean’s face. “Sorry.”
“Damn right you’re sorry! What the fuck were you thinking?” Dean’s hand spasms a little on Sam’s shoulder and his voice drops from anger to confession. “You scared the shit outta me, man. I thought- fuck, Sammy, I thought you-”
Sam puts his hand over Dean’s and struggles to sit up. His stomach lurches, but he swallows tightly and forces himself to speak instead.
“I’m going to take a shower.” Dean looks at him and Sam swallows again when he sees Dean’s eyes are wet. “It’s this smell, it’s everywhere, like corpses-”
“Okay, okay. Shower. Do you need help?”
Sam doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to when he pushes himself to his feet and it becomes abundantly clear he can hardly stand on his own. Dean wedges himself under Sam’s shoulder and helps him make his embarrassingly slow way across the motel room. This one doesn’t have fleur-de-lis on the wall, Sam notes through waves of dizziness and a headache that radiates all the way down his neck and into his chest. There’s nothing on the walls but a single painting in a handmade frame, two ducks floating on a pond.
“Holden would like that,” Dean says as they shuffle past the painting and he notices Sam staring at it, though that quickly changes to staring at Dean. Dean shrugs. “Holden Caulfield. You know, Catcher in the Rye.”
“Right.” That had been one of Dean’s favorite books growing up. Sam remembers he used to keep a dog-eared copy in the glove compartment of the Impala. He wonders if it’s still there.
When they reach the bathroom Dean sits Sam on the toilet then strips them both down to their boxers. It’s only then that it occurs to Sam he’s wearing sweatpants when before he was wearing jeans. There’s a sharp twinge of pain when Dean pulls the sweatpants off his legs, and Sam looks down to find several inches of stitches curving from the front of his thigh around to the side, perfectly neat and utterly incriminating.
“You sliced yourself real good, dumbass,” Dean says when he notices Sam running his index fingers over the little black lines. He’s clearly freaking out, and wants to demand to know why Sam did that and probably make him swear a blood oath to never so much as look at a knife again, but he impressively holds himself in check and turns the shower on.
“Come on, Princess.” He drags Sam back to his feet, and helps him step over the edge of the tub. “You’re washing your own junk, okay?”
Sam tries to make a witty retort, but the feeling of the hot water hitting his aching muscles feels so good he just groans instead. He leans forward to duck his head, ends up over-balancing and slips on the slick surface of the tub. Dean stops him from falling just in time with a grunt and several extremely colorful curses.
“Guess I should’ve run a bath instead,” Dean mutters, shoving at Sam until he’s propped up against the wall in a more or less steady position. “If you’re going to have the coordination of a five-year I might as well treat you like one.”
“Only if you’d still make the shampoo a submarine.” Sam can tell Dean’s gruff words are just a cover-up for his far more serious concern. He tries to look a little less pathetic, and makes a grab for the soap. Dean slaps his hand away, picking up the bar himself and working up a lather he then starts to rub on Sam’s shoulders and chest. Combined with the water, the gentle pressure of his hands feels almost like a massage. Sam tilts his head back and closes his eyes, stifling another groan.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Dean warns as he crouches to wash Sam’s legs, kneading at the tensed muscles and taking extra care around the stitches. “Drowning in the shower would be about the lamest way ever to die.”
“You can’t drown in the shower.” Sam tries not to twitch as Dean washes each of his feet, deliberately aiming for some of his most ticklish spots. “But you might get your head kicked in in the shower if you keep doing that.”
Dean chuckles warmly and stands, starting in on Sam’s arms. “You can too drown,” he insists. His hands come back to Sam’s shoulders and Sam slides a few inches down the wall to make the reach easier. “I saw it on TV.”
“Oh, okay, then.” Sam peels his upper body away from the wall, encouraging Dean to work the soap across the nape of his neck and down his back. “If you saw it on TV then it must be true.”
Dean pokes him in the side, then grabs the shampoo and rumbles, “Lean forward.” Sam doesn’t hesitate, closing the remaining few inches between them and letting his forehead come to rest just above Dean’s collarbone. He loops his arms around Dean’s waist for balance. Dean sticks sudsy fingers in his hair. Sam breathes out, every last inch of tension melting from his body.
