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It seems fucking stupid now—worse: naive—but Dean honest-to-God thought that everything would stop after he went to Hell. A big cosmic reset button. Like his death would settle the universe's score and Sam could make himself some kind of real life, one that didn't involve hitching his fate to Dean's inevitable demise. Sam's a bright kid, but he's never been one to admit to a lost cause.
Dean followed through. He held up his end of the goddamn bargain, and if Lilith or whoever is pissed off that he's walking back on solid ground now, well, that's not Dean's problem. He didn't have a hand in this. It'd be really awesome if the forces of good and evil would quit playing racquetball with his immortal soul. He's tired of this Imminent Apocalypse Doom and Gloom bullshit.
Also tired of the nightmares, which have had him up well before dawn for a solid week, pacing the tiny bathroom of whatever motel room they're in that night, the shower curtain pulled wide open because he always thinks something's waiting for him, now. He checks in the trunk and under the hood and the seats before he'll get in the car. He opens closets and dresser drawers. He wants to know what's there.
Sam hates it. He's started making a big production out of checking underneath the beds, like, getting down on his knees with a flashlight and conversing with the dust bunnies.
"Proper preparation prevents piss-poor performance," Dean says, "and oh yeah, it also prevents me from fucking kicking you in the face when something tries to eat me."
"Nothing's going to eat you," Sam says, weary, and Dean would have something smart to say if it weren't for the dark half-circles beneath Sam's eyes. Sam hasn't been sleeping either. He's just better at staying in the bed and faking it.
They did the whole thing earlier, a repeat performance of their new nightly ritual, and the critics don't like it any better than they did the first dozen times around. Not a hit on Broadway this season. Dean doesn't give a fuck.
It's probably 4am by now. He isn't sure; there's no clock, just the steady dripping of the faucet, the o-rings gone loose. This hour's the worst kind of darkness. He's got the overhead light on, buzzing fluorescent and echoing against the tiles, but it's not doing much. Dean still knows it's night out there.
His feet are cold. He climbs into the bathtub after a while, crumples a damp towel beneath his head for a pillow. He falls asleep there and dreams about grocery shopping: Cheerios in the cart, a trail of discarded oranges behind him.
When he wakes up in the morning, Sam's standing at the toilet, shaking piss off his dick. Dean watches as Sam stuffs himself back into his shorts and yawns, scratches at the hair on his belly.
"Sexy," Dean says.
A year ago, Sam would have stammered and gone red in the face, maybe called Dean a pervert for looking. Now he just says, "You slept in the tub all night."
"Not all night," Dean says. "What time's it?"
"I dunno," Sam says. "Six thirty."
"Just for two hours, then," Dean says. "I want some goddamn sausage patties."
"Okay," Sam says.
They go down the street for breakfast. Sam orders hash browns and eggs and doesn't do anything but shove them around on his plate, but he eats half of Dean's breakfast, and drinks six cups of coffee. Their waitress raises her eyebrows a little higher every time she pours a refill.
"So what's the plan," Sam says.
"Dunno," Dean says. He scrapes some of Sam's eggs onto his own plate. No sense letting good food go to waste. "You tell me, you're the one with all the bright ideas in this relationship."
"Stop," Sam says.
"It's not like you're gonna eat these," Dean says. He upends the ketchup bottle over his plate and dollops out a smiley face. Nobody else is laughing; he needs some fucking sunshine in his life. Laughter is the best medicine. A smile a day. Et cetera.
"I didn't mean the eggs," Sam says. "Look, can we just—I don't want to fight with you this early in the morning, okay? Let's just drive up to Cedar City and see if we can find this thing—"
"And what if we can't," Dean says. "We've already gone through three states looking for this Mitten of the End Times or whatever the fuck Castiel called it. I don't know when you hopped on the Happy Angel Express, but—"
"Stop it," Sam says again, and this time Dean lets it go.
They aren't on the road for more than fifteen minutes before Sam conks out in the passenger seat, his head clunking dully against the window as the car sways along the highway. He starts drooling. A year ago, Dean would have whipped out his cell phone and taken a picture, and then printed out copies to tape to Sam's back, a "Kick Me" for the new millennium. Now he just keeps driving.
***
Ruby only stuck around for a couple of weeks—no surprise there, but Sam was a mess, all that mopey woe-is-me bullshit that Dean thought they'd gotten rid of that first year on the road, after Sam mourned Jess like it was the last important thing he'd do with his life. Dean remembered those backbreaking months he spent dragging Sam through each day, and he wasn't sure he could go through it again, not when he'd so recently been dragged up from his own hell.
"You really that hard-up for pussy?" he asked. "Can't get it except from a demon? I didn't know you were into that kinky rape stuff, Sammy—"
"Shut the fuck up," Sam said, still staring out the window, his hands curled loose against his kneecaps.
Dean thumped the heels of his hands against the steering wheel. "Look, dude, if you want to cry it out, maybe hug a little..."
"Shut up," Sam said. "It wasn't—she was helping me. With my, uh. She was going to help me."
"You don't need her fucking help," Dean said, and they didn't talk about it again.
There are a lot of things they don't talk about anymore. Ruby's one of them. Another one: Sam's powers. He's got a box of mangled silverware that he keeps in the trunk, and every time he brings it into a motel room along with his duffel bag, Dean heads out to the nearest bar and doesn't come back until he's stumbling. Denial's healthy. It keeps a man from losing his shit.
Another one: Castiel, who shows up looking like the best dream Dean's ever had, and talks like somebody shoved a Bible so far up his ass that it's coming out the other end. Dean's never put much stock in that whole God business, but it's hard to deny the power of the everlasting when he's got it seared on his skin like the mark of Cain.
