Archive of Our Own

Wet. Heavy. That's what the air feels like, like summer in Florida. It weighs on his skin, it's wrapped stickily around him. Stifling, but somehow, oddly, there's cold threaded through the heat. This isn't right, he thinks, there's something very wrong here.

He'd left Dean in the car to go take a piss and now he’s…well, he’s not sure where he is, but considering the state of his life lately, it's a safe bet it's nowhere good. Maybe he's been out of the "Family Business" for the last few years but it doesn't mean he's dumb. Or defenseless.

Speaking of defenseless, it registers that wherever he is, he's flat on his back in the dark.

'Urg, damn…' It takes a minute or two before he can work to his feet. Feels like he got worked over in his sleep. He looks around but there's just more darkness. Scrubbing at his eyes, he squints, until--there.

Light, from the outside, leaking under what has to be a door. There's just enough light to make out shapes in the gloom. Looks like the typical things you'd find in a motel room: a desk, a chair, a cot. A collapsed duffle bag. Scooting over to it, he gives it a kick—it’s as empty as it looked.

'Damn it.' This is worse than not good. His gear's gone, weapons, first aid kit, and worst of all, no Dean.

The light disappears, plunging him into total darkness, but before he can adjust, a voice breaks the silence.

'Oh, you're awake. Mother's been waiting for that. We have been busy though, making you a little place, a nest to keep you safe and close to us, the way I need you to be. For now. The little ones were so excited over the new guest but no, Children,' I said, 'no eating yet; I wanted to talk to you first, meet you personally. Feel you. There we go, what a lovely spike of fear. Very nice, very filling.'

'Who the hell are you?' Whirling around, trying to see through the shifting shadows he reaches out, fingers grasping on air, searching for the speaker, needing to find a wall, furniture—something to ground himself in the darkness. He fights the urge to crouch, make himself smaller. The dark seems to form and reform, blooming and shrinking with no rhyme or reason. 'What the hell is going on, what have you done?' Frustration and building fear drive the next words out at top volume. 'WHERE'S MY BROTHER?'

'Mmm, there it is.' The oily voice curls around his ear, leaking, slipping inside his head, full of satisfaction. 'That's the thing, the hook. The meat.'

'The meat' reverberates in the darkness, dissolving into low moaning and the sound of too many tiny claws skittering behind him in the shadows.

Oh god—not rats! Sam lurches forward, stopping when he actually hits a wall. Relief fades fast when his searching hand slides over the viscous dampness coating it. 'Shit!'

Gagging at the slime sliding against his skin, he forces his fingers along the wall, until finally they bump up against what feels like a door frame. An exit, hopefully. He sweeps his hand along the wood until, yes! A doorknob!

Scrubbing his hand against his shirt first, he jerks the door open, then stumbles back, staggered by the stink on the other side. It’s all the worst smells; an overwhelming reek of rotten oranges, spoiled meat, and mildew, the stink of decay.

Wrinkling his nose in disgust, he takes a breath, about to yell again when he hears a very familiar voice. 'Dean?'

"Hand me one of those sandwiches outta the cooler."

It’s Dean, he’s sure of it, but the sound warbles and dips like sound underwater. 'Dean?'

'No, no, my exquisite delicacy. Mother is just getting started. Now let's rummage around in your very crowded attic and see what else we can find—'

Sam falls over backwards like a felled tree. The world is quaking, it feels like a flare's going off in his brain. Everything goes white and then—black.

The rhythmic sound and feel of the car rumbling over asphalt is kind of hypnotic; Dean's barely able to keep his eyes open. He should grab a sandwich from the back. Maybe chewing on something will help him focus. It's weird that he's so damn tired, though. They've been going through a down time, basically just aimlessly cruising. They've got no specific job on board—yet—and just couple of salt'n'burns in the rearview. They have kind of danced around the idea of going to Bobby's but it's still been a little awkward, ever since Dad caught a case of the ass with the old man.

'Oh well.' He glances over at Sam, who's sitting there looking disgustingly perky. "Hand me one of those sandwiches outta the cooler, dude."

"Ya, okay, let me just…urg. Damn, my back. Here."

"Thanks." Dean snatches the sandwich out of the air, lets his knees guide the wheel as he tears the plastic off a ham and cheese. He peers up through the top of the windshield at a large black shape whirling overhead. "S'at a hawk?"

Sam glances up, not really interested, but apparently willing to indulge Dean. "Nah. It's a crow. I think. Maybe a raven?"

"Hunh." Dean chews, swallows, and says, "Well, there's a bunch of 'em. Almost looks like they're following us."

Sam perks up at that, a mild look of interest on his face. "Really?" He bends his head to peer up through the windshield as well. "Hunh. They do look like they're following us. Maybe they have a nest ahead."

"Shit!" Dean fumbles his sandwich onto the floor when suddenly, the crows or ravens, whatever they are, shoot up into the air, calling loudly to each other. A few break off the main group and fling themselves straight at the car, cawing furiously.

"What the fuck—are they attacking us? They're attacking us! Back up, back up!!" Sam screams, throwing himself backwards and into Dean, scaring the shit out of him. Sam’s arms are curled over his face, cowering as if something very much worse was happening than a supposed crow attack. Dean's gonna give him such shit for it later but right now he's fighting the wheel he jerked too hard to the left. Though, yeah, he’s a bit creeped out too by the crow 'attack'.

Once he’s got the car settled, Dean pulls to the side of the road, shuts it off, and stares at Sam. He’s about to ask him what the fuck that was, but Sam's staring at the flock of crows, and the look of sheer hatred on his face stops Dean short. Since when was Sam so fucked up over crows? Clowns he knew, but crows? Something happen to him at Stanford maybe?

"S'okay Sam. They can't get us in the car…I don't think." Dean swallows, thumbs haphazardly at a crust of mustard smeared on his chin. "I think…"

He watches the flock—a murder, his helpful brain supplies—flow and circle around what seems to be a specific spot further up the road. It unsettles him, chills him to the bone. He thinks maybe Sam has a point about the crows. They're really acting kind of weird.

"Say, Sam, I think they're trying to keep us from going into that—" he waves his hand and Sam smacks it away.

"I can fucking see that, Dean, fucking—"

"Sam, I think the car’s sliding—" Dean grips the dash, the wheel, trying to hold on as the world suddenly shifts sideways, up, down; Sam's voice is echoing, repeating. "Fucking—fucking—"

'Crows. Black scraps of airborne excrement. Them. I hate them. They're busybodies. Always getting in my way. Ever since the contract—which, by the way, was forced on Mother by the Great Mystery—the Crows have interfered on Its behalf, protecting the two-legged nothings, good only to feed us,' the voice snarls, growls, shrieks, an insane howl full of frustration.