He’s vaguely aware this should be weird, hugging his brother while they’re both nearly naked and sharing a shower, but after everything else that’s happened in his life, this barely registers as unnatural. Together they’ve lost a mother, a father, lovers, friends and any chance at a life free of constant pain and sacrifice. But despite everything they haven’t lost each other, and this is the happiest Sam has felt since he came back from Hell. He feels safe here under the water with Dean’s hands on his head and Dean’s body wrapped securely in his arms. There are no monsters in here. No secrets. No death or heartbreak. There’s just Sam and Dean, holding on to the only thing they’ve ever been given to keep, and the only thing they have left.
By the time Dean rinses all the shampoo from Sam’s hair and shuts off the water, Sam is so relaxed he’s almost asleep. Dean plunks him on the toilet again to make a half-assed attempt at drying him off, then gives up and drags Sam to the nearest bed, yanks off the covers and lets him collapse into it. He piles the covers back on top of him, then Sam’s pretty sure he adds the covers from the other bed as well.
“Just promise me you’ll wake up, Sammy,” Dean whispers, so quietly Sam almost doesn’t hear him. After a moment’s hesitation, Dean lies down next to him on the bed and presses two tentative fingers to the pulse in Sam’s throat.
“Promise,” Sam slurs through a yawn. He uses his last remaining energy to untangle one hand from his mass of covers and fumble it around until it comes in contact with some part of Dean. He finds his chest first and pushes his palm flat, splayed fingers resting over Dean’s tattoo. “Not going to leave you. Not ever.”
The smell of death still lingers in Sam’s nose, a buzzing at the edge of his awareness like a mosquito in his ear, but the smell of soap and Dean’s skin is stronger, keeping Sam warm and safe as he slips away into the dark.
***
It’s the smell of coffee and donuts that wakes Sam for a second time, along with Dean’s voice saying loudly, “So here’s the plan.”
Sam sits up groggily, struggling under the weight of what feels like several tons of bedding. Images from his most recent nightmare still cling like cobwebs in front of his eyes. In the dream he had been driving the Impala through an unfamiliar town, searching for something while Dean lay silent and unresponsive in the seat next to him. One of Dean’s eyes was missing.
“How’re you feeling?” the very much alive Dean in front him asks.
Sam pushes away the nightmare and tries to think of an answer. He feels less like he’s dying today, more like he’s just been run over several times. By a freight train. “You got coffee?”
“Yep. That’s step one of the plan.” Dean passes a steaming cup to Sam. He looks pale and ill and Sam wonders if he got any sleep at all. “We drink the coffee. Step two- potentially interchangeable with step one- we eat these delicious donuts I was awesome enough to buy for us. Step three, you tell me what the hell was going on when you tried to sever your femoral artery and made the smoke monster from Lost explode like a firecracker.”
Sam takes a swallow of his coffee. It goes down his throat like broken glass, sticking to each cut and tear. “Is there a step four?”
“Um, I kick your ass for being a reckless moron?”
“I saved your life, Dean.”
Dean snorts, opens the box of donuts and props himself up against the motel room’s rickety breakfast table. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do. That thing was going to kill you, and it was only doing it to get my attention.”
“Oh, so what, you had a little mental chat with it while it was crushing my chest like a beer can? Did it tell you it was lonely, and just looking for a friend?”
“No.” The little things in the back of Sam’s mind are waking up, pincers clicking eagerly like they’re readying themselves for a big meal. He takes another drink of his coffee, hoping the pain with keep them at bay. “I just knew. That thing was from Hell. And so am I.”
“No you’re not.” Multi-colored sprinkles and bits of glaze scattered across the tabletop as Dean throws down his donut. “You’re a person, Sammy. A human being.”
“Dean, come on. That hasn’t been completely true since I was six months old.”
Dean goes livid, his expression twisting into something ugly and terrifying the way it usually only does right before he kills something. Sam swings his legs fully out of the bed and plants both feet on the floor; he needs the extra stability to keep talking when Dean looks like that.
“I was Lucifer’s vessel,” Sam tells his knees. “And I spent… time in the cage with him.” There’s a muted bang like a fist hitting a tabletop, and Sam’s suspects Dean may have visited further violence on his donut, but he doesn’t dare look up. “I don’t remember much of that time, but I do remember, even in that cage, he is their God. And I was a part of that, for a while. Now he’s down there, and I’m up here, and it’s like…”
“Like what, Sam?” Dean’s voice is soft and deadly.
Sam swallows, tastes death. “Like I brought a piece of Hell back with me.”
