firmament | More than the dirt it takes to bury them

Title: More than the dirt it takes to bury them
Fandom: Supernatural
Rating: NC-17
Length: About 24,000 words.
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean, other ensemble characters.

Content notes: (skip) Includes addiction/withdrawal scenarios, some alcohol abuse, and sexual situations involving siblings who don't know they're related. There's also some canon-appropriate violence (and nothing to the extreme that the show ever reaches).

Summary: Sam Wesson doesn't usually run off with strangers to fight what lurks in the dark. But then, Sam doesn't meet people he dreams about - people like Dean Smith - every day. It's not perfect, but he's making a difference and getting closer to Dean, so what's not to love?

Except the dreams he still can't explain. And the way he's starting to sweat and shake and itch for something he can't name. Something like demon blood. (For spn_j2_bigbang 2012.)

Also available on: AO3 | LJ
Non-AO3 downloads: mobi | epub | PDF

(Note: the story and the ebooks were edited 6/23/12 to fix a mild canon error.)

Art post

Master post - quayle

Author's notes

The stunning artwork's by the amazing quayle, who was lovely to work with (and extremely tolerant of my idiosyncrasies, to put it mildly). Make sure to stop by the art post and shower love!

As always, I have to thank my family and friends for putting up with me during Big Bang season, but three people in particular: my mom for listening when I couldn't figure things out, rahnekat for her enthusiasm for Smith/Wesson, and most of all, the fantastic puchuupoet, who did a stellar beta job at the absolute last minute. Any lingering errors/annoying parts of the story are from my fiddling.

Additional thanks to the spn_j2_bigbang mods, as always. Their hard work always makes this challenge a joy!

Thanks for reading!

Most folks live and die without moving anything more than the dirt it takes to bury them. You get to change things.
-Zachariah, It's a Terrible Life

“I'm stronger than that now. Now I can kill.”

Sam curls his hand.

His head flares with pain, and it's hard to get his fingers to tighten around the air, almost like he's grabbing an invisible stress ball. But he keeps pushing, and when light flares in front of him, his hand finally manages to curl into a fist.

When the body slumps to the floor, blood trickles out of Sam's nose.

It's dark behind Sam's eyelids, and warm. The pillow crinkles against his cheek as he shifts around, and the blanket catches between his legs. He tastes pennies in his mouth, and he flicks his tongue around, trying to catch all of the blood–

The alarm goes off.

Sam squeezes his eyes tighter, grabs his cell phone by memory, and rubs his face, groaning.

When he opens his eyes, the apartment's as empty as it was when he first moved in. He'd never made it his own - he hadn't been in town long enough for decorating, and tech support wasn't going to put him on Cribs any time soon - but there was enough furniture to sell on Craigslist, and he'd donated everything else that wasn't his laptop or his iPod or clothes. He has more cash in his pocket than he'd had since he and Madison broke up, but again, not saying much.

Sam folds his blanket, tosses it on top of his two bags, and stumbles into the shower.

His last moments in the apartment are underwhelming. After he's clean, he packs everything down and turns in his keys to the front office. He's not attached enough for a more formal goodbye, and the person working doesn't give him a second look. Probably for the best.

By the time he makes it to the bus, it's after the morning rush, but it's still busy enough that he's standing in the aisle with his bags at his feet. Maybe he should've pushed Dean into picking him up; he has a car, after all. But then, Sam was the one who pushed him into turning in his resignation in the first place. And he'd turned down Dean's offer to spend the night after their farewell-to-Sandover beers. (Dean even drank one. A light beer, but it was still empty carbs.)

At least he's not on the bus long. When he reaches his stop and walks the couple of blocks to Dean's condo - old condo, now - Dean's standing out front in jeans and a leather jacket. Like the place he's leaving, they're slick: Sam would be willing to bet the jacket's worth more money than everything he'd scraped together by selling his possessions, and the jeans are some brand that's basically Italian for "rich". Still, it's more dressed down than Sam's seen him. The last three days, Dean had still been wearing his suits. Maybe because he wouldn't get to wear them anymore.

Dean watches a couple of movers take out his Bowflex machine, and he hands Sam a Starbucks cup. "Don't mind a no-foam latte, do you?" he asks.

Sam shakes his head and takes a sip. It's way better than the sludge Sandover had tried to pass as coffee, and it's hot. "Got much more to do?"

"This is it." Dean sighs quietly. "Gave the key to the guy renting out the place, and he's keeping the rest of the furnishings."

"So you didn't sleep on the floor last night?"

Dean snorts. "Please."

Sam laughs. He takes another mouthful of coffee and, after he swallows, he asks, "Who's taking the first leg?"

For a second, Dean's eyebrows furrow. Maybe he hadn't thought about the fact that he'd be riding in his car with another licensed driver. But when his expression clears, he replies, "I've got this for a while. Double-shot espresso never lets me down."

The movers slam the back of the truck closed, and while Dean finishes talking to them, Sam throws his stuff in the trunk of Dean's Prius. It's one of the smaller trunks he's seen, and Dean's taking a lot of crap that Sam suspects he doesn't need, but Sam manages to cram his bags in. Anything like food or hunting supplies will probably need to go in the back seat, but for now, they're covered.

Sam's legs have to twist in a weird position to fit in the space in front of the passenger's seat. And really, the whole thing's a little...narrow. But he's not falling out any time soon, and it's still way better than the bus. Judging by the way Dean climbs into his seat with a happy sigh, he'd likely agree.

"Ready?" Dean asks, with one last glance at his building.

"Ready."

Dean turns on the car - although it's hard to tell, with the engine as quiet as it is - and they ghost away, barely making a sound.

It doesn't take Sam any time at all to figure out that riding with Dean's going to be a pain in the ass. It isn't a surprise, even if he's not really a corporate douchebag, but it only takes Sam two hours to start clenching his jaw.

"We're not supply shopping in town," Dean says with a huff. "I still have my condo."

"That you're renting out."

"Either way. I want to come back someday."

Sam lets that one drop. Until Dean tosses over his smart phone and Sam frowns down at the GPS app.

"You can't read the directions?" Sam asks. The voice had been telling Dean which exits to take, and it had worked fine so far.

"I need you to search for a supply store. Probably not in whatever town we're hitting next–"

"Dayton, Dean."

"–but somewhere on the way."

"Why?" Sam asks. "We can get most of the basics at a Wal-Mart on the way. Probably a good place to stop for bathroom and food, too."

Dean's hands clench on the steering wheel. "What."

"There's usually signs for Wal-Marts on the freeway. But I can look one up." Sam squints at the screen in his hand. He doesn't have the money for an Android-type smart phone – he didn't even with his job – but it can't be too hard to figure out.

"We are not," Dean says, laughing incredulously, "stopping at a Wal-Mart. Not even if you're about to pee all over my seat."

"So what, you'd rather I stick it out the window?"

"Or you wait for lunch like a normal person."

Sam rolls his eyes. "We're not made of money, Smith. I don't care how much you've got; it won't last forever. You'll have to learn to make do."

"I can make do," Dean says. "But no Wal-Mart."

"Whatever." Sam will wear him down.

Dean does let Sam out near a Wal-Mart when they stop for the night. It's kind of a compromise: Sam gets supplies while Dean finds a room. The reason it's not actually a compromise is that Sam didn't successfully convince Dean to let him drive while Dean slept in the car, so it's mostly Dean being pissy and Sam getting a breather before he punches him in the face. Which is another compromise altogether, probably.

After Sam finishes, Dean picks him up without a word and takes him to a Holiday Inn Express. The bed's great, and the shower isn't shabby, but Sam puts down the bags and says, "How much was this?"

Dean crosses his arms and scowls.

"How long do you want to do this for?" Sam waves his arms a little. "Because it's math, dude. We'll need to figure out a way to make money at some point, and I've got some ideas, but whatever I manage to pull together won't be enough to cover a place like this for a week, much less the months I'd like to be doing this." Sam nudges the Wal-Mart bags. "Let me know if I missed anything. I'm taking a shower."

It's not like he really needs another shower until tomorrow morning. But the room's paid up, and he'll take it.

Sam flops on the bed, and the woman on top of him draws her arm back. He should be exhausted, spent. But his skin aches, and he wants more.

"Ready to go?" he asks, drawing a finger over the woman's wrist, circling the red wound.

She grins down at him. "Think you can keep it in your pants while I clean up?"

"You want to take a shower?"

"Uh, yeah. Just because you like going after demons in your own filth doesn't mean I do."

Sam rolls his eyes. "There's just no point in cleaning up until after, you know?"

"Basic comfort's enough of a point." She kisses his shoulder and flops out of bed. "I'll toss you a washcloth, Romeo. You won't even have to move."

Sam laughs a little and turns over in bed so he can see the bedside clock, and...

...it's nighttime, and a figure's sprawled on the bed across, snoring with his mouth open. Sam can't see him, but it's Dean. Of course it's Dean. Right.

Sam blinks a couple times, fast at first, then longer as he tries to get his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Never mind that it was already dark and his eyes were closed. It's more like he was squinting into the golden light in the dream than giving his eyes a break.

He shivers a little – when he started sweating in his sleep, he kicked off the blankets even though it's chilly without them – and pulls the comforter close. Maybe he can get a couple hours before they hit the road again.

"Dude. Breakfast."

Sam blinks his eyes open and rubs his face. Dean's standing in front of him with a wrap in his hand, and Sam takes it. "You been up long?"

Dean waves his own wrap and sits in the chair across from Sam's bed. "Long enough to jog. And I was thinking."

"Did you get a medal?" Dean looks at Sam funny, but Sam grins back. "I meant, when you were thinking...never mind. What were you thinking about?"

"That thing you were talking about last night. The money thing."

Sam quirks an eyebrow and takes a bite of the wrap. Turkey and veggies, from the taste of things. But the tortilla tastes kind of like the cheap ones he was looking at when he went shopping at Wal-Mart, which meant Dean made it. "These are good."

"Thanks," Dean says. He takes another bite and closes his eyes like he'll never eat anything like this again. "But the money. It is going to get tight soon, and...well. If we need to do a budget, I can figure that out. Sound good?"

"Uh."

"Great." Dean finishes his wrap in two more bites and uses a hotel tissue to wipe his hands. "I get first shower."

It isn't until the water's running and Sam's staring at his wrap that he gets it. Dean was apologizing.

"You kind of suck, dude," he says to the quiet room around him, but he laughs quietly and digs into his food.

Dean's stretching by the time Sam makes it out of the shower and loads his stuff into the trunk.

"Running another marathon?" Sam asks.

"We'll be sitting in a car all day. Easy to get stiff." Dean bends down, and he grunts a little as he grabs the backs of his ankles. "So what's the deal with this job?"

Sam has the clippings in his laptop case, but he does his best to sum up. "Seems like a stereotypical haunted house story. Locals won't go near the place because they say it's had activity for years, but teenagers think it's a great make-out spot, so they break in and drink. Usually no big deal, but five kids have gone missing in the last six months, and two of those were last month."

Dean straightens, a little pale. "What if it's human? A whack-job with a hard-on for taking out kids?"

It's a good question. Sam sticks out his lip as he considers. "Guess we save who we can and call the cops?"

"But we can't really stop humans, can we?"

"Are you really worried about it?" Sam's tone's light, but he's serious. This isn't the kind of job where they can nitpick their every step, or they'll never get anything done.

Dean looks deep in thought for a minute. His eyes are shadowed, and for some reason, Sam thinks of his dream the night before. Demons, the woman had said, like it was nothing.

"No," Dean says eventually. "I'm actually not worried. I mean, about someone wanting to drink my blood? Maybe a little."

"No vampires then," Sam says.

He claps Dean on the shoulder, and just as he pulls back, Dean says, "Did you have dreams about vampires?"