Sam blinks awake to a black so black he’s scared; has he gone blind? That’s a worry chased out of his mind by the voice's frustrated howl reverberating through his pounding skull.

So yeah, he’s scared, but his real worry, his major worry, is, 'Where's Dean? Just—let me go so I can find my brother. Let me out!'

'Oh, you don't need him, you don't even like him. You tried to shoot him not so long ago…ah, here’s something interesting!’

Sam hisses—it feels like his eye’s being pierced with a hot needle, wiggling around until it finally stops, a sound of satisfaction echoing in his ear.

'Oh-ho! It's like that is it? Wah, wah, you terrible brother, I hate you so much I want to sink myself in you. Repeatedly. And you really should, yes…roll around inside that sticky mess in his head, twisty, turny, needy Dean. Swears he's going to let you go but he'll just suck you back in. He'd do anything for you, anything. Gut himself and hang himself with his own entrails if you asked and you hate it. So you say.'

The voice is quiet for a few moments, while Sam feels like he’s shrinking inside, like his outside remains static but inside he is lessening.

‘It’s a good taste, your fear, your rage—something special about that. We can take this from your brother too. Drink up his essence, his spirit, just like you want to do. Hold and control him. You want to suck him dry, just like Mother wants.’

The voice has gone high and sing-song, like a demented, warped little girl. Wet, thin, shapes slide over his face–when he gasps in disgust, they prod at his mouth and taste like bloody bones.

'Stop! Shut up!' Sam screams. He jerks his head out of reach, circling wildly and striking out at nothing. Chance brings him back to the door. Flinging it open, he hears his voices, his and Dean's, warbling all around him. He wants to run to the sound but Dad's discipline takes over. Instead he inches his way in the dark down what seems to be a narrow passage. And as if the darkness isn’t terrifying enough, he swears he’s being followed by something, what sounds like slow, wet flopping noises behind him. Maybe. His ears seem to be malfunctioning

'Okay, think I'm officially beyond freaked the hell out,' he mutters. He’s still creeping forward when out of nowhere he's struck by a wave of vicious rage that isn't his: too violent, too sharp. In the next second, the rage flips to disdain so suddenly it's like being tossed into an ice-cold shower.

"I was just joking ‘round. Don't be such a bitch about it."

"That’s my line,"

’Dean, where are you?’ he yells before the world shakes and rumbles, and sound echoes crazily and he blows out like a candle in a storm.

When Dean wakes up, he’s got an arm through the steering wheel and his forehead's pressed against the window. It's cold as fuck and he's hurting all over. Not to mention he’s really sick and damn tired of sleeping in the car. Fuck this hunt and fu—the heck with Dad.

Trying to smother a yawn, he twists toward his right; first thought as always is to check on Sam.

Who was not there damn it, and won't be, ever again. Letting out a growl, Dean punches the dash. Shit. After all the time that Sam's been off at college, Dean’s first impulse every morning is still to check on his baby brother. Not that Sam living life like a normal kid isn’t a good thing, it is. For Sam. Kid needs that. He’s too damn smart to be just another Hunter grunt, not like—

Dean shakes his head, lets out a sigh that comes from the soles of his feet, and heaves himself upright. Yawning wide and loud since there's no one in the car but him, he pushes the door open and lets his boots thump against the damp ground. He paws around on the seat, looking for a thermos he won't find because of the case he's just wrapped up. He snorts a little, smirking as he remembers launching it like a missile into a trog's face. Lost the damn thermos, but it gave him enough time to grab a shotgun and blow the motherfucker to bits. The result of that, though…Dean shudders. The memory of being showered by crunchy trog bits and blood finally kicks him fully awake, scrubbing viciously at his face. "Fucking solo hunts, man."

Solo? "Wait a minute."

What the hell is he thinking? Sam is back. Sam's been back for a while now. Dean shakes his head, knocks his forehead trying to shake the fog out of his brain—Sam’s here, Sam’s with him, he’s just taking a piss. Yeah.

Dean drags himself out of the car, taking deep breaths of chill morning air. He exhales, a steamy cloud drifting around his head. "Sam?" He calls, taking a step into the roadside gravel. "Sam!" he shouts, flinching when a cloud of crows, probably disturbed by the noise, explode skyward out of the woods lining the roadside, cawing wildly as they circle overhead. For a moment, all he can see is their black silhouettes against a navy sky peppered with red stars. Stars like hundreds of little red eyes peering at him.

Dean tries to take a step but vertigo nearly buckles his knees. Something's off. He could have sworn it was morning—how is it not? But yeah, somehow, the woods are black shapes against a blacker, definitely night sky. More importantly, Sam's not answering him.

Dean yells for his brother again, curses some too because damn it, he's not getting an answer. Pissed that Sam got out of the car without a word. Worried because it's not a Sam thing to do.

There's a strange sort of thumping sound behind him, like soft things dropping onto overturned soil. The ground is moving, rippling under his feet, twisting, squirming. Red eyes blinking click-click-click in the black.

Horrified, Dean shouts. He’s about five seconds from crawling right up Baby's hood, paint job be damned—but the clouds part, the moon shines down, and all he sees is grass shivering in the wind and pale, ugly mushrooms in the rotten leaf-litter along the roadside. Fear surges up his throat like bile. His brain shrieks, find Sam, get Sam.

*
His head’s tilted back against the car seat so his neck is killing him. "Jesus," he grumbles, rubbing his eyes free of sleep. Shit's sake, he’s still in the car. Damn, he'd really thought he was awake. "It was all a dream" comes bubbling up out of some deep corner in his mind and he laughs.

"A fuckin' weird one, for sure. Okay…" He’s about to reach for the door handle but nearly jumps through the roof when a fist bangs against his window.

He's scared, and pissed off, and having way too big a reaction to a really stupid prank. But he can relax at least, because there he is. Fucking Sam, too damn pleased with himself and laughing that weird sing-song laugh of his; deep dimples dotting either side of his almost-too-wide smile that forces a smile out of Dean in return.

Sam dips his head and his hair swings over his eyes like a curtain. He splays hands over the window and still laughing and hoots, "Oh man, your face!" before swinging his Sasquatch-self around the side of the car and into the passenger seat. "What?" he asks, staring innocently at Dean.

"Nothing, nothing," Dean grumbles and pointedly, gently, closes his door. He might be pissed off (scared) but he was not about to take it out on his girl.

