Dusted Kaleidoscope (Slash, Adult)
Title: Dusted Kaleidoscope
Rating: Adult
Category: Slash (Wincest) oneshot
Word Count: 7782
Characters: Dean/Sam
Spoilers: “In My Time of Dying”
Summary: Sam and Dean go back and remember more than just their father.
Warnings: Brother incest
Author’s Notes: A fic of this length is not always easy to work with, which is why I owe so much to two people. Thanks to the first person-she knows who she is-who listened to me rant and who read this patiently so that this could sorted out into a something. Thank you as well to the amazing drvsilla who not only answered questions and beta’d but also overthought through more than just words with me. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Crossposted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
Sam wakes to the touch of Dean’s hand on his ankle. Dean’s voice, hushed and rough around the edges, is calling him.
“Hey? Sam, you awake yet?”
When Sam opens his eyes, he sees that the room is still dark. He rubs his right eye with the heel of his hand and rolls over in the direction of the digital clock beside his bed. Shoving aside some books in front of the display, he is able to see that the cubed red numbers tell him that it’s a few minutes past four-thirty in the morning.
“Sam?” Dean says again, and although Sam cannot see his brother, he feels his weight sink onto the bed beside his feet. Dean smells like something greasy, like bacon pulled from Bobby’s freezer and reheated in the microwave.
“What do you want?” Sam’s voice is thick and unsteady, and his tongue is bitter with the taste of too early morning. His shoulder hurts, and he thinks he must have slept on it wrong; they haven’t been hunting enough in the last month for him to have the chance to injure it.
“I’m going away. Gotta get out of here. Wanted to know if you were going to come along.”
“How long?” He doesn’t contemplate not going with Dean. The chance for him to refuse the offer and allow Dean to leave him behind never even crosses his mind.
“Don’t know. Until I’m finished?” Dean replies, and there’s a soft swish of leather as he shrugs his shoulders. He sighs heavily, scratches the back of his head. “It could be a month, could be a year…”
“No,” Sam answers to stop Dean from talking, and he pulls the twisted blankets away from his legs. The cold air slaps his flushed skin, and he almost recoils back into the comfort of his bed, almost tells Dean to go on the trip without him. “How long till you want to leave?”
“Oh. Uh, as soon as you’re ready. The car’s packed. I’m good to go. Just waiting on you.”
Sam nods and rubs his hands across his face; his skin feels dry and prickled. “Okay…okay,” he repeats. “Just let me get, get a shower and packed…”
Dean pats him on the shoulder, and Sam wonders how Dean can see him in the darkness when Sam can’t see anything. “I’ll be waiting in the car whenever you’re ready.”
Sam hears Dean’s distinctive rhythmic footsteps, followed by the sound of the car door opening and then the final click of it shutting. He sits alone in the silence for a long moment before finally reaching over to turn on the lamp beside his bed to get ready. The light splits the darkness and is instantly blinding.
- - - - -
Sam is the one who leaves the note for Bobby to tell that they’re leaving. He scribbles something about needing to move on and thanks for everything, we’ll keep in touch and here’s our cell numbers in case you hear anything. Shifting his duffel bag on his shoulder, Sam slips the note under the coffee maker. Bobby’s gone on his own business but when he returns, it’ll be the first place he’ll go.
Outside, the sky is gray and hazy, and the air is wet with cold mist. On the ground, the leaves and grass are covered in a crystal armor of brittle frost. Dean leans against the Impala with his legs crossed and hands deep in his coat pockets. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept all night, but he doesn’t seem to let it bother him.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Sam asks, as Dean takes Sam’s bags and throws them into the opened trunk.
“Nope.” Dean’s answer is guttural and final.
Sam sighs. He still feels groggy, and he knows that asking Dean where they’re going and what they’ll do once they get there will be just as pointless as his first question. So, Sam merely slides into the Impala, familiar padding and leather at his back.
“Sleep,” Dean orders and hands Sam a pillow that he most likely swiped from Bobby.
“We’re not coming back, are we?” Sam asks, looking out the window. Sam’s hot breath forms a small, foggy cloud when he speaks. He folds the pillow in half and props it against the glass. The air in the car is bitterly cold, the engine not yet warm enough to produce heat, and frost crawls up the outside of the window.
Dean eases out of the driveway and gravel pops beneath the tires. “No. Hadn’t planned on it, anyway. We might, but…” He checks to see if the road is clear before he turns. “No, probably not.”
Sam yawns and closes his eyes. “Okay. That’s what I thought.”
- - - - -
“This is about a hunt, isn’t it?”
They’re eating off-brand Cheerios out of today’s motel’s coffee mugs. The news is on in the background, and the voice of the world is a low hum around them.
“Maybe,” Dean replies, shrugging.
“What’s the big secret?”
Dean chews on his cereal, and two milk droplets slide off his chin and onto the bed where they sit Indian style. They face each other, but Dean has his back to the television and Sam can see the newscaster talking about things that barely seem to affect the two of them.
“Do you remember the last time we ate breakfast at a table?” Dean asks suddenly. The random question catches Sam off guard, and his spoon hovers halfway between the cup and his mouth.
“Bobby’s?”
“No. Well, yeah. Kind of. But, no. Like a normal table. We ate off Bobby’s desk in his office.” Dean’s spoon clinks against the side of his mug as he fishes for the few remaining cereal pieces.
“Since when do you care about normal?” Sam’s disbelieving laugh is short and scratchy.
“I don’t. But I was just thinking. That’s all. Can’t a guy make an observation?”
Sam rolls his eyes as the newscasters nod and smile to one another at their long desk. “Sure. Observe away, Sherlock.”
They fall back into silence. The forecast is calling for rain later this week. They’ll be well out of state by then.
“So what are we hunting?” Sam asks.
Dean lifts his mug and drinks the remaining milk leftover from his cereal. His eyes crinkle in a smile, and he doesn’t answer.
- - - - -
They pass the whiskey bottle back and forth, sit on the hood of the Impala somewhere near the Canadian border and the Rockies. The earth around them is jagged and spiked, dotted with rare tufts of grass and unknown vegetation, and the last building they passed was over two hours ago.
“I think I’m drunk,” Sam laughs. “Are you?”
“Give me back the bottle,” Dean replies, “and I’ll let you know.” He extends his hand, and when Sam moves forward to give him the whiskey back, Dean leans into him. The kiss is not as unexpected as it should be.
Dean keeps one hand on the glass bottle, fingers curling over Sam’s, and the other tightens itself in the fabric of Sam’s shirt near his neck. “Yeah,” Dean hisses, parting his lips.
Sam’s hands find Dean’s body, warm and strong, and even though it’s been months since they’ve done this-before Bobby’s, before the hospital and the accident, before Dad and the demon-Sam’s fingers have Dean memorized. One hand curves around the back of Dean’s neck, and the other slides its way up Dean’s thigh, starting at his bent knee, thumb trailing along the inside seam of denim.
Suddenly, Dean stops. Stops moving and pulls back sharply. In the silver illumination of the night, his eyes are full and his face is flushed. They sit, staring at each other, until Dean slides off the car and walks away with his hands laced behind his head, arms bent like wings.
Sam stays sitting on the hood of the car and watches his brother move into the depths of the night. His breath rattles in his lungs, and he brings a hand to wipe away the taste of Dean at his lips.
- - - - -
They stop at a river that empties into one of the Great Lakes. Dean says it’s to stretch his legs. Sam knows it’s not.
They wander aimlessly along the gravel-shored river, and occasionally, Dean picks up a rock here and there and tosses it into the rushing water. “Dad took us fishing here,” he says, and Sam stops walking to stare at him.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. You just don’t remember. You were only two, anyway.”
Sam shakes his head. He wonders if that is the truth for them being here or if Dean is lying to cover up the real reason. “Dad never did stuff like that.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks, looking back over his shoulder at Sam. He rolls a black rock in his hand as he talks. “We actually caught fish that day. I caught two, you caught five, but only because Dad helped you. We ate the fish for dinner, and you were mad because we didn’t have any ketchup.”
Sam stops walking and sinks down against an aged maple tree where curved mushrooms climb up the side and latch into its bark. Dean remains standing and watching the river twist its way through forest. He stares at it so intently, as if he will be able to see the end of its path.
- - - - -
At the southern fair, Sam buys blue cotton candy and stands back in the crowd as Dean shoots bottles with a cheaply made BB-gun. He wins the big stuffed bear, of course, and gives it away to some passing girl with a black t-shirt and pink shoelaces.
“Just for you, baby,” Dean grins.
The girl giggles, stands on tiptoe to whisper something in his ear that Sam can’t hear, and then pecks him quickly on the cheek. She turns away into the crowd with her friends. Sam watches the fuzzy tops of the bear’s ears bob on her shoulders until he can see them no longer.
Dean comes forward, eyes still in the direction of the girl. “Too bad we can’t win any money. I’d clean this place out.” He smiles, pinches off a piece of the cotton candy and leans his head back, tongue extended. After he catches the spun sugar in his mouth, he licks his lips and leaves a smear of blue at the corners.
“Get your own,” Sam snaps, pulling the cotton candy away.
Dean doesn’t seem to hear him because he asks, “Wanna ride the Scrambler?”
Sam raises an eyebrow questionably. “You’re how old?”
“Asks the man eating cotton candy,” Dean points out, then continues before Sam can reply. “It was either that or the bumper cars, but I know your big ass won’t fit in them, so it’s gotta be the Scrambler.”