Sam just grins. "Let's go."

“Oh, come on.” But Dean follows.

The nice thing about small towns is that there aren't a lot of motel options. The choice between the lacy, overly pink bed-and-breakfast and the run-down trucker stop by the freeway isn't really a choice at all, even for Dean, who'd heaved a heavy sigh when the Holiday Inn hadn't had turndown service.

"There's a whole...thing," Sam says, walking to the room that Dean had managed to snag. The parking lot's thick with trailers and bearded men who give Dean odd looks. And once-overs, but Sam suspects that's not what Dean wants to hear. "My parents went to a bed-and-breakfast, and the owners were asking about them all the time and inviting them to poker games and crap."

"I get it," Dean says. He's in a tan sweater and khakis, and he sneers a little at a trucker who frowns at him. Sam tenses for a second, but the trucker keeps walking. "We can't have Grandma Doily breathing down our necks. It's fine."

But he stops dead in the doorway, and Sam, keeping an eye out for anyone who might decide that Dean's just asking for an ass-kicking, runs into him. "What the hell?"

Dean clicks on the light, and Sam peeks around him.

It's a dump. No denying that. But there's no bugs on the floor or water stains on the ceiling, and he's pretty sure the weird smell in the air is cleaning chemicals and not something more sickening or threatening, so whatever.

"Come on," Sam says, pushing around him. He sets his bag next to a table and pulls out his laptop. "We need to figure out our plan of attack."

Dean finally steps inside and closes the door, but he looks at a loss. He pulls his loafers off the carpet, nose crinkled, and says, "It's sticky."

Sam bites the inside of his lip a little, then says, "Seems fine to me."

Dean looks up at the ceiling - maybe he's trying to pretend he's somewhere else - and lowers onto the nearest bed. He drops his hand beside him, and when he looks down again, he jumps to his feet, arching his neck like he's trying not to shudder. "The bed's stained."

"Just the comforter." Sam can't resist a quiet snicker. "Toss it on the floor. It's fine."

Dean glares at him. "Fine. That's your bed."

"Okay." Sam pulls the comforter off and stacks his backpack on top. "Can we figure out what we're doing already?"

Dean spreads his hands. He's still crinkling his nose like he smells something bad. "What's to figure? We go in, we gank the monster, we move on."

Sam resists the urge to roll his eyes. But just barely. "We need to figure out what kind of monster it is. We need to figure out what's keeping it tied to the area, and if it's got anyone right now."

"So what," Dean says, blinking. "We have to do research? I thought we got that covered."

Sam unzips his backpack and pulls papers out. "We got some ghost-burning stuff. But if what I saw online was right, there's all kinds of monsters, a lot of which look like ghosts."

Dean plops in a chair, shifts like he sat in something, and eventually stops and rubs his face. "I might need another Starbucks run for this."

Sam takes the library trip off Dean's hands. After all, if a dodgy motel made the guy cringe, a dingy old public space would probably give him a heart attack. And that was the best-case scenario. If Dean thought about how gross the keyboards were...well. Sam can deal with public exposure.

He sends Dean off to the center of town to ask questions. After all, he's a well-groomed white guy; as long as he doesn't hit on anyone, it shouldn't be a big deal.

Sam pauses in the library entrance as he gives that some thought. What kind of guy is Dean, anyway? He's good at killing ghosts, and he's kind of a prissy douche, but would he trust him around his sister? If he had a sister.

Well, it's too late now. He doesn't hear sirens, and his cell phone isn't buzzing in his pocket. Dean's a grown man who worked at Sandover's for a while without getting reported. That'll have to be enough.

When Sam sits at the computer, it's like being home again. Not in a good way. The library's even a little too hot, like it had been at the old office. All Sam needs is a crappy multiline phone to really complete the experience.

By the time he's found what he's needed, sweat's started beading on his forehead. He takes notes and brushes off the moisture with the back of his hand.

He leaves the first second he's able, and it still doesn't feel fast enough.

It turns out Dean is the kind of guy who hits on women. When Sam catches up with him in the City Center, Dean's got his cell phone out in front of a woman who's probably in her mid-twenties, and she's grinning as she reads off numbers.

"Seven...eight...two," Dean repeats back. "Got it. Thank you, Mandy."

"And thank you," Mandy says, slipping her phone back in her pocket. She slings her purse over her shoulder and walks away. Dean watches her go very openly.

Sam laughs a little incredulously. "Important case work, huh?"

Dean smirks. "I'll have you know, two of the numbers in my contacts are from people who were at the house at the time of the murder."

"Wow." Sam nods a little. "Was Mandy one of them?"

Dean smooths down his sweater. "She liked my loafers."

Sam rolls his eyes, but he can't help laughing, too. "Maybe we'll finish early," he says as they walk back to the Prius. "You can ask her to a bar or something."

Dean grins and unlocks the car, humming quietly.

He's stopped humming long before the house job is done.

The monster's not a ghost; it's something called a ghoul. Which is nothing like an angry spirit. Instead, it's a scavenger that takes on faces and usually eats corpses, and since the town had blocked off its cemetery, it looked thin and pale and half-dead.

Of course, it was still fast. Dean got thrown in what seemed like an old compost pile, and Sam had a decent-sized gash torn in his arm. By the time Sam tackled the ghoul and Dean took off its head, they were both hurting. And disgusting.

Dean limps into the motel bathroom without a word. He even strips off his clothes and leaves them on the floor, and Sam can't help staring at the folds of the clothes in the dim light. Dean's the guy who rolled his shirt into a suitcase the night before. Granted, his shirt hadn't smelled like rotten fruit yesterday, but still.

Sam shakes his head and grabs the first-aid kit Dean packed. Luckily, the wound on his arm's stopped bleeding and doesn't look like much. But there is a fresh cut on his arm, and Sam pushes at it with the tip of his finger. Blood smears, and the edge of the wound stings with pressure. Breath catches in Sam's throat...

...and then the water in the shower turns off.

Sam jerks his hand away like it's on fire and pulls out an antiseptic pad. He can't cover the cut fast enough.

Sam's up before Dean the next morning. Mostly because he never went to sleep.

It's not a big deal; he's never slept great on the road trips he's taken before, and it's not like the edges of his vision are blurring or he's faint. If anything, it's nice that he can get some work done. He doesn't go jogging, but he finds a drop-in gym near the edge of town and puts in a couple minutes of weights. He also swings by a laundromat and checks his laptop for the next potential job while his clothes spin. There's a couple prospects not too far away, and one of them definitely looks like a ghost. Ghost is good. He bookmarks a couple pages and packs up the clothes he washed before making it back to the motel.

"Hey." Dean's hair's freshly washed, and he's slipping on his loafers. "Thought we were hitting the road early."

"I was looking up more jobs." He grabs his backpack and puts the bag of clothes he washed next to it. "And I did a couple things."

"You seen my sweater?"

Sam smiles and pulls out the freshly folded clothes from the bag. It smells nice. Like home. "This is it, right?”

"You–" Dean snatches the clothes. "You washed these?"

Sam's smile fades a little. "Yeah?"

"Not dry clean?"

"The tags said–"

"I don't care what the tags say." Dean zips open his suitcase with a little force, rattling the table it's resting on.

Sam clenches his jaw. "You're welcome."

Dean pauses for a second before he puts the clothes in. Then he rests his hands on the table. "I don't mean to be a dick, but...if this is what we should be doing, shouldn't it be easier than this?"

"We're on the road," Sam says, like that's any kind of response.

But maybe it is. Dean taps his fingers for a minute, but he ends up zipping up his suitcase and lowering it to the floor.

"Let's go," Dean says. "Lots of miles to cover."

They get to the town by eight, and it feels like Sam's been on the road forever.

He barely waits before Dean gets them a room before he says, "I'm crashing out, dude."

"Already?" Dean frowns. "Shouldn't we get to work? Hit the books? Whatever?"

"We can do that in the morning." At Dean's crestfallen expression, Sam adds, "Or you can go to a bar. Scope out the feeling in town."

Dean nods slowly as he pulls the car into a parking spot in front of their room. "You don't even want dinner?"

Sam shakes his head and lets his eyes droop closed. "I can eat after I get up."

"If you're sure." Dean hands him a key. An honest-to-god piece of metal, not a card, like they've had the past couple nights. If Sam had had any doubts that they'd left civilization, that killed the last of them.

Sam doesn't bother bringing in his laptop or clothes. He barely opens his eyes long enough to get out of the car and into the room, and he's asleep almost before he hits the pillow of the bed nearest to the door.

The door's open, and the brunette woman's talking to someone as Sam passes by. He doesn't smell pizza, but the delivery guy probably hasn't taken it out of the warming case yet.

And then he stops. Because it isn't a delivery guy.

"Hey, Sammy," Dean says.

But it can't be. Dean's been...Dean's not...

Sam tastes blood in his mouth as he launches himself forward and pulls his knife.

Something thumps loudly next to Sam's ear, and he twitches.

"What's wrong?" he says, words a little thick in his mouth.

"Nothing," Dean whispers. "Go back to sleep."

But Sam opens his eyes and sits up.

This motel room isn't quite as much of a dive as the one the night before. It definitely hit its prime ten years before Sam was born, and it's a little musty, but the blankets feel new, and the curtains do a great job blocking anything outside.

Even though the numbers on the clock read 2:38 – and it's definitely not afternoon – Dean's sitting at a table with a bunch of books.

"Where'd you get those?"

"Library was open," Dean says. "Figured I'd get a head start. Maybe we can take a day off if we get this wrapped up fast."

"It's not exactly a seven-days-a-week job." Sam smiles a little.

Dean shoots him a level look. "Go back to sleep."

Sam rubs his eyes, but he nods and lays back on the pillows. "You sleep, too."

"I will."

Waking up's hard. Gravity feels twice as strong as normal, and Sam's still sweating, like the air conditioner's broken. He manages to haul himself to the shower, even though he falls half-asleep inside. It's only the sound of the slamming door that brings him out of it, and he stops the water and starts toweling himself off.

"You in there, Sammy?"

"Yeah, Dean." His voice shakes, and he coughs to cover it up.

"I brought breakfast."

Sam nods even though Dean can't see and dries off. He wraps the towel around his waist and goes into the room, where Dean's waiting with...

"Donuts?" Sam asks.

Dean turns toward him with a smile, but it fades when he takes Sam in. "You look like crap, dude."

"Thanks." Sam limps toward the bed to get fresh clothes.

Dean shakes himself off. "But yeah, donuts. They were always my sick food when I was a kid, and with the chemicals they pump in, they've gotta be good for a couple days, right?"

Sam snorts a little. "Would you actually eat them if they did?"

"Probably not." Dean shudders. "But you can, if you feel like it. Or you can feed the birds. I don't care."

"Thanks, man."

Dean opens the box and holds it out to Sam, who takes a white-frosted one. He takes a bite and closes his eyes a little. It's still warm.

"You need to take the day off?" Dean asks.

"No," Sam says right away.

"It's not a big deal." Dean closes the box of donuts and puts them on the table next to his suitcase. "You don't have health insurance anymore, right? It's not like you can just run to the doctor."

Sam snorts. "You say that like I had insurance at my last job."

"You were supposed to."

"Wasn't there long enough for it to kick in."

Dean frowns. "I need you sharp when you're at my back."

"When I'm at your back." Sam's feeling draggy enough that he sits on the bed, but he's grinning. “You're taking point?”

"Damn straight. I have management experience. That puts me up front."

"But wouldn't that make you the general? Officers stay behind the grunts."

For a second, it looks like Dean's seriously considering the topic. He shrugs. "Okay, well. Even if you're in the front, I need you to survive long enough that I can get away."

"Good to know you have your priorities in order."

