if love sits on your heart like stone (5/5)
five;; and I am the bones to burn to set us free
Nothing really changes after that, and yet everything does. For the first time in years, the open road is exhilarating. It’s a throwback to an era sepia-toned with age, a remix of their childhood. They laugh and banter and fight across the country, and their home is as much the open road as the Impala, and more than either, each other. They share beds and sometimes after gruelling hunts, showers. The intimacy of the soul-bond makes it difficult if not downright impossible to conceal things from each other, which is sometimes good, and other times inconvenient. Soulmate or not, they’re damaged goods, and a lifetime of emotional baggage doesn’t just disappear overnight with a spell.
In Indiana, Dean stares a little too long at a brunette and her kid while he’s getting lunch and returns to the car to Sam completely shut off from him. It’s not the first time Sam’s voiced... concerns, wanting Dean to rethink his choices, nor the last, probably, and he knows Sam just wants him to be happy, but it never fails to feel like rejection, like impending abandonment. “What the fuck,” is what he says when they get to the motel room and he still doesn’t feel a single bit of Sam. And he really can’t be blamed for being a little agitated - he remembers forgetting Sam all too well, and this always feels a bit too much like that.
Sam doesn’t say a word, and Dean suddenly feels the urge to bloody his brother’s lips, because fuck this - he’s allowed to miss Lisa and Ben when they’re half a fucking hour away from where they live and still not regret his decision or love Sam any less. And if Sam weren’t a complete fuckwit he would realise that.
Sam still doesn’t say anything, and anger turns quickly to desperation - if he could just touch Sam it’d all be solved, except Sam hates being touched when he’s like that, flinches and jerks away and that’s just more crap to add onto Dean pile. “Fuck, Sam - give me something here,” he says, almost begging, and then - Sam puts out a hand, lets Dean snatch it up in a bruising grip.
The sheer relief eclipses Sam’s emotions for a moment, but then he feels it all - uncertainty, insecurity, worry, guilt - “I don’t... You wanted that,” Sam says. “I know you wanted it, and you deserve it, and I’m not -” He’s flayed open and Dean doesn’t know if he’ll ever be used to this, to feeling exactly how much his brother needs him and fears that need.
“You’re right,” he says, continues before the flare of hurt can blossom into anything more. He grips tighter at Sam’s hand that’s trying to pull away, “You’re not Lisa and Ben. You’re my little brother. You’re - you’re Sam, you’re Sammy, and - I fucking left them for a chance of finding you, I pulled you out of Hell myself - I don’t... You’re just, you’re it for me, okay? Forever and ever and until the sun turns black and a fucking eternity, whatever - I made my choice. It’s not in the cards for me, and I don’t want it to be.” He takes a breath, decides, fuck it, and - “I’ve got all I need right here.” Then he lets go, because Sam isn’t trying to block him out anymore and all this hand-holding makes him feel like a girl.
For a moment it seems like what he said wasn’t enough, and he doesn’t know what else Sam needs, but then Sam looks up at him - “You do, huh?” Amusement tugging at the thread between them. “I think you left our lunch in the car, dude.”
It comes so out of left field that Dean can’t help his incredulous expression. It morphs into his own brand of bitchface a moment later as he rolls his eyes, gives Sam the finger before walking out to grab the soggy paper bag from the car.
---
Dean’s thigh gets ripped open by a poltergeist in Ohio, and Sam feels the echo distinctly in his own leg, which means it’s got to hurt like fuck for Dean. He jams the last bag into the wall, doesn’t wait to see if it worked, and skids to a stop where Dean is clutching at his leg on the floor. “Dean,” he says, worriedly, but the son of a bitch just rolls his eyes and starts pushing himself up, leaving him nothing to do but help.
They’re filthy from where the poltergeist popped a pipe and shot them with some putrid unknown liquid. Sam isn’t taking any chances, just pushes Dean into the shower stall and climbs in right after him. It’s not the first time they’ve shared a shower, and it’s not like they really look at each other when they do, but Dean’s thigh is washing red liquid down the drain and Sam just can’t help but stare, because God, how is he even standing - and then -
“What’s that?” He says, and his voice is the wrong tone, strident and almost frantic, but what the fuck is that, and he can’t tear his eyes away from it, not even when he feels Dean’s embarrassment along with a side of annoyance feed through the line.
“Nothing,” Dean says, quickly, starts to move past him, but he grabs onto Dean, and short of barreling over Sam Dean really has no option but to stay. He seems to realise it, huffing an unhappy, impatient breath but letting Sam push him back so he can stare at the marks on his skin.
“Is that my name?” He whispers when he finally gets a good look, lifts his eyes up to Dean’s, horrified.
Dean just rolls his eyes and nods pointedly at the still-healing scars on Sam’s torso and stomach. “Stop making a big deal out of this, princess,” he says. “You have yours too, and have I said a single word about it? Live and let live, Sammy - ”
“You carved my name into your skin, Dean,” Sam whispers, “I just - it’s - ”
“What? It’s what - different? Like you didn’t mean it to hurt or you didn’t need the pain? Don’t try to bullshit me, Sam - I know - ”
“It’s my name, Dean!”
There must be something in Sam’s face or his voice though, because Dean sighs, but softens. “I just needed a reminder, okay?” He says quietly. “It helped.”
Sam swallows audibly. “I didn’t want you to - You didn’t have to - ”
“Yeah I did,” Dean says. “It was the only thing that worked, and even then...”
Sam shakes his head. “I - don’t do it again, okay? I don’t want you to do it again,” he says, and he knows he should sound authoritative, tell Dean it’s not okay to just carve into your own flesh when you can’t remember, but he just feels like a kid, and maybe that’s for the better, because Dean looks at him a moment, then nods.
“You too,” he says shortly, reaches out a hand to rub gently, briefly at Sam’s chest where he doesn’t even want to touch himself, the skin so mangled and criss-crossed with raised scars on top of burns it makes his stomach roil when he looks at it or touches it. But Dean just - touches it all the time casually, like it doesn’t disgust him or something, just puts a hand on it when they’re sleeping, reaches over to pat it in reassurance randomly, and it feels - it feels like sanctification. Absolution.
---
It starts in Missouri, because Sam just couldn’t help it. It was right there, right in front of him, dangling enticingly, and he just had to. The backlash - the warm splatter of coffee all over his front and on his face - is every bit worth the expression on Dean’s face - incredulous and flabbergasted and just thoroughly, thoroughly done. He laughs until his stomach hurts from something other than fingernail marks, unable to stop - and evidently Dean can’t help it either, reluctant grin tugging on his lips mirroring Sam’s unrepentant one, affection blatant in his eyes as he looks at Sam laughing. It’s a good day, because neither of their grins leave their faces even as they finish breakfast and walk to the car. “I can’t believe you actually put salt in my coffee, bitch,” Dean grouses half an hour later. “Real mature.” Sam just laughs.
In Arkansas they’re working a case. Sam opens his laptop to ask a librarian something he’s researching, turns promptly red. Dean just laughs and laughs and laughs off to the side as Sam slams the laptop shut, mutters something probably incoherent to the scandalised librarian, and marches over to Dean. “You’re a jerk,” he says succinctly, and Dean doesn’t even stop laughing, just grabs Sam’s arm and tries to lead him out of the library, not even the least bit hurt when Sam crabbily pulls away, glaring heatedly at Dean. It might have something to do with how he immediately returns to Dean’s side, like magnet to magnet, and Dean, who can read Sam more fluently than English, sees the grudging amusement in the set of his lips.
“Payback’s a bitch... bitch.” Sam just rolls his eyes, pressing down on the power button until BustyAsianBeauties.com isn’t frozen on his screen, and starts plotting how to get back at Dean.
And that’s how it starts.
It lasts for one entire month, a record even for bored boys travelling on an endless road trip, too much time on their hands and a father who drills them on hand-to-hand fighting and sends them on three-mile runs up and down the hill in the storm, but just rolls his eyes when his sons’ pranks get actually, truly out of hand.