They ride the Scrambler twice; it hurtles them around so fast that the wind whistles in Sam’s ears, and by the end of the second time around, Sam is clutching his stomach. “I don’t think I should’ve eaten all that cotton candy,” he moans, tasting bile in the back of his throat when his feet finally touch solid ground.
Dean pats him on the shoulder. “Go lay down in the car. I’ll be there in a bit.”
Nodding sickly, Sam makes his way to the Impala. He’s about halfway there when he realizes Dean still has the keys. For a moment, he debates waiting outside the car, but the grass is wet with heavy dew and the evening air is growing a fresh biting chill. So, reluctantly, he turns away from the car and begins to enter the midway, looking for Dean.
After nearly ten minutes of searching, Sam is ready to return to the car before he vomits in front of everyone. When he stops at the restrooms to get a drink of water from the fountain, he hears the soft giggle of a girl. Instinctively, he turns his head in that direction, and the first thing he sees in the shadows are pink shoelaces.
But, the longer he stares, the more he sees. Leaning against the wall, Dean has one hand up the girl’s shirt, palm cupped around one of her small breasts. She has a hand down his unzipped pants, and his hips are jerking in short, little thrusts against her. When she kisses him, she stands on pink-laced tiptoes to run her tongue along the edges of his lips.
Sam kicks a nearby garbage can so hard his toe stings, and he storms back to the car. “Fuck this,” he growls. His nausea has vanished, but another rancid taste that he won’t acknowledge as jealousy sweeps across his insides.
- - - - -
They don’t speak to each other for three days. Actually, Sam is the one who doesn’t speak for those days. Dean merely stopped trying after the first night.
Finally, on the third day, Sam snaps. Dean is watching TV and drinking beer from a half finished six-pack while Sam leafs through their father’s journal. The more Sam reads, the angrier he gets until he finally gives into the words that have been sitting on his tongue for three days.
“Is it because Dad died that you have to pretend like anything we did-were-never happened?”
From the bed, Dean looks up, expression blank. His eyes flicker from the opened journal to Sam’s twisted face. When he doesn’t answer right away, Sam slams the journal shut and storms over to him.
“Is that it?”
“No.”
“Then what? Fuck. Just, goddamit, Dean, if you had wanted a cheap handjob from some girl, we could’ve stayed at Bobby’s-”
“You watched me?”
“-but you had to go and drag me across the entire country. And for what? What the fuck is all of this?”
“None of your goddamn business, all right?”
“No. You brought me here-”
“You agreed to come,” Dean spits, rising to his feet. The TV remote slides off his lap and bounces once on the mattress.
“What do you want, Dean? What do you want? You want me? I’ve been here the whole fucking time. You kiss me, but then-that girl at the fair…”
“The kiss? Up near Canada?” Dean laughs derisively. His upper lip curls in a sneer as he speaks. “It meant nothing. We were both smashed. Fuck. Quit being such a pussy. It was the whiskey and that’s all.”
“Just shut up the fuck up. You know that wasn’t it.”
“Yeah?” Dean raises an eyebrow, spreads his arms wide, making him open and available, bigger than before like a frightened dog raising the hairs on the back of its neck. “What if it was something else? Doesn’t change anything, does it? Dad’s still dead-”
“This is about Dad.”
“Fuck you,” Dean growls. He grabs his coat from the back of a chair, which wobbles after his brutal snatch. “Don’t wait up, asshole.”
The door slams and the chair falls to the linoleum, and Sam is left alone in the motel room. He punches the wall harder than he intends and then swears when his knuckles start to bleed.
He doesn’t hate Dean. He knows that. But, he is already angry over Dean’s continuing denial of their relationship, then letting him back in for a momentary kiss. He is also frustrated with Dean’s search for something that clearly has to do with their father, but that Dean won’t discuss.
Sam sucks one of his bleeding knuckles, presses it to the roof of his mouth with his tongue and lets the salty blood fill his mouth. He goes to bed, but stays awake all night waiting for Dean, who comes back after three reeking of cigarettes and booze.
The next morning, Sam buys breakfast at the nearest gas station. He pauses in the checkout line, gets a red bottle of aspirin for his hand and the hangover he assumes Dean has. They never quite apologize with words. Sam says he’s sorry by offering Dean a glass of water and small white pills. Dean says he’s sorry by accepting them.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, swallows with his head tilt back. Then he looks up at Sam. “What happened to your hand?”
Sam shrugs. “Wall.”
Dean nods, like he understands exactly what Sam means. He takes a donut from the open bag on the nightstand between them. “Is it broken?”
“Nope.”
“Good.” Dean bites the donut, chews, and doesn’t notice the swab of chocolate frosting on the corners of his lips. “That’s good.”
- - - - -
The yellow house next to the city’s playground is for sale now. The flowers in the garden have turned to weeds, and there is a little boy’s handprint in the cement walkway. Sam knows that, no matter how hard he might try, his hand will never fit into such a childish indentation again. It has been one year too many since he was so small.
Sam stands on the lawn, hands in his pockets as Dean rings the doorbell. After several minutes of no answer, he peers in one of the front windows, wiping filth from the glass and craning his neck down. “Nobody lives here,” Dean says, turning to face Sam.
“I could’ve told you that the minute we pulled up.” The grass beneath Sam’s boots is brittle and brown, and dusty patches of naked ground are scattered throughout the dead lawn like a minefield. Everything about the area is dirty and forgotten.
Dean doesn’t reply and starts to walk around to the back of the house. Curious, Sam follows.
In the backyard, there is a large tree with branches mostly bare, dotted by a few dead leaves scarcely holding on. A child’s tire swing hangs by a rotting rope and creaks in the soft breeze. Two rusty pipes connect an unused clothesline.
Dean walks past the tree to the end of the yard. He stops and crouches to the ground where he pushes through the shaggy grass to reveal a carefully placed stone.
“What is it?” Sam asks, coming up behind him.
“Do you remember Beans?”
“What?” Sam laughs. Dean’s lost it, finally cracked under the grief and the stress of their lives. “What are you talking about?” He kneels down next to Dean, and the ground feels damp through his jeans.
“Your pet turtle,” Dean replies, spreading the blades of grass to show Sam the stone with crudely carved letters that read, BEANS.
Sam looks over at Dean, flabbergasted. His mouth opens and closes, and he makes a series of pinched, confused chokes.
“Best pet we ever had,” Dean muses, running his fingers over the letters that he helped Sam carve so many years ago.
Again, Sam laughs, only this time it’s a softer, sweeter, more forgiving sound. “Remember Dad’s face when we brought him home? I can’t believe he let us keep him.”
Dean smiles, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Yeah, well,” Dean continues, “you wouldn’t leave that turtle behind after you found him in the playground, and I sure as hell couldn’t leave you. I think Dad was just so damn surprised he couldn’t say no at first, then after that he didn’t mind so much.”
“I had forgotten Dad let us do that.” Sam’s eyebrows narrow at the memory. “Weird how I could remember him yelling at us about not allowing pets, but I couldn’t remember the exception he made for Beans.”
“Maybe you didn’t really know Dad all that well.”
Sam touches the stone and changes the subject, knows that Dean is right. “You know, Beans was the first thing I ever saw die.” When Dean lifts his head to look over, Sam continues uneasily, words spilling over each other awkwardly, “I mean, that I remember. Mom, I just, I guess…I don’t remember, and I…” He trails off, not sure what to say, realizing how utterly stupid and insensitive he must sound. “Mom and Dad aren’t turtles, Dean. I didn’t mean it like that. I…I know that.”
“Death’s still death.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
They kneel and say nothing more. Sam’s thoughts travel back to the baby turtle, the innocence they had rescuing Beans and coaxing him to eat split-open grapes, the kindness of his father now remembered. Traits they all had-once-before the world made them so hard.
- - - - -
Sam’s in the bathroom, awake before Dean in the early morning hours. The shower curtain is still wet from when Dean washed quickly last night after Sam went to bed. They had watched television together-cheap eighties flick with bad coloring and even worse plot-and ate takeout food warmed in the microwave.
In the shower, Sam scrubs his head with the shampoo they share. They share everything, it seems, but Dean manages to remain so distant and unwavering as if he can keep on denying the fact that they-them as brothers, lovers, so much more-happened not all that long ago.
There are small, dark curls on the surface of the soap when Sam picks it up. Dean’s pubic hairs are stuck to the side of the white bar. Only three or four, but enough to be noticed.
Sam imagines Dean jerking off, running the soap down the length of his cock, hitting the soft curls of hair gathered on the insides of his thighs and then coming back down to the ridge of the head. Against the back of Sam’s neck, the water suddenly seems hotter than before and heat rushes down his spine.
Casually, Sam rinses the hairs off the soap bar and watches them twirl in the water then disappear down the black mouth of the drain. After he finishes showering, he walks into the bedroom where Dean remains asleep.
The blankets have fallen down around Dean’s waist, exposing his naked back and arms. His skin glows golden in the sunrays peeking through the curtains. As Sam watches, he thinks, We were once more than brothers and now you act like everything we did never even happened.
Dean rolls over onto his other side, mumbles something in his sleep and pulls a wad of blankets back up to his shoulder.
I loved you, Sam thinks, did you know that? I loved you so much.
- - - - -
In the latest motel, two hundred and fifty miles from the last one, Sam finds Dean in the laundry room. It’s somewhere after midnight, not yet two, and Sam’s in his pajamas-flannel bottoms and baggy t-shirt-when he finds Dean.
“Dean?” Sam calls, and he has to speak louder than normal to be heard above the machines. “Why are you doing laundry? It’s the middle of the night.”