Sam’s smart-ass grin collapses into a frown. "I was just joking ‘round. Don't be such a bitch about it."

"That’s my line," Dean mutters. He makes a bit of a business about turning the key and hitting the gas, studiously avoiding Sam and his pissy 'you're-an-asshole' expression.

The car stalls out, chokes to a stop. Over the sound of the choking engine, he hears the damn crows caw-cawing like nobody's business. Sam's yelling something, and Dean's hit with that damn wave of vertigo again, only this time it feels like the whole world is shivering, tilting downwards and he's falling—then nothing.

Sam trudges on and on, the floor flat and even, which gives him no indication whether he’s walking left or right or straight ahead. The walls seem to narrow at times, or suddenly blow wide before closing again. He keeps his fingers to the wall—strips of what he really hopes is wallpaper brush over his hands as he walks. Sam tells himself nothing's trying to cling to him, nothing's plucking at his skin; it's just damp paper, not skin, not bones....

He walks in the dark, and he hears things,

"Your brother and me, we needed you—"

voices from a distance

"You walked away not me—you were the one who said don't come back dad,

or maybe memories dredged out of his brain.

“Dad never showed did he….?”

Sam blocks the voices, takes a step forward and, "Oh gross," his foot slides sideways in something thick but mushy. A tiny scream vibrates in the sudden silence. He mutters "Oh god, oh god," over and over in a kind of horrified trance as he walks faster, but still gingerly. At last he finds what has to be a doorway. God, hopefully to somewhere outside of this place, this constant night—

Sam trips past the threshold into another room. He can barely make out shapes in the gray light. He's sweating from the damn heat. Exhaustion covers him like a heavy blanket. He’s so tired—his eyes burn in the dim light, his bones ache. He needs rest, just a little rest, can’t move another step. He groans out loud at the sight of a bed. It’s high, old fashioned, a four poster thing. It looks musty and worn and faded with age and Sam could not give a rat's ass. Has to be better than trying to sack out on the floor. He curls up on it and never realizes he’s whimpering for Dean before he passing into sleep.

The air's so dry it feels like it's sucking the moisture right out of him, plus it's cold as hell. The land stretches away on all sides, flat as a pancake and smothered by a black sky. A sky dusted with a million stars that from the corner of Dean's eye look like a million bloody little eyes are watching him. He closes his own eyes and rubs hard against sticky eyelids. When he opens them, the world looks different: the sky's full of bright, white diamonds now. Sam’s standing kind of close, smiling at him. Dean blinks, squinting to try and clear the blurriness from his vision.

"Feeling pretty tired? You look wiped, dude."

Dean just nods, grabs their duffles from the trunk and tosses Sam his.

While Sam heads inside the motel they'd taken for the night, Dean eyes their disgusting laundry bag, trying to judge whether they should do laundry the next morning or wait until the next motel, when he gets a feeling, like something creeping over his bones. The hair on the back of his neck stands up, his heartbeat trips a little faster—something is coming after him. He looks up, catches a reflection in the room's darkened window…not a monster then. Dean exhales, despite not feeling any better that it took him a whole handful of seconds to recognize what's behind him is his brother.

Sam's practically on his back, too damn close for the way things have been going for them lately. And then, Sam's finger takes a scratchy little trail from the crown of Dean's head to the nape of his neck before resting there. It feels weird. Uncomfortable.

"You need help?" Sam's voice is low and a little rough. This is not like Sam at all, at least not the Sam Dean has come to know since Stanford. Sam pushing so close is weird, off-putting. Damn confusing what with the distance Sam's been putting between the two of them for days now. Dean's been trying to figure out the why of that, and this sudden looming in his personal space, the weird touching now, isn't helping that confusion at all.

Sam speaks again, damp, warm breath right in Dean's ear. "Don't move," he says in that same low timbre, but now the trace of roughness is less intimate. There’s a note more like danger in his voice. Sam's hand clamps down on Dean's shoulder and spins him away from the window.

"What the fuck, Sam!" The momentum drives his head against the edge of the open trunk, hard enough to bounce. The bright, stinging, pain is so sudden it forces tears from his eyes. He wipes at a warm trickle between his eyes; blood, and he hates that he's almost sure that Sam's done it on purpose. Maybe?

No. Hell no, that's not the kind of stuff they do—Sam's sense of humor just doesn't run that way. He's snarky and sarcastic, but not in a mean way, never anything meant to do more than jab him. Most of the time.

Dean gets a flippant, "Oh, shit. Sorry about that, man," from Sam, in a tone that is anything but sorry. Dean flails when he's suddenly flipped again, this time to his back, pressed a little too far back against the open trunk. He has to hang on to the edges to keep from falling onto the weapons.

Sam scrubs a couple of fingers kind of painfully over the little cut. Stings like a bitch, small as it is and the damn thing is still bleeding. "Man. Head stuff always bleeds like crazy, hunh?"

"Sam. Sam, get off, c'mon man, you're not helping my back here."

"Yeah, yeah, okay. Get your stuff inside. I'd kill for a shower right now."

Dean shrugs but bending down to grab his duffle, he chokes--what the ever loving fuck—he's covered with gore. Sam snatches the duffle himself when Dean hesitates, and sees that Sam's doused in blood and bits as well. Is something wrong with his eyes? Lifting his hands up to wipe at them, he sees then they're coated with dried blood and tiny bits of what looks like bone. The fuck…?

"So tired man, but not too tired to wash this crap off." Sam chuckles before walking off with Dean's bag. "Trogs, am I right?"

"Yeah," Dean whispers but…the trog was over a year ago. He'd been alone on that hunt.

'Hello, delicious morsel, are you awake now? Shhhh, better for you if you go back to sleep.'

Sam groans, trying to pull his mind out of that space between waking and dreaming, aware of himself but not sure if he's just dreaming of being aware.

'Shhhh, let me sweep through some more memories. You are full of sweet sour truth and lies. Delicious.'

Sam fights to roll out of the bed, but his arms are trapped in the sheets; they're twisted tight around his legs, thick, and powdery-dry where they aren't damp and faintly slimy. He twitches and the sheets slide up to cover his arms. The wet fabric feels like tentacles crawling over him, hot, alive. Tendrils of it slip between his toes, weaves through his fingers and into his hair. It covers his eyes now, sliding tiny threads into his lashes. He starts to panic before warm breath ghosts over him. A voice slithers around in his head promising him he's safe, sheltered, resting in the nest. All around him is the smell of soil and dampness. Protecting him. Through closed eyelids, he can still make out shapes in the pleasantly dark nest. Thick stems sway, domed and frilled heads dip and rise as the children watch him, watch out for him.

