Archive of Our Own

Pulling Dean down off the rebar is the worst thing that Sam has ever had to do.

“It’s okay,” he says, trying to cradle the back of Dean’s head and hold his weight up at the same time.

He’s so heavy. His head flops forward, lifeless against Sam’s throat, and Sam has to stop what he’s doing for a minute to hold them both up against the wall and cry. They’ve been here before -- Sam has driven through this intersection a hundred times. He knows he promised Dean he wouldn’t, but his brain is still spinning out in every direction. Spells, contacts, things that Sam could do.

Dean’s boot toes drag along the dirty, shitty ground as Sam heaves his weight up again.

“Please don’t make me do this,” he mouths, words disappearing into the hair on the crown of Dean’s head.

Sam tips back and looks up at the rafters, stars poking pinholes through the worn open wood ceiling. If you’re up there, he thinks, starting to shake, if you’re up there, and you see this, do something. Help me.

Help us.

“Dean.” Sam shifts them around again, and then gasps when Dean’s blood starts to coagulate and fall in thick slops. Sam hates the sound of it. He’s heard blood before, the sensory input that comes along with someone bleeding out like this. “God, you’re hurt, huh?”

A voice in the back of Sam’s head says, “Aw, it’s just a little poke, Sammy! It’s all part of the job--”

“Damnit,” Sam whispers again, squeezing Dean tight.

He touches Dean’s back again, like he did earlier, when Dean was still alive. It’s wet, sticky, warm and sickly. Sam feels nauseous. He’s always had the stomach for gore, but not when it’s Dean. He presses his hand flat again.

Sam thinks yeah you said it, but he knew you were lying, and he would have lied to you, too.

Because if he brings Dean back, he’s going to need his blood. All of it. And this is Dean’s blood, Sam suddenly thinks, hysterical. He looks down at the floor around them, the pieces of hay soaking everything up, the way Sam’s boots are caked with it.

It’s a lake, a river, and it’s still pouring out of Dean like water.

“I have to get the stuff from the car,” Sam grits out. He digs his chin into Dean’s shoulder and glances across the barn, to where he notices a work bench a few feet away. “I know you don’t want me to leave you,” he says into Dean’s temple. His voice breaks, “But I have to go get the stuff from the car.”

Sam has put stitches into Dean a thousand times. The first night he had to do it by himself, Dean was fourteen and suffering from his first dance with a rougarou. The whole time, he alternated between looking like he was going to pass out, and pretending like it was no big deal -- hunters get stitches all the time, Sammy, ow, watch the nipple!

“I promise you’re safe,” Sam says quietly, carrying him across the barn. “I promise it’s just us, Dean.”

At the bench, Dean goes willingly, without a snappy comment for the first time in his life. Sam forgets to catch his head as he’s rolling Dean’s body weight back, and it goes flopping to the side, the dead weight of it banging against the wood in a way that makes Sam jump and break down again.

There’s blood on his hands and now it’s all over his face as he wipes his eyes.

“I’ll be right back.” Before he goes, he presses an out of breath kiss on Dean’s face.

When Sam turns and takes those first few steps without Dean’s dead body in his arms, the adrenaline kicks back in. He greys out suddenly and lurches sideways, legs sloping so fast the wall comes up on him and he has to duck his head so he doesn’t hit it on a beam.

In the car, Sam laser focuses on getting the first aid kit.

It’s a little more than that, not just bandaids and rubbing alcohol. Usually Sam would leave the kit here and just take what he knew they needed, because Dean was always bitching about this and that, even when he was laid out and awaiting medical assistance, and usually Sam just needed a second to think--

He swings the car door closed and staggers back towards the barn.

“Hey.” It’s what he would say if Dean were propped up and grimacing against the wall. Sam rests a hand on Dean’s knee, and sets the first aid kit down. “I’m going to fix you up a little bit,” he continues, ignoring the blood pooling through the cracks in the workbench; the way it sounds like the leaky gutters at Bobby’s house. “Then we’ll head out.”