From his position seated on the rumbling dryer, Dean shrugs. He is dressed in his blue jeans and gray shirt with a smudge of dirt on the shoulder from earlier that day. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Sam walks over to Dean and stands in front of him. He rests his hands on Dean’s knees and watches his older brother flinch at the touch. “Look man, I don’t know what all of this is about. The trip, the places we’ve been going to. I get it’s about Dad, I get that, but Dean, that was then.” Dean keeps his eyes downcast, neck bent, as Sam talks. “But, whatever this is, whatever you’re trying to do, I’m not going anywhere, all right? You’ve got to trust me on that.”
Dean lifts his head and finally looks at Sam. “If you want an apology,” he whispers, and his voice can barely be heard above the rhythmic clanking of the dryer where buttons and zippers clink the metal, “you’re not going to get it. This is something I’ve got to do for me.”
Sam nods, comes closer and pushes Dean’s legs apart to stand between them and lean against the warmth of the machine. “That’s not what I want,” he says and brings one hand tentatively up to the side of Dean’s face. The skin is sandpaper rough, unshaven, and it scratches against Sam’s palm. Sam expects to be batted away like before, but instead Dean grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him forward. They surge into each other.
Seated on the dryer, Dean is taller than Sam, and he twists down into the kiss. He’s clutching Sam’s shirt, shoulders, fingers fisting in Sam’s hair. His hands seem to everywhere at once.
Sam slides one hand down the back of Dean’s jeans and touches bare skin, cupping the upper curve of ass with the tips of his fingers. With his free hand, Sam begins to work at the button on Dean’s jeans. When he finally pops the button through its denim hole and slides the zipper past its teeth, he reaches down into the jeans. Against his ear, Dean huffs out a curse but doesn’t stop mouthing wetly down Sam’s neck.
When Sam’s hand wraps around his cock, Dean groans, putting more of his weight against Sam. “I…” he whispers, budding protests rising to his lips.
“Shut up,” Sam hisses. “Just…just don’t. Go with it.” He doesn’t want Dean to stop, doesn’t want any of it to stop because he’s afraid that if Dean draws away again, this will never come back.
Sam pulls Dean’s dick free and jerks it a bit too roughly in eagerness. Keeping one hand on Dean’s ass and the other pumping in counter-rhythm to the tumbling dryer, Sam leans forward, resting his weight into Dean. He sighs at the warm vibrations and the feel of Dean’s breath against the curve of his neck.
Their approach to the verge is fast-almost too fast-and so good. Dean pulls back from Sam and hisses air quickly through gritted teeth. His hands are white knuckles on the edges of the dryer and a muscle in the side of his face twitches. He keeps his eyes slit open, watching, it seems, the way that Sam’s hand twists up to cover the pink, lipped head of his cock and then push it out again on the pull back down.
“Sam, don’t…” Dean begins.
Then Dean’s breath catches in a soft whimper as Sam quickens his strokes and whispers encouragements. Dean comes, cock pulsing in Sam’s hand, bitten lip and eyes pinched tightly shut.
Dean wraps his hand over Sam’s, holds so they both caress his cock, and he groans. He kicks the dryer hard enough to make the sound of clanging metal echo across the room. As his orgasm ends, Sam presses forward and kisses him.
They wipe their hands on Dean’s already dirty jeans. Dean tucks himself back into his pants and zips up with trembling fingers. He keeps swallowing as if he has a bad taste in his mouth.
“Don’t think you’re getting a thank you,” he grumbles, seeming to be ornery.
Sam laughs, smiles into Dean’s mouth when all Dean can do is kiss him again anyway.
- - - - -
When they drive past their old school, Sam is surprised to see that there are kids in the playground. Dean slows the car and pulls up alongside the curb. With the windows rolled down, they watch the children squeal and laugh. Little girls group together on the monkey bars, boys on the jungle gym. Sam points this out, and Dean shrugs. “I always liked the swings myself.”
The bell rings, and the children abandon their games and imagination. In packs of grubby fingers and untied sneakers, they run toward the building. They form neat lines as they change from pirates and robbers to kindergarteners and first graders then walk through open double doors where teachers smile down and count their heads.
“When I was in fourth grade,” Sam begins, then stops. Clears his throat and cracks his knuckles. “When I was in fourth grade, we had to do a report on who our hero was.”
“Yeah?” Dean’s biting at the edge of his thumb, not seeming to care, but even Sam knows the old cliché about deceiving appearances.
“Yeah. It took me-God-it took me days to decide between you and Dad.”
“You gonna tell me who you picked?”
Sam laughs, bows his head. His hair falls into his eyes and he lets it hang there, shielding his eyes. “Dude-do you really have to ask?” he replies.
Dean snorts and punches him on the shoulder.
“For a college boy, you sure are a moron sometimes. Who do you think made sure those things got in your backpack at night? Got put on the fridge and then in a box? As if we’d need them again.” He shrugs and smiles, but this time it reaches his eyes, so much further.
Sam blinks, turns back to the school and the playground. It’s empty now like he remembers when Dean and he would sit and wait for Dad to collect them. “Oh,” he breathes. Dean laughs, soft, and Sam smiles.
- - - - -
In the weeks that follow, they fall back into their old patterns. They piss with the door open and walk naked to the shower. Dean chews without closing his mouth and Sam leaves his hair in the sink to clog the drain. They fight and argue when they get lost, run out of gas or just because they need it. Sometimes they punch and throw the other to the ground where they spit and swear like angry cats.
Despite that-these old familiar patterns-they are not them. Not together. There is Sam and there is Dean. Sam wonders if Dean even remembers what it was like to be joined instead of divided.
Yet Sam believes this is progress. It’s all just a journey. Someday, maybe, this will be a distant memory. Just like everything else.
- - - - -
The old cabin has lost its porch and sags into the ground like a small, fat troll. The beams are black with age and grow spotty moss on the corners. Cattails form a boundary around the pond now covered by lily pads and duckweed. Under a bowing willow tree, Dean parks the Impala and says, “We’ll stay here for the night.”
“Wasn’t this the place we spent that one summer?” Sam asks, stepping out of the car and following Dean to the trunk. Dean unloads the duffel bags and hands them to Sam. The air smells of water and rotting leaves; it’s a comfortable, easy scent of the earth.
“Try more than one summer, Sammy,” Dean replies as he opens the door-unlocked because Dad never cared who came and went while they were gone-and the brothers step inside. The windows are dusty and filter in only gray smeared light, and the rugs have moth holes in the same areas that they did years ago. Dean drops his bag on a square table with uneven legs and flops down on his old bed, which is no longer big enough for him to stretch to his full height on the mattress.
From his reclined position, he watches as Sam walks around the room, touching the mildewing walls and damp logs. There are tick marks on a doorframe in two straight columns. One marked “Sam” and the other marked “Dean.” Sam’s column stops at his waist, and he wonders how old he was when his head reached only so high. He is surprised at seeing his father’s familiar handwriting engraved in the wood and even more so that his father would care about how they grew.
- - - - -
Dean sleeps in his old bed that night, noisy springs that groan with each yawn and every breath. Sam stays in Dad’s old bed since it’s the one that can fit the most of his long frame. Dad had his own room, and even though there are walls separating Sam from Dean, he can still hear that creaking, squeaking mattress. On the ceiling above his head, he counts the swirls in the wood. Like counting sheep, but he doesn’t sleep right then. Not until he hears Dean snoring, and then Sam rolls over on his side, stares off into the darkness and drifts to sleep in his dead father’s bed.
- - - - -
They stay longer than one night, and there’s no one to tell them to leave, nothing to drag them away. There’s no electricity and the plumbing’s been gone for years. They don’t shower during those two days, even though Dean dares Sam to jump naked into the pond that now probably has enough bacteria to make him grow a third arm. Sam remembers learning to swim out there with Dean holding his shoulders above the water and Dad saying, “Kick, Sam! Kick!”
They eat food out of the Impala’s trunk and drink bottled water. Dean lights a fire in the fireplace on the second evening, and they stay up all night, not saying too much except for “I remember when…” Sometime during the memories, Sam curls up next to Dean.
When he wakes the next morning, his head is in Dean’s lap, nose pressed in the fabric over Dean’s thigh, fingers curled in the folds of denim around Dean’s knee. Dean is sleeping, head back against the couch, mouth open. One hand is in Sam’s hair and the other on his shoulder. The ashes are only a pale, poor orange, but Sam feels warm blush on his cheeks anyway.
- - - - -
Later that day, they explore the surrounding forest. Dean kicks rocks through the trees like a bored teenager, and Sam picks leaves from the trees and crudely identifies them with what little information he remembers from a college botany class. He thinks that if their father had been a law-abiding normal man, all of this would be theirs now. But there is no will to prove that the ownership has been passed on, and Sam thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to be. They wouldn’t own it anyway; too many hours on the road and not enough desire.
Half an hour into their exploring, it begins to rain. At first it’s a soft, drizzling mist that turns to torrents of fat raindrops. They’re instantly soaked and there is no way to escape it.
Like children, they push each other on their slow run back to the cabin. Sam slips and falls in the mud as Dean laughs open-mouthed to the sky. The raindrops fall into Sam’s eyes and cling to his lashes as he looks up at his brother. When Sam finally rises to his feet he has to peel hair away from his eyes and wipe mud from his hands.
Dean just shakes his head. His own hair is flattened against his skull, turned black with water, and his shoes squish-squash with his movements.
Unexpectedly, he comes forward, grabs and kisses Sam. The gesture is fierce and possessive, and he shoves his tongue past Sam’s lips. Mouths wide and gasping, they kiss and bite at each other’s skin.