Another one: anything Sam did while Dean was in Hell.
They roll into Cedar City that afternoon. The sun's already setting. Dean hates how fucking dark it gets this time of year, the days crumbling down toward midwinter, and he hates fucking Utah and the snow on the peaks. He missed summer this year, rotting in his grave.
"We should go to Cancun," he says. "When this is over. Look at some chicks in bikinis."
Sam ignores him. They're driving down the main road off I-15—the same road that runs through every interstate town in the country, the McDonald's and the Subway and the shabby '50s motor inns, and the stoplights flashing red in the twilight. Dean's been everywhere. He's seen it all, and it all sucks, and he just wants—he's fucking tired, and he just wants to go somewhere warm and sleep off the hard sad weight that's been rolling around in his gut for the last decade.
Dean pulls into the parking lot of the first motel he sees, something bargain-price and faded, well past its prime. He leaves Sam in the car while he goes into the office to check in and pick up their keys. "Smoking or non," the chick at the desk says, bored, not looking away from the small TV she's got perched on the counter beside the Enjoy Your Stay sign.
"Non," Dean says, and, "Thanks for your help, I feel so welcome here."
She snaps her gum and turns up the volume on the TV.
Sam's still in the passenger seat, picking at the fraying seam of his jeans. Dean raps on the window. "Go time," he says.
"What?" Sam says, voice muffled, and he looks confused, like he can't figure out why Dean's talking to him.
At dinner, Sam drags his fork through the pool of ketchup on his plate, scratching out swirly designs, and eats half of his hamburger before abandoning it in favor of staring out the window at the parking lot. The silence is awkward and weighted, but Dean can't be fucking bothered. He should be living it up right now: freed from Hell and with all the time in the world ahead of him. Not hauling Sam's recalcitrant ass across the continent.
"Smile, Sammy," Dean says finally, feeling like his head's going to explode if they keep ignoring each other. "We aren't dead yet."
"Yet," Sam says, and shoves a french fry in his mouth.
"Always the optimist," Dean says.
"I don't want to talk about this," Sam says. Dean's expecting him to get up and stomp away from the table, but he just sits there, staring at the modern art experiment on his plate.
"Great," Dean says. "That's awesome. Talking's for pussies."
Sam stares at him, mouth crumpled.
That night, Dean dreams that he and Sam are back in Arkansas, the house they lived in the summer Sam was eleven. They're in the wide field behind the house, the unmown grass waist-high and full of insects buzzing as night comes on, and they're tossing a baseball back and forth, a pale streak in the fading light. "Higher!" Sam says. "Come on, I can catch it," and then his face splits in two, a red seam right down the middle, and starts peeling away, and it's just muscle and bare bone underneath—
Dean wakes up. The clock on the bedside table says 3:41. He knows he won't be sleeping any more tonight. Sam's a lump in the other bed, breathing softly, so Dean goes into the bathroom and sits on the closed toilet seat. The lid's cold beneath his thighs. He's pretty sure something's watching him. Several somethings. A higher power in the world.
"Well," he says, to the room's empty white echo. "Bring it."
***
Sam's in a better mood in the morning, which is a fucking relief. He doesn't give Dean any shit about sleeping in the tub again, and he goes out to get coffee and brings back one of those fancy things with chocolate syrup in it, which Dean bitches about but secretly loves. He survived the Pit; Starbucks probably won't lower his manliness quotient too much.
"Did Castiel tell you where we're supposed to be looking?" Sam asks.
"Nah," Dean says. "He likes to keep us guessing. Telling us what's going on would make it too easy."
Sam rolls his eyes, all put-upon. He tries to act like he's happily following the orders of the Lord his Father, but it's pretty obvious he doesn't like the whole angel thing any better than Dean does. They've been on the road alone for too long; having Castiel stalking them is like being bossed around by the meanest, most shriveled hag of a schoolteacher ever known to mankind, the one who has eyes in the back of her head and a sixth sense for knowing when you're about to yank on Cynthia Jackson's ponytail.
"We could always try throwing darts at a map," Dean says.
"You suck at darts," Sam says. "Let's just, I don't know. We can just drive around."
They drive around. Sam's twitching like he's hopped up on something, scratching at the back of his neck and thumping one knee against the door. Dean's going to hit him in the fucking teeth. Then Sam leans forward like a dog picking up a good scent and says, "Turn right at the next intersection."
"Fine, whatever," Dean says, but he's used to Sam's whims by now, and he cuts off an old lady in a Cadillac and screeches through the turn. The car still handles like a dream. He did a good job, fixing her up.
Sam directs him to an old brick church just outside of town, the kind of decrepit, falling-down place that Dean's getting really sick of. He's not sure why everything in his life looks like somebody's idea of a carnival spook house. Just once he'd like to get to crawl around in a building that isn't infested with spiders.
He parks on the side of the road, half in the ditch. "So what's here," he says.
"Uh, I'm not sure," Sam says, and sighs loudly, like it's somehow Dean's fault. "Whatever, let's just go inside and check it out, okay?"
"Whatever," Dean says. He gets out of the car and doesn't look to see if Sam's following. Sam always follows. It's what he does.
It's silent inside, and poorly lit, all the windows boarded up, even the fancy stained-glass ones. Dean's boots leave thick prints in the layer of dust on the floor. He's never figured out the dust thing, why it's all over the fucking place in these old buildings, where it comes from. Maybe dust is what ghosts shit out.
