SPN fic: That visions are seldom all they seem
Title: That visions are seldom all they seem
Disney Prompt: Sleeping Beauty
Pairing/Gen: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5200
Warnings: None. Spoilers through S7.
Summary: An evil fairy curses Dean, and he loses his memory. Only a kiss from his soul mate can awaken him. Featuring Bobby and Cas as Flora and Fauna. (And Meg as an absent Meriweather.)
Notes: My entry for super_disney. (This is either way more or way less sappy than it sounds, idek.) Thanks as always to topaz119. Title from "Once Upon a Dream," from the Disney Sleeping Beauty soundtrack. I've been singing that song since I was 8 years old. Which is why I succumbed to the temptation to make the rest of the lyrics section titles, for which I apologize profusely.
At AO3
"You will sleep, my pretty hero. You will be as if asleep. You will wander the world, unknown to yourself. Only the one who shares your soul can bring you back to yourself again."
"Dean!" Sam grabbed for his brother, but he couldn't reach him. Dean flickered around the edges. Not like a ghost, but as if lights gleamed under his skin, making him blink in and out of focus. "Dean, no!"
And Dean was gone.
1. I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream...
When Dean Winchester awoke on the morning of June 18th, he had no idea that he was, in fact, Dean Winchester.
In fact, for the entirety of that day, he thought his name was John Bonham. No real reason - the only ID he could find, a newish-looking driver's license in a worn leather wallet, said John Smith.
That was a damned boring name, though, and since the name Bonham happened to be floating through Dean's brain, he decided that must be who he was.
With a name like John Bonham, he had to be awesome.
He felt even more positive that he was awesome when he realized that he was fit and muscular, with a flat stomach and impressive biceps. Studying himself in the bathroom mirror, he realized that he was pretty good-looking, whoever he was.
He had light brown hair, big green eyes with long, sweeping lashes, full lips, and a dusting of freckles across his cheeks that made him look boyishly handsome.
Actually, he was pretty damned hot.
He bet the ladies - or the guys, he could be open-minded about that - thought so, too.
Now he just had to figure out where he was and what he was doing here.
Here seemed to be a dingy motel room, with faded wallpaper, worn carpeting, and a ratty-looking bedspread crumpled at the foot of a wobbly bed with a saggy mattress.
Okay, so John Bonham wasn't exactly living the high life. Dean could deal with that. He got the feeling he was used to it, because the dreariness of his surroundings didn't bother him at all. The only reason it even registered was because he was trying to gather evidence and put together clues.
Maybe he was some kind of private investigator. It felt like he might be good at that.
There was a half-empty duffle bag tossed in the corner of the room and a pile of rumpled clothes strewn across the top of the dresser.
Dean paused to admire himself again in the flyblown mirror over the dresser, then started digging through the pockets of the dirty clothes, looking for anything else that might help him figure out what the hell was going on.
For whatever reason, he didn't seem inclined to panic at the fact that he really had no idea who he was and no memories of his life before he woke up this morning. He studied his eyes in the mirror, but he saw no shadows there, no hints of emotional trauma. There were no signs of physical trauma on his body, either, so he had no clue as to what might have precipitated what he assumed was the sudden onset of amnesia.
Oh, god, unless he had the sort of amnesia that started again every day, the short-term kind which meant he wouldn't remember things from one day to the next. That would suck.
No, he was sure he'd seen a movie about that once, so that had to mean he didn't have that kind of memory loss, or he wouldn't remember the movie.
Right?
It made his head hurt to think about it, so he put it aside in favor of going through the few possessions he could find scattered around the room.
Aaaand there was a laptop. Jackpot.
Once he booted it up, he started poking around in the bookmarks. That might give him some insight as to what he was into.
Oh. Apparently he was into porn.
Anime porn.
He clicked on a couple of links, but after watching a few clips, decided he really didn't see the appeal.
There were also bookmarks for a handful of sites that dealt with the occult; supernatural beings like vampires and werewolves, and something called a wendigo.
Seriously?
The Ghostfacers site was interesting, though. Those guys seemed pretty cool.
Huh.
Except for the porn, it was an oddly impersonal computer. There weren't emails from family and friends, just a lot of spam for penile enhancing drugs, which Dean was happy to say he didn't need.
He'd checked.
There was nothing there to contradict his hunch that his name was John Bonham, at least.
He was a little disturbed at the number of whiskey bottles stashed in the bottom of the duffle bag, but he shrugged and used one of them to fill up the battered silver flask he found in his jacket pocket.
The knife under the bed pillow and the pearl-handled revolver tucked under the pile of dirty clothes on the dresser gave him pause, though.
He searched the room thoroughly, but he didn't find a cell phone, which seemed strange. Surely he had a phone.
Hunger finally drove him out of the motel. There were a couple of hundred dollars in his wallet, mostly small bills, so he tucked the wallet in his pocket and headed out in search of lunch.
He walked until he found a diner situated a couple of blocks from the motel and spent a pleasant hour over pancakes and coffee, flirting half-heartedly with the waitress and hoping a memory or two would pop back into his head if he didn't think very hard.
The day turned out to be pretty boring. Not knowing who he was made it difficult for him to figure out what to do with himself. Having nothing specific to do made him restless, made his skin itch with the irritation of not having a task or a purpose.
He finally gave in to curiosity and ended up losing several hours to the dubious charms of animated characters fucking. It really made him wonder about himself. That was some fucked up shit right there.
Apparently he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, because he found his eyelids drooping not long after the sun dipped below the trees on the far side of the road facing the motel.
Shrugging, he figured he might as well call it a night. He wasn't sure what to do with the evening, anyway. Maybe whatever it was he liked to do for fun would come back to him after a good night's sleep.
Dean looks down into brown eyes filled with pain. There's fear there, too, and determination. Tears clog his throat, but he swallows them and drops a soft kiss on the girl's forehead, then places an equally tender kiss on her lips. They tremble under his.
The dark-haired woman sitting next to the girl, holding her in a mother's embrace, gives him a nod and a grim smile.
They're both covered in blood. Dean thinks it's the girl's blood, but he can't be sure. Their hands are clasped together, clutching some kind of triggering device.
Dean turns and walks away, not knowing why, only knowing that it's one of the hardest things he's ever done. Every step seems to take him toward something unspeakable.
"Dean." He turns. The blonde girl is pale as death, and the older woman's grip tightens around her shoulders. "Kick it in the ass."