Sam’s head feels crazy inside, working overtime to fill in all the blanks where Dean should be. I’m starving, man, can’t we save the very special episode of ER for when we get back to the motel? If this is what Dean meant by I’ll always be with you, then Sam is going to strangle him the next time they see each other. A huge grin, big and stupid and so very Dean. I can be George Clooney.

“I have to turn you over,” Sam whispers.

He very gently pushes Dean’s shoulder, and then pulls at his elbow, trying to roll him onto one side. Dean is about halfway there when Sam’s hands jerk back in surprise, and he realizes it’s not just blood that’s coming out of Dean.

Sam doesn’t hesitate; he reaches down and tries to push Dean’s guts back inside. I know it looks bad, Sammy.

It’s terrible, gruelling work. Sam puts Dean back together as much as he can.

This is something Sam knows he can do. He stitches Dean’s skin up carefully, religiously, and then takes off his flannel shirt to wrap around Dean’s mid-section. It’s still bad. It’s bad, bad, Dean is turning a pasty blue from how much blood he’s lost, but Sam still wants to look at him forever.

“Alright, let’s go,” he whispers, helping Dean back up off the bench.

*

It’s dawn by the time Sam gets the car back on the highway.

Dean is safe in the backseat, wrapped up in the crinkly silver emergency blankets they’ve always kept in the trunk. It’s dark enough that Sam can glance in the rearview mirror and pretend Dean isn’t marbled blue and purple.

Whaddya think, Sammy? This is kind of my color. I’m pulling it off, right? You know, I always knew I was a winter.

Sam shakes his head, trying to get the voices out. He keeps the tape deck off because he doesn’t want to think about the last song Dean listened to before he died.

They’re ten minutes down the highway when Sam sees the distinct shapes of two tiny, scared little people walking along the shoulder.

Sam pulls over up ahead and throws the car into park. When he gets out, he swings one arm through the exhaust and squints, trying to make them out with just the glow of the car tail lights.

Sure enough, it’s the two boys Dean rescued in the basement. Sam wants to throw up and cry at the same time.

“Hey. Hey,” Sam says, trying not to shout, trying to be gentle, but he feels hysterical, like he might not ever be able to have a regular conversation with anyone ever again. “Remember me? We found you in the barn.”

‘We’ has always been the shortest, most succinct way to say “me and Dean.”

“I remember you,” the younger one says. They’re both shivering and look paper white. “You told us to run.”

Sam lets out a relieved breath. “Yeah. You did a good job.” He blinks back tears and clears his throat. “How about I drive you somewhere safe?”

The kids look at each other and then nod and quietly follow Sam back to the car. Before he opens the front door to let them in, he takes off his jacket and tucks it around Dean’s head and shoulders, gently tilting his face into the upholstery so the kids won’t see.

“Where’s your friend?” the older boy asks, a little mistrustful, as Sam pulls back off the shoulder.

He swallows.

“He, uh.” Who will be the first person Sam tells about Dean’s death? He falters, because he doesn’t even know how to say it. “He stayed back at the barn. To make sure no other bad guys came.”

Attaboy, Sammy. Lie to the children.

“Oh.” The boy goes quiet again, the little one already falling asleep against the door. “Well, when he gets back, tell him thank you for saving me and my brother.”

This round of tears is uncontrollable. Sam blinks them away, tries to push his tongue up against the roof of his mouth -- anything to shorten the tell.

“I will,” he finally gets out, voice rough. “I promise I will.”

*

Sam drops the kids off in front of the first county police station he sees.

“Take very good of your brother,” he says, crouching down in front of them.

The older one gives him a look, like duh, and then Sam watches them all the way up the steps.

*

Sam drives 60 miles north, to one of Dean’s favorite little podunk Americana towns.

It’s morning when they get there. The car rolls down Main St., engine rumbling, the local news low on the radio.