Sam's dreaming, he knows he's dreaming, but it's okay. He's drifting off in the warm, soft arms of Mother's babies. He picks up some distant sound–hissing and moaning, loud and soft falling sound, but he can't make out words.

"Dean?" The word vibrates in the air, the dank, humid, too-warm air. It’s a night in an imaginary Florida, locked in a room with no A/C, all alone in the dark. Inhaling wet air, he feels a prick on his sternum and a drawing sensation, pulling at his heart, plucking his lungs like banjo strings. God, he's so, so, tired.

Dean idly rubs an itchy but tender insect bite on his forehead, gazing around in the darkened car. There's a half-formed thought 'scritch, scritch, scritching at the back of his mind—why isn't Sam here? Dean rockets upright in the seat, yelling for Sam as he moves. "Sam, Sammy!" Now where the fuck did the kid go to? Dad is going to fucking murder him.

Scrambling out of the car a bit too fast, he hits the ground and almost falls. He's clumsy trying to get to his feet, slides in the wet gravel on the edge of the road until finally he gets control of himself. Dad would have a flipping-ass fit watching him Stooge it up on a hunt. Or no, he’s not on a hunt, is he? He's just...kinda lost?

'Sam's the one who’s lost!' Dean's heart trips; he whirls this way and that, searching for Sam in the dark. There! There's a tall, thin, shadow on the edge of the woods that line the field they're parked near. "Fucking…SAM!" What the fuck's he doing wandering around in the dark?

'Dean, knock it off.' Jerk. He knows how much Sam hates being shaken awake. Wait until he can get his eyes open.

'Not Dean, sweetmeat. Dean's…asleep. Let's stir things up a bit, hmm? Play a game that is more interesting, shall we? Open your eyes.'

Sam startles awake, laid out on his back. This is not a room. There’s no ceiling above him, only sky. Except he can tell almost instantly it's not a real sky—the constellations are wonky, the stars are visibly wheeling like clockworks. There’s a weird sound, it seems to come from every corner, something he’s been hearing for a while but his brain’s just registering it now. Sounds like a recording played backwards, all odd notes and weird tones and then something swims into view. It grows from a smudge in the corner of his eye to taking up the whole sky and it’s—Sam feels like everything stops. Like his heart stops beating and he stops breathing and he just stops...everything. He can't even cry because he can't move and something horrible is coming for him, closer and closer and closer….

What he sees above him is bigger than he can really take in. It's black, blacker than black. It devours light and vomits out horror. It hangs over his head like a float designed by something or someone seriously insane. All the teeth, teeth shining from one side of its head to the other, beast teeth, too bright, white and red and wet…Mother? The sound it makes, "Mother" makes, echoes as it swims through the sky and black bits fall from it like necrotic flesh sloughing off crooked bones. Bits hit the ground and dig in, multiply, mushroom all around him, a ring of toadstools blinking red eyes at him.

Long, long, skeletal arms, claws, search Sam out in the dark, pinning him to the ground, which shudders and turns into mice, rabbits, squirrels, all the little mammals of the fields—only not. Lumpy and misshapen and naked pink and white and gray, the color of fungus. Erupting fleshy knobs and slimy loops and pustules that sink in again, sending out tentacles that crawl over him, caress him and Sam would scream if he could.

Mother floats above him and plucks at his soul–searching, rummaging around in his brain and pulling the juicy parts out, picking through his brain and tasting. 'You're not giving me enough. Neither of you are. I’m still hungry,' Mother scolds. 'I want to go deeper, there’s something good in here, besides the whole, "I want to fuck my brother".

For a moment, Sam's mind glitches, freezes on What? No! No, that's, that's not what he wants. A hot needle slides into his brain, wiggling around until the pain finally stops, and suddenly he's in a motel room with his brother, taking a long, slow, look over Dean's naked, shower-wet back ending at his ass—but that's sick. Disgusting. Monstrous.

'Mmmm,' Mother agrees softly. The needle wiggles and, 'Ah, hello. What's this? A shtriga? That seems an interesting thing—something out there I can understand. Such pure needs, simple wants. Just like me. Let's take a deeper look at that.'

The needles become claws reaching into his head and dragging across the surface of his brain before it all goes white—

He sprints towards Sam, whose outline bounces all around like he's made of shadow and someone’s fucking with the lights. Suddenly Sam's right there in front of him, but he's a whirlwind of fists and feet and teeth, doing his best to kick the shit out of Dean. Dean rears back, hands out, gasping in bursts of freezing air.

It is his little brother, but fuck—like, really little, like, baby little. He's got his little baby teeth bared, but there's nothing funny about it, it's downright scary. They're too white and sharp and when he lunges forward and bites, he's got the teeth of a tiger. Dean's skin splits, bleeds. "Motherfuck! What the fuck, Sam! Stop, damn it." Dean claps his hand over the torn skin, trying to staunch the blood seeping out between his fingers. "What the fuck is happening?"

"You were going to leave me in this place alone!"

Dean tightens his hand around his bleeding wrist and stares around. The roadside's gone. They're in a shabby, run-down motel room; it's all grays and browns, like the joint's made of dust and clumps of grease. It stinks, mildew and rot, and the noise. Sammy's screaming like a wild thing, crows are calling to each other frantically, the wind is beating against the windows. On the bed, something made of black rags and bare branches is sucking the life out of his little brother.

The pain in his chest is so intense it feels like his heart’s being pulled through his ribs. His eyes slam shut with the pain of struggling to breathe. Air fills his lungs in a sudden burst—he opens his eyes again and it's him on the bed, crouched over a sunken, shriveled bag of skin. It smells like dried blood and grave dust. The face he's staring at might be wrinkled and sunken and collapsed, but he knows it, knows the wisps of chestnut hair fallen around it.

Dean's screaming, screaming with all his might, begging Sam not to be dead, screaming into Sammy's tiny sunken chest, his dusty, dry, brittle cracking skin—

But at the same time a whole, living Sam is clawing at him, digging his tiny fingers into the wounds on Dean's wrist, twisting them wider, kicking at him as the room melts around them, running like rain on a window pane—and then they’re back again.

Small Sam on a hotel bed, trying to escape a shtriga, screaming for Dean to save him; the other Sam pinching Dean so viciously he opens fresh wounds. "There, you see? See what you did?" Young Sam's voice hisses out of him, high and vicious.