Dean nods and walks out the door, every fiber of his being fighting to turn back. As he goes, he realizes there's someone else with him, someone at his back, but he can't get a sense of who it is.
There's heat and noise, and he's filled with overwhelming grief.
Dean woke up gasping, a name on his lips that he couldn’t recall, no matter how hard he tried.
His head pounded, and his temples throbbed. He wondered if that was a good thing. Maybe a headache this bad was his memory coming back.
There were tears on his face for the woman and the girl in his dream, and he swiped at them with the back of his hand.
The woman had called him Dean. Was that his real name? It didn't seem terribly important this morning, in the face of such grief, whether he had a cool name or not.
He wondered again about the knife he found under his pillow, and the gun. Was he some kind of criminal? Who were those women, and why had they died?
Did he kill them? Had he been responsible in some way?
Dean tried to wash away the feelings of unease in the shower, then dressed in a pair of jeans he found on the floor. There were car keys in the pocket, keys he hadn't seen yesterday.
Taking a deep breath and feeling a lot less confident than he had on setting out yesterday, Dean headed out to find his car.
Closing the motel room door behind him, he surveyed the parking lot, looking for a - he glanced down at the keys in his hand - some kind of Chevy. There was a sweet black Impala parked close to the room, and he knew the minute he laid eyes on the car that she was his.
He made a decision before he even realized it, and turning around, he went back inside the room and gathered up his belongings, tossing them into the back seat of the car.
There was no reason he could think of to stay here. He could get breakfast on the road.
The highway beckoned to him, a long black ribbon shimmering in the morning sun. It called to Dean, and as he slid into the driver's seat of the Impala, he felt a sense of home steal over him.
He peeled out of the motel parking lot and set off to figure out who the hell he was.
*
"There's a lot of different kinds of fairies, Sam. Leprechaun's, Red Caps, little twinkling naked ladies -"
"I know, Bobby. I'm the one who made that leprechaun count the salt, remember?" Sam sighed. "I just feel like if I knew what kind of fairy it was, I could figure out where it sent Dean."
"Yeah, I know." It was Bobby's turn to sigh. "Let me see what I can find out. Tell me again exactly what she said."
Sam repeated the words he'd heard before Dean vanished.
"'Only the one who shares your soul can bring you back to yourself?'" Bobby looked thoughtful. "Soul mates? The lore's not real clear on if there's even such a thing, really."
Shrugging, Sam said, "Ash mentioned soul mates when Dean and I were in Heaven that one time."
"'In Heaven that one time,'" Bobby said, shaking his head, no doubt at the absurdity of their lives. "Well, Ash would know these days." He paused, then looked up at Sam from under the brim of his hat. "Any idea who Dean's soul mate might be?" he asked, sounding so disinterested that Sam's suspicions were immediately aroused.
"Someone with bad taste in sandwiches and who likes big tits, hair metal, and cheap booze?" Sam said, hazarding a wild guess.
Bobby stared at him with something like pity.
"What?" Sam said defensively.
"You ain't exactly describing yourself there, Sam." What was that supposed to mean? Why was Bobby looking at him like that, like he was waiting for Sam to…catch on.
Really?
"Wait, what? No, Bobby." Sam tried to wrap his head around the idea of being Dean's soul mate. "That can't be right."
"Makes perfect sense to me. You boys've been through a lot together. Managed to get a lot done together, too. Seems to me there could be a reason for that."
"Really?" Huh. "Soul mates?"
"You got any better ideas?"
"I guess not." Sam shook his head. Soul mates? Him and Dean?
"Well, let's get busy," Bobby said, as if he hadn't just turned Sam's worldview upside-down. "This ain't gonna figure itself out. And I got a distinct disadvantage here, being a ghost and all."
"Right, sorry." Sam felt bad. Sometimes he forgot about that part. "Hey, that reminds me. How are you even here? Dean has the flask, not me."
"Beats me. But I am, so let's get to figuring this shit out."
2. I know you, the gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam...
When Dean stopped at another cheap motel for the night, he poked around in the trunk of the car before he went in, hoping to find some clean clothes. He might not know his real name, but he did know Laundromats weren't his favorite places to spend his time.
It was probably just as well he hadn't thought to look in there before he set out on the road, otherwise he might have ended up back in that lumpy bed, huddled under the covers.
The trunk was full of weapons and weird shit, like crucifixes and dream catchers and - what the hell? A folded-up trench coat that had seen better days.
Was he some kind of Satanist?
Or maybe a serial killer?
Neither of those options sounded good. Dean slammed the trunk lid down in a hurry and sent a quick glance around the parking lot to make sure he was alone out there.
It wouldn't do for anyone else to see his trunk full of deadly weapons.
Christ, what the fuck was that all about anyway?
The only sound is the crackling of a fire. Dean's deep in a forest of some kind, surrounded by flames.
No, not surrounded. The flames are in front of him, and at first Dean thinks it's a pile of wood burning. But there's a body on top, wrapped in a sheet.
A combination of guilt, grief and fear almost brings Dean to his knees, but he can't give in to it. There's someone else there with him, someone who needs him.
Dean has no idea who it is, but he can feel grief emanating from him, grief mixed with guilt, just like Dean.
When the flames die down, when the body is consumed, Dean looks at the person standing beside him.
He's tall, with dark brown hair half-covering his eyes. He stares at Dean with such faith, so much confidence, in spite of the grief and fear on his face, that Dean has to turn away.
It took Dean the better part of a day to work his way out from under the miasma of really bad feelings that came on the heels of that last dream.
He didn't know whose body had burned, he just knew that it had been someone it hurt to lose, and that the tall guy with him was someone important.
The sense of urgency about figuring out who he was and what the hell was going on was growing, crawling under his skin, making his hands shake a little.
Dean pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, hefting it in his hand, unsure.
He had discovered it sitting in the glove box when he found the Impala, along with another one in the trunk, but he'd been putting off calling anyone.
He had no idea what to say. "Hey, it's Dean, do you know who I am? What can you tell me about myself?" was the best he'd come up with so far.
He'd looked at the numbers and the names on the contact lists more times than he could count, but so far he hadn't managed to hit send.
He wasn't sure what he was afraid to find out.
But finally he snorted in disgust at himself and randomly hit a name on the phone that had been in the trunk of the car. It looked older than the others and seemed like a good place to start.
Hey, this is Ellen. If I'm not answering and you need to get a hold of me, call my daughter Jo. If you don't know her number, I probably don't want to talk to you anyway.