There’s the gas station they always stopped at when they came through this way. One time Dean filled up the tank and spent the whole three minutes lounging with his elbows on Sam’s window. It was a long time ago, but Sam still remembers that day. The bakery was next door, and then a couple blocks down, the motel they lived out of for a week. Dean really liked the coffee there. He had been extremely impressed by the genuine Jean-Claude Van Damme autograph hanging behind the check-in desk.

It’s a postage stamp town; it rolls by fast. Then it’s all trees, and Sam drives for another twenty minutes. The houses tucked into the woods get further and further apart until he’s in backroad country.

Sam takes a right onto a familiar dirt road. It used to be a hunter safehouse, but a few years back it burnt down, and now it’s just a safe piece of land with some river views.

It was one of Dean’s favorite little spots.

The pyre doesn’t take long for Sam to build. He leaves Dean in the car, and starts stacking the wood he finds from all around the edges of the forest. It feels like he’s digging his own grave; every branch he picks up is heavier in his hands, harder to justify.

Sam hyperventilates in the time between when the pyre is built and when he realizes he has to go get Dean from the car.

His stomach hurts, and he would do anything -- ANYTHING -- to have it be any other way. Dean used to tell everyone the world owed him a lot of things, but most of all, it owed him one more day with his brother. But so much has happened in the years between then and now. The debt has been paid for a very long time; Dean has been living on second chances since the night he permanently damaged his heart.

Dean never wanted to live forever. And Sam won’t make him.

“Alright,” Sam whispers, dropping into a crouch at the open back door. He hasn’t been able to wrap Dean up yet. He keeps wanting to get one more look. Sam rests his hands on Dean’s boots, and then his ankles. He’s so cold and so stiff, Sam can feel it through the cuffs of his jeans. “I think this is it.”

His hands are already shaking, and so is his voice. For a split second Sam feels mad about it. That Dean got to be the one to go first. That he never had to be the one to do this, to say goodbye in so many ways and moments that it felt like splintering apart slowly and without relief.

Every time Dean has left him, a piece of Sam has gone too. And now he’s taking everything at once.

“I, um.” Sam has to look at the edge of the car, the tiny rip in the upholstery and the rust speckle on the frame of the door. “I will do my best, but,” he breaks his tight, tiny words to laugh breathlessly, eyes wet again. “That rebar is looking really good for me right now, too.”

Sam hears it, the Aw, come on now, Sammy. Things aren’t all bad! and it doesn’t help, just like Dean pretending everything would be fine never helped, because things never ended fine, not for them, not when you do what they did, and now here he is, burying his brother for the last time.

And Sam knows the fire doesn’t give back what it takes.

He helps Dean out of the car, tugging his body across the leather seats until his boots clunk down into the dried, matted grass. Sam takes a big, deep breath, and realizes he’s scared. He’s terrified, and he doesn’t know how to make the ride stop.

“Here we go,” he whispers, maybe to Dean, or maybe just to himself.

Then Sam heaves Dean up out of the back seat. Dean lurches forward and Sam catches him against his chest, presses his cheek to Dean’s hair and rests his nose against Dean’s temple, where he always has.

He loves him like he always did.

On the pyre, Sam lays Dean flat on the white sheet. Dean’s eye sockets are hollow and purple, blood everywhere but nowhere it should be. Sam doesn’t care. If he could, he would keep Dean with him like this forever. Just like Weekend at Bernie’s, huh? Right? Come on, Sam. That’s funny.

Sam kisses his face again, broken nose, open lips, sunken, strange cheeks. It’s all Dean.

He keeps Dean’s wallet, his watch, his lighter. The only thing he puts back is the wrinkly little 4x4 picture of them and their parents. He rests it on Dean’s belly, and then lays Dean’s palm on top.

“I love you so much,” is all he can say, and it still feels inadequate. “Bye, Dean.”

As he wraps Dean up, he knots the ropes tightly, methodical.

The last important thing Sam will ever do in his life.

*

He sleeps in the car beside the burnt pyre for two nights.