The creatures in his mind riot as he finally admits their existence aloud. Shrieking and spitting, they gnaw themselves little holes and start pouring through them. Sam can feel their pincers sinking into the roof of his mouth and the soft skin beneath his eyes. He clenches his hands until his nails split the skin and he feels his own blood start to pool in his palms.
“I can feel it inside of me, Dean. Like a cancer. And that creature could feel it too. It knew me.”
“No!” Dean moves like he’s hunting, fast and merciless. One second he’s at the table, the next he’s kneeling on the floor in front of Sam, trying to pry open his hands and mop up the blood with the cuff of his shirt. “You’re my little brother,” he keeps repeating. “You’re my little brother, and that’s all. That’s all I let out of Hell. Just you.”
“What?” Sam pulls his hands back. The blood smears over Dean’s palms and with him kneeling on the floor it’s like some perverted kind of communion. This is my body, this is my blood. “Dean. What did you do?”
Dean doesn’t answer. From the rigid set of his shoulders and the way he swipes his bloodied hand over is jaw, Sam can tell he’s crying.
Sam scoots forward on the bed, bracketing Dean with his thighs. He puts his hand under Dean’s chin and tilts his face up. His eyes are closed, as though if he stays like that he can shut out the world.
Sam moves his hand to the back of Dean’s neck then leans down until their foreheads are pressed together. He closes his eyes too, but he doesn’t need to shut out the world. It’s all right here in front of him.
Dean is taking shallow breaths through his silent tears, and each passes hot and sharp over Sam’s lips.
“It’s okay,” Sam starts whispering into the spaces between each gasp. “It’s okay.”
Dean brings one hand up to fist it in the front of Sam’s shirt. They stay like that for a long time, Sam speaking Dean’s words, Dean breathing Sam’s air.
Then Dean shifts, rising up on his knees and pushing his forehead harder against Sam’s. “Sammy,” he says brokenly. “Sammy, I-”
Sam’s cell phone rings, the sound like a bomb going off in the quiet room. Sam and Dean both jump and pull apart. Sam gropes for the phone while Dean hastily scrubs at his eyes.
The caller ID reads Bobby. Sam sighs, but hits talk.
“Sam?”
“Hey, Bobby.”
“Where are you, Sam?”
“In a motel room. Listen, Bobby, if it’s not an emergency now’s not really the best time-”
“I heard about what happened at the diner, Sam. That was you, wasn’t it?”
“Uh, yeah, it was us.” Sam glances at Dean to find he’s recovered himself enough to be pulling an annoyed face and holding his hand out for the phone. Sam shakes his head at him.
“Bobby, there were two zombies this time, and they were stronger. And then there was some sort of… creature thing, we had no idea-”
Bobby sounds angry and almost scared when he cuts him off. “Those weren’t zombies, Sam.”
Sam shoots Dean a bewildered look. “Then what-”
Like in the diner, Dean snatches the phone right out of Sam’s hand, ignoring Sam’s “oh, come on!” and saying immediately, “Bobby. It’s Dean. Talk to me.”
Sam gets dressed and brushes his teeth while Dean’s on the phone, deliberately dropping his duffle and banging the medicine cabinet until Dean glares at him, but it doesn’t stop Dean from continuing his inscrutable monosyllabic answers and noncommittal noises. When he finally hangs up, Sam is standing with his hands on his hips, ready to do whatever it takes to get Dean to tell him what he’s been hiding.
Dean stops him before he even gets started. “I’m going to tell you what’s going on, Sammy.”
“Oh.” Sam deflates, caught off guard. “Okay. Good.”
“But I’m not telling you here.”
“Dean-”
“No, come on. I said I’d tell you, and I will. Let’s just get out of here first, okay? I’m sick of this room. Those damn ducks are looking at me weird.”
Sam barks out a laugh in spite of himself. “Alright, fine. Go check us out and I’ll meet you in the car. And yes-” Sam gets to head Dean off at the pass this time, “I can make it there just fine by myself.”
Dean makes a point of bandaging Sam’s hands before they leave, wrapping gauze around his palms with all the care of a surgeon or a master artist. Dean was never so skilled at anything as he was at fixing Sam. Several drops of blood remain on the carpet, but they pack their stuff and leave the room without making any effort to clean them up. They’re just a few more pieces of themselves left behind in the wake of their lifestyle of destruction.