Dean cleared his throat. "Hey, Ellen, this is Dean." He had no idea what to say next. "If you get a chance, call me. Um, thanks."
Ellen's voice sounded familiar, but Dean couldn't quite place it. He must know her, if her name was in his phone, but the voice sounded like something he'd heard recently, not just something he may or may not remember. Shrugging, he scrolled down to the name Jo.
This is Jo. If I'm not answering and you know my mom's number, call her.
Great. Dean rolled his eyes. That was helpful.
There wasn't much else Dean could do but leave another message.
An hour and several glasses of whisky later, Dean had called every name in both phones, with the same results. Not one person picked up.
He didn't know what he'd expected, but it wasn't that.
Ellen. Jo. Bobby. Rufus. Frank. Garth. Richie. Sam.
It was as if he were calling a bunch of ghosts.
This is Sam. Leave a message.
That voice in particular got under his skin, an itch he couldn't figure out how to scratch. It made him restless, unable to sit still, making him jump up and pace around the small motel room until he thought he would lose his mind.
Except that he already had lost it, and wasn't that the problem here?
And then it hit him - where he'd heard Ellen's voice before.
He'd heard it in his dream, the one with the two women and the explosion.
The older woman who said Kick it in the ass right before Dean walked away - it was her voice in the message.
He bet the young blonde girl was Jo.
Had been Jo, if his dream was actually a memory.
Had he really just left two women to die?
The walls of the motel room suddenly felt like they were closing in, and Dean had to get out of there.
Luckily, there was a bar right down the street, conveniently open to facilitate the obliterating of his thought processes.
He stumbled in hours later, drunk, and face-planted on the bed.
Dean moves around a sunny kitchen, a frying pan in his hand. It's full of scrambled eggs, yellow and fluffy, and he divides them onto three plates.
A young boy grabs the plates and arranges them on a table that's already set for three. He smiles up at Dean, and his eyes are full of trust and love.
A woman with long dark hair reaches around Dean to grab the saltshaker, and she runs her hand over the small of his back as she leans. Her touch is warm, familiar and intimate.
Surrounded by smiles, Dean eats his eggs. They taste like sawdust, and he can barely get them down. The rightness of being here with these people feels more wrong than anything he can imagine, and he's overcome with a wave of grief that's as excruciating as it is unexpected.
*
"Cas, what -" Sam stared at the angel standing in front of him. "What are you doing here? I thought - is Meg -"
"Sam, your questions are incomplete and therefore unanswerable. What is it you wish to know?" He looked away. "And Meg is...unhappy that I am here."
"How are you here?" Sam didn't give a fuck what Meg was unhappy about, really.
"Really? You do not wish to know where Dean is?"
"Are you saying you know?"
"I know how to help you find him, yes."
"Does it involve board games? We don't have to play Monopoly or something, do we?" Sam asked, in an attempt to gauge Cas's current state of mind. You never knew, with Cas.
Cas gave a small, self-deprecating smile at that. "No, no games. Actually, I think Bobby can find him for you." He paused, then said, "And then you're going to have to kiss him."
"Excuse me? Kiss who? Bobby?" Sam looked at Cas in horror.
"No, Dean, of course. When you find him, that's how you'll have to wake him up."
"Wake him up?" Sam asked in alarm, ignoring the part about the kiss for the moment. "Is he, what, in a coma or something?"
"No, he is conscious."
"Then what -"
"His memory, Sam," Cas said, almost sounding patient. "You'll have to kiss him in order to make him remember." His face lit up. "I think you will enjoy that, am I right?"
Sam was rendered completely speechless by both Cas's words and the brightness of his smile.
"I'm curious as to whether it will be for the first time."
"Please stop talking," Sam begged.
Cas ignored him. "And Sam - of course you and Dean are soul mates. I thought you knew that. I would have told you before had you asked." Cas looked at him reprovingly.
"I - oh, god, I -"
Cas beamed at Sam again, looking far more pleased with himself than Sam thought he had any right to be.
3. Yet I know it's true, that visions are seldom all they seem...
Dean stumbled through the next day feeling hollow, like all his organs had been scooped out. It felt familiar, as if sometime in his life he'd actually had all of his organs scooped out.
The feeling of loss was profound, and it never left him. It became harder and harder to drag himself through the days, and he finally stopped trying.
He crashed for almost a week at a small motel on the outskirts of Cincinnati, making good use of the stockpile of cheap whisky he'd woken up to.
But every time he passed out, he dreamed.
His feet are wet. He's standing in the shallows of a small lake, and as he watches, water ripples out from the center, turning black as it rolls in a circular movement toward the shore.
At the center is a man in a trench coat, and Dean watches in horror as the man sinks beneath the surface of the black water.
Dean is angry, and he yells across the water, tries to plunge into the inky blackness to get to the man.
Someone stops him, someone holds him in a tight grip, and Dean wants to fight, but now all of his awareness is focused on the heat of that grip, and he leans back against a solid chest.
"Dean, don't," a voice murmurs, and Dean turns, looks up at the face behind him. It's filled with compassion, and Dean pulls away.
"Who are you?"
*
Sam didn't know if he could do it.
Well, obviously he had to do it. He could kiss Dean and hope that when he woke up, or got his memory back, or whatever was going to happen, that maybe Dean would then forget that Sam had kissed him.
Because there was no way this was going to end well. Sam was perfectly happy to kiss Dean, but there was no universe in which Dean would be perfectly happy to kiss Sam.
Unless he wasn't giving Dean enough credit. Maybe Dean would look at it the same way Sam did - that their lives were so damn bizarre, and that they'd been through so much at this point, that one little kiss would barely be a blip on the radar.
Sam sighed and rolled over, punching his pillow in a fruitless attempt to get it to actually support his head. It wasn't like he had a choice here. Dean had forgiven a lot over the years, Sam would just have to have faith that he'd get over this, too.
*
4. But if I know you, I know what you'll do...
When Dean woke up, he was consumed with the tall man's face, with the tenderness and love he saw there. Maybe he should move, get up and get in the car and go look for whoever this guy was.
He felt like if he could just find him, everything would be all right.
But sleep pulled him under again, making him languid and slow. His limbs became heavy, weighed him down and kept him there.
Dean and the tall guy stand side by side next to a bed in a busy Emergency Room. There's a man in the bed, an older man with blood on his face.
They watch as the man opens his eyes and tells them goodbye.
A heart monitor begins to beep frantically and Dean realizes it's attached to the older man. The glowing green line is flat, no signs of life to be teased out of indecipherable curves and spikes.
