Archive of Our Own

Sam wakes slowly, blinking away the last inky tendrils of his dream from his eyes. 

He had been in a grocery store at some point, and it’s kind of funny, now, that his dreams are of his grocery list instead of monsters. Sam leans over to the nightstand and taps on his phone screen. 7:09 a.m . Sam wars with himself briefly over whether to get up or stay in bed. This would usually be his cue to get dressed for his run, but something undefinable and heavy keeps him pressed to his mattress.

Sam rolls over, sliding an arm around Dean’s chest. Dean is the grumpiest little spoon that Sam has ever met—not that either of them have a lot of experience with holding another person. For the most part, Sam doesn’t try to wrangle him when he’s awake. Dean is much more pliable like this, in his sleep, head nuzzling back into the crook of Sam’s neck, soft and grumbly and automatic.

They mostly fall asleep on opposite sides of the bed, and don’t touch at all during the night. It’s a habit so old it’s become comfortable: sharing adjacent spaces, not burdened with the significance of touch. 

Dean snuffles in his sleep, leaning back against Sam’s chest. Sam closes his eyes tightly, nosing at the small hairs at the back of Dean’s neck. It’s easy to forget the novelty of having this. Sam’s spoiled rotten and gets accustomed to nice things too fast. Sam tries to remind himself of the privilege here, breathing on Dean’s spinal cord and hand pressed to the soft fold of his arm against his chest. The reminder blooms warm and happy in his chest, preening under the sun of acknowledgement.

Right? Can you believe this? It says. No, Sam really can’t.

Dean had adapted to the change in their relationship like he adapts to most things: glass of whiskey in his hand and ironic smile on his face. But—and Sam has to monitor his own train of thought in fear of becoming sickening—Dean seems genuinely happy. 

Sam catches Dean looking at him more often than not, moving his legs over so he falls asleep with Sam’s calf under his foot. He’s started whistling when he makes dinner. He automatically stands left of the sink in the morning so Sam can press in next to him when they brush their teeth. The adjustments are small, but Sam drinks them in like everything else about Dean.

Now that the agony of loving Dean from afar had been dissolved, Sam’s left with just the soft weight of the love itself. It feels strange. It feels wonderful. And Dean would brain him with the glass of water on the nightstand if he said any of this. 

Sam tilts his chin forward and places a kiss to the top knob of Dean’s spine—an apology for being sappy—then one to the back of his neck, perfectly centered. Dean always smells different in the morning, night sweat and faint soap and the smell of their skin together.

Dean makes a grumbly little noise, tucking his head against his own hand on the pillow. Sam laughs a little, a puff of air against Dean’s neck. Whatever dream he’s having, he’s not ready to leave yet.

“S’my,” Dean complains. His voice is coarse and high-pitched, barely a word. Then Dean goes tense, body straightening out and seizing once, as if he’s been electrocuted. 

“Sammy?” He says again, this time wide-awake and voice tight. Sam sighs. He had hoped Dean was having a good dream.

“Yeah,” Sam says, hand flattening out on Dean’s chest. He can feel his breath quicken. Sam pulls his hand back a little so it rests on his side, conscious of how feeling restrained can make things worse if Dean’s just woken from a nightmare. Sam wonders what Dean dreams about. They’ve both had too many close calls.

Nightmares have been coming fewer and farther between since they’ve started sharing a bed, but it’s not unusual. Last month, Dean had a nightmare of that first time but in reverse: Sam on the ground being ripped to gore by a pack of hellhounds. He wouldn’t calm down until Sam rolled Dean on top of him and held his head down against his chest, his heartbeat thumping against Dean’s cheek.

They fucked after, slow and deep and silent, and Sam pretended not to see the brightness in Dean’s eyes while Dean pretended not to notice the way Sam’s eyes went distant as the very real image of Dean’s chest being torn to ribbons played on loop in his brain.

Dean shoots out of bed, shrugging Sam’s arm off with a roughness that takes him off guard. Dean whirls around, eyes wide as he stares Sam down. His shirt is still rumpled, and his hair is flattened on one side by the pillow but he looks fucking overwrought. 

His eyes fly over Sam in bed, lingering on his face before taking stock of the room. Sam turns around so he can flick the lamp on. Dean winces at the light, and he’s backing away from the bed like it’s covered in snakes.

Sam sits up, genuine alarm starting to take root in his stomach. It must be bad. Dean’s not woken up like this in a few months. Usually Sam can talk him through it or offer a distraction, but Dean looks…unwell. Scared. Manic. The way a dog must look seconds before it chews its own leg off to escape a bear trap. 

“Dean?” He asks, carefully.

“Not again, not fucking again.” Dean mutters, and Sam throws his legs over the side of the bed, scooting forward so he can look at Dean properly.

“It was a dream,” Sam says, part as placation and part as hope. But as he gets closer to Dean, he notices something’s…off.

Dean is…

Dean’s eyes snag on his nightstand strewn with the contents of his pockets from the night before: his wallet, a few coins from the convenience store down the road, his pocket knife, the keys to the Impala. 

“A dream?” Dean asks, a little dazed. Sam leans forward, barely resists snagging Dean’s wrist. Dean’s out of it, this time. Usually, a truly bad nightmare wakes him with a snap, and Dean has to walk it out, trailing up and down the hall like a ghost. Sam always stands in the doorway until he can come back into bed. A sentinel to his grief, a guard to protect his anger.

One of the few times Dean’s dreams didn’t wake Sam, Dean ended up having a panic attack in a motel bathroom and Sam didn’t find out until he saw the claw-like welts on Dean’s throat the next morning from where he had ripped at his own throat. I couldn’t breathe , he had said, not meeting Sam’s eyes. Sam tries to stay alert, now. Attuned to the shifting of the mattress.

“Yeah, Dean. Just a dream.” Sam says now, searching his face. Something’s off, not including Dean’s far-away look. 

Sam tries to place what’s odd as he ducks his head to look at Dean’s wide eyes. Dean keeps turning to hide his face, and it’s disconcerting to try to calm him down when he can’t see him.

Dean shifts to the nightstand and starts picking through his things. He flips open his wallet, looks at the fake ID there. Flips through the bills, like he’s a cashier checking for counterfeits. He drops the wallet back on the nightstand, resting a hand on the cool wood for a second. It’s an odd reaction to being thrown awake from a nightmare, but not an impossible one.

Sam woke up from one one night and couldn’t be brought back down until he had gone into the bathroom and sat under the spray of the shower for a few minutes, warm water ripping his brain from icefireterror and the phantom blood from his hands.

They’re no stranger to this, to pressing each other back into shape, moulding each other into humans again with firm hands and soft words after their beds evict them. Sam lets Dean orient himself, breathing slow and easy for Dean’s and his own benefit. It doesn’t get easier, seeing him like this. 

When Dean looks back at him, he’s a little calmer. He searches Sam’s face for a second, and Sam tilts himself into the light a little so Dean can see it better. If this was a Lucifer dream, Sam wants to help as much as possible. Dean sometimes has nightmares of Lucifer in Sam’s body, of Sam suddenly turning from something safe and Dean’s into foreign and threatening. Sam had woken up one night to Dean’s knife at his throat, and Dean refused to sleep in the same bed for months, unwilling to take the chance that he could hurt Sam. He hates that Dean is so scared of him, even if it’s not him , not really. Sam tries to imagine Michael in Dean, wonders what change of expression would tip him off.

He wonders what his own tells are, what classifies him as purely Sam to Dean. Whatever he’s looking for, he must find. Sam must be Sam again, because the tension in Dean’s shoulders loosens.

“Sorry,” Dean says finally, and sits down heavily on the bed. His leg is tucked up so he’s facing Sam sideways. His hands are wound into a knot in his lap. Sam moves over a little so he’s facing Dean more directly, adjusting the collar of Dean’s shirt so it lays flatter on his shoulders. It’s a thread-bare Tallahassee Fire Department shirt that they had picked up years ago, and it’s so soft and sleep-warm under Sam’s fingers that he can barely tell the difference between cotton and skin.

He lets his fingers linger there, splaying over the back of his neck and palm resting in the slope where his neck meets shoulder. Dean’s eyelashes flutter shut, and his head tilts back so Sam’s fingers are holding his head up. Sam feels the move and slide of tendons under his fingertips as Dean rolls himself into the touch.

When Dean’s eyes open again, his eyes are bright.

“It’s not your fault,” Dean says. The nightmare? Lucifer? Sam nods. “That I—“ Dean swallows hard, and his throat clicks. Sam watches the bob of his Adam’s apple. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” It’s a weak offering, and one that Dean will absolutely decline. Dean only talks about things when he’s on the brink of something—death, leaving, sitting in the bottom of a bottle.

Dean shakes his head like Sam knew he would and Sam moves the tension in his hand as Dean’s head moves so it doesn’t fall. Dean is looking at Sam again, and a hand comes up to trace the thin crow’s feet at the corner of Sam’s right eye. Dean’s been a little obsessed with them ever since he noticed the first one. Sam gets just as high off of Dean’s, the smile lines that trail from his eyes like stars whenever he laughs, now. 

It’s addicting to see someone grow a little older. To see a demarcation of the life that they’ve lived with you.

Sam’s only thirty-six, but Dean still looks at him like he’s a revelation sometimes. Sam’s no better—he never thought he’d live past twenty-seven.

Dean leans in a little, and lets Sam bridge the gap. He presses a light kiss to Dean’s lips, surprised at the unspoken request. The nightmare must have been tangible, translatable to reality in a way that made Dean shaky, loose with his usually rigid self-possession. Dean exhales shakily, and Sam watches him for a second. He searches for the smile lines when Dean offers him a weak twitch of lips.

But…Sam’s alarm bells start going off. Dean…He doesn’t have—

“They got me pinned again,” Dean says, still so close that Sam has to concentrate for his face to come into focus. “This is exactly what I would’ve wanted.”

Sam’s about to ask what he means when he sees that Dean’s other hand is still in his lap. His fingers are flicking open the blade of—his pocketknife—he must’ve— the nightstand —

Dean’s palm shifts, and his fingers wrap around the small hilt like Sam has seen him hold every knife since he was six. Sam’s eyes flick up to Dean’s for just a second, disbelievingly, but Dean is still smiling softly at Sam as the light catches the blade because he tilts the knife slightly so it’s pointed in, under Dean’s ribcage. It’s not innocuous, it’s not —Dean’s arm tenses a millisecond before—

Sam slams his hand into Dean’s sternum, hard. It always manages to wind him in sparring, knocking his come-back swing off kilter. Dean hits the mattress, hard, and Sam scrambles for the knife, slamming his forearm into Dean’s wrist, pinning to the bed and twisting his body so his back is to Dean’s oncoming fist. Dean is pounding at his back, body twisting back up as he gasps for breath, but he must’ve caught Dean truly unaware because Sam is already prying his shaking fingers from the hilt, slippery with sweat.

Sam throws the knife across the room and it sticks in the wall, blade sinking a few inches into plaster. He whirls on Dean, heart pounding and thoughts whirling.

“What the fuck was that? ” He demands, adrenaline turning his stomach to rot.

Dean is trembling, a full body shake that stops Sam in his tracks. He’s still down, sprawled awkwardly on the mattress, a thin layer of sweat making his thin white shirt stick to his ashen skin. He’s so pale.

“You don’t get it, Sammy.” Dean sounds miserable, grieved. He looks like he’s about to be sick, clammy and frail and distant. ”I can’t stay here—you’re not real .”

Dean blinks up at Sam with big green eyes and curls his hand into a fist, nails biting into the tough skin of his palm. It’s a nervous habit that Sam hasn’t seen in…years. His face, outside of the furrow in his brow, is unlined. He’s wearing every emotion flitting across his face like a brand and not a secret to be ferreted away. A thought dawns on him as Sam starts connecting the loose threads. Panic makes his voice unleveled as he asks,

“Dean…what year is it?”

Dean, to his credit, just shakes his head, and answers. “It’s 2006.”

