The Elm of False Dreams, for kalliel
Title: The Elm of False Dreams
Recipient: kalliel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~5000
Warnings: Use of the F word. There might be a touch of gencest in here because the boys might be older, but they are still stupidly co-dependent.
Author's Notes: To Kalliel: I’ve tried to cover a few of your likes, and merged a couple of your prompts - you asked for anything about bees, and for some wet Winchester hazard - so I hope this fits the bill! Thank you to my lovely beta for picking out my inconsistencies and making this offering so much better - you know who you are!
The headings are some of the different parts of the Underworld taken from Greek mythology, as is the title.
Summary: Dean and Sam are semi retired from hunting. Dean grows stuff, Sam keeps bees. It’s a story of domestic bliss until suddenly it isn’t.
The Elm of False Dreams
“Look at this,” Dean said, thrusting a soil encrusted hand under Sam’s nose, causing Sam to start. He nearly dropped the frame of raw honey he’d just brought into the kitchen to process. Sam should have been used to Dean getting all up into his space by now, but Dean might be forty-nine and virtually retired but he still moved like a freaking ninja.
“Dean, what the hell?”
“Look,” Dean repeated, flapping his hand urgently, as if his unspoken question was obvious. Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother’s scrunched up expression that wavered somewhere between horror and bemusement. Sam was certainly with Dean on the latter - he didn’t have a clue what Dean was on about. Sam placed the sticky frame down on the chopping board and sighed. Gardening was supposed to be a soothing activity, yet somehow Dean managed to turn it into a crisis.
“Okay, I’m looking. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“This! Do you think it’s arthritis?” Dean flapped his hand again then jabbed at a slightly knobbly-looking knuckle. Sam nearly strained a muscle as his eyes rolled heavenwards.
“Really? Dean, your hands are so dirty you could have leprosy and I wouldn’t be able to see it.”
“I don’t see you complaining about a little dirt when I put all that fancy rabbit food on your plate, grown with these very hands,” Dean pouted, somehow looking twelve years old, all round green eyes and eternally youthful. Seriously, sometimes Sam thought Dean must practice witchcraft on the sly. It was obscene how time and adversity barely touched him, in spite of the gray that now sprinkled Dean’s stubble and highlighted his temples.
Sam turned his attention back to the oozing slab of honeycomb, carefully picking off the dead carapace of a worker bee before picking up the home-made rake and starting to score across the waxy surface capping the tiny, perfect hexagons. The first honey harvest of the year was a moment Sam liked to savor, and he was particularly proud that his bees had produced a good crop so early.
“Hah, laugh it up, chuckles. In four years time this will be you.” Dean said, interrupting Sam’s zen moment.
Sam shook his head, hiding a smile. “Yeah, and in four years time you’ll be using a walking frame, old man.”
“Fuck you very much!”
Dean flounced out of the kitchen, but not before he’d stuck his suspect knobbly and very dirty finger into the center of Sam’s frame. He slurped loudly and sucked off the honey as he went. For someone who protested loudly and often about being manly, Dean did a great Scarlet O’Hara impression when he was in a mood.
“Gross, Dean!” Sam raked over the hole, muttering imprecations under his breath about contamination of his honey. After so many years in close proximity, Sam was still amazed at his big brother’s talent for being endlessly infuriating.
Absorbed in his work centrifuging the liquid honey from the twelve frames he’d harvested from his hives that morning, it was probably a couple more hours before Sam thought to wonder where Dean had gone. A loud rumble from his stomach reminded him that they hadn’t eaten since after Sam’s early morning run. He took the now honey-free frames from the centrifuge and stacked them neatly on the stainless steel drainer. He’d probably be able to make candles from the waxy residue. Resisting the temptation to lick his fingers clean, and thankful Dean wasn’t there offer to lick it off for him because yuck, insanitary, he washed off the stickiness in the sink. He left the task of draining the spun honey into jars in favor of finding Dean.
Sam didn’t start worrying until he’d been through all the usual places and found no sign of his wayward brother. Dean wasn’t crashed out on his memory foam bed, having a sneaky siesta when he thought Sam wasn’t looking. He wasn’t practising on the shooting range, or watching porn on his laptop in the library. He wasn’t washing the Impala, or tuning her ancient engine that didn’t run any more because there were no more parts to be had anywhere. He wasn’t outside, or in the greenhouse, tending his precious seedlings.
Dean wasn’t anywhere.
Oceanus
Dean startles awake when something cold and wet stings his face. His eyes are crusty and it’s a struggle to open them, but when he does, he’s none the wiser. Above him the sky presses down; gun-metal gray, clouds so heavy he feels he could touch them by reaching up a hand from where he’s lying on his back. The air is salt-laden, damp, and full of noise. It takes him a moment to sort it all out - the rattling wind in the dune grasses from the shurr of the waves from the grinding of the shingle. Sea spray or rain, he’s not sure which, needles his cheek again and he shivers.
He’s not ready to move yet though the chill has settled into his bones. His head is thick and his thoughts sluggish as congealing tar. He thinks he might be drunk though he can’t remember much about the night he must have had. What was the point of a hangover without the fun that came before?
He can smell something boozy over the scents of sea - had he spilled whiskey down himself? -together with something vaguely sweet that reminds him of apples. It’s incongruous and unsettling enough to force his eyes open again (he hadn’t realized he’d shut them) and attempt to sit up. He manages to get as far as propping up his torso, resting on his elbows. His heart is racing from the effort which makes him reassess the whole drunken stupor theory. That and the fact that he really cannot recall one single reason why he should be lying on an deserted windswept beach with the taste of ash on his tongue and waves lapping at his bare feet.
The wind picks up the foam from the crest of the next wave and dashes it into his face. He splutters and blinks, the shock of the cold shuddering through his whole body this time, and he scrabbles at the shifting pebbles, trying to shuffle his butt backwards up the banked beach and out of reach of the grasping ocean. At least the salty water has banished the ashy flavours from his mouth, though now he’s aware of a terrible thirst. It grips him mercilessly and has him patting down his pockets in the hope of finding a hip flask. He always carries holy water, but right now he’s coming up blank. His jacket has gone and he’s wearing nothing but a torn tee and his jeans, both of which are saturated and stiff with sea-water.
The ebb drags at the stones, rolling them down then grinding them up the beach as the waves surge high enough to wet Dean’s feet again. The tide must be coming in. The realisation rewards him with a surge of its own, and he finds the strength to roll over onto his hands and knees. From there he finds enough leverage to scramble upright with his back to the ocean. Swaying like the marram grasses on the dunes in front of him, Dean staggers forward. He only manages a few precarious steps before his momentum deserts him and he falls.