Dean is angry, so angry, and he lashes out at the only person who seems safe, who won't leave no matter what Dean does.
"Dean, we still have each other," the tall guy says.
"Fuck you," Dean answers.
With every dream the constant presence of the man at Dean's side, at his back, became stronger. Dean didn't know his name, had no idea who he was, but that was okay.
Dean didn't actually know who he was himself, so what did it matter what the guy's name was? All he knew is that he needed to find him.
He needed to feel safe.
Dean runs, his feet slipping in thick mud. He knows he won't get there in time, and that knowledge is a terrible weight.
The man in the distance gets closer and closer. "Dean!" he calls, desperate, the rain plastering his long hair to his face.
And then out of the rain comes another figure, up behind the man Dean is so desperate to reach. He plunges a knife into the man's back and is gone as quickly as he came.
By the time the tall man dies in Dean's arms, Dean's throat is raw from his screams.
Dean sat bolt upright in bed, gasping. He had to go. He had to go now, had to get in his car and drive until he found the man from his dreams.
Unless he really was dead. Oh, god, don't let him be dead.
The sense of urgency was all-consuming, propelling him out of bed and into action for the first time in days.
He had the presence of mind to pack, to shove his belongings into the back seat of the car, but after that there was only room for thoughts of move, now!
He didn't know which direction to go, but that hardly mattered. What did matter was only that he go.
*
"Concentrate, Bobby," Sam said. "Think about the flask."
"I am, dammit," Bobby snapped. "Shut up for five minutes and this might actually work."
Bobby closed his eyes and scrunched up his face. He flickered in and out a few times and then vanished. It didn't weird Sam out nearly as much as it probably should have.
It only took a few minutes for Bobby to flicker back into view. He seemed a little winded, a little unsteady on his feet, and Sam wondered how much of a toll apparating, for want of a better word, took on a ghost.
"Found him," Bobby said. "But he's on the move, so you'd better get going. He's heading for Cleveland, god only knows why. I don't think he's going anywhere with any purpose in mind, he's just moving to be moving." Bobby frowned. "He's pretty freaked out."
"Did he see you?"
"No, ya idjit. I do have some idea of how to be stealthy."
"Right. Okay, thanks Bobby."
"Did Cas say what you have to do when you find him?"
Sam hesitated, then thought what the hell. Of all the weird shit in all their lives - and deaths - this was hardly the worst thing he'd had to do.
"I have to kiss him."
Bobby looked at him blankly for a second, then he snorted. "Of course you do.
5. You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.
"Dean? Dean, is that you?" Someone tapped Dean on the shoulder and Dean jumped about a foot in the air. He was disappointed in himself. For someone who had a badass stash of weapons in the trunk of his car, he really didn't think he should be so easy to sneak up on.
But he'd just spent a day driving like a bat out of hell and finding himself in Cleveland at the end of it, so maybe he couldn't be held accountable for being so jumpy.
"Whoa," said a familiar voice, warm with amusement and something that sounded like relief. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
"I wasn't scared," Dean said, turning and crossing his arms over his chest. "Do I know you, pal?" He looked up…and up, at smiling hazel eyes, brown hair that was way too long, dorky sideburns, and dimples.
Dean felt like he'd been kicked in the chest. It was him, the guy from his dreams. The one he'd thought had died.
"You're not dead," he blurted.
"Um, no I'm not," the guy said. "Not right now, anyway."
"What the hell does that mean?" Dean demanded. Then he waved his hand. "Never mind, I don't care. I'm just so happy to see you. Who the hell are you?"
The guy laughed, looking delighted. "Sam. I'm Sam."
"Sam," Dean said, liking the way the name felt on his tongue, as if it had always belonged there.
"I thought you'd be, like, asleep or something. Cas said -" he broke off. "It doesn't matter. Listen, this is gonna sound weird, but - um, do you have a room or someplace we can go? We need to talk."
Dean nodded without hesitation. There was something about this guy - about Sam - that made him feel safer than he'd felt since he woke up thinking he was John Bonham. He was just so relieved that he couldn't stop smiling.
It was a good feeling. So good, in fact, that when they were in his room and Sam shut the door, leaning against it and looking at Dean with such fondness on his face, Dean didn't even think to protest when the next thing he knew, Sam had his fists in Dean's shirt, tugging him closer.
"Just go with it, okay?" Sam said. "Trust me."
Before Dean could do more than nod, Sam lowered his head and caught Dean's lips in a gentle kiss. There was nothing tentative about it, but it was gentle and full of love.
Dean gasped against Sam's mouth. "Sam," he said. "Sammy."
It was the kiss of a lifetime. It woke things in Dean far beyond his memory. As Sam finally pulled back, breaking the kiss, Dean knew only that it may have been love's first kiss, but no way in hell was it going to be the last.
They stood there, Sam's hands on Dean's shoulders feeling like they were never going to let him go, Dean gripping Sam's hips tight enough that his fingers cramped.
They grinned idiotically at each other, until Dean regained some small sense of dignity and said, "Dude."
That only made Sam smile more widely, and Dean found himself staring at Sam's dimples as if he'd never seen them before. He made a show of pushing Sam away, but without actually letting go of him.
He didn't know if he'd ever let go of him again.
"Was that a fairy who did this?" he asked, mock-scowling up at Sam.
Sam nodded. "Bobby thinks so."
At Bobby's name, Dean's chest tightened. "I dreamed about him, about that day…I had a lot of dreams, actually."
"Dreams about what?"
Dean shook his head. "Not important, not anymore." He punched Sam in the shoulder. "I told you once before, Sam. You've gotta fight the fairies."
Sam snorted and shook his head. "I'll remember that next time," he said, his lips quirked up in that fondly indulgent smile that Dean would never in a million years admit was his favorite of Sam's smiles.
"There better not be a next time, Sammy," Dean said darkly. "I mean it. That was some fucked up shit."
"Tell me about it, dude." Sam brightened. "But hey, are you sure you remember everything there is to remember?" Dean blinked at him. "I mean, if you're not sure, maybe I'd better kiss you again." He waited hopefully.
"Well." Dean thought about it. "I can't remember what I had for lunch last Wednesday." He pointed to his mouth and grinned up at Sam. "Here, plant one on me, see if it comes back to me."
So Sam did.
When they broke apart a second time, Dean leaned his forehead on Sam's shoulder until he caught his breath long enough to say, "I think it was a cheeseburger."
