Fic: The spy who loved me (Supernatural)
Rating: R for incest and graphic descriptions of violence
Pairings: Sam/Dean, Dean/Lisa, Sam/Ruby, one-sided Dean/Cas. Also weirdly kind of gen? Maybe?
Characters: Ruby, Sam, Dean, Ben, Lisa, Castiel, Crowley. But mainly Ruby and Dean.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: FOR ALL OF SEASON 6 SO FAR. Up to S6 19. Even though it's AU.
I don't know why I'm so obsessed with Ruby lately, but I am. The fic is also up on the AO3, here. 4,500 words.
H
Here’s the skinny version: Sam’s not the one you want. There. That’s your intel.
I’m not saying Dean doesn’t still love him. Dean loves him in all the ways he used to, plus a couple new ones. He’s been jerking off to this fantasy where he licks Sam out, recently. Sam doesn’t know about it, but it’s just a matter of time before they get past frantic we-got-your-soul-back handjobs and start getting to the good stuff. Dean loves his brother’s bitchface and he loves his brother’s hair, and he loves his brother’s puppy eyes and his legs squeezed in the car, he loves his brother’s sweaty shirts and bitten lips and tattered soul and the thick vein running up his brother’s dick. He’d still die for him, still kill for him. But that’s old news. Do I need to go on?
Fine.
Dean and Sam are what happens when you raise two boys to love each other and nobody else in the world, and then teach them to be soldiers. They know how to fight and they know how to die and they know how to hold on right past the bitter end-but neither of them know how to live. It’s like John made them for the apocalypse on purpose. I could trace everything back to John’s sucky parenting skills if I wanted. Dean loses everything and has to grow up too fast, has to take care of baby Sammy, yatta yatta, Sam grows up dead certain that his brother loves him, and runs on that strength until he’s the golden boy, the Stanford kid, the resentful rebel. I’m not saying none of that’s true-I’d be lying if I said certain higher forces didn’t take shameless advantage of John Winchester’s idiocy. (Kinda telling, isn’t it, that the devil tried to win Sam’s heart with the truth, and reason, and an intense, desperate affection bordering on love-tried to make him want it, want to say yes--and heaven tried to win Dean with brute force, with tricks and traps and despair. Heaven would have got Dean, if not for Sam and Cas and Bobby-the people who loved him. Heaven screwed the pooch. Hell did get Sam, because Sam was stupid and hopeful and arrogant and thought he could trick the devil. But the fuck of it is, Sam was right. Not that it mattered for him, in the end.) But yeah, that’s also lazy, kinda dishonest. Not the whole truth, anyway. They’ve both had some serious introspection time over the last couple years, and they’ve thought this whole normal life thing to death.
Dean thinks Sam wants a normal life and can’t have it. He also thinks that’s his fault, because he’s a masochistic fuck. This thinking dates back to when Sam was fifteen and ran away to Flagstaff for two weeks, where he ate stale pizza and ran around with someone else’s dog in the woods of Coconino County. Dean and John were both going crazy, both of them blaming Dean even though they knew that wasn’t right, and the fight when they finally caught up with Sam sank like adamantium into Dean’s bones, making him stronger and heavier at the same time. The main thing he remembers is Sam’s face, young and flushed, as he shouts at both of them -Right, because it’s so horrible that I want to be happy.
No, I’m not spicing anything up. I’m telling it like I see it. Okay-no, I didn’t pick this all up from watching their conversations, but do you have any idea how much shit is lying around Bobby’s house? It’s pathetically easy to pick up on all the memories soaking into all that crap. And we used to be on speaking terms, remember? Some of it’s stuff I picked up on back then-drunken rambling, snippets of conversation, intense looks, stuff that only makes sense now. Some of it’s Dean’s dreams-and thanks for that, by the way. It’s not enough that I’m disembodied and thoroughly dickless, but I get sucked into his head whenever he passes out on a barstool. Fun times. Look. You’re the one who raised me, okay? I was a happy bit of oblivion until you pieced me back together-and I do not want to know where you got the juice for that. Why am I here if all you want is for me to confirm that Sam is it? I thought I was making sure you didn’t fuck this up, not enabling your ass-kicking. I’m just doing the fucking job you gave me. I’d watch your obsession about collecting souls they’ve been close to, by the way. Sooner or later they’re going to notice that everyone they say five words to ends up dead five minutes later.
So the sick joke of a prophet doesn’t agree with me? So what? I’ve read those books, and they’re worth shit. They don’t tell you anything but the bare bones, and these boys are about blood and muscle and flesh. And they don’t even get the facts straight, most of the time-Dean’s described as a tiny blond twink, and every book I’m in spends hundreds of words on my boobs and pretty much nothing on my agenda. It’s inaccurate and insulting. And you know he doesn’t even get the visions straight from Heaven anymore? Yeah, his fucking girlfriend ghostwrites for him. So if you read this is a romance, you read wrong. I’m getting to why right now-you gonna let me tell you? Okay.
At thirty one, Dean’s really only had two relationships that deserve the name, and one of them lasted six sweet weeks when he was twenty two. That alone should be more than enough to tell you what kind of guy Dean is-namely, the guy who catches your eye and slams back three shots of jack and slides to his knees in a bathroom stall and presses an openmouthed kiss to your cunt and doesn’t catch your name. Much as I’d like to deny it, I’m actually talking from personal experience here. Not that he knew it was me at the time. It was before we met.