Sam’s walk to the car is slow and stilted; his limbs feel twice as heavy as usual, and there’s a dull ache all along his left side from his shoulder to the small of his back, but he makes it there before Dean comes out of the main office. And because he can, he slides into the driver’s seat.
“No fucking way” is the first thing Dean says when he gets to the car, opening the driver’s side door and making the universal ‘get the hell out’ hand gesture at Sam.
“Come on, Dean.” In spite of their most recent difficulties, or maybe because of them, Sam is not above a little bit of wheedling. “I haven’t driven her since I’ve been back. I’m feeling much better now, I drank all my coffee and everything. Come on, please?”
Dean looks thunderous, which means he’s already given in. He slams the door and gets in the other side. “You go where I tell you,” he demands, because Winchesters never give in to anything without setting a few of their own conditions. “And if you feel even the slightest bit tired, or dizzy, or even like you have to fucking sneeze- you pull over.”
“Okay.” Sam holds out his hand for the keys. Dean gives him a final glare for good measure, then hands them over. The Impala roars to life under Sam’s hands and he takes her out of the parking lot and onto the highway. The first long stretch they come to, Sam drops his foot on the gas and lets the Impala take over, going far faster than he normally does when there’s no one bleeding out in the backseat. Everything is different now but this never changes, and Sam wants to feel the rumbling of the engine all the way into his bones.
Dean’s directions make it clear he has a specific destination in mind. Sam doesn’t even know for sure what state they’re in, but Dean’s always been good with knowing exactly where he is and where he wants to go.
After half an hour Dean has Sam leave the highway and take several increasingly rustic roads that lead them to the gravel banks of a river at the bottom of small gorge. Trees and scrub lines the hills on either side, and to their left a rusted steel bridge spans the water. As Sam puts the car into park, a train passes over the bridge, making it rattle and shake like a tin can hit with a round of buck shot. There’s something familiar about the sound, about the way the industrial bleakness of the bridge seems to infect the trees, making them look tired and scraggly.
“Did we come here once as kids?” Sam asks.
“Yep. You wanted to go swimming, but Dad said no because it was November and the water was freezing.”
Sam squints through the windshield, trying to remember that day. He was probably about ten at the time. “I went in anyway, didn’t I?”
“You bet you did, you little brat. We had to wrap you in almost every piece of clothing we owned and I swear you didn’t stop shivering for a week.” Dean gets out of the car. “Come on, over here.”
Sam follows Dean to a group of large rocks, piled near the edge of the water. The trees prevent most of the sunlight from reaching the river, except for this spot. The rocks are warm to the touch as Sam and Dean each choose one and sit down.
“We had a picnic here,” Sam remembers. “Or, what counted as picnic for us. I think the food came from a gas station.”
“Hey, we had sandwiches and apples and juice boxes. That’s a picnic. And Dad bought an extra loaf of bread so you could feed the ducks.”
“So you could feed the ducks. You were the one that was obsessed with them.”
“Oh, right you were little pussy back then and they scared the shit out of you.”
“No that was geese, not ducks. And they didn’t scare me, I just didn’t like them getting too close. They have extremely powerful beaks, you know. There’ve been many documented cases of people losing fingers to angry fowl.”
Dean laughs, loud and wonderful. “Yeah, sure, in Hitchcock movies.”
He leans back on his elbows and closes his eyes, letting the sun wash over him. Sam allows himself briefly to enjoy the moment, the sound of the river lapping gently at the gravel shores, the faint hum of insects punctured by the twittering of a bird, and the sight of Dean, laid out and at least pretending to be relaxed. The sun highlights his freckles and the dark sweep of his eyelashes, making him looks years younger. Dean could almost be a teenager again, happy just to take orders from his father, pull his stupid little brother from a freezing river, and throw some bread at some ducks.
But despite the tranquil setting Sam’s mind is dark and teeming with things that skitter across the inside of his skull and lick around his eardrums and make themselves impossible for him to ignore.
“Dean,” he says quietly, as though he can avoid breaking the peacefulness if he makes his voice soft enough. “How did you get me out of Hell?”
Dean doesn’t open his eyes. “I broke it.”
“You broke- what?”
“Hell. I broke Hell. Cracked it open like an egg.”
Sam stares at him. He thinks of all the lore he read while Dean was serving his time in the Pit, tries to come up with something to help Dean’s words make the slightest bit of sense. He draws a blank. “Dean, I don’t understand-”
Dean straightens up and twists around, looking at Sam at last though his expression is unreadable. “You remember when the Yellow-Eyed Demon opened that gateway to Hell? It was sort of like that. Only, we didn’t have a gateway. We made a fault line.” Dean pulls a passable imitation of his usual smirk. “The Sam Andreas.”