The place has been stripped bare. Dean gets out his EMF reader and waits for something exciting to happen. Sam wanders around doing his aimless I'm-a-psychic thing, touching the backs of the pews, sniffing the dust on his fingers. Dean's kind enough not to say anything about how Sam's probably getting a big whiff of ghost crap.
"Diddly-squat," Dean says, when Sam comes around for another pass, still looking all blank and puzzled. "Right? There isn't a goddamn thing here."
"I don't think so," Sam says.
"Fucking Castiel," Dean mutters, because this isn't the first time that freaky bastard's pulled a fast one. For weeks now, Dean's been wanting to tell Castiel to shove it up his angelic ass, but Sam won't let him do it; says they have to follow it through to the end, see what happens, try to make nice with the Almighty. Dean's never liked kissing anyone's ass, and so what if Castiel could fry him like a little bug; better fried by an angel than the alternative. At least with an angel you're pretty sure where you're going to end up.
"What's funny," Sam says. His hands are both totally coated in dust, and he's wiping them off on his pants and making a huge fucking mess in the process. They're going to have to do laundry tonight.
"Fried By An Angel," Dean says. "Coming soon to a television set near you."
"You're never going to get less weird, are you," Sam says.
"No, probably not," Dean says. "Quit doing that, I don't want your dusty ass-prints all over my car." Sam tries to say something, but seriously, Dean doesn't want to hear it. "Let's get going. I don't even know what the fuck we're looking for, but we're not gonna find it here."
"I want burgers for lunch," Sam says, and okay, sure, burgers: they can get burgers. Whatever.
Sam spends the whole meal bitching about the dust in his hair, and when they get back to the motel room, he hops right in the shower. Serves him right; he should know better than to go putting his hands in ghost shit. Dean dumps out his bag and sorts his laundry into three piles: totally destroyed, toss; absolutely must be washed before wearing again; mostly passes the sniff test, good to go. The destroyed pile is bigger than he'd like. They'll have to make a Wal-mart run before they leave town.
"Hey, Sammy," he hollers, "do you know what I did with the laundry money," and he turns around, his arms full of dirty shirts. Castiel's standing there. Dean staggers back a few steps and drops his clothes all over the floor.
"Hello, Dean," Castiel says.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Dean says, "you really feel the need to give me a fucking heart attack every time you show up?"
"I didn't mean to frighten you," Castiel says. "You and Samuel have stopped looking for the Gauntlet. Why?"
"Well, yeah, 'cause it's a wild goose chase," Dean says. "I told you to quit pulling this shit, dude, you can't just send us off looking for some mythical object every time you want us out of the way."
Castiel has the decency to look guilty. "I will confess it served my purposes to have you both otherwise occupied for a few days, yes. But the Gauntlet does exist, and it is here in this town. We will all go to collect it later."
"Great," Dean says. "I can't wait to spend my afternoon looking for a haunted mitten. I'm not explaining this to Sam, it's all on you this time, buddy."
Castiel tilts his head to one side. "Why do you call it a mitten?"
"Because I'm—it's a joke," Dean says.
"I see," Castiel says. It's pretty obvious that he doesn't.
"So, uh, I'm gonna do some laundry, but make yourself at home," Dean says. "Watch some cable. There's that show you like, uh, that Playboy Bunny thing—"
"The Girls Next Door, yes," Castiel says. He sits down at the end of one of the beds. "I will watch that and wait until you've finished with your laundry."
"Uh, yeah. You do that," Dean says. He shoves his dirty clothes into his empty duffel and makes a beeline for the exit. Castiel's TV habits are kind of disturbing, and Dean doesn't want to hang around and witness that shit. Sam's going to have a nice surprise when he gets out of the shower.
Sure enough, fifteen minutes later Sam comes stomping into the laundromat, his hair still wet. "I can't believe you didn't warn me about the angel," he says, and punches Dean in the arm.
"Ow," Dean says, scowling. "Keep it down, dude, people can hear."
"We're the only people in here," Sam says, really slowly, like he's talking to someone who's mentally deficient.
"See, and that's why I didn't warn you," Dean says. "Because you're a bitch."
"Stop it," Sam says. "You know he doesn't like me, he was watching that Hugh Hefner show and he just looked at me like I'm a baby murderer, okay? It gives me the creeps."
"Yeah, he's a creepy bastard," Dean says, "but I don't hear you coming up with any bright ideas about how to get rid of him." He hoists himself up on top of the washing machine and thunks his boots against the metal. It's humming under his ass and it feels kind of nice, like one of those vibrating beds.
"We still don't even know he's really an angel," Sam says.
Dean rubs his face with both hands. They've had this conversation a billion times, and it never goes anywhere, and he's tired of it. "Look, Sammy—"
"No, I know. You're right," Sam says. "I just. I fucking hate it, Dean, I feel like we're always at each other's throats, and we still don't know what's happening with Lilith, and I'm—I might be—"
"You're not," Dean says, and leans forward to grab Sam's shoulders. "Don't you fucking say that, I won't let you. Okay? I'm not gonna fucking let you."
"Okay," Sam says, and then he inhales noisily and says, "I'm scared."
"Yeah, I know," Dean says, and doesn't say, Me too.
When they get back to the room, Castiel's still watching the Playboy chicks bounce around the screen in their little cut-off shorts. "Dude, seriously," Dean says, "if you want some actual porn, we can get you some porn."
"I'm not interested in pornography," Castiel says. "These women have good hearts. They seem to care about each other," and that's the whole demented situation in a nutshell: Castiel learning about human nature from the sort of trashy cable show that even Dean won't watch, not even to annoy Sam.
"Oh boy," Sam mutters.