The first time Dean understood the creeping tendril of want inside him-want for something besides the fight and his family beside him-is when he kissed a woman at a crossroads, and traded his life for Sam’s. He had one year to live, and it’s the freest he’d ever felt. He let himself quietly want, because there was no danger of it messing up the fight-he’d made the ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t need-or really, want-to save himself, because as it stood, he’d won. Sam safe, and he could ask for Christmas, and Lisa, and acknowledge the sharp longing in his chest when he thought about Ben, and how he could have been his.
Lisa was his long lost flame, remember, from way back in the past when he was twenty five and she was a very bendy yoga teacher in Sioux Falls. They had a weekend of the best sex in Dean’s life, four years later he comes back and saves her kid from death by monster, and then drives off into the apocalypse. Only when the apocalypse comes, Dean doesn’t die. He expected to die. That was always in the game plan. But he doesn’t, and because of a promise he made to his brother he ends up on Lisa’s doorstep one more time, and she ends up letting him in.
The next year was weird. In some ways it was the best year of Dean’s life. He was sleeping with a very, very bendy yoga teacher, who also happened to be smart, and funny, and understanding. Lisa liked horrible sugary coffee, and Lisa let him line the doors and windows with strips of electrical tape dipped in salt, and Lisa liked potato salad, and Lisa held him when he felt like he was shaking apart, and Lisa read books with titles like The Coconut Miracle and You’re Not Sick; You’re Thirsty!, and Lisa didn’t scream when she saw the gun under the bed, she just got very still. Lisa knew about the monsters, but the monsters weren’t her life. Lisa figured out whose name she wasn’t supposed to mention and she made room in her garage for an extra car, and she caressed the lines in his forehead in bed and told him quietly that she’d never really let him go. He wanted, badly, to ask her to get an anti-possession tattoo, but he knew that was too much, that the timing wasn’t right, so he settled for tracing it into her skin, obsessively, at night. Lisa was the best friend he’d ever had-let’s be honest, the woman was the only real friend he’d ever had. And if that weren’t enough, there was also her kid, her sweet dark eyed kid who listened to AC/DC and played video games and baseball and looked at Dean like he hung the freaking moon. Dean never quite got up to telling Lisa he loved her, but he couldn’t hide how hard he fell for Ben, the love pouring off of him in waves with every breakfast and away game and ride to school, all the while not letting himself think the word “dad”. For a man like Dean, a life like that was closer to happiness than he’d ever dreamed he’d get.
In other ways it was the most miserable he’d ever been, and that included the year that came with his own expiration date. Sam was dead. If that wasn’t bad enough, Sam was in hell. And Dean had forty years of first hand experience reminding him exactly how not okay that was. Dean thought a lot about conversions that year. Dean had been dead for four months. Had broken after three. Every second after his brother threw himself into the underworld was a second Dean couldn’t help but count. Every two and a half days was a year for Sam, every five hours was a month for Sam, every hour and a quarter was a week, every ten and a half minutes was a day. His brother-his baby brother, the one he still loved the most, despite everything-his Sammy was in Hell for one hundred and twenty years. Dean counted every second.
And then Dean broke down, woke up in his own garage and found his brother sitting there, safe and sound. Had been safe and sound all along. Sammy’d never really been in hell, according to him. Bobby’d known, hadn’t said anything-and so had Cas, if Sam really had been praying to him all year. All the people Dean loved, and each one of them let him count those seconds, let him struggle for breath in the dark, a beautiful woman sleeping next to him, let him try his damndest just to bring in one breath after another and not think about hooks in Sam’s skin, about hot coals in Sam’s mouth, about needles in Sam’s eyes and cold, slimy hands on his Sammy’s body. It fucking killed him when he found out about Sam's soul, because he stopped counting months before he should have. Not so surprising then, is it, that Dean tried to pick Lisa. Tried to pick the ones who hadn’t lied to him, the family he could choose instead of the ones he’d been tied to by blood, by time, by war. But you know how that story goes. The Winchesters never could escape from each other. No matter how hard they tried.
He did try, though. Credit where credit’s due. The poor bastard couldn’t have tried any harder, with so much weighing on his shoulders. Not sure how much of that was how he felt for Ben and Lisa, though, and how much of it was the waves of wrong rolling off of Sam, before they figured out what it was. Sam and Dean were seriously out of joint-and I’m not gonna fool myself for a minute that Dean wouldn’t have dropped everything, and I mean everything, if the person in the garage had really been his brother. As it was, Dean was still pulled towards the half-Sam like a magnet to a pole, both of them reluctantly spinning into each other’s orbits with the nagging knowledge that they didn’t reallyfit. Sam was wrong, yeah, but everyone knows what was wrong with Sam. Dean was wrong, too. He didn’t fit into the place Sam left in his life for him-womanizing Dean, reckless Dean, immature fearless drifting hero that he’d been. Dean had learned how to be different, had discovered a private fondness for caesar salad, learned how to say good morning to people he knew he’d be saying good morning to tomorrow and the next day and the next.Dean had learned how to shove the sorrows down far enough that nobody got scared of the look in his eyes, had figured out how to be a grownup instead of faking it, with only booze and Lisa to help him do it.