Sam tries to wrap his head around that. “But the amount of power that would take…”
“Well, Hell was a bit of mess at the time. You see, they thought they were getting their Rapture, but what they ended up with was just some floppy-haired, overgrown kid locking their leader in a cage. Kind of knocked their defenses down for a while.”
“And it was just that easy then? To make a crack in Hell?”
Dean shrugs. “Cas helped. And some of his friends. He managed to stop Heaven tearing itself down long enough to convince them they owed you one for taking down the Devil.”
“Well I did let him out in the first place,” Sam mutters. That’s always going to be a sore point, but Dean frowns at him so Sam moves past it. “But okay, so you managed to crack Hell. Still doesn’t explain how you got me out of the cage.”
“That was the tricky part,” Dean says casually, as though everything he’s been describing up until now was as easy as salting and burning some bones. “We had to get the placement just right so we could get inside the cage. And then Bobby came up with this ancient Norse summoning ritual thing, like you were the ship and I was the anchor, blah blah blah, we chanted, we drew some runes, we burned a lot of weird smelling plants. There was some blood stuff and then there you were.”
Dean’s tone is deliberately light but Sam knows from his own attempts at breaching Hell just how difficult it must have been. The words ‘blood stuff’ remind Sam of seeing Dean in the shower, and how his arms bore several vicious and unfamiliar scars. He’s sure there’s a lot more Dean isn’t telling him, sacrifices and rites preformed, deals made, but those aren’t important right now.
“I wasn’t the only thing that got out though, was I?” Sam asks.
Dean turns back to face the river. The sun has moved in the sky now, and its new position puts Dean’s face in shadow. “No.”
“The zombies and that other thing, they came through the crack.”
“Yes. Well, technically just the other things came through. Bobby thinks they make the zombies. You know, as like-”
“Foot soldiers.” Sam takes a deep breath, then sits up straight and links his fingers, elbows resting on his knees. His planning stance. “Okay, is the crack closed now?”
“Yeah.” Dean seems a little wary of Sam’s sudden shift in mood. “We rigged it so it closed the second you came through.”
“Good. So there’s a finite number of these things in the world then, unless they can somehow breed which a little too gross to think about, so I say we assume there’s only so many.”
“Sammy…”
“We’re going to need to do some research. Figure out what the signs are when one of these things is around. Probably put out an alert to the other hunters, and call Cas, see if he has any advice on how to kill them, otherwise I’ll just have to-”
“Sammy, stop.” Dean stands up and turns around. With Sam still sitting on a rock, Dean towers over him, blocking out the sun. “We’re not hunting these things.”
“What? Dean, I know you said you don’t want to take any more cases right now, but these creatures followed me out of Hell, and they’re still following me. I’m not just going to sit by and let them run around killing innocent people.”
“No, we’re not sitting by. We’re running.”
“Dean-”
“Sam, we went up against one of these things, and I ended up giving you CPR in a parking lot.” Dean’s voice has gone steely and sharp like a blade. “I did not bring you back from Hell to watch you die.”
Sam flinches, but has to add, “They’re going to come after me, anyway, Dean. We’ve got to be prepared.”
“I don’t want to be prepared.” Dean’s hands close into fists and he sets his jaw. “This was supposed to be over. You went to Hell, you stopped the Apocalypse. That was supposed to be the goddamn end of all this!”
“Look, Dean…” Sam stands and reaches for him but Dean puts his hands on Sam’s chest and shoves, sending him stumbling backwards several steps.
“Who decides?” he snarls. “Who decides this is our fault? This is our job? Why do we have to spend our whole damn lives sacrificing everything we have for everyone else?”
“I can’t run away from my mistakes, Dean. And neither can you. That’s not how we were raised.”
“Fuck that!” Dean yells. He’s so angry now he’s gone pale, his freckles standing out like tiny bullet holes all over his skin. “We were raised to believe we could make a difference in this world, but every time we try we end up getting our asses handed to us, along with a couple corpses of the people we love. There ain’t an end to this war, Sam. I’m not letting you become just another body killed for the cause.”
“And what about you?” Sam demands, closing the distance between him and Dean so he’s the one towering now. “What happens when these creatures come after us and we’re not ready for them, and they kill you to get me? What do I do then? This thing between us goes both ways, you know.”