Disney Prompt: Sleeping Beauty
Pairing/Gen: Sam/Dean
Rating: PG
Word Count: 5200
Warnings: None. Spoilers through S7.
Summary: An evil fairy curses Dean, and he loses his memory. Only a kiss from his soul mate can awaken him. Featuring Bobby and Cas as Flora and Fauna. (And Meg as an absent Meriweather.)
Notes: My entry for super_disney. (This is either way more or way less sappy than it sounds, idek.) Thanks as always to topaz119. Title from "Once Upon a Dream," from the Disney Sleeping Beauty soundtrack. I've been singing that song since I was 8 years old. Which is why I succumbed to the temptation to make the rest of the lyrics section titles, for which I apologize profusely.
At AO3
"You will sleep, my pretty hero. You will be as if asleep. You will wander the world, unknown to yourself. Only the one who shares your soul can bring you back to yourself again."
"Dean!" Sam grabbed for his brother, but he couldn't reach him. Dean flickered around the edges. Not like a ghost, but as if lights gleamed under his skin, making him blink in and out of focus. "Dean, no!"
And Dean was gone.
1. I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream...
When Dean Winchester awoke on the morning of June 18th, he had no idea that he was, in fact, Dean Winchester.
In fact, for the entirety of that day, he thought his name was John Bonham. No real reason - the only ID he could find, a newish-looking driver's license in a worn leather wallet, said John Smith.
That was a damned boring name, though, and since the name Bonham happened to be floating through Dean's brain, he decided that must be who he was.
With a name like John Bonham, he had to be awesome.
He felt even more positive that he was awesome when he realized that he was fit and muscular, with a flat stomach and impressive biceps. Studying himself in the bathroom mirror, he realized that he was pretty good-looking, whoever he was.
He had light brown hair, big green eyes with long, sweeping lashes, full lips, and a dusting of freckles across his cheeks that made him look boyishly handsome.
Actually, he was pretty damned hot.
He bet the ladies - or the guys, he could be open-minded about that - thought so, too.
Now he just had to figure out where he was and what he was doing here.
Here seemed to be a dingy motel room, with faded wallpaper, worn carpeting, and a ratty-looking bedspread crumpled at the foot of a wobbly bed with a saggy mattress.
Okay, so John Bonham wasn't exactly living the high life. Dean could deal with that. He got the feeling he was used to it, because the dreariness of his surroundings didn't bother him at all. The only reason it even registered was because he was trying to gather evidence and put together clues.
Maybe he was some kind of private investigator. It felt like he might be good at that.
There was a half-empty duffle bag tossed in the corner of the room and a pile of rumpled clothes strewn across the top of the dresser.
Dean paused to admire himself again in the flyblown mirror over the dresser, then started digging through the pockets of the dirty clothes, looking for anything else that might help him figure out what the hell was going on.
For whatever reason, he didn't seem inclined to panic at the fact that he really had no idea who he was and no memories of his life before he woke up this morning. He studied his eyes in the mirror, but he saw no shadows there, no hints of emotional trauma. There were no signs of physical trauma on his body, either, so he had no clue as to what might have precipitated what he assumed was the sudden onset of amnesia.
Oh, god, unless he had the sort of amnesia that started again every day, the short-term kind which meant he wouldn't remember things from one day to the next. That would suck.
No, he was sure he'd seen a movie about that once, so that had to mean he didn't have that kind of memory loss, or he wouldn't remember the movie.
Right?
It made his head hurt to think about it, so he put it aside in favor of going through the few possessions he could find scattered around the room.
Aaaand there was a laptop. Jackpot.
Once he booted it up, he started poking around in the bookmarks. That might give him some insight as to what he was into.
Oh. Apparently he was into porn.
Anime porn.
He clicked on a couple of links, but after watching a few clips, decided he really didn't see the appeal.
There were also bookmarks for a handful of sites that dealt with the occult; supernatural beings like vampires and werewolves, and something called a wendigo.
Seriously?
The Ghostfacers site was interesting, though. Those guys seemed pretty cool.
Huh.
Except for the porn, it was an oddly impersonal computer. There weren't emails from family and friends, just a lot of spam for penile enhancing drugs, which Dean was happy to say he didn't need.
He'd checked.
There was nothing there to contradict his hunch that his name was John Bonham, at least.
He was a little disturbed at the number of whiskey bottles stashed in the bottom of the duffle bag, but he shrugged and used one of them to fill up the battered silver flask he found in his jacket pocket.
The knife under the bed pillow and the pearl-handled revolver tucked under the pile of dirty clothes on the dresser gave him pause, though.
He searched the room thoroughly, but he didn't find a cell phone, which seemed strange. Surely he had a phone.
Hunger finally drove him out of the motel. There were a couple of hundred dollars in his wallet, mostly small bills, so he tucked the wallet in his pocket and headed out in search of lunch.
He walked until he found a diner situated a couple of blocks from the motel and spent a pleasant hour over pancakes and coffee, flirting half-heartedly with the waitress and hoping a memory or two would pop back into his head if he didn't think very hard.
The day turned out to be pretty boring. Not knowing who he was made it difficult for him to figure out what to do with himself. Having nothing specific to do made him restless, made his skin itch with the irritation of not having a task or a purpose.
He finally gave in to curiosity and ended up losing several hours to the dubious charms of animated characters fucking. It really made him wonder about himself. That was some fucked up shit right there.
Apparently he hadn't gotten much sleep the night before, because he found his eyelids drooping not long after the sun dipped below the trees on the far side of the road facing the motel.
Shrugging, he figured he might as well call it a night. He wasn't sure what to do with the evening, anyway. Maybe whatever it was he liked to do for fun would come back to him after a good night's sleep.
Dean looks down into brown eyes filled with pain. There's fear there, too, and determination. Tears clog his throat, but he swallows them and drops a soft kiss on the girl's forehead, then places an equally tender kiss on her lips. They tremble under his.
The dark-haired woman sitting next to the girl, holding her in a mother's embrace, gives him a nod and a grim smile.
They're both covered in blood. Dean thinks it's the girl's blood, but he can't be sure. Their hands are clasped together, clutching some kind of triggering device.
Dean turns and walks away, not knowing why, only knowing that it's one of the hardest things he's ever done. Every step seems to take him toward something unspeakable.
"Dean." He turns. The blonde girl is pale as death, and the older woman's grip tightens around her shoulders. "Kick it in the ass."
Dean nods and walks out the door, every fiber of his being fighting to turn back. As he goes, he realizes there's someone else with him, someone at his back, but he can't get a sense of who it is.