The third day, he’s on the other side of town, pointing Dean’s car back to the interstate, when the anger overwhelms him. It boomerangs through him like a possession.

When Sam jerks the car off the road, he almost goes flying into a ditch. But Baby keeps him safe and they just rumble along the shoulder for a minute, with Sam’s hands twisted tight like bones around the wheel. He bounces around, the car rolling over underbrush and rocks and all kinds of things that shake Sam up like a pressurized can.

By the time he comes to a stop he’s breathing hard, adrenaline, anger. A mean, blank slate.

The barn is a few hours away.

Sam makes it back there by night fall. He rips the rebar out of the wall with his bare hands, and burns the building to scrap and ash.

*

After the pyre, Sam doesn’t hear Dean’s voice in his head anymore.

*

It takes him two more days to drive back to the bunker in silence.

No music, no talk radio. No Dean in his head. His cellphone stays dead in the glove box, tangled up with the other burners and Dean’s wedge of fake IDs. There are no friends left to call him, and if it’s a stranger with a lead, Sam knows that today it would end in suicide.

At home, Miracle greets him at the front door.

“Hi.” It’s the first time Sam has said anything since he last said ‘I love you’ to Dean. He puts one hand out for the dog to lick. “Hi, buddy. Sorry, we weren’t supposed to be gone this long.”

It was supposed to be a day trip, maybe a night if they got tired and found a hotel. Dean left the bag of dog food ripped open on the kitchen floor just in case, and Sam made fun of him for it. Always with the dog, Dean.

And now Miracle is happy and well-fed, but he keeps looking around Sam for Dean.

“Me too, buddy,” Sam tells him, setting his and Dean’s bags down on the floor.

*

Dean loved Miracle, so at first, Sam only stays alive for him.

“For someone who said he didn’t like dogs,” Sam murmurs, throwing another piece of bacon up in the air. “You sure had him trained.”

Miracle barks again and wags his tail.

Dogs only live for ten, maybe eleven years? And Miracle is at least four or five. Sam sits on Dean’s bed and promises himself, five years. If it doesn’t work out after that, it’s okay. He tried.

On the seventh day since Dean died, Sam tries to say “Miracle” but he just can’t.

There’s no such thing.

He just starts calling the dog Buddy instead.

*

Dean blasts down the empty road.

It’s the perfect day. The sun is shining and if he looks up at the right angle, he can see the blue mountain caps up over the silhouette of the trees.

“Haha,” he laughs to himself, a grin on his face that he cannot shake. He picks the rickety shoebox full of tapes up off the floor and sets them on the passenger seat so he can dig around in it.

He finds the perfect one -- a bootleg copy of an AC/DC set from 1976 -- and pops it the deck.

If heaven had a highway, this is her. Smooth asphalt, a fresh pave, the center line a pure, fresh yellow that blinks by faster and faster as Dean lays on the gas. He taps his fingers on the wheel and the first notes clang out of the speakers. Look at that, the tape starts at the beginning even though he knows he forgot to rewind it before they lost it in the crash.

Dean knows he’s got some business to take care of up here… but not before he does this.

Part of him feels like he won the lottery. He laughs again as he flies over a dip in the road, and the car feels like it goes flying through the air. It’s all still up there -- every memory, every thought that ever ran through his brain. He still has his personality, and his crappy old soul.

He tilts his head towards the passenger seat, and goes to open his mouth and make a joke before he smiles and cuts himself off instead. His throat clicks and his eyelashes flicker as he glances over at the empty seat.

Just miles of highway flying past the window that still has Sam’s sleepy forehead smudge on it.

Dean turns back and looks out at where the road is leading him.

That’s when it really opens up, just a length of back highway that stretches out for as far as Dean can see. He drops his foot on the pedal and leans into it, into the speed, the freedom, the first moment of his life that isn’t weighed down by the shackles of being everything to everyone. Now he can be whoever he wants to be.

He grins again.

He’s got things to do.

Maybe find a few good spots to eat at before he gets here.