Then Dean pulls away and Sam stands there, panting and hot flushed. He narrows his eyes in confusion when Dean smirks, “Come and get me,” before he turns and breaks into a sprint toward the cabin. Puddles of muddy rainwater explode beneath his feet.
Sam yells out something inarticulate above the crashing rain and leaps after in chase. His heart pounds wildly in his chest, and he hears the blood pulsing in his ears. Dean, Dean, Dean, it whooshes, and the taste of adrenaline and rain on Sam’s tongue is the most beautiful thing he’s had all year.
- - - - -
They crash into each other just outside the cabin. “You’re getting slow in your old age,” Sam hisses as he presses his mouth to the hollow of Dean’s throat where the flesh is cold and wet from the rain.
Dean’s skin vibrates when he laughs. “I wanted to let you catch me. I could have outrun you all day, Sammy.”
Tearing at each other, they teeter inside the cabin. Clothing is torn from their bodies and dropped in wet plopping piles on the floor. They leave wet footprints and handprints on every surface that they touch.
Sam pins Dean against the wall of the bedroom that used to be theirs, hands curling over the top of Dean’s head and fingers pushing through wet, prickled hair. Suddenly, Dean pushes into Sam, pinning their upright cocks together between their abdomens. The sensation is overwhelming and Sam chokes on it.
“I want,” Sam begins unintelligently. “I want…” He doesn’t have to say what he wants any more than Dean does. Their bodies burn against each other, rain-soaked flesh against hard heat.
“Not here,” Dean hisses roughly, nearly a growl in the back of his throat. “Too small. Dad’s.”
Sam pauses his frantic thrusting when he realizes what Dean’s saying. They’ll never fit in either of their beds, so he grabs Dean, one hand around a hip and the other on a cheek, pushing them to their father’s room where Sam now sleeps. He is too afraid to let Dean go, afraid of the coldness that will follow if Dean leaves him now, afraid of so much.
Sam falls down onto the bed first, pulling Dean on top of him. Their legs twist over each other, confused and shaking. Sam rests his hand on the small of Dean’s back and pushes them together. Dean’s hard cock bumps and bounces against his belly and trails sticky fluid along the line of muscle above his hip.
“I want you,” Sam gasps, pulling back from Dean’s mouth long enough to breathe and speak. “I want you to do it.” He doesn’t say why exactly, just that he knows that Dean needs this, needs him, maybe more than Sam needs all this.
In the late afternoon light, Dean’s eyes are black and wide, and his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. He doesn’t say anything, only nods without protest.
Sam’s bag is in the corner of the room. He escapes from under Dean, staggers and finds the lube, tucked safe in a small pocket just in case. He hands it to Dean, falls back onto the bed, watches it shine on Dean’s fingertips. Dean kisses and positions them, settles between his spread thighs. Carefully, one finger, two, and Sam realizes just how long it’s truly been since they’ve done this. He feels his body tense against Dean’s intrusion into him, and he arches his back involuntarily and breathes through his nose.
Dean leans over Sam, taking his cock in one hand, and he presses himself into Sam slowly, and Dean whispers a curse-or perhaps it’s a prayer-as he sinks into his brother. They slide together, vertebra by vertebra, breath by breath.
With his legs pressed above the curve of Dean’s ass, Sam meets his brother’s eyes. Dean’s watching his face, carefully, looking for any signs that Sam is in pain as he runs a hand over the broad planes of muscle in Sam’s chest. Their breathing is hitched, choked and pinched.
“Move,” Sam spits out. “Fuck, just go.”
Dean does, hips snapping downward, driving him in and out of Sam. The muscles in his back contort and ripple with each thrust, and Sam’s hands flap futilely in the bed sheets, tugging at the worn fabric.
Still inside Sam, Dean leans back on his heels and moves Sam with him, resting Sam’s ass on his legs. He wraps a hand around Sam’s cock and twists his wrist, running his thumb down the side of Sam’s seeping cock and along the underside of his wrinkled sac.
Sam’s neck strains as his head presses back into the mattress, exposing his throat to the ceiling. When he comes, the hot semen falls onto his belly, and he pants and curses, can’t focus or breathe.
Then Dean falls forward, slicks through the sticky mess and wraps his arms around Sam’s back at the crook of armpits. Sam’s hands link to form a tight circle around Dean’s neck and Sam’s legs ring tightly around Dean’s waist again. Dean moves rapidly, forcing himself into and out of Sam with growing urgency. All Sam can do is merely hang onto his brother, hold on for dear life, his and Dean’s.
When Dean comes, he bows his head, forehead hard against Sam’s shoulder, as he groans and sputters. As he finishes, Sam runs a hand down the lines of muscle in his back and watches as Dean lifts his head.
Gasping, sweat on their faces and backs, they remain staring at each other. It is like they are seeing one another for the first time since their father died. Wonder and amazement that this, my brother, is you.
- - - - -
After the cabin, something finally gives way. Not just to each other to form a relationship, but in each other to form themselves into the men they thought they had left behind. They fall asleep in the same bed, naked, limbs entwined. Sam wakes to the feel of Dean’s mouth on his cock, and Dean falls asleep to the touch of Sam’s arms around his body.
Dean has changed too. Accepted, maybe, or just finally understanding. Sam can see it in the way that he moves that even though he’ll never be completely free of the grief of their father’s death, at least he can breathe now.
So Sam finds them here then finds the nerve to ask him one night at dinner, “Do you think we can go back yet? Have you found what you were looking for?”
“You think sex with you is what I was looking for?” As Sam blushes when a waitress walks past with steaming trays on her arms, Dean smirks and kicks him under the table. “That’s just a perk.”
“Then…what was this about?”
Dean stabs his demolished hamburger; he’s the only person Sam has ever seen eat a hamburger with a fork. The ketchup and mustard ooze out in a swirled orange. “We’re almost there, Sammy. Promise. We’re almost there.”
- - - - -
Outside of a small town near the east coast, there is a tree house in the middle of an apple orchard. Dean parks the Impala outside the grove, pulls a shovel from the trunk of the Impala and walks directly beneath the little fort in the branches where he starts to dig. Sam offers to help him. Dean refuses. Says it’s his to do alone.
Not long after he’s started, Dean hits metal. He looks up at Sam, expression unreadable.
From the shallow hole he has created, he crouches down and pulls out a metal box. He brushes dirt off the lid to reveal, “J. Winchester” embossed on the metal in formal capital letters. With his pocketknife, Dean pops the lock off effortlessly and rises to his feet.
“You remember when Dad told us to bury our fears?”
“We were what, four?” Sam asks in disbelief, shoving his hands into his pockets. His fingers touch lint and spare change. “That’s ridiculous…stuff like that doesn’t matter when you’re this old and…”
He stops speaking when Dean opens the lid of the box. Dirt flakes away from the hinges, and Sam’s voice is incredulous and surprised when he gasps, “This is it? This is what we’ve been looking for? All this time…”
The box is empty inside, and Dean explains, “When Dad was in the army, he kept the letters Mom sent to him in this box. He put the letters in another box once he got back home, but after she died, maybe three years or something, I don’t really know… when he really started to get involved in hunting and knew we’d be joining him one day, he told us to whisper our fears into our hands and then let them go in here. He said he’d lock it up and bury them so they could never find us and make us scared again.”
“What’d I say?”
“The dark,” Dean replies matter of factually. A shadow passes across his face before he whispers, “And I said I was afraid of losing you and Dad like I did Mom.” He looks up at Sam and closes the box, running his fingers along the edges, bubbled with rust and age. “And I guess I, fuck, why are we talking about this?”
“Dean,” Sam says, stepping closer, “it’s okay.”
“Well. I just-look.” Dean wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “You and Dad. You were all I had, and now he’s gone. But, I lived through it. I’ve still got you, Sammy, and I might have done this when I only a kid, but it still…it still matters now. And for a while there, I…”
Sam wraps his hands over Dean’s, curling their fingers over the corners of the small tin box that once held their parents’ love and their childish fears. “Is that what this has been about? Finding this box just so you could tell yourself that you survived? Is that it?”
Dean shakes his head. “I had to find Dad, too. Had to remember him one last time.” He purses his lips and sighs, breath shaky. “I needed to know there was more to him than just a hunter.”
Together, they bury the box again, and Sam presses his long fingers against the soft earth, smearing the dirt on his palms. He reflects back on everything that Dean has shown him-the fishing trip, the baby turtle, the swimming lessons at the cabin-and Sam realizes that their dad was not always a calloused hunter.
Our Dad did this for us, he thinks, remembering Dean’s story of how they had put their fears away so they could not be hurt by them. Not so we could be hunters, but so we could be able to live in a world that had taken our mother away from us. All he wanted was for us to live. Suddenly, Sam understands his father more than he ever has in his whole life.
- - - - -
Outside the Impala, they stand under the setting sun.
“Okay,” Dean says. He clears his throat, tries again. “All right. I’m ready.” He swallows and chews on the corner of his lower lip. “Let’s go back.”
“To all of it?”
“Everything. The hunting, the monsters…the whole damn mess of it.”
Sam reaches across the car hood, squeezes Dean’s hand once, tightly, a sharp jab of reassurance. “Let’s go,” he agrees.
They get into the car, and the engine comes to life. They drive away from the town and back to the hunts and the life they had before, but this time with them included. They drive back to the world that their father tried to keep them safe from every day of his life and gave his own blood to allow them to see again. In their rearview, the world grows smaller, a dwindling memory that is theirs alone for the keeping.
End
Rating: Adult
Category: Slash (Wincest) oneshot
Word Count: 7782
Characters: Dean/Sam
Spoilers: “In My Time of Dying”
Summary: Sam and Dean go back and remember more than just their father.