Dean claps him on the shoulder. "I didn't find out much from the books. I'm gonna check them again, make sure I didn't miss anything. You could nap or something."

"Sounds good." It really does. Judging by the way his skin hurts, he probably has a fever. "Of course, if I get the ghosts sick, maybe that'll take care of them."

Dean laughs incredulously. "Dude, they're already dead."

By the time Sam makes it to the afternoon, he's slept four hours, and he's definitely shaking now.

Dean's out when he wakes up, so Sam forces himself to walk to the local drugstore. He's flagging hardcore by the time he makes it, but the drugstore's actually a gas station hybrid, so Sam can buy cold medicine and coffee in one spot. Should be enough to get back to the motel, at least.

He slumps through the aisles, circles the row he needs twice before he actually stops, and sways in place while he tries to read labels. It's almost like the shadows move.

“Just get something,” he mutters. Once he dopes himself up, it'll be easier to think. Hopefully.

He grabs a bottle and slumps to the register. While digging his cash out of his pocket, he drops a couple quarters, and they roll under a chip stand braced against the front counter..

"Crap," he mutters. "Sorry about that."

"You okay, mister?" the cashier, a guy who looks like he was a trucker in another life, asks in a somewhat bright tone.

"Fine," Sam says, and he bends to clean up.

When he stands straight, he notices the trucker fixing his sleeve and wiping something red from his hands onto a napkin. Sam frowns for a second, but he shakes it off and hands the cash forward.

"Have a good day," the cashier says, staring pointedly at Sam.

"You too," Sam says, taking a sip of his coffee. It tastes...well, like gas station coffee. At least it's strong.

He slips into the bathroom long enough to take a swig of medicine and starts walking back.

By the time he makes it back to the motel room, the Prius is back in its spot, and Dean's inside. More importantly, Sam feels a million times better than he did, to the point where his posture feels normal and he doesn't have to his shirt rolled up to keep from overheating..

"Hey," Dean says. "You went out?"

Sam nods. "Got cold medicine."

"You're looking better." Dean grins. "Which is good. We can tackle Casper tonight."

"You found him?"

"Yeah. And get this; his name's actually Casper." Dean laughs.

Sam can't help but join in.

The ghost's a lot easier to deal with than the ghoul was.

For one thing, Sam and Dean know the tricks already. They use salt to block the doors, they have iron pokers from the ghoul-infested house, and they've got lighters to burn the lock of Casper's hair that was stuck in one of the baseboards. Of course, it probably feels easier to Sam because he's not on death's door and because Dean did all the research, but he'll take it.

Of course, Dean's got a bit of a spring in his step, too. "We should celebrate, right?"

Sam's a little worried about money - his wallet's certainly getting light - but they saved a woman from getting killed by a ghost in her own home, and it's not even eight yet. It's hard to worry.

"I could go for a beer," Sam says.

They actually end up driving a couple hours toward a new, bigger town because Dean is set on getting to a place that has something resembling healthy food. That doesn't stop him from scowling when Sam tells him to park in front of a Biggerson's.

"You kidding? They drown everything in grease."

"It's also cheaper than every place you were looking at on your phone, and they have a lower-calorie menu." Sam pauses. "And you can eat smaller portions and drink a lot of water if it bothers you."

"Some celebration," Dean grumbles, but he follows Sam inside.

Sam can't remember the last time he's been to a Biggerson's, but there something...familiar about the whole thing. Probably because it's a chain; that's the point, after all. But it seems like an itch at the back of Sam's mind, like he's just missing something.

By the time Sam orders a burger and Dean begrudgingly orders the closest thing they have to a real salad, Dean notices Sam shifting on his side of the booth. "Still feeling okay?"

"Yeah, yeah," Sam says. And he does. He feels pumped, if anything.

He beams at the server when he brings their drinks - Dean sticks to water, but Sam has a full-caloried, on-tap beer that tastes full and delicious - and bounces his fingers on his leg.

"Guess you are feeling better," Dean says. His gaze drifts up and down Sam. Sam bites his lip.

"Lots," Sam says. It's only when he starts tracing his finger around the top of his glass that Dean looks away.

The really buzzed feeling lasts well into the next day. Sam doesn't sleep much, but he doesn't need to. He takes a long jog and does sit-ups by the bed, and by the time Dean's awake, he's already showered and dressed.

"You're driving," Dean says almost right away, tossing him the keys as he rolls out of bed.

Sam blinks. "Seriously?"

"I feel like staring at something not road for five minutes," Dean says. "Or ghosts. Or moldy research books. I've barely checked my stocks this week."

While Sam takes the wheel, Dean pokes around on his phone, occasionally humming along with whatever crappy pop station he finds or scoffing with a quiet "come on" when he reads something. After Sam asks him about his first investment, and Dean goes on about the value of gold for forty-five minutes, he lets the rest of the noises go without comment.

The car feels just as small in the driver's seat. And too...hardy, is the word that comes to mind. It takes them most of the day before they have to stop for gas, so the first few pit stops are purely food- and bathroom-related. It's easier on their wallets than other cars, at least.

Since the gas mileage does come out so well, Dean insists they wait for the best price on gas they can find. "It's freaking highway robbery, the way gas stations perch like vultures on the freeways. We'll get the best deal if we head into town." Never mind that driving off the freeway uses extra gas. It's an easy point to give Dean for a little peace.

Sam goes in when they stop - Dean never lets him fill the tank - and stares at the drinks and candy like they'll tell him where they should go next.

"Well, well. Hello, Sam."

A soccer mom's leering at him from the end of the aisle. The second he sees her, the skin on Sam's arm goes into goosebumps.

"Do I know you?" he asks.

She blinks, and her eyes go black. "You can't stay off the radar forever."

Sam's breath hitches as she raises a hand, and the snacks on the shelves around Sam push back with a gust. He puts up his arms to protect his head, but it won't be enough. The power's radiating strongly that he can feel it even without direct contact.

But the power glances off when it does hit, and he lowers his arms once it disappears. The black-eyed woman snarls.

"Guess you've had your spinach, Popeye." She stomps forward, and Sam nearly trips in his haste to step back. "But it won't save you."

A shovel swings through the air, and when it hits the woman's head, it cracks, bending. Sam winces, but the woman straightens and whips her head around to the man holding the shovel like a sword.

"Guess it wouldn't be Bonnie without Clyde," the woman hisses at Dean. Because of course it's Dean, pale and wide-eyed, blocking the front door.

"Sam," Dean says quietly, and his eyes flick toward a door in the back corner. But when Sam glances back, he sees a major lock on it, like it's a storeroom.

He shakes his head. "Run."

"No one's going anywhere," the woman says, and she starts to raise her hand in Dean's direction.

But something sparks in Sam, and he yells, "Run."

He curls his hand.

It isn't like it was in the dream. Whatever the woman is, she's not nearly as strong as what he'd struggled with before. Sam's hand shakes like he's grabbing onto the power the woman was shooting his way, and she lights up from the inside. She screams as she flashes before she drops to the floor, lights gone, a puddle of blood spreading underneath her.

Dean didn't run. He stands over the woman, shovel still in his hands, and gapes at Sam, jaw dropped.

"Go. Now," Sam says.

As they run out the door, Dean looks back at the dead woman every few seconds. Sam only looks forward.

"Who the hell did we piss off?"

Sam tears his eyes away from the speedometer. For the last couple hours, they've been driving twenty miles over the speed limit, dangerous with out-of-state plates like theirs, but considering how Dean's been leaning on the gas, twenty miles is downright conservative.

"I..." He swallows. "I think she was after me."

Dean shakes his head. "Bonnie and Clyde. She knew me, too."

"But...but her eyes."

Dean bounces his hand on the steering wheel a couple times, and when he nods like he decided something, he pulls over the car to the side of the road.

Sam looks from him to where they parked. "Dude. We need distance." He's been thinking about the cameras in the gas station ever since they left, and how fast the cops could find–

"Tell me why I shouldn't push you out of the car right now."

Sam jumps. "What?"

"Or leave your ass. Probably that one."

"I thought...” Sam takes a shaky breath. “Aren't we in this together?"

"Are we?" Dean sets his jaw. He still won't look over at Sam. "What did you pull back there?"

Sam blinks and stares down at his hand. He curls his fingers, but it doesn't feel like anything. Not like it felt back there. Not like...

Not like it felt in the dream.

"Demons," he whispers.

"What?"

When Sam picks up his head again, Dean's staring straight at him. And he looks like he's ready to punch a wall, but he's also listening.

"I've been...dreaming." Sam rubs the back of his neck. "Like I was back at Sandover."

"About me?"

"Not this time. But it feels like...it feels like you should be there." Sam shakes his head. He hadn't felt that loss until now, but it's there, like someone scooped out important organs from his chest. He rubs his chest a little, and says, "I was fighting demons."

"Demons." The word's not disbelieving, or confused. It sounds like Dean's trying it on his mouth again, and he leans back against his seat.

Sam nods.

"Demons," Dean says again. This time, it sounds wondering. "How the hell did I forget?"

"You remember something?"

Dean sags a little. "No. But it feels like I should."

As Dean jiggles his leg, Sam digs his fingers into his jeans. It isn't until Dean pulls the lever, taking the car out of park, that Sam relaxes his fingers and exhales hard.

"We should hole up somewhere," Dean says. "Figure out what's really going on."

Sam nods absently. Hiding somewhere won't change the fact that they have nothing to go on. Nothing but Sam's dreams.

He straightens. "I've got an idea."

The idea, appropriately enough, takes a motel room.

They pick something over the next state line that's really gross. When Sam pays in cash - he kept a part of his furniture money for an emergency just like this one - the seedy cashier hands him a key and doesn't give him a second look as he lists off where the condom vending machine is and what channels they can use to order porn. Sam gives him a tight-lipped smile and finds their room.

There's only one king-sized bed, and the room smells like something died in it, but Dean only crinkles his nose and says, "How long do you think this'll take?"

"An hour, maybe?" Sam's already pulling the nighttime cold medicine out of his bag that they'd picked up at a gas station. "To get started. I don't know how long it'll take me to dream. If I dream at all."

"And you really think this is our best bet?"

Sam measures out a cup of glowing red liquid. He winces. Cold medicine always tastes like ass. "You got any other leads right now?"

"Besides my gut feelings?" Dean shakes his head. "But I don't like it."

"Then put up salt or something. Give us some protection."

Dean rubs his hands together. "You'll be okay here?"

Sam tips the medicine into his mouth and shivers. Nasty. "Unless you smother me in my sleep."

He'd be lying if he didn't admit he relaxes when Dean rolls his eyes and says, "Get some shut-eye, Sleeping Beauty" and goes outside.

Sam lays back on the bed. Sleeping Beauty, Bonnie, and Popeye. That's a lot of characters for one day.

Dean writhing on the ground, a blonde woman watching with a big smile. Sam's screaming, tears almost blurring Dean out of sight, and–

No. This isn't what he needs to see.

Dean hugging Sam. Sam in a shack, firelight bouncing on the walls. The smell of sulfur in the air. The cadence of badly-recited Latin. The taste of pennies on Sam's tongue.

Dark clouds.

That's familiar. Possibly useful. Sam focuses.

The smell of ozone. Rumbling in the sky. Ringing in the air as water bounces off metal.

It all freezes, and Sam walks through like a ghost.

Raindrops hanging in the air catching the filtered light with faint glimmers. Footsteps crunch gravel, and...

Sam pauses. Not feet. The sound's too even for feet.

Tires.

Sam's eyes open.

The room's dark, and the wood-paneled walls are barely visible with the closed drapes. He can only see vague shapes thanks to a flashing TV in the corner, but Dean's not watching. He's curled up on the bed next to Sam, fully dressed, but his chin's tilted forward a little, and his eyes are closed.