*

It’s been a year since Dean died.

Sam gets through the days. He’s hunting again, and he’s reckless about it, but it makes him feel better some days, to know he’s toeing the tight rope between staying alive and being dead. At night, he lays alone in the bed with the dog at his feet and promises himself one more day.

One more day, one more day, one more day.

It’s peaceful, to not have to worry about it. To not have your heart walking around in the world outside of you. Sam only has to keep himself alive until he dies, and it’s a relief, to not have anything more at stake.

And then everything changes.

The baby finds him. It isn’t the other way around.

Sam doesn’t go looking for anything anymore, chronically suicidal, but then there he is one day. Sam finds him on the floor in a public bathroom at the beach. Buddy is soaking wet and caked with sand and shit from the shore, but Sam just has a premonition, something that tells him to push open the stall door of the handicap stall.

And then there’s this baby, staring up at him.

“Hi,” Sam says carefully, holding the door open with one hand. He looks around the bathroom, empty other than him, because it’s a crappy grey day and no one is planning to lay in the sun in New Hampshire in the middle of November. “How did you get here?”

The baby is old enough to track him with his eyes and make some noise with his mouth. Sam sticks his head back through the main door, but no one is outside. It’s just him, the dog, and now this baby, apparently. For the first time in a while, he knows what Dean would say. A whole ass baby? Are you kidding me, Sam??

Sam squats down beside the car seat, which looks well-kept but a generation old, and pokes around in the blankets wrapped around the baby’s body. There’s a piece of paper, folded in half and then half again.

Born January 3 2021 healthy baby boy. dad is trying to kill us. Please keep him safe. I love him.

He reads the note three times, and then looks around again.

Babies stick around for a lot longer than five years.

Over by the door, Buddy barks and wags his tail, nails clicking on the tiled floor as he turns in a circle, ready to go.

“Alright,” Sam sighs. He sticks the note in his jacket pocket, carefully picks the baby up, and pushes the empty car seat under the leaky bank of sinks. The baby is still warm, and settles against Sam’s shoulder comfortably. Sam has a split second where he looks at himself in the speckly mirror, and thinks: what the fuck are you doing? You can’t keep anyone safe.

Then he makes his mind up.

“Let’s get you somewhere warm,” he murmurs, opening the door.

*

The days go by slow, but the years go by fast.

Sam is surprised to learn he’s a good dad. He always thought that was more of Dean’s gig, that it was never something he would be able to do -- especially alone. But at first, DJ is just this fat little baby that Sam is sure he’s feeding too much, and DJ doesn’t know anything at all. That makes it easier, when Sam realizes they’re in this together.

Kids were never off the table. Dean always talked about them, but always in relation to the things they couldn’t have, like the suburbs and moving back to Lawrence to settle down.

Dean would have loved DJ.

For the first few years, Sam stays on the road, because the road reminds him of Dean. It offers comfort that the grief classes and the anti-depressants can’t. It doesn’t matter where Sam is, when they’re rolling towards the sunset with another dusty little town behind them, Dean is in the driver’s seat all over again.

It isn’t until DJ has to start school that Sam stops moving them around as much. He rents an apartment in Texas for a while, but they’re still nomadic. Buddy dies two weeks after DJ’s kindergarten graduation ceremony, so Sam packs them up in the car, and they head north. They live in Colorado for a little while, because they have good schools and Sam actually kind of likes skiing. It only lasts until the fourth grade, though. Over the next eight years, they live in four more states.

All this time Sam spent resenting their dad for moving them around like a military family, and here Sam is, doing it again because sometimes it’s the only way he feels any relief.

“Dad, how about Alabama?” DJ asks, a month after he turns 17. He laughs and says, “Look, there’s a statue of Reagan at this McDonald’s he visited once. That’s awesome.”

It’s crazy. They never met, but sometimes DJ reminds Sam of Dean so much, his eyes water.

*

Regular life is as boring as Jess always threatened it could be.