They prank and laugh their way across the country. In New Mexico Sam painstakingly puts glue between the teeth of Dean’s comb. In New Jersey Dean puts toothpaste in Sam’s oreos. In Seattle Sam redecorates the Impala, and in California Dean does the same to Sam’s laptop.
---
The laughter stops in Milwaukee.
Dean’s in line for Cheetos, M&M’s and a stick of strong glue when he feels it. He doesn’t even think, just dashes out of the store, the alarm beeping behind him from the goods he’s just basically robbed. He already knows there’s going to be no one in the motel room when he bursts in through the door, but fuck, for once, could they just have a fucking break? He gives the room a once-over and when he realises who’s taken Sam, cold fury settles over him, taking away the desperate edge to his movements. There’s even a part of him that likes this, settling in for the hunt, predator to the prey who’ve taken his little brother.
He tracks them with the single-minded focus of finding Sam the first time round, pushing down the waves of irrational grief and panic at their separation, concentrating on the thread between them. He doesn’t reopen the scars on his thigh, but takes a lesson from Sam, drawing his baby brother’s name in his flesh with his fingernails, renewing each mark whenever he starts to wonder if Sam really is back from the Cage.
It isn’t difficult to find them. For hunters, they range from amateurs to professionals, Dean critically looking over the trail they leave behind, John’s snarky criticisms playing in the back of his mind, but clearly none of them have been trained by a Marine, and they don’t have the instincts a Winchester has, ingrained through years of elite training.
By the end of the day, he’s staking out the grounds where the abandoned warehouse (why always abandoned warehouses? Have a little creativity, good grief) is located. Where Sam is located. It turns out little brother is giving as good as he’s getting, volleying back and forth with snarky insults that make his captors look even more like buffoons than usual - which isn’t even the main act, serving only as distraction for how he’s somehow gotten a piece of wire and is currently working discreetly to get himself free. Still, he’s sporting a black eye and there’s a patch of wet on his leg that’s making Dean’s blood boil.
Sam is good, Dean thinks, as he watches his brother not even reacting the tiniest bit at the bird whistle he sounds out, a signal they’ve used on rare occasions. In fact, that’s the only thing that gives him away - and only to Dean - that he’s heard it and knows that help - that big brother is coming. There are ten of them against two, counting Sam, who is hurt but evidently good to go, and much as he wants to make them have a taste of their own medicine, it’s not his priority. He wants - needs to get Sam out of there, not strung up like a piece of meat for those twisted fuckers to torture and play with.
Mind - and plan - made up, he reaches into his boot, and throws the first knife, embedding it in the back of the guy nearest to Sam, then aims and shoots, two clean shots to the chest, before everything descends into chaos. It’s vaguely unsatisfying, how they just scatter and run away then, especially when it’s odds of ten against two, Wusses. But they get out of there, Sam leaning against Dean, limping to the Impala. He looks bad close up, exhausted and hurt.
“I’ve got you,” he says, rubbing a hand over Sam’s neck, relief washing over him as adrenaline fades.
Sam just closes his eyes and tips forward into Dean’s shoulder, where he stays as Dean starts the car, hands buried in Dean’s shirt underneath his jacket, and Dean lets him. As they turn into the motel parking lot, Sam reaches behind him to peer at the stick of glue left on his seat, grins loopily and says, “Gotcha.”
Dean laughs, a bleak, somewhat hysterical sound, drops the facade, and pulls Sam into him.
---
“I’m hunting them down,” Dean announces when he wakes up in the morning.
Sam squints at him. “What, just like that?”
“Dude, they took you, twice - what more do you want?”
Sam looks a little embarrassed, a little surprised, two parts worried to one part pleased, then scrunches his face and goes back to stirring his coffee. As far as abductions go, it’s ranked fairly low on the traumatic scale, bouncing back nearly immediately afterwards. He shrugs. “They think they’re doing the right thing,” he says, and Dean shoots him such an incredulous look he almost rethinks what he just said.
“You’re kidding, right? In what world is feeding you demon blood the ‘right thing’?”
Sam flinches, then shrugs, finishes his coffee and stands up. “I’m going out,” he says, and Dean almost wants to shoot himself and Sam and then everybody else.
“That’s not - that’s not what I meant, Sam,” he says, and Sam stops.
“Yeah,” he finally says, hand dropping from the doorjamb. “I know. It’s just - ” He laughs a little. “Sounds like the kind of thing I’d do, not so much you.”
Dean looks affronted. A little hurt. “What, protecting you? Sam - ”
“No,” he rushes out, “not - ” Breaks off. “I just - you don’t hunt people down, that’s not what you do. You save people, you don’t kill them.”
“Have killed plenty before,” Dean lobs back, flippantly. Then, softer - “Dude, they’re going to come after you again and again and they’re going to get new people to believe whatever bullshit they’ve been trying to sell.”
“They think they’re doing the right thing,” Sam says, again, stubbornly, and Dean doesn’t even know why he’s so set on defending the sons of bitches that have made for some of his worst days, Hell notwithstanding.
“Well, they’re not,” he retorts. “They’re going to find that out soon enough.” He hefts his Colt, tucks it behind him.
“That what you’re going to do to me if I make a mistake again?” Sam says, and Dean suddenly gets it. And not at all too, because what the fuck, why would Sam even - ?
He crosses the few feet between them. “Never,” he says resolutely, waits until Sam raises eyes to him. “I mean it - never. You go down, we go down together.”
Sam smiles bleakly. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Dean. I keep - I keep fucking things up. No matter what I do - save the world, don’t save the world, try to save you, fail to save you - I just... I just keep fucking things up. And somewhere along the line you stopped trying to stop me, but you’re - you’re good, you’re supposed to be good, and I’m just dragging you down with me into my muck, and you fucking let me. You just. You fucking. Let me. And I’m supposed to - ”
“You’re supposed to let me,” Dean says, presses a hand on Sam’s chest, frowns when Sam blanches and steps away. “Sammy...”
“You keep touching me there - like it doesn’t... like it doesn’t disgust you...”
“Because it doesn’t,” Dean shoots back immediately. “Dude. Look,” pushes his sleeve up his arm, exposes flesh permanently carved with Sam’s name. “You’re not disgusted by that either. All that - ” he motions to Sam’s torso, “That’s just... more you. That’s my kid brother sacrificing himself to save the world. That’s my little brother hurting, that’s my brother needing me. Wanting me back. How could I be disgusted by that?”
“You’re supposed to,” Sam says, doggedly, and Dean remembers it from when Sammy was three and insisted that Dean not buy any more animal crackers because then the animals would die, crushed in their mouths, even after Dean had explained they weren’t really animals, or really alive, for that matter. And then a month after that when Sam had been convinced eggs and ham could only be eaten if they were green, and Dean had had to take what little pocket money he had to buy a small bottle of green colouring until he’d grown out of it. And then a week later, and a year later, and a decade later.
“No, I’m not,” Dean says easily. “You’re mine to take care of. Nothing - not even you and your big dumb head with its big dumb ideas - is going to take that away from me.”
Sam just frowns at him. “You’re dumb,” he finally says, grumpily.
“Yeah, whatever.” Dean turns away. “Now - are we good? We gonna go get those suckers or what?”
Sam grimaces.
“Look at it this way,” Dean says, starting to pack up. “If they’re stupid enough to think you’re a danger, they’re stupid enough to endanger all the innocent people on earth and we’re going to stop it before they do anymore harm. I, on the other hand,” he turns and smiles, big and happy, “I’m going to enjoy nailing them for putting my brother through all the crap he never deserved.”
He should probably find it disturbing, Sam thinks, picking up his jacket and duffel, Dean saying that with the expression of an ecstatic five-year-old, but all he sees is his big brother, protecting him. “I’m going to drag you down to Hell with me,” Sam says soberly.