Sam stares at his brother. His brother is twenty-six years old.

~~~

Castiel doesn’t say anything for a long minute. He looks at Dean, who’s staring at him with equal parts hostility and confusion. 

Sam had sent him frantic messages—prayers and calls alike—until a flap of wings and a gruff “ Sam. ” answered. 

“Did I see him in a Johnston and Murphy ad?” Dean asks, shooting Castiel a look out of the corner of his eyes. “Or for the new season of Without a Trace ?”

He had managed to wrangle Dean into the library and sit him down at the table. He gave Dean a glass of water (a habit from waking up in the night to a Dean nightmare), and Dean kept staring at it strangely.

Sam wonders if Dean thinks it is poisoned. Sam has half a mind to take a sip as a proof of benignity, but decides against it.

“What do you think, Cas?” Sam asks. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if Cas doesn’t know what’s wrong. Dean is definitely not the Dean that fell asleep in Sam’s bed last night. His eyes are so…bright. He’s got a verve that the Dean of his time doesn’t have—a life that only a younger Dean had. Even as he’s sizing Castiel up, looking between him and Sam with annoyance.

Cas is the only one standing, and Sam sits a chair away from Dean as to not crowd him. Dean sits at the head of the table in the library, arms crossed, and Sam can’t stop the way his fingers restlessly tap on the table.

“It’s strange seeing him so…young.” Cas says, tilting his head. “His soul is so…”

Sam leans in as the silence grows, but it’s clear that he’s not going to continue. Sam’s stomach churns. 

He’d always given a lot of thought to what his own soul looks like, especially in the aftermath of Dean’s deal coming due. No demon would take it, no matter the terms or the bargains or the threats. Then, after he lost it, he couldn’t help but wonder what they shoved back into his throat. Dean told him once, “Blue. It was blue. Bright. And warm. And…y’know,” and looked away quickly.

Sam remembers being surprised. He thought that after the Cage and the demon blood and the way demons would shy away from him in the days after the deal that it was corrupt. Void. Hideous. Sam realizes as he watches Castiel watch Dean with a frown, that he’s never really considered what Dean’s soul looks like.

Angels dismissed Sam out of hand but flocked to Dean, so he had assumed there was a visible difference between them. But Dean’s soul looks different as he’s gotten older? Sam wonders how much of that is because of what has happened to him, and how much is because of what Dean has chosen.

Sam suddenly hates the fact that Cas knows something about his brother that he doesn’t.

Dean chuffs a little laugh. Sam’s eyes snap back to Dean, and he watches as the false smile blooms and shrinks on his face, as he realizes they’re not joking.

“My soul?” He asks, raising a brow. Sam shoots Cas a quelling look that the other man understands and obeys. Sam doesn’t know how this is working yet, but he’s seen enough rerun episodes of The Twilight Zone to be sparse with information when faced with a time traveller.

“But it’s definitely Dean?” Sam asks, looking at Dean as he crosses a lean ankle over the other under the table. He’s the picture of easy confidence, and if he were younger or any less wise, Sam might have believed it. He used to believe it. Even if Dean was affecting the façade for Sam’s sake, Sam would buy into it regardless, so thankful to have something solid to lean on that he would let Dean bluff.

“Yes,” Castiel looks up at Sam. “This is Dean Winchester. Not of our time, but…It’s him.”

Sam sighs. Time travel. They’re messing with something with some serious power. Castiel seems to reach this conclusion at the same time, and gives Sam a concerned look. It’s barely discernible by the slight furrow in his brow, but Sam is familiar enough with his mannerisms by now to distinguish it.

“Hey.” Dean snaps. “Stop eye-fucking in front of me, please.”

Castiel looks alarmed. He blinks.

“I do not—“

“It’s an expression, Cas.” Sam says, shooting Dean a look. Dean seems genuinely ticked off, which is certainly strange. He raises an eyebrow that clearly communicates Back Off, a universal signal they’ve used since Sam had to roll up his jeans three times to fit on his skinny waist.

Dean’s face contorts, and his mouth twists down into a frown. He looks back at Castiel. He sits forward, lips pursing and then puckering as he appears to consider something. It’s so Dean—so full of cockiness and sarcasm that it takes Sam’s breath away a little. It’s like looking in a time machine, to all of Dean’s bluster and rage and blood spilling down his shirt. It’s…agonizing. Beautiful. Too bright to look directly at.

“If this is my fantasy, why is this guy here?” Dean tilts his head at Castiel. Castiel turns to look back at Sam. “I must be a masochist.” 

“Your ‘fantasy’?” Sam repeats blandly. Dean turns back to look at Sam, but his eyes get caught by something on the table. Sam stops his tapping fingers to look, but realizes with a jolt that Sam’s hands are what he’s looking at. He looks up at Dean, a little stunned, but Dean is already looking away with pink cheeks.

“Christo.” Dean says, but Cas just looks at him levelly. Dean rolls one of his shoulders in a blasé shrug. “Worth a shot.” 

Okay, so he’s not to angels yet. Sam keeps his lips pressed together, trying to stop himself from saying anything that’ll give himself away. This is like when Dean got turned into a teenager. Dean had never seemed small to Sam, always too sturdy and larger than life.

But he looks small now, the way that he keeps awkwardly adjusting his shirt, like he’s not used to having so much of his arms exposed. His eyes are so big in his face, his lips are so full and pink and chapped. Dean had broken the bad habit of chewing his lips to hell a while ago, but clearly that hasn’t happened for this guy yet.

Sam watches, rapturous, as Dean pulls his bottom lip into his mouth, pulling at dry skin with sharp teeth. He had never let himself look before. When Dean had done it all those years ago, Sam always made an effort to look away, flushing hot with shame.

Dean catches him staring, and lets his lip go suddenly, mouth falling slightly open. His brow is furrowed, and he looks between Sam and Cas with suspicion. Sam avoids Cas’s eyes, a little embarrassed. Cas knows what Sam and Dean are to each other now, but the fact that Sam wasted no time to covet this new version of his brother is not lost on either of them.

Dean leans back in his chair, crossing his arms defensively. His eyes go suddenly wide, and he slams a hand down on his sternum, sliding up to his neck. His other hand comes up, and it looks like he’s trying to strangle himself for a second, hands splayed wide over his neck. Sam starts to rise, but Dean’s hands are falling already, limp, to his lap. When he looks up at Sam next, he looks mutinous. 

“If this is some weird subconscious play to get me to waste Sam, you’re way off the fucking mark.”

“What?” Sam looks down at Dean’s hands, up to the spot on his sternum. It hits him, then. What Dean was looking for. What he had worn for decades around his neck.

“I won’t do it. I don’t care what Yellow-Eyes says.” Dean’s jaw is set, and he leans forward so he can spit the words directly into Cas’s unbothered face.

“Yellow Eyes?” Sam repeats weakly. He has to stand up then, just to get some air. “Jesus Christ.”

He takes a few steps away, rubbing a hand over his jaw. He didn’t get the chance to shave this morning, and stubble scratches at the pads of his fingers. Sam’s mind is reeling. Yellow Eyes. That means that he’s still alive, which means that Sam hasn’t gone to Cold Oak yet. Which means that Dean hasn’t been to Hell yet. That thought alone is enough to cool his blood.

Grief, strong and heavy and sharp, sinks into Sam’s gut. God. Dean is…he’s Dean. Dean before the trauma and the torture and the blood that will never wash off. It’s Dean in a way Sam had almost forgotten he could be. It’s Dean from what? 2006? Who loved sleeping around and hustling at pool and vomited adoration for Sam all over the floor. A Dean who felt everything in HD, in hyper-realism. 

No wonder his soul looks different. Sam feels like he’s going to be sick.

A thought picks at his brain. Wait. Before Cold Oak. 2006. Sam turns to look at Dean, who’s still sitting at the table. His eyes are watching Sam intensely, and Sam wonders what he must look like to this Dean. Does he look like some funhouse mirror, twisting something well-worn and comfortable into something hulking, monstrous? Sam knows that he’s not the same shape he was when he was twenty-two.

He almost wants to reach up and push his hair back. He had his bangs in 2006, right? He remembers Dean ragging on him a bunch for it. It’s almost to his shoulders now, but Dean hasn’t said anything. Sam wonders what that means. Dean—his Dean—loves to tuck it behind his ears, loves to brush it aside so he can kiss Sam’s neck, loves to have a hand in it when they kiss. And he still loves to make fun of him for it. The thought is jarring enough to get Sam’s brain back with the program. He clears his throat.

“You said something about your fantasy.” Sam says, trying to connect these seemingly disparate puzzle pieces. Dean had tried to kill himself. He thought he’d seen Cas on a TV show. He said that “this is exactly what I would’ve wanted.”

It’s…no, it can’t be.

“Come again?” Dean pulls his eyes away from Sam’s left shoulder and looks back up at his face, looking a little dazed. Sam starts forward, moving to sit back in his chair. Cas still hasn't moved, and Sam gestures at him in the other chair.

“You think…You said Cas was on Without a Trace.” Sam pauses, thinking about how to word this. “Where do you think you are right now?”

Dean sniffs, looking at the walls of the library slowly. He trails his eyes over the books, the lamps, the katana on display on one of the shelves. Eventually, his gaze lands back on his own hands, and Sam watches them clench and unclench.

“Probably in a warehouse somewhere.” Dean says, quietly. “I don’t remember hunting a djinn, but that’s how you work, isn’t it?”

“Djinn.” Sam repeats. That’s what he thought. He trades another look with Castiel. Cas doesn’t say anything, but his mouth is a hard line. 

Time travel. Dean thinks it’s a djinn. Sam remembers that case. God, it was fucking terrifying. That had been right before Cold Oak. Sam remembers waiting for Dean for hours with no word. He knew that Dean had been taken by the djinn, but a small, squalling, shaking part was terrified that Yellow Eyes had gotten to him first. Sam had been trembling the whole way to the warehouse, trying to call his temperamental power to his skin. If Dean’s in trouble, we have to be ready to kill something. Don’t let me down. Don’t let me down. We’ve done it before, with Max. Do it again. Do it again.

Across from him, Dean seemingly recognizes that he let too much of his true emotion show in front of the enemy, and he forcefully relaxes his posture, leaning back in his chair. He raises a mocking brow. 

“So tell me, 'Sam.'” He drawls. His attempt at what? intimidation? is so cute that Sam wants to shove him back in his chair and kiss that stupid grin off of his face. He can’t remember how often he wanted to back then and never could. “In this perfect world you’ve constructed, is Dad still alive?”

Sam blinks.

“No.” Sam says. He can’t even imagine their lives with their dad still in it. If their dad was here today, he wouldn’t wait for Dean to put a bullet in him; he’d take one step into their shared bedroom with lube on the nightstand, turn around, and empty his mag into Sam’s brain—demon influence enough to molest his own brother and convince him he wanted it.

The thought makes Sam—for some fucking reason—puff air out of his nose in a humorless laugh.

Dean doesn’t look surprised at this. “Mom?”

This throws Sam for even more of a curve, though it shouldn’t have. To Dean, Mom and Dad are fresh wounds. Ten years can’t make too much difference, but Sam is surprised about how openly Dean aches.

They tell stories about their parents sometimes (Sam saying, Do you remember the time Dad took us to Daytona Beach? And Dean saying, Mom used to peel her grapes, because she hated the way the skins felt. How the fuck do you peel a grape?), but it always felt like telling the stories of characters on TV. 

The couple on House Hunters bought a craftsman in the suburbs. The Cubs lost last night, 8-to-10. Our mother loved us. Dad snored like a motorboat.

“Mom? No. She’s…no.”

Dean does look surprised now, eyebrows raising and shoulders slouching. He looks defeated, like he had been hoping to see her. Sam feels instantly guilty for lusting after this kid. He’s a kid —he might be Dean, but he’s a young Dean, a Dean that yearns for his mother.

“Are we still hunting?” Dean looks at Cas when he says this, eyes sliding past him to the katana on the shelf. His voice is exceptionally neutral when he says this, and Sam can’t tell if he wants confirmation or rejection on this. Sam answers honestly.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” Dean says, eyes back on Sam. His mouth doesn’t move. “Do you…y’know. Got Jessica and the kids and the picket fence?”

Jessica? Jesus Christ. Dean hasn’t mentioned her in years either. It’s not easy to hear—Jessica is a wound that won’t ever heal. Sam remembers now that Dean had said in his last djinn excursion that he and Jessica were engaged. Sam didn’t think anything of it at the time—in fact, he had gone distant himself, longing. He remembers thinking then that if the world was fair, neither of them would be sitting there. Sam would be sitting at home with Jessica, practicing her interview questions.

The thought now seems ridiculous, and Sam can recognize that he was deluding himself. He couldn’t have lived without Dean. Survival, sure. But there would’ve come a point, maybe five or ten or twenty years in the future when Sam would end up exactly where he first opened his eyes, staring up at Dean.

But now, knowing what Dean had carried with him since they were both children—The Thing that they both had been carrying—it makes Sam ache. Sam doesn’t know if he’d be able to let Dean have that: a normal life and a wife and kids. Sam would always want him too much to be selfless.

“No. It’s just you and me.” Sam says, softened, but then he remembers Cas sitting in the chair opposite, and straightens. “And some friends.”

Dean eyes Cas, dubious. The only friends Dean had had up to this point in his life were Dad’s friends, all over forty and carrying decades of PTSD and failed marriages. 

Cas is absentmindedly moving a bead of condensation from Dean’s untouched water glass across the table without touching it, creating a pattern Sam can’t make out from this angle. 

Dean clears his throat, and leans closer to Sam, pressing both forearms against the table so he can block Cas’s view. Sam humours him and leans in as well.

Dean looks suddenly unsure, now that Sam is reciprocating the attention, now that Sam is in his space. Dean sits back down abruptly, tips of his ears pink.

“How long have…” Dean looks over at Cas like he’s afraid of being caught by a hall monitor for talking in the library. Cas is coaxing a second bead of condensation to join the first, and Sam starts to recognize the beginning of a tracking sigil.

Dean looks back at Sam, and widens his eyes purposefully as if to clue Sam in, looking between Sam’s chest and his own hands. “How long have we been…”

Sam snorts, helpless. It’s not like he can deny it. He was pressed up against Dean this morning, nose against his nape. Dean probably noticed the two pairs of boots in the corner, some of his old shirts thrown against Sam’s chair.

And the comically large bottle of lube sitting boldly on the shelf that Dean had insisted on getting because “It’s better to be prepared. What if you look great and I want to jump you and can’t? That’s a risk I’m not willing to take, Sammy, buck up.”

“Four years.” Sam admits. He looks up at Cas when he says it, wanting to know if it’s a bad idea even though the words have already left his mouth. Cas doesn’t react.

“And we…” Dean doesn’t look at Sam, but he doesn’t look at Cas, either. His eyes stay fixed on the table, his hands splayed flat on the polished surface.

It’s a relief that Sam can still read him—can still fit words into Dean’s mouth that he teeths against gratefully.

“Yeah. You call me ‘the old ball and chain’ in town.” Sam says. Dean tenses. “I know because Marcie down at the bar told me. You’re kind of an asshole, so nothing’s changed there.”

Dean nods and sits back in his chair, like he’s thoughtfully digesting this information. His facial expression doesn’t change at all, which is why Sam is shocked when Cas’s forearm shoots out and his palm catches Dean’s forehead just in time. Dean tried to slam his head down with enough force to brain himself on the corner of the table.

Dean twists out of Cas’s hold immediately, lunging for the corner of the table again. Sam’s body finally reacts, and he jumps up to pull Dean away. He grabs a fistful of Dean’s shirt and pushes him back, forcing him back into his chair.

“Please.” He spits. “This is too fucking cruel, even for you. Four years? Fuck you.”

“Dean, c’mon. Please. It’s okay. Okay? You’re okay.”

“No, I’m not! ” Dean wails, and it’s higher than Sam has heard his voice in almost a decade. Dean is babbling, roaring at no one in particular. “What, you all learn your lesson last time? You can’t give me him, you can’t. ”

“Dean, listen to us.” Cas tries, but Dean can’t even hear him. He’s still looking at Sam like he’s punched holes in his world, shattered the peace and calm that he’d fought tooth and nail for. Sam feels wretched as he wrenches Dean’s shoulder back, trying to get him to stand down. Dean flinches, but Sam knows that he didn’t hurt him. He knows exactly what Dean’s body can take.

Dean tries to shake off Sam’s hands, head snapping down to look at Sam’s spread fingers on his forearm. When he looks back up at Sam, his eyes are burning with unfiltered hate. His lips tense, thin as he examines Sam’s face.

But Sam’s been reading Dean since he was born. He knows the tremble in his lower lip, the wetness at the outer corners of his eyes, the pink blooming on the tip of his nose. Sam is held captive by it, by this boy that he’s worshipped for decades, a process in reverse, in slow motion, as his lashes touch cheekbones.

Dean’s mouth twists, and the wetness is gone from his eyes. The broken open mask has been hastily patched, and Dean is stony once more as he tries to wrest himself free from Sam’s grip.

“Don’t touch me with his hands. Don’t.” He says, and Sam lets him go immediately, hands coming up, open palms, in apology. Supplication.

His hands.

He’s not mad at Sam for touching him. He’s mad at Sam for not being…Sam. 2006’s Sam. Dean only wants 2006 Sam’s touch, his hands—not the facsimile. Sam has to breathe around the sudden, strange feeling in his chest. Dean doesn’t want him. He wants someone else.

It’s insane to feel territorial here, to feel the sting of jealousy of another Sam, a Sam that gets this Dean’s devotion, his loyalty. Sam can feel the heat of it from here, wonders if that—what? twenty-three year old?—twerp knows what he holds between his clenching palms. Sam has never been good at sharing any part of Dean, and it shouldn't be surprising that that rule apparently also applies to himself.

Dean’s eyes go distant, and Sam wonders if he’s thinking of him now, of a Sam that he’s judged deserving of his unwavering fealty. 

This is a pre-Hell Dean, all bleeding heart and dull edges and a thin patina of bluster over a ball of anxiety. Sam wants to pin this boy to the wall and grind him into powder, into a shuddering mess of Sam’s name and coal dust.

The instinct is surprising, and Sam leans away from him. He clears his throat, chasing the thought away with the case. The case.

“Dean, you can’t do that shit again. Please.”

Dean shoves back in his chair and stands up, backing a few steps away.

“He tried that last time, too. Begged me to stay. I won’t.” Dean’s shaking like a colt, wobbly legs and unstable foundation. He takes a stumbling step away from Sam, just to get away. It’s not personal, but it stings. “I got out of here last time, and I will again.”

“Okay,” Sam says, throat tight. He holds up his hands out to his sides, placatingly, above his waist. He tries to think of what Dean from over ten years ago would find non-threatening. “I believe you.”

Dean’s face twitches, mouth curled into a snarl but eyes wide and soft. Afraid.

“How about this?” Sam asks, keeping his voice level. “Time works differently in a djinn dream, right? So days in them are hours in the real world. Give me forty-eight hours. Then I’ll get you the knife and blood to get out of here myself.”

It’s a hard sell. Sam knew it would be, and Dean immediately starts shaking his head. Sam can feel Cas’s eyes on him, can feel his hesitance. Sam wishes—for an absurd moment—for Dean. Dean would have his back, would start weaving the periphery of Sam’s story until it could hold weight.

“I have to get home,” Dean says, “Back to Sam. I’m not going to stay in this fucked-up—”

“I’m not asking you to,” Sam cuts him off, knowing that if he lets Dean dig too deep of a trench into anger, he won’t get back out. “Just asking you for a little time. To find where my Dean went, and get you back home.” 

“To suck me dry, you mean.” Dean spits, but there’s something behind his eyes. Curiosity. Sam waits for Dean’s clever mind to puzzle out what he wants. It’s almost addicting to be on the outside of this, to step into his own mind over ten years ago and sit in rapt attention to a brother that looked like this.

“‘Your’ Dean.” Dean finally repeats, slowly. His mouth is pulled down into a frown, like he doesn’t like the taste of the words in his mouth. He searches Sam’s face for something.

“Yeah.” Sam snorts a little, and straightens his arms out, gesturing at his own body. “Don’t know if you noticed, but I’m not…twenty-one.”

Dean doesn’t say anything, just looks at Sam. The gaze is intense. Ten years ago, Sam would’ve squirmed under his attention. Hell, even now, Sam feels his gaze like a physical weight, going from Sam’s head to his toes.

Sam knows their physical difference has not gone unnoticed, but Dean’s intentional allotment of time to look, to see, makes sweat bud at Sam’s hairline. Again, he wonders what he must look like to Dean. 

Surely a bit of a disappointment, right? His hair is longer, for which Dean used to rag on him a lot more. He knows he has forehead wrinkles that didn’t use to be there. Bags under his eyes. The little kid from Sam’s face is completely gone now, leaving something gaunt in its place.

“So what, you’re saying we…swapped places or somethin’?” Dean finally asks. “That’s the story you’re going with?”

“It’s a possibility.” Cas says, and they both jump. Sam, for his part, had completely forgotten Castiel was in the room. For a while, he stayed in the habit of breathing after his stint as a human. And sometimes, he would make the effort to breathe and blink just to reduce his physical dissonance in Sam and Dean’s spaces. But he’s alarmingly good at being a fly on the wall when he wants to be.

Putting Castiel in the same room as his twenty-six year old brother is not an attention contest Cas is going to win. Dean whirls around, backing up farther so he can keep both of them in his line of sight.

“If we can find where my Dean went, we can put you back with your Sam.” Sam’s already running possibilities in his head. 

For the first time since this fiasco started, Sam lets himself worry for Dean—his Dean, the Dean that fell asleep in Sam’s bed with his boxers and one of Sam’s old workout tees. Is he safe? Sam hopes that he found his way to a Sam, that he and this Dean had truly done just that: swapped places.

“What year is it?” Dean asks suddenly.

“2019.” Sam answers absent-mindedly, a split-second before he realizes he probably shouldn’t have. He looks up at Cas, a little alarmed, but Cas shrugs up one shoulder. It’s looking like neither of them know how far they’re allowed to go.

“The world didn’t end.”

Sam’s breath catches in his throat. He slowly turns back to look at Dean, who looks a little ill. His cheeks are high in colour, eyes glassy. Horror buds in Sam’s chest, heart ticking up a few beats as Dean’s words sink in.

How the fuck did he know about the Apocalypse? Was it a guess? Did he somehow know Sam was wrong from the beginning?

“What?” Sam breathes, and he has to blink a few times to focus on the room, on Dean—physical and real—in front of him. Dean meets his gaze, and takes a half-step back. His eyebrows raise, and he looks unsure, eyes flicking over to Castiel, then back to Sam.

“In 2012, right? Wasn’t the world going to end?” Dean’s voice goes high, defensive. He looks back and forth between Cas and Sam’s intense stares. “Mayans, or something?”

Sam runs a hand through his hair, releasing the air in his lungs on an exhale that shakes. 

“Oh.” He clears his throat. “Yeah.” 

Dean takes a long time to untense. He searches Sam’s face for a long moment, and Sam is briefly grateful that he’s gotten a little better at his poker face since he was twenty-two.

“How would you find him? Me? The one that’s from here?” Dean asks, but then he’s quick to add: “Pretending that I believe you.”

Sam opens his mouth, but closes again. He looks over at Castiel, who’s still standing a few paces away. Cas has let him take the lead so far, which Sam is grateful for. Sam realizes, now, as he looks at Cas, that he’s never seen Dean this young before. He only ever met Dean after Hell, after his soul had been through unimaginable horrors.

Castiel is still staring at Dean, so Sam gets his attention.

“Cas?”

Cas tilts his head in Sam’s direction before he tears his eyes away. He blinks a few times, as if dazed. Is Dean’s soul bright? It must be beautiful. Cas frowns when Sam’s words register. Sam’s stomach sinks at the bad news clearly poised in the set of his mouth.

“I couldn’t. My tracking sigil wouldn’t activate, which means Dean’s soul from this timeline is not distinct enough that I could find it from the outside looking in. I’d have to travel into each timeline.” Castiel says, furrow in his brow. “By the time I found him, I might be too weak to bring him back, never mind swap him for this one.”

He gestures at Dean, then, and Dean scowls.

“I’m not a piece of luggage, asshole.” He spits, crossing his arms. Dean, then—to Sam’s shock—takes a step in Sam’s direction. Just a small one. It seems that even when Dean is not sure what’s going on, or who he can trust, he wants to trust Sam.

It shouldn’t warm Sam as much as it does, but Sam is suddenly breathing through a wave of affection in his chest. It’s not much, but it’s a little. Sam has always been greedy for whatever Dean gives him.

Sam’s mind whirs in the light of Cas’s information. He can’t find Dean. How in the hell is Sam supposed to find his Dean, over the thousands of Deans that exist? Sam’s dizzy with it for a second, with the hundreds of thousands of Deans that must prowl timelines near and far. If this Dean is from the past, are there some Deans that have never gone to Hell at all? That married Cassie or Lisa and settled down? That never came to get Sam from school? That never had to, because Sam never left? 

There must be hundreds of thousands of Sams, too, then. If there are Deans that exist, Sam knows he can’t be too far away. Sam can’t imagine existing in a timeline where Dean doesn’t. Sam wonders—as he always does—if the Deans that exist without him are happier. Not the ones where Sam dies, but the ones where Dean never knew a brother. That never had to deal with demon blood or spells or deals.

Spells. Sam straightens—Of course!

Cas blinks at Dean’s hostility, the furrow in his brow becoming more pronounced. 

“It’s reassuring to know that I wasn’t completely unreasonable when we met the first time.” Cas says, slowly. “You were always abrasive.”

Sam sees Dean opening his mouth, so he cuts in quickly before he has the chance to escalate because knowing a twenty-six year old Dean, he will. 

“It’s okay, Cas.” Sam says, and smiles weakly when Cas’s eyes snap back over to him. “There’s something I can try. Do you think you’d have enough strength to swap them once I find my Dean?”

Cas tilts his head, but then nods. Sam smiles again, hoping to reassure, keeping an eye on Dean in the corner of his eye. He’s so…small.

“Great. Rest up, okay? I’ll call you when I find him.” Sam says, and he runs through the ingredients he needs in his head. He turns around before Cas disappears, but hears the flap of wings that signal his departure.

He needs althea. Something of Dean’s. Yellow evening primrose. Bamboo. Reaper blood. Club moss couldn’t hurt, frankly.

“Okay, c’mon. I need to grab something from my room, and then—” Sam starts walking back towards their room, when he notices Dean isn’t following him. He turns back around, and Dean hasn’t moved. “You coming?”

Dean stares at the spot Cas was standing, and slowly moves his arm out. He shakes his arm in the open air for a moment, before whipping around to face Sam. His eyes are wide.

“He disappeared.” Dean says. Shit. Sam definitely can’t tell him about angels, can he? “Ghost?”

Sam tries to keep his expression neutral.

“You feel any cold spots?”

Dean’s eyes narrow, but he tilts his head, considering. He clearly searches for something, then asks,

“Trickster?”

Sam snorts.

“You think I’d keep him in my pocket after Broward County?”

Dean starts moving towards him, then stops. He looks back up.

“What happens in Broward County?”

Sam blinks. Fuck.

Sam turns back around, quickly, knowing he’s not going to be able to stop whatever happens on his face from happening.

“Uh…C’mon. Let’s go find you.”