Sam gets older, and older, and one day, he looks in the mirror and wonders where the fuck all the years went. He retires from his crappy little job that paid for all the expenses of having a kid, and DJ starts to drift away, but it makes Sam happy. Those five years he promised Buddy are long gone, he raised a good kid into a good man, and now here he is on the other side.

He visits DJ in the little off-campus apartment he’s renting with his girlfriend. There’s a picture of Sam on the mantel, and a smaller one of Dean, because even though DJ never got to meet Dean, he knew damn well who he was named after.

And then five months later, Sam goes to the doctor, and finds out about the cancer.

*

Dean shakes his head as the first track on the tape ends.

God, this is such a good set. The second song starts with a kick, and Deans start tapping away again, thinking about how the one thing he never got to do was go back in time and sit front row at the friggin Troubadour.

The horizon is still up ahead, but the density of the trees starts to thin out a little bit. A few miles later, he swings around a curve and realizes there’s a riverbank coming up.

“Well I’ll be damned,” he says to himself, a little awed.

The sun sparkles off the water even though Dean is still a ways away. He wonders what kind of rules they have up here, if he could mindmeld a sandwich or if there’s some kind of heaven type bodega kicking around. Maybe he can get one of Ash’s nasty, delicious burgers from the Roadhouse.

Dirt kicks up as Dean peels onto the bridge and takes up enough space for two cars.

“So cool,” he grins to himself, shaking his head.

He stops the tape halfway through the song and takes his keys out of the ignition. Before Dean gets out of the car, he straightens up the cassettes left in the shoebox, and slides the whole thing back under the passenger seat. Yeah, because that’s a good place for them -- jeez, Dean.

Dean frowns as he straightens up and looks around. He swears it sounded like Sammy was right here. He suspiciously peers back over each shoulder one more time before he gets out.

Damn, it’s beautiful here… wherever “here” is. It’s vaguely familiar, but Dean can’t put his finger on it. This could be any state park in the world, and if you told Dean he was in Colorado or Alabama right now, he’d believe either one.

He gets out of the car and ambles down the length of the bridge.

Look at the friggin water, he thinks to himself, squinting down the rocky banks. It’s so clear you can see the fish trying to swim up stream. He rests both hands on the metal railing and takes a deep breath. It’s pretty perfect here; the picturesque cover of an Oregon postcard. Can you fish in heaven?

Then he suddenly gets it. He knows, now, what Bobby said about time.

It’s like the sun always finds a way to get brighter when Sam is around.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says first.

And sure enough, when he turns around--

“Dean.”

Sam looks just as sad as he did the last time Dean saw him.

He’s got that serious look on his face like he used to get when they were kids, and Dean hasn’t had much of a chance to think about the night he died yet, but man. The sad frown on Sam’s face puts him right back to dying on that wall.

The only thing he can do is turn around and tug Sam forward into a hug. Sam falls into him, knocking them both back a step, and Dean smiles, gets Sam wrapped up tight. He feels Sam start to shake, laughing or crying or maybe a combination of both.

Both of Sam’s hands press into Dean’s shoulders, fingers spreading so wide they feel like wings.

Yeah, this is heaven alright.

And there are sad, dark circles underneath Sammy’s eyes, but Dean will ask about those later.

For now he turns them both towards the water. It’s nowhere they’ve been, but it reminds Dean of everywhere. The little fishing towns they’d roll through for a beer and a sandwich. The coastal cities full of weird donuts and nasty coffee. The safehouse that burned to the ground and left only a back country plot behind.

“Wow,” Sam creaks out. He takes a deep, shaky breath, and admits, “I think I’m dreaming.”

Dean grins, dimple to dimple, and curls his fingers into the hair on the back of Sam’s head. “This is it, baby.”

“We’re really… this is it?” Sam finally seems to realize where they are. He looks around, and sees the car over Dean’s shoulder for the first time. He lets out that tiny laugh again. “Of course.”