“Yeah, the other way round too, and we’re going to wreck Hell together - but not now, okay? Now we’re going to wreck those bastards who missed the memo never to touch Sam Winchester.”
---
They split up, because they have some sense of self-preservation. Roy is in a nameless small town in Alabama shoving eggs down his throat when Dean fucking Winchester slides into the seat across from him in the booth, grinning at him all teeth, creepy as fuck. His first reaction is to get the fuck out of there, knees banging the table before him as he tries to rise, but there’s a pressure on his shoulder and that’s just ridiculous, Dean isn’t even moving - until he looks up. And up. And up.
“Hi, Roy.”
“Fuck!” And then they both laugh. “Look - Sam - Dean - ” Because he doesn’t even know which one of them is more balanced right now - “We can talk this over.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Sam acquiesces readily, and Roy’s hand starts creeping to his jacket surreptitiously. It stops halfway, held in Sam’s iron grip. “Like we did when I came back from Hell, right? Oh wait.”
“You boys don’t wanna do this,” he says, hating the shaking in his voice. “I’ve got buddies - ”
“I know,” Dean says, gently. “We’re getting to them next. But first we want to finish you off.”
He feels more than sees Sam’s indecision at that, turns to him. “Look, Sam - we started off on the wrong foot - ” The coldness of steel nudges at his throat, turning him back to face Dean.
“Eyes on me, off Sam,” he says. “You don’t get to speak to him unless he talks to you.” A pause, because Roy doesn’t have anything to say to Dean except don’t kill me, because right now he looks like he’ll first torture and then kill him. “We’re going to walk out of here, calmly. Nobody has to get hurt. Well, except you - but we’ll salt and burn you. Don’t worry.”
“Fuck, fuck fuck - ”
“Shh.” He feels the bead of red slide down his throat. “We’ll make it quick if you make it easy.”
They walk out of the diner without Roy even feeling his legs at all during the short trip out to the back.
“Hey, Sammy,” warm - affectionate, and Roy entertains a hope to get out of this alive briefly - “Go wait in the car, alright? I’ll be back in a moment.” And then Dean Winchester’s voice - “You should’ve learned never to touch my brother, Roy. Didn’t I say - kill me, but when I come back I’ll be pissed? Well - you’ve got me pissed, pal. And here’s what.” The bite of steel, slower than a bullet. “Is it that difficult? Just - don’t. touch. Sammy.” Roy fancies it’s anguish he’s hearing in Dean’s voice before he can’t hear anything anymore, and then he doesn’t even feel anything anymore.
---
They’re working a case in Arizona, something that reeks of angel and Sam is more skittish than usual. Dean can’t blame him - Castiel did a number on - well, both of them, to be sure, but he’d taken advantage of Sam’s insecurities, his grogginess, and flat-out lied to him, manipulated him just like his brothers before him had. Still, he doesn’t expect it to come full-circle quite as quickly as it does. One moment he’s in the mental hospital, staking out the place, and the next he hears the flutter of wings and he’s in a basement of sorts, the trench-coated figure in front of him familiar, making his fists itch for a fight. He feels Sam’s frantic worry escalate, and then tamped down so hard he thinks Sam might have literally hurt himself in the process.
“Hello, Dean.” Castiel says, and what humanness he’s gained in that year with Sam and Dean, it’s gone, evident in the cold otherworldliness in his expression. Dean barely even cares, just wants to bloody his fists with Cas’s face. Or the other way round. Whatever.
“You know Sam’s going to make your life a living Hell after what you did to him, right? To us?”
Castiel just smiles, and God, he hates that arrogant son of a bitch. “He’s just a boy, what can he do? I have a legion behind me. Anything you try - you’ll run for the rest of your lives.” He pauses. “I might have... miscalculated your consuming need for each other, and the sickening propensity you have for getting back together. Still, it bought me some time.”
“Yeah, well, watch what happened when your big brothers underestimated us. Underestimated Sam. You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Cas.”
Cas seems mildly disturbed by that for a brief moment, then smiles again. “I think it’s you who doesn’t know who you’re dealing with, Dean.” Dean barely has a second to contemplate what that might mean when Cas closes his fist, and it’s like Hell all over again, supernatural pain spreading through every cell in his body, burning, burning, burning.
---
Whatever reticence Sam previously harboured towards the case, it vanishes the moment he feels the thread strain between them. They don’t talk about it, alongside with a dozen other things that came along with the soul bond they don’t talk about - but he feels every bit of Dean’s physical distance every time they separate on a hunt, and even if Dean doesn’t feel particularly rattled by the sudden stretch in the thread between them, he knows, just knows that Dean has been taken. He also has a fairly good idea of who it was that took Dean, and the urge to kill, the urge to make his abductor feel every bit of pain he physically can, only heightens when he feels the sudden burst of pain from Dean’s end of the thread - and it doesn’t stop.
Rage fuels him, and he lets it - bubbling and frothing and stopped only by a dam, ready to burst forth in a split second’s notice. Underneath it - grief so piercing only Dean’s words are stopping him from digging his fingers right into his stomach to start gouging, because he’s not ready, he’s not fucking ready for this, and Castiel should know better than to try to take his brother away from him not once but twice.
It doesn’t take long for him to finish figuring out how many angels are in the region working under Cas - if there’s anything that’s the angel’s downfall, it’s his arrogance. He thought sundering them was a good idea, and maybe Sam would have let that go eventually, because having Dean there, that’s what matters, he’s learned that. But for whatever asinine reason Cas has, he’s taken Dean away again, and a small part of him even shivers at the coldness of his rage.
C’mon, Sammy - put that big brain of yours to use, Dean’s voice in his head, and he does. Sam draws each and every single one of his prey out, paints invisible sigils he’s learned in his time with two archangels sometimes bored of even torture, blocks out any and every single distress call on the angel radio, and watches himself kill four of them, the ones working closest to Cas as far as he can tell. It’s a dangerous dance, he knows, looking down at the charred shadows of wings on the ground, stained with blood. But so is taking Dean from Sam, and there are a fair number of monsters gone to wherever monsters go to when they die - that know better than to bet against a Winchester.
Finding Dean isn’t even the problem - every single cell in him wants to burst him and take his brother, hide him away fucking forever so nobody can ever take him away from Sam again, but the angels he’s taken out are only foot soldiers, and he already has a bleeding gash to add to the collection on his torso. One on his back, and a few other internal injuries, because angels don’t fight fair. Cas is a general. From what he can tell, a seraph too, and he doesn’t hold high hopes of simply going in and stopping Cas just like that.
So he plans. Carves sigils into his skin - the same ones Cas probably erased from his ribcage when he lied to Sam - and tries not to dig too deep or relish the pain too much. Dean probably wouldn’t approve either way, but at least Sam can say that he tried his best to stop. Patiently, patiently draws sigils around the house Cas has Dean in. Unfortunately, he’s in the basement, and short of going in through the house itself, Sam can’t do anything about that. He can only place his hope in Cas’s greed, that he wants to ensnare Sam as well. He knows Dean feels his proximity, won’t give him away, but his heart still pounds in his chest painfully as he lies in wait, trap set.
The plan doesn’t go quite according to plan, of course, because the Winchester bad luck is only part of their charm - the holy oil only getting half of Cas and the flames not quite spreading as much as he would like. Half of him is outside of the circle of holy fire, but for some reason in his rage Cas steps into instead of outside of it.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with, boy,” Cas’s voice, except bigger, thunderous, and his wings are spreading. Sam is just waiting for the cue, aims and shoots. It lodges inside his head, Sam can see - no exit wound - the black hole only smokes, but it’s marked with sigils, carved into the bullet. Cas is a little slower. “You think you can shoot an angel of the Lord?” He says, raises his hand, and - nothing happens.