“Then you should understand why I want to run!”
“You should understand why I want to fight!”
“I can’t watch you die again!”
“Fine, then how about you do yourself the courtesy of getting murdered first and I’ll just follow after. Seems a waste of a lot hard work getting me out of Hell though, if you want me to just jump right back in!”
Dean makes a sharp movement, and for a second Sam’s sure he’s about to get punched, but then Dean’s hand is gripping his hair and Dean is pressing up against his chest and Dean is kissing Sam like it’s the end of the world.
And maybe it is. The Apocalypse was just a warm up compared to this- Dean’s lips strong and sure again Sam’s, his arm around Sam’s back, the heavy beat of his heart that feels like it’s beneath Sam’s own ribs. This is the kind of thing that makes mountains crack, oceans boil and the sky burn.
Sam kisses Dean back.
Sam has a piece of Hell in his mind and a Devil-shaped scar beneath his skin and the armies of evil on a never-ending march for his soul, so he kisses his brother on the banks of a river where in another lifetime he once went swimming, and Dean fed the ducks.
Dean is gentle despite his anger, kissing soft and slow, but Sam is not. He bites his way into Dean’s mouth, marks his lips and claims his tongue. He wraps his arms around Dean and pulls him in so tightly even with layers of clothes between them it feels like they’re touching skin to skin. This is my body, this is my blood.
This kiss for centuries, for every day Sam was in Hell and every second Dean spent trying to get him back. It’s like they’re trying to climb inside each other, to destroy any once of space between them, and Sam is more than okay with that. They were never really meant to be two people, anyway. A heart can’t beat when half of it is missing.
“I’m not leaving you,” is the first thing Sam says when they pull apart. He says the words into Dean’s jaw, his ear, the curve of his throat. He’d tattoo them there this second if he could, put a promise in black ink and make the universe aware he was going to keep it forever. “I’m not leaving you. Not ever.”
Dean doesn’t say anything so Sam kisses him again. They’re both shaking, exhausted and terrified and sick of the world trying to take away everything they own. Dean’s tongue slides again Sam’s; Sam angles his head to let him even deeper and swallows down Dean’s following moan. Hell can’t touch them when they’re like this. Not when they’re united, together, giving each other everything they have.
Dean pulls away first. He shoots Sam a fragile, guilty look then turns to face the river. Sam thinks he should feel more confused than he does, but he made his promise not to leave Dean and everything else is just details. He gives Dean a few minutes, then steps up beside him and gently knocks his shoulder. Dean turns to look at him, and Sam smiles.
They don’t talk about the kiss. They strip down to their boxers instead and go swimming in the river. It’s cold but not freezing and they stay in until the sun starts to go down, having handstand contests, splashing fights, and trying to rub mud in each other’s hair. They return to the rocks to dry off and soak up the last rusting rays of the sunset.
Sam is stumbling and fuzzyheaded by now, tired and still feeling the effects of his fight with the shadow creature. His back and shoulders ache like he’s carrying some immense weight on them. The corners of Dean’s eyes tighten with anxiety, and he lets Sam lean back against his chest while he runs his fingers through Sam’s hair, pulling out stray bits of plants and working through the worst of the tangles. The things in Sam’s head are mostly quiet, quelled by Dean’s gentle ministrations. If a shadow creature were to come out of the river right this moment, Sam thinks he could destroy it with barely a blink.
“I know we don’t believe in fate or destiny or all that crap, but I sometimes I feel like I’m meant for this,” he tells Dean sleepily.
“Meant for what?”
“Killing things.”
Dean’s hands go still, and Sam can feel the muscles in his chest and stomach start to clench. “Sam-”
“No, I just mean, some people paint. Some people do math. I kill evil.” The next part is said only half-jokingly. “I save the world.”
They’re too comfortable and too worn out for Dean to get angry now, Sam knows, but when he speaks his voice is quietly and completely wrecked. “What do I do then?”
The light from the sunset reflects off the remaining water droplets on Sam’s skin, making them look like blood. “You save me.”
Sam twists until he can get his ear pressed to Dean’s bare chest. Dean pulls his fingers from Sam’s hair and lets them rest on his shoulders instead. The sun sets over the river, and Sam dozes off, listening to the steady beating of Dean’s heart that sounds just like his own.
Part 4 >>>
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