Something tightens in Sam's chest.

"Hey," he says quietly when he can manage, shaking Dean's arm.

Dean snorts and jerks awake. "Wha?"

"I know where we need to go."

Dean nods and grabs his coat. It's only when he stumbles to his feet that Sam notices the salt in front of the door.

They drive for days.

Sam loses count because he drives little and sleeps a lot. Whatever sickness he'd been fighting off before all this started is back, and he's sweating, keeping whatever cool thing against his cheek that he can find.

Dean's shooting him looks almost more than he watches the road. “Hang in there,” he says after he passes Sam the cold medicine the first day. “We'll figure it out.”

Sam nods and barely tastes the medicine on the way down.

He doesn't sleep. He doesn't feel much of anything.

“– problem, officer?”

Sam blinks. The world is the kind of blue it gets to be with clouds and a setting or rising sun, and as he shivers, he can't tell which it's supposed to be.

“–driving over the speed limit. Need to see your license and registration.”

Sam leans back as Dean goes for the glove compartment. Dean fishes out the papers, takes out the expensive-looking wallet from the jacket he has hanging from the chair, and leans over to hand what he has to the cop.

A chill up Sam's spine is his only warning.

The cop clamps one hand around Dean's arm, pinning him against the door, and another around his throat, squeezing. Sam's hands scramble on the door to push the lock, and when he pops the door, he's falling on his face.

“Let him go!” he yells, supporting his weight on the hood of the car as he stands..

Dean's watching him with a purple face and bulging eyes, his fingernails dragging across the cop's arm over and over as he tries to get free. The cop's bleeding very heavily. Sam doesn't need to look into his black eyes to know how he can still hold on.

The cop grins and turns to Sam, but the smile disappears before he can say anything. Sam's yanking and pulling before he even starts curling his fist, throwing all of whatever power he has behind it. He doesn't see the slowly building colors lighting up the cop like it did the woman in the gas station; it's one big orange explosion. The cop lets go of Dean just as he falls, and Dean collapses against the steering wheel, the horn honking beneath him.

Sam wants to follow them both and collapse. But some surge of adrenaline or psychic mojo keeps him strong enough to make his way to Dean's side, and he pushes him back against the seat.

“Dean!”

No answer. He presses his fingers to the inside of Dean's uninjured wrist. There's definitely a pulse. And those are definitely Dean's eyes fluttering open, and breaths wheezing out of his mouth.

“The...”

“Don't talk,” Sam says. “Can you move?”

Dean nods, winces as it tugs at the already-bruising skin around his throat, and rolls over into the passenger's seat, groaning every time he jostles something. Sam drags the still-breathing cop away from the car, picks up Dean's discarded license and papers, and climbs into the car.

“You have your phone?” Sam asks as he buckles in. “We need to find a hospital.”

“No.”

“Dean–”

“No.” It's a croak, but Dean's scowling like he means it. “Drive.”

And Sam does.

The adrenaline's gone within the hour.

It isn't sudden, like Sam's good one second and about to pass out the next. It's just that it gets harder to check his speed, or look for the exits they need, and eventually, to keep his head steady. It's when his hands start to shake and he changes lanes twice without meaning to that Dean gestures to the side of the road, and Sam's too busy parking to object.

“I'll drive,” Dean forces out when they're stopped.

“But what...what about...” It's all Sam can do to weakly gesture at Dean's throat.

“'M fine. Move.”

They manage, somehow. Sam isn't sure when he got to be in worse shape than a guy who nearly got choked to death a few minutes ago, but he's almost crawling to the backseat.

He passes out before the car starts moving again.

"Sam? Hey, Sam!"

Hands are shaking him. It's only when Sam blinks and looks up at Dean that they stop. Through the windshield behind Dean, there's a seemingly never-ending line of pine trees stretched out to the distance, tall enough to obscure the sky overhead.

"Yeah?"

Dean shakes his head. His voice is a little rough, but it mostly sounds normal again. “Damn it, you've gotta answer me when I'm talking to you.”

“S-sorry.” Now that he's kind of awake again, his teeth are chattering.

“You're the one that knows where we're going, man.” Dean's got cold weather gear on, but Sam's still dripping sweat. Just looking at the expensive coat and gloves Dean's using makes Sam shake a little more. “How far are we?”

"Just a couple more miles." He pauses and looks out his window. He shouldn't know, especially since he was out for so long. But this...this is definitely familiar.

Dean starts the car again, and sure enough, Sam sees a side path's that's no more than dirt cut into a line of trees within ten minutes. If he didn't know where to look, he wouldn't know it.

“There,” he croaks, pointing when Dean slows.

The car turns onto it. They have to go slow because the Prius is so close to the ground and there's still remnants of winter snow on the ground, but they round the corner, and a lake appears.

A lake, and parked under the trees next to it, a car.

Dean parks and tells Sam to wait. “I'll check it out,” he says.

Sam gives Dean about a minute of squinting at the car and looking in the windows before he drags himself out of the car and across the lightly muddy path. The other car's an Impala, which Sam doesn't need the decal on the side to confirm, much older than the computerized car at his back, and definitely bigger. Sam leans against it for a moment before he reaches in one of the wheel wells and pulls out keys.

Dean huffs a quiet laugh. "Seriously?"

"Just wait until you see the trunk," Sam says, smiling despite himself.

Dean snatches the keys from his hand. “You should sit down, asshole.”

“And miss the grand reveal? No way.”

Dean rolls his eyes, but he bends and rolls a shoulder forward. Sam throws his shoulder around, letting Dean take some of his weight, and they make their way to the back together.

“Think you can stand on your own for five seconds?”

Sam snorts, but he slips his arm down and stands. He shakes again, but the cold air feels amazing on his skin, so he waves Dean off when Dean gestures at his coat.

“Just get it open,” Sam says.

When Dean pulls the trunk open, the door tries to close dramatically on Dean's head before it's all the way up. It creaks when Dean forces it all the way up. Definitely better that Sam didn't try it.

“There's nothing here.” Dean drags his hand across the bottom, like he can reveal something magician-style.

Sam steps forward. It only takes him a few seconds to feel where the false bottom comes up, and when he pulls it up, Dean's eyes go cartoon-style big.

“A little help?” Sam asks when his arm starts to tremble. “It won't stay up on its own.”

“You want me to hold it?”

Sam points to a shotgun. "Use that."

"What?"

Sam grabs the shotgun and braces the false bottom. He leans on the bottom once that's done, winded, but it's his turn to take everything in.

Guns. Ammo. All the ghost fixings. Weird bottles and boxes and necklaces that he wouldn't even begin to know how to use.

"Well," Dean says, voice awed. "This'll make a difference."

The cabin they break into on their side of the lake doesn't have much. Sam doesn't see power outlets or anything resembling a furnace. It does, however, have a working toilet, and after Sam pukes three times in two hours, he really appreciates what a different that makes.

The first time, Dean hovers in the doorway, clenching and unclenching his hands like he can fight whatever evil stomach monsters are causing the nausea. Sam would laugh if he wasn't busy hurling up his insides.

When Sam gets a break, he finally says aloud what he's been thinking. "You should get rid of the Prius."

"My car?"

"We have another car." Sam sighs and leans on the toilet seat. He can still see his breath mist in the air, so it's not a good sign that the porcelain feels delightfully cool on his skin. "And it's not on any cameras."

"That we know of."

Sam pushes to his feet. "Fine, I'll do it."

"Just...hold on, okay?" Dean holds out his hands, and when Sam leans against the sink, he grumbles, "That beast outside probably gets negative gas mileage." But he also claps a hand on Sam's arm and heads outside.

When he comes back in, he's wearing a leather coat and holding another one. He still has his own peacoat and khakis and polo on underneath, along with the gloves and hat that go with the outfit, but he looks a lot warmer that way.

He holds the second coat out to Sam, but Sam shakes his head.

"Take the freaking coat," Dean says, scowling.

"Too hot."

"Do I look like I care?"

Sam's more worried about dehydration than hypothermia – he had another hurling session while Dean was gone, so it's not like there's much in his stomach as it is – but he doesn't have the energy to fight. He takes the coat and shrugs it on.

"I'll be poking through the guns when you're done."

"You ever fire a gun?"

Dean shrugs. "Looks like it."

Sam's too busy dropping back down to the toilet to ask more, but as Dean goes back into the room, he sincerely hopes Dean doesn't shoot something important. Like himself.

"So you've been using your freaky ESP stuff?"

Sam shakes his head, sweaty bangs falling in his face. "No."

"You sure about that?"

Sam doesn't answer again. He won't rise to the bait.

"Sam?"

"I said no, okay, Dean?"

A hand shakes his shoulder, and Sam jerks awake.

"I was just checking on you, what the hell," Dean says. Sam winces. "There's a couple beds in this place, you know."

Sam sits up from the toilet, rubbing his back. Yeah, that was a bad idea. “Lead the way.”.

The cabin's not very big. If it had been set up for the winter, Sam would say it was for hunters looking for game, but it's not, so maybe its lakeside position means it's for boating or something. When it's not below freezing, that is.

The beds Dean mentioned are in a bedroom, dark and tucked away from the rest of the house. It's small, and Sam'll need to fold in half to fit on his, but still, it's better than using a toilet for a pillow. It isn't until his cheek hits pillow and his body unloosens that he realizes just how much pain he was in.

"Sleep," Dean says, sticking a bucket by his head. "Don't die."

If Sam wasn't half-unconscious, he'd grunt. But he's closing his eyes, and he doesn't even think to pull up the comforter until Dean does it for him, and he's out.

"I gave him what he wanted. And it wasn't some bitch in a g-string."

The knife tightens at Sam's throat. He laughs a little, trying to wriggle his way free. But the hand holding it – even in a dream, Sam feels the texture and knows Dean – doesn't give ground.

In front of him, the man leans forward. "It was you."

A shadow passes in front of Sam's eyes.

When he pushes the lids open, all he sees is Dean in the other bed, snoring quietly, fully dressed and half-sitting, like he'd been watching Sam and just happened to fall asleep. If it wasn't for the dim flashlight illuminating dust motes on the floor, Sam wouldn't see anything, like the door to the rest of the cabin slightly cracked.

He squeezes his eyelids shut and open again, but nothing happens. Probably just some weird trick of the not-light.

Sam grabs the flashlight and eases out of bed. His mouth's dry and his bladder's full, which isn't a good combination.

The floor boards creak as he makes his way to the rest of the cabin, and occasionally, other parts creak in the wind. He can't be sure if the place is haunted or not...except there's something on the table, and Sam paid enough attention to the Ghostfacers videos to know it's an EMF detector. There aren't power lines this far out, and when he switches it on, it doesn't so much as blip. At least ghosts aren't a problem.

That's what he tells himself when he sees his shadows distort on the floors and walls as he makes his way to the bathroom. Sometimes, they look like smoke, and not the kind that comes from a fire. Regular smoke doesn't twist around his head and...menace, if that's possible. Other times, the shadows take the shape of other people's shadows, people he should know, people who gesture and seem to scream without words or sound.

“No,” Sam mutters. He stops and rubs his eyes, and when he opens his eyes again, he's staring at his own silhouette on the wall.

He uses the toilet. He's looking over his shoulder the whole time, but nothing happens. Not until he goes back out to the living room, and a woman's standing right in front of him.

"You're a hard man to find," she says. "You disappeared a few days ago, and I thought I'd never catch up."

Rubbing his free hand against his eyes doesn't make her disappear. She quirks her lips and tilts her head, and...

"You!" Sam says, nearly dropping the flashlight. "My dreams."

The woman lifts her hands and looks toward the ceiling. "Great. Still mind whammied."

She takes a couple steps forward, and Sam shrinks back against the wall.