There's heat and noise, and he's filled with overwhelming grief.
Dean woke up gasping, a name on his lips that he couldn’t recall, no matter how hard he tried.
His head pounded, and his temples throbbed. He wondered if that was a good thing. Maybe a headache this bad was his memory coming back.
There were tears on his face for the woman and the girl in his dream, and he swiped at them with the back of his hand.
The woman had called him Dean. Was that his real name? It didn't seem terribly important this morning, in the face of such grief, whether he had a cool name or not.
He wondered again about the knife he found under his pillow, and the gun. Was he some kind of criminal? Who were those women, and why had they died?
Did he kill them? Had he been responsible in some way?
Dean tried to wash away the feelings of unease in the shower, then dressed in a pair of jeans he found on the floor. There were car keys in the pocket, keys he hadn't seen yesterday.
Taking a deep breath and feeling a lot less confident than he had on setting out yesterday, Dean headed out to find his car.
Closing the motel room door behind him, he surveyed the parking lot, looking for a - he glanced down at the keys in his hand - some kind of Chevy. There was a sweet black Impala parked close to the room, and he knew the minute he laid eyes on the car that she was his.
He made a decision before he even realized it, and turning around, he went back inside the room and gathered up his belongings, tossing them into the back seat of the car.
There was no reason he could think of to stay here. He could get breakfast on the road.
The highway beckoned to him, a long black ribbon shimmering in the morning sun. It called to Dean, and as he slid into the driver's seat of the Impala, he felt a sense of home steal over him.
He peeled out of the motel parking lot and set off to figure out who the hell he was.
*
"There's a lot of different kinds of fairies, Sam. Leprechaun's, Red Caps, little twinkling naked ladies -"
"I know, Bobby. I'm the one who made that leprechaun count the salt, remember?" Sam sighed. "I just feel like if I knew what kind of fairy it was, I could figure out where it sent Dean."
"Yeah, I know." It was Bobby's turn to sigh. "Let me see what I can find out. Tell me again exactly what she said."
Sam repeated the words he'd heard before Dean vanished.
"'Only the one who shares your soul can bring you back to yourself?'" Bobby looked thoughtful. "Soul mates? The lore's not real clear on if there's even such a thing, really."
Shrugging, Sam said, "Ash mentioned soul mates when Dean and I were in Heaven that one time."
"'In Heaven that one time,'" Bobby said, shaking his head, no doubt at the absurdity of their lives. "Well, Ash would know these days." He paused, then looked up at Sam from under the brim of his hat. "Any idea who Dean's soul mate might be?" he asked, sounding so disinterested that Sam's suspicions were immediately aroused.
"Someone with bad taste in sandwiches and who likes big tits, hair metal, and cheap booze?" Sam said, hazarding a wild guess.
Bobby stared at him with something like pity.
"What?" Sam said defensively.
"You ain't exactly describing yourself there, Sam." What was that supposed to mean? Why was Bobby looking at him like that, like he was waiting for Sam to…catch on.
Really?
"Wait, what? No, Bobby." Sam tried to wrap his head around the idea of being Dean's soul mate. "That can't be right."
"Makes perfect sense to me. You boys've been through a lot together. Managed to get a lot done together, too. Seems to me there could be a reason for that."
"Really?" Huh. "Soul mates?"
"You got any better ideas?"
"I guess not." Sam shook his head. Soul mates? Him and Dean?
"Well, let's get busy," Bobby said, as if he hadn't just turned Sam's worldview upside-down. "This ain't gonna figure itself out. And I got a distinct disadvantage here, being a ghost and all."
"Right, sorry." Sam felt bad. Sometimes he forgot about that part. "Hey, that reminds me. How are you even here? Dean has the flask, not me."
"Beats me. But I am, so let's get to figuring this shit out."
2. I know you, the gleam in your eye is so familiar a gleam...
When Dean stopped at another cheap motel for the night, he poked around in the trunk of the car before he went in, hoping to find some clean clothes. He might not know his real name, but he did know Laundromats weren't his favorite places to spend his time.
It was probably just as well he hadn't thought to look in there before he set out on the road, otherwise he might have ended up back in that lumpy bed, huddled under the covers.
The trunk was full of weapons and weird shit, like crucifixes and dream catchers and - what the hell? A folded-up trench coat that had seen better days.
Was he some kind of Satanist?
Or maybe a serial killer?
Neither of those options sounded good. Dean slammed the trunk lid down in a hurry and sent a quick glance around the parking lot to make sure he was alone out there.
It wouldn't do for anyone else to see his trunk full of deadly weapons.
Christ, what the fuck was that all about anyway?
The only sound is the crackling of a fire. Dean's deep in a forest of some kind, surrounded by flames.
No, not surrounded. The flames are in front of him, and at first Dean thinks it's a pile of wood burning. But there's a body on top, wrapped in a sheet.
A combination of guilt, grief and fear almost brings Dean to his knees, but he can't give in to it. There's someone else there with him, someone who needs him.
Dean has no idea who it is, but he can feel grief emanating from him, grief mixed with guilt, just like Dean.
When the flames die down, when the body is consumed, Dean looks at the person standing beside him.
He's tall, with dark brown hair half-covering his eyes. He stares at Dean with such faith, so much confidence, in spite of the grief and fear on his face, that Dean has to turn away.
It took Dean the better part of a day to work his way out from under the miasma of really bad feelings that came on the heels of that last dream.
He didn't know whose body had burned, he just knew that it had been someone it hurt to lose, and that the tall guy with him was someone important.
The sense of urgency about figuring out who he was and what the hell was going on was growing, crawling under his skin, making his hands shake a little.
Dean pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, hefting it in his hand, unsure.
He had discovered it sitting in the glove box when he found the Impala, along with another one in the trunk, but he'd been putting off calling anyone.
He had no idea what to say. "Hey, it's Dean, do you know who I am? What can you tell me about myself?" was the best he'd come up with so far.
He'd looked at the numbers and the names on the contact lists more times than he could count, but so far he hadn't managed to hit send.
He wasn't sure what he was afraid to find out.
But finally he snorted in disgust at himself and randomly hit a name on the phone that had been in the trunk of the car. It looked older than the others and seemed like a good place to start.
Hey, this is Ellen. If I'm not answering and you need to get a hold of me, call my daughter Jo. If you don't know her number, I probably don't want to talk to you anyway.