Warnings: Brother incest
Author’s Notes: A fic of this length is not always easy to work with, which is why I owe so much to two people. Thanks to the first person-she knows who she is-who listened to me rant and who read this patiently so that this could sorted out into a something. Thank you as well to the amazing drvsilla who not only answered questions and beta’d but also overthought through more than just words with me. Any remaining mistakes are mine alone. Crossposted around.
Disclaimer: The following characters and situations are used without permission of the creators, owners, and further affiliates of the television show, Supernatural, to whom they rightly belong. I claim only what is mine, and I make no money off what is theirs.
- - - - -
Sam wakes to the touch of Dean’s hand on his ankle. Dean’s voice, hushed and rough around the edges, is calling him.
“Hey? Sam, you awake yet?”
When Sam opens his eyes, he sees that the room is still dark. He rubs his right eye with the heel of his hand and rolls over in the direction of the digital clock beside his bed. Shoving aside some books in front of the display, he is able to see that the cubed red numbers tell him that it’s a few minutes past four-thirty in the morning.
“Sam?” Dean says again, and although Sam cannot see his brother, he feels his weight sink onto the bed beside his feet. Dean smells like something greasy, like bacon pulled from Bobby’s freezer and reheated in the microwave.
“What do you want?” Sam’s voice is thick and unsteady, and his tongue is bitter with the taste of too early morning. His shoulder hurts, and he thinks he must have slept on it wrong; they haven’t been hunting enough in the last month for him to have the chance to injure it.
“I’m going away. Gotta get out of here. Wanted to know if you were going to come along.”
“How long?” He doesn’t contemplate not going with Dean. The chance for him to refuse the offer and allow Dean to leave him behind never even crosses his mind.
“Don’t know. Until I’m finished?” Dean replies, and there’s a soft swish of leather as he shrugs his shoulders. He sighs heavily, scratches the back of his head. “It could be a month, could be a year…”
“No,” Sam answers to stop Dean from talking, and he pulls the twisted blankets away from his legs. The cold air slaps his flushed skin, and he almost recoils back into the comfort of his bed, almost tells Dean to go on the trip without him. “How long till you want to leave?”
“Oh. Uh, as soon as you’re ready. The car’s packed. I’m good to go. Just waiting on you.”
Sam nods and rubs his hands across his face; his skin feels dry and prickled. “Okay…okay,” he repeats. “Just let me get, get a shower and packed…”
Dean pats him on the shoulder, and Sam wonders how Dean can see him in the darkness when Sam can’t see anything. “I’ll be waiting in the car whenever you’re ready.”
Sam hears Dean’s distinctive rhythmic footsteps, followed by the sound of the car door opening and then the final click of it shutting. He sits alone in the silence for a long moment before finally reaching over to turn on the lamp beside his bed to get ready. The light splits the darkness and is instantly blinding.
- - - - -
Sam is the one who leaves the note for Bobby to tell that they’re leaving. He scribbles something about needing to move on and thanks for everything, we’ll keep in touch and here’s our cell numbers in case you hear anything. Shifting his duffel bag on his shoulder, Sam slips the note under the coffee maker. Bobby’s gone on his own business but when he returns, it’ll be the first place he’ll go.
Outside, the sky is gray and hazy, and the air is wet with cold mist. On the ground, the leaves and grass are covered in a crystal armor of brittle frost. Dean leans against the Impala with his legs crossed and hands deep in his coat pockets. He looks tired, like he hasn’t slept all night, but he doesn’t seem to let it bother him.
“You wanna tell me what’s going on?” Sam asks, as Dean takes Sam’s bags and throws them into the opened trunk.
“Nope.” Dean’s answer is guttural and final.
Sam sighs. He still feels groggy, and he knows that asking Dean where they’re going and what they’ll do once they get there will be just as pointless as his first question. So, Sam merely slides into the Impala, familiar padding and leather at his back.
“Sleep,” Dean orders and hands Sam a pillow that he most likely swiped from Bobby.
“We’re not coming back, are we?” Sam asks, looking out the window. Sam’s hot breath forms a small, foggy cloud when he speaks. He folds the pillow in half and props it against the glass. The air in the car is bitterly cold, the engine not yet warm enough to produce heat, and frost crawls up the outside of the window.
Dean eases out of the driveway and gravel pops beneath the tires. “No. Hadn’t planned on it, anyway. We might, but…” He checks to see if the road is clear before he turns. “No, probably not.”
Sam yawns and closes his eyes. “Okay. That’s what I thought.”
- - - - -
“This is about a hunt, isn’t it?”
They’re eating off-brand Cheerios out of today’s motel’s coffee mugs. The news is on in the background, and the voice of the world is a low hum around them.
“Maybe,” Dean replies, shrugging.
“What’s the big secret?”
Dean chews on his cereal, and two milk droplets slide off his chin and onto the bed where they sit Indian style. They face each other, but Dean has his back to the television and Sam can see the newscaster talking about things that barely seem to affect the two of them.
“Do you remember the last time we ate breakfast at a table?” Dean asks suddenly. The random question catches Sam off guard, and his spoon hovers halfway between the cup and his mouth.
“Bobby’s?”
“No. Well, yeah. Kind of. But, no. Like a normal table. We ate off Bobby’s desk in his office.” Dean’s spoon clinks against the side of his mug as he fishes for the few remaining cereal pieces.
“Since when do you care about normal?” Sam’s disbelieving laugh is short and scratchy.
“I don’t. But I was just thinking. That’s all. Can’t a guy make an observation?”
Sam rolls his eyes as the newscasters nod and smile to one another at their long desk. “Sure. Observe away, Sherlock.”
They fall back into silence. The forecast is calling for rain later this week. They’ll be well out of state by then.
“So what are we hunting?” Sam asks.
Dean lifts his mug and drinks the remaining milk leftover from his cereal. His eyes crinkle in a smile, and he doesn’t answer.
- - - - -
They pass the whiskey bottle back and forth, sit on the hood of the Impala somewhere near the Canadian border and the Rockies. The earth around them is jagged and spiked, dotted with rare tufts of grass and unknown vegetation, and the last building they passed was over two hours ago.
“I think I’m drunk,” Sam laughs. “Are you?”
“Give me back the bottle,” Dean replies, “and I’ll let you know.” He extends his hand, and when Sam moves forward to give him the whiskey back, Dean leans into him. The kiss is not as unexpected as it should be.
Dean keeps one hand on the glass bottle, fingers curling over Sam’s, and the other tightens itself in the fabric of Sam’s shirt near his neck. “Yeah,” Dean hisses, parting his lips.
Sam’s hands find Dean’s body, warm and strong, and even though it’s been months since they’ve done this-before Bobby’s, before the hospital and the accident, before Dad and the demon-Sam’s fingers have Dean memorized. One hand curves around the back of Dean’s neck, and the other slides its way up Dean’s thigh, starting at his bent knee, thumb trailing along the inside seam of denim.
Suddenly, Dean stops. Stops moving and pulls back sharply. In the silver illumination of the night, his eyes are full and his face is flushed. They sit, staring at each other, until Dean slides off the car and walks away with his hands laced behind his head, arms bent like wings.
Sam stays sitting on the hood of the car and watches his brother move into the depths of the night. His breath rattles in his lungs, and he brings a hand to wipe away the taste of Dean at his lips.
- - - - -
They stop at a river that empties into one of the Great Lakes. Dean says it’s to stretch his legs. Sam knows it’s not.
They wander aimlessly along the gravel-shored river, and occasionally, Dean picks up a rock here and there and tosses it into the rushing water. “Dad took us fishing here,” he says, and Sam stops walking to stare at him.
“No, he didn’t.”
“Yes, he did. You just don’t remember. You were only two, anyway.”
Sam shakes his head. He wonders if that is the truth for them being here or if Dean is lying to cover up the real reason. “Dad never did stuff like that.”
“Yeah?” Dean asks, looking back over his shoulder at Sam. He rolls a black rock in his hand as he talks. “We actually caught fish that day. I caught two, you caught five, but only because Dad helped you. We ate the fish for dinner, and you were mad because we didn’t have any ketchup.”
Sam stops walking and sinks down against an aged maple tree where curved mushrooms climb up the side and latch into its bark. Dean remains standing and watching the river twist its way through forest. He stares at it so intently, as if he will be able to see the end of its path.
- - - - -
At the southern fair, Sam buys blue cotton candy and stands back in the crowd as Dean shoots bottles with a cheaply made BB-gun. He wins the big stuffed bear, of course, and gives it away to some passing girl with a black t-shirt and pink shoelaces.
“Just for you, baby,” Dean grins.
The girl giggles, stands on tiptoe to whisper something in his ear that Sam can’t hear, and then pecks him quickly on the cheek. She turns away into the crowd with her friends. Sam watches the fuzzy tops of the bear’s ears bob on her shoulders until he can see them no longer.
Dean comes forward, eyes still in the direction of the girl. “Too bad we can’t win any money. I’d clean this place out.” He smiles, pinches off a piece of the cotton candy and leans his head back, tongue extended. After he catches the spun sugar in his mouth, he licks his lips and leaves a smear of blue at the corners.
“Get your own,” Sam snaps, pulling the cotton candy away.
Dean doesn’t seem to hear him because he asks, “Wanna ride the Scrambler?”
Sam raises an eyebrow questionably. “You’re how old?”
“Asks the man eating cotton candy,” Dean points out, then continues before Sam can reply. “It was either that or the bumper cars, but I know your big ass won’t fit in them, so it’s gotta be the Scrambler.”