"Whoa, hey." She stops. "I'm just going to help you with your little problem you're having. Again."

Sam frowns. "How do you–"

"You've been dreaming about me. You know me, Sam." She moves again, and there's something about the way she smells that's very familiar. Sweet, with just the barest edge of something not.

"Maybe," he says. "But I don't right now. So maybe you should just go."

She shakes her head. "Can't do that. Not until you're at fighting strength again."

"I said no."

The woman sighs, and she twitches a hand. The bedroom door creaks shut. "You'll thank me later."

Sam stumbles backward against the wall. "You're a demon."

"Duh." She pulls out a knife, but when Sam's hands ball into fists, she holds out a hand and says, "Not hurting you, remember? I'm helping."

She draws the knife against her skin, and blood wells out. It looks nearly black thanks to the cold blue beam coming from the light in Sam's hand.

So why does it suddenly look like the best thing in the world?

He blinks, and she's in front of him, cradling his neck, sticking her arm against his lips. He jerks, but she shushes him and mutters soothing nothings he can't hear until he tentatively licks, and...

Sam groans, and he holds the arm to his mouth.

It doesn't really taste like blood, not like what gets on his tongue when cuts his mouth or has a nosebleed. But then, it's not like he's tasting the blood itself, but what's underneath. It's hot and glowing and filling Sam head to toe with everything he's been missing for days. The mist huffing from his nose doesn't seem like cold condensation so much as smoke from a fire in Sam's gut.

It's heady. It's too much. And it's fucking perfect.

But another murmur fills the air, and the woman jerks back, turning on her heel. Sam doesn't hear what she says; he's slipping down the wall and licking his lips and staring without seeing as everything slots back into place. He almost feels the wall in his brain separating him from what he needs to know, can feel the holes where the memories trickles out, and if he pushes just a little bit...

A gust hits his face, and Sam can focus again.

The woman's on the floor, still with eyes unblinking and blank. Dean's crouched in front of Sam, pushing his face until his staring into his eyes.

"...hurt you? Sam? Sammy? Can you hear me?"

"Don't..." Sam lifts a hand to push Dean away from his face, but Sam touches his hand, and it's Dean. His palm lingers, and Dean's hand should be cold, but it's just the perfect amount of warmth, better than the raging fire through his veins, better than the chilled air around him. It's just what he needs.

“Sam?”

Right. He was saying something. "Don't call me Sammy," he finishes, but his voice is breathy, and Dean pales.

"What'd she do to you?"

He looks down. There's still blood on his fingertips from where he'd touched his lips, and Dean looks at it, too. Then Dean's staring at his mouth, and the heat under Sam's skin flares even more.

"I don't..." He forces himself to move his hand away from Dean's. "What did you do?"

Dean pats Sam's face, laughs quietly, and pats a book nearby. "Exorcism. Turns out us mundanes can get demons out, too."

Sam laughs too, but it's giddy for a second until he reigns it in. Mundane is the last word he'd use for Dean.

They can't stay in the cabin with a body there – or won't, if Dean's disgusted face is any way to tell – so they pack up and climb in the Impala.

It's nothing like the Prius. That car was everything modern that Sam's usually familiar with: soft interiors, cozy, computerized and extremely efficient. But this car's a beast, and it growls up the road with Dean cranking the steering wheel. Sam has a lot of room to stretch out, and that's kind of awesome.

Dean's plan had made sense back at the cabin. He'd held up a business card that had been a page holder in the exorcism book – Singer Salvage, it read – and Dean had said, "Probably has something to do with the car. I figure we travel for a while, get a motel, give this guy a call."

"Why not call now?" Sam asks.

Dean tosses him his smartphone. The screen's dark.

"Doesn't matter that the car doesn't have a place to charge," Dean says with a wistful sigh. "There's no reception out here anyway."

Something's off about the way Dean drives the car. He's wearing a suit Sam recognized from their office days – all the rest were dirty, Dean had said, and he'd given the rumpled clothing bag in the Impala's trunk a good scowl – with the leather jacket over it for warmth. But he's also got an arm across the back of the bench seat, and every now and then, he gives the old-school speedometer a slightly awed expression. And then his gaze flicks over to the gas meter, and his face is a dark cloud again.

"I'll have to spend half my savings keeping this thing running," he grumbles.

"But maybe we won't have demons get the jump on us again," Sam says.

"Jump on you, you mean."

Sam shrugs. Despite the itch under his skin – not from feeling deprived like before, but feeling too much – he's willing to be charitable.

They stop in a town that's probably a lot busier during the summer. Now, with snow falling and the roads half-plowed – at least the Impala had chains, and putting them on had taken him five seconds, like he'd done it a million times before – the only people they find are one man running a gas station and an older couple running the one open inn. Even Dean, looking a little ragged around the edges, doesn't object to the weird musty smell when they get inside.

"How long until we can make the call?" Sam asks.

Dean plugs his phone into the room's one unused outlet, made free when they unplugged one of the two lamps, and flips it on. He sighs. "No reception here, either."

"We can use the handset."

"If I feel like paying collect charges out of my ass. Or you can."

Sam shrugs. "I can be patient."

And he can. No cops would probably make it their way in this weather, and Dean put salt at every possible entrance the second they got inside. But the TV isn't working, and Dean keeps shooting Sam looks, so Sam grabs a book from the pile he'd taken out of the car and holds it out to Dean.

"You think..." Dean looks at the spine. "'Physical Demon Protections' is a fun, light read?"

"It's not in Latin. Or ancient Greek."

Dean rolls his eyes.

"You want to wait for a demon to tear you apart?" Sam shakes the book. "I'd rather be ready."

"Yes, Dad," Dean mutters, but he grabs the book. And Sam's hand.

They both still. Sam's looking down at Dean, but he's feeling the connection made with both of their hands, like electricity runs through their touch. And judging by the way Dean's thumb runs once, very slowly, over the tips of Sam's fingers, he's feeling it, too.

Sam makes himself pull back first. The warm feeling in his hand spreads when he does, curling through his body, until it disappears again.

"Right," he says, flexing his fingers. "Reading."

He grabs the book on the top of the stack and sits in the chair next to the table. He feels Dean's gaze on him for a few more moments, and it's only when it drops that Sam can breathe again.

Sam tries to read. He really does. But his eyes skim over the print over and over, taking in nothing, for long enough that he's about to give up on it when Dean speaks.

"Guess the tattoo on my chest's for a reason," he says. When Sam looks up, the book's tilted down in his hands, and Sam can see him dragging a finger over a symbol on the page.

"You've got one, too?"

"Hmm?" It doesn't really sound like he's listening.

Sam sits up in his chair. His mouth goes try, but it doesn't stop him from shrugging off his t-shirt. "Like this?"

Dean looks up from the book. His eyes widen, not dramatically, but enough for Sam to see the pupils expanding over the irises. He's not staring at the tattoo, or just the tattoo; he's looking up and down Sam's torso, biting his lip...

The flush is back in Sam's skin, spreading and dropping lower. He can't take it anymore. "Dean? You with me?"

"Uh." Dean shakes himself and stares back down at the book. "Yeah. Exactly like that."

"Dean?"

Instead of looking back Sam's way, Dean snaps the book shut and throws it on his nightstand. "I'm going to take a shower. We should probably get an early start tomorrow."

But Sam doesn't want to let him leave. He jogs across the room and puts his hand over the bathroom to keep Dean from going in. Dean does look at him then, jaw set. But his eyes are pleading, asking Sam for a break without words, and Sam can't fight it. He doesn't want to.

"Early start," Sam says quietly, and he eases back.

Dean stares for another second. Finally, he swallows and gives a curt nod, and then he lets himself inside the bathroom.

Sam sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

Sam woke alone. He wasn't cold in Dean's arms, kneeling in the mud, but on a bed, dry and safe. As he sat up, the skin on his back tugged, and he winced with pain.

It took him a little while to ease out of bed and pull up his blood-stained shirt to look in a mirror, but there it was: an ugly, mostly-healed scar on his back where a wound had been. How long had he been out?

The door clicks open, and he turns to see Dean, pale and tired, staring at him. "Sammy? Thank god."

"Hey," Sam says.

Dean crosses the room and grabs Sam, hugging him for all he's worth.

Sam feels the edges of the memory, knows he winces and Dean draws back, but in the dream, he lets it linger, lets him feel Dean clinging, and knows it's everything he'll ever need.

Until he wakes up.

"Sam?"

He rolls over and sees Dean staring back, eyes lit up from the light of the alarm clock's numbers. It feels like he's been looking at Dean in dark motel rooms his entire life. It's not far from the truth, really; this life, whatever it is, has only existed since Sandover's. Even back then, Dean might not have been in his apartment every night, but he was in his head, fighting and bleeding and smiling and crying.

"What are we?" Sam whispers. "To each other?"

Dean shifts until he's sitting up. If the fact that he's lying fully dressed on top of his covers is any way to tell, he hasn't done much sleeping. "Wish I knew."

Sam stands, and the only sounds in the room are the blankets rustling as he pushes them away. It even sounds like Dean's holding his breath. Maybe he is. But he doesn't try to move away when Sam sits on his bed; if anything, it seems like he's keeping himself from leaning forward.

They sit quietly, Sam poking absently at the bed, Dean playing with the hem of his shirt. Something's different, and since Dean's letting Sam figure it out, Sam won't push.

It's when Dean drops the hem that he gets it. Of course. He's not wearing his clothes.

Instead, he's wearing whatever the Dean before wore: a black t-shirt, jeans, boots. The boots are even a little dirty, messing up the bed, but Dean doesn't seem to notice.

Sam reaches forward and lays his hand on the sleeve of Dean's shirt. Dean starts, but he relaxes when Sam pinches the fabric, rolls it between his fingertips.

"Why?" Sam whispers.

"Because I thought I'd feel like myself again," Dean whispers back. His head's turned, like he can't say what he's thinking and look at Sam at the same time. "Like I even know who that is."

Sam runs his hand up Dean's arm. He started it as a gesture of comfort, some kind of pat, but the shirt and the hair on his arm feels like Dean, and Sam feels like Sam, and he can't stop.

"You're you," Sam says. "I feel it more every day."

Dean does look at Sam then. The wind kicks up outside, and it's the only thing Sam hears besides his own beating heart. He leans in, and Sam lets him.

For some reason, Sam's first thought when their lips touch is that Dean's breath is fresh. It's minty, like he brushed while Sam was drifting in his own world, and it shouldn't be. It should taste like cheap beer or shitty food. Dean's more himself every day, but this part, the overly clean and tidy bit, is still a construct, and the fact that he still clings to it makes Sam grab for Dean, growling a little.

This, Sam can fix. This is always something he can fix.

Dean lets Sam tug off the t-shirt, lets Sam drag his hands over his lightly muscled body. Sam's fingers skim where scars should be, but his body's healed, fresh. It's like the map to Sam's life has gone blank, and no amount of grabbing can make it come back. He kisses the bruises around Dean's throat, nibbles on his jaw, and bites Dean's lip instead, and Dean groans into his mouth.

At the same time, Dean's hands are skimming over Sam's back as well, like he's looking for the same scars mirrored in Sam's skin. He won't find anything – Dean's hands skim over where the back scar from his dream should be without resistance – but Sam pulls back enough to let Dean toss off his shirt. At least he can make this part easier.

"Jesus, Sam," Dean whispers, staring like he stared earlier.

Sam kisses him again. The lack of familiar that makes his jaw set and his hands clench eases with every bit that Dean relaxes, every moment that Dean lets Sam work closer and closer to full nudity and doesn't shrink in and cover himself. It feels like he should, but Dean doesn't give a damn about "should", and neither does Sam.

Dean's not grabbing for Sam, but he doesn't need to. He's waiting. And Sam won't leave him hanging.