A little offended, Dean shoves Sam by the shoulder. “Hey! Shut it.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Sam volleys back, and then he laughs for real. The tension, the terror, the hesitation and the second nature of waiting to see what the trick is, it all melts away. “God.” He lets out a real breath this time, and both hands grip the railing. “This isn’t real.”

Dean laughs. “Believe it, Sammy. It’s as real as my tits.”

“You.” Sam looks at him, face split into a real grin. “God, I missed you.”

He lets go of the railing with the hand closest to Dean, and grabs him by the front of the jacket instead. Dean smiles and says, “Why Sammy, I didn’t know you felt that way,” and then cuts himself off and laughs as Sam yanks him into a kiss.

Halfway through it, Dean feels Sam’s hand twist up the small of his back.

“You’re okay,” Sam says into Dean’s mouth. Dean breaks the kiss and leans away, watches the relief pour across Sam’s face as he palms the spot where there might have been a scar, had Dean made it out of that barn alive. Sam’s fingers curl into Dean’s skin and he falls forward, mouth landing wet against the shoulder of Dean’s jacket. “You’re really okay.”

Dean hugs him again, serious about it this time. He still can’t wrap his arms all the way around Sam’s shoulders and have his fingers touch on the other side.

“Never been better,” he muffles into Sam’s jacket pocket. “Man, look at you.”

Sam sounds nineteen again as he mumbles back, “It’s been a really long time.”

“What? It’s been like, ten minutes,” Dean gives Sam a look, and then a charming smile. “I have something to show you.” This is the day he’s been waiting for his whole life. When Sam gives him a look back, he adds, “You can tell me the whole story on the way.”

*

Before Sam gets into the passenger seat, he checks for their initials on the back dash.

“How…” he trails, staring at the familiar but long gone S.W. and D.W. He remembers the afternoon they did it; they were at Bobby’s, and they were running through a maze of tire stacks when Dean found the swiss army knife in the dirt. They got in so much trouble the next day. He eyes Dean critically over the roof of the car. “This is… this is?”

Dean grins back, bursting with joy at the seams. “She’s back. This is her, man. Uncrashed, original plates, my friggin’ box of bootlegs. It’s all back.”

“Great,” Sam manages tightly, which makes Dean laugh.

Overwhelmed, Sam shuts the back door and opens the front just as Dean drops behind the wheel.

“This morning I was in a hospice bed,” Sam says quietly, stunned. He gets in and runs the palm of his hand over the dash, the glove box. It feels real. “I didn’t think I’d be here today.”

Dean grins at him again, but it’s softer this time. “Tell me about it, Sammy.”

“I mean, I knew it was coming.” Sam frowns a little, eyebrows knotting. “I had cancer.”

Before he can say anything else, Dean cuts him off, delighted. “Cancer?! That is awesome.”

“Dean,” Sam complains, giving him a look.

Dean has the decency to look sorry for a split second. “No, I mean… you know. Regular people die from cancer all the time!”

“Yeah, lucky break for me,” Sam says back, flat. He’s planning to leave it at that, but then he can’t help himself, and adds, “You know cancer kills like 20 thousand people every single day?”

There’s a pause, and then Dean turns that smile on him. The affectionate, crinkly-eyed one, with no teeth, where he’s not trying to be charming, and he’s just smiling at Sam. It’s the first time Sam has been stuck in Dean’s crosshairs since the day he died. He doesn’t know whether he wants to kiss him or break a stick over his head.

“I missed this,” Dean says genuinely. His face splits into a full, dazzling grin.

Sam frowns. “You said I was gone for like, ten minutes.”

“Yeah.” Dean looks serious again, those big eyes and all that face. “You were.”

*

Dean rolls them back off the bridge and through what looks like a state park.

“Where are we?” Sam asks, mostly rhetorically. He leans forward and peers out the window. Looks like every place they’ve ever been, but there’s a certain familiarity to it... “Are we in Plattsburgh?”

Dean smacks the steering wheel with his palm. “Plattsburgh! That’s what it is.”