They ride the Scrambler twice; it hurtles them around so fast that the wind whistles in Sam’s ears, and by the end of the second time around, Sam is clutching his stomach. “I don’t think I should’ve eaten all that cotton candy,” he moans, tasting bile in the back of his throat when his feet finally touch solid ground.
Dean pats him on the shoulder. “Go lay down in the car. I’ll be there in a bit.”
Nodding sickly, Sam makes his way to the Impala. He’s about halfway there when he realizes Dean still has the keys. For a moment, he debates waiting outside the car, but the grass is wet with heavy dew and the evening air is growing a fresh biting chill. So, reluctantly, he turns away from the car and begins to enter the midway, looking for Dean.
After nearly ten minutes of searching, Sam is ready to return to the car before he vomits in front of everyone. When he stops at the restrooms to get a drink of water from the fountain, he hears the soft giggle of a girl. Instinctively, he turns his head in that direction, and the first thing he sees in the shadows are pink shoelaces.
But, the longer he stares, the more he sees. Leaning against the wall, Dean has one hand up the girl’s shirt, palm cupped around one of her small breasts. She has a hand down his unzipped pants, and his hips are jerking in short, little thrusts against her. When she kisses him, she stands on pink-laced tiptoes to run her tongue along the edges of his lips.
Sam kicks a nearby garbage can so hard his toe stings, and he storms back to the car. “Fuck this,” he growls. His nausea has vanished, but another rancid taste that he won’t acknowledge as jealousy sweeps across his insides.
- - - - -
They don’t speak to each other for three days. Actually, Sam is the one who doesn’t speak for those days. Dean merely stopped trying after the first night.
Finally, on the third day, Sam snaps. Dean is watching TV and drinking beer from a half finished six-pack while Sam leafs through their father’s journal. The more Sam reads, the angrier he gets until he finally gives into the words that have been sitting on his tongue for three days.
“Is it because Dad died that you have to pretend like anything we did-were-never happened?”
From the bed, Dean looks up, expression blank. His eyes flicker from the opened journal to Sam’s twisted face. When he doesn’t answer right away, Sam slams the journal shut and storms over to him.
“Is that it?”
“No.”
“Then what? Fuck. Just, goddamit, Dean, if you had wanted a cheap handjob from some girl, we could’ve stayed at Bobby’s-”
“You watched me?”
“-but you had to go and drag me across the entire country. And for what? What the fuck is all of this?”
“None of your goddamn business, all right?”
“No. You brought me here-”
“You agreed to come,” Dean spits, rising to his feet. The TV remote slides off his lap and bounces once on the mattress.
“What do you want, Dean? What do you want? You want me? I’ve been here the whole fucking time. You kiss me, but then-that girl at the fair…”
“The kiss? Up near Canada?” Dean laughs derisively. His upper lip curls in a sneer as he speaks. “It meant nothing. We were both smashed. Fuck. Quit being such a pussy. It was the whiskey and that’s all.”
“Just shut up the fuck up. You know that wasn’t it.”
“Yeah?” Dean raises an eyebrow, spreads his arms wide, making him open and available, bigger than before like a frightened dog raising the hairs on the back of its neck. “What if it was something else? Doesn’t change anything, does it? Dad’s still dead-”
“This is about Dad.”
“Fuck you,” Dean growls. He grabs his coat from the back of a chair, which wobbles after his brutal snatch. “Don’t wait up, asshole.”
The door slams and the chair falls to the linoleum, and Sam is left alone in the motel room. He punches the wall harder than he intends and then swears when his knuckles start to bleed.
He doesn’t hate Dean. He knows that. But, he is already angry over Dean’s continuing denial of their relationship, then letting him back in for a momentary kiss. He is also frustrated with Dean’s search for something that clearly has to do with their father, but that Dean won’t discuss.
Sam sucks one of his bleeding knuckles, presses it to the roof of his mouth with his tongue and lets the salty blood fill his mouth. He goes to bed, but stays awake all night waiting for Dean, who comes back after three reeking of cigarettes and booze.
The next morning, Sam buys breakfast at the nearest gas station. He pauses in the checkout line, gets a red bottle of aspirin for his hand and the hangover he assumes Dean has. They never quite apologize with words. Sam says he’s sorry by offering Dean a glass of water and small white pills. Dean says he’s sorry by accepting them.
“Thanks,” he mumbles, swallows with his head tilt back. Then he looks up at Sam. “What happened to your hand?”
Sam shrugs. “Wall.”
Dean nods, like he understands exactly what Sam means. He takes a donut from the open bag on the nightstand between them. “Is it broken?”
“Nope.”
“Good.” Dean bites the donut, chews, and doesn’t notice the swab of chocolate frosting on the corners of his lips. “That’s good.”
- - - - -
The yellow house next to the city’s playground is for sale now. The flowers in the garden have turned to weeds, and there is a little boy’s handprint in the cement walkway. Sam knows that, no matter how hard he might try, his hand will never fit into such a childish indentation again. It has been one year too many since he was so small.
Sam stands on the lawn, hands in his pockets as Dean rings the doorbell. After several minutes of no answer, he peers in one of the front windows, wiping filth from the glass and craning his neck down. “Nobody lives here,” Dean says, turning to face Sam.
“I could’ve told you that the minute we pulled up.” The grass beneath Sam’s boots is brittle and brown, and dusty patches of naked ground are scattered throughout the dead lawn like a minefield. Everything about the area is dirty and forgotten.
Dean doesn’t reply and starts to walk around to the back of the house. Curious, Sam follows.
In the backyard, there is a large tree with branches mostly bare, dotted by a few dead leaves scarcely holding on. A child’s tire swing hangs by a rotting rope and creaks in the soft breeze. Two rusty pipes connect an unused clothesline.
Dean walks past the tree to the end of the yard. He stops and crouches to the ground where he pushes through the shaggy grass to reveal a carefully placed stone.
“What is it?” Sam asks, coming up behind him.
“Do you remember Beans?”
“What?” Sam laughs. Dean’s lost it, finally cracked under the grief and the stress of their lives. “What are you talking about?” He kneels down next to Dean, and the ground feels damp through his jeans.
“Your pet turtle,” Dean replies, spreading the blades of grass to show Sam the stone with crudely carved letters that read, BEANS.
Sam looks over at Dean, flabbergasted. His mouth opens and closes, and he makes a series of pinched, confused chokes.
“Best pet we ever had,” Dean muses, running his fingers over the letters that he helped Sam carve so many years ago.
Again, Sam laughs, only this time it’s a softer, sweeter, more forgiving sound. “Remember Dad’s face when we brought him home? I can’t believe he let us keep him.”
Dean smiles, although it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Yeah, well,” Dean continues, “you wouldn’t leave that turtle behind after you found him in the playground, and I sure as hell couldn’t leave you. I think Dad was just so damn surprised he couldn’t say no at first, then after that he didn’t mind so much.”
“I had forgotten Dad let us do that.” Sam’s eyebrows narrow at the memory. “Weird how I could remember him yelling at us about not allowing pets, but I couldn’t remember the exception he made for Beans.”
“Maybe you didn’t really know Dad all that well.”
Sam touches the stone and changes the subject, knows that Dean is right. “You know, Beans was the first thing I ever saw die.” When Dean lifts his head to look over, Sam continues uneasily, words spilling over each other awkwardly, “I mean, that I remember. Mom, I just, I guess…I don’t remember, and I…” He trails off, not sure what to say, realizing how utterly stupid and insensitive he must sound. “Mom and Dad aren’t turtles, Dean. I didn’t mean it like that. I…I know that.”
“Death’s still death.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
They kneel and say nothing more. Sam’s thoughts travel back to the baby turtle, the innocence they had rescuing Beans and coaxing him to eat split-open grapes, the kindness of his father now remembered. Traits they all had-once-before the world made them so hard.
- - - - -
Sam’s in the bathroom, awake before Dean in the early morning hours. The shower curtain is still wet from when Dean washed quickly last night after Sam went to bed. They had watched television together-cheap eighties flick with bad coloring and even worse plot-and ate takeout food warmed in the microwave.
In the shower, Sam scrubs his head with the shampoo they share. They share everything, it seems, but Dean manages to remain so distant and unwavering as if he can keep on denying the fact that they-them as brothers, lovers, so much more-happened not all that long ago.
There are small, dark curls on the surface of the soap when Sam picks it up. Dean’s pubic hairs are stuck to the side of the white bar. Only three or four, but enough to be noticed.
Sam imagines Dean jerking off, running the soap down the length of his cock, hitting the soft curls of hair gathered on the insides of his thighs and then coming back down to the ridge of the head. Against the back of Sam’s neck, the water suddenly seems hotter than before and heat rushes down his spine.
Casually, Sam rinses the hairs off the soap bar and watches them twirl in the water then disappear down the black mouth of the drain. After he finishes showering, he walks into the bedroom where Dean remains asleep.
The blankets have fallen down around Dean’s waist, exposing his naked back and arms. His skin glows golden in the sunrays peeking through the curtains. As Sam watches, he thinks, We were once more than brothers and now you act like everything we did never even happened.
Dean rolls over onto his other side, mumbles something in his sleep and pulls a wad of blankets back up to his shoulder.
I loved you, Sam thinks, did you know that? I loved you so much.
- - - - -
In the latest motel, two hundred and fifty miles from the last one, Sam finds Dean in the laundry room. It’s somewhere after midnight, not yet two, and Sam’s in his pajamas-flannel bottoms and baggy t-shirt-when he finds Dean.
“Dean?” Sam calls, and he has to speak louder than normal to be heard above the machines. “Why are you doing laundry? It’s the middle of the night.”