Sam just stares at him. “You don’t take Dean, you hear?” He says, and he knows it should be quieter, deadlier, like Dean goes when someone threatens Sam, but he can’t, he just can’t - he can’t lose Dean again and he’s terrified and desperate and - “You don’t. fucking. take Dean away from me.” And then he sinks the blade into Cas’s chest.
He watches for a long time then, just stands and stares at the flames, at the shadows of Cas’s wings, at the destruction he brings with him.
Until -
“Sammy,” soft, weak - too soft, too quiet, that Sam wouldn’t have heard it without the bond.
Oh, God.
He tumbles more than rushes down the stairs, lethal grace all forgotten in his haste to get to Dean. He doesn’t dare to touch more than he has to - not only because Dean is probably too sore to touch, but because he can’t, he can’t let it stain him, let the darkness touch him.
Dean doesn’t seem to have his qualms, reaches out and pats Sam down, checks for injuries, brows furrowing when Sam doesn’t even flinch as his fingers come away wet, red-tinged. “Sammy...”
“We’re getting out of here,” Sam says, and they do.
---
Dean barely stays awake on the way back to the motel, doesn’t grouse about Sam’s driving, but he keeps casting long looks at Sam. It feels almost like when Sam was drinking demon blood behind Dean’s back, like Dean’s somehow decided he’s a freak. He can’t. He just hunches deeper into himself, and drives on.
Sam patches Dean up efficiently, gently. Dean lets him take care of his own wounds when he tells Dean to go to sleep and refuses to let Dean look at them, and he doesn’t know if he’s grateful or upset about it. It feels like - like he’s not even really himself anymore, and he doesn’t even understand why - Dean was the one who got taken. Three whole days, tortured for no good reason by a sadistic former-friend-turned-enemy. He doesn’t even know for sure what Cas was working towards.
He stumbles into their bed after cleaning up the gashes he can reach and ignoring whatever he can’t, facing away from Dean. Dean doesn’t reach out to him.
---
It’s five days later, which feels like an eternity, that Dean slams the mug onto the coffee table, ignoring the liquid sloshing out. Sam looks up, a little startled.
“That’s it,” he growls. “What the fuck crawled up your ass, Sam?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Don’t even pretend with me - you know what. You’ve been shying away every single time I’ve tried to touch you. You stay in the car just not to be in the motel room with me. What is it - you finally decided this soul thing isn’t going to work? You’re gonna walk out on me, Sam? Because let me tell you - this - ” he gestures between them - “This isn’t much better.”
He just stares at Dean, trying to decode what Dean is trying to say, because it’s - he doesn’t... Is Dean - is Dean kicking him out?
“Fuck, don’t give me that kicked puppy look. I was gone for three days - three - and somehow in those three days I lost some... what, brother status so I can’t touch you anymore? And don’t even pretend you don’t need it - I fucking live with you, dude, I see you. So - ” he breaks off. Quieter - “So tell me what’s going on.”
Dean wants to know what’s going on. He doesn’t... The laugh that bubbles from his lips is manic, hysterical, and he can’t stop it.
“Sam!” Barked, harsh. “Settle down.”
He does, a Pavlovian response more than anything, ingrained through years of training. Dean’s asking Sam what’s going on. He doesn’t even know himself. Doesn’t know why Dean’s touch feels like too much, when it’s all he needs - needs Dean like he’s starving and dying of thirst, and the only thing that soothes the hunger is Dean’s frame in his arms and Dean’s arms around him, Dean’s laughter and his stupid huge green eyes, his sour morning breath, his amulet pressing into Sam’s chest, fitting into the grooves of his skin like coming home.
“Sammy.” Dean’s closer now. He feels it in the thread, in the heat of Dean’s body, and Sam is so cold, so fucking cold. “Hey, buddy.” He almost snorts at how Dean is talking to him like he’s five, although - “I scared you, huh?”
Fucking understatement. He buries his face in his hands, feeling like the entire world is crumbling apart around him, not knowing why. “I don’t...”
“Shh,” Dean shushes, really like he’s five, and then hugs him.
“I don’t wanna be a monster,” he says, muffled in Dean’s neck, because he doesn’t know where to start.
“You’re not,” Dean replies easily, like there’s no question about it.
“You didn’t see me. You didn’t see me when I - ”
“You saw me,” Dean interrupts. “When I was hunting down all of those hunters to kill them. Cold-blooded. Execution-style.” His voice cracks, a little, and Sam frowns, tries to pull back, because he doesn’t... “You think I’m a monster, Sam?”
“Never,” he says, doesn’t even have to think about it.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Neither are you. You saved me, little brother.” Dean turns his head slightly, and Sam thinks he feels a kiss pressed into his hair, wisely doesn’t say anything about it. “You did good, Sammy.” He pulls away then, grins a little at Sam, pride - not fear - in his eyes. “Fucking badass, man - you killed four angels and then Cas?”
“Yeah, well.” Feels pleased, embarrassed heat creep up his neck. “They were dicks.”
Dean smiles then. “Yeah, they were.”
---
“Heard Creedy’s dead,” Bobby’s voice comes over the phone, unreadable.
“Really,” Dean says blandly. Sam elbows him half-heartedly, because on one hand - dude, at least actually try to sound marginally convincing that you’re surprised. But on the other - why even bother? Nobody except his brother stepped in, came for him when he was on the other end of the barrel, and honestly, he doesn’t really care about what anyone except Dean thinks anymore.
“Yeah,” Bobby continues. “Roy too - some other hunters as well - all stabbed in the heart.” Sam looks at Dean then, because Dean never let him see any of the actual killings. He never really wanted to, not at that time anyway. Not much at all even now. “Clean wound, looks like an expert hand.”
“Huh,” Dean says noncommittally, still not giving an inch. “They say who they suspect?”
“You gonna tell me the truth if I tell you?” The big guns now.
“Depends,” Dean says, and there’s a hardness, a frigidness in his voice that doesn’t, Sam thinks, have anything to do with the topic at hand. “Whose side are you on?” And that’s just - weird, because Bobby’s always been on their side, stepped in as surrogate father when Dad had died.
There’s a pause, then Bobby swears. “You’re an idjit,” he says heatedly. “I’ve always been on your side, yours and Sam’s. I didn’t insist on helping you find Sam because you wanted to do it alone, not because I wasn’t tracking every contact I had out there. You could’ve asked if you wanted me around, even if you didn’t have a voice - you could’ve written something down - ”
“Bobby - ”
“... Sam’s there, isn’t he?”
Dean shrugs. Sam leans over. “Hi, Bobby.”
“Good to hear from you too, Sam,” Bobby says grouchily, and they both shoot each other guilty looks. “Listen - they’re on the lookout. A few of them won’t be able to do much harm to you, but you never know - some of them just want to find reasons to screw you over. You boys be careful, and swing by when you get the chance.”
“Yeah, Bobby,” Sam says, because Dean doesn’t seem inclined to say anything.
“Good,” Bobby says, and hangs up.
Sam turns to look at Dean. “You didn’t have a voice?”
Dean shrugs, again. “Not the first time,” he says.
“You said my name was the first thing you said,” Sam presses.
Dean stares at him, stonily, duh obvious on his face.
Sam ponders it for a moment, then starts grinning.
Dean takes a look at Sam, then rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he says, testily.
Sam just laughs, and can’t stop. “You love me,” he crows, grin not flagging a bit when Dean reaches a hand over and swats him on the head.
“Who could love a little bitch like you,” Dean mutters, but there’s a smile in his voice.
---
They drive for days, from hunt to hunt, dusty highways and seedy motels, rediscovering the road that is their home. They drive, classic rock blaring from the Impala’s speakers, Sam’s voice laughingly joining in the off-key singing, wind in their hair and sun in their eyes, boys like they were and have always been. And then Dean says, let’s go see the Grand Canyon.
And Sam says, yeah, let’s.
Five hundred days after Sam falls into a hole, Dean sees the Grand Canyon for the first time. It’s good.