Not drunk. He knows what drunk feels like and this isn’t it. What the hell happened to him? And where’s Sam? Back on his hands and knees, Dean crawls. The wind whips at his cold skin, tugs at the edges of his unravelling shirt, but he keeps his head down and carries on. His frozen fingers reach the sharp-edged dune grass and close convulsively on fistfuls of fine silver sand and gray-green grasses. He’s breathing as heavily as if he’s run a couple of circuits chasing Sam’s longer legs, and all his blood seems to have rushed to his head because everything’s spinning like a tilt-o-whirl. He thinks he’s clear of the water now, surely he’s come far enough, and he slumps face-down right there in the sand. Let’s the creeping darkness around his edges come flowing in.
With the dark comes dreams.
The entrance to the Underworld
Sam was at a loss. He stood in Dean’s orchard resting one hand unheedingly on the nearest of his hives, trying to breathe through what threatened to be a minor panic attack. Orchard was a rather glorified term for the four apple trees that Dean had planted around a rather gnarled and ancient plum tree that had somehow survived decades of neglect, but Sam wasn’t going to take issue with Dean’s tendency to exaggerate right now.
A spot of rain hit a bare patch of soil on the path, followed by another. Sam looked up at the lowering skies with a frown. Clouds had rolled into Lebanon while he’d been distracted, and the balmy spring temperatures of the morning had been banished along with the earlier sunshine.
Sam’s fingertips were vibrating. It was several seconds before Sam realised this wasn’t normal, or something related to the weather or his state of mind, but was, in fact, a steadily building hum from inside the beehive he was so casually and carelessly resting on. Without any of his protective gear.
Sam leapt backwards, limbs flailing, and that was the moment the bees chose to emerge. They rose like smoke and hung in mid air for a few seconds before flowing north, drifting on the cool breeze that had arisen when the rain arrived.
Bees didn’t fly in rain; they didn’t like to fly when it was cold. So why was a small group of them choosing to swarm now? Sam’s brain was finally kicked into action by the anomaly. Once the thoughts started, Sam found them racing, buzzing as agitated as the bees.
Bees. Significant in many countries’ folklore, sacred in others. The San desert people told of a bee planting a seed in the body of a dead mantis before it too died. That seed became the first human. Bees grew from the tears of the Egyptian god Ra; Artemis and Demeter had priestesses called Bees. None of this sounded relevant - Sam continued processing. Bees were linked with death and the underworld in Greek and Egyptian mythology…Sam straightened up. Maybe that was it - in Greek mythology in particular, bees were the bridge between the natural world and the underworld. Was this swarm trying to tell Sam something?
“Oh, Dean,” he muttered, taking off at a run after the cloud of bees through the steadily increasing rain. “Who have you pissed off this time?”
Sam followed the swarm (well, mini swarm really) up hill away from Dean’s garden and into the woods that grew round and over the bunker, brambles snagging skin and clothing with impartial claws. He was steeling himself for an arduous trek when the swarm suddenly disappeared from view into a low patch of scrub. Sam shortened his stride then stuttered to a halt when the ground beneath his feet vanished along with his bees.
“Whoa!”
He teetered on the edge of a hole in the ground, narrow and dark. Sam regained his balance then crouched down to take a closer look. The bees might be in there but Sam couldn’t tell. The light was too dim and the noise of the rain pattering on the leaves was louder than any buzzing the swarm might be doing. Sam’s hair whipped into his face as the wind grew stronger and the rain turned from merely inconvenient to torrential, but in spite of the rivulets of water running into Sam’s eyes, he could see where the undergrowth at the lip of the hole was broken and flattened. Two deep muddy grooves ran down from Sam’s feet into the dark, and it didn’t take a Tonto to read the trail. Someone had slipped and fallen here, and there was no sign of them emerging. Ergo, someone - who had to be Dean - must still be down there, probably injured, or else why would he not have climbed out again?
Sam studied the hole with caution as the rain got heavier, drumming loudly on the leaves of the brambles and ivy tangled round a more regular shape that Sam recognised as a large grille made of rusting iron. As his eyes adjusted to the rainy gloom, Sam could see the grille’s hinges were broken, and it was being held in place by a large padlock and chain. It appeared to have been designed to protect the entrance to a man-made structure, possibly a culvert. From the occult symbols Sam could see engraved on the flat surfaces of the metal, it looked like Dean had inadvertently discovered part of the bunker’s drainage system.
“Dean!”
Sam shouted a couple more times but it was futile. Even if Dean replied, Sam wouldn’t be able to hear over the noise of the rain and the small stream that was forming under his feet. He paused for a second to weigh up running back to the bunker to get rope and a flashlight, but the fact that he was already shivering told its own story. Sam couldn’t afford to waste any time. If Dean was stuck down there, Sam needed to get to him quickly before hypothermia set in.
Grabbing onto a low branch, Sam allowed the mini mudslide to carry him down into the maw of the culvert.
Asphodel meadows
Dean’s in the Impala. It’s dark outside, the only light coming from Baby’s dash. The purr of her engine reverberates through his bones - familiar, comforting. He breathes with her rhythm, the interior smelling of leather and sweat with undertones of gasoline - pure home. A soft sigh makes him turn his head and there’s Sam sprawled asleep in shotgun, head resting against the side window. Something tight in the centre of Dean’s chest loosens at the sight, and he grins, filled with a sudden longing for a spoon to stuff into Sam’s open mouth.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sam says, eyes still closed but a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“I wish I hadn’t lost the cell with that picture; that was a good look on you.”
“Yeah well, I wish I’d taken a picture of your face when you realised that beer bottle was super-glued to your hand.”
Sam straightens up, then arches back over the seat, stretching as best he can in the confined space. His too-short tee rides up, exposing that flat belly Dean secretly envied, and the dark trail of hair disappearing into loose jeans. Dean’s gaze skitters away, sideways like a crab, only to get lost in the utter blackness beyond the windshield.
“Where are we?” Dean asks; then as a sudden thought hits him, “Are we dead?”
The sense of contentment and lassitude that has gripped him since he found himself in the Impala dissipates like wind-blown smoke at the thought. Sam isn’t bothered though. Sam slouches back down into the soft leather and drapes a long arm along the back of the bench seat, carelessly allowing his hand to lie, heavy and hot, on Dean’s shoulder. It anchors Dean in place, a stone weighing down papers on a table, stopping Dean from scattering in the cold breeze from the open windows.
“Dunno, man,” Sam says, nothing but lazy musing in his voice. “Maybe.”
There’s a pause, filled with Dean’s heartbeat - too loud, too fast - and Sam’s breathing - quiet and steady.