From his position seated on the rumbling dryer, Dean shrugs. He is dressed in his blue jeans and gray shirt with a smudge of dirt on the shoulder from earlier that day. “Couldn’t sleep.”
Sam walks over to Dean and stands in front of him. He rests his hands on Dean’s knees and watches his older brother flinch at the touch. “Look man, I don’t know what all of this is about. The trip, the places we’ve been going to. I get it’s about Dad, I get that, but Dean, that was then.” Dean keeps his eyes downcast, neck bent, as Sam talks. “But, whatever this is, whatever you’re trying to do, I’m not going anywhere, all right? You’ve got to trust me on that.”
Dean lifts his head and finally looks at Sam. “If you want an apology,” he whispers, and his voice can barely be heard above the rhythmic clanking of the dryer where buttons and zippers clink the metal, “you’re not going to get it. This is something I’ve got to do for me.”
Sam nods, comes closer and pushes Dean’s legs apart to stand between them and lean against the warmth of the machine. “That’s not what I want,” he says and brings one hand tentatively up to the side of Dean’s face. The skin is sandpaper rough, unshaven, and it scratches against Sam’s palm. Sam expects to be batted away like before, but instead Dean grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls him forward. They surge into each other.
Seated on the dryer, Dean is taller than Sam, and he twists down into the kiss. He’s clutching Sam’s shirt, shoulders, fingers fisting in Sam’s hair. His hands seem to everywhere at once.
Sam slides one hand down the back of Dean’s jeans and touches bare skin, cupping the upper curve of ass with the tips of his fingers. With his free hand, Sam begins to work at the button on Dean’s jeans. When he finally pops the button through its denim hole and slides the zipper past its teeth, he reaches down into the jeans. Against his ear, Dean huffs out a curse but doesn’t stop mouthing wetly down Sam’s neck.
When Sam’s hand wraps around his cock, Dean groans, putting more of his weight against Sam. “I…” he whispers, budding protests rising to his lips.
“Shut up,” Sam hisses. “Just…just don’t. Go with it.” He doesn’t want Dean to stop, doesn’t want any of it to stop because he’s afraid that if Dean draws away again, this will never come back.
Sam pulls Dean’s dick free and jerks it a bit too roughly in eagerness. Keeping one hand on Dean’s ass and the other pumping in counter-rhythm to the tumbling dryer, Sam leans forward, resting his weight into Dean. He sighs at the warm vibrations and the feel of Dean’s breath against the curve of his neck.
Their approach to the verge is fast-almost too fast-and so good. Dean pulls back from Sam and hisses air quickly through gritted teeth. His hands are white knuckles on the edges of the dryer and a muscle in the side of his face twitches. He keeps his eyes slit open, watching, it seems, the way that Sam’s hand twists up to cover the pink, lipped head of his cock and then push it out again on the pull back down.
“Sam, don’t…” Dean begins.
Then Dean’s breath catches in a soft whimper as Sam quickens his strokes and whispers encouragements. Dean comes, cock pulsing in Sam’s hand, bitten lip and eyes pinched tightly shut.
Dean wraps his hand over Sam’s, holds so they both caress his cock, and he groans. He kicks the dryer hard enough to make the sound of clanging metal echo across the room. As his orgasm ends, Sam presses forward and kisses him.
They wipe their hands on Dean’s already dirty jeans. Dean tucks himself back into his pants and zips up with trembling fingers. He keeps swallowing as if he has a bad taste in his mouth.
“Don’t think you’re getting a thank you,” he grumbles, seeming to be ornery.
Sam laughs, smiles into Dean’s mouth when all Dean can do is kiss him again anyway.
- - - - -
When they drive past their old school, Sam is surprised to see that there are kids in the playground. Dean slows the car and pulls up alongside the curb. With the windows rolled down, they watch the children squeal and laugh. Little girls group together on the monkey bars, boys on the jungle gym. Sam points this out, and Dean shrugs. “I always liked the swings myself.”
The bell rings, and the children abandon their games and imagination. In packs of grubby fingers and untied sneakers, they run toward the building. They form neat lines as they change from pirates and robbers to kindergarteners and first graders then walk through open double doors where teachers smile down and count their heads.
“When I was in fourth grade,” Sam begins, then stops. Clears his throat and cracks his knuckles. “When I was in fourth grade, we had to do a report on who our hero was.”
“Yeah?” Dean’s biting at the edge of his thumb, not seeming to care, but even Sam knows the old cliché about deceiving appearances.
“Yeah. It took me-God-it took me days to decide between you and Dad.”
“You gonna tell me who you picked?”
Sam laughs, bows his head. His hair falls into his eyes and he lets it hang there, shielding his eyes. “Dude-do you really have to ask?” he replies.
Dean snorts and punches him on the shoulder.
“For a college boy, you sure are a moron sometimes. Who do you think made sure those things got in your backpack at night? Got put on the fridge and then in a box? As if we’d need them again.” He shrugs and smiles, but this time it reaches his eyes, so much further.
Sam blinks, turns back to the school and the playground. It’s empty now like he remembers when Dean and he would sit and wait for Dad to collect them. “Oh,” he breathes. Dean laughs, soft, and Sam smiles.
- - - - -
In the weeks that follow, they fall back into their old patterns. They piss with the door open and walk naked to the shower. Dean chews without closing his mouth and Sam leaves his hair in the sink to clog the drain. They fight and argue when they get lost, run out of gas or just because they need it. Sometimes they punch and throw the other to the ground where they spit and swear like angry cats.
Despite that-these old familiar patterns-they are not them. Not together. There is Sam and there is Dean. Sam wonders if Dean even remembers what it was like to be joined instead of divided.
Yet Sam believes this is progress. It’s all just a journey. Someday, maybe, this will be a distant memory. Just like everything else.
- - - - -
The old cabin has lost its porch and sags into the ground like a small, fat troll. The beams are black with age and grow spotty moss on the corners. Cattails form a boundary around the pond now covered by lily pads and duckweed. Under a bowing willow tree, Dean parks the Impala and says, “We’ll stay here for the night.”
“Wasn’t this the place we spent that one summer?” Sam asks, stepping out of the car and following Dean to the trunk. Dean unloads the duffel bags and hands them to Sam. The air smells of water and rotting leaves; it’s a comfortable, easy scent of the earth.
“Try more than one summer, Sammy,” Dean replies as he opens the door-unlocked because Dad never cared who came and went while they were gone-and the brothers step inside. The windows are dusty and filter in only gray smeared light, and the rugs have moth holes in the same areas that they did years ago. Dean drops his bag on a square table with uneven legs and flops down on his old bed, which is no longer big enough for him to stretch to his full height on the mattress.
From his reclined position, he watches as Sam walks around the room, touching the mildewing walls and damp logs. There are tick marks on a doorframe in two straight columns. One marked “Sam” and the other marked “Dean.” Sam’s column stops at his waist, and he wonders how old he was when his head reached only so high. He is surprised at seeing his father’s familiar handwriting engraved in the wood and even more so that his father would care about how they grew.
- - - - -
Dean sleeps in his old bed that night, noisy springs that groan with each yawn and every breath. Sam stays in Dad’s old bed since it’s the one that can fit the most of his long frame. Dad had his own room, and even though there are walls separating Sam from Dean, he can still hear that creaking, squeaking mattress. On the ceiling above his head, he counts the swirls in the wood. Like counting sheep, but he doesn’t sleep right then. Not until he hears Dean snoring, and then Sam rolls over on his side, stares off into the darkness and drifts to sleep in his dead father’s bed.
- - - - -
They stay longer than one night, and there’s no one to tell them to leave, nothing to drag them away. There’s no electricity and the plumbing’s been gone for years. They don’t shower during those two days, even though Dean dares Sam to jump naked into the pond that now probably has enough bacteria to make him grow a third arm. Sam remembers learning to swim out there with Dean holding his shoulders above the water and Dad saying, “Kick, Sam! Kick!”
They eat food out of the Impala’s trunk and drink bottled water. Dean lights a fire in the fireplace on the second evening, and they stay up all night, not saying too much except for “I remember when…” Sometime during the memories, Sam curls up next to Dean.
When he wakes the next morning, his head is in Dean’s lap, nose pressed in the fabric over Dean’s thigh, fingers curled in the folds of denim around Dean’s knee. Dean is sleeping, head back against the couch, mouth open. One hand is in Sam’s hair and the other on his shoulder. The ashes are only a pale, poor orange, but Sam feels warm blush on his cheeks anyway.
- - - - -
Later that day, they explore the surrounding forest. Dean kicks rocks through the trees like a bored teenager, and Sam picks leaves from the trees and crudely identifies them with what little information he remembers from a college botany class. He thinks that if their father had been a law-abiding normal man, all of this would be theirs now. But there is no will to prove that the ownership has been passed on, and Sam thinks that’s the way it’s supposed to be. They wouldn’t own it anyway; too many hours on the road and not enough desire.
Half an hour into their exploring, it begins to rain. At first it’s a soft, drizzling mist that turns to torrents of fat raindrops. They’re instantly soaked and there is no way to escape it.
Like children, they push each other on their slow run back to the cabin. Sam slips and falls in the mud as Dean laughs open-mouthed to the sky. The raindrops fall into Sam’s eyes and cling to his lashes as he looks up at his brother. When Sam finally rises to his feet he has to peel hair away from his eyes and wipe mud from his hands.
Dean just shakes his head. His own hair is flattened against his skull, turned black with water, and his shoes squish-squash with his movements.
Unexpectedly, he comes forward, grabs and kisses Sam. The gesture is fierce and possessive, and he shoves his tongue past Sam’s lips. Mouths wide and gasping, they kiss and bite at each other’s skin.