-END-
Nothing really changes after that, and yet everything does. For the first time in years, the open road is exhilarating. It’s a throwback to an era sepia-toned with age, a remix of their childhood. They laugh and banter and fight across the country, and their home is as much the open road as the Impala, and more than either, each other. They share beds and sometimes after gruelling hunts, showers. The intimacy of the soul-bond makes it difficult if not downright impossible to conceal things from each other, which is sometimes good, and other times inconvenient. Soulmate or not, they’re damaged goods, and a lifetime of emotional baggage doesn’t just disappear overnight with a spell.
In Indiana, Dean stares a little too long at a brunette and her kid while he’s getting lunch and returns to the car to Sam completely shut off from him. It’s not the first time Sam’s voiced... concerns, wanting Dean to rethink his choices, nor the last, probably, and he knows Sam just wants him to be happy, but it never fails to feel like rejection, like impending abandonment. “What the fuck,” is what he says when they get to the motel room and he still doesn’t feel a single bit of Sam. And he really can’t be blamed for being a little agitated - he remembers forgetting Sam all too well, and this always feels a bit too much like that.
Sam doesn’t say a word, and Dean suddenly feels the urge to bloody his brother’s lips, because fuck this - he’s allowed to miss Lisa and Ben when they’re half a fucking hour away from where they live and still not regret his decision or love Sam any less. And if Sam weren’t a complete fuckwit he would realise that.
Sam still doesn’t say anything, and anger turns quickly to desperation - if he could just touch Sam it’d all be solved, except Sam hates being touched when he’s like that, flinches and jerks away and that’s just more crap to add onto Dean pile. “Fuck, Sam - give me something here,” he says, almost begging, and then - Sam puts out a hand, lets Dean snatch it up in a bruising grip.
The sheer relief eclipses Sam’s emotions for a moment, but then he feels it all - uncertainty, insecurity, worry, guilt - “I don’t... You wanted that,” Sam says. “I know you wanted it, and you deserve it, and I’m not -” He’s flayed open and Dean doesn’t know if he’ll ever be used to this, to feeling exactly how much his brother needs him and fears that need.
“You’re right,” he says, continues before the flare of hurt can blossom into anything more. He grips tighter at Sam’s hand that’s trying to pull away, “You’re not Lisa and Ben. You’re my little brother. You’re - you’re Sam, you’re Sammy, and - I fucking left them for a chance of finding you, I pulled you out of Hell myself - I don’t... You’re just, you’re it for me, okay? Forever and ever and until the sun turns black and a fucking eternity, whatever - I made my choice. It’s not in the cards for me, and I don’t want it to be.” He takes a breath, decides, fuck it, and - “I’ve got all I need right here.” Then he lets go, because Sam isn’t trying to block him out anymore and all this hand-holding makes him feel like a girl.
For a moment it seems like what he said wasn’t enough, and he doesn’t know what else Sam needs, but then Sam looks up at him - “You do, huh?” Amusement tugging at the thread between them. “I think you left our lunch in the car, dude.”
It comes so out of left field that Dean can’t help his incredulous expression. It morphs into his own brand of bitchface a moment later as he rolls his eyes, gives Sam the finger before walking out to grab the soggy paper bag from the car.
---
Dean’s thigh gets ripped open by a poltergeist in Ohio, and Sam feels the echo distinctly in his own leg, which means it’s got to hurt like fuck for Dean. He jams the last bag into the wall, doesn’t wait to see if it worked, and skids to a stop where Dean is clutching at his leg on the floor. “Dean,” he says, worriedly, but the son of a bitch just rolls his eyes and starts pushing himself up, leaving him nothing to do but help.
They’re filthy from where the poltergeist popped a pipe and shot them with some putrid unknown liquid. Sam isn’t taking any chances, just pushes Dean into the shower stall and climbs in right after him. It’s not the first time they’ve shared a shower, and it’s not like they really look at each other when they do, but Dean’s thigh is washing red liquid down the drain and Sam just can’t help but stare, because God, how is he even standing - and then -
“What’s that?” He says, and his voice is the wrong tone, strident and almost frantic, but what the fuck is that, and he can’t tear his eyes away from it, not even when he feels Dean’s embarrassment along with a side of annoyance feed through the line.
“Nothing,” Dean says, quickly, starts to move past him, but he grabs onto Dean, and short of barreling over Sam Dean really has no option but to stay. He seems to realise it, huffing an unhappy, impatient breath but letting Sam push him back so he can stare at the marks on his skin.
“Is that my name?” He whispers when he finally gets a good look, lifts his eyes up to Dean’s, horrified.
Dean just rolls his eyes and nods pointedly at the still-healing scars on Sam’s torso and stomach. “Stop making a big deal out of this, princess,” he says. “You have yours too, and have I said a single word about it? Live and let live, Sammy - ”
“You carved my name into your skin, Dean,” Sam whispers, “I just - it’s - ”
“What? It’s what - different? Like you didn’t mean it to hurt or you didn’t need the pain? Don’t try to bullshit me, Sam - I know - ”
“It’s my name, Dean!”
There must be something in Sam’s face or his voice though, because Dean sighs, but softens. “I just needed a reminder, okay?” He says quietly. “It helped.”
Sam swallows audibly. “I didn’t want you to - You didn’t have to - ”
“Yeah I did,” Dean says. “It was the only thing that worked, and even then...”
Sam shakes his head. “I - don’t do it again, okay? I don’t want you to do it again,” he says, and he knows he should sound authoritative, tell Dean it’s not okay to just carve into your own flesh when you can’t remember, but he just feels like a kid, and maybe that’s for the better, because Dean looks at him a moment, then nods.
“You too,” he says shortly, reaches out a hand to rub gently, briefly at Sam’s chest where he doesn’t even want to touch himself, the skin so mangled and criss-crossed with raised scars on top of burns it makes his stomach roil when he looks at it or touches it. But Dean just - touches it all the time casually, like it doesn’t disgust him or something, just puts a hand on it when they’re sleeping, reaches over to pat it in reassurance randomly, and it feels - it feels like sanctification. Absolution.
---
It starts in Missouri, because Sam just couldn’t help it. It was right there, right in front of him, dangling enticingly, and he just had to. The backlash - the warm splatter of coffee all over his front and on his face - is every bit worth the expression on Dean’s face - incredulous and flabbergasted and just thoroughly, thoroughly done. He laughs until his stomach hurts from something other than fingernail marks, unable to stop - and evidently Dean can’t help it either, reluctant grin tugging on his lips mirroring Sam’s unrepentant one, affection blatant in his eyes as he looks at Sam laughing. It’s a good day, because neither of their grins leave their faces even as they finish breakfast and walk to the car. “I can’t believe you actually put salt in my coffee, bitch,” Dean grouses half an hour later. “Real mature.” Sam just laughs.
In Arkansas they’re working a case. Sam opens his laptop to ask a librarian something he’s researching, turns promptly red. Dean just laughs and laughs and laughs off to the side as Sam slams the laptop shut, mutters something probably incoherent to the scandalised librarian, and marches over to Dean. “You’re a jerk,” he says succinctly, and Dean doesn’t even stop laughing, just grabs Sam’s arm and tries to lead him out of the library, not even the least bit hurt when Sam crabbily pulls away, glaring heatedly at Dean. It might have something to do with how he immediately returns to Dean’s side, like magnet to magnet, and Dean, who can read Sam more fluently than English, sees the grudging amusement in the set of his lips.
“Payback’s a bitch... bitch.” Sam just rolls his eyes, pressing down on the power button until BustyAsianBeauties.com isn’t frozen on his screen, and starts plotting how to get back at Dean.
And that’s how it starts.
It lasts for one entire month, a record even for bored boys travelling on an endless road trip, too much time on their hands and a father who drills them on hand-to-hand fighting and sends them on three-mile runs up and down the hill in the storm, but just rolls his eyes when his sons’ pranks get actually, truly out of hand.