~~~

“What is this place?” Dean asks, and Sam tries not to preen under the weight of the wonder in his voice.

“Storage room 19-B.” Sam states. He flicks the light switch, and the tube fluorescents rattle to life in their metal cages. He crosses the room to the cabinet in the corner, and swings the door open.

Jars and sachets of herbs and liquids gleam at him, and he starts picking things out, putting them on the metal table behind him. He can hear Dean’s footsteps slowly enter the room behind him, but he doesn’t turn around to look.

“Is this all our shit?” Dean asks, and Sam can hear him pick something up. Sam throws a look over his shoulder to make sure it’s not dangerous, but it’s just a ritual knife. Funny that they live a life now where the weapons are the least dangerous things in the room.

“Not even close.” Sam says, figuring it’s okay to give him a little information. If he shuts Dean down, Dean’s not going to believe him. And he needs all the trust Dean can spare right now. “It belonged to a bunch of other hunters. We just kind of caretake the place. And that’s all you’re getting out of me, so stop wheedling.”

Sam closes the cabinet door, satisfied with his stash. He starts organizing the contents on the table, sprinkling some bamboo ash into the golden bowl in the center. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out what he grabbed from their room.

Dean’s eyes go wide, and his mouth pulls down into a grimace.

“Is that…?”

“Your fingernail clippings? Yeah.” Sam pats his other pocket, grinning at the disgusted horror in Dean’s eyes. “Got your hair, too.”

Dean makes a querulous noise, squeezed out through clenched teeth.

“That’s fucked up.” He says. Sam’s smile—probably for the first time all night—is genuine, as he looks down at his younger-older brother. That’s not even the most fucked up thing of Dean’s Sam owns. The blood isn’t either. 

But now Sam kind of wants to tell Dean about how he keeps bottles of their blood in the basement, and one time he injected Dean with so much of Sam’s blood that it turned him human again. Litres of it. For six weeks after Dean returned to humanity, he was mostly Sam, in terms of parts per volume.

“You have mine in a plastic bag under your side of the bed. Pretty sure you’ve got one of my old toothbrushes, too.” Sam says, and laughs out loud when Dean’s mouth falls open. He looks for a second like he’s going to start defending himself, but realizes he has no idea what his own reasoning for having those items are.

“If you’re trying to convince me that this isn’t a fucked up hellscape, you’re failing miserably.” Dean finally settles on, crossing his arms over his chest petulantly. Sam grins.

“Good to know,” He says, and uncorks the reaper blood, pouring it in a half-moon shape in the bowl. He finishes by putting the ground club moss in the center, and grabs his flint. He realizes there’s not a way to prepare Dean for this, and closes his eyes briefly against the regret of shocking him like this.

He grabs the thick tome left to him by Rowena, and flips to the Location spells. He creates a spark with the flint and steel, and the spark catches the club moss, a bright yellow flame shooting into the air. The flame looks more liquid than fire, and spreads like an ink spill over the contents of the bowl.

Dean jumps back from the table, as Sam says the spell quickly, quietly. He thinks of his brother— his brother, at age forty. His crow’s feet and stubble and knee that cracks. He thinks of Dean’s laughter and the smell of his sweat.

He lets himself be filled by it, of a moment last week when they went out for dinner. Dean had hooked Sam’s ankle under the table, and watched rapt every time Sam took a sip of his beer. He ate like a starving man, fries and burger and chocolate cake, even a few solicitous bites of Sam’s slice of carrot cake, which he claimed to despise, despite reaching for a few more forkfuls. They drove the long way home, windows down. He took Sam apart slow that night, kisses on Sam’s shoulders, his jaw. So deep Sam choked on it, gasping for breath that Dean pumped into his lungs for him, straight from Dean’s own lungs. Belonging. Home. Love. Peace.