They pile Castiel into the back seat of the car and drive around town some more. It weirds Dean out to have Castiel sitting back there, where Dean has bled and fucked and dreamed and puked all over everything. It's like Castiel's his kid. Or the goddamn monkey on his back. Whatever.
The Mitten's in a church, of course; a different church than the one they looked in earlier, but same general idea, dust shit everywhere, creepy-looking statue of Jesus. Castiel leads them down into the basement and there it is, gleaming silver in the vague light coming through a window. It doesn't look like much. Dean used to go to this bar in Seattle every so often, whenever he was up that way, and they had a full suit of armor right inside the front door, helmet and axe and everything. The Mitten kind of looks like that armor had, just shinier. Big fucking deal.
Castiel scoops it up and slides it onto his left hand. It glows blue, and he says, "Good," and takes it off again. "We can leave now."
"Leave," Dean says. "Uh-huh. Where are we going?"
"You have demons to kill," Castiel says. "I have business elsewhere. Shall we get hot dogs before I go?" The hot dog thing is another one of Castiel's bizarre habits. He always orders a side of cottage cheese, and piles it on top of the relish and mustard and whatnot. It's fucking gross.
"Sure," Dean says. "Whatever you want, dude."
Castiel's gone the next morning, and the Gauntlet thingy with him. Dean's managed to sleep the whole night through. He pisses, shaves, brushes his teeth. It's snowing outside, light flakes drifting down and just starting to stick on the asphalt.
Sam wakes up when Dean turns on the local news: house fire, missing child, lost dog reunited with loving family. "Are we going?" Sam asks, bleary, and sits up, his hair rumpled.
"Don't know," Dean says. "You want to? Castiel took off. Looks like it's just you and me again, baby bro."
"Don't call me that," Sam says. He groans and stretches until his back pops. "Bobby emailed me about a hunt up in Oregon. We could go check that out."
"Sure," Dean says. He doesn't understand anything about his life anymore: who Castiel is, why he comes and goes so abruptly and without any apparent purpose, what Lilith's up to, who Sam's becoming. His head hurts. He wants to be gone from Utah already. He hits the power button on the TV remote. "Let's go," he says.
***
Ruby left two weeks in, with absolutely no warning: just picked up and headed off. Dean and Sam went out to breakfast that morning, and when they got back to the motel room, Ruby was gone, her suitcase sitting on the bed all emptied out and useless like a cicada shell.
Sam called her phone fifteen times and left increasingly pathetic messages: "Please just let me know you're okay, Ruby, please—"
"Dude, give it up," Dean said, but of course Sam wouldn't listen. They spent all day driving around town looking for Ruby. Big surprise: no dice.
That was what made Dean really hate her—hate her, not just the fact that she was a demon; hate her on her own merits. She'd made Sam love her and then left him without a word. Too many women had already pulled that disappearing act on Sam, and it was so fucking—it wasn't fair.
"Let's get the hell outta Dodge, Sammy," Dean said, late afternoon, and Sam rubbed his face and said, "Okay."
Dean still doesn't know what the deal was with the two of them, Sam and Ruby. Ruby never had much to say to him, even after he gave in to Sam's wordless pleading and agreed to let Ruby ride along with them—and Christ, that had been hard to stomach, Ruby sitting back there all quiet and watchful, and Sam blindly devoted to her; and Dean, who'd been blindly devoted to Sam since the day that kid was born, which was the only reason he was fucking stupid enough to let a demon in his car in the first place.
He doesn't even know if Sam and Ruby were fucking; they'd shared a bed, most nights, but they never touched otherwise, and most of the time, when Dean was up by 4am, they were facing away from each other, heads on separate pillows. He and Sam haven't talked about it. Maybe they should. Dean's given up pretending he has any clue what he's doing. He's inventing this shit as he goes. He's never been resurrected before; he figures that changes all the rules. Nothing's the same. He still isn't sure why he's alive.
They're in Nevada now, that long stretch between Pony Springs and Ely, empty desert and tumbleweed, pinion juniper. Dean didn't want to take 84. Interstates make him nervous now, have him checking his rearview every thirty seconds. He's stopped questioning these gut feelings. If whatever's watching him wants him to keep to the back roads, he's not going to argue. Maybe he and Sam can disappear into the desert and Lilith won't be able to find them at all. It's the only thing he's ever wanted: to keep Sam safe.
"Hey Sammy," he says. "Sammy, you awake?"
"No," Sam says.
"Come on, wake up," Dean says. "There's nothing to look at out here. I'm getting the heebie jeebies."
"Oh, is that the technical term for it?" Sam says. He sits up and drinks the rest of Dean's coffee, probably stone cold by now. "Will you pull over? I have to pee."
"Your dick's going to freeze off, it's fucking cold out there," Dean says, but he pulls the car over to the shoulder and cuts the engine. They both get out. Sam walks off into the scrub and unzips his pants. Dean hears the zipper going down, and Sam's contented sigh. It's not as cold out as he thought: above freezing, probably, and the sun's warm on the back of his neck.
"I saw a jackrabbit," Sam says, kicking a tumbleweed out of his path on his way back to the car. "It was out there sniffing around in the bushes."
"That's great," Dean says, as sarcastic as he can make it, and Sam grins and smacks his arm. "No, really, Sammy, that's fucking—I've always wanted a bunny rabbit, maybe we can go catch it and put a collar on it or something—"
"Shut up, bitch," Sam says. He leans against the car next Dean, their elbows knocking. "How much further?"
"I dunno," Dean says. "About 600 miles. Depends on how the roads are."