“Does it matter?” Sam says, finally, and Dean doesn’t know the answer. He stares out front but all he can see are the faint reflections of his own face and Sam’s, lit by Baby’s dash light. Sam looks young, serene - happy, even. His hair falls in soft bangs over his forehead, hiding the worried frown that has lately been his default expression. Dean thinks this in itself should be worrying him, but he can’t muster up even a frisson of concern over the warm feeling seeing Sam so content gives him.
Sam’s hand shifts, and his thumb idly strokes across Dean’s cheek, fingernails rasping against his stubble. Dean shivers and ---
Wakes.
Tartarus
Sam’s thoughts were a churning mix of mythology and lore and worry. The darkness in the culvert reminded him of the descriptions of the different levels of the underworld. It was said that in Tartarus night was poured all around like a collar, while above grew the roots of the earth and the unharvested sea. Sam vainly wiped his glasses on his drenched shirt and stretched his eyes wide, trying to adjust to the new depths of darkness. It was quieter inside the culvert, out of the drumming rain, but he couldn’t hear the bees, or, more importantly, Dean. The only sounds were the trickle of running water and his feet squelching in years’ worth of deep mulch. He could feel the chilly mud oozing over the tops of his boots, causing him to grimace. His nostrils flared at the overwhelming stench of rotting vegetation and stagnant water stirred up by his passage.
If Dean was here, surely he couldn’t be far from the entrance. Sam moved slowly, feeling his way with outstretched hands and shuffling feet. He was rewarded when the toe of a boot stubbed against something firm, yet soft and yielding. He crouched down, ignoring the angry popping from his knees. His groping fingers snagged on soft sodden cloth and firm muscle. Sam moved carefully round the body, feeling his way until he was positioned to make the best use of the available light. Pushing his glasses up his nose, Sam strained to see a darker outline partially propped up against the glistening slime smeared walls of the tunnel. The light coming from the entrance was gray with rain but once his eyes adjusted it was just enough for Sam to see that it was Dean.
Dean’s face was slack and pallid as the belly of a fish. One temple was smeared with a mess of sticky black - blood. Sam turned Dean’s head gently and tapped his cheek. There was no reaction, so Sam leaned in to check Dean was breathing. Shit, nothing. His fingers and Dean’s skin were so cold he couldn’t tell if there was a pulse or not.
Sam rolled Dean onto his side as best he could but something was restricting Dean’s movement so they ended up with Dean slumped awkwardly, his torso twisted sideways with his legs still out straight. Sam didn’t have time to worry about that right now, his priority was getting his brother breathing again, and fast. He was all too aware that the rain wasn’t showing any signs of easing, and that if he was right, and this was some sort of storm drain, then the water levels in here were only going to rise.
Sam prised Dean’s jaw open and stuck a long finger inside Dean’s mouth. Sure enough, Dean’s airway was full of the same gunk that lined the tunnel floor. Sam scooped out as much as he could before whacking between Dean’s shoulders and hopefully expelling the rest. He returned Dean onto his back as best he could and tilted his chin before starting mouth to mouth. Three breaths, then chest compressions, you know the drill, Sammy, Dean’s voice said inside his head.
Yeah. Sam did. Only too well.
The river of Acheron
There’s no beach. No impala. No darkness - because the sun is high overhead; a shiny copper penny in a brazen blue sky. Dean’s flat on his back again, his fingers digging into grass and soil, releasing familiar scents of earth and green into the spring-chilled air. For a brief moment he thinks about the planting to come, all his fragile seedlings waiting for a green thumb. An ant or some other insect runs up the back of his hand, tickling through the fine golden hairs. He shakes it off without looking and his hand hits something (someone) warm. He turns his head and Sam is staring into his eyes, almost too close to focus on. Sam’s breath puffs into Dean’s face, moist and warm, and Dean blinks, an involuntary motion. His eyes startle open, then close like falling shutters when Sam leans in and presses cool lips to his - and this can’t be happening; he’s dreaming, right?
His lips tingle as if Sam’s touch is electrically charged, a current that flows through him, prickling skin, sparking in his blood, thrilling through his muscles. He doesn’t breathe, Sam’s doing it for him. He forgets his own name, where he is and why…if he ever knew. Sam tastes raw and sweet, of moonshine and mown grass and his breath thrusts into Dean’s mouth, claiming his lungs. Claiming Dean.
As if there’s any part of Dean that Sam didn’t already own.
Sam pulls back for a moment and air rushes back into Dean’s lungs so fast it leaves him dizzy. If he hadn’t been lying down he would have fallen. As it is, he’s falling anyway. Sam’s eyes flash with the colours of the day, brazen gold and sky blue and grass green. He’s staring at Dean expectantly but Dean doesn’t know what Sam wants. He knows his brother inside out yet somehow Sam is still a mystery.
There’s a flicker of something in Sam’s eyes, Dean can’t quite put a name to it, then Sam’s on top of him and Dean’s naked. Arms outstretched, legs splayed wide, Sam slotted between Dean’s thighs, and Dean can’t move. At first, he doesn’t want to. It feels natural. Right. For Sam to have him exposed and vulnerable, all defences down. At first, he doesn’t feel it when Sam’s knife starts slicing, then the icy cold pain slides into his leg up to his belly, following the line of the blade.
“Shh,” Sam whispers, even though Dean hasn’t made a sound.
“It’s okay, Dean, it’s gonna be fine,” Sam’s saying but Dean feels strange. Weak as water. And when he lifts his head just enough to look down his body to see what Sam’s doing, he’s not fine. Sure, he’s not bleeding. Or at least, he’s not bleeding blood. Instead it’s light that’s spilling out of him, white as star-shine and ten times as bright. His eyes burn.
Dean screams.
Fields of Punishment
Sam wasn’t sure how long he’d been performing CPR when Dean convulsed, coughing up more foul-smelling slime onto Sam’s shoulder as he jack-knifed out of the stagnant mud. It was the best sound Sam had heard in a very long time, and he held on while his brother choked out breath like the air was full of glass shards.
He lowered Dean back against the wall and checked, but Dean hadn’t woken; he was still a dead weight in Sam’s hands. But at least he was breathing on his own, that was a start. Sam’s relief was short-lived when he noticed the sludge he was kneeling in was now threatening to cover his outstretched calves. He ran his hands down Dean’s body and sure enough, the water levels were rising. Well, that was just peachy, Sam’s inner Dean observed, somewhat redundantly. The purpose of this culvert was becoming obvious, proving Sam right, and sitting in a storm drain with a storm raging outside was not the best idea they ever had.
“Fuck, Dean, you never do anything the easy way, do you,” Sam muttered into Dean’s wet hair.