“Dean,” Sam finishes the spell with the name of The Lost, and tries to pour as much emotion he can into the name. The Lost. Sam fights off a shudder as he pours some of Dean’s clippings into the flame. The flame turns just a little orange, and dies down. Sam closes the book, breathing for what feels like the first time in minutes.

The spell will run until Sam’s Dean is found, cycling through as many as it can find. 

Sam looks up.

Young Dean has pressed himself to the far wall, and Sam’s heart clenches at the look of pure, unfiltered horror on his face. Dean is pale, sweaty, green eyes wide and pupils pin-round.

“W-What the fuck?” He gasps, looking at Sam like he’s never seen him before. Sam has seen that look before, but not in years. Not since the demon blood, probably. Sam fights off the familiar reflex of shame. It’s been a long time since this was his greatest fear, but it still stabs like a knife. “You’re—You’re a witch.”

“Not really.” Sam replies, tone dull. He starts cleaning up the table, unable to look at Dean and see the horror there. The hatred that is surely soon to follow. “A friend taught me a few things in case we end up in situations. Kinda like this one. It’s not a big deal.”

It turns begging at the end. Sam closes the cabinet, and slowly turns back around. Dean has taken a few steps away from the wall, and stares down at the bowl. The flame has turned into a small globe, about the size of a racquetball, and golden hues swirl in its depths.

Please don’t hate me. Sam wants to ask, but bites down on his tongue to stop the impulse.

“You really are trying to send me away.” Dean blurts. Sam looks down at the spell himself, and sees flashes of his brother, hands and the curve of a smile and calves and hair. Sam can’t read the tone in his voice. Relief? Wonder? Disappointment?

It’s hard to pin down, but when Sam does, he wants to pull Dean in close. Sam is trying to send him away. Dean’s always been afraid that Sam is going to send him away. So while there’s relief that Sam appears to be sticking to his word, there’s also…something else. Something heavy. Something childish, and frightened.

“You don’t belong here.” Sam says, apologetic. Dean looks up to meet his gaze. Sam softens at the insecurity there, the need for reassurance. “I know I’m probably out of my mind with worry right about now.”

Dean’s gaze snaps away from his, and he looks back down at the spell.

“I’ve probably tried to kill older you at least a few times by now.” Sam tries to lighten the mood. He doesn’t know what the hell he’d do if suddenly Dean from the future visited him in a shitty motel room in 2006.

A thrill shoots through Sam as he imagines, briefly, Dean from the future coming to visit him now. Age fifty-five? Maybe with a little grey in his hair. Maybe he and Sam finally settled down outside of the Bunker. A yard that Dean would obsess over. Sam is embarrassed—but not surprised—to feel a stirring of arousal low in his gut.

“Yeah.” Dean replies, toneless. Sam jerks back to the present, trying to pick up the thread of conversation. He’s still staring at the swirling ball of light, but his gaze is distant. The corner of his mouth ticks up, barely. “Probably.”

Sam lets him look for a few more seconds, but soon crosses the table, and pats a hand on Dean’s shoulder. Dean jolts, and looks down at Sam’s hand. It almost dwarfs Dean’s shoulder, fingertips brushing his collarbone.

Sam jerks his hand away, shocked by the jolt of warmth that shoots down his arm. He feels it in his fingertips as he pulls away, going to the door. He closes his hand in a fist, trying to shake off the sudden wrong-footedness in his step.

Sam turns around.

Dean’s not looking at him. Or the spell. Or the cabinet.

He’s looking at a jar on one of the shelves next to the door. Sam knows what it says. 

Lamb’s blood.
Sam looks back at the ritual dagger sitting on the box to his left. The silver dagger.

Silver dagger and lamb’s blood. The two ingredients needed to get out of a djinn dream. Sam shifts, standing between Dean and the shelf of lamb’s blood.

“Let’s go get some breakfast.” Sam says, firmly. Dean’s eyes flick back to his. Trepidation. Sam wants to go up and shake him. This is real. I’m real. Sam knows with a sinking in his gut that this is how Dean felt every day for years, Sam looking at him with distrust and fear that he would transform into Lucifer any second.

“Not hungry.” Dean says, but he joins Sam, and walks through the door back into the hallway. Sam closes the door behind them, flicking the lights off. The golden spell casts the room in an eerie glow as Sam shuts the door.

He locks it, and checks the handle, making sure it’s locked.

“Me either.” Sam says, staring through the chicken-wire lined window at the only chance of bringing his brother home.

~~~

“Holy shit.” Dean’s words are muffled by bacon, but he reaches a hand out and grabs another piece. He stuffs that in, too, and moans. “This is delicious.”

Sam hides his laugh in his coffee, too charmed by Dean’s lust for life to be disgusted. He had forgotten Dean could get like this. He found so much joy in so much. He ate bacon like he hadn’t seen it before and would never see it again.

Dean stills at Sam’s laugh, and his eyes linger on Sam’s mouth as he swallows.

“What?” He asks. Sam waves him off, spearing a bit of scrambled egg and eating it.

They’re sitting in the kitchen, across from each other at the table. Sam had sent a silent apology to His Dean—wherever he was—as he unwrapped the bacon leftovers and heated them up. He scrambled a few eggs, put a few pieces of bread in the toaster, and turned on the coffee maker. Their modest breakfast wasn’t much, but Dean had barely taken a breath between frantic bites of food.

Dean is still staring at him, so Sam caves.

“Nothing. You—my you—made this a few days ago. You’re…you’re patting yourself on the back from another dimension. Kinda brings ‘self-congratulatory’ to a new height.”

Sam smiles, and expects Dean to match his mirth, but Dean’s eyes fall back to Sam’s mouth again and stay there. 

“Oh.” He says, and picks up his own fork to stab at some scrambled egg on his plate. Sam lets him eat in silence for a few minutes, taking this time to look at him.

His hair is mussed. Sam wonders at what point in the night His Dean was switched. Had Sam been holding younger Dean for hours? Minutes? Had Sam’s arms mussed his hair? The thought starts to chase him, so Sam shifts in his chair to break the thought process. 

Dean is still staring at his mouth.

“You went somewhere.” Sam prods, taking another sip of his coffee. Dean blinks, startled, and his eyes fly back up to Sam’s own.

Dean scowls, clearly reading the amusement in Sam for what it is.

“Shut up.” Dean shoves another piece of bacon in his mouth, and chews like he’s angry at it. When he swallows, he gestures at their plates. “I…I apparently make us breakfast and—and sleep in your bed and keep your fucking hair under my pillow—”

Dean cuts himself off, mouth pulled down in a frown, and tears into a piece of toast like a lion ripping meat off of bone. Sam sits back, scratching at his temple.

Is Dean…upset? That they’re together? Dread starts building in Sam’s gut, making the food on the table unappetizing.

“I’m sorry.” Sam says, genuinely, carefully, afraid that if Dean condemns him for this that he’ll shatter. “I’m sure it’s a lot to adjust to.” 

Dean’s eyes turn a little glassy, and Sam sits up in alarm as Dean breaks eye contact. Dean clears his throat.

“You’re really…You look just like him.” Dean says, quietly. “My Sammy.”

Sam snorts, and Dean’s eyes snap back up to him, quick.

“Awkward and bony?”

“No.” Dean says immediately, and Sam recoils a bit in surprise. Dean drags his eyes across Sam’s torso, his shoulders, his pecs, with a lingering gaze that makes Sam…hot. Uncomfortable. “You’re huge.” 

Dean takes a sip of his coffee, and Sam has to sit with that information for a long beat.

“Do I look like you?” Dean asks, head tilting a little.

“You are a bit…” Sam tilts his head, face screwing up as he searches for a word to describe his brother. Dean flushes an immediate scarlet, and throws the wadded up paper towel he’s been using as a napkin at Sam’s head.

“Shut up!”

Sam laughs, loud, dodging the grease-soaked paper with ease.

“No, I was going to say shorter!” He reassures, hand reaching out to grab Dean’s wrist. Dean’s eyes lock on his hand, but he makes no move to dislodge Sam’s fingers.

“Like hell,” Dean mutters, shoveling another bite of scrambled egg into his mouth.

“You could definitely bench press me if you wanted to,” Sam reassures, although he doesn’t know if it’s quite the truth, anymore. Sam has definitely lost a few pounds of muscle mass, but Dean has gained a few pounds of…happy weight, Sam supposes.

Dean’s still fitter than anyone Sam knows, but now that they have a home and kitchen and stable inflow of groceries, Dean’s been trying new recipes. He’s been feeding Sam like the Hansel-and-Gretel Witch, like he’s trying to pork him up to eat later.

Sam loves it. He can’t get e-fucking-nough of it. He wants Dean to be full and happy forever. And Sam eats obediently, even when he feels nauseous or tired or sick.

Regardless, Dean seems appeased by this news, and he chews his food with more restraint. He looks less like he’s trying to kill his scrambled eggs with his teeth while it’s trying to escape his mouth at least, which is always a good thing.

“Makes sense that…”

“Hm?”

“Nuffin’,” Dean garbles around a mouthful of bacon. 

Sam lets him have it.

~~~

“Jesus,” Dean breathes. 

Sam turns around, but Dean isn’t even looking at him. He’s bent into the Impala, tips of his ears pink. He’s not moving at all, like a child caught doing something they weren’t supposed to. Sam finishes putting the cooler in the trunk, suspicious.

He rounds the side of the car, and sticks his head in the other window. Dean jolts when Sam appears, and almost falls back out on his ass.

“Gah!” He shouts, and pulls his head back out. Dean is blushing so hard that Sam can see it on his neck, and his chest goes warm as Dean opens the passenger door and slides in.

He was…he was definitely checking Sam out lifting the cooler, wasn’t he? Sam suddenly has the urge to go back inside and get the really big cooler that they use on their fishing trips and fill it with crap to show Dean how much he can really lift, but decides against it. They’d have no room.

Sam slides into the driver’s seat, and tries to ignore how awkward it feels with Dean sitting right next to him.

After Dean had spent a good hour fawning over the cars in the garage, Sam had convinced him to get going.

After they had breakfast that morning, they’d decided to stay up. Sam had put Dean in front of the TV, unsure what else to do. However, as Dean started flicking through their DVD collection, Sam realized how messy that could get.

Just as Dean was about to get to the new Star Wars trilogy, Sam had hurried him up and out of the TV room.

And as Dean shouted in protest because Was that new Star Wars, Sammy? Are you holding out Star Wars on me?, Sam knew exactly where to take him.

There was a national park about an hour away that he and Dean would go to on weekends sometimes. Sam liked to jog, and they had a few fishing lakes that Dean couldn’t get enough of. After a long hunt, they’d pack their cooler and head up to the park, and just spend a long day in each other’s company.

Sam trusted himself more than movies or TV shows to tell Dean about the future—or not tell him, as it were—so he bundled both Dean and the cooler into the Impala and started the trek over.

But as Sam was packing up, he realized they were out of beer. He and His Dean had had a few a couple of nights ago for their The Mentalist binge. They must’ve gone through their stash.

So that’s what has Sam pulling up to a grocery store a few miles away from the park.

Dean’s wearing one of Sam’s baseball hats low over his face as they stroll through the aisles, but Sam has also made sure to stop at one they’ve never been to before. Given that it’s a while out of town, they shouldn’t run into anyone that recognizes them, but Sam still keeps his head on a swivel. 

As they walk through the chip aisle, Sam notices Dean eyeing a brand that wasn’t available yet in 2006. He figures a few snacks couldn’t hurt, so he picks it up for him. Dean’s smile is wide.

As they near the drink coolers, Sam notices that Dean keeps rubbing at the junction where his shoulder meets his neck. Sam’s not sure what’s wrong, but when Dean trails his fingers over his collarbone, Sam gets it with a pinprick of devastating clarity.

The amulet. Dean’s not used to not having it around his neck. He keeps reaching for it.

Sam wonders, as he opens the cooler door and moist, cool air hits his cheeks, if Dean is used to reaching for it. Did he touch it often? Is he only reaching for it now, when things are unfamiliar? Sam grabs their usual brand and passes a six pack off to Dean, then another.

Their fingers brush. Dean flushes, and Sam doesn’t miss the way Dean looks up at him, blinking a few times as if shocked from a reverie. His brother is so easily flustered, being unseated seemingly at random, whenever Sam looks at him wrong.

Sam stares down at Dean for a long moment. He’s smaller than Sam remembers him being. He’s not small—not at all—but he has a roundness to his face. A look in his eye. He’s looking at Sam like Sam is about to answer every question Dean has ever asked.

Sam wants to.

Sam wants to pull Dean close and reassure him that everything is okay and that everything will always be okay, and to beg him to not stop looking at him like this, no matter what happens.

Dean, when Sam was twenty-two, seemed secure. Stable. Like he knew how to help and what to do and where to look. Sam felt so blind back then, stumbling through the dark and grief and guilt of being so happy even though Jess was gone. Dean had slid into his life with the confidence and surety of a blade, but now, as the fridges hum behind Sam, and the blue light of the door makes Dean’s eyes glow, Sam is lost for words.

Dean looks…young. So young. He looks scared. Had he been scared that whole time? As lost and unsure as Sam was? Sam knows he was, but seeing it now with the benefit of a decade…

Sam can almost count the freckles on Dean’s face, they’re so dark against his skin. Sam wants to trace them, wants to feel them under his fingers. Wants to taste them on Dean’s skin.

Someone swears loudly.

Sam tears his eyes away from Dean’s with a great effort, and sees a woman standing behind Dean in one of the aisles, struggling to reach something on the top shelf. She curses again, and her purse falls to the ground, spilling some of its contents onto the tile.

Sam looks back down at Dean, and notices he had taken a step closer to Dean, to where he was practically towering over him, penning Dean in. Dean’s head is tilted almost completely up to look at him, and his lips are parted, breathing quickly.

Sam scared him.

Ashamed, Sam hurries over to the woman, and grabs the box of cereal off the top shelf. He feels his ears burn as he hands it to her, and crouches so he can help her pick up the items in her purse. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him, can feel his stare like a brand on Sam’s back.