Giving up Ben and Lisa turned out to be the easy part, because Dean loved them so much. The thought of hurting them--of what he almost did to them-of what he could still bring down on them-Dean knew it was the right choice. But let’s face it, Dean pretty much had the market cornered on giving up the things he loved. Mommy, Daddy, that first house, those first friends, their puppy-they’d had a dog, back in Lawrence, and Dean could vaguely remember asking John where Max was almost as often as he’d asked about Mom-and then Sam, again and again and again. Dean tried not to think about them. He knew thinking about it made it worse.
Have I told you about the angel yet? Well, but you already know about the angel, don’t you? It’s one of the things Carver fucking Edlund actually hasn’t managed to fuck up. In the first book he’s “an imposing silhouette with burning eyes, continually followed by the silent rustle of wings”-(I mean, really? the silent rustle? an imposing silhouette, whose eyes are somehow visible? I love this shit, I really do)-but in the last book, it’s kind of like subtlety’s been thrown to the winds. “Castiel turned his limpid orbs upon the weary hunter, moistening his plush lips as he struggled for words.” There really isn’t much point in being subtle, anymore. The angel’s obsessed with Dean, and everyone in every dimension knows about it. It imprinted on him after it lost its faith in daddy, or something. But it’s a very stupid angel-almost as stupid as you if you think it’s the way to get at Dean. It doesn’t get that Dean doesn’t have enough room in his poor shriveled heart to love everybody the same. The angel’s important to him, fine, I’ll give you that, but it’s only ever going to be fifth or sixth on his list, after his family and Bobby and his fucking car. He’s never going to love it the way it needs him to, and the way it follows him around invisibly like a lost fucking puppy doesn’t do anything but make it look pathetic to everyone else. And believe me, it isn’t the only invisible thing stalking Dean Winchester, even counting me and you out. Just because the apocalypse got cancelled doesn’t mean everybody decided to discount its main players.
But it’s fucking annoying, having it around all the time, tripping over Dean’s footsteps and looking woeful. It hasn’t noticed me-I don’t think I’m real enough, or maybe you just hid me that well, I don’t know. But whatever power you’re feeding it is making it bulk up like an angelic Lou Ferrigno. I don’t know what your game is, but I’d watch it. Sometimes I wish you were both less careful and Dean would wise up and just kill it, already. But I guess it did bring back Sam, so-well. It brought back Sam. I don’t know whether to hate him for that or not.
So, the soulless thing was the angel’s fault. Which makes the sound Dean made when RoboSam kissed him the angel’s fault too. It was a casual kiss, careless and possessive. They were fighting-about something stupid, I don’t even remember, and then Dean said something biting and instead of clenching his jaw and dealing with it, Sam wrapped one huge hand around Dean’s skull and kissed him, hard.
It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed. They’d been screwing each other since Sam’s seventeenth birthday-adrenaline fueled handjobs and drunken fumbling, for the most part, not something they’d ever talked about, just another bit of hot shame in Dean’s belly. And of course they’d kissed. Sam told me about kissing him, when he was blind-drunk and Dean had been gone a month. How Dean would just relax under him and let Sam suck and bite him stupid, and not even actual sex got Sam as hot as his big brother melting against his mouth. But Dean wouldn’t have touched this Sam any more than he’d have fucked Sam’s corpse.
With that in mind, I was expecting a show. You know, Dean wrenching away with a “you’re sick,” or “you’re not my brother,” or projectile vomiting, or something. They’ve always been fucking dramatic. Instead he pulled back, mouth snapping shut, and in the second before he caught himself, he made this sound-this soft noise against the bitten line of his own lips. I can’t even describe it. But I know that sound. It’s the sound you make when something you’ve been desperate for, something you’ve been aching for with your entire being-is offered to you, pressed hard and hot against your mouth, and somewhere you have to find the strength to turn it down. Sam used to make that noise. He used to squeeze his eyes shut and mmph against my skin, like he didn’t want it, slide one huge hand into my hair and-
I’m getting off topic.
The point is, the angel fucked up, Sam came back without a soul, and suddenly every supernatural force around comes sniffing around, thinking this is their chance to get under Dean Winchester’s skin. You too, smartie. This is a recap, I know, but deal with it, since it apparently didn’t sink in while you were living it: while the easiest way to get Dean’s cooperation is to threaten Sam, that’s almost never a good idea. Because you never know when the freak is going to go over your head and do something ten kinds of insane, because when it comes to his brother, Dean has no limits. Seriously. And so he did the craziest thing anybody could think of, and he made a deal with Death. Death. The horseman, the destroyer of worlds. I tell you what, I’m looking forward to watching that come back and bite him in the ass.
Dean’s a crazy motherfucker, but he got Sam’s soul back. I caught glimpses of it, once when Death had it cupped in his hands, and then again, flickering around the angel’s fist in Sam’s chest. It looked…well. I don’t really want to get into it, but I’ve seen a lot of damaged souls. I’vemade a lot of damaged souls-and whatever I am now, whatever it means to be a freeform echo bobbing along after the wrong Winchester, whatever it means to be your fucking sentient spy cam-originally, I was a damaged soul. I know what I’m talking about, maybe even better than you. I’m older, after all. And Sam. Sam was--
No. No, fuck you, I’m not talking about Sam. You get whatever Dean thinks about him, and that’s going to be enough. That’s all I can damn well offer. It’s not like I’m going to run out of Dean related things to talk about, right? And that’s what you care about. Dean and I go back. He killed me. That creates a bond. We’ve hated each other, and envied each other, and I know what his O-face looks like, and there’s that other thing we’ve got in common. So, fine. Dean.