He presses his hand to one of Dean's shoulders, spreading his fingers. There should be a welt the shape of a hand, and it's like it was never there. But sure enough, the tattoo on his pec is exactly the same as Sam's. Probably. Sam's never seen his own tattoo in the detail he's seeing Dean's now, never had his lips and teeth lighting grazing the skin, never had a back arch toward his mouth like he can't get enough.

"It's you," he finds himself whispering, like he hasn't known for weeks. This is the Dean from his dreams more than the man who's driven with him for a couple weeks now. Even though Dean knows too, he nods.

Dean's fully hard against Sam's bare thigh, leaking and shaking, but he isn't asking for more, not with words. It doesn't stop him from grabbing at the bed when Sam wraps his hand around him, spreading precome as he jerks him, slow and steady.

"Sammy," Dean says, and it's kind of like the way he said it in Sam's dream. That moment of rediscovery, destroyed and saved all at the same time.

He meets Sam's movement with his own until he comes, barely making a sound.

They stare at each other for a while, both of their breathing heavy.

“You haven't,” Dean says finally, looking down.

Sam nods and spreads his legs, letting Dean reach down.

It isn't surprising that the feel of Dean's hand on his cock is almost like his own hand. Or that he clutches Dean's shoulder, looking to anchor himself. What is surprising is that Dean ducks his head to take the head of Sam's cock inside his mouth. He licks and nibbles and draws back every few seconds, staring up at Sam like he's looking for something.

“Yeah,” Sam finally says. He wants to caress Dean's cheek, wants to feel the shape of his own cock inside Dean's mouth through the skin, but it's too much. He grabs at the sheets instead, does his best not to look at Dean's fluttering lashes as he closes his eyes. Dean's moaning something, his tongue dragging underneath Sam's cock as his lips move, but Sam can't hear anything, nothing but the roar of his blood surging as he gets closer...closer...

He must manage to get some kind of warning out to Dean because he finishes in his own hand. But when Sam drops his head at the end of the climax, Dean's watching, and Sam knows where he's seen that look on Dean's face before.

His dream. When he hugged Sam like there was nothing left in the world but them. There's wonder and...relief.

“I'm right here,” Sam whispers. “I'm not going anywhere.”

And even though they're both sweaty and covered in their come, when Dean hugs Sam just like he did in the dream, Sam can only hug back.

The snow's stopped long enough the next day for Sam to leave the room. The storm was pretty brutal for late winter; the Impala's half-buried in the slightly sunken parking lot, trunk included. What they've got in their motel room is all that they have access to until they get dug out. Judging by the plows he sees around, it'll probably be midday at least. But the sidewalks are mostly clear, and the parking lot of the diner's free, so he heads that way.

Snow stings Sam's face as the wind blows the top layer off the trees. The raw cold on his cheeks is pretty nice, actually. He spent all night warm and next to Dean, and Dean didn't stir when Sam took his shower and dressed. He'll probably wake up if Sam brings him black coffee – he's given up on having his usual mix this far out from civilization – but he couldn't bear to do it before he left. Not when Dean was smiling in his sleep, and not when Sam was the cause.

"Winchester."

Sam frowns. The word's obviously directed toward him, but it doesn't mean anything. It's a gun, right? Like Wesson.

Like Smith and Wesson.

He turns, and a middle-aged man in a puffy jacket and plaid lowers into an aggressive crouch across the sidewalk from him.

"What did you say?" Sam asks.

"Your name, asshat. Or have you forgotten these days?" The man smirks.

Sam takes a step toward him. He isn't sure what he'll do, or even why he's doing it, but it doesn't matter. He hears the crunch of snow behind him, and when he turns, an older woman's grinning and balling her hands into fists. And then there's a couple men in the road, knee-deep in drifts. And another woman closing in from the motel he'd just left behind.

Fuck.

"You didn't think Lilith would keep letting you take us out, did you?" The original man asks. He's obviously not worried about standing out in the middle of the street, and hell, that's a scary thought. "Not without saying hello?"

It's obvious Sam's supposed to know this Lilith person – or demon, since that seems to be the way this is going – so he doesn't ask "Who?" Instead, he says, "You guys can't touch me."

"Maybe not," the woman behind him says. "But we can touch Dean. And listen to him scream. You can too, if you'd like."

"Probably squeals like a pig," another man murmurs. "Hunters usually do."

All of a sudden, Sam feels taller and wider. He tilts his head down, until he's looking over his nose at all the demons, and curls his lip.

"None of you," he hisses, "are going near Dean."

They laugh, of course. It's fine by Sam. It'll make the moment they shut up even better.

The man in front of Sam is the first to choke. And he really is choking; smoke is spilling out of his throat like he's heaving smoke out of his stomach and up. Sam keeps tugging with the invisible force that's a part of him, and he turns to the next and pulls, and it should get harder, it should be too much, but his blood positively sings.

By the time he's got all five of them writhing and yelling, there's some resistance. It's like a wind that isn't actually blowing, stinging his eyes and making the lids hard to keep open. But he probably couldn't stop even if he wanted. And he really, really doesn't.

The second the demons are gone, and a burst of power blows the top layer of snow onto Sam's pants, the thread of power cuts completely. Sam staggers, and when he throws out a hand to keep from faceplanting onto cold concrete, blood drips onto his skin. He touches his fingertips to his upper lip, and the blood trickling down from his nose covers them.

"Crap," he says quietly, and the world goes dark.

"Sam? Sam, please."

He'd thought it hurt before. And it had; the explosions were more extreme than the exorcisms. But he hadn't tried dealing with five demons at once before, either.

Sam should've known. Even as great as he felt, the blood the demon fed him could only carry so far. She'd actually helped, was an ally of some kind like his dreams suggested, and Dean had exorcised her. Their only face-to-face help.

"Damn it, Sam."

He can't unclench his eyes, or his hands, or any of his muscles on his own. It takes several minutes before anything does relax, and then it starts up again, with Sam clawing at the air. The pain is white in his head, too much for his eyes to handle even closed.

For a second, he arches off the bed, and it almost feels like he flies through the air. But he hits mattress again, so that's a stupid thought.

Something shoves in his mouth, and he bites down into leather.

Blood rushes in his ears, drowning out the rest of the room, and his one tether to the world disappears. Sam lets himself drift away, drift to some places quieter and darker, half-hoping that he'll never come back.

But he does.

The motel room's quiet and sunny. It's cold, not to the point of the cabin, but enough that the leftover sweat beading Sam's skin makes him shiver.

He gets to his feet, and god, he's aching head to toe, but it's so much better than it was before. More problematic are the stabbing hunger pains in his stomach, his dry mouth, and his barely-moving muscles. But again, after the past...however many hours, his half-hunched slumping is leap years forward.

The bathroom door's closed, but the light makes the crack between the floor and the door glow.

"Dean?" Sam doesn't know when he turned got an old man's croak, but it's not pretty. Sam grabs a water bottle from the table next to the bed, cracks the top, and takes a generous swig before trying again. "I'm awake. You doing okay?"

There's no answer.

Sam frowns. He doesn't hear the shower. He glances at the clock, but it tells him nothing. The wet paper where the bottle of water had been, on the other hand, is much more promising.

"Went to meet up with Bobby Singer," it reads. "Should be back in a couple days, if not call–"

The last two words are a guess, since the water makes the ink impossible to read. He can make out a nine and a seven afterward and nothing else.

A couple days. A couple days from when?

The paper's dated April 7th. Sam went to get coffee...the 6th, maybe? Had he been out of it more than a day?

Sam closes his eyes.

Dean tipping water in his mouth, Dean holding back his hair while he barfs, Dean and two others that look exactly like him...

Wait. What?

No, that's what happened. There was the Dean in a sweater and khakis sitting next to him on the bed, pale and sweating. Then there was a Dean wearing the clothes from the trunk and looking like a complete natural in them, face tight with some unspoken emotion. And behind him, a Dean looking sad in a way that looks completely un-Dean-like, light glowing around him like a halo.

Sam shakes his head and looks back at the paper. Why didn't Dean leave the number on his phone? Why did Dean leave in the first place? Being sick for a full day, even really sick, wasn't that bad.

He shuffles over to his phone. Maybe Dean did leave the number. Or the card he'd been talking about before. Something. If nothing else, he could order pizza and get to work putting the pounds back on that he's clearly lost. His pants are slipping off his hips with every step he takes.

The phone screen illuminates when he hits a button, and...

"No way," Sam whispers.

The date reads April 11th. It doesn't change when he stares at it.

He thumbs down to the only working number in his contacts and presses the call button.

"Please," Sam whispers. "Come on, Dean, come on–"

"Your call has been forwarded–"

Sam hangs up. And then he dials again. The voice mail picks up again. It does the third and the fourth time he calls, too.

When he calls a fifth time, he hangs up after the third ring and mutters, "Doesn't mean anything. He might not have his phone. It might be dead."

But as Sam looks out the window, at the melting snow and the completely clear roads, he knows better.

Sam's first instinct is to take the remaining wad of cash in his bag, find the nearest rental place or clunker dealership, and drive. Never mind that he has no useful leads, or that he's actually not in the same room he and Dean had driven into together. He'd checked around for a city guide, and they weren't even in the same state they'd been in before.

But he's half-crawling across the room. He's way more likely to drop dead before he makes it anywhere near a car and that's not something Dean would forgive him for. Especially since he should probably be dehydrated or starving to death at this point.

Dean didn't leave books. He didn't leave anything but weapons and tools: salt and medallions and holy water and drawn sigils under the rugs. It's probably why Sam hasn't been jumped by a demon in the days since Dean left.

He has enough energy to order a pizza and shake out a couple bills to give to the driver when he delivers it. And he has enough energy to put the pizza on the bed that he's not using and eat one slice before he passes out again, almost half on the floor from leaning to try to get more food.

It's dark when he wakes up, and the pizza's cold, but it doesn't matter. He eats another couple slices and drinks four bottles of water - he skips the sink and uses the tub to fill the bottle Dean left - before he settles onto the mattress for even more sleep. At least he's under the covers this time.

The sun's half up when he opens his eyes again, and he can't bring himself to check his phone to see if it's sunrise or sunset. Dean hasn't called him. Dean hasn't come back. There's no telltale Impala engine roar, or a courier bringing a message, or a freaking paper airplane. Dean went to find help for Sam – it's the only reason he'd go – and he has to be...he can't be...

"Sam."

Sam jerks against the headboard, heart pounding.

In the middle of the room, where there was previously nothing, is a man. A man with tousled black hair and a trenchcoat and a very steady expression. He steps forward, and Sam tries to push off the bed, but his legs are still lacking what he'd need to support his weight.

"Who the hell are you?" he croaks instead.

The man blinks and tilts his head. His face is very neutral, so it almost reads as surprise. "Zachariah didn't restore your memories."

"What?"

The man strides over to Sam. Sam falls off the bed in his attempts to get away, but the man catches up, cradles Sam's face in his hands, and–

It happens in the blink of an eye. Literally. Sam's eyelashes tangle together and push apart, and maybe he loses time, but when he looks up at Castiel again, his head is full. Not a bad or painful full, necessarily. Just the full it should be.

"Holy crap," Sam whispers. He sits up. "Dean's gone."

"I know." Now, Sam reads more than just puzzlement; Cas is downright tense.

"Was it Lilith? Did she open the last seal? When–" Sam stops. The demon Dean exorcised. Ruby. His key to Lilith.

Sam only realizes that he's rubbing as his head when Cas stills the motion with a light touch to his wrist. "Prepare yourself."

"For what?"

Cas puts his hand on Sam's chest, and pain flares. A couple of days ago, it would've more seemed intense than anything but the most devastating wounds. Now, since the worst of it goes away when Cas pulls his hand back, it's almost forgettable. It probably doesn't hurt that Sam's hunger and weariness disappears, too.