Dean cleared his throat. "Hey, Ellen, this is Dean." He had no idea what to say next. "If you get a chance, call me. Um, thanks."
Ellen's voice sounded familiar, but Dean couldn't quite place it. He must know her, if her name was in his phone, but the voice sounded like something he'd heard recently, not just something he may or may not remember. Shrugging, he scrolled down to the name Jo.
This is Jo. If I'm not answering and you know my mom's number, call her.
Great. Dean rolled his eyes. That was helpful.
There wasn't much else Dean could do but leave another message.
An hour and several glasses of whisky later, Dean had called every name in both phones, with the same results. Not one person picked up.
He didn't know what he'd expected, but it wasn't that.
Ellen. Jo. Bobby. Rufus. Frank. Garth. Richie. Sam.
It was as if he were calling a bunch of ghosts.
This is Sam. Leave a message.
That voice in particular got under his skin, an itch he couldn't figure out how to scratch. It made him restless, unable to sit still, making him jump up and pace around the small motel room until he thought he would lose his mind.
Except that he already had lost it, and wasn't that the problem here?
And then it hit him - where he'd heard Ellen's voice before.
He'd heard it in his dream, the one with the two women and the explosion.
The older woman who said Kick it in the ass right before Dean walked away - it was her voice in the message.
He bet the young blonde girl was Jo.
Had been Jo, if his dream was actually a memory.
Had he really just left two women to die?
The walls of the motel room suddenly felt like they were closing in, and Dean had to get out of there.
Luckily, there was a bar right down the street, conveniently open to facilitate the obliterating of his thought processes.
He stumbled in hours later, drunk, and face-planted on the bed.
Dean moves around a sunny kitchen, a frying pan in his hand. It's full of scrambled eggs, yellow and fluffy, and he divides them onto three plates.
A young boy grabs the plates and arranges them on a table that's already set for three. He smiles up at Dean, and his eyes are full of trust and love.
A woman with long dark hair reaches around Dean to grab the saltshaker, and she runs her hand over the small of his back as she leans. Her touch is warm, familiar and intimate.
Surrounded by smiles, Dean eats his eggs. They taste like sawdust, and he can barely get them down. The rightness of being here with these people feels more wrong than anything he can imagine, and he's overcome with a wave of grief that's as excruciating as it is unexpected.
*
"Cas, what -" Sam stared at the angel standing in front of him. "What are you doing here? I thought - is Meg -"
"Sam, your questions are incomplete and therefore unanswerable. What is it you wish to know?" He looked away. "And Meg is...unhappy that I am here."
"How are you here?" Sam didn't give a fuck what Meg was unhappy about, really.
"Really? You do not wish to know where Dean is?"
"Are you saying you know?"
"I know how to help you find him, yes."
"Does it involve board games? We don't have to play Monopoly or something, do we?" Sam asked, in an attempt to gauge Cas's current state of mind. You never knew, with Cas.
Cas gave a small, self-deprecating smile at that. "No, no games. Actually, I think Bobby can find him for you." He paused, then said, "And then you're going to have to kiss him."
"Excuse me? Kiss who? Bobby?" Sam looked at Cas in horror.
"No, Dean, of course. When you find him, that's how you'll have to wake him up."
"Wake him up?" Sam asked in alarm, ignoring the part about the kiss for the moment. "Is he, what, in a coma or something?"
"No, he is conscious."
"Then what -"
"His memory, Sam," Cas said, almost sounding patient. "You'll have to kiss him in order to make him remember." His face lit up. "I think you will enjoy that, am I right?"
Sam was rendered completely speechless by both Cas's words and the brightness of his smile.
"I'm curious as to whether it will be for the first time."
"Please stop talking," Sam begged.
Cas ignored him. "And Sam - of course you and Dean are soul mates. I thought you knew that. I would have told you before had you asked." Cas looked at him reprovingly.
"I - oh, god, I -"
Cas beamed at Sam again, looking far more pleased with himself than Sam thought he had any right to be.
3. Yet I know it's true, that visions are seldom all they seem...
Dean stumbled through the next day feeling hollow, like all his organs had been scooped out. It felt familiar, as if sometime in his life he'd actually had all of his organs scooped out.
The feeling of loss was profound, and it never left him. It became harder and harder to drag himself through the days, and he finally stopped trying.
He crashed for almost a week at a small motel on the outskirts of Cincinnati, making good use of the stockpile of cheap whisky he'd woken up to.
But every time he passed out, he dreamed.
His feet are wet. He's standing in the shallows of a small lake, and as he watches, water ripples out from the center, turning black as it rolls in a circular movement toward the shore.
At the center is a man in a trench coat, and Dean watches in horror as the man sinks beneath the surface of the black water.
Dean is angry, and he yells across the water, tries to plunge into the inky blackness to get to the man.
Someone stops him, someone holds him in a tight grip, and Dean wants to fight, but now all of his awareness is focused on the heat of that grip, and he leans back against a solid chest.
"Dean, don't," a voice murmurs, and Dean turns, looks up at the face behind him. It's filled with compassion, and Dean pulls away.
"Who are you?"
*
Sam didn't know if he could do it.
Well, obviously he had to do it. He could kiss Dean and hope that when he woke up, or got his memory back, or whatever was going to happen, that maybe Dean would then forget that Sam had kissed him.
Because there was no way this was going to end well. Sam was perfectly happy to kiss Dean, but there was no universe in which Dean would be perfectly happy to kiss Sam.
Unless he wasn't giving Dean enough credit. Maybe Dean would look at it the same way Sam did - that their lives were so damn bizarre, and that they'd been through so much at this point, that one little kiss would barely be a blip on the radar.
Sam sighed and rolled over, punching his pillow in a fruitless attempt to get it to actually support his head. It wasn't like he had a choice here. Dean had forgiven a lot over the years, Sam would just have to have faith that he'd get over this, too.
*
4. But if I know you, I know what you'll do...
When Dean woke up, he was consumed with the tall man's face, with the tenderness and love he saw there. Maybe he should move, get up and get in the car and go look for whoever this guy was.
He felt like if he could just find him, everything would be all right.
But sleep pulled him under again, making him languid and slow. His limbs became heavy, weighed him down and kept him there.
Dean and the tall guy stand side by side next to a bed in a busy Emergency Room. There's a man in the bed, an older man with blood on his face.
They watch as the man opens his eyes and tells them goodbye.
A heart monitor begins to beep frantically and Dean realizes it's attached to the older man. The glowing green line is flat, no signs of life to be teased out of indecipherable curves and spikes.