They prank and laugh their way across the country. In New Mexico Sam painstakingly puts glue between the teeth of Dean’s comb. In New Jersey Dean puts toothpaste in Sam’s oreos. In Seattle Sam redecorates the Impala, and in California Dean does the same to Sam’s laptop.
---
The laughter stops in Milwaukee.
Dean’s in line for Cheetos, M&M’s and a stick of strong glue when he feels it. He doesn’t even think, just dashes out of the store, the alarm beeping behind him from the goods he’s just basically robbed. He already knows there’s going to be no one in the motel room when he bursts in through the door, but fuck, for once, could they just have a fucking break? He gives the room a once-over and when he realises who’s taken Sam, cold fury settles over him, taking away the desperate edge to his movements. There’s even a part of him that likes this, settling in for the hunt, predator to the prey who’ve taken his little brother.
He tracks them with the single-minded focus of finding Sam the first time round, pushing down the waves of irrational grief and panic at their separation, concentrating on the thread between them. He doesn’t reopen the scars on his thigh, but takes a lesson from Sam, drawing his baby brother’s name in his flesh with his fingernails, renewing each mark whenever he starts to wonder if Sam really is back from the Cage.
It isn’t difficult to find them. For hunters, they range from amateurs to professionals, Dean critically looking over the trail they leave behind, John’s snarky criticisms playing in the back of his mind, but clearly none of them have been trained by a Marine, and they don’t have the instincts a Winchester has, ingrained through years of elite training.
By the end of the day, he’s staking out the grounds where the abandoned warehouse (why always abandoned warehouses? Have a little creativity, good grief) is located. Where Sam is located. It turns out little brother is giving as good as he’s getting, volleying back and forth with snarky insults that make his captors look even more like buffoons than usual - which isn’t even the main act, serving only as distraction for how he’s somehow gotten a piece of wire and is currently working discreetly to get himself free. Still, he’s sporting a black eye and there’s a patch of wet on his leg that’s making Dean’s blood boil.
Sam is good, Dean thinks, as he watches his brother not even reacting the tiniest bit at the bird whistle he sounds out, a signal they’ve used on rare occasions. In fact, that’s the only thing that gives him away - and only to Dean - that he’s heard it and knows that help - that big brother is coming. There are ten of them against two, counting Sam, who is hurt but evidently good to go, and much as he wants to make them have a taste of their own medicine, it’s not his priority. He wants - needs to get Sam out of there, not strung up like a piece of meat for those twisted fuckers to torture and play with.
Mind - and plan - made up, he reaches into his boot, and throws the first knife, embedding it in the back of the guy nearest to Sam, then aims and shoots, two clean shots to the chest, before everything descends into chaos. It’s vaguely unsatisfying, how they just scatter and run away then, especially when it’s odds of ten against two, Wusses. But they get out of there, Sam leaning against Dean, limping to the Impala. He looks bad close up, exhausted and hurt.
“I’ve got you,” he says, rubbing a hand over Sam’s neck, relief washing over him as adrenaline fades.
Sam just closes his eyes and tips forward into Dean’s shoulder, where he stays as Dean starts the car, hands buried in Dean’s shirt underneath his jacket, and Dean lets him. As they turn into the motel parking lot, Sam reaches behind him to peer at the stick of glue left on his seat, grins loopily and says, “Gotcha.”
Dean laughs, a bleak, somewhat hysterical sound, drops the facade, and pulls Sam into him.
---
“I’m hunting them down,” Dean announces when he wakes up in the morning.
Sam squints at him. “What, just like that?”
“Dude, they took you, twice - what more do you want?”
Sam looks a little embarrassed, a little surprised, two parts worried to one part pleased, then scrunches his face and goes back to stirring his coffee. As far as abductions go, it’s ranked fairly low on the traumatic scale, bouncing back nearly immediately afterwards. He shrugs. “They think they’re doing the right thing,” he says, and Dean shoots him such an incredulous look he almost rethinks what he just said.
“You’re kidding, right? In what world is feeding you demon blood the ‘right thing’?”
Sam flinches, then shrugs, finishes his coffee and stands up. “I’m going out,” he says, and Dean almost wants to shoot himself and Sam and then everybody else.
“That’s not - that’s not what I meant, Sam,” he says, and Sam stops.
“Yeah,” he finally says, hand dropping from the doorjamb. “I know. It’s just - ” He laughs a little. “Sounds like the kind of thing I’d do, not so much you.”
Dean looks affronted. A little hurt. “What, protecting you? Sam - ”
“No,” he rushes out, “not - ” Breaks off. “I just - you don’t hunt people down, that’s not what you do. You save people, you don’t kill them.”
“Have killed plenty before,” Dean lobs back, flippantly. Then, softer - “Dude, they’re going to come after you again and again and they’re going to get new people to believe whatever bullshit they’ve been trying to sell.”
“They think they’re doing the right thing,” Sam says, again, stubbornly, and Dean doesn’t even know why he’s so set on defending the sons of bitches that have made for some of his worst days, Hell notwithstanding.
“Well, they’re not,” he retorts. “They’re going to find that out soon enough.” He hefts his Colt, tucks it behind him.
“That what you’re going to do to me if I make a mistake again?” Sam says, and Dean suddenly gets it. And not at all too, because what the fuck, why would Sam even - ?
He crosses the few feet between them. “Never,” he says resolutely, waits until Sam raises eyes to him. “I mean it - never. You go down, we go down together.”
Sam smiles bleakly. “That’s what I’m afraid of, Dean. I keep - I keep fucking things up. No matter what I do - save the world, don’t save the world, try to save you, fail to save you - I just... I just keep fucking things up. And somewhere along the line you stopped trying to stop me, but you’re - you’re good, you’re supposed to be good, and I’m just dragging you down with me into my muck, and you fucking let me. You just. You fucking. Let me. And I’m supposed to - ”
“You’re supposed to let me,” Dean says, presses a hand on Sam’s chest, frowns when Sam blanches and steps away. “Sammy...”
“You keep touching me there - like it doesn’t... like it doesn’t disgust you...”
“Because it doesn’t,” Dean shoots back immediately. “Dude. Look,” pushes his sleeve up his arm, exposes flesh permanently carved with Sam’s name. “You’re not disgusted by that either. All that - ” he motions to Sam’s torso, “That’s just... more you. That’s my kid brother sacrificing himself to save the world. That’s my little brother hurting, that’s my brother needing me. Wanting me back. How could I be disgusted by that?”
“You’re supposed to,” Sam says, doggedly, and Dean remembers it from when Sammy was three and insisted that Dean not buy any more animal crackers because then the animals would die, crushed in their mouths, even after Dean had explained they weren’t really animals, or really alive, for that matter. And then a month after that when Sam had been convinced eggs and ham could only be eaten if they were green, and Dean had had to take what little pocket money he had to buy a small bottle of green colouring until he’d grown out of it. And then a week later, and a year later, and a decade later.
“No, I’m not,” Dean says easily. “You’re mine to take care of. Nothing - not even you and your big dumb head with its big dumb ideas - is going to take that away from me.”
Sam just frowns at him. “You’re dumb,” he finally says, grumpily.
“Yeah, whatever.” Dean turns away. “Now - are we good? We gonna go get those suckers or what?”
Sam grimaces.
“Look at it this way,” Dean says, starting to pack up. “If they’re stupid enough to think you’re a danger, they’re stupid enough to endanger all the innocent people on earth and we’re going to stop it before they do anymore harm. I, on the other hand,” he turns and smiles, big and happy, “I’m going to enjoy nailing them for putting my brother through all the crap he never deserved.”
He should probably find it disturbing, Sam thinks, picking up his jacket and duffel, Dean saying that with the expression of an ecstatic five-year-old, but all he sees is his big brother, protecting him. “I’m going to drag you down to Hell with me,” Sam says soberly.
“Yeah, the other way round too, and we’re going to wreck Hell together - but not now, okay? Now we’re going to wreck those bastards who missed the memo never to touch Sam Winchester.”