"What's happening? Am I sleeping? This is a bad dream, I’m having a nightmare." Dean stares down at his brother, tiny, just starting to melt out of his baby fat. Knobby knees and beanstalk neck and red-rimmed eyes boring into his. Dean whispers to himself, "Maybe a djinn dream? Maybe I'm trapped, I'm—"

"Dean! Wake up!" Sam screams, and lands a punch on Dean's chest and fuck that tiny boy's fist feels like Sam's full grown hand. It almost feels like a rib snaps, knocks the breath out of him.

Dean looks down fearfully, but the red-eyed, rage filled look is gone. It's just his little brother, crying so hard he's shaking and begging Dean to "Listen to me! You gotta run, Dean, run away. This isn't me, m'not dying! Break free! Please!" Sam reaches out and grabs Dean by the wrist with a return of that unnatural strength and drags him to the car. "Go, go—break out."

Dean stops, manages to unlatch the grip Sammy's got on him. He feels tears rolling down his own face, hot in the chilly air. "No, I can't leave you. Help me, Sammy, what's going on?"

Sam shudders and twists, glitching like worn-out video tape; when it stops, Sam is different, this is not Dean's Sam. His face is sharper, meaner, his too-bright eyes lock on Dean as he screams, "This is why I died, because you can't put two and two together and come up with any kind of reasonable number. God, you're so stupid." Suddenly teenage Sam reaches down to the side of the road and grabs a rock and throws it through the Impala's windshield.

"Hey!" The next rock is aimed at Dean's head. "No—" it echoes in his head. Before everything goes black, he's surrounded by a cloud of smoke. He holds his hand open and feels it slipping through his fingers, too thick, too slick. Feathers, not smoke. Black feathers; overhead, black birds wheel in the sky, some come at him, beaks open as they crow. They crow, and sound like they're calling out, "Wake! Wake!"

Mother's gone quiet, Sam's alone in the dark again. Or not—he hears Dean's voice, feels it vibrate down his spine. Dean's here. He's not imagining it—somewhere Dean is very close. Sam feels a connection of some sort between them. It feels almost…tangible. Sam sweeps his hand through the air, reaching out for what feels like an actual tether holding the two of them together. He gets a sense that the reason he's still alive is the tether, and that the monster is greedy. Whatever's crossing between the two of them, whatever energy it's pulling out of them both, must be too good for it; double meals, lots and lots of complicated, screwed up emotions vibrating between him and his brother and feeding the thing so damn well….

But if this Mother thing can yank that tether, pull on his memories to torture Dean and vice versa, then Sam should be able to use the tether to reach Dean on his own. Warn him that something like a djinn has them trapped. Or not a djinn, maybe some kind of minor godlet. Mother said it had been forced to sign a contract with a god, that it hated the crows for keeping it in place. Could be a clue as to where it's hiding its…nest, whatever it means by that. Dean has to find the crows this thing was ranting about; he has to trust the crows, follow the crows. Get Dean to realize he's not alone and Sam needs him.

Sam rolls to his side, thinking about the mess they're in. If this thing pulls memories from them, it's twisting them so they turn bad, or makes the bad ones worse than they were. God knows between the two of them, they have some gut-churning memories—wouldn't take much to make them…Sam forces his thoughts still. If Mother can pluck their memories to get them to react, maybe Sam can, with a strong enough memory that Dean and he share equally. Something that has a lot of energy around it—yeah, like the disaster of Stanford night, now there's a pretty damn energetic memory. Sam can feel the rage, the HURT batter him. Even after all this time, Sam's gut still roils just thinking about it.

The stifling world around him twitches, shudders like layers are peeling away. It's a strong memory, powerful; his reaction to it is severe enough that Mother shows interest. It hovers over him, stroking his brain with its slime-crusted claws. Two, four, six, a hundred pairs of talons raking his soul, teasing out the feelings, the emotions, like plucking a juicy oyster from the shell. And Dean? Yeah, Sam's pretty sure he feels it too.

Oh, he'd known perfectly well that night that the moment he opened his mouth his world was going to cave in. Dean should have known too. Dean should have stopped Dad; he should have cared more. He should have COME WITH.

The world he's stuck in shivers with the force of his anger. Sam's shocked at the sheer amount of anger that he's forced down and ignored, pretending it didn't exist. God, after all this time, and even after loving Jess, it still hits him like this. Rage, threaded through with a sick feeling of betrayal. It fucking HURTS, like it's ramped up past normal human feelings. The mental threads wrapped around him shiver; Sam can feel Dean's response to this memory. It's sharp and painful as a knife, layered with hurt, confusion, betrayal, plus a thin bloom of hope. Wonder.

"Sammy?"

Hoping fervently that he can slip past Mother, and feed his message directly to Dean, he sends 'The crows, Dean! Follow the crows! The mushrooms…I think I might be there…' Wherever there is, Sam thinks, and the familiar shuddering wave rolls him under again.

Sam is yelling at Dad, Dad's yelling back, and Dean feels like he's being skewered between the two of them, the force of their anger like spears being driven into his soul. Dean hears Sam's voice break–Dean feels his chest crack in two. His brother wants to leave him.

No–this, this is the past. A memory, fresh and hotly painful as the day it happened. Dean tries to force it back into the box he's kept it in, closed off like a poisoned gift. He doesn't want to remember it but he's got no choice, he's dragged back to that night, that one day that changed his whole life.

Dean's throat is aching from fighting to hold in the screams that want to break loose. He feels stupid—brothers don't scream when their little brother wants to go to fucking college. Not when Sam's worked so hard for it and can't Dad see the pain behind Sam's anger? The boy's so fucking hurt. And Dean, damn it, he's completely fucking up trying to explain to Sam why he can't go with. That Dad's gonna need him. Sam's got a whole new life stretching out before him, it's going to be great, amazing. Dean begs him to understand that without Sam, Dad's got nothing left but Dean and revenge. Zero sum game.

And then Dad's storming out the door and Sam is throwing his stuff into his bag, audibly crying, but Dean's frozen, like maybe he's a little bit in shock. The world shakes, and Sammy's in his face, grabbing Dean by the collar. It scares him, the way Sam's sobbing, "Come with me, come with me," so hard Dean's afraid Sam's gonna puke all over them both, but then.

But then.

Sam kisses him. It's a desperate, wet, clinging kiss, smearing spit and tears all over Dean's face. Too much tongue too fast, teeth pinching and scraping his lips and not in a good way. Like Sam's never kissed anyone before, like he's running out of time, and he wants to make this single kiss count. Fucking hell, it does, it does count. It sinks right into Dean's brain like a flaming iron brand.