He wound his long arms round Dean’s shoulders and tugged. Sam’s muscles screamed with the strain but Dean wasn’t budging. In fact, even though he was still unconscious, when Sam pulled, Dean whimpered in pain. Sam didn’t want to set his brother down in the freezing cold water again, but he had no choice. Keeping his body between Dean and the worst of the swelling flow, Sam tried to find the source of the obstruction by feeling his way down Dean’s submerged legs, all too aware that his own hands were increasingly clumsy with cold. Luckily diiagnosing the source of the problem wasn’t difficult because when Sam’s numb fingers reached the trapped and injured ankle, Dean screamed.
The river of Lethe
He’s cold.
His eyes are open but there’s nothing to see except gray. Gray sky above him, gray soil underneath him; the seam between the earth and sky indistinguishable in the distance.
Water colder than the air is dripping down on his exposed skin from a smooth-barked tall tree, its leaves a pale silver against the darker dove-gray sky. He thinks he should know the name of the tree, but as he thinks that, he realises he doesn’t even know his own name. For a moment he struggles to remember. There was a man, someone important; tall, slender like this tree, with stupidly long hair and worried eyes…then the image is gone, leaving only a vague sense of loss.
Water drips and soon he feels nothing but the all-pervading cold and a bone-deep weariness.
Heavy lidded, his eyes close and he sleeps.
Elysium
“What do you mean, I can thank the bees? It was you who pulled me out of there, wasn’t it?”
Dean was propped up on several pillows, his face barely a shade pinker than the white linen pillowcase supporting his head. His freckles stood out like cinnamon sprinkles on milk and his ankle was propped up and bandaged neatly in Sam’s best handiwork. Sam thought Dean had never looked better, bruises and all, and he hadn’t stopped smiling since Dean had opened his eyes.
It had taken Sam over two hours to free Dean from the second grille Dean had somehow managed to stuff his left leg into, all the while desperately trying to keep both their heads above the rapidly rising mucky water that was filling the drain. It had reminded Sam of a smellier, dirtier version of that episode of Dr Sexy MD that Dean used to like watching on repeat; the one where Dr Sexy rescued a pretty girl after they’d spent a night trapped in a culvert. Dr Sexy had returned to the hospital to a hero’s welcome, with his white coat still retaining that just-washed splendour which perfectly matched his gleaming teeth. Sam and Dean Winchester, on the other hand, emerged from their culvert covered in evil-smelling mud with Sam thanking Chuck their tetanus shots were up to date and with a noticeable dearth of welcoming committees.
“A whole swarm of bees wouldn’t have enough strength to lift a grown man, and even sacred, magic bees would balk at trying to deal with a big lump like you, Dean. So yeah, unsurprisingly it was me who carried you out of the drain. But it was the bees that led me to the culvert. Without them I might not have found you until it was too late.”
“Huh, so you’re the fucking bee whisperer now, are you?” was Dean’s response, but Sam could see a reluctantly impressed expression lingering on his brother’s face. In the weeks of recovery that followed, Sam found several searches in Dean’s browser history about the mythical significance of bees. He even, on one memorable occasion, caught Dean talking to one of the hives.
The Isle of the Blessed
“Bees are very democratic, you know,” Sam observed from somewhere behind his ridiculous broad-brimmed hat and voluminous veil. Dean grunted dismissively to demonstrate his extreme disinterest in Apoidean politics, and snipped another malformed twig off the oldest of his apple trees. He patted the gray bark and smiled. There’d been a good crop from this one last year, and he was certain this year’s would be even better. His mouth started watering at the thought of all the pies he was going to make. Of course, Sam’s bees were great pollinators and since Sam had established his hives, Dean’s fruit and vegetable patch had really thrived. Not that Dean was going to admit the connection to Sam any time soon. He barely admitted it to himself, after all. If he occasionally thanked the bees, that was between him and them.
Sam was droning on, much like his bees, a pleasant hum in the background. Dean heard Sam say something about bees harnessing the power of self-interest to promote social harmony and barely restrained himself from a massive eye-roll. It was kind of comforting that despite the years passing more and more rapidly these days, some things never changed. Like Dean’s little brother’s eagerness to absorb every snippet of arcane knowledge stored in the Men of Letter’s library and beyond. Somehow Dean didn’t think that the Men of Letters would have been interested in the merits of quadratic voting systems, and how the fuck had Sam moved onto that from bee behaviours?
Dean shrugged and tipped his head back to feel the early summer sun on his face. His neck gave an audible crack and his bad leg creaked when he shifted his weight but he ignored them. The day was too awesome to worry about the creeping effects of aging and injury on his aching body. The air was rich with smells that spoke of early summer. There was the scent of freshly turned earth where he’d just planted out his seedlings - kale, Chinese broccoli, Swiss chard and spinach (all for Sam), and pumpkin, chilli and green peppers for him. Threaded through those darker earthy notes Dean could make out the delicate aroma of apple blossom, just discernable over the headier scent of the jasmine that had seeded itself a few years ago and now ran rampant, concealing the lower entrance to the bunker in a tangle of dark green starred with white flowers.
The jasmine reminded Dean of their mother. Mary had gone again now, lost to them for the second time - no, make that the sixth. Dean had said goodbye to her more often than he cared to remember. Ghost, djinn vision, past self, resurrected Mom. It still hurt his heart to think of all the partings.
Sam’s hand grasped Dean’s shoulder, the firm grip anchoring Dean in the present. His eyes opened to find Sam’s anxious face peering at him through dark-rimmed glasses. Sam had bitched about needing them for weeks after he succumbed and had his eyes tested, but Dean secretly thought their addition made his little brother look kind of distinguished. Sam had lifted his veil-thing (it probably had some fancy technical bee-keeping name, but to Dean it was a veil) and a few stray bees were drifting lazily round his head, buzzing a soft approval that made Dean proud. His brother, the Bee Whisperer. Sam’s hair was backlit by the sun, the breeze lifting a few strands into a red-gold corona that reflected in the tiny, transparent wings of Sam’s bees.
In this light Sam looked ancient, holy, gilded like a god, and Dean almost staggered at the way his heart swelled. How his love for Sam never lessened it’s grip, never stopped squeezing the breath from his lungs just like it had the very first time baby Sammy wrapped his tiny fist round Dean’s finger forty five years ago. It wasn’t fucking fair, but Dean wouldn’t have it any other way.
A solitary bee hummed thoughtfully in agreement, its chitinous feet tickling the fragile skin as it landed on the freckled shell of Dean’s ear. Dean didn’t bat it away; he listened to it whisper Sam’s secrets while he basked in the sunshine of Sam’s smile.