"Okay," Sam says. He lets out a long breath. "Dean, I don't—I'm not sure this is what we should be doing."
"Specific or general?" Dean asks.
"Both," Sam says. "I dunno, this hunt—I mean, it needs to be taken care of, but there are other people who could do it. I'm just so goddamn—I feel like Lilith could show up any minute and blast us both off the face of the planet, and maybe we should drive up to see Ramsey, or, I don't know—"
"Nobody's got any ideas," Dean says. "It's a waiting game. I hate it too, dude, but we can't smoke Lilith out, we've just gotta wait until she shows her cards."
"Fuck," Sam says. He rubs his forehead. "Look, you know that I—if Lilith starts coming after us, it's going to get crazy. Ruby, uh. Taught me a lot of stuff, and I have to use it, Dean, I can't just pretend that I don't know how—"
"I know," Dean says. "Look, nobody's dead, nobody's gone darkside. I mean, okay, you've changed, but I don't think it's—that doesn't mean you're evil, Sammy. Or whatever the fuck it is you're giving yourself an ulcer over. We'll get through this."
"I don't know," Sam says.
"We'll get through this," Dean says.
Sam turns to look at him, hip braced against the car door. "You trust me more than you should."
Dean shrugs, uncomfortable. He doesn't really want to talk about this.
Sam reaches up and touches Dean's face, fingertips to Dean's jaw, and Dean's breath catches. He doesn't move, waiting to see what Sam will do, and after a moment Sam's hand drops away again, and he says, "I'm ready to go."
"Okay," Dean says.
They stop in Winnemucca for the night. Dean leaves Sam in the motel room and goes down the road for a six-pack and pizza. It's cold out. He fills up the car, nods to the guy who's camped out by the pump in a lawn chair, flannel coat hiked up around his ears. Small town America. God help him, Dean loves it.
Sam's sitting on the bed, watching the television. "Did you get green peppers?" he asks.
"Yep," Dean says. He tosses the box down on the mattress. "Have at it. I'm gonna shower."
The water's hot and the pressure's good. Dean stands under the spray after he's finished washing and lets the water pound the tension out of his shoulders. He keeps thinking about that afternoon, how Sam touched his face, how he—it doesn't matter. They put that behind them years ago, before Sam even left for Stanford. Ancient history. Dean's an idiot.
Sam's watching some sitcom, laughing quietly every few minutes. Dean lies down on the other bed and eats his half of the pizza, drinks a beer, watches Sam's bare toes wiggling, the way he chews his upper lip. "What," Sam says, catching Dean at it.
"Nothing," Dean says.
The next day they drive the last 200 miles to Burns. Sam drinks four cups of coffee at breakfast and talks for a solid hour about his Lilith theories: where she might be, what she might be doing. Dean knows he should probably be paying attention, but he zones out after a while, listening to the familiar rhythm of Sam's voice and watching the slow landscape unrolling through the windshield.
Burns is tiny and sedate. They drive down the main road, scoping things out. There isn't much to see. "Okay, so why are we here?" Dean asks.
"Black dog," Sam says. "Nothing too exciting. We ought to be done and out of here in three days."
"All right," Dean says, pleased. This is what he wants: something simple, with a distinct beginning and end. He understands black dogs. They don't suddenly decide to pull you out of Hell. Or teach your brother how to do magic or some bullshit like that. He says, "What's our lead?"
"A woman named Nancy Lopez called the cops like, ten times in two days to report a big dog hanging around her back yard," Sam says. "Nobody else saw anything."
"Huh," Dean said. "Okay, so let's find a diner and start asking around, see if we can find this chick."
Nancy's easy to find: she runs an art gallery on Broadway, and she's behind the counter when Sam and Dean walk in. Sam does the talking while Dean looks around at the froofy art shit and tries not to break anything by breathing on it too hard.
"Oh, I'm so glad you believe me," Nancy says, "the cops were nice and all, but I could tell they got sick of me calling them all the time, but I didn't know what else to do! My husband believed me, but he never saw anything, so that made it kind of hard for him to catch the dog or scare it off, you know, it's hard to scare away something if you can't see it, but I was just so worried, my daughter's just starting to crawl, you know, and I'm afraid to let her out in the back yard, because—"
Sam clears his throat. "Mrs. Lopez," he says, "we'll do whatever we can to help you."
"Thank you so much," Nancy says, and shakes Sam's hand, and then Dean's, and then Sam's again. "Really, I was at the end of my rope, if the two of you hadn't shown up, I just don't know what—"
"We'll be in touch," Sam says, and they make a break for it.
"At least she wasn't a crier," Dean says, once they're safely in the car.
"Christ, yeah, those are the worst," Sam says, and buckles in.
They find a motel near the highway and pay extra to check in early. "You should sleep," Dean says. "Could be a long night."
Sam raises his eyebrows. "Oh yeah? What about you?" He slings his duffel onto the floor and sits on the end of one of the beds, bends over to take off his boots.
"We'll see," Dean says. The room smells like mildew and pipe smoke. He salts the doors and windows, draws the curtains. With the lights off, the room's so dark that Sam's face is just a pale blur. Dean kicks off his own boots and lies down on the other bed, face up, his hands folded over his belly. He closes his eyes. Sam rustles around for a few minutes before he goes quiet. Dean wants everything to stay like this: no demons, no cosmic war, just him and Sam on the road, like always.
He wakes up when the mattress shifts. "Dean," Sam says, and grabs Dean's shoulder, shakes him roughly. "Dude, wake up, you were—"
"Sorry," Dean says. His shirt's sticking to his back, damp with sweat. He doesn't remember what he was dreaming about, but his pulse is racing, and his mouth's watering like he's about to puke. "Sorry, bad dream."