Dean scrubs hard at his face as the memory fades. He’s s wondered over the years on the rare occasion he lets that memory surface, if he even remembers that night right. Did it really happen that way or has he embellished it over the years? Or made it up altogether—wanting it so damn much like some freak pervert, did he hallucinate the whole fucking thing?

Since Sam's been back in the life, Dean's tried to figure out a million ways to ask him. He can't. It's not just that he's afraid, (but yeah, he's afraid), it's that Sam hasn't given him the slightest sign that it really did happen. That it was real. Hell, he's not given Dean any kind of signal about anything. Sam treats him with mild affection, frequently tinged with annoyance. Dean might as well be a distant cousin, with as emotional Sam is not being towards him.

Or maybe all along Dean's just been expecting the impossible from his little brother.

"Come with me," he hears again and he takes a breath and turns towards his brother. He can't fuck things up worse than they're fucked up now. He's just gonna fucking ask Sam. Right the fuck now. He needs to know the truth. "Sam," is all he gets out before BAM—he's laid out beside Baby on a patch of freezing, gritty blacktop, the stink of tar and something moldy stinging his nose. Blood's flooding his mouth and Sam shaking out his hand, flinging drops of blood, and hissing down into his face, "I fucking hate you so much. Why won't you COME WITH ME?"

Hot, wet drops splatter against his skin, crawl over his mouth and drip down his neck. He squints up at the sky as the world shivers, splinters apart. Suddenly, birds explode from the clouds, blood-red Cardinals at first glance. They're racing in frantic circles overhead, all the while shrieking what sounds like his name. One bird peels off from the circle and flies straight at Dean, its beak wide, shedding clumps of bloody feathers until finally it lands, now black as night, on his shoulder. It holds him in a tender grip, totally at odds with how violently it'd flown at him.

The crow runs its heavy beak gently along his cheek and softly says, "Trust the crows, Dean."

*
Dean feels vinyl, stiff with the morning's chill, under his cheek. Still in that place between sleep and waking, he hears Sam whisper, "If you watch the crows, you can find me. Watch them, find the mushrooms, find me."

"Sammy?" The dream, and Sam's voice whispering through it, is fucking weird enough that it tugs Dean fully awake. He feels rather than hears Sam's voice fade away on You need to wake up now, big brother.

"Yeah, okay," he mumbles, rubbing drool off his cheek and tilting his head towards the passenger side where his brother should be. His eyes land on Sam, who's sitting in a casual sprawl next to him. He's sporting a hell of a wide grin, rubbing the dash like a weirdo and looking around like a tourist. "Sammy?" he mutters again, and a feeling of hope flickers in his chest. Sam's back, is this shit over now?

"I like it in here. Feels like home. Feels like a casket."

"What?" Dean's suddenly aware of noise outside the car—it's creaking and rocking with the force of the crows hitting it. Fucking crows again. They're bouncing off the windshield in a frantic wave, so many that the windows are black. Sam, instead of trying to crawl into the footwell this time, rolls out of the car in one smooth move. Comes upright with his Taurus aimed at the cloud of frantic birds. He moves forward, aiming and laughing softly, boots sinking into the ground…but as Dean watches, the ground morphs into a wave of fungus-covered…rats maybe, rabbits, all sorts of small, misshapen, red-eyed beasts. They flop and surge around Sam's feet like dirty ocean waves.

It's horrible. The animals look like they're being swallowed by, by, mushrooms or fungus or something equally as gross. Little walking, diseased mushrooms. Dean backs away, scrabbling at the waistband of his jeans, searching for his—

"Aww. Are you looking for this pretty thing?" Sam holds up a gun. Instead of his Taurus, he's holding Dean's Colt. Sam's beaming like a new dawn, his eyes flash yellow like fire. "Nice," he says. "Fits perfectly in my hand."

Where his fingers rest on the gun, thin tendrils of smoke waft upwards. Dean's nose stings with the smell of burning meat, and Sam just smirks. "Yeah, ivory is a powerful protectant, but not for something like me," he says and Dean's heart shatters.

"Sammy…no. Please."

"No, no, Sammy please," Sam mocks him. "Oh yes, Dean." He sights down the long barrel, aiming at Dean's forehead, yellow eyes flaring like the sun in the low evening light.

"Pow," he says. Dean flinches and Sam laughs; but now the Colt in Sam's hand isn't his Colt 1911, it's Samuel Colt's Paterson revolver; Daniel Elkin's Colt, rumored to be the demon killer.

Sam's chuckling as he swings the gun about but it doesn't sound like him at all. It's a deep…gluey sound is the only way Dean can describe it, thick and sticky. It makes his hair stand on end.

Sam's still playing with the gun, swinging the long barrel towards the field, then back to the car. He skips over Dean to aim at the swirling cloud of crows. "Bang. Bang. Bang," he whispers, and his finger tightens on the trigger. "I've got you now, you ragged little slaves of a forgotten, nothing god…."

"No!" Dean shouts, and slaps Sam's hand away. Sam turns towards him with a snarl twisting his face. His free hands claws and scoops at the air like he's collecting something. Before Dean can duck like instinct is telling him to do, Sam flings his hand forward and the whole world tilts.

"Fuck!" An invisible fist smashes into Dean's ribs, spinning him around. Sam scoops the air again, and Dean's flying, snatched off his feet, then slammed into the ground. The mushroom creepers swarm over him immediately.

"This is a dream," he shouts, a dream, a dream—he screams as pinpoint teeth tear at him and he swears over the screaming, the crowing, he can hear his brother laughing, he hears his brother shouting WAKE UP.

'NO!' Sam wants to scream, his throat aches like he's screaming, but the mushroom's filaments flow over him, wrapping over his mouth, glueing it shut. His arms are curled over his chest and glued as well. Can't speak, can't move anything, but he can still feel—all over him, flabby, spongey, moist things are clinging to him. He can feel the screams building up in his mind, his chest heaving against the grip of the filaments. He's going crazy. He's going to lose his mind—

STOP, he tells himself, control. Think, think, Dean, think about Dean…maybe…it's like a djinn. Lamb's blood? They don't have anything like that on hand. Silver? Sure, silver's a standard. But fire is the ultimate purifier. Fire they have. If they can burn it. Burn it.

But Dean could be anywhere. Miles and miles away. Sam could be chained up in some derelict basement, or deep in a cave, wrapped up and stored for dinner like a wendigo's prey. The wendigo. Think about the wendigo. He thinks about the tether, imagining it tying Dean and him together, imagines it winding around his chest, protecting him from Mother's parasitic children. Connecting them soul to soul. 'Listen to me, Dean! Set it on fire—Dean!'