Fast forward a little. The next part is boring-there are fierce hugs, choked voices, wet eyes, a rough but heartfelt “Sammy”---but none of that should be new. None of that should surprise you. The point where it starts to get interesting again-and I mean really interesting-is when Sam’s been all souled up for a couple weeks, and Dean gets a phone call from Ben. He crashes into Sioux Falls, guns blazing, thinking there’s some horrible danger. There isn’t. There’s only this boy-this dark haired boy, this one thing Dean let himself love during the worst year of his life-this boy sitting on a bed with shuttered, hurt eyes, telling Dean he was sorry, whatever he did, just please, come home. You can’t imagine how that felt.
You should have seen him. The way he talked to the kid-the kind of careful honesty Dean’s never shown anyone in his life. Here, picture it. Dean’s sitting down next to him on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. His voice is the same, low and rough--but there’s something about the way he chooses his words that makes you think of bear hugs and baseball games instead of blowjobs and bar fights. Nothing about him’s really changed, okay? He’s not playing a part, he’s not holding himself back, he’s one hundred percent Dean. And he fits. He fits in this kid’s room, he fits in the house, he fits under the kid’s eyes.
He inhales slowly and says: “I think my job turns me into someone who can’t sit at your dinner table. And if I stayed. You’d end up just like me.”
The kid calls him on it, and Dean keeps going, full of the kind of certainty that only comes with fierce love. “This way, you got a shot at living whatever life you want. You know, pick one. Pick five. Cause with me, there’s just the one road.”
The kid tells him he’s wrong. But he’s not the first kid Dean’s raised, just the first one he’s ever been a parent to.
The last kid Dean raised grew into somebody who trusted demons. Somebody who’d trust fucking anyone who looked at him sweet, who offered up her wrists and cupped her hands around the back of his head and called him Sammy, anyone who looked like she loved him. The last kid Dean raised looked so bright when he was Ben’s age, so promising and strong and so fucking smart, and look at him now, spending his days beheading vampires and his nights breaking into graveyards, panting after his brother. And Dean was going to do that to Ben? Never. It’s all bullshit, of course. Not even Dean Winchester could fuck up that badly twice.
Here’s the last part: Dean and Sam, safe and sound, back at the ranch. The Impala’s parked out back, in the middle of Bobby’s mountains of junkers, and Sam’s lying down on the hood, staring up at the sky. Dean comes out of the house, and for a second none of the other shit weighing on him--how angry Lisa was, how heartbroken his kid looked-none of that can really touch the tightness in Dean’s chest at seeing his Sammy like that, looking up at the stars.
He leans back on the hood next to Sam, sighing. He doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes, but he doesn’t really have to.
“Hey,” Sam says after a while, softly. He doesn’t reach for his brother, but they’re lying close enough for heat to pass between their bodies. “If I tell you something. Do you promise just to listen? Don’t even say anything. Just hear me.”
“I always hear you,” Dean replies, frowning. But he knows that’s a fucking lie. So does Sam. So do I.
“Right,” Sam says, then breathes in. “You don’t always have to choose me.”
Dean twists his neck around, and Sam lifts himself onto his elbows, and just that much is enough let him tower, silhouetted blue and gray against the night, hair hanging in his face.
“I’m not,” Dean says, awkwardly. “Sam, it’s not-“
“Just,” Sam makes a small, frustrated noise. He’s been trying to tell Dean something like this for years. “I’m not going anywhere.” You don’t have to cling to him, Dean-o, because he’s not going to let you go.
Dean closes his eyes, and everything in him wants to curl into Sam, let his brother envelop him, let his body trust Sam’s body. He doesn’t move, because he’s Dean.
Sam lies back down, and lets his shoulder nudge against Dean’s, lets them stay lightly pressed together. Just that little bit of touch, and its not enough, but it still unlocks something in Dean’s chest, and he says, quickly, like he’s afraid he won’t get it out:
“I miss him, Sammy.”
Sam’s voice is soft, and Dean doesn’t see the look in his eyes, but I do. “I know you do, Dean.”
And there’s your clincher. Sam. Sam took psych 101 at Stanford. He knows that you can have more than one identity. He knows you can love more than one person. He knows, God help him, that your brother can be your fucking soulmate without being your world. He knows that Dean doesn’t pick up women anymore, and he knows that Dean doesn’t order cheeseburgers, and he knows that his brother drinks too much, and he knows what Dean’s been aching for and he knows it isn’t him. He knows Dean would give up everything for him, and Sam would die before he let that happen again. So if they win this? I guarantee it won’t be the Winchester brothers show anymore. Dean’s going to be a part of Ben’s life, if Sam has any damn thing to say about it.
So. There it is. Your weak spot, pulsing like a bullseye. Go get it, and I guarantee, they’ll fold, both of them. The woman’s just a friend. The angel and the hunter are his family, but he’s kind of used to family betraying him. Go after Sam and Dean’ll go crazy, like he always does, but Sammy's a big boy these days. Sam doesn’t eclipse everything else anymore. Go after Ben, and the Winchesters are yours.
Is that enough? Can I be done? I’m tired, Eve, I’m fucking tired. I don't want to look at them anymore. Let me be done.