"I know," Sam says. Instead of getting up, he lies down beside Dean, their shoulders and knees touching. "You want to talk about it?"
"No," Dean says, and then, "I don't really remember." His memories of the Pit are still pretty hazy, and the nightmares vanish when he wakes up. He's probably better off not knowing.
"Okay," Sam says. He rolls onto his side and puts a hand on Dean's throat, pressing lightly on the Adam's apple. Dean swallows, and feels Sam's palm move with him. The room is hot and quiet. Sam shifts again and noses at the spot behind Dean's ear. Dean doesn't move. Sam tightens his grip on Dean's throat.
"Sammy," Dean croaks.
Sam lets go and rolls off the bed. "I don't know what I'm doing."
"Who the fuck does?" Dean says. He touches his throat where Sam's hand was.
"I'm all fucked up," Sam says, and makes a noise like it hurt him to say that, and wow, this is not a conversation Dean wants to be having. He doesn't say anything. Sam stands there in the dark for a few more seconds, and then he goes into the bathroom and shuts the door.
Dean gets up and puts his boots back on. It's 8:30. When Sam comes back into the room, Dean says, "We should get going."
"Dinner first," Sam says, and it's fucking great how they've both gotten so good at failing to talk about anything important. Just awesome. Dean wants to throw a punch. Instead he grabs his keys.
They eat, and then they drive to the Lopez residence and camp out in the back yard with a few shotguns and a canister of rock salt. It starts snowing after a while. The lights in the house go out. Dean blows into his cupped fists. He needs new gloves: these are worn through, and the right one has a hole in it—Dean doesn't even know what from, maybe it snagged on a branch or something. He's hard on his clothes.
The black dog doesn't show. They sit there until dawn, freezing their asses off, and the goddamn thing doesn't even have the courtesy to make an appearance. "Fuck," Dean says, when the sun breaks over the horizon, and he kicks at the snow that's piled up overnight. "What a waste of fucking time—"
"Let's just get out of here," Sam says, and Dean grunts, too tired to argue.
He sleeps for two hours and wakes up, takes a shower, tries to sleep again; can't get comfortable, ends up bedding down on the floor. Sam's going to give him a hard time. An ambulance drives by outside. Dean's stomach growls. He sits up and looks at the clock. It's only 10:30.
He's not going to sleep any more. Sam's all wrapped up in the sheets, drooling onto his pillow. Dean pulls his coat on and goes out to find some breakfast. The diner he picks is almost empty this time of the morning, just him and two old guys slumped at the counter. It's weird to eat without Sam. Dean's spent his entire life staring at Sam across diner tables. Almost his entire life. It feels like a goddamn eternity. The best years he's had.
He goes back to the motel. Sam's awake, still lying in bed, shirtless and rumpled. "Dean," he says.
"Hey," Dean says. "I brought some food back, you want a sausage biscuit?"
"Later," Sam says. "C'mere."
Dean stares at him, edgy. He shifts his weight. Sam's like one of those Chinese puzzle boxes: you do it the wrong way and it snaps down on your finger like a steel trap. He drops the takeout bag on the dresser and crosses the room to sit on Sam's bed.
"Take off your shoes," Sam says. His voice is scratchy with sleep. Dean bends over to unlace his boots, and Sam's hand presses against his lower back, slides down and then up again, this time beneath Dean's shirt, hot against Dean's skin.
"We can't," Dean says, and his guts twist: longing, fear.
"Why not?" Sam asks. His hand moves, curling around to rest flat against Dean's belly.
"You fucking know why," Dean says. "Don't make me go through this again, Sam, I swear to God—"
"I won't," Sam says. He pulls backward, and Dean could resist: it would be so easy to shove Sam off and stand up and pretend like this never happened, but instead he lets Sam tug him onto the bed and shuffle things around until they're both under the covers: Dean wearing all his clothes, Sam naked as the day he was born.
"Sammy," Dean says, and Sam wraps an arm around Dean's waist and pulls him close, kisses Dean's jaw and his mouth, and Dean opens up for it, lets Sam kiss him like it hasn't been ten years and a hundred thousand miles.
Sam pulls away and kisses down Dean's throat, sucks on his collarbone, scoots down beneath the blankets and starts tugging at Dean's belt. Dean can't even see him now, just the lump he makes under the covers, and Dean lets his head drop back against the pillow and closes his eyes. Sam yanks open Dean's button fly, pulls down the waistband of Dean's boxers, and then that's—that's his hand around Dean's cock, and then, Christ, his mouth.
Dean gasps and grabs at the sheets, and then shoves his hands under the blankets and grabs at Sam's hair. Sam sucks him fast and messy; Dean can feel spit sliding down his balls, and Sam's mouth is hot and slick, his tongue swirling around the head of Dean's cock when he pulls off to take a breath. It's been years, and this could be a dream—it feels like a dream, the small moaning noises Sam keeps making, the noises Dean hears himself making, the wet sounds of Sam's mouth, a car honking outside. He draws up his knees, trying to get his cock deeper into Sam's throat, and Sam makes a different noise and pulls off to suck at Dean's balls, and it's just—it's too fucking much, and Dean reaches down to grab at his cock and comes all over his own fist.
Sam shuffles around under the covers. He's laughing. Dean moves his clean hand onto Sam's shoulder, and the muscles there are flexing, the bones shifting underneath—Sam's jerking himself off.