"Ow," he says anyway, rubbing at his skin and frowning.

"It was necessary. Gather your things. We need to find your brother."

Sam nods and pushes to his feet with a strength he hasn't had for days.

We need to find your brother.

The words ring in Sam's head when he appears in Bobby's muddy scrapyard with Cas. Sam shakes his head almost immediately and pulls Dean's note out of his pocket.

"They won't be here. Dean said he was going to meet Bobby, so Bobby would've met him closer to our location." He shouldn't have missed that. But then, it feels like his brain's made up of two Slinkies trying to push together. It works in some places, but mostly, the memories clang against each other.

"Where?"

Sam shakes his head and hands over the note. Cas's face grows progressively more furrowed as he reads.

"This is bad news," Cas says, giving the note back. "Zachariah's been hiding you two from my sight for weeks, but it's only in the last few days that I haven't seen Bobby Singer."

"What? How'd you find me?"

"I don't know. But no one will find you now."

Sam pats his chest. "Is that what this was?"

Cas nods. "You can't kill Lilith, Sam."

"I will if she took Dean," Sam says with a snarl, and a flush springs goosebumps onto his skin.

Cas grabs his sleeve sharply. "Don't give in, Sam. The blood is out of your system now."

"How do you...never mind. What do we do?"

Cas stares at nothing for a moment. His gaze focuses on Sam when Cas takes his arm more solidly into his hand. "Hold on."

In an instant, they're standing in a dingy hallway outside of a door labeled 2B. Cas drops Sam's arm and knocks.

"Since when do you knock?"

Cas eases out of direct view of the door. "Since I can't appear in the room we need access to."

Sam's about to ask more questions, but the door opens as far as the safety chain will allow, and a familiar face grins at him in pleased surprise. "Sam!"

He returns her grin. "Anna."

Anna unlocks the door, but she freezes when she looks around the frame. "Castiel."

"Anna."

She slips a hand behind her back, and Sam slips a hand to the gun he brought from the motel room. Not that it would do any good here. "Uh, aren't you on our side?"

Anna doesn't change her stance. "Am I?"

After a moment, Cas nods very slowly. And after another moment, Anna exhales slowly and hugs Cas hard around the neck. There's something silver in her hand that catches the light, but somehow, Sam doesn't think she's going to plunge it into Cas's back. Anna's not the type. She'd stab from the front.

"I knew you'd come around," she says, grinning. She beams up at Sam. "Let's not talk in the hall, huh?"

Sam's throat thickens when they step inside. It's never comforting to move into a room where every single wall and the ceiling and probably the rug-covered floors are painted in sigils. But Cas isn't holding himself as rigid, so Sam swallows, and some of the tension disappears.

"What's the story?" Anna asks. She puts the silver thing – a sword of some kind – on the table next to her and picks up a steaming mug, cupping it in her hands. "I'm guessing this isn't a social visit."

Cas shakes his head. "We needed somewhere to talk without being watched."

"So it's like that." Anna looks at Sam with a soft expression. "Where's Dean?"

"Gone." And there's the choked feeling again. "We're trying to find him."

"Can I trust you, Anna?" Cas asks quietly.

"I won't sell you out to the big guys, if that's what you mean." She sips and shakes her head. "I told you with Alastair–"

"You were there?" Sam asks, eyebrows going up.

"–that we needed to find our own path." Anna's eyes flicker quickly, and Sam knows she's looking at the room. "Heaven isn't mine. And if you're here, it's not yours."

Cas stares at the sigils as well, but his look isn't quite as neutral. Finally, he lets the breath he's holding out. "Zachariah ran them through a scenario."

"Did he?" Anna chuckles. "Haven't seen that trick in a while."

"And he didn't restore their memories."

Anna's eyes widen dramatically. "That's not playing fair."

"I suspect that's the point."

"So what about..." Anna looks at Sam and bites her lip.

"The demon blood should be out of his system, judging by his weakened state when he was revealed to me."

"You both knew about it?" Sam resists the urge to throw his hands in the air. Barely. "Tell me you didn't tell Dean."

"I had orders not to," Cas says.

"And I only found out in the last week." Anna puts her mug back on the desk and draws her fingers over her sword, still worrying her lip between her teeth. "Lots about you two on the wire these days."

"Why did you and Dean part ways?" Cas asks, his voice tight.

"We didn't...it wasn't like we fought or anything."

Anna sighs. "That would've been just what we needed."

"Demons had been following us for a while. I think they tracked our cars." Dean had been right about that all along. Of course. "I got cornered, and when I took them out, it pretty much drained my resources."

"So you detoxed," Anna says, beaming like it wasn't a complete accident. "What happened to Dean?"

"He left me a note saying he would find Bobby."

"And he's been gone for days," Cas says. "Both of them are."

Anna turns quickly toward Cas. "You don't think..."

"Don't think what?" Sam asks, but Cas is already shaking his head.

"I think he would've made a bigger move by now if he'd gone after Dean."

"You sure?" Anna takes a couple steps, staring at the ground. "If he took Dean out of the picture and waited for Sam to get more blood–"

Sam takes a big step back, and both angels turn to look at him. "Took Dean out of the picture?"

"She doesn't mean kill," Cas says immediately, but not in a tone that sounds comforting. "If Zachariah wanted you dead, you would be dead."

"We need to find Bobby Singer." Wind whips in the room, and Anna disappears and reappears in seconds, dressed in jeans and a jacket.

Despite the gnawing worry in his stomach, Sam can't help but ask, "Can all of you do that?"

"Some people don't care to," Anna says, looking Cas up and down. "Let's go. Bobby won't find himself."

Jumping around the country with angels sucks.

They only take breaks when Sam stops to puke, whether it's by the side of the road or in a line of bushes or whatever. Every time he does, Anna and Cas whisper to each other in low tones that only make it to Sam's ears in odd hisses that barely lift over the breeze.

"I can keep up, you know," Sam says after the fourth time, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Nearly a Stanford grad, after all."

Anna gives him a sad smile. Before she can talk, he says, "Skip the pity. What do you know about Dean?"

"Nothing," Cas says immediately with an unmistakable shut-up look to Anna. "We have theories and nothing to back them up."

"But we'll find him," Sam says.

Anna nods. "Cas would know if he's dead."

Sam winces. That's...something. He squares his shoulders and says, "Let's go back to work."

Cas grabs his arm, but before they leave, he gives him a thoughtful expression, and a tingle runs through Sam. It takes him a second to realize he's healing. Maybe it's Cas's way of saying he's sorry.

Then they start all over again.

Sam's the tag-along – it takes about three seconds in each place for Anna and Cas to scan for a sign of Dean – so the only way to keep the whirlwind of scenery from getting to him is to think. And who else will he think about?

Jump.

Dean's gone, and he doesn't even have the ghost of Sam's memories to help.

Jump.

Dean can kind of deal with ghosts and demons, but he's one guy. And if it's not ghosts or demons...

Jump.

What about angels? The ones on their side are with Sam, and Dean doesn't have what's on Sam's ribs. If they decided to do something...

Jump.

Sam breathes in and holds up a hand. "You guys smell that?"

Anna nods immediately. She gestures west, and together, they crunch over the remnants of snow.

It doesn't take Sam long to separate the smells in his nose, probably because they're familiar :sulfur and blood. The red sprays on the snow seconds later confirms it. A couple of houses appear; they're probably not too far from a town, judging by the way small trails of smoke curl over the treetops. But it's too quiet.

"Stay here," Anna says, and she disappears. She's back before Sam counts to five. "He's in there."

"Dean?" Sam asks, but he asks while he's running, and when he bangs the broken screen door open, his own question's answered.

Bobby's lying on the floor of the cabin, blue-lipped and still. Judging by the snow that's blown in the front door and the ice on his beard, he's been there a long time.

“Is he...”

"He's alive," Anna says right away, crouching beside him.

"How?"

Cas says, "Revive him" before she can answer. It's an evasion, but when she looks at Sam, Sam kneels down quickly and nods.

She lies her palm on his forehead, and before Sam's eyes, the shallow movements of his chest – which were there, if hard to see – deepen, and pink tones return to his skin. By the time Bobby takes a long jagged gasp of air and opens his eyes, Anna's sagging against the wall.

"Sam?" Bobby says. "That you?"

"Yeah," Sam says, smiling despite himself, eyes flickering between Bobby and Anna. "What the hell happened?"

Bobby struggles up on his elbows, and Sam helps him stand.

"You...you got your noggin fixed, I'm guessing?"

Sam nods, and Bobby grabs at his head. His hat's a few feet away, so Sam grabs it and hands it over. But instead of putting it on his head, he wrings it in his hands.

"Those sons of bitches tailed him," Bobby says. "And he didn't...he couldn't..."

"It's not your fault," Sam says quickly. Instead of saying it's mine, he tells him, "Zachariah took away our memories for some kind of lesson, I guess."

Bobby looks around the front room, eyes wide. "How long have I been like this?"

Sam shrugs.

Bobby pulls out his cell phone and frowns when it's dark. "Balls."

"Dean?"

"Right, sorry." Bobby sticks his phone back in his pocket and taps at the watch on his wrist. He shakes his head and continues. "The demons circled us, and it didn't look good, 'specially because that brother of yours didn't trust me further than he could throw me."

Sam winces. "Not even to get rid of the demons?"

"Oh, sure. But he wasn't paying full attention because he expected me to stab him in the back, and they broke all of the crap defenses we'd managed. We were screwed."

"So the demons took him," Sam says tightly.

"Will you let me finish?" Bobby jams his hat on his head. "They didn't have a chance because a really powerful white light burned them all out of existence."

Anna and Cas both look up from their corner.

"Like..." Anna begins.

"Not even like you two put together," Bobby says, "and I saw what you did to that barn, Cas. No. This was something way beyond."

"So the white light happened," Sam says, "and what, Dean left?"

"The white light happened, and then I woke up five seconds ago."

Sam's jaw drops.

"Well," Anna says after a few moments of silence. "Guess it isn't just a theory anymore."

They jump to Bobby's scrap yard. Bobby looks happy to be home, even if he keeps shooting Sam guilty looks. Sam and Bobby get food, and Cas grills him Bobby in...well, his own way.

"I understand the date all this happened," Cas says. "But I need the exact time."

"You think I stopped to check my cell phone the second I thought my ass was grass?" Bobby takes an indignant bite of sandwich and a swig of beer.

"I'm not asking on a whim," Cas says in the slightly deeper, more dangerous version of his voice. "I'm asking because it's important."

"You think?"

Cas leans in. "This could be vital to the survival of your species' entire existence. So think."

Bobby raises an eyebrow and chews slowly. When he finally swallows, he says, "Ten? Ten-thirty, maybe?"

Sam nods at Bobby's wrist. "Didn't your watch stop?"

Before Bobby can look, Cas grabs his wrist and says, "Nine thirty-seven."

He turns and leaves the kitchen immediately. Sam pushes back his chair quickly enough that it squeaks and falls back against Bobby's counter, but Cas and Anna are already talking in the living room by the time he makes it into hearing range.

"–can't be sure," Anna's saying. "He hasn't made any other moves."

Cas looks over his shoulder at Sam. When Sam waves his hands, he sighs and says, "Of course he hasn't. He's waiting for Sam to free Lucifer, like Zachariah is."

"What?"

"Lilith's the final seal," Anna says, her voice gentle.

Bobby's chair clatters over in the other room. Sam glances over her shoulder, and Bobby shoots him a what-the-hell look, but Sam shrugs and turns around when Anna starts talking to Cas again.

"If you're so sure," she says, "then you need to move on this."