What the fuck was he thinking? Dean doesn’t trust him. Doesn’t think Sam is even really Sam , and Sam had practically cornered him and made starry-eyes at him for forty-five seconds. Sam is lucky Dean didn’t knee him in the balls and shout “stranger danger.” Sam is a decade older than him, and probably close to fifty pounds heavier.

The woman he helps keeps thanking him, and Sam looks up, to find her on her knees next to him. They’re sorting through the things on the ground, and Sam watches her shovel some loose change into one of the inside pockets.

“Thank you so much,” She babbles, nervous, “I’m so scatter-brained today. Thank you for your help.”

She’s young, probably mid-twenties, and has brown hair pulled into a knot at the back of her head. She meets his eyes, and ducks her head again in embarrassment. They help each other stand, and Sam hands her back the contents of her purse: a compact, a receipt of some kind, and a small green pouch. She takes it gratefully, and tucks a strand of her hair behind her ear.

“Thank you again, seriously.” She says, and thrusts her hand forward like it’s a weapon and she’s trying to stick him up. Sam takes it, smiling despite himself. “I’m Clara.”

“Hey, Clara. No worries, seriously. I’m Sam. Have a good one.”

He’s about to walk away when she starts talking again.

“I just moved in down the road, and it’s been so hectic trying to start groceries from scratch.” Clara fiddles with a ring on her index finger, and Sam watches the way she spins it around. “Are you—uh. Are you from around here?”

Sam rubs a hand at his nape. “Yeah, kind of. I’m a bit more south. But this area is great.” 

Sam has no idea what this area is like. But he’s hesitant to go back over to Dean, who’s probably still working through Sam turns into a big pervert when he gets older. And he and I are fucking full-time. He probably wants to fuck me. What a freak.

“What brought you to—” Kansas, Sam’s about to ask, but—

There’s a hand on Sam’s back, and Sam jumps a little. He starts to turn, only to see that Dean is standing next to him now. Dean’s transferred both six-packs into one hand, and his hand slowly slides down Sam’s back until it rests around his waist. He doesn’t look up at Sam at all. Clara’s a few inches shorter than Dean, so he stares down at her, his head tilted away from Sam. Sam can’t see the look on his face from the low brim of his hat, but Dean uses the arm around his waist to steer Sam back a little.

Sam tenses. Did he see something Sam didn’t? Is Clara something other than human?

“That’s Sammy,” Dean says, forced cheeriness in his tone making Sam double-take. “Always happy to lend a hand.”

Clara stares up at Dean, and something changes in her expression. She takes a step back from them both, eyes wide like she’s realizing something. Her mouth opens, like she’s about to say something, but Dean cuts her off.

“Remember we have to stop by the condoms on the way out,” Dean says, and Sam gapes as Dean strolls away, as quickly as he had come, up the aisle and towards the pharmacy section. 

Sam and Clara trade an astonished look, before she bursts into giggles.

“Have a good day, Sam.” She says, and Sam mutters something that’s probably only 25% English as he follows Dean quickly. Dean slows down near the end of the aisle, so Sam can sidle up next to him, but before Sam can say anything, Dean looks over his shoulder.

“Don’t worry. I know you have condoms already.” Dean says, lightly. “It’s like, the only thing in my nightstand.”

He starts to walk away again, but Sam plants a hand on his shoulder.

“What the hell was that?”

Dean turns around, and he shifts on his feet, looking anywhere but at Sam.

“You’re with me .” He tells the box of cherry-flavoured granola bars. He looks up at Sam quickly, then away again, this time at a bag of dried cranberries. His brow is furrowed, and Sam watches the movement of his throat as Dean swallows thickly. “Right? We’re together?”

Sam inhales deeply, but it shakes. Jealous. Dean’s jealous .

Dean has always been a possessive son of a bitch, and it only got worse after they stopped seeing other people. Dean did everything to mark his territory but damn piss on him most days. Whenever someone sees Sam and actually goes out of their way to approach him, Dean’s not far behind, a possessive hand on Sam’s ass or hand scratching at the nape of Sam’s neck. One time, Dean insisted they go back to their local bar the next day just to show of Sam’s new line of hickeys to the travelling financial conference guys that had taken an interest in Sam the night before. Sam hadn’t realized Dean’s plan until all of his non-V-neck shirts “were being washed.” Dean stuck to him like a leech the entire night, hands brushing Sam’s back and chest and neck. 

Sam’s not any better. He burns whenever Dean flirts with bartenders and waitresses and clerks, a muscle so well-built over Dean’s life that to use it is reflex. Sam is always torn between standing closer to Dean or backing up and letting Dean have his kicks, like maybe this would be the thing to snap Dean out of it and want what he only had with Lisa again.

But more often than not, it would lead to Sam pressing Dean down into their bed, fucking into Dean so hard and rough that Dean had to brace himself on the headboard to avoid a concussion. Dean would chant Yours and Mine and Only Thing I Want, Baby into Sam’s mouth, until Sam said it back, Mine, Dean, Mine.

But Sam hasn’t seen true jealousy on Dean this young. Dean often over-encouraged Sam to flirt and meet up with girls, and buried his jealousy under jokes and sarcasm. But now Dean looks uncomfortably vulnerable, staring blankly at a bag of dried cranberries and shifting his grip on their beers.

Sam can’t help himself. He smiles.

“Yeah, Dean.” He says. We are together.

“So Clara doesn’t need shit from you.” Dean says immediately. He looks at Sam head on, then, mouth curled in a leer so false Sam could see it a mile away. “Don’t like sharing, Sammy.”

He heard her name. He had eavesdropped. Sam can’t stop his smile growing, incredulous as he looks down at this younger version of his brother that still wants him this much.

Sam wonders if Dean would’ve always been this possessive if Sam had given him the opportunity. Would he have bit Ava’s head off for standing too close? Ripped Sam a new one for being interested in Sarah or Cara or Madison? 

Dean’s eyes flick down to Sam’s mouth again, and Sam realizes he’s been chewing on the inside of his lip. He releases it, and Dean’s tongue comes out to wet the inside of his own bottom lip. Sam stands up straighter.

If this was His Dean, Dean would’ve pulled him down for a kiss that everyone could see. It’s so interesting to watch Dean fight that instinct in real time, to beat back something he doesn’t think he’s allowed. 

It’s…charming. Sam’s charmed, he realizes.

“Don’t like being shared.” Sam says, putting his hands in his pockets and shrugging. He nudges Dean’s shoulder with his as he passes, and purposefully doesn’t turn around. His heart skips a beat in his chest, and Sam smiles so wide that it hurts his cheeks as he leads their way to the check-out counter.

~~~

They pull up to the park thirty minutes later, and find a bench next to a lake. Sam carries the cooler to the water, filled with their new beers, and makes sure to walk in front of Dean.

For no reason in particular, mind you. He moves it to rest under one arm, and makes sure to take his flannel off beforehand. It’s just easier that way. Sam doesn’t hear Dean suck in a breath, and doesn’t notice the way Dean slows down so he can keep Sam in his line of sight.

It’s been a second since Sam felt this openly…admired. Dean—His Dean—always leers at Sam when Sam gives him the chance, but it feels more habit than actual genuine admiration. Sam’s here, and he’s bending over, so it’s time to look at his ass.

But with Dean audibly stumbling over paving stones behind him as Sam switches his hold from one arm to another, Sam can’t help but preen a little.

Sam feels like a slab of meat at a packing plant and honestly? It’s doing wonders for his ego. 

He briefly mourns the fact he doesn’t lift as much anymore. He didn’t like feeling so big, but if it has Dean drooling like this, Sam would’ve kept it up.

You’re huge, Dean had said at breakfast—God, was it only that morning? I’ve been bigger, Sam has the sudden urge to say, as he finds their usual spot and reluctantly puts the cooler down. How would Dean react to that? He slumps onto the bench seat and motions for Dean to do the same.

It’s a beautiful day, and their usual bench is farther away from the main trails, so they only occasionally see someone else walking their dog on the other side of the lake. It’s quiet, and Sam sits for a long moment, beer in hand, listening to the wind in the trees above them and his brother’s nails tapping quietly on the sweating glass of his own bottle.

It’s as perfect as Sam’s life can get right now.

“Do you remember that case in Atlantic City? With the leprechaun?” Dean blurts suddenly, and when Sam opens his eyes and looks over, Dean looks panicked and uncomfortable, like he hadn’t meant to say it.

“Do you mean do I remember that time you faked an Irish accent for a month?” Sam deadpans. “Yeah. You drove me crazy. You asked Ellie Marston if she was the ‘darlin’ lass of a gowl’ that I couldn’t stop talking about.”

Dean bursts into laughter. Sam kicks his ankle hard, and Dean keeps laughing, frantic, like he can’t stop.

They talk, for a long time, about the past. Dean eventually breaks out the bag of chips Sam bought, and makes serious contemplative noises as he chews. He breaks down the “salt-to-crunch” ratio, and Sam can’t stop looking at the way his mouth moves, how salt sticks to his top lip.

Sam’s addicted to the way Dean looks at him, as Dean recaps their most recent cases. Sam had forgotten a lot of the finer details, and Dean can’t tear his eyes away from Sam’s face. Everytime Sam looks away and then back, Dean is still looking at Sam like he’s never seen him before. Rapt. His lips keep pulling up at the corners, even when he’s not saying anything funny. Like Sam being here is enough to court mirth.

When Sam talks, Dean leans forward—without even realizing he’s doing it, because he keeps having to catch himself on his hands on the backrest of the bench and looks confused every time—into his space, eyes searching Sam’s face like he’s the most important thing Dean’s ever gotten the chance to look at.

After a while, their chatter peters into silence, warm and solid. It’s not awkward—silences between them rarely are, even now—and Sam reaches over and grabs some of Dean’s chips. They’re spicy, which Sam doesn’t usually like, but he eats a couple. He sticks the pad of his thumb in his mouth to suck some of the salt away, and notices that Dean’s eyes track that movement, too.

When Sam turns to fully look at him again, Dean’s eyes quickly flick away back to the lake. He clears his throat.

“Sammy’s going to get a kick out of this when I get out.” Dean says, quietly. His mouth is still in that frozen half-smile, but it looks sharper now. The set of it is harder. Sadder.

When I get out. Sam frowns at this. He wants to correct him, wants to make sure Dean knows that this is as real as it can get, but something stops him.

“So what’s not perfect?” He asks. Dean turns his head, and looks at him. Sam notices that his arm has been thrown over the back of the bench, and his fingers brush the back of Dean’s neck as he turns. He curls his hand into a fist to avoid his skin.

“Huh?” Dean asks, leaning back into Sam’s arm. It’s probably not a subconscious search for Sam’s skin, but Sam wishes it was.

“The last time, you said your djinn dream wasn’t a perfect world, but a wish. You said your wish was that mom was alive, but we didn’t get along. So what’s not perfect, if this is a djinn dream?”

Sam doesn’t know what possesses him to say it. But he wants to know what parts of himself, of their life, are imperfect to this version of Dean. What’s the wrinkle in reality that looks not quite right?

Sam spent so long doing that after the Cage—examining the world for cracks, for ripples—that Dean’s hesitance almost fascinates him. For a long moment, Dean doesn’t say anything. He looks out at the lake, and takes a long sip of his beer. Sam watches him in silence, the way his lashes cast sunshine onto his cheeks. The way Dean fiddles nervously with his fingers, where he used to wear a ring.

Did Dean stop wearing his jewelry to get himself to stop fiddling with it? Or did he remove it because he had no more need to fiddle with it? Did Hell take his idleness? His hesitancy? And Sam didn’t notice, so wrapped up in his mission?

Dean turns to look at him, thumbnail picking at the peeling label on his bottle.

“Something happened to us, didn’t it?” Dean asks. Sam’s mouth goes dry. “You thought I was having a nightmare. You…keep pressing at your palm, and you flinched when I came up behind you this morning. You held your breath the entire time we passed through the deli. It was the raw meat, right? Dad did that, sometimes, when he was having episodes from ‘Nam.”

Sam is agog. How the fuck has Dean noticed all of this, been logging it? Sam feels—almost—humiliated. That he’s so transparent, that he’s seen so easily. But the sting is soothed by the knowledge he’s been seen by Dean . Dean, even ten years removed, with tells he hasn’t had time to learn, can read Sam like a book. Has cared enough to look, to see.

Sam’s stomach churns. His only job has been to protect Dean from the future, and Dean has found it all out anyway. Of course he has.

“I…I failed, right?” Dean’s voice is tight, and Sam blinks back to the present, tries to find the reason behind Dean’s tilted mouth. Sam knows this look well: reproach.

“Failed?” Sam repeats, lost.

“To save you. To protect you.” Dean spits, running a hand through his hair. “From whatever’s coming for us.”

Sam’s going to be sick. How could Dean be right on the truth and so catastrophically off-base? Dean thinks Sam is like this because of something Dean failed to do. 

Dean sees Sam’s shame and his jumpiness and his inability to walk through the meat section at a grocery store as personal failings. Dean is the reason Sam is like this. Count on his brother to take the world onto his shoulders. “Something” happened to them alright, but Dean couldn’t have stopped Lucifer or Michael or the angels for anything.

They were doomed from the start.

Dean takes Sam’s silence as confirmation, and Sam watches the vulnerability in Dean’s eyes harden, solidify. His mouth tilts down into a full scowl, fury baring his teeth.

“That’s what doesn’t make any goddamn sense. You stayed. My wish was that you not leave the second we kill the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and you clearly did. But—” Dean’s gaining momentum, gaining speed, agitated hand tearing through his hair. “But why the fuck did you stay?”

Sam can read between the lines of Dean’s fury, the raw vulnerability that oozes like a heart squeezed in a tight fist. All viscera and blood and agony. Why would you stay when I couldn’t protect you? When I let this shit happen to us?

Why did Sam stay? It’s like asking why a bird yearns for the sky. Why a tree digs its roots into soil. Why a river seeks the ocean. It’s the way he’s made. It’s the dust from which his marrow was created.

Sam unfolds his fist and lets himself touch, lets his fingers slide up the back of Dean’s head until he’s holding it, until the heel of his palm sits in the notch where skull meets neck. Dean’s skin is warm, and he shivers under Sam’s touch, blinking quickly.

“You’re my big brother, Dean. Nothing else matters.” Sam says into the air between them. He watches the words land, watches Dean chew and swallow and digest them. He watches Dean tilt his head towards Sam, watches him expose his neck as he leans back into Sam’s hand, the nails scratching gently through closely shorn hair. Hair that Sam himself had probably cut, over ten years ago.

“And…us?” Dean asks, voice quiet, like he’s afraid if he speaks too loudly, the moment will shatter. Sam shrugs.

“...You’re my big brother, Dean. Nothing else matters.”

Dean’s face crumples. His brows come together, mouth screwing up, eyes closing like he’s seconds away from screaming. He grabs Sam’s shirt roughly, and Sam has a split-second glimpse of Dean’s green, green, green eyes, before he lunges forward, and their lips connect.

Sam’s not expecting it. He doesn’t know why, given his hand in Dean’s hair, and the way they had been practically sharing breath since Dean woke up in his bed. But he’s not. 

It’s not an easy kiss. Dean had shot forward so quickly that their teeth slam together, and Sam tastes ozone high in his nose. Dean doesn’t react like he was expecting the kiss either, and his mouth barely moves, just smashed to Sam’s like he’s hoping that Sam will give up and let him try to shove his way into Sam’s mouth.

Just as quickly as it started, Dean is pulling back. Dean’s eyes are wide, shocked, like Sam had been the one to kiss him. Sam watches the colour in his cheeks drain in real time, watches Dean’s mouth fall open in horror. 

He throws himself down the bench, wrenching his head from Sam’s grip and standing up with such ferocity that he almost overbalances and has to correct himself. 

“Shit.” Dean hisses. He whirls on Sam, but won’t meet his eyes. His lips are pink. “I’m so sorry. Forget I did that, please. Oh god, I didn’t mean—”

Sam doesn’t think about it. He stands. He steps towards Dean. He stops Dean’s babbling with a hand on either side of his face. Tilts his face up.

And he kisses him.

Properly this time, like Dean deserves to be kissed. Their lips touch, and Dean goes rigid against him, hands coming up to grab Sam’s forearms. 

As Sam kisses Dean softly, he remembers himself. He remembers who he is, who Dean is, why what Sam is doing is a very dangerous and bad thing to be doing. But he can’t stop himself, not when he gently brushes his tongue against Dean’s bottom lip and Dean reacts like he’s been shot, wet, hot mouth opening ready and obedient.

This is his big brother. This is the version of his brother that needs reassurance like he needs to breathe, that swallows praise like he swallows liquor—fast and hard and deep. He’s sitting in Sam’s palms and begging to be loved, and Sam, for better or fucking worse, can’t deny him.

Sam thinks of His Own Dean, worried for a second that this might count as some kind of infidelity, despite the fact arousal floods his mind, his limbs, his gut. Is touching this Dean a betrayal? Is wanting his hands on Sam treachery? Would Dean mind? Would Sam care if Dean kissed his own younger self?

Sam pulls away, knowing that taking this any farther is a bad idea. He doesn’t go far, though, just enough that Dean can see his face when he tells him what he has to say. Dean’s eyes are dazed, pupils blown, wet mouth pink and flushed. Sam rubs a thumb on Dean’s jaw, unused to how smooth it is under his fingertip.

“You didn’t fail me. You never did.” Sam vows. Dean’s waterlines build, and he tilts his head away from Sam’s gaze, as if trying to hide. He doesn’t have to hide from Sam. He never did. Sam wants to tilt forward and nose at the spot his hair meets his temple, but Dean is so overwhelmed Sam knows it’ll hurt more than anything. Sam loosens his hold on Dean, mindful not to pen him in. “It’s okay. It’s me .”

Dean’s breathing quickly, and Sam gives him time to process. Dean’s eyes flick over his face wildly, settling on his mouth and bouncing away again like catching himself in a habit he’d rather break.

But he hasn’t loosened his hold on Sam’s forearms. He hasn’t even taken a step back, still practically standing on top of Sam’s own feet. Sam takes a small step away from him, and Dean closes the distance immediately, stepping back into Sam’s personal space.

But to be honest, Sam never really had one of those. At least, not personal space that didn’t already include Dean.

“I don’t want…” Dean searches his face, and he shakes his head. “I can’t…”

Strangely enough, Sam doesn’t think he’s talking about them. The guilt that begs to rise to the surface never comes. Sam can’t be sorry about loving Dean. The realization makes him pause, but it feels as natural as breathing as he nods, smiling softly.

“Whatever you want, Dean.” He reassures, and takes another step away. Dean doesn’t follow, this time. He looks lost, not breaking their eye contact until Sam turns away to gather their things. 

When he turns back around, Dean’s hand is over his mouth as he stares out at the lake. Sam wants to know what he’s thinking, but he doesn’t ask.