"Let me," Dean says. "Sammy, come on, I want to—"
"No," Sam says, muffled, and picks up speed, and then he grunts a few times and bites Dean's thigh, hard, his teeth sinking in.
"Fuck," Dean says, "that fucking hurt."
Sam sits up and throws the blankets back. He's grinning, licking at his lips, and his hair's sticking up all over the place. "You've had worse," he says, and he's so flushed and happy-looking, and Dean grabs him and pulls him down and kisses his idiotic smiling mouth.
***
They had a cat once, the spring Dean was twelve—or, not had a cat, more like the cat was one of those obnoxious strays that hung around and refused to leave, and then Sam started feeding her and she really wouldn't leave; and then she went into heat and yowled outside in the yard at all hours of the fucking night. That's how Dean feels: he wants to rub up against something (Sam), shameless, ass in the air.
They slept all afternoon, and then they went out to dinner, and Sam kept smirking at him and kicking Dean beneath the table, and Dean hopes to God that Castiel isn't spying on them, because he's pretty sure this shit wouldn't go over too well with an Angel of the Lord.
"You've gotta knock it off," he says, when they're leaving the restaurant. "Not cool, dude."
"What?" Sam says. "What am I doing?"
"You just—you keep looking at me," Dean says, and Sam laughs sharply and says, "I didn't realize that was a criminal offense."
"Whatever," Dean mutters. "Just—stop it."
"So what are we doing about the black dog?" Sam says, and Dean blinks a few times, his key in the car door, because he'd honestly completely fucking forgotten about the black dog.
"Uh," he says. "Well, we could—I guess we're going over there again tonight."
"It's me," Sam says.
"What?" Dean says.
"I think I'm scaring it off," Sam says, and shrugs sheepishly, his hands in his coat pockets. The sun's long since set, and the way Sam's standing directly beneath a streetlight makes him look like he's lit up from the inside. Dean has to look away.
"So I'll go by myself," Dean says.
"I'm sorry," Sam says. "It's just, this whole—demonic powers thing, or whatever, it kind of. It seems to make some creatures, uh, suspicious."
"It's not demonic," Dean says, and then, when Sam looks like he's going to talk back, "I'm not arguing about this with you, don't even try me. Get in the car."
Dean goes to the Lopez house by himself: him and his shotgun and his canister of rock salt. And sure enough, the black dog shows up just after midnight, and then it's just a matter of doing some running around and shooting and salting and burning. Simple stuff. Dean could do this with one arm tied behind his back.
He goes back to the motel, sweaty and bleeding in a few places. Sam's still up, watching TV. He smiles when Dean comes in, and Christ, it's been too long since Sam's been this happy. "Success?" Sam asks.
"Success," Dean says. "I'm gonna shower. Get out the kit, yeah? I might need some stitching up."
Sam frowns. "Dean—"
"It's not serious, don't give me that look," Dean says. He shuts the bathroom door before Sam can start in on the bitching. Not the night for it.
He strips down and pokes at the cut on his forehead while the shower heats up. It's not as bad as he thought, but the cut on his shoulder's definitely going to need stitches. He should let Sam do it before he showers, but he's filthy and tired and in the end he gets under the spray and lets it wash all the blood and dirt down the drain.
Sam starts pounding on the door after a while, so Dean gets out and pulls on his boxers and lets Sam come in. "I'm not gonna drown in the shower, Sam, Jesus Christ," he says.
"You never know," Sam says. "Sit on the toilet seat, I want to look at these cuts."
"I told you it's not a big deal," Dean says, but yeah right, when has that ever worked. He sits mostly still and lets Sam rub him down with peroxide and give him a few swigs of whiskey and stitch up the cut on his shoulder. It hurts. It means he's still alive.
"I should have been there," Sam says, "I knew your stupid ass would get injured without me."
"Hey," Dean says, "you know what, smartass, it's not my fault that dog had a taste for Winchester meat. It wanted a piece of me, and damn if I was going to deprive it. Closest that bastard was ever gonna get to heaven."
"You're so conceited," Sam murmurs, and then ties off the string and says, "Okay, there, you're done."
"About fucking time," Dean says. "Didn't I teach you any better than this?" He rotates his shoulder and winces. It's gonna suck for a few days.
"You've only got yourself to blame," Sam says. He presses a butterfly bandage to Dean's forehead and then bends down to kiss that spot, gently, and Dean tips his head back and kisses Sam's mouth. It's supposed to be light, quick, but Sam opens his mouth and then it's anything but.
"Christ," Dean says, and slides off the toilet seat, down onto his knees on the tile floor, and Sam inhales and says something. Dean isn't listening. He yanks down Sam's jeans and boxers and licks at the head of Sam's cock until it's salty-bitter and Sam's cussing a blue streak, and then he gets serious and brings his hands into it, and it's not five minutes before Sam's cupping Dean's jaw and coming down Dean's throat.
"Mm," Dean says; pulls off and swallows. Sam's staring down at him, eyelids at half mast, looking really fucking pleased with himself. Dean wipes at his chin. He feels weird and achy. His dick's leaking through his shorts.
"Show me your cock," Sam says, like he's saying Show me the map or Tell me the directions again: that ordinary and detached. And so Dean fumbles his boxers down and doesn't think. "Good," Sam says. "Now get yourself off for me. I want to watch."
Dean feels his face go hot—it's too intimate, the bright overhead lights, and Sam calm and looking. He does it anyway. His cock's hot and flushed with blood, and he rests his free hand on his thigh, digging the nails in: something to distract him. Otherwise he's going to come in about two seconds. He works his thumb over the head, tugs at the shaft, over the head again.
"How does it feel?" Sam asks.