Sam's face is warm against his. He's rubbing his cheek slowly against Dean's and Dean likes it. Makes him feel safe, cared for. The rasp of stubble against his makes his skin tingle, his gut clench in a way that’s pleasant, like anticipating something sweet. Where Sam’s skin is smooth, Dean licks, takes his time kissing. Slowly rubs open-mouthed against the rough, liking the way it feels on his lips. His dick is taking notice and he can’t keep still anymore. His hips roll and Sam meets him immediately, pressing down until Dean makes space for him between his thighs. Sam’s hard too and that, that’s really good. That’s what he wants.

Sam arches up and drags the length of his dick over Dean’s—even clothed, it makes Dean gasp, and from the feel of it, Sam’s huge down there. He thinks about finally seeing all of Sam, not just post-shower quick peeks trying hard to be impersonal—Dean shudders, bites down on a moan. Fuck yeah, can’t wait. To touch, maybe even taste if Sam will let him….

It’s fucking hot now, feels like they're inside an oven, both of them sweating rivers into the sheets. Grinding against each other, finally laying hands on each other in a stifling, crummy motel room somewhere in the asshole of whatever state this is. The walls better be thick enough to keep other renters from hearing him, because he has the feeling all hell's about to break loose. Sam grabs his head, knocking him out of his daze to kiss him. He can barely believe that it's Sam's tongue slipping in and out of his mouth, in lazy licks, sweet, soft pulls at his lips, teeth grazing them, slow and tingling.

It's too good and borders on too much. Dean groans, can't keep it in anymore and Sam pulls back. He laughs at him and hot breath washes over Dean's kiss-sensitive lips as he whispers, "I always wanted this. Always wanted this, Dean. S'why I left. Every day just got worse and worse. I could barely control myself around you. That's what all that fighting, yelling, was about. Shoving you away, protecting myself. But now we’re safe. We can give ourselves this, you know, like the kiss I took from you then. We’re in a place where we can do this forever and ever."

Dean nods. Of course they can. Yeah, sure it makes sense. From now on, it can be just him and Sam. Nothing else exists, nothing is more real, more important. Just the two of them buried inside each other. Together, forever. Heat jolts through him, twisting him up in a way he knows only Sam can loosen. Burning in a fire only Sam can quench.

Sam’s hands are all over him, firm, hot, sliding up under his shirts and stroking over his bare skin. "Show me how much you want me," Sam whispers, a harsh burst of sound that makes Dean jump.

"How, Sam?” Dean asks. “I don’t know how."

"Like this," Sam growls, and grips his waistband, trying to yank Dean's jeans off. His nails claw painfully into Dean's skin as he twists and pulls hard enough that the denim burns. It fucking hurts—Sam belts out a nasty laugh when Dean tries to tell him that.

"Come on, big strong guy like you, you like it like this, don't you? Want someone to boss you, control you. Daddy you."

The tone of Sam's voice, what he says, fills Dean with fear and revulsion. This has to stop—this isn't Sam, there has to be something wrong with him. "Hey no, c'mon, not like this! Please, Sam, stop!"

"You sure about that?" Sam says. "Isn't this what you've always wished for? Your little brother, wanting you like you want him. Wasting time on all that mutual guilt, when all along both of you want it." He grabs Dean's dick through the denim and squeezes, the fucker. Dean can't help letting out a high-pitched yowl, and Sam lunges forward--

"Shit, sorry Sam—I gotta—" and right into the punch Dean throws: it's wild, off center, but thank god, it connects solidly. Sam's chin feels…mushy? Kind of weirdly soft? But Dean’s main concern at the moment is getting the fuck away—

Behind him, Sam is cursing a blue streak. Dean chances a look back and winces when he sees Sam with his hands over his nose and blood smeared on his fingers. But it's Dean’s chance to bug out—he drops over the side of the bed and crawls for the door like he’s doing one of Dad’s drills. Through the buzzing in his head, he hears Sam yell, "Yes! Oh Dean, thank god, now go, go, burn it!"

*
Dean opens his eyes—he's dressed, freezing cold, and in the car. He doesn't bother looking for Sam–he dives into the back seat, gropes around the floor, looking for something but he's not quite sure what. He feels something, grabs it, and pulls it free.

It's a book about mushrooms. He picks it up and shudders, lip curling in disgust. There are tiny, wetly glistening mushrooms growing out of the spine, oozing out between the edges of the pages. Fucking mushrooms. What is it about damn mushrooms? He drops the book, fishes under the seat again and finds another. This book's about…wendigos? What? Mushrooms and wendigos. The fuck. He drops that one too, hard to hold anyway, as damn cold as his hands are. He blows into them, trying to get some warmth in his cramping fingers, it's that damn cold. Wish there was fire, he could really use one right now.

'God.' Dean sighs, confused, irritated. He has the anxious feeling he's running out of time. He climbs out the car, looking towards the woods and the crows circling there. Looks down and he's stepping on squashy bits of…of…

"Mushrooms. Ick."

Everything tilts for a few seconds, he's got a feeling that he's falling, falling into darkness, he knows he's about to die—the world rights itself.

When the vertigo passes, the first thing he sees is Sam, who's standing too close, bright eyes staring at him from an emotionless mask. Terror punches Dean right in the chest and he staggers back, away from his brother. Stupid, yeah, but he can't stop feeling like—like Sam is dangerous. "What—" he starts to say before his vision goes wonky, everything static for a second like a cheap horror film. A big, hot hand curls over his shoulder, then shakes him. Sharp, sudden, impatient shakes. "Will you wake up, damn it! You need to set this bitch on fire—stop them before they kill us.'

'Wake up!' is echoing in his head, dragging him out of a fucked up nightmare of a dream; Dean comes fully awake alone and kneeling on the side of the road. He's bent halfway into the driver's side of the car, his legs stretched out into the road. If another car had come down this way, it would have fucking killed him.

Sensation comes back in fits and starts: gravel biting into his knees and his gut is killing him. He’s fucking starving and crazy thirsty, and that tells him this is real. Dreams never feel like this--there's too much happening, too many sensations. It takes him a few minutes to feel his hand, fist knotted tightly, curled under his chest. The other hand is shoved under the driver's side seat. Pulling that one back, he scoops a thin can of lighter fluid out with it. When he gets his fist unlocked, Dad’s Zippo is in that hand. Fire. He remembers Sam yelling something about fire…maybe. Might have been a dream. But he's sure Sam telling him to burn whatever was more real than anything he's gone through tonight.