---
They split up, because they have some sense of self-preservation. Roy is in a nameless small town in Alabama shoving eggs down his throat when Dean fucking Winchester slides into the seat across from him in the booth, grinning at him all teeth, creepy as fuck. His first reaction is to get the fuck out of there, knees banging the table before him as he tries to rise, but there’s a pressure on his shoulder and that’s just ridiculous, Dean isn’t even moving - until he looks up. And up. And up.
“Hi, Roy.”
“Fuck!” And then they both laugh. “Look - Sam - Dean - ” Because he doesn’t even know which one of them is more balanced right now - “We can talk this over.”
“Oh yeah, sure,” Sam acquiesces readily, and Roy’s hand starts creeping to his jacket surreptitiously. It stops halfway, held in Sam’s iron grip. “Like we did when I came back from Hell, right? Oh wait.”
“You boys don’t wanna do this,” he says, hating the shaking in his voice. “I’ve got buddies - ”
“I know,” Dean says, gently. “We’re getting to them next. But first we want to finish you off.”
He feels more than sees Sam’s indecision at that, turns to him. “Look, Sam - we started off on the wrong foot - ” The coldness of steel nudges at his throat, turning him back to face Dean.
“Eyes on me, off Sam,” he says. “You don’t get to speak to him unless he talks to you.” A pause, because Roy doesn’t have anything to say to Dean except don’t kill me, because right now he looks like he’ll first torture and then kill him. “We’re going to walk out of here, calmly. Nobody has to get hurt. Well, except you - but we’ll salt and burn you. Don’t worry.”
“Fuck, fuck fuck - ”
“Shh.” He feels the bead of red slide down his throat. “We’ll make it quick if you make it easy.”
They walk out of the diner without Roy even feeling his legs at all during the short trip out to the back.
“Hey, Sammy,” warm - affectionate, and Roy entertains a hope to get out of this alive briefly - “Go wait in the car, alright? I’ll be back in a moment.” And then Dean Winchester’s voice - “You should’ve learned never to touch my brother, Roy. Didn’t I say - kill me, but when I come back I’ll be pissed? Well - you’ve got me pissed, pal. And here’s what.” The bite of steel, slower than a bullet. “Is it that difficult? Just - don’t. touch. Sammy.” Roy fancies it’s anguish he’s hearing in Dean’s voice before he can’t hear anything anymore, and then he doesn’t even feel anything anymore.
---
They’re working a case in Arizona, something that reeks of angel and Sam is more skittish than usual. Dean can’t blame him - Castiel did a number on - well, both of them, to be sure, but he’d taken advantage of Sam’s insecurities, his grogginess, and flat-out lied to him, manipulated him just like his brothers before him had. Still, he doesn’t expect it to come full-circle quite as quickly as it does. One moment he’s in the mental hospital, staking out the place, and the next he hears the flutter of wings and he’s in a basement of sorts, the trench-coated figure in front of him familiar, making his fists itch for a fight. He feels Sam’s frantic worry escalate, and then tamped down so hard he thinks Sam might have literally hurt himself in the process.
“Hello, Dean.” Castiel says, and what humanness he’s gained in that year with Sam and Dean, it’s gone, evident in the cold otherworldliness in his expression. Dean barely even cares, just wants to bloody his fists with Cas’s face. Or the other way round. Whatever.
“You know Sam’s going to make your life a living Hell after what you did to him, right? To us?”
Castiel just smiles, and God, he hates that arrogant son of a bitch. “He’s just a boy, what can he do? I have a legion behind me. Anything you try - you’ll run for the rest of your lives.” He pauses. “I might have... miscalculated your consuming need for each other, and the sickening propensity you have for getting back together. Still, it bought me some time.”
“Yeah, well, watch what happened when your big brothers underestimated us. Underestimated Sam. You have no idea what you’re dealing with, Cas.”
Cas seems mildly disturbed by that for a brief moment, then smiles again. “I think it’s you who doesn’t know who you’re dealing with, Dean.” Dean barely has a second to contemplate what that might mean when Cas closes his fist, and it’s like Hell all over again, supernatural pain spreading through every cell in his body, burning, burning, burning.
---
Whatever reticence Sam previously harboured towards the case, it vanishes the moment he feels the thread strain between them. They don’t talk about it, alongside with a dozen other things that came along with the soul bond they don’t talk about - but he feels every bit of Dean’s physical distance every time they separate on a hunt, and even if Dean doesn’t feel particularly rattled by the sudden stretch in the thread between them, he knows, just knows that Dean has been taken. He also has a fairly good idea of who it was that took Dean, and the urge to kill, the urge to make his abductor feel every bit of pain he physically can, only heightens when he feels the sudden burst of pain from Dean’s end of the thread - and it doesn’t stop.
Rage fuels him, and he lets it - bubbling and frothing and stopped only by a dam, ready to burst forth in a split second’s notice. Underneath it - grief so piercing only Dean’s words are stopping him from digging his fingers right into his stomach to start gouging, because he’s not ready, he’s not fucking ready for this, and Castiel should know better than to try to take his brother away from him not once but twice.
It doesn’t take long for him to finish figuring out how many angels are in the region working under Cas - if there’s anything that’s the angel’s downfall, it’s his arrogance. He thought sundering them was a good idea, and maybe Sam would have let that go eventually, because having Dean there, that’s what matters, he’s learned that. But for whatever asinine reason Cas has, he’s taken Dean away again, and a small part of him even shivers at the coldness of his rage.
C’mon, Sammy - put that big brain of yours to use, Dean’s voice in his head, and he does. Sam draws each and every single one of his prey out, paints invisible sigils he’s learned in his time with two archangels sometimes bored of even torture, blocks out any and every single distress call on the angel radio, and watches himself kill four of them, the ones working closest to Cas as far as he can tell. It’s a dangerous dance, he knows, looking down at the charred shadows of wings on the ground, stained with blood. But so is taking Dean from Sam, and there are a fair number of monsters gone to wherever monsters go to when they die - that know better than to bet against a Winchester.
Finding Dean isn’t even the problem - every single cell in him wants to burst him and take his brother, hide him away fucking forever so nobody can ever take him away from Sam again, but the angels he’s taken out are only foot soldiers, and he already has a bleeding gash to add to the collection on his torso. One on his back, and a few other internal injuries, because angels don’t fight fair. Cas is a general. From what he can tell, a seraph too, and he doesn’t hold high hopes of simply going in and stopping Cas just like that.
So he plans. Carves sigils into his skin - the same ones Cas probably erased from his ribcage when he lied to Sam - and tries not to dig too deep or relish the pain too much. Dean probably wouldn’t approve either way, but at least Sam can say that he tried his best to stop. Patiently, patiently draws sigils around the house Cas has Dean in. Unfortunately, he’s in the basement, and short of going in through the house itself, Sam can’t do anything about that. He can only place his hope in Cas’s greed, that he wants to ensnare Sam as well. He knows Dean feels his proximity, won’t give him away, but his heart still pounds in his chest painfully as he lies in wait, trap set.
The plan doesn’t go quite according to plan, of course, because the Winchester bad luck is only part of their charm - the holy oil only getting half of Cas and the flames not quite spreading as much as he would like. Half of him is outside of the circle of holy fire, but for some reason in his rage Cas steps into instead of outside of it.
“You don’t know who you’re messing with, boy,” Cas’s voice, except bigger, thunderous, and his wings are spreading. Sam is just waiting for the cue, aims and shoots. It lodges inside his head, Sam can see - no exit wound - the black hole only smokes, but it’s marked with sigils, carved into the bullet. Cas is a little slower. “You think you can shoot an angel of the Lord?” He says, raises his hand, and - nothing happens.