"Good," Dean says, and swallows, and says again, "Good."
"Oh God," Sam says, and then he drops to his knees too and knocks Dean's hand out of the way, and then it's Sam's hand there, Sam's big hand curling around Dean's cock, and Sam twists his wrist hard and kisses Dean's panting mouth, and Dean comes before he's even aware of it: he watches himself spurt onto Sam's hand, and the pleasure hits a second later, long waves of it that Sam strokes him through.
"I missed you," Sam says, "God, Dean, I missed you so much, I thought that you were—and I tried everything, and—"
"Yeah," Dean says. He hooks a hand around the back of Sam's neck and kisses him. "Good thing I got touched by an angel, huh."
"It's not funny," Sam says, and pulls back. "Why are you always trying to joke about this?"
Dean rolls his eyes, abruptly irritated. He just had a fucking amazing orgasm, and he wants to clean off and go to sleep, and Sam's trying to pick a fight with him or whatever the fuck. "Yeah, I know, Sammy, you and Ruby fucked like minks and then I came back and ruined your love nest. My bad."
"What?" Sam says. "You're an asshole. That's not what happened."
"So what did," Dean says. He shakes off Sam's hands. "It's not like you'll tell me anything, you act like there's some huge fucking secret, so forgive me if I draw the logical conclusion."
"It wasn't like that," Sam says, "I fucking—it was like I—like I was—" and he starts crying, almost soundless, just quiet gasps and the tears rolling down his face. "I couldn't—I tried so hard, and nothing I did, I couldn't—"
"Hey, Sammy, shh, it's okay," Dean says, bewildered, and pats Sam's shoulder awkwardly. He hates this crying bullshit. He never knows how to react. He gets up and runs one of the hand towels under the sink, wipes off his belly and Sam's hand. Sam stays on the floor, head bent, weeping. "Dude, seriously," Dean says, "everything turned out fine, I'm extremely alive, I've even got a guardian angel and everything."
"You don't know," Sam says. "You have no idea, you don't—I tried to kill myself."
The words don't make sense. "What?" Dean says.
"You heard me," Sam says. "After the first month. When I knew I—when I knew that nothing was going to—"
Dean touches Sam's face, the tracks of wetness on his cheeks. He hears what Sam's saying, but it's incomprehensible, it doesn't make any—just the thought that Dean could have come back into a world without Sam in it. He can't imagine anything worse. "Sammy," he says, at a complete fucking loss for words.
"I missed you," Sam says. "And I'm afraid that I'll—that I'll go wrong, or something, and I don't want—I want us to stick together. No matter what happens."
"Yeah," Dean says. He leans back against the sink and looks at Sam's messed up hair, his wet face. "Well, we'll just have to make sure we get Lilith before she can get us."
"How are we supposed to do that," Sam says.
Dean grins. "Easy," he says. "I'll kill her with my charms," and Sam groans and throws the wet towel at him, and Dean says, "Hey, how about I order some pizza."
"That sounds good," Sam says.
***
There's no happy ending; Dean knows that. Even if they do get rid of Lilith, and every other fucking demon that comes after them, there's an unlimited supply of supernatural critters, any one of which would happily kill itself a Winchester. Dean's never expected to die of old age in his own bed. The best he can hope for is to go out Butch and Sundance style. Nothing wrong with that. As dreams go, it's not a bad one. Especially if Sam's with him.
Dean's paid his fucking dues. He's put in his time and more. The least God can do is let Dean keep Sam by his side, day in and day out, for however many years they have left. It's not a lot to ask for. Next time Castiel shows up, Dean's going to see if he can get the feathery bastard to put in a good word.
Really, Dean's a simple guy. He wants simple things: good food, gas in his car, demons to kill, his brother at his side. The open road. People to save. It's not complicated. God should be able to pull that one off easy.
They stop by Nancy Lopez's store on their way out of town to let her know that the dog's been taken care of. "Looks like a runaway," Dean tells her. "Still got a collar and everything. We're working on getting in touch with the owners. They should have him back within a few days."
"Oh, that's wonderful news," Nancy says, beaming. "I'm sure he isn't a bad dog, just a little mean-looking, maybe, but I'm so glad there's somebody out there who wants him, because everyone needs a home, you know, somebody to love them, and if there's somebody out there who wants that dog, well, God bless them. And thank you both for doing so much to help me, I appreciate it so much, let me get you some food before you leave, okay? I make the best muffins in town, you know, and I baked up a batch of blueberry this morning, let me just run into the back and get them," and of course she won't let them go until they've taken a bag full of her still-warm muffins. Not that Dean's complaining. The day he turns down free baked goods is the day he rolls over and dies.
They say goodbye to Nancy and go outside to the car. Dean sets the bag between them in the front seat and opens it up. "Man, these smell goddamn amazing," he says, and they do, all blueberry-ish. He had a huge breakfast, but so what: there's always room.
"I can't believe you're going to eat that," Sam says, looking kind of grossed out and kind of amused. "I saw all that sausage gravy you ate at the diner."
"I'm fueling up for later," Dean says. "We're not stopping until we're three states away. Fucking Oregon. I hate all this goddamn snow. You'd better have a water bottle back there because I'm not letting you piss out the window again."
"I did that once," Sam says. "When I was eight."
"Still!" Dean says. "It still happened!"
Sam laughs and throws a handful of ketchup packets at Dean's face. "You're unbelievable. Okay, so where are we going?" he asks, and Dean turns and grabs Sam's face and kisses him, and doesn't stop until Sam's smiling and saying, "Dean, Dean," all muffled and sweet.
THE END