"You don't know what you're saying," Cas sounds...scared. Actually scared.

"I do." Anna stands straighter. "But I'll go, if you won't."

"Even if it means you won't return?"

"I'm no threat. I won't provoke him."

"Your existence will–"

"Hold it." Sam's head's spinning. "What does Lucifer have to do with Dean? Or me?"

"There's no time to explain," Cas says.

"But you know where Dean is?"

Anna shakes her head. "Not exactly. But there's an easy way to check, and–"

"It isn't exactly easy–"

"I'm coming with you," Sam says, looking between them. "Someone's taking me."

Cas frowns. Or his usual frown darkens. "You can't be at risk."

"But he thinks it's his destiny to fight Lucifer," Anna says. "If Sam goes–"

"What do you think will happen when he sees him? What do you think he'll do?"

"Nothing. Gloat, maybe."

It's all Sam can do to keep from punching something. "If there isn't time to explain, then there isn't time to fight. Let's just go."

Anna and Cas exchange yet another look. Sam swallows hard. "Please," he says quietly. "I have to find him."

That does it; Cas nods. "I will take you, Sam. And if it doesn't work, Anna, you must jump backward."

Anna frowns. "And get the Fates on my ass?"

"Zachariah has interfered with the usual state of affairs. You would correct them."

"Whatever you tell yourself," Anna says. But when Cas continues to stare, she says, "I guess I'll just hope they're feeling generous."

"They will be." Cas turns to Sam. "We must speak."

"Can't we just go?"

Cas is already walking toward the stairwell, and Anna pats Sam's arm reassuringly and walks into the kitchen, picking up Sam's discarded chair and sitting down. Sam answers Bobby's baffled expression with a shrug and leaves the room.

"We will be seeing a version of Dean unfamiliar to you," Cas says in a low tone when Sam rounds the corner and Anna's small talk about sandwiches fades. "You must be prepared."

"Sorry?"

"Your relationship has been...fraught. That will make things even more difficult."

"I am officially tired of you talking to me like a child," Sam hisses. "Get to the point."

Cas blinks once. "You had sexual relations with your brother. With neither of you in the proper place to consent."

Sam frowns. Until images of Dean's pale skin and the freckles on his nose and the way he tasted on Sam's tongue appear in his head, and... "Oh."

"It's likely this will be used against you," Cas says.

Sam leans against the wall. It had been so right.

"Can you do this?"

It takes a couple tries, but he says, "Yeah." Just because...whatever happened, it doesn't mean he could ever leave Dean behind. "What do I need to bring?"

"There's nothing you can bring beside yourself."

Great.

"Are you ready?"

Sam should say goodbye to Bobby, but hell, he'd be lucky if he could look the man in the eye at this point. No, it's just better to go. No more wasting time.

He closes his eyes and nods.

Whatever journey they take isn't instantaneous. Sam feels some kind of sensation similar to movement – like flying, but in all directions at once – and hears the sound of flapping wings, slow at first, then faster and faster, like it's building up to something.

Then, just as suddenly, it's over, and sunlight shines on the other side of Sam's eyelids.

"Whoa," Sam says, opening his eyes. The field that he and Cas are standing in doesn't look familiar. But it's green and lush, the grass pungent with a freshly-clipped aroma. It's warmer than the places they'd been before, and Sam spots some cars parked in the distance, like they're in a park or something. "Where are we? When are we?"

Judging by the way Cas sways and his eyes roll up into his head beside him, it's not super recent. Sam just manages to catch him before he falls.

"Cas?" Sam shakes him. "Can you hear me?"

He doesn't stir, but he's still breathing. That has to be good enough.

Sam drags Cas toward the cars; they can't get anywhere if he can't jump them around, after all. Luckily, no one's sitting in the cars or lingering around on the streets. Which means the lock picks Sam tucked into his jacket at Bobby's right after their arrival come in handy.

"Don't need anything but yourself," Sam says in an undertone as he jimmies an older sedan open. "Sure, Cas. Whatever you say."

He tosses Cas in the back and leans under the dash. It only takes a couple minutes to get the car running and to see that it has a half-tank. It should be enough to see where Cas took him, at least. He takes the car out of park and gives it gas, checking over his shoulder for any other cars.

A few minutes later, he stops checking for more traffic.

A few minutes after that, he turns on the radio. There isn't even static..

And It's not just the street by the park that's empty; it's all the streets. There's cars and buildings and crosswalks, but no one using them. But it's not like a zombie movie, either. It's more like the town with the Croatoan virus after the fact: empty and untouched.

"What happened here?" Sam asks. He's pretty sure Cas is still out, and when Sam looks back in the rearview mirror, he's proven right. Cas lies on his stomach with his arm dangling over the seat, swinging in time with the movements of the car. It doesn't stop Sam from wanting an answer.

Something changes at the corner of his eye, and Sam hits the brakes even before turning his head back around. The tires screech, and there's a thump against his seat as Cas falls out of the seat, but the car stops just when Sam wants it to.

Which is just a few feet clear of the biggest crater Sam's ever seen.

Even though he can see it just fine from inside the car, Sam unbuckles and climbs out. It's huge. Grand Canyon huge, in terms of both width and depth. The road's even sloped up a little where the car stopped, like a shock wave of force pushed it up.

"God," Sam breathes.

"Not exactly."

Sam whirls and grabs for his gun. He nearly drops it when he sees who's standing in front of him. "Dean?”

Dean's dressed exactly the way he did in Sam's fevered memory: pristine sweater and khakis. He's holding up his hands, but he doesn't looked nervous. It's more like he's trying to soothe Sam.

"Sorry," he says. "I could've appeared when you first showed up, but I couldn't resist the dramatic gesture."

“Appeared?” Sam asks.

Dean smiles, and the sunlight hit his hair. Like a halo.

Sam points his gun at Dean's heart.

"You're not Dean," he says.

"Not entirely," Dean says. Not-Dean. "But I can only be corporeal here with a vessel, and he's the only one left on Earth, if you can believe it."

Sam can. He really, really can. "Tell me why I don't shoot you right now."

"Because you know that won't do a thing, or because you came here to talk to me. Take your pick."

"I did?"

Dean comes up against the back of the sedan. He pats the trunk. "Castiel didn't warn you?"

There's nothing you can bring beside yourself. It makes sense now. And as the smile on Dean's face grows knowing and patient, so does the rest.

Sam lowers the gun. "Who are you?"

"Michael." When Sam doesn't answer, he tips Dean's head. "Commander of God's armies? No?"

"I went to college. I know my angels."

"Archangel, if you're being technical." Michael shrugs Dean's shoulders and glances in the car. "You didn't even know about our existence until my brother appeared to yours."

"He's not your brother."

"He is, just as much as Dean's yours." Dean's smile doesn't look like him at all. It's full of pity and serenity and everything Dean's never felt in his life.

"What did you do to Dean?"

"Nothing he didn't ask for." The smile shifts into a smirk, and that's completely familiar.

"Stop it," Sam snaps.

"Stop what?"

"Looking like him."

Michael shakes his head, and the smirk grows. "It's either this or enough divine presence to burn out your eyeballs. You don't want that."

"You don't know what I want." God, what Sam wouldn't give for that sword of Anna's. Even if it didn't do a thing.

Michael straightens out Dean's clothes. "He does. And let me tell you, him seeing you here? It makes him very...sad."

Sam flinches.

"He gave up years ago. No point fighting when everyone's..." Michael gestures upward. "But one glimpse of you...he's defeated, and he knows it, but just for a second, he forgot."

Dean's watching. Michael might be running the show, but Dean's there, just behind his own eyes.

"This hasn't happened yet," Sam says. "I'll stop you."

Michael laughs. "Unfortunately, Sam, there's nothing about this world that isn't inevitable. And I had to show Dean that. We watched what you did without Dean, how you turned back to the demon blood, how you killed Lilith even knowing what it would do. And then, when I faced Lucifer, Dean helped me kill the both of you. And he'd do it again."

Of course Dean would. Sam can see it like it's happening in front of him.

Dean's desperate yes in the cabin, and the glow, warm and inviting at first, then more and more powerful as it takes him over completely, repairing lost memory, adding new knowledge, fear of Sam's power on top of fear of Lucifer on top of regret for what Dean's done and what he will do...

Sam crouched in the middle of a room of dead demons, tearing wounds in their wrists and throats with a knife, eyes growing black as his mouth sucks greedily...

Two brothers standing across from each other in a cemetery in Lawrence, carrying two more brothers with them, and they only have time to apologize to one another before their powers peak, and they clash, destroying the earth for miles around...

Sam's burned-out body in Michael's – Dean's – arms, as the legions of angels stand behind, ready to finish it for good...

It breaks when Sam laughs, grim and loud. Michael's smile freezes on his face.

"I get it," Sam says. "You wanted to win Dean fair and square, didn't you? You wanted him to know what was happening and say yes anyway. But when Zachariah did his thing, you just couldn't resist swooping in. And now that you've Raptured the world or whatever, you're alone with that idea that you cheated to win."

Michael raises an eyebrow, but he doesn't answer.

"You're alone," Sam says, gesturing all around. "And the one guy who'd understand is the guy you killed."

"Lucifer wasn't my only brother." Michael's voice is steady. It's the closest thing to rage Sam's heard from him yet.

"No, but he's the one who counted, wasn't he? And he screwed up big time." Sam walks forward, closing the gap between him and Michael. Michael watches but doesn't move. "I screw up, too. But you know what the difference is?"

"What's that?" A little amusement's back in Michael's voice, but there's something in his eyes that seems...off.

Sam crosses his arms. "Destiny doesn't mean a damn thing to me."

The smirk appears again. "Guess you'll see, Sammy."

"Don't...” Michael's expression disappears. Sam's jaw drops, and then he grins. "...call me Sammy.”

Maybe it's Sam's imagination, but Michael's eye twitches. Almost like he's winking.

And then he – and Dean – are gone.

Sam sleeps the night in the car in what remains of Lawrence, and it's the weirdest fucking thing in the world, but he actually sleeps well. The angels can't touch him because they need him back in his past where he belongs, and since they won, there's nothing else left. And it's not like he's failing with every passing second. He'll get these seconds back. All Sam can do is wait for Cas to wake up.

And Sam can wait. He knows the end game now, and he's going to win.

Cas stirs before sunlight and hits his head on the ceiling. It's loud enough that Sam jerks awake.

"What happened?" Cas says. "I feel...his presence."

Sam yawns, rubs his face a little, and says, "We talked."

"And?"

"And we need to go save Dean."

The reflection of Cas, a faint outline in the darkness, nods in the rearview mirror, and a hand makes it onto Sam's shoulder.

Sam doesn't get the chance to close his eyes. He doesn't need to; they're back at Bobby's almost immediately, standing right in front of Bobby's couch. Cas sways, but Anna's by his side immediately, and they disappear.

"Well?" Bobby's behind his desk, and Sam sits on the couch, rubbing his eyes. It's bright outside.

Anna reappears in the middle of the room. "Cas is out for the count. Hope what you got was worth it."

Sam nods. "I've got a plan."

Anna basically forces Sam to eat before they leave. Sam wouldn't agree, but Bobby looks like he really wants to understand what's going on, and the logistics are tricky.

"No," Bobby says after Sam explains. "They're damned impossible. You saw the future."

Anna shakes her head. "Sam saw a potential future based on the progression of events as they are now. That future is now part of his past. And this would make part of the past his future."

Bobby takes off his hat and scratches his hair. "That make any sense to you?” he asks Sam.

"Enough."

Anna sighs. "Sometimes, I really don't miss being mortal."

When they finally jump, Anna very neatly takes Sam from Bobby's dining room chair and sets the both of them in the backseat of the Impala. It's probably the crappiest part of the plan, considering