Then Dean pulls away and Sam stands there, panting and hot flushed. He narrows his eyes in confusion when Dean smirks, “Come and get me,” before he turns and breaks into a sprint toward the cabin. Puddles of muddy rainwater explode beneath his feet.
Sam yells out something inarticulate above the crashing rain and leaps after in chase. His heart pounds wildly in his chest, and he hears the blood pulsing in his ears. Dean, Dean, Dean, it whooshes, and the taste of adrenaline and rain on Sam’s tongue is the most beautiful thing he’s had all year.
- - - - -
They crash into each other just outside the cabin. “You’re getting slow in your old age,” Sam hisses as he presses his mouth to the hollow of Dean’s throat where the flesh is cold and wet from the rain.
Dean’s skin vibrates when he laughs. “I wanted to let you catch me. I could have outrun you all day, Sammy.”
Tearing at each other, they teeter inside the cabin. Clothing is torn from their bodies and dropped in wet plopping piles on the floor. They leave wet footprints and handprints on every surface that they touch.
Sam pins Dean against the wall of the bedroom that used to be theirs, hands curling over the top of Dean’s head and fingers pushing through wet, prickled hair. Suddenly, Dean pushes into Sam, pinning their upright cocks together between their abdomens. The sensation is overwhelming and Sam chokes on it.
“I want,” Sam begins unintelligently. “I want…” He doesn’t have to say what he wants any more than Dean does. Their bodies burn against each other, rain-soaked flesh against hard heat.
“Not here,” Dean hisses roughly, nearly a growl in the back of his throat. “Too small. Dad’s.”
Sam pauses his frantic thrusting when he realizes what Dean’s saying. They’ll never fit in either of their beds, so he grabs Dean, one hand around a hip and the other on a cheek, pushing them to their father’s room where Sam now sleeps. He is too afraid to let Dean go, afraid of the coldness that will follow if Dean leaves him now, afraid of so much.
Sam falls down onto the bed first, pulling Dean on top of him. Their legs twist over each other, confused and shaking. Sam rests his hand on the small of Dean’s back and pushes them together. Dean’s hard cock bumps and bounces against his belly and trails sticky fluid along the line of muscle above his hip.
“I want you,” Sam gasps, pulling back from Dean’s mouth long enough to breathe and speak. “I want you to do it.” He doesn’t say why exactly, just that he knows that Dean needs this, needs him, maybe more than Sam needs all this.
In the late afternoon light, Dean’s eyes are black and wide, and his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows. He doesn’t say anything, only nods without protest.
Sam’s bag is in the corner of the room. He escapes from under Dean, staggers and finds the lube, tucked safe in a small pocket just in case. He hands it to Dean, falls back onto the bed, watches it shine on Dean’s fingertips. Dean kisses and positions them, settles between his spread thighs. Carefully, one finger, two, and Sam realizes just how long it’s truly been since they’ve done this. He feels his body tense against Dean’s intrusion into him, and he arches his back involuntarily and breathes through his nose.
Dean leans over Sam, taking his cock in one hand, and he presses himself into Sam slowly, and Dean whispers a curse-or perhaps it’s a prayer-as he sinks into his brother. They slide together, vertebra by vertebra, breath by breath.
With his legs pressed above the curve of Dean’s ass, Sam meets his brother’s eyes. Dean’s watching his face, carefully, looking for any signs that Sam is in pain as he runs a hand over the broad planes of muscle in Sam’s chest. Their breathing is hitched, choked and pinched.
“Move,” Sam spits out. “Fuck, just go.”
Dean does, hips snapping downward, driving him in and out of Sam. The muscles in his back contort and ripple with each thrust, and Sam’s hands flap futilely in the bed sheets, tugging at the worn fabric.
Still inside Sam, Dean leans back on his heels and moves Sam with him, resting Sam’s ass on his legs. He wraps a hand around Sam’s cock and twists his wrist, running his thumb down the side of Sam’s seeping cock and along the underside of his wrinkled sac.
Sam’s neck strains as his head presses back into the mattress, exposing his throat to the ceiling. When he comes, the hot semen falls onto his belly, and he pants and curses, can’t focus or breathe.
Then Dean falls forward, slicks through the sticky mess and wraps his arms around Sam’s back at the crook of armpits. Sam’s hands link to form a tight circle around Dean’s neck and Sam’s legs ring tightly around Dean’s waist again. Dean moves rapidly, forcing himself into and out of Sam with growing urgency. All Sam can do is merely hang onto his brother, hold on for dear life, his and Dean’s.
When Dean comes, he bows his head, forehead hard against Sam’s shoulder, as he groans and sputters. As he finishes, Sam runs a hand down the lines of muscle in his back and watches as Dean lifts his head.
Gasping, sweat on their faces and backs, they remain staring at each other. It is like they are seeing one another for the first time since their father died. Wonder and amazement that this, my brother, is you.
- - - - -
After the cabin, something finally gives way. Not just to each other to form a relationship, but in each other to form themselves into the men they thought they had left behind. They fall asleep in the same bed, naked, limbs entwined. Sam wakes to the feel of Dean’s mouth on his cock, and Dean falls asleep to the touch of Sam’s arms around his body.
Dean has changed too. Accepted, maybe, or just finally understanding. Sam can see it in the way that he moves that even though he’ll never be completely free of the grief of their father’s death, at least he can breathe now.
So Sam finds them here then finds the nerve to ask him one night at dinner, “Do you think we can go back yet? Have you found what you were looking for?”
“You think sex with you is what I was looking for?” As Sam blushes when a waitress walks past with steaming trays on her arms, Dean smirks and kicks him under the table. “That’s just a perk.”
“Then…what was this about?”
Dean stabs his demolished hamburger; he’s the only person Sam has ever seen eat a hamburger with a fork. The ketchup and mustard ooze out in a swirled orange. “We’re almost there, Sammy. Promise. We’re almost there.”
- - - - -
Outside of a small town near the east coast, there is a tree house in the middle of an apple orchard. Dean parks the Impala outside the grove, pulls a shovel from the trunk of the Impala and walks directly beneath the little fort in the branches where he starts to dig. Sam offers to help him. Dean refuses. Says it’s his to do alone.
Not long after he’s started, Dean hits metal. He looks up at Sam, expression unreadable.
From the shallow hole he has created, he crouches down and pulls out a metal box. He brushes dirt off the lid to reveal, “J. Winchester” embossed on the metal in formal capital letters. With his pocketknife, Dean pops the lock off effortlessly and rises to his feet.
“You remember when Dad told us to bury our fears?”
“We were what, four?” Sam asks in disbelief, shoving his hands into his pockets. His fingers touch lint and spare change. “That’s ridiculous…stuff like that doesn’t matter when you’re this old and…”
He stops speaking when Dean opens the lid of the box. Dirt flakes away from the hinges, and Sam’s voice is incredulous and surprised when he gasps, “This is it? This is what we’ve been looking for? All this time…”
The box is empty inside, and Dean explains, “When Dad was in the army, he kept the letters Mom sent to him in this box. He put the letters in another box once he got back home, but after she died, maybe three years or something, I don’t really know… when he really started to get involved in hunting and knew we’d be joining him one day, he told us to whisper our fears into our hands and then let them go in here. He said he’d lock it up and bury them so they could never find us and make us scared again.”
“What’d I say?”
“The dark,” Dean replies matter of factually. A shadow passes across his face before he whispers, “And I said I was afraid of losing you and Dad like I did Mom.” He looks up at Sam and closes the box, running his fingers along the edges, bubbled with rust and age. “And I guess I, fuck, why are we talking about this?”
“Dean,” Sam says, stepping closer, “it’s okay.”
“Well. I just-look.” Dean wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “You and Dad. You were all I had, and now he’s gone. But, I lived through it. I’ve still got you, Sammy, and I might have done this when I only a kid, but it still…it still matters now. And for a while there, I…”
Sam wraps his hands over Dean’s, curling their fingers over the corners of the small tin box that once held their parents’ love and their childish fears. “Is that what this has been about? Finding this box just so you could tell yourself that you survived? Is that it?”
Dean shakes his head. “I had to find Dad, too. Had to remember him one last time.” He purses his lips and sighs, breath shaky. “I needed to know there was more to him than just a hunter.”
Together, they bury the box again, and Sam presses his long fingers against the soft earth, smearing the dirt on his palms. He reflects back on everything that Dean has shown him-the fishing trip, the baby turtle, the swimming lessons at the cabin-and Sam realizes that their dad was not always a calloused hunter.
Our Dad did this for us, he thinks, remembering Dean’s story of how they had put their fears away so they could not be hurt by them. Not so we could be hunters, but so we could be able to live in a world that had taken our mother away from us. All he wanted was for us to live. Suddenly, Sam understands his father more than he ever has in his whole life.
- - - - -
Outside the Impala, they stand under the setting sun.
“Okay,” Dean says. He clears his throat, tries again. “All right. I’m ready.” He swallows and chews on the corner of his lower lip. “Let’s go back.”
“To all of it?”
“Everything. The hunting, the monsters…the whole damn mess of it.”
Sam reaches across the car hood, squeezes Dean’s hand once, tightly, a sharp jab of reassurance. “Let’s go,” he agrees.
They get into the car, and the engine comes to life. They drive away from the town and back to the hunts and the life they had before, but this time with them included. They drive back to the world that their father tried to keep them safe from every day of his life and gave his own blood to allow them to see again. In their rearview, the world grows smaller, a dwindling memory that is theirs alone for the keeping.
End