Sam just stares at him. “You don’t take Dean, you hear?” He says, and he knows it should be quieter, deadlier, like Dean goes when someone threatens Sam, but he can’t, he just can’t - he can’t lose Dean again and he’s terrified and desperate and - “You don’t. fucking. take Dean away from me.” And then he sinks the blade into Cas’s chest.
He watches for a long time then, just stands and stares at the flames, at the shadows of Cas’s wings, at the destruction he brings with him.
Until -
“Sammy,” soft, weak - too soft, too quiet, that Sam wouldn’t have heard it without the bond.
Oh, God.
He tumbles more than rushes down the stairs, lethal grace all forgotten in his haste to get to Dean. He doesn’t dare to touch more than he has to - not only because Dean is probably too sore to touch, but because he can’t, he can’t let it stain him, let the darkness touch him.
Dean doesn’t seem to have his qualms, reaches out and pats Sam down, checks for injuries, brows furrowing when Sam doesn’t even flinch as his fingers come away wet, red-tinged. “Sammy...”
“We’re getting out of here,” Sam says, and they do.
---
Dean barely stays awake on the way back to the motel, doesn’t grouse about Sam’s driving, but he keeps casting long looks at Sam. It feels almost like when Sam was drinking demon blood behind Dean’s back, like Dean’s somehow decided he’s a freak. He can’t. He just hunches deeper into himself, and drives on.
Sam patches Dean up efficiently, gently. Dean lets him take care of his own wounds when he tells Dean to go to sleep and refuses to let Dean look at them, and he doesn’t know if he’s grateful or upset about it. It feels like - like he’s not even really himself anymore, and he doesn’t even understand why - Dean was the one who got taken. Three whole days, tortured for no good reason by a sadistic former-friend-turned-enemy. He doesn’t even know for sure what Cas was working towards.
He stumbles into their bed after cleaning up the gashes he can reach and ignoring whatever he can’t, facing away from Dean. Dean doesn’t reach out to him.
---
It’s five days later, which feels like an eternity, that Dean slams the mug onto the coffee table, ignoring the liquid sloshing out. Sam looks up, a little startled.
“That’s it,” he growls. “What the fuck crawled up your ass, Sam?”
He blinks. “What?”
“Don’t even pretend with me - you know what. You’ve been shying away every single time I’ve tried to touch you. You stay in the car just not to be in the motel room with me. What is it - you finally decided this soul thing isn’t going to work? You’re gonna walk out on me, Sam? Because let me tell you - this - ” he gestures between them - “This isn’t much better.”
He just stares at Dean, trying to decode what Dean is trying to say, because it’s - he doesn’t... Is Dean - is Dean kicking him out?
“Fuck, don’t give me that kicked puppy look. I was gone for three days - three - and somehow in those three days I lost some... what, brother status so I can’t touch you anymore? And don’t even pretend you don’t need it - I fucking live with you, dude, I see you. So - ” he breaks off. Quieter - “So tell me what’s going on.”
Dean wants to know what’s going on. He doesn’t... The laugh that bubbles from his lips is manic, hysterical, and he can’t stop it.
“Sam!” Barked, harsh. “Settle down.”
He does, a Pavlovian response more than anything, ingrained through years of training. Dean’s asking Sam what’s going on. He doesn’t even know himself. Doesn’t know why Dean’s touch feels like too much, when it’s all he needs - needs Dean like he’s starving and dying of thirst, and the only thing that soothes the hunger is Dean’s frame in his arms and Dean’s arms around him, Dean’s laughter and his stupid huge green eyes, his sour morning breath, his amulet pressing into Sam’s chest, fitting into the grooves of his skin like coming home.
“Sammy.” Dean’s closer now. He feels it in the thread, in the heat of Dean’s body, and Sam is so cold, so fucking cold. “Hey, buddy.” He almost snorts at how Dean is talking to him like he’s five, although - “I scared you, huh?”
Fucking understatement. He buries his face in his hands, feeling like the entire world is crumbling apart around him, not knowing why. “I don’t...”
“Shh,” Dean shushes, really like he’s five, and then hugs him.
“I don’t wanna be a monster,” he says, muffled in Dean’s neck, because he doesn’t know where to start.
“You’re not,” Dean replies easily, like there’s no question about it.
“You didn’t see me. You didn’t see me when I - ”
“You saw me,” Dean interrupts. “When I was hunting down all of those hunters to kill them. Cold-blooded. Execution-style.” His voice cracks, a little, and Sam frowns, tries to pull back, because he doesn’t... “You think I’m a monster, Sam?”
“Never,” he says, doesn’t even have to think about it.
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Neither are you. You saved me, little brother.” Dean turns his head slightly, and Sam thinks he feels a kiss pressed into his hair, wisely doesn’t say anything about it. “You did good, Sammy.” He pulls away then, grins a little at Sam, pride - not fear - in his eyes. “Fucking badass, man - you killed four angels and then Cas?”
“Yeah, well.” Feels pleased, embarrassed heat creep up his neck. “They were dicks.”
Dean smiles then. “Yeah, they were.”
---
“Heard Creedy’s dead,” Bobby’s voice comes over the phone, unreadable.
“Really,” Dean says blandly. Sam elbows him half-heartedly, because on one hand - dude, at least actually try to sound marginally convincing that you’re surprised. But on the other - why even bother? Nobody except his brother stepped in, came for him when he was on the other end of the barrel, and honestly, he doesn’t really care about what anyone except Dean thinks anymore.
“Yeah,” Bobby continues. “Roy too - some other hunters as well - all stabbed in the heart.” Sam looks at Dean then, because Dean never let him see any of the actual killings. He never really wanted to, not at that time anyway. Not much at all even now. “Clean wound, looks like an expert hand.”
“Huh,” Dean says noncommittally, still not giving an inch. “They say who they suspect?”
“You gonna tell me the truth if I tell you?” The big guns now.
“Depends,” Dean says, and there’s a hardness, a frigidness in his voice that doesn’t, Sam thinks, have anything to do with the topic at hand. “Whose side are you on?” And that’s just - weird, because Bobby’s always been on their side, stepped in as surrogate father when Dad had died.
There’s a pause, then Bobby swears. “You’re an idjit,” he says heatedly. “I’ve always been on your side, yours and Sam’s. I didn’t insist on helping you find Sam because you wanted to do it alone, not because I wasn’t tracking every contact I had out there. You could’ve asked if you wanted me around, even if you didn’t have a voice - you could’ve written something down - ”
“Bobby - ”
“... Sam’s there, isn’t he?”
Dean shrugs. Sam leans over. “Hi, Bobby.”
“Good to hear from you too, Sam,” Bobby says grouchily, and they both shoot each other guilty looks. “Listen - they’re on the lookout. A few of them won’t be able to do much harm to you, but you never know - some of them just want to find reasons to screw you over. You boys be careful, and swing by when you get the chance.”
“Yeah, Bobby,” Sam says, because Dean doesn’t seem inclined to say anything.
“Good,” Bobby says, and hangs up.
Sam turns to look at Dean. “You didn’t have a voice?”
Dean shrugs, again. “Not the first time,” he says.
“You said my name was the first thing you said,” Sam presses.
Dean stares at him, stonily, duh obvious on his face.
Sam ponders it for a moment, then starts grinning.
Dean takes a look at Sam, then rolls his eyes. “Shut up,” he says, testily.
Sam just laughs, and can’t stop. “You love me,” he crows, grin not flagging a bit when Dean reaches a hand over and swats him on the head.
“Who could love a little bitch like you,” Dean mutters, but there’s a smile in his voice.
---
They drive for days, from hunt to hunt, dusty highways and seedy motels, rediscovering the road that is their home. They drive, classic rock blaring from the Impala’s speakers, Sam’s voice laughingly joining in the off-key singing, wind in their hair and sun in their eyes, boys like they were and have always been. And then Dean says, let’s go see the Grand Canyon.
And Sam says, yeah, let’s.
Five hundred days after Sam falls into a hole, Dean sees the Grand Canyon for the first time. It’s good.
-END-