Dean is angry, so angry, and he lashes out at the only person who seems safe, who won't leave no matter what Dean does.
"Dean, we still have each other," the tall guy says.
"Fuck you," Dean answers.
With every dream the constant presence of the man at Dean's side, at his back, became stronger. Dean didn't know his name, had no idea who he was, but that was okay.
Dean didn't actually know who he was himself, so what did it matter what the guy's name was? All he knew is that he needed to find him.
He needed to feel safe.
Dean runs, his feet slipping in thick mud. He knows he won't get there in time, and that knowledge is a terrible weight.
The man in the distance gets closer and closer. "Dean!" he calls, desperate, the rain plastering his long hair to his face.
And then out of the rain comes another figure, up behind the man Dean is so desperate to reach. He plunges a knife into the man's back and is gone as quickly as he came.
By the time the tall man dies in Dean's arms, Dean's throat is raw from his screams.
Dean sat bolt upright in bed, gasping. He had to go. He had to go now, had to get in his car and drive until he found the man from his dreams.
Unless he really was dead. Oh, god, don't let him be dead.
The sense of urgency was all-consuming, propelling him out of bed and into action for the first time in days.
He had the presence of mind to pack, to shove his belongings into the back seat of the car, but after that there was only room for thoughts of move, now!
He didn't know which direction to go, but that hardly mattered. What did matter was only that he go.
*
"Concentrate, Bobby," Sam said. "Think about the flask."
"I am, dammit," Bobby snapped. "Shut up for five minutes and this might actually work."
Bobby closed his eyes and scrunched up his face. He flickered in and out a few times and then vanished. It didn't weird Sam out nearly as much as it probably should have.
It only took a few minutes for Bobby to flicker back into view. He seemed a little winded, a little unsteady on his feet, and Sam wondered how much of a toll apparating, for want of a better word, took on a ghost.
"Found him," Bobby said. "But he's on the move, so you'd better get going. He's heading for Cleveland, god only knows why. I don't think he's going anywhere with any purpose in mind, he's just moving to be moving." Bobby frowned. "He's pretty freaked out."
"Did he see you?"
"No, ya idjit. I do have some idea of how to be stealthy."
"Right. Okay, thanks Bobby."
"Did Cas say what you have to do when you find him?"
Sam hesitated, then thought what the hell. Of all the weird shit in all their lives - and deaths - this was hardly the worst thing he'd had to do.
"I have to kiss him."
Bobby looked at him blankly for a second, then he snorted. "Of course you do.
5. You'll love me at once, the way you did once upon a dream.
"Dean? Dean, is that you?" Someone tapped Dean on the shoulder and Dean jumped about a foot in the air. He was disappointed in himself. For someone who had a badass stash of weapons in the trunk of his car, he really didn't think he should be so easy to sneak up on.
But he'd just spent a day driving like a bat out of hell and finding himself in Cleveland at the end of it, so maybe he couldn't be held accountable for being so jumpy.
"Whoa," said a familiar voice, warm with amusement and something that sounded like relief. "Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."
"I wasn't scared," Dean said, turning and crossing his arms over his chest. "Do I know you, pal?" He looked up…and up, at smiling hazel eyes, brown hair that was way too long, dorky sideburns, and dimples.
Dean felt like he'd been kicked in the chest. It was him, the guy from his dreams. The one he'd thought had died.
"You're not dead," he blurted.
"Um, no I'm not," the guy said. "Not right now, anyway."
"What the hell does that mean?" Dean demanded. Then he waved his hand. "Never mind, I don't care. I'm just so happy to see you. Who the hell are you?"
The guy laughed, looking delighted. "Sam. I'm Sam."
"Sam," Dean said, liking the way the name felt on his tongue, as if it had always belonged there.
"I thought you'd be, like, asleep or something. Cas said -" he broke off. "It doesn't matter. Listen, this is gonna sound weird, but - um, do you have a room or someplace we can go? We need to talk."
Dean nodded without hesitation. There was something about this guy - about Sam - that made him feel safer than he'd felt since he woke up thinking he was John Bonham. He was just so relieved that he couldn't stop smiling.
It was a good feeling. So good, in fact, that when they were in his room and Sam shut the door, leaning against it and looking at Dean with such fondness on his face, Dean didn't even think to protest when the next thing he knew, Sam had his fists in Dean's shirt, tugging him closer.
"Just go with it, okay?" Sam said. "Trust me."
Before Dean could do more than nod, Sam lowered his head and caught Dean's lips in a gentle kiss. There was nothing tentative about it, but it was gentle and full of love.
Dean gasped against Sam's mouth. "Sam," he said. "Sammy."
It was the kiss of a lifetime. It woke things in Dean far beyond his memory. As Sam finally pulled back, breaking the kiss, Dean knew only that it may have been love's first kiss, but no way in hell was it going to be the last.
They stood there, Sam's hands on Dean's shoulders feeling like they were never going to let him go, Dean gripping Sam's hips tight enough that his fingers cramped.
They grinned idiotically at each other, until Dean regained some small sense of dignity and said, "Dude."
That only made Sam smile more widely, and Dean found himself staring at Sam's dimples as if he'd never seen them before. He made a show of pushing Sam away, but without actually letting go of him.
He didn't know if he'd ever let go of him again.
"Was that a fairy who did this?" he asked, mock-scowling up at Sam.
Sam nodded. "Bobby thinks so."
At Bobby's name, Dean's chest tightened. "I dreamed about him, about that day…I had a lot of dreams, actually."
"Dreams about what?"
Dean shook his head. "Not important, not anymore." He punched Sam in the shoulder. "I told you once before, Sam. You've gotta fight the fairies."
Sam snorted and shook his head. "I'll remember that next time," he said, his lips quirked up in that fondly indulgent smile that Dean would never in a million years admit was his favorite of Sam's smiles.
"There better not be a next time, Sammy," Dean said darkly. "I mean it. That was some fucked up shit."
"Tell me about it, dude." Sam brightened. "But hey, are you sure you remember everything there is to remember?" Dean blinked at him. "I mean, if you're not sure, maybe I'd better kiss you again." He waited hopefully.
"Well." Dean thought about it. "I can't remember what I had for lunch last Wednesday." He pointed to his mouth and grinned up at Sam. "Here, plant one on me, see if it comes back to me."
So Sam did.
When they broke apart a second time, Dean leaned his forehead on Sam's shoulder until he caught his breath long enough to say, "I think it was a cheeseburger."