Please.
Pairings: Sam/Dean, Dean/Lisa, Sam/Ruby, one-sided Dean/Cas. Also weirdly kind of gen? Maybe?
Characters: Ruby, Sam, Dean, Ben, Lisa, Castiel, Crowley. But mainly Ruby and Dean.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Spoilers: FOR ALL OF SEASON 6 SO FAR. Up to S6 19. Even though it's AU.
I don't know why I'm so obsessed with Ruby lately, but I am. The fic is also up on the AO3, here. 4,500 words.
H
Here’s the skinny version: Sam’s not the one you want. There. That’s your intel.
I’m not saying Dean doesn’t still love him. Dean loves him in all the ways he used to, plus a couple new ones. He’s been jerking off to this fantasy where he licks Sam out, recently. Sam doesn’t know about it, but it’s just a matter of time before they get past frantic we-got-your-soul-back handjobs and start getting to the good stuff. Dean loves his brother’s bitchface and he loves his brother’s hair, and he loves his brother’s puppy eyes and his legs squeezed in the car, he loves his brother’s sweaty shirts and bitten lips and tattered soul and the thick vein running up his brother’s dick. He’d still die for him, still kill for him. But that’s old news. Do I need to go on?
Fine.
Dean and Sam are what happens when you raise two boys to love each other and nobody else in the world, and then teach them to be soldiers. They know how to fight and they know how to die and they know how to hold on right past the bitter end-but neither of them know how to live. It’s like John made them for the apocalypse on purpose. I could trace everything back to John’s sucky parenting skills if I wanted. Dean loses everything and has to grow up too fast, has to take care of baby Sammy, yatta yatta, Sam grows up dead certain that his brother loves him, and runs on that strength until he’s the golden boy, the Stanford kid, the resentful rebel. I’m not saying none of that’s true-I’d be lying if I said certain higher forces didn’t take shameless advantage of John Winchester’s idiocy. (Kinda telling, isn’t it, that the devil tried to win Sam’s heart with the truth, and reason, and an intense, desperate affection bordering on love-tried to make him want it, want to say yes--and heaven tried to win Dean with brute force, with tricks and traps and despair. Heaven would have got Dean, if not for Sam and Cas and Bobby-the people who loved him. Heaven screwed the pooch. Hell did get Sam, because Sam was stupid and hopeful and arrogant and thought he could trick the devil. But the fuck of it is, Sam was right. Not that it mattered for him, in the end.) But yeah, that’s also lazy, kinda dishonest. Not the whole truth, anyway. They’ve both had some serious introspection time over the last couple years, and they’ve thought this whole normal life thing to death.
Dean thinks Sam wants a normal life and can’t have it. He also thinks that’s his fault, because he’s a masochistic fuck. This thinking dates back to when Sam was fifteen and ran away to Flagstaff for two weeks, where he ate stale pizza and ran around with someone else’s dog in the woods of Coconino County. Dean and John were both going crazy, both of them blaming Dean even though they knew that wasn’t right, and the fight when they finally caught up with Sam sank like adamantium into Dean’s bones, making him stronger and heavier at the same time. The main thing he remembers is Sam’s face, young and flushed, as he shouts at both of them -Right, because it’s so horrible that I want to be happy.
No, I’m not spicing anything up. I’m telling it like I see it. Okay-no, I didn’t pick this all up from watching their conversations, but do you have any idea how much shit is lying around Bobby’s house? It’s pathetically easy to pick up on all the memories soaking into all that crap. And we used to be on speaking terms, remember? Some of it’s stuff I picked up on back then-drunken rambling, snippets of conversation, intense looks, stuff that only makes sense now. Some of it’s Dean’s dreams-and thanks for that, by the way. It’s not enough that I’m disembodied and thoroughly dickless, but I get sucked into his head whenever he passes out on a barstool. Fun times. Look. You’re the one who raised me, okay? I was a happy bit of oblivion until you pieced me back together-and I do not want to know where you got the juice for that. Why am I here if all you want is for me to confirm that Sam is it? I thought I was making sure you didn’t fuck this up, not enabling your ass-kicking. I’m just doing the fucking job you gave me. I’d watch your obsession about collecting souls they’ve been close to, by the way. Sooner or later they’re going to notice that everyone they say five words to ends up dead five minutes later.
So the sick joke of a prophet doesn’t agree with me? So what? I’ve read those books, and they’re worth shit. They don’t tell you anything but the bare bones, and these boys are about blood and muscle and flesh. And they don’t even get the facts straight, most of the time-Dean’s described as a tiny blond twink, and every book I’m in spends hundreds of words on my boobs and pretty much nothing on my agenda. It’s inaccurate and insulting. And you know he doesn’t even get the visions straight from Heaven anymore? Yeah, his fucking girlfriend ghostwrites for him. So if you read this is a romance, you read wrong. I’m getting to why right now-you gonna let me tell you? Okay.
At thirty one, Dean’s really only had two relationships that deserve the name, and one of them lasted six sweet weeks when he was twenty two. That alone should be more than enough to tell you what kind of guy Dean is-namely, the guy who catches your eye and slams back three shots of jack and slides to his knees in a bathroom stall and presses an openmouthed kiss to your cunt and doesn’t catch your name. Much as I’d like to deny it, I’m actually talking from personal experience here. Not that he knew it was me at the time. It was before we met.