~~~

Sam wakes up and Dean is gone.

Sam wanted to insist that he and Dean share a bed just to keep an eye on him, but Dean beat him to it. As soon as he got out of the shower, he came back to the room that he and Sam share now and lifted up the top sheet, sliding into bed like it was a regular night. 

Sam put down his book, looking down at Dean with no small sense of wonder. Dean had turned his back to him, and Sam could see a flush at his wet nape, either from the heat of the shower or the heat of his skin.

For the first time in a long time, Sam had wanted his brother and done nothing about it. He turned his back to Dean as well and had fallen asleep.

But as soon as Sam wakes, and Dean is no longer warm and solid in the bed next to him, Sam knows exactly where he is.

Sam runs.

The grogginess is gone immediately, heart shooting into his mouth and squishing wetly in his mouth. Adrenaline makes Sam shaky, makes him slam into corners at top speed, but Sam can’t feel the pain in his shoulders, in his legs, in his knees.

He rounds the final corner at a break-neck pace and slams into the opposite wall, and—

Storage room 19-B is cracked open.

Sam forgot to take his fucking lock picks.

Sam stumbles forward, slams the door completely open, and freezes.

The only light in the room is the golden orb on the table, still spinning away and casting an eerie, watery light over the scene. A snatch of Dean’s laughter, muted, sings in the room, then gone again as the view of the orb melts into something else.

Dean kneels on the ground, dagger in hand. It’s covered in blood, and for one yawning, terrifying, horrific second, Sam thinks it’s done. Dean has dug that knife into his own guts and caused irreparable damage and it’s over—Sam’s life is over —but—

Dean’s shirt is clean. Dean’s eyes snap up when the door rebounds. The look in his eyes is frantic, like an animal hunted, and Dean raises the dagger above his head. The blade is pointed down.

“Dean!”

Sam moves. He tackles Dean to the ground, throwing all 6’5” two-hundred-ten pounds of himself at Dean at full speed. Dean slams to the ground, the knife skittering out of his reach and into the shadowy recesses of the room.

“No, no!” Dean screams, howls, and he fights Sam like a wild animal, hitting and scratching and clawing at Sam’s hands, his arms, his neck. It’s all power, no finesse, nothing like the man that taught Sam how to fight. “Give it back!”

Sam’s furious now, furious at Dean for trying to take something away that wasn’t his to begin with, furious at Dean for almost robbing another version of himself his older brother, furious at himself for not handcuffing himself to Dean and watching him at all hours of the day. Dean tries to flip them, but Sam’s too big. Dean tries every nasty trick he ever taught Sam in a fight with someone bigger than him, but Sam knows them all. He keeps Dean pinned, even as Dean curses at him, even as his shouts of rage turn teary, turn sobbing.

“What the hell are you thinking —” Sam practically spits, hands locked on Dean’s wrists, pinning them. His hand wraps around his wrist easily, like it’s nothing. He hates that he’s so big, now, that having Dean and holding him down feels like a violation, like a power imbalance that was never supposed to tip this far in one direction.

“Please, Sammy, please. This is torture.” Dean begs—and it is begging, Sam hasn’t seen him like this outside of Sam’s life hanging in the balance. “I have to go home. Please let me go home.”

Tears bite at Sam’s eyes, and he loosens his grip on Dean’s wrists but still holds them there. He will not risk Dean getting up, getting loose, doing something too horrific to think of. 

“I’m trying,” Sam pleads, “I thought we agreed this wasn’t a djinn dream, Dean. This could’ve killed you.”

Dean bucks against him again, but Sam is firmly on his hips, and he can feel the hard lines of wiry muscle, built by years of necessity but not yet by years of abuse.

“So what? ” Dean snaps, and Sam recoils, horror a stone in his stomach. “Either I go home and fail Sam or I stay here and fail him anyway.” 

Sam’s blood washes white-hot. He thought he had calmed Dean’s worries about the future earlier. He had thought, with Dean’s breath in his mouth and hand in his hair, that he had made things a little better.

But clearly, Sam had made it incalculably worse.

Dean thinks now that Sam is doomed either way. But Dean’s presence in his life is the only thing keeping Sam vertical, keeping him alive.

Sam slumps forward, and takes his hands off of Dean’s wrists, instead sliding them up to hold his shoulders. One hand slides up to his neck when Dean tries to tilt away from him. Sam doesn’t let him look away, keeps Dean close.

How the fuck is Sam supposed to send this boy back? He’s maybe weeks away from Cold Oak, from watching Sam die in the mud, from selling his soul.

And Sam can’t change any of it. He can’t make Dean stay, he can’t make him stop. Dean is going to take himself off the chessboard in one way or another, and Sam feels like screaming. Tears build up at his waterlines as he stares down at the man he loves.

You are going to doom yourself for me, in any way you can.

“Don’t. You can’t leave Sam, Dean. He needs you.” Sam’s voice cracks, but he powers on. “I need you, Dean. Please.”

Dean blinks up at him, and his hands come up, one hand in Sam’s hair, one knotted in the front of Sam’s shirt like he’s stabilizing him from a punch. He looks dazed, eyes on Sam’s budding tears, his mouth, his nose.

Dean closes his eyes tight, inhaling sharply.

“I’m never getting out, am I?” He whispers, eyes still closed. Sam tilts his head forward until his forehead hits Dean’s collarbone, nose on his sternum. Sam has been begging Dean to want to live for decades. It never gets easier.

And Sam never gets any better at it.

“The spell is still working, Dean. Please give me just a little more time.” Sam begs, voice small.

He wants his brother back.

Sam’s not equipped to protect such a young Dean, to give him exactly what he needs. Sam has been taking care of His Dean for years. He knows exactly what he’s looking for and exactly what he needs. Dean has never wanted to leave Sam, and Sam has no idea how to take care of one that does.

Sam doesn’t know how to convince him that they’re equals. That Sam loves him. That Sam will do anything to keep him happy and safe and alive.

A hand in his hair. Dean pets through it softly.

“Your hair got long, Sammy.” Dean says, quietly. Sam nods, head still on Dean’s chest. He can feel the rumble of Dean’s words in his brain. Dean’s hands are so gentle in his hair. More gentle than they’ve been in decades. Just gun and shovel calluses. Sam buries his first few tears in Dean’s shirt, and swallows the rest of them as he moves up and off of Dean.

For the first time, Sam notices that he’s kneeling in a pool of blood. Dean’s pajamas are soaked, and the lower half of Sam’s legs are soaked through with a viscous, red fluid. Lamb’s blood.

Sam stands, goes over to the knife and tucks it in his waistband. He leaves. When he comes back five minutes later with a bucket of soapy water and two rags, Dean sits up eagerly, like a dog that had been waiting for its owner to come home.

He tilts forward into Sam’s body as Sam hands him a rag, and they kneel on the floor together, scrubbing at blood like penitents in a chapel.

They work in silence for half an hour, starting in the middle and working outwards. At one point, Sam hears a laughed Sammy! from the orb above, and has to close his eyes against the potent wave of grief that threatens to undo him.

As they near the end, Dean comes over to put his rag back in the bucket. Sam holds it out for him, and Dean drops it in with a wet squish. He doesn’t move away, though, just watches the now-pink suds slosh in the bucket.

“You got me real fuckin’ good. By giving me him. When he looks at me like that,” Dean says, tightly. He looks up at Sam, and the corner of his mouth tilts up in a bitter smirk.  “I don’t want to go back.” 

Sam blinks at him.

I don’t want to go back.

How could, after all of this, Dean want to stay? He tried to kill himself to get out of here, to escape back home to Sam of the past. 

Dean’s true meaning, then, hits him: I’m never getting out. Because I won’t be strong enough to. Because I don’t want to go back. You got me good by giving him to me. When he looks at me like that, I don’t want to go back. That’s the only thing that would get me to stay.

What was one of the first things Dean told him?

This is exactly what I would’ve wanted.

Dean tried this tonight, in part, because if he didn’t he was afraid that he’d want to stay. That he wouldn’t have the strength to say no to the djinn. 

Not if the djinn gave him Sam.

Sam’s heart breaks in a million different ways, as he kneels on the ground a few feet away from his brother. Something in Dean’s expression changes, then.

“The Other Sam never looked at me like that.” He says. “He tried, but it wasn’t like…”

Sam swallows thickly. “Like what?”

“Like…” Dean straightens, realization dawning like the sun over a hilltop, sharp and focused, hands falling down to his sides. He looks up at the table, at the flashes of Dean that come in and out of focus. He touches his own neck, where the amulet used to rest. 

“It’s me, it’s me,” Sam says, or tries to say, but nothing can squeeze past the burning in his throat. Dean’s eyes fall to his mouth, read the words on his lips.

“A djinn couldn’t have done this, could they?” Dean rasps. “This is real, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Dean. It’s me.” Sam says. His voice shakes. He feels like he’s going to come apart at the seams, like he’s been standing out in the cold for hours and can’t feel his fingers or his toes or his face anymore, his heart beating overtime just to keep them attached to his body.

Dean shuffles forward, until he’s almost on top of Sam, their knees touching in soapy, bloody water.

“Sammy?” Dean breathes, lifting his hand just slightly, but stalling before he can connect. Sam nods, smiling breathlessly, terrified.

Dean finds what he’s looking for and surges forward, like a dam collapses, leaning forward and up until their mouths slam together. His hands wind immediately into Sam’s sleep shirt, shaking so hard that Sam can feel Dean’s fist beat back against his chest like he’s trying to match Sam’s thundering heart blow-for-blow.

Sam doesn’t know what’s done it, if Dean’s own self-esteem couldn’t create a Sam that would stop breathing if Dean asked him to, or if the shock of almost taking his own life made something click.

“I’m sorry,” Dean grits between kisses, “I’m so sorry, Sammy.”

Sam doesn’t know what he’s apologizing for, but soothes the apologies with his tongue, unused to hearing direct apologies from Dean’s lips like this.