Gravel scrapes and squeaks, he looks up and finally, there’s Sam. "Sam, shit, what the hell is going on, little brother?" He wobbles forward, almost dizzy with relief until he realizes—whatever that is, it’s not Sam.

That knowledge hits him like a sledgehammer: whatever's been beside him all this time, probably since they first saw the crows, hasn't been Sam. It barely even looks human now—fleshy, fungus-like blobs make up its face, dark, spore-covered tendrils twitch around it, pretending to be hair. The fucker steps closer, smiling with a million teeth, so many teeth. "Sweetmeat, it appears we've had all the fun we can have."

A scream practically splits his eardrums, and suddenly crows are fucking everywhere; they force their way between him and fakeSam. Beating at it with their wings, their sharp feathers opening little cuts all over it, beaks tear pieces of it away. Dean's drawn to follow, stumbling along behind as they drive the snarling Sam thing deeper into the woods. They circle it, then drop again, cawing and beating wildly at it until the fake Sam breaks apart into hundreds of small, deformed things; rats, mice, snakes, all red-eyed and rotting.

The crows circle Dean once, cawing, before flying upwards and disappearing into the clouds.

"Fuck, fuck…" Dean circles, hands cradling his head, blinking and just all in all feeling like he'd been punted off a cliff edge into an ocean of crazy. He sucks in a deep breath, feeling like he's breathing at last, after struggling to for a long, long time. When he finally has the brain power to take stock, he finds he's in a clearing, brightly lit by a huge moon overhead. The toes of his boots are just nudging a circle of mushrooms surrounding a natural kind of bowl sunk into the ground.

In this light it's clear that the mushrooms are something hideously more than that. The circle is made up of all sorts of small field animals, mushrooms sprouting in their hair, vomiting mushrooms from their mouths and ears, red eyes peeking out of a coating of spores. They're moving, and that freaks Dean out the most–that despite being nearly eaten, they're still croaking and slithering around the bowl and around the big mound of rooted mushrooms in the center of it. Instinct grabs him by the throat and screams Fire, kill it with fire. Yeah, fire. Fire killed the unkillable, like wendigos, and hope to god, This.

He yanks the tin of lighter fluid out of his coat pocket, frantically sprays the mushrooms with fluid in the outer circle. The middle, the mound, quakes and shivers, but it's okay, Dean knows that’s the important part, the fire in his chest tells him it's important—Do Not Burn it.

Sweating now, finally warm, his whole body tight with tension, fear, and hope, he growls quietly, "If I was someone who prayed, consider this is me praying now," and tosses the Zippo into the outer circle.

There's a feeling he'd describe as an implosion if he was aware enough to, and the whole earth screams.

Sam's standing again, back in the hallway, running. He's punching, kicking through the walls. He can feel Dean making fire and Sam's roasting right along with everything. He hears the crows, feels their wings beating against him in the dark. Feels like they're guiding him to salvation. To Dean. Sam forces his way through the narrowing tunnel, hall, whatever this is. Squinting, desperately hoping for light, feeling his way forward. Lathe walls crack, split, fall away. He's punching faster now, kicking through what had felt like plaster but now feels thin, papery. Mother's voice is screeching in his head. 'Stop, stop, you're killing the children!'

'Yeah! He's doing it, Dean's doing it!' Sam shouts back, "We're killing the parasites—and hopefully you!" The ceiling opens and chunks of it rain down on him, smelling like diseased earth, like fungus. The chunks break easily apart, like mushrooms, when they hit him.

He hears it first before he sees it. The fire roars through what's left of the hall and ahead of him, there's something huge, black and shapeless at first, gathering in its edges as it rises. Sam slams his hands over his ears. The thing–Mother–is making a sound that vibrates through his skull, down his spine–it's like being washed in broken glass.

There's no ceiling overhead now. Mother is high in the sky, a shrieking black hole sucking in stars and clouds and light. It's nothing now but claws and teeth, so many teeth. It swells larger and larger the higher it flies until thankfully, finally, it explodes into a million black pieces flying everywhere before floating earthward again. Nothing’s left of it but a tear in the sky and teeth raining down to the ground….

"Sam? Sammy?"

Arms reach down, pull him loose from the black soil and clamp down on him, solid, warm, leather-clad arms. Cool, square hands wrap around his face, leaching the heat away. Sam's on the edge of tears, it feels so good not to be boiling in his own skin anymore. Under the stink of the rancid soil crumbling away from him, there's the comforting smell of gunpowder and cut grass and leather and smoke.

"Dean?"

Sam's so damn happy to be out, safe again, that he doesn't even care it kind of hurts where Dean's fingers are clawing away dirt, frantically scraping crushed mushrooms off of him. Dean drags his fingers through Sam's hair, yanking out knots and what look like little bits of sharp, white bone that rain to the ground. He looks behind him, at the shallow dip in the ground. His guts twist when he realizes he was never more than a few inches below ground. If not for Dean, he would have died there, his soul drained by Mother and what was left absorbed into her children. His brother saved him; he probably saved them both.

"Sam, Sam, hey," Dean's nearly sobbing, and that snatches Sam's attention away from the hole in the dirt to his brother. Who is out and out crying now, hitching in big snotty gulps of air and leaking tears. He throws his arms around Sam and it feels so good, so real. Flesh and blood, his flesh and blood. Dean, who he thought he'd see again.

Hell with it, Sam's crying too now and clutching back for all it's worth. They both deserve a damn pass on this one—hell, with any luck, this is the last damn time they cry all over each other like little girls. Any clutching in the future better be because, because…Sam snorts out a wet laugh. Dean does too, Sam figures it's out of the sheer screaming relief that they're both alive and breathing. Dean swings him around, their feet grinding broken mushrooms and white toothy bits under the thick, black soil.

Dean's wiping gently at Sam's face now, smearing tears and mud together and making an even worse mess of his face, Sam's sure. He doesn't give a damn; not when Dean's looking at him in a way that makes his heart race.

"Sammy, fucking hell, it's you, really you. Look at you, Sasquatch: big, solid, and warm and, and, damn, dude, you are really dirty an' kinda smell like a cesspool but that's okay. Sam, that's okay. When we get you outta here and cleaned up and all, we gotta talk because I'm not letting this go anymore. I gotta know, about you, and me I guess. Sam–"

Dean grips Sam's arms, stares into his eyes, and Sam's knees go weak. He knows what Dean's going to ask him and despite the pain, the filth covering him like Slimer's hug, the rancid mud smeared over both of them and Mother's foul ashes drifting down on them like snow from hell, Sam smiles. He's already saying yes when Dean asks.