Sam looks over at him curiously, and he swears when he looks back out the window, it looks more definitively like Plattsburgh than it did before.

“This is close to where I burned you up,” Sam says quietly. They roll down the gravel path that leads them back to the highway; the last time Sam did this, he was covered in ash from Dean’s pit. “Jesus.”

Dean keeps giving him the look, glancing over like he doesn’t think Sam notices the way he has to try to keep his eyes on the road.

“It’s the first place I came when I got here,” Dean says simply.

Sam smiles a little at that, tight, no teeth, and feels a bit of peace that he did right by Dean in death. All those years he held onto the guilt of leaving Dean behind, of scattering his ashes.

Part of Sam felt like it was his job to carry Dean around forever, keep him in a vial around his neck. But it was a slippery slope. And Sam knew himself. If he gave into the urge, the compulsion to take Dean apart and keep whatever he could get, it wouldn’t end. Just like before.

“I took your watch,” Sam says quietly, still reflecting, staring out the window.

Dean squawks. “You took my watch?! Bitch!”

“You didn’t need it, Dean,” Sam frowns over at him.

Dean shoots him another look, but lets it go.

“That night,” Dean finally says. “I wasn’t planning to die on you. But I had been waiting for a long time.”

Sam nods. “I know.”

“My inevitable demise,” Dean says dramatically. “Dean Winchester, murdered by a barn.”

“Not funny, Dean.”

“It’s kinda funny.”

“When I took you off the wall, your guts fell out,” Sam says. It’s not funny to him, and Dean can make as many jokes as he wants, but Sam will carry that night with him forever. Even though he’s here now and Dean is, too. “I put you back together with my hands.”

That sobers Dean up. He clears his throat uncomfortably. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.” Sam frowns again and looks up ahead; the horizon, never-ending. “Well. Those kids wanted me to tell you thank you.”

Now Dean is interested. His eyebrow pops up and he asks, “You saw them again?”

“On the side of the road that night.” Sam remembers it, too, their ghostly little frames stuck out of place on that big dark highway shoulder. “I picked them up and took them to the police.”

Dean says, “Good boy, Sammy,” and reaches over to grab his shoulder.

He goes to take his hand back, but Sam grabs it, and keeps it in his lap.

“I have so much to tell you.” Sam looks down at Dean’s hand, and this is Dean’s hand, it’s not a meat suit, it’s not a really good imitation. Sam flips it over and presses his thumb up the life line in the middle of his palm. Dean automatically curls his fingers around Sam’s. “I don’t even know where to start, man.”

There are so many stories he wants to tell Dean about DJ. He wants to say the whole thing, from the moment he found him until the moment DJ told him he could leave. Tears spring to his eyes again but he focuses on Dean’s hand; every moment of his life led him right here.

“I know a place,” Dean says elusively, laying on the gas.

*

Dust kicks up behind them as Dean peels the car into the empty lot.

“No way,” Sam says, floored. “Are you serious?”

When he looks over at Dean, there’s an uncontrollably indulgent look on his face. The dust settles around the car, and for the first time in fifty years, Sam realizes he’s sitting outside of the Roadhouse.

“Believe it, baby,” Dean says quietly.

They get out of the car, doors slamming with a quiet, deeply familiar sound.

Sam follows Dean up the little step, still staring around with his mouth open. There are two chairs on the front stoop, a table with some cards and two beers set down. Dean opens the doors and holds it like that for Sam with a grin.

As he steps in, his eyes adjust from the bright sky outside to the dim interior of Harvelle’s.

There’s the bar end they sat at with dad’s casefile, and the booth where Dean took a nap that day he was so hungover he couldn’t talk without gagging. The pool table where Sam and Jo double hustled some guy one night for more than he could pay up. The same jukebox Sam remembers Dean bitching about because it always ate all his coins, but he kept putting them in.

Ellen, behind the bar, turns around to face them, with a rag in one hand and a clean beer glass in the other.

“Well, hell,” she says. “Took you boys long enough.”