Dean still faintly tastes like toothpaste, and Sam chases the taste into his mouth, Dean opening for him easily. Their tongues slide together, and Dean stutters an inhale, slipping cool air into their mouths.

Sam’s hands come up and hold Dean against him, one hand above his delicate spine and the other wound tightly in Dean’s hair. He uses his hand in Dean’s hair to steer him, pulling him closer and into Sam’s mouth. Dean makes a noise like a dying animal, pressed into their mouths like an imprint.

Dean tilts more and more into Sam, until Sam is practically holding all of his body weight, keeping Dean upright on his knees with the force of their kiss alone.

Sam had always wondered what it would be like to kiss this Dean. When he was fresh out of Stanford, it felt like an incalculable disloyalty to the memory of Jess. But it didn’t stop his hungry eyes from tracing Dean’s plush mouth wrapping around straws, his sharp, bright eyes assessing a pool table, his teeth biting at his pink bottom lip.

His Dean had decades of experience kissing by the time Sam finally got to touch, and Sam wanted to write thank you notes to each and every person that taught Dean to move his tongue like that. 

But it’s a new hedonism to slowly coach Dean’s tongue into the moves that drive them both wild, Dean’s already-practiced kissing becoming sloppier and sloppier as his breathing gets heavier, as he gets more desperate and more turned on.

Sam moves their tangled tongues back into Dean’s mouth, brushing the roof of his hard palate. He pulls back enough to gently nip at Dean’s chapped bottom lip, and Dean reciprocates, using this chance to lick back into Sam’s mouth with half-lidded eyes and swollen lips.

He tastes like toothpaste and a little like the beer from this afternoon, and Sam wonders what he must taste like, because Dean’s chasing it to the back of Sam’s mouth, hungry.

Sam presses his thumbs into the hinge of Dean’s jaw and gently moves him back, soothing him with a kiss to his top lip that Dean lingers in.

Dean’s pupils are blown, and Sam is enraptured by the way Dean’s kiss-bruised mouth is slick with both of their saliva, with the way the colour sits high in his cheeks. He looks fucked-out already, and Sam hasn’t even touched him.

Sam has to make a split-second decision, as he looks down on Dean’s face, if he’s going to do this. 

Is he betraying His Dean by doing this? But Sam realizes, as he looks at this face that he’s loved for decades, that this is Dean. Sam loves all versions of his brother, and this is not an exception. If His Dean is with a past Sam, Sam hopes he does this. Sam wants to be taken apart by—be a part of—every possible version of Dean, and he trusts that Dean wants the same.

“Do you—” Sam starts, but Dean starts nodding before he can finish, cutting him off.

“Please,” Dean pants, “Please, Sammy.” 

Dean deserves a kiss for that, so Sam brings their mouths together again, and Dean melts into him eagerly, sliding his tongue into Sam’s mouth with a sigh of relief. Sam can feel his cock pulse in his jeans. He’s so fucking eager. Sam gently pulls away, having to lean back because Dean keeps trying to follow him, pressing kisses into his mouth, his cheek, his jaw.

“Bedroom,” Sam says, and Dean’s pupils swallow his iris in the way flame swallows kindling. They stumble to their feet, and Sam doesn’t bother putting anything away in the room, just takes the dagger out of his belt and drops it on a crate on his way out of the room. Dean won’t leave him now; he knows this.

They stumble down the hallways, too clumsy to make fast work of it. Sam can’t resist biting down on the junction of Dean’s shoulder and neck, and Dean keeps trying to grab at Sam’s hair, hands petting and punishing in turn.

Sam eventually decides Fuck It , and as they round the last corner, he grabs Dean by the thighs and hauls him into his arms. Dean yelps, hands coming around Sam’s neck, but once he realizes what Sam’s done, his mouth crashes against Sam’s again, a whimper of Holy Fuck right against Sam’s teeth.

Dean’s heavy, but not too heavy for Sam. He’d try to take Sam to the ground if Sam tried anything like this with His Dean, but This Dean’s brain seems sufficiently too melted to try to stop him. His weight is solid in Sam’s arms, and Sam wants to keep him here forever, physical proof of Sam’s ability to care for him, physical proof that Dean is real and here and happy.

Dean’s hips pump up into Sam’s stomach once, twice, frantic, like he can’t stop himself, as Sam kicks their bedroom door open. Sam’s brain spins, and he has to pant for breath between kisses, as he imagines holding Dean here, forcing him to rub off against Sam if he wants to come. He would do it, Sam realizes with a pull in his gut, and his dick jumps. Sam could ask him to do anything, and Dean would agree. Would beg for it.

Sam needs him too much to consider that now, but Sam stores that mental image away, of Dean’s head thrown back, hips working against Sam’s stomach, Sam not lifting a finger, as he took whatever Sam would give him.

Sam walks them toward the bed and leans Dean down, dropping them both onto the bed in a tangle of limbs. Their combined body weight makes the springs bounce, and Sam’s nose gets smashed against Dean’s ridiculous freckled cheekbone as they’re shoved together. Sam can’t resist nipping at it as they settle, before trailing his mouth back down to Dean’s to capture it in another kiss.

It’s filthier than earlier, sloppier, and Dean’s tongue rolls against his in his mouth, shooting sparks down into Sam’s fingers, which he winds into Dean’s hair, scrapes against the thin skin of his neck.

Sam just manages to rip his mouth away from Dean’s, and it feels like pure agony, like ripping his own skin off. His lips throb in their absence, blood-hot and aching for more of Dean’s skin. He lunges for the bottle of lube on his nightstand, feeling so acutely grateful for His Dean being ridiculous and hedonistic and—absurdly, in his own way—romantic.

When he comes back to Dean, Dean is looking at the bottle with a wide-eyed stare, and Sam watches as Dean swallows thickly. He shifts on the bed, but not away from Sam. His hands clench and unclench in the sheets.

“I’ve—” Dean starts, then stops. His eyes flick down between them, to the place where his pelvic bone rests above Sam’s. He looks back up at Sam, and his legs fall open, releasing their hold on Sam’s waist and thunking gently to the bed, on either side of Sam’s body. “I’ve never. G-Go slow?”

Sam’s brain tries to leak out of his ears. A hot wave of FuckDeanGod makes Sam’s vision go a little sideways.

Dean’s eyes are wide, but trusting, and his chin is tilted up a little in defiance, like he’s bracing himself to get a shoulder reset. But he still wants this, he’s still offering, still opening his body for Sam, telling him to come in, telling him to take.

Take his first.

I’ve never. Such a strange vulnerability from Dean in this moment, in giving Sam more power, and not less of it. Sam drops the bottle of lube onto the bed and uses both hands to rip Dean’s shirt over his head, following quickly with his own. Dean looks dazed and dizzy when Sam descends on him again, the heat of skin on skin shooting pleasant shocks of warmth through Sam’s entire body.

He bites down right above Dean’s clavicle, and sucks his skin into his mouth, tasting the tang of soap and salty sweetness of skin and DeandeanDean. Dean bites down on a whimper, and Sam hears it whispered directly in his own ear. Dean’s hand comes up to tangle in Sam’s hair, holding him to Dean’s skin like he’s nursing.

Sam slides his other hand down, and cups Dean through his flannel pajamas, feeling the hot solid weight of him like a brand in his hand. Dean does cry out this time, bucking up into Sam’s grip, and Sam grinds his hand down, feeling the slide of Dean against his palm.

“You’re so perfect,” Sam swears, lips coming away from an already darkening mark and sliding up and over, closer to Dean’s shoulder, as he bites in again. “You’re mine, aren’t you? Do anything little brother asked of you?”

“Yes, Sammy, yes,” Dean pants, “Fuck. Yours. I’m yours.” 

Sam leans back onto his heels, taking his hips and hands and mouth away from Dean. He looks down at the spread of Dean’s body, the obscene bulge in his pants, the darkening marks on his neck, his heaving chest dusted with freckles. His face is unlined and flushed, blinking rapidly, mouth almost bruised with how abused it is. 

Sam knows if he asked Dean to suck his dick and go to bed untouched that Dean would do it.

The power thrumming through Sam’s veins is a round of buckshot to the brain. Sam can feel his heartbeat everywhere: in his tongue, in his fingers, in his cock. Every cell in his body screams.

Sam reaches out and tugs on the elastic waistband Dean’s pants. Dean lifts his hips obediently, and Sam watches hungrily as his cock springs out, flushed pink and already wet at the head. Sam bends down as he continues to pull Dean’s pants off of his legs and plants a kiss just left of the base, in Dean’s wiry pubic hair.

Dean’s stomach goes concave as he inhales sharply, muscles trembling. Sam smirks into his skin, and lightly—so lightly Sam can barely feel the warmth of his skin—he brushes his lips along Dean’s shaft. Sam always loves how Dean smells here, how he tastes, and tonight is no different.

Dean smells the same, salt and musk and sweat, and Sam doesn’t know why it makes his blood sing but it does. It feels like giving Dean a gift, almost, through time. I love you here, too. You were mine here, too.

Dean reacts like he’s been shot, head slamming back into the bed but muscles locked tight, like he’s afraid if he moves Sam’ll stop touching him.

Sam has to fight the urge—the instinct—to take Dean in his mouth right here and now, show Dean exactly how he likes it, how good Sam can be for him, how well Sam knows this body and how much he loves to worship it. But that’s not the plan tonight.

When Dean’s pants are fully off, Sam leans back up and reaches for his own waistband, slowly pulling it down. Dean sits up on his elbows so he doesn’t miss a single moment, rapt. Sam pulls his waistband down and over his cock, and his cock thwaps against his stomach with a wet noise, precome leaving a shiny mark on his stomach.

A tortured noise slides from Dean’s throat, and Sam’s eyes flick back up to his. Dean’s jaw is slack, and his eyes haven’t left Sam’s dick.

Sam feels a little bashful. He knows it’s kind of big. Dean’s own dick is nothing to lift a nose at, and Dean—His Dean—had been obsessed with looking at their cocks together when they first started this. Turns out dick size is genetic, Sammy, Dean had rasped into Sam’s ear, as they looked down at Dean’s hand holding the both of them together. But fuck. You definitely pulled the longer straw. Sam had groaned in exasperation, which mutated into a groan of pleasure as Dean started to stroke them together, his hand not able to wrap all the way around them both.

“You’re gonna fucking kill me.” Dean whimpers, and only then does he look up at Sam, eyes wide. His legs hitch a little more open, though, despite his words. He wants it. 

Dean doesn’t care if it hurts—his shaking thighs pressing open a little wider as Sam stares, a bashful enticement—as long as he gets to be the one to take it. He prays for destruction as long as Sam is the one to deal it. He and Sam’s Dean aren’t too different, after all, are they?

Sam almost changes his mind—fuck his plan, this could be way goddamn better—but through sheer damn stubborness, pulls his pants the rest of the way down and reaches for the lube.

Dean lifts his leg up and away when Sam uncaps it, and the cold lube on his fingers makes Sam shiver. Arousal burns more persistently in his gut, an almost Pavlovian response to this noise and this feeling, and when Sam puts the bottle down, he wraps a hand around his own dick and squeezes once, just to stave off the pulsing YesYesNowYes . 

His hand curbs his need like slowly opening a bottle of soda slowly releases pressure and Sam can finally breathe.

Dean’s mouth falls open when Sam’s hand does not slide towards Dean, but reaches behind himself.

“Sammy,” Dean breathes, enthralled.

Sam prods at his ass, rubbing around the tight ring of muscle to loosen himself up. He is going to take care of Dean tonight. Show him just a fraction of the reason Sam stays. Show him that this is real, that Sam is real, that they are real.

The tip of his middle finger slides in, and Sam shudders, slumping forward. It has been a few days since he and His Dean had done this last, but muscle memory takes over, and Sam slumps forward into Dean. He works his finger into his hole easily, muscles slackening because Sam’s body knows that Dean must be coming shortly.

“Fuck.” Dean whispers, hands spasming on Sam’s hips. “Fuck, baby.”

Sam grinds his dick into Dean’s thigh, and Dean’s making little punched-out noises like Sam is knuckle deep in him, instead. Sam gets more lube and works a second finger in, gently scissoring them apart. His eyes roll a little at the feeling, pleasure making him shivery and weak. He brushes against his prostate but doesn’t pay it too much attention, just little brushes that pull his anticipation slow and long like taffy. 

“Gotta get myself ready for you,” Sam pants, and he mouths at Dean’s collarbone as his fingers slide against his hole. “Gonna feel so fucking good when I take you in.” 

Dean swears, and one of his hands slides around Sam’s waist, to his back, then down. His fingers sit against Sam’s hole, not pressing in, but feeling the way it moves and shifts around his fingers. Sam groans, and shoves another finger in next to his two, scissoring his three fingers apart. 

“You feel this, Dean?” Sam mutters right against Dean’s ear, and pulls his fingers out, knowing his ass is slow to close, knows Dean’s fingers slip past the rim, Sam’s hole so greedy for Dean that it sucks him right in. “All for you, De.”

Dean’s fingers are dry, not even fingering, just pressing at his rim. They both moan at the feeling, Dean an overwhelmed little noise that has Sam pressing another rewarding, wet kiss to his mouth.

Dean is shaking. His fingers hold Sam in his arms in a vise grip, like someone is going to take him away, but the hand at his hole is shaking. Nerves, or excitement, or fear, or just pure adrenaline, Sam doesn’t know. He looks down into Dean’s eyes, decades and centuries older than him, and Dean looks…in love.

His hands are shaking.

Only Dean looks at him like that. Only Dean could ever look at him like that, and Sam feels too seen, too naked, and too known. There’s a knot in his throat, and Sam wants Dean to look at him like that forever. 

Sam can’t take it any longer, and flips onto his back, dragging Dean over him. Dean looks dizzy and so overwhelmed he looks vaguely ill. Sam uses the fingers that were just inside him, coated in lube, and strokes Dean once, twice. Dean almost collapses forward into him, eyes rolling up into his head.

Sam transmutes his power, presses into Dean’s skin with his hands on Dean’s chest. He needs his brother, needs to be protected and loved and fucked in the way only This Dean could.

“Take care of me, Dean,” Sam mutters, almost a beg, leaning up and nipping at Dean’s jaw, the other hand sliding across smooth, freckled shoulders. “Show me how good you can be for me?”