Recipient: kalliel
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~5000
Warnings: Use of the F word. There might be a touch of gencest in here because the boys might be older, but they are still stupidly co-dependent.
Author's Notes: To Kalliel: I’ve tried to cover a few of your likes, and merged a couple of your prompts - you asked for anything about bees, and for some wet Winchester hazard - so I hope this fits the bill! Thank you to my lovely beta for picking out my inconsistencies and making this offering so much better - you know who you are!
The headings are some of the different parts of the Underworld taken from Greek mythology, as is the title.
Summary: Dean and Sam are semi retired from hunting. Dean grows stuff, Sam keeps bees. It’s a story of domestic bliss until suddenly it isn’t.
The Elm of False Dreams
“Look at this,” Dean said, thrusting a soil encrusted hand under Sam’s nose, causing Sam to start. He nearly dropped the frame of raw honey he’d just brought into the kitchen to process. Sam should have been used to Dean getting all up into his space by now, but Dean might be forty-nine and virtually retired but he still moved like a freaking ninja.
“Dean, what the hell?”
“Look,” Dean repeated, flapping his hand urgently, as if his unspoken question was obvious. Sam raised an eyebrow at his brother’s scrunched up expression that wavered somewhere between horror and bemusement. Sam was certainly with Dean on the latter - he didn’t have a clue what Dean was on about. Sam placed the sticky frame down on the chopping board and sighed. Gardening was supposed to be a soothing activity, yet somehow Dean managed to turn it into a crisis.
“Okay, I’m looking. What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“This! Do you think it’s arthritis?” Dean flapped his hand again then jabbed at a slightly knobbly-looking knuckle. Sam nearly strained a muscle as his eyes rolled heavenwards.
“Really? Dean, your hands are so dirty you could have leprosy and I wouldn’t be able to see it.”
“I don’t see you complaining about a little dirt when I put all that fancy rabbit food on your plate, grown with these very hands,” Dean pouted, somehow looking twelve years old, all round green eyes and eternally youthful. Seriously, sometimes Sam thought Dean must practice witchcraft on the sly. It was obscene how time and adversity barely touched him, in spite of the gray that now sprinkled Dean’s stubble and highlighted his temples.
Sam turned his attention back to the oozing slab of honeycomb, carefully picking off the dead carapace of a worker bee before picking up the home-made rake and starting to score across the waxy surface capping the tiny, perfect hexagons. The first honey harvest of the year was a moment Sam liked to savor, and he was particularly proud that his bees had produced a good crop so early.
“Hah, laugh it up, chuckles. In four years time this will be you.” Dean said, interrupting Sam’s zen moment.
Sam shook his head, hiding a smile. “Yeah, and in four years time you’ll be using a walking frame, old man.”
“Fuck you very much!”
Dean flounced out of the kitchen, but not before he’d stuck his suspect knobbly and very dirty finger into the center of Sam’s frame. He slurped loudly and sucked off the honey as he went. For someone who protested loudly and often about being manly, Dean did a great Scarlet O’Hara impression when he was in a mood.
“Gross, Dean!” Sam raked over the hole, muttering imprecations under his breath about contamination of his honey. After so many years in close proximity, Sam was still amazed at his big brother’s talent for being endlessly infuriating.
Absorbed in his work centrifuging the liquid honey from the twelve frames he’d harvested from his hives that morning, it was probably a couple more hours before Sam thought to wonder where Dean had gone. A loud rumble from his stomach reminded him that they hadn’t eaten since after Sam’s early morning run. He took the now honey-free frames from the centrifuge and stacked them neatly on the stainless steel drainer. He’d probably be able to make candles from the waxy residue. Resisting the temptation to lick his fingers clean, and thankful Dean wasn’t there offer to lick it off for him because yuck, insanitary, he washed off the stickiness in the sink. He left the task of draining the spun honey into jars in favor of finding Dean.
Sam didn’t start worrying until he’d been through all the usual places and found no sign of his wayward brother. Dean wasn’t crashed out on his memory foam bed, having a sneaky siesta when he thought Sam wasn’t looking. He wasn’t practising on the shooting range, or watching porn on his laptop in the library. He wasn’t washing the Impala, or tuning her ancient engine that didn’t run any more because there were no more parts to be had anywhere. He wasn’t outside, or in the greenhouse, tending his precious seedlings.
Dean wasn’t anywhere.
Oceanus
Dean startles awake when something cold and wet stings his face. His eyes are crusty and it’s a struggle to open them, but when he does, he’s none the wiser. Above him the sky presses down; gun-metal gray, clouds so heavy he feels he could touch them by reaching up a hand from where he’s lying on his back. The air is salt-laden, damp, and full of noise. It takes him a moment to sort it all out - the rattling wind in the dune grasses from the shurr of the waves from the grinding of the shingle. Sea spray or rain, he’s not sure which, needles his cheek again and he shivers.
He’s not ready to move yet though the chill has settled into his bones. His head is thick and his thoughts sluggish as congealing tar. He thinks he might be drunk though he can’t remember much about the night he must have had. What was the point of a hangover without the fun that came before?
He can smell something boozy over the scents of sea - had he spilled whiskey down himself? -together with something vaguely sweet that reminds him of apples. It’s incongruous and unsettling enough to force his eyes open again (he hadn’t realized he’d shut them) and attempt to sit up. He manages to get as far as propping up his torso, resting on his elbows. His heart is racing from the effort which makes him reassess the whole drunken stupor theory. That and the fact that he really cannot recall one single reason why he should be lying on an deserted windswept beach with the taste of ash on his tongue and waves lapping at his bare feet.
The wind picks up the foam from the crest of the next wave and dashes it into his face. He splutters and blinks, the shock of the cold shuddering through his whole body this time, and he scrabbles at the shifting pebbles, trying to shuffle his butt backwards up the banked beach and out of reach of the grasping ocean. At least the salty water has banished the ashy flavours from his mouth, though now he’s aware of a terrible thirst. It grips him mercilessly and has him patting down his pockets in the hope of finding a hip flask. He always carries holy water, but right now he’s coming up blank. His jacket has gone and he’s wearing nothing but a torn tee and his jeans, both of which are saturated and stiff with sea-water.
The ebb drags at the stones, rolling them down then grinding them up the beach as the waves surge high enough to wet Dean’s feet again. The tide must be coming in. The realisation rewards him with a surge of its own, and he finds the strength to roll over onto his hands and knees. From there he finds enough leverage to scramble upright with his back to the ocean. Swaying like the marram grasses on the dunes in front of him, Dean staggers forward. He only manages a few precarious steps before his momentum deserts him and he falls.
Not drunk. He knows what drunk feels like and this isn’t it. What the hell happened to him? And where’s Sam? Back on his hands and knees, Dean crawls. The wind whips at his cold skin, tugs at the edges of his unravelling shirt, but he keeps his head down and carries on. His frozen fingers reach the sharp-edged dune grass and close convulsively on fistfuls of fine silver sand and gray-green grasses. He’s breathing as heavily as if he’s run a couple of circuits chasing Sam’s longer legs, and all his blood seems to have rushed to his head because everything’s spinning like a tilt-o-whirl. He thinks he’s clear of the water now, surely he’s come far enough, and he slumps face-down right there in the sand. Let’s the creeping darkness around his edges come flowing in.
With the dark comes dreams.
The entrance to the Underworld
Sam was at a loss. He stood in Dean’s orchard resting one hand unheedingly on the nearest of his hives, trying to breathe through what threatened to be a minor panic attack. Orchard was a rather glorified term for the four apple trees that Dean had planted around a rather gnarled and ancient plum tree that had somehow survived decades of neglect, but Sam wasn’t going to take issue with Dean’s tendency to exaggerate right now.
A spot of rain hit a bare patch of soil on the path, followed by another. Sam looked up at the lowering skies with a frown. Clouds had rolled into Lebanon while he’d been distracted, and the balmy spring temperatures of the morning had been banished along with the earlier sunshine.
Sam’s fingertips were vibrating. It was several seconds before Sam realised this wasn’t normal, or something related to the weather or his state of mind, but was, in fact, a steadily building hum from inside the beehive he was so casually and carelessly resting on. Without any of his protective gear.
Sam leapt backwards, limbs flailing, and that was the moment the bees chose to emerge. They rose like smoke and hung in mid air for a few seconds before flowing north, drifting on the cool breeze that had arisen when the rain arrived.
Bees didn’t fly in rain; they didn’t like to fly when it was cold. So why was a small group of them choosing to swarm now? Sam’s brain was finally kicked into action by the anomaly. Once the thoughts started, Sam found them racing, buzzing as agitated as the bees.
Bees. Significant in many countries’ folklore, sacred in others. The San desert people told of a bee planting a seed in the body of a dead mantis before it too died. That seed became the first human. Bees grew from the tears of the Egyptian god Ra; Artemis and Demeter had priestesses called Bees. None of this sounded relevant - Sam continued processing. Bees were linked with death and the underworld in Greek and Egyptian mythology…Sam straightened up. Maybe that was it - in Greek mythology in particular, bees were the bridge between the natural world and the underworld. Was this swarm trying to tell Sam something?
“Oh, Dean,” he muttered, taking off at a run after the cloud of bees through the steadily increasing rain. “Who have you pissed off this time?”
Sam followed the swarm (well, mini swarm really) up hill away from Dean’s garden and into the woods that grew round and over the bunker, brambles snagging skin and clothing with impartial claws. He was steeling himself for an arduous trek when the swarm suddenly disappeared from view into a low patch of scrub. Sam shortened his stride then stuttered to a halt when the ground beneath his feet vanished along with his bees.
“Whoa!”
He teetered on the edge of a hole in the ground, narrow and dark. Sam regained his balance then crouched down to take a closer look. The bees might be in there but Sam couldn’t tell. The light was too dim and the noise of the rain pattering on the leaves was louder than any buzzing the swarm might be doing. Sam’s hair whipped into his face as the wind grew stronger and the rain turned from merely inconvenient to torrential, but in spite of the rivulets of water running into Sam’s eyes, he could see where the undergrowth at the lip of the hole was broken and flattened. Two deep muddy grooves ran down from Sam’s feet into the dark, and it didn’t take a Tonto to read the trail. Someone had slipped and fallen here, and there was no sign of them emerging. Ergo, someone - who had to be Dean - must still be down there, probably injured, or else why would he not have climbed out again?
Sam studied the hole with caution as the rain got heavier, drumming loudly on the leaves of the brambles and ivy tangled round a more regular shape that Sam recognised as a large grille made of rusting iron. As his eyes adjusted to the rainy gloom, Sam could see the grille’s hinges were broken, and it was being held in place by a large padlock and chain. It appeared to have been designed to protect the entrance to a man-made structure, possibly a culvert. From the occult symbols Sam could see engraved on the flat surfaces of the metal, it looked like Dean had inadvertently discovered part of the bunker’s drainage system.
“Dean!”
Sam shouted a couple more times but it was futile. Even if Dean replied, Sam wouldn’t be able to hear over the noise of the rain and the small stream that was forming under his feet. He paused for a second to weigh up running back to the bunker to get rope and a flashlight, but the fact that he was already shivering told its own story. Sam couldn’t afford to waste any time. If Dean was stuck down there, Sam needed to get to him quickly before hypothermia set in.
Grabbing onto a low branch, Sam allowed the mini mudslide to carry him down into the maw of the culvert.
Asphodel meadows
Dean’s in the Impala. It’s dark outside, the only light coming from Baby’s dash. The purr of her engine reverberates through his bones - familiar, comforting. He breathes with her rhythm, the interior smelling of leather and sweat with undertones of gasoline - pure home. A soft sigh makes him turn his head and there’s Sam sprawled asleep in shotgun, head resting against the side window. Something tight in the centre of Dean’s chest loosens at the sight, and he grins, filled with a sudden longing for a spoon to stuff into Sam’s open mouth.
“Don’t even think about it,” Sam says, eyes still closed but a smile tugging at the corner of his lips.
“I wish I hadn’t lost the cell with that picture; that was a good look on you.”
“Yeah well, I wish I’d taken a picture of your face when you realised that beer bottle was super-glued to your hand.”
Sam straightens up, then arches back over the seat, stretching as best he can in the confined space. His too-short tee rides up, exposing that flat belly Dean secretly envied, and the dark trail of hair disappearing into loose jeans. Dean’s gaze skitters away, sideways like a crab, only to get lost in the utter blackness beyond the windshield.
“Where are we?” Dean asks; then as a sudden thought hits him, “Are we dead?”
The sense of contentment and lassitude that has gripped him since he found himself in the Impala dissipates like wind-blown smoke at the thought. Sam isn’t bothered though. Sam slouches back down into the soft leather and drapes a long arm along the back of the bench seat, carelessly allowing his hand to lie, heavy and hot, on Dean’s shoulder. It anchors Dean in place, a stone weighing down papers on a table, stopping Dean from scattering in the cold breeze from the open windows.
“Dunno, man,” Sam says, nothing but lazy musing in his voice. “Maybe.”
There’s a pause, filled with Dean’s heartbeat - too loud, too fast - and Sam’s breathing - quiet and steady.
“Does it matter?” Sam says, finally, and Dean doesn’t know the answer. He stares out front but all he can see are the faint reflections of his own face and Sam’s, lit by Baby’s dash light. Sam looks young, serene - happy, even. His hair falls in soft bangs over his forehead, hiding the worried frown that has lately been his default expression. Dean thinks this in itself should be worrying him, but he can’t muster up even a frisson of concern over the warm feeling seeing Sam so content gives him.
Sam’s hand shifts, and his thumb idly strokes across Dean’s cheek, fingernails rasping against his stubble. Dean shivers and ---
Wakes.
Tartarus
Sam’s thoughts were a churning mix of mythology and lore and worry. The darkness in the culvert reminded him of the descriptions of the different levels of the underworld. It was said that in Tartarus night was poured all around like a collar, while above grew the roots of the earth and the unharvested sea. Sam vainly wiped his glasses on his drenched shirt and stretched his eyes wide, trying to adjust to the new depths of darkness. It was quieter inside the culvert, out of the drumming rain, but he couldn’t hear the bees, or, more importantly, Dean. The only sounds were the trickle of running water and his feet squelching in years’ worth of deep mulch. He could feel the chilly mud oozing over the tops of his boots, causing him to grimace. His nostrils flared at the overwhelming stench of rotting vegetation and stagnant water stirred up by his passage.
If Dean was here, surely he couldn’t be far from the entrance. Sam moved slowly, feeling his way with outstretched hands and shuffling feet. He was rewarded when the toe of a boot stubbed against something firm, yet soft and yielding. He crouched down, ignoring the angry popping from his knees. His groping fingers snagged on soft sodden cloth and firm muscle. Sam moved carefully round the body, feeling his way until he was positioned to make the best use of the available light. Pushing his glasses up his nose, Sam strained to see a darker outline partially propped up against the glistening slime smeared walls of the tunnel. The light coming from the entrance was gray with rain but once his eyes adjusted it was just enough for Sam to see that it was Dean.
Dean’s face was slack and pallid as the belly of a fish. One temple was smeared with a mess of sticky black - blood. Sam turned Dean’s head gently and tapped his cheek. There was no reaction, so Sam leaned in to check Dean was breathing. Shit, nothing. His fingers and Dean’s skin were so cold he couldn’t tell if there was a pulse or not.
Sam rolled Dean onto his side as best he could but something was restricting Dean’s movement so they ended up with Dean slumped awkwardly, his torso twisted sideways with his legs still out straight. Sam didn’t have time to worry about that right now, his priority was getting his brother breathing again, and fast. He was all too aware that the rain wasn’t showing any signs of easing, and that if he was right, and this was some sort of storm drain, then the water levels in here were only going to rise.
Sam prised Dean’s jaw open and stuck a long finger inside Dean’s mouth. Sure enough, Dean’s airway was full of the same gunk that lined the tunnel floor. Sam scooped out as much as he could before whacking between Dean’s shoulders and hopefully expelling the rest. He returned Dean onto his back as best he could and tilted his chin before starting mouth to mouth. Three breaths, then chest compressions, you know the drill, Sammy, Dean’s voice said inside his head.
Yeah. Sam did. Only too well.
The river of Acheron
There’s no beach. No impala. No darkness - because the sun is high overhead; a shiny copper penny in a brazen blue sky. Dean’s flat on his back again, his fingers digging into grass and soil, releasing familiar scents of earth and green into the spring-chilled air. For a brief moment he thinks about the planting to come, all his fragile seedlings waiting for a green thumb. An ant or some other insect runs up the back of his hand, tickling through the fine golden hairs. He shakes it off without looking and his hand hits something (someone) warm. He turns his head and Sam is staring into his eyes, almost too close to focus on. Sam’s breath puffs into Dean’s face, moist and warm, and Dean blinks, an involuntary motion. His eyes startle open, then close like falling shutters when Sam leans in and presses cool lips to his - and this can’t be happening; he’s dreaming, right?
His lips tingle as if Sam’s touch is electrically charged, a current that flows through him, prickling skin, sparking in his blood, thrilling through his muscles. He doesn’t breathe, Sam’s doing it for him. He forgets his own name, where he is and why…if he ever knew. Sam tastes raw and sweet, of moonshine and mown grass and his breath thrusts into Dean’s mouth, claiming his lungs. Claiming Dean.
As if there’s any part of Dean that Sam didn’t already own.
Sam pulls back for a moment and air rushes back into Dean’s lungs so fast it leaves him dizzy. If he hadn’t been lying down he would have fallen. As it is, he’s falling anyway. Sam’s eyes flash with the colours of the day, brazen gold and sky blue and grass green. He’s staring at Dean expectantly but Dean doesn’t know what Sam wants. He knows his brother inside out yet somehow Sam is still a mystery.
There’s a flicker of something in Sam’s eyes, Dean can’t quite put a name to it, then Sam’s on top of him and Dean’s naked. Arms outstretched, legs splayed wide, Sam slotted between Dean’s thighs, and Dean can’t move. At first, he doesn’t want to. It feels natural. Right. For Sam to have him exposed and vulnerable, all defences down. At first, he doesn’t feel it when Sam’s knife starts slicing, then the icy cold pain slides into his leg up to his belly, following the line of the blade.
“Shh,” Sam whispers, even though Dean hasn’t made a sound.
“It’s okay, Dean, it’s gonna be fine,” Sam’s saying but Dean feels strange. Weak as water. And when he lifts his head just enough to look down his body to see what Sam’s doing, he’s not fine. Sure, he’s not bleeding. Or at least, he’s not bleeding blood. Instead it’s light that’s spilling out of him, white as star-shine and ten times as bright. His eyes burn.
Dean screams.
Fields of Punishment
Sam wasn’t sure how long he’d been performing CPR when Dean convulsed, coughing up more foul-smelling slime onto Sam’s shoulder as he jack-knifed out of the stagnant mud. It was the best sound Sam had heard in a very long time, and he held on while his brother choked out breath like the air was full of glass shards.
He lowered Dean back against the wall and checked, but Dean hadn’t woken; he was still a dead weight in Sam’s hands. But at least he was breathing on his own, that was a start. Sam’s relief was short-lived when he noticed the sludge he was kneeling in was now threatening to cover his outstretched calves. He ran his hands down Dean’s body and sure enough, the water levels were rising. Well, that was just peachy, Sam’s inner Dean observed, somewhat redundantly. The purpose of this culvert was becoming obvious, proving Sam right, and sitting in a storm drain with a storm raging outside was not the best idea they ever had.
“Fuck, Dean, you never do anything the easy way, do you,” Sam muttered into Dean’s wet hair.
He wound his long arms round Dean’s shoulders and tugged. Sam’s muscles screamed with the strain but Dean wasn’t budging. In fact, even though he was still unconscious, when Sam pulled, Dean whimpered in pain. Sam didn’t want to set his brother down in the freezing cold water again, but he had no choice. Keeping his body between Dean and the worst of the swelling flow, Sam tried to find the source of the obstruction by feeling his way down Dean’s submerged legs, all too aware that his own hands were increasingly clumsy with cold. Luckily diiagnosing the source of the problem wasn’t difficult because when Sam’s numb fingers reached the trapped and injured ankle, Dean screamed.
The river of Lethe
He’s cold.
His eyes are open but there’s nothing to see except gray. Gray sky above him, gray soil underneath him; the seam between the earth and sky indistinguishable in the distance.
Water colder than the air is dripping down on his exposed skin from a smooth-barked tall tree, its leaves a pale silver against the darker dove-gray sky. He thinks he should know the name of the tree, but as he thinks that, he realises he doesn’t even know his own name. For a moment he struggles to remember. There was a man, someone important; tall, slender like this tree, with stupidly long hair and worried eyes…then the image is gone, leaving only a vague sense of loss.
Water drips and soon he feels nothing but the all-pervading cold and a bone-deep weariness.
Heavy lidded, his eyes close and he sleeps.
Elysium
“What do you mean, I can thank the bees? It was you who pulled me out of there, wasn’t it?”
Dean was propped up on several pillows, his face barely a shade pinker than the white linen pillowcase supporting his head. His freckles stood out like cinnamon sprinkles on milk and his ankle was propped up and bandaged neatly in Sam’s best handiwork. Sam thought Dean had never looked better, bruises and all, and he hadn’t stopped smiling since Dean had opened his eyes.
It had taken Sam over two hours to free Dean from the second grille Dean had somehow managed to stuff his left leg into, all the while desperately trying to keep both their heads above the rapidly rising mucky water that was filling the drain. It had reminded Sam of a smellier, dirtier version of that episode of Dr Sexy MD that Dean used to like watching on repeat; the one where Dr Sexy rescued a pretty girl after they’d spent a night trapped in a culvert. Dr Sexy had returned to the hospital to a hero’s welcome, with his white coat still retaining that just-washed splendour which perfectly matched his gleaming teeth. Sam and Dean Winchester, on the other hand, emerged from their culvert covered in evil-smelling mud with Sam thanking Chuck their tetanus shots were up to date and with a noticeable dearth of welcoming committees.
“A whole swarm of bees wouldn’t have enough strength to lift a grown man, and even sacred, magic bees would balk at trying to deal with a big lump like you, Dean. So yeah, unsurprisingly it was me who carried you out of the drain. But it was the bees that led me to the culvert. Without them I might not have found you until it was too late.”
“Huh, so you’re the fucking bee whisperer now, are you?” was Dean’s response, but Sam could see a reluctantly impressed expression lingering on his brother’s face. In the weeks of recovery that followed, Sam found several searches in Dean’s browser history about the mythical significance of bees. He even, on one memorable occasion, caught Dean talking to one of the hives.
The Isle of the Blessed
“Bees are very democratic, you know,” Sam observed from somewhere behind his ridiculous broad-brimmed hat and voluminous veil. Dean grunted dismissively to demonstrate his extreme disinterest in Apoidean politics, and snipped another malformed twig off the oldest of his apple trees. He patted the gray bark and smiled. There’d been a good crop from this one last year, and he was certain this year’s would be even better. His mouth started watering at the thought of all the pies he was going to make. Of course, Sam’s bees were great pollinators and since Sam had established his hives, Dean’s fruit and vegetable patch had really thrived. Not that Dean was going to admit the connection to Sam any time soon. He barely admitted it to himself, after all. If he occasionally thanked the bees, that was between him and them.
Sam was droning on, much like his bees, a pleasant hum in the background. Dean heard Sam say something about bees harnessing the power of self-interest to promote social harmony and barely restrained himself from a massive eye-roll. It was kind of comforting that despite the years passing more and more rapidly these days, some things never changed. Like Dean’s little brother’s eagerness to absorb every snippet of arcane knowledge stored in the Men of Letter’s library and beyond. Somehow Dean didn’t think that the Men of Letters would have been interested in the merits of quadratic voting systems, and how the fuck had Sam moved onto that from bee behaviours?
Dean shrugged and tipped his head back to feel the early summer sun on his face. His neck gave an audible crack and his bad leg creaked when he shifted his weight but he ignored them. The day was too awesome to worry about the creeping effects of aging and injury on his aching body. The air was rich with smells that spoke of early summer. There was the scent of freshly turned earth where he’d just planted out his seedlings - kale, Chinese broccoli, Swiss chard and spinach (all for Sam), and pumpkin, chilli and green peppers for him. Threaded through those darker earthy notes Dean could make out the delicate aroma of apple blossom, just discernable over the headier scent of the jasmine that had seeded itself a few years ago and now ran rampant, concealing the lower entrance to the bunker in a tangle of dark green starred with white flowers.
The jasmine reminded Dean of their mother. Mary had gone again now, lost to them for the second time - no, make that the sixth. Dean had said goodbye to her more often than he cared to remember. Ghost, djinn vision, past self, resurrected Mom. It still hurt his heart to think of all the partings.
Sam’s hand grasped Dean’s shoulder, the firm grip anchoring Dean in the present. His eyes opened to find Sam’s anxious face peering at him through dark-rimmed glasses. Sam had bitched about needing them for weeks after he succumbed and had his eyes tested, but Dean secretly thought their addition made his little brother look kind of distinguished. Sam had lifted his veil-thing (it probably had some fancy technical bee-keeping name, but to Dean it was a veil) and a few stray bees were drifting lazily round his head, buzzing a soft approval that made Dean proud. His brother, the Bee Whisperer. Sam’s hair was backlit by the sun, the breeze lifting a few strands into a red-gold corona that reflected in the tiny, transparent wings of Sam’s bees.
In this light Sam looked ancient, holy, gilded like a god, and Dean almost staggered at the way his heart swelled. How his love for Sam never lessened it’s grip, never stopped squeezing the breath from his lungs just like it had the very first time baby Sammy wrapped his tiny fist round Dean’s finger forty five years ago. It wasn’t fucking fair, but Dean wouldn’t have it any other way.
A solitary bee hummed thoughtfully in agreement, its chitinous feet tickling the fragile skin as it landed on the freckled shell of Dean’s ear. Dean didn’t bat it away; he listened to it whisper Sam’s secrets while he basked in the sunshine of Sam’s smile.