The first time Dean understood the creeping tendril of want inside him-want for something besides the fight and his family beside him-is when he kissed a woman at a crossroads, and traded his life for Sam’s. He had one year to live, and it’s the freest he’d ever felt. He let himself quietly want, because there was no danger of it messing up the fight-he’d made the ultimate sacrifice. He didn’t need-or really, want-to save himself, because as it stood, he’d won. Sam safe, and he could ask for Christmas, and Lisa, and acknowledge the sharp longing in his chest when he thought about Ben, and how he could have been his.
Lisa was his long lost flame, remember, from way back in the past when he was twenty five and she was a very bendy yoga teacher in Sioux Falls. They had a weekend of the best sex in Dean’s life, four years later he comes back and saves her kid from death by monster, and then drives off into the apocalypse. Only when the apocalypse comes, Dean doesn’t die. He expected to die. That was always in the game plan. But he doesn’t, and because of a promise he made to his brother he ends up on Lisa’s doorstep one more time, and she ends up letting him in.
The next year was weird. In some ways it was the best year of Dean’s life. He was sleeping with a very, very bendy yoga teacher, who also happened to be smart, and funny, and understanding. Lisa liked horrible sugary coffee, and Lisa let him line the doors and windows with strips of electrical tape dipped in salt, and Lisa liked potato salad, and Lisa held him when he felt like he was shaking apart, and Lisa read books with titles like The Coconut Miracle and You’re Not Sick; You’re Thirsty!, and Lisa didn’t scream when she saw the gun under the bed, she just got very still. Lisa knew about the monsters, but the monsters weren’t her life. Lisa figured out whose name she wasn’t supposed to mention and she made room in her garage for an extra car, and she caressed the lines in his forehead in bed and told him quietly that she’d never really let him go. He wanted, badly, to ask her to get an anti-possession tattoo, but he knew that was too much, that the timing wasn’t right, so he settled for tracing it into her skin, obsessively, at night. Lisa was the best friend he’d ever had-let’s be honest, the woman was the only real friend he’d ever had. And if that weren’t enough, there was also her kid, her sweet dark eyed kid who listened to AC/DC and played video games and baseball and looked at Dean like he hung the freaking moon. Dean never quite got up to telling Lisa he loved her, but he couldn’t hide how hard he fell for Ben, the love pouring off of him in waves with every breakfast and away game and ride to school, all the while not letting himself think the word “dad”. For a man like Dean, a life like that was closer to happiness than he’d ever dreamed he’d get.
In other ways it was the most miserable he’d ever been, and that included the year that came with his own expiration date. Sam was dead. If that wasn’t bad enough, Sam was in hell. And Dean had forty years of first hand experience reminding him exactly how not okay that was. Dean thought a lot about conversions that year. Dean had been dead for four months. Had broken after three. Every second after his brother threw himself into the underworld was a second Dean couldn’t help but count. Every two and a half days was a year for Sam, every five hours was a month for Sam, every hour and a quarter was a week, every ten and a half minutes was a day. His brother-his baby brother, the one he still loved the most, despite everything-his Sammy was in Hell for one hundred and twenty years. Dean counted every second.
And then Dean broke down, woke up in his own garage and found his brother sitting there, safe and sound. Had been safe and sound all along. Sammy’d never really been in hell, according to him. Bobby’d known, hadn’t said anything-and so had Cas, if Sam really had been praying to him all year. All the people Dean loved, and each one of them let him count those seconds, let him struggle for breath in the dark, a beautiful woman sleeping next to him, let him try his damndest just to bring in one breath after another and not think about hooks in Sam’s skin, about hot coals in Sam’s mouth, about needles in Sam’s eyes and cold, slimy hands on his Sammy’s body. It fucking killed him when he found out about Sam's soul, because he stopped counting months before he should have. Not so surprising then, is it, that Dean tried to pick Lisa. Tried to pick the ones who hadn’t lied to him, the family he could choose instead of the ones he’d been tied to by blood, by time, by war. But you know how that story goes. The Winchesters never could escape from each other. No matter how hard they tried.
He did try, though. Credit where credit’s due. The poor bastard couldn’t have tried any harder, with so much weighing on his shoulders. Not sure how much of that was how he felt for Ben and Lisa, though, and how much of it was the waves of wrong rolling off of Sam, before they figured out what it was. Sam and Dean were seriously out of joint-and I’m not gonna fool myself for a minute that Dean wouldn’t have dropped everything, and I mean everything, if the person in the garage had really been his brother. As it was, Dean was still pulled towards the half-Sam like a magnet to a pole, both of them reluctantly spinning into each other’s orbits with the nagging knowledge that they didn’t reallyfit. Sam was wrong, yeah, but everyone knows what was wrong with Sam. Dean was wrong, too. He didn’t fit into the place Sam left in his life for him-womanizing Dean, reckless Dean, immature fearless drifting hero that he’d been. Dean had learned how to be different, had discovered a private fondness for caesar salad, learned how to say good morning to people he knew he’d be saying good morning to tomorrow and the next day and the next.Dean had learned how to shove the sorrows down far enough that nobody got scared of the look in his eyes, had figured out how to be a grownup instead of faking it, with only booze and Lisa to help him do it.
Giving up Ben and Lisa turned out to be the easy part, because Dean loved them so much. The thought of hurting them--of what he almost did to them-of what he could still bring down on them-Dean knew it was the right choice. But let’s face it, Dean pretty much had the market cornered on giving up the things he loved. Mommy, Daddy, that first house, those first friends, their puppy-they’d had a dog, back in Lawrence, and Dean could vaguely remember asking John where Max was almost as often as he’d asked about Mom-and then Sam, again and again and again. Dean tried not to think about them. He knew thinking about it made it worse.
Have I told you about the angel yet? Well, but you already know about the angel, don’t you? It’s one of the things Carver fucking Edlund actually hasn’t managed to fuck up. In the first book he’s “an imposing silhouette with burning eyes, continually followed by the silent rustle of wings”-(I mean, really? the silent rustle? an imposing silhouette, whose eyes are somehow visible? I love this shit, I really do)-but in the last book, it’s kind of like subtlety’s been thrown to the winds. “Castiel turned his limpid orbs upon the weary hunter, moistening his plush lips as he struggled for words.” There really isn’t much point in being subtle, anymore. The angel’s obsessed with Dean, and everyone in every dimension knows about it. It imprinted on him after it lost its faith in daddy, or something. But it’s a very stupid angel-almost as stupid as you if you think it’s the way to get at Dean. It doesn’t get that Dean doesn’t have enough room in his poor shriveled heart to love everybody the same. The angel’s important to him, fine, I’ll give you that, but it’s only ever going to be fifth or sixth on his list, after his family and Bobby and his fucking car. He’s never going to love it the way it needs him to, and the way it follows him around invisibly like a lost fucking puppy doesn’t do anything but make it look pathetic to everyone else. And believe me, it isn’t the only invisible thing stalking Dean Winchester, even counting me and you out. Just because the apocalypse got cancelled doesn’t mean everybody decided to discount its main players.
But it’s fucking annoying, having it around all the time, tripping over Dean’s footsteps and looking woeful. It hasn’t noticed me-I don’t think I’m real enough, or maybe you just hid me that well, I don’t know. But whatever power you’re feeding it is making it bulk up like an angelic Lou Ferrigno. I don’t know what your game is, but I’d watch it. Sometimes I wish you were both less careful and Dean would wise up and just kill it, already. But I guess it did bring back Sam, so-well. It brought back Sam. I don’t know whether to hate him for that or not.
So, the soulless thing was the angel’s fault. Which makes the sound Dean made when RoboSam kissed him the angel’s fault too. It was a casual kiss, careless and possessive. They were fighting-about something stupid, I don’t even remember, and then Dean said something biting and instead of clenching his jaw and dealing with it, Sam wrapped one huge hand around Dean’s skull and kissed him, hard.
It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed. They’d been screwing each other since Sam’s seventeenth birthday-adrenaline fueled handjobs and drunken fumbling, for the most part, not something they’d ever talked about, just another bit of hot shame in Dean’s belly. And of course they’d kissed. Sam told me about kissing him, when he was blind-drunk and Dean had been gone a month. How Dean would just relax under him and let Sam suck and bite him stupid, and not even actual sex got Sam as hot as his big brother melting against his mouth. But Dean wouldn’t have touched this Sam any more than he’d have fucked Sam’s corpse.
With that in mind, I was expecting a show. You know, Dean wrenching away with a “you’re sick,” or “you’re not my brother,” or projectile vomiting, or something. They’ve always been fucking dramatic. Instead he pulled back, mouth snapping shut, and in the second before he caught himself, he made this sound-this soft noise against the bitten line of his own lips. I can’t even describe it. But I know that sound. It’s the sound you make when something you’ve been desperate for, something you’ve been aching for with your entire being-is offered to you, pressed hard and hot against your mouth, and somewhere you have to find the strength to turn it down. Sam used to make that noise. He used to squeeze his eyes shut and mmph against my skin, like he didn’t want it, slide one huge hand into my hair and-
I’m getting off topic.
The point is, the angel fucked up, Sam came back without a soul, and suddenly every supernatural force around comes sniffing around, thinking this is their chance to get under Dean Winchester’s skin. You too, smartie. This is a recap, I know, but deal with it, since it apparently didn’t sink in while you were living it: while the easiest way to get Dean’s cooperation is to threaten Sam, that’s almost never a good idea. Because you never know when the freak is going to go over your head and do something ten kinds of insane, because when it comes to his brother, Dean has no limits. Seriously. And so he did the craziest thing anybody could think of, and he made a deal with Death. Death. The horseman, the destroyer of worlds. I tell you what, I’m looking forward to watching that come back and bite him in the ass.
Dean’s a crazy motherfucker, but he got Sam’s soul back. I caught glimpses of it, once when Death had it cupped in his hands, and then again, flickering around the angel’s fist in Sam’s chest. It looked…well. I don’t really want to get into it, but I’ve seen a lot of damaged souls. I’vemade a lot of damaged souls-and whatever I am now, whatever it means to be a freeform echo bobbing along after the wrong Winchester, whatever it means to be your fucking sentient spy cam-originally, I was a damaged soul. I know what I’m talking about, maybe even better than you. I’m older, after all. And Sam. Sam was--
No. No, fuck you, I’m not talking about Sam. You get whatever Dean thinks about him, and that’s going to be enough. That’s all I can damn well offer. It’s not like I’m going to run out of Dean related things to talk about, right? And that’s what you care about. Dean and I go back. He killed me. That creates a bond. We’ve hated each other, and envied each other, and I know what his O-face looks like, and there’s that other thing we’ve got in common. So, fine. Dean.
Fast forward a little. The next part is boring-there are fierce hugs, choked voices, wet eyes, a rough but heartfelt “Sammy”---but none of that should be new. None of that should surprise you. The point where it starts to get interesting again-and I mean really interesting-is when Sam’s been all souled up for a couple weeks, and Dean gets a phone call from Ben. He crashes into Sioux Falls, guns blazing, thinking there’s some horrible danger. There isn’t. There’s only this boy-this dark haired boy, this one thing Dean let himself love during the worst year of his life-this boy sitting on a bed with shuttered, hurt eyes, telling Dean he was sorry, whatever he did, just please, come home. You can’t imagine how that felt.
You should have seen him. The way he talked to the kid-the kind of careful honesty Dean’s never shown anyone in his life. Here, picture it. Dean’s sitting down next to him on the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. His voice is the same, low and rough--but there’s something about the way he chooses his words that makes you think of bear hugs and baseball games instead of blowjobs and bar fights. Nothing about him’s really changed, okay? He’s not playing a part, he’s not holding himself back, he’s one hundred percent Dean. And he fits. He fits in this kid’s room, he fits in the house, he fits under the kid’s eyes.
He inhales slowly and says: “I think my job turns me into someone who can’t sit at your dinner table. And if I stayed. You’d end up just like me.”
The kid calls him on it, and Dean keeps going, full of the kind of certainty that only comes with fierce love. “This way, you got a shot at living whatever life you want. You know, pick one. Pick five. Cause with me, there’s just the one road.”
The kid tells him he’s wrong. But he’s not the first kid Dean’s raised, just the first one he’s ever been a parent to.
The last kid Dean raised grew into somebody who trusted demons. Somebody who’d trust fucking anyone who looked at him sweet, who offered up her wrists and cupped her hands around the back of his head and called him Sammy, anyone who looked like she loved him. The last kid Dean raised looked so bright when he was Ben’s age, so promising and strong and so fucking smart, and look at him now, spending his days beheading vampires and his nights breaking into graveyards, panting after his brother. And Dean was going to do that to Ben? Never. It’s all bullshit, of course. Not even Dean Winchester could fuck up that badly twice.
Here’s the last part: Dean and Sam, safe and sound, back at the ranch. The Impala’s parked out back, in the middle of Bobby’s mountains of junkers, and Sam’s lying down on the hood, staring up at the sky. Dean comes out of the house, and for a second none of the other shit weighing on him--how angry Lisa was, how heartbroken his kid looked-none of that can really touch the tightness in Dean’s chest at seeing his Sammy like that, looking up at the stars.
He leans back on the hood next to Sam, sighing. He doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes, but he doesn’t really have to.
“Hey,” Sam says after a while, softly. He doesn’t reach for his brother, but they’re lying close enough for heat to pass between their bodies. “If I tell you something. Do you promise just to listen? Don’t even say anything. Just hear me.”
“I always hear you,” Dean replies, frowning. But he knows that’s a fucking lie. So does Sam. So do I.
“Right,” Sam says, then breathes in. “You don’t always have to choose me.”
Dean twists his neck around, and Sam lifts himself onto his elbows, and just that much is enough let him tower, silhouetted blue and gray against the night, hair hanging in his face.
“I’m not,” Dean says, awkwardly. “Sam, it’s not-“
“Just,” Sam makes a small, frustrated noise. He’s been trying to tell Dean something like this for years. “I’m not going anywhere.” You don’t have to cling to him, Dean-o, because he’s not going to let you go.
Dean closes his eyes, and everything in him wants to curl into Sam, let his brother envelop him, let his body trust Sam’s body. He doesn’t move, because he’s Dean.
Sam lies back down, and lets his shoulder nudge against Dean’s, lets them stay lightly pressed together. Just that little bit of touch, and its not enough, but it still unlocks something in Dean’s chest, and he says, quickly, like he’s afraid he won’t get it out:
“I miss him, Sammy.”
Sam’s voice is soft, and Dean doesn’t see the look in his eyes, but I do. “I know you do, Dean.”
And there’s your clincher. Sam. Sam took psych 101 at Stanford. He knows that you can have more than one identity. He knows you can love more than one person. He knows, God help him, that your brother can be your fucking soulmate without being your world. He knows that Dean doesn’t pick up women anymore, and he knows that Dean doesn’t order cheeseburgers, and he knows that his brother drinks too much, and he knows what Dean’s been aching for and he knows it isn’t him. He knows Dean would give up everything for him, and Sam would die before he let that happen again. So if they win this? I guarantee it won’t be the Winchester brothers show anymore. Dean’s going to be a part of Ben’s life, if Sam has any damn thing to say about it.
So. There it is. Your weak spot, pulsing like a bullseye. Go get it, and I guarantee, they’ll fold, both of them. The woman’s just a friend. The angel and the hunter are his family, but he’s kind of used to family betraying him. Go after Sam and Dean’ll go crazy, like he always does, but Sammy's a big boy these days. Sam doesn’t eclipse everything else anymore. Go after Ben, and the Winchesters are yours.
Is that enough? Can I be done? I’m tired, Eve, I’m fucking tired. I don't want to look at them anymore. Let me be done.
Please.