Dean’s hips jerk forward, needy, and Sam is so fucking turned on he could die. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat, throbbing in the head of his dick. Dean’s cheeks are flushed, sweat beading at his temples, and he looks down at Sam like some wild thing.

“Yeah, Sammy,” Dean whispers, cognizance returning to his eyes, determination making his jaw set, his hands grab at Sam’s hips. Dean knows his role again, fills the boots with a fervor so acute it makes his eyes glow. Sam loves this kid so much it makes him ill. “Gonna take carea’ you.”

“Please,” Sam pleads, thighs wrapping around—and so wide and strong they almost devour—Dean’s hips, pressing his brother closer, closer, only ever closer.

Dean lines up his dick to Sam’s entrance, and Sam closes his eyes to the feeling of the wet head of his dick kiss his hole, almost home.

This is the last second in time that Sam will not own all versions of his brother, where there is a version of Dean that Sam has met and not had. Sam looks into Dean’s face, splotchy heat and dark freckles and eyes that only get bigger when Sam smiles.

Dean thrusts in, and Sam’s head slams against the pillows, an arm coming up to wrap around Dean’s shoulders. When Sam looks up, Dean’s eyes are glued to the point they meet, where Dean is sliding his cock deep into Sam’s guts, where Dean slides home.

“Fuck, Sammy,” Dean’s voice is high-pitched. “I’m in you. F-Fuck. You feel—”

“Made for you,” Sam agrees, distantly, breathing through the sudden intrusion, and Dean makes another overwhelmed whimper. When Dean is fully seated, they stare at each other for a long moment. Dean looks near tears, overwrought as he is as deep in Sammy as he can go. Something deep in Sam settles in a way he doesn’t outside of moments like these. Sam is full. Sam is full of his brother.

He knows he’s smiling, but can’t stop it, instead grinding down on Dean’s dick, working Dean even deeper. The familiar weight of Dean stretches him open, and Sam can hardly breathe. Every single one of Sam’s nerves light up, screaming in ecstasy to have Dean exactly where he’s supposed to be, making Sam’s cock jerk against his stomach.

Sam is both idol and idolatress, something worshipped and worshipful, and Sam can practically hear the gears in Dean’s brain whirring, torn between his usual cocky confidence and skill, and frantic, clawing need. 

Dean is still, hands on Sam’s waist still shaking, cradling him like Sam is made of spun glass. Sam cants his hips down, thighs and calves urging Dean closer.

“C’mon, fuck me, Dean.” Sam implores. Dean obeys. 

Dean pulls out and slams back into him with so much force that the air is punched from Sam’s lungs. Dean goes at him like a wild animal, hips pumping so fast and hard that their skin makes thwap ping sounds when they come together, Dean’s balls swinging against his ass.

Dean gets his rhythm soon, though, and slows down a touch. Not enough to let Sam breathe but enough that each grind is intentional and—

Sam cries out when Dean brushes his prostate, and Sam’s world goes crystal sharp as pleasure shoots down to his fingertips.

Dean understands what this is again—that even though it feels like something earth-shattering and fatal, sex is just sex again, Sam is just Sam , again—and he finds familiar footing. Sam watches through heavy-lidded eyes as Dean bends down to nip at Sam’s neck, to lave his tongue against the stubble there. 

Dean has always been made to please. Made to swagger and praise and fuck.

“There it is, baby,” Dean pants, “Look at you. So perfect for me.”

This is what they were always meant to be, and Sam could cry with how perfect it is that he can be this for this Dean, too. He is always perfect for Dean, always meant for him.

“Made to take it, aren’t you?” Dean bites at Sam’s throat, leaving marks Sam knows will last for days, claiming Sam right back. “Made for me, Sammy.”

“Yes.” Sam agrees eagerly, tightening his thighs’ grip on Dean’s waist, pulling him closer. Dean needs to know this, needs to know they’re perfect together, built for each other. “Just yours, Dean.”

Dean collapses forward, hips grinding deep in Sam as he noses along his neck, nipping at stubbled skin and sucking sweat from his shoulder, from his jaw.

“I love you,” Dean gasps against Sam’s shoulder, and Sam freezes underneath him, acutely aware of his sweat and his skin and the places they connect. He hasn’t heard those words from Dean in…a long time. Not those words in that order.

Dean shows him in other ways, and Sam never has doubts that he is loved, but Dean has just come out and said it.

“Love you so much,” Sam replies, a burning in his throat making it hard to speak. “Only thing that fucking matters.” 

Dean’s hips change angles again, and Sam almost screams when Dean hits his prostate dead-on, then again, then again.

“Dean,” Sam moans, “Wanna feel you come, ‘sso fucking good.”

Sam is jolted when Dean’s entire body locks up. Dean’s hips jackrabbit, and he looks shocked, almost shouting as his orgasm is pulled out of him. 

“Sam!” Dean cries, and Sam’s hand comes up to pet through his hair as his orgasm rockets through him. Sam feels the increased warmth of his come spread, Dean fucking it deeper as his hips stutter.

Dean wilts forward against him, the aftershocks making his dick twitch deep in Sam’s ass. Sam’s dick twitches against Dean’s stomach, trapped between them as Dean heaves for breath against Sam’s chest.

To Sam’s shock, Dean’s hips start moving again, pulling back a little so he can wrap a hand around Sam’s dick. Dean’s dick is softening, and his mouth is pulled up into a pained grimace, but he brushes against Sam’s prostate, working sparks through Sam’s body and screaming across his nerves. He’s working himself into oversensitivity, almost agony, just for Sam’s pleasure.

This alone causes the wave of ecstasy to close over Sam’s head, and he comes with a shout of Dean’s name, shooting come over Dean’s fist and between their stomachs, his spinal cord melting down his vertebrae as every nerve in his body turns into screaming points of pleasure, overwhelming him.

When the world comes back into focus, Dean’s thumb is sliding some of his come back into Sam’s hole, and pats at Sam’s stomach with one of their discarded shirts. Sam’s hips jerk, unable to decide if he wants to press further into or away from the overstimulation skittering along his nerve endings.

When Dean’s seemingly satisfied, he wraps his arms, cooling with sweat, around Sam’s shoulder, tugging Sam down and into his chest like Sam is still small. Sam goes eagerly, nosing along Dean’s chest, smelling sharp and salty like come and sweat and home. 

Sam disappears under Dean’s arm, letting himself be held, and Dean adjusts them until his cheek rests on Sam’s hair.

“You’re so perfect, Sammy,” Dean whispers into Sam’s hair, hands roaming across Sam’s chest, his shoulders, his stomach. His breath is pure warmth across Sam’s scalp, sending shivers down his spine. Sam closes his eyes, overcome with feelings he can’t even name. “God, look at you.” 

Sam’s never been perfect, but he can almost believe it, with Dean’s come slowly leaking out of his ass, Dean loose-limbed and blissed-out and petting through Sam’s hair like he’s the most beautiful thing to ever exist.

Dean keeps muttering praises into Sam’s hair until his voice trails off, pulled into sleep. Sam follows, eager to go wherever Dean leads.

~~~

When Sam wakes up the next morning, he knows His Dean has been found.

He pulls his jeans over his sore ass, pulls a shirt on over his stomach still barely crusted with dried come, and goes to the storage room. He leaves Dean in bed, eyelashes heavy over freckled cheeks.

When he walks into the storage room, the spell is lit a brilliant green, the colour of Dean’s eyes.

The first thing Sam feels is relief, and he stumbles forward to get a closer look into its swirling depths. It shows Dean sitting at a desk—Sam knows that desk, he realizes, and recognizes that this is showing Dean from two days ago, helping Sam catalogue some artifacts on the fourth floor.

Dean picks up a cube, and it immediately reacts to his touch, glowing a merry green. Dean puts it back down quickly, and writes a note on the pad of paper Sam had given him. Sam knows, instinctually, that this is what swapped his Deans.

Sure enough, the scene goes dark, a time jump, and the cube is still sitting on the table. It suddenly flares to life, and Sam sees symbols flash across the cube’s surface—Roman numerals, counting down, MMXIX, MMXIV, MMIX , until it stops on MMVI. 2006.

Sam blinks and he’s staring at his brother’s face, slack in sleep. His Dean. He has the familiar wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the familiar tense jaw, the light freckles under long lashes. Sam’s heart aches looking at him.

He thinks of the Dean he has in his bed right now, snoring lightly. Guilt eats at him.

How the fuck is he supposed to do this?

An unexpected wave of grief makes his vision go blurry, and Sam has to brace himself on the table. 

Dean is found. Dean is safe.

But Sam is supposed to send the other Dean back into 2006. Weeks, maybe, before Sam gets his spinal cord cut in the mud. Weeks before he sells his soul to get him back. Even years later, Dean can’t talk about the days after Sam died that first time.

How is Sam supposed to do that to him?

Before Sam can talk himself out of it, he whispers, “Cas. I found him.”

The familiar flutter of feathers sounds behind him, and Sam wants to take it back. He wants His Dean back, but doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to doom the version of his brother that lays in his bed, unaware of what the future holds.

“May I see?” Cas asks, and Sam steps aside, eyes still closed. He hears Cas approach, feels Cas at his side as he peers into the spell. Sam finally opens his eyes, and Cas puts a hand on Sam’s shoulder. His eyes hold something sad and serious, and Sam wonders how much Cas knows. If he can feel the grief that lives in Sam like a disease. “I will go alert the other Dean.”

“Not necessary, CPA Barbie.” They both turn, and Dean is standing in the doorway. He’s fully dressed, and his arms are crossed in front of himself protectively. His hair is still mussed in sleep, and there are pillow marks on his cheek. He looks catastrophically young. When his eyes land on Sam, he goes soft, arms coming down to his sides. “Hey, Sammy.”

“Dean.” Sam says. It’s all he can say. Dean pads into the room, but doesn’t approach Cas or the spell. He only has eyes for Sam.

“I could feel it. It’s time, isn’t it?” He asks. His jaw is set, determined, but Sam can see the insecurity in his eyes. The need for reassurance, to be told that everything’s going to be okay.

“Dean.” Sam repeats. It’s the only word he knows. Dean sways into his body, drawn like a magnet, and Sam catches him eagerly, hand coming up to steady Dean’s waist. He can see the dark marks of the hickeys he left on Dean’s neck. He wants to press down on them again, and wonders what noise Dean would make if he did.

“You’re going to wipe my memory, aren’t you?” Dean asks, and Sam startles, only to find Dean looking directly at Cas. For the first time since Dean got here, there is not a trace of hostility in his tone or gaze as he looks at Cas. With Sam’s arms around his waist, Sam’s marks on his neck, Dean’s claim has been sufficiently laid, it seems.

Cas nods once, slow, and Sam closes his eyes against another wave of grief. It’s necessary, and Sam knew it would happen, but it still feels sharp.

“It’s for the best.” Cas says, softly.

There’s a hand on Sam’s jaw, and Sam’s head is pulled toward the side. Dean’s lips are on his, just a peck. His eyes are bright in the darkness, and the pure adoration there makes Sam feel nauseous.

“Love you, Sammy.” Dean whispers, only for Sam’s ears. Sam whispers it back, and tightens his hold on Dean’s waist. He’s seized with the need to reassure Dean, to make sure even if Dean doesn’t remember, he’ll know.

“Dean.” Sam says, muttering low, urgent. He meets Dean’s gaze. “It’s going to get hard. And scary. But I’ll be with you, okay? Every step of the way—we’re gonna make it together.”

Dean blinks a few times, hard, and Sam is agonized to see the beginnings of tears at Dean’s waterlines. But Dean pulls away from Sam’s grip, hand lingering on his forearm, and shrugs. His smile is cocky and false, the performance of confidence erected again.

“C’mon, Sammy. I’ll look out for you. Easy as pie.” Dean smirks, but the performance is undercut by a hard sniff. Suddenly, he looks a little unsure, and looks back over at Cas, briefly. When he looks back up at Sam, it’s hope that burns in his gaze. “I’ll see you in thirteen years, yeah?”

Sam nods, and despite himself, returns Dean’s smile. “I’ll be right here waiting.”

Sam pulls him up into a kiss, trying to press every ounce of love and devotion he can into Dean’s mouth, and Dean grabs onto him tightly, kissing him just as desperately. Sam can feel the familiar burn of Cas’s grace, and knows it’s happening.

He doesn’t let go of Dean, not for a second, and kisses him until between one breath and the next, Sam is holding air.

Sam doesn’t open his eyes, every fiber of his being screaming to get Dean back, to bring him back so Sam can keep him safe, protect him, prevent anything from ever happening to him again.

The room gets brighter behind Sam’s closed eyelids, and when he opens them next, the room is dark.

Cas is gone. The spell in the bowl has fizzled out, and the only light in the room is from the hallway fluorescents. Sam’s arms feel empty, as they fall to his side.

“Sammy?” A voice, decades older and octaves deeper. Sam whirls around, and there Dean is—His Dean—standing next to the cabinets. Sam practically throws himself at him, sweeping him up into a hug.

Dean throws his arms around him, stumbling forward, and his grip on Sam is so tight that Sam can hardly breathe, but it feels so good. Sam doesn’t need to breathe. He needs Dean.

Finally, too soon for Sam’s taste, Dean pulls away and gives Sam a once-over, hands on Sam’s chest, his arms, his waist, looking for injuries. Sam lets himself be inspected, knowing it’s mostly for Dean’s peace of mind than anything else.

When Dean finally pulls away, Sam stops him with a hand on Dean’s bicep. Dean stills, and looks up into Sam’s eyes. Sam traces the things about his brother that he had missed.

“He was so young,” Sam whispers, grieving the man his brother used to be, the man that is probably reuniting with his own Sam, clueless to what waits for them.

“So were you, Sammy.” Dean mutters, and Sam can see in Dean’s eyes that he is grieving, too, that Dean had to let go of a Sam that was weeks away from dying.

Sam pulls Dean in for a kiss, feeling the familiar weight and heft of Dean under his hands, the familiar lines of his body and the surety with which Dean carries himself.

“They have each other,” Sam says, comforting himself with the thought that while things get bad for them, they have this future, still. A future where they can love each other freely and fiercely and will put each other back together again, as many times as it takes.

Dean smiles, and Sam falls in love all over again with the lines around his brother’s eyes. The age and wisdom and strength and beauty that he grew into.

“They only need each other.” Dean agrees, and Sam lets himself be pulled into another kiss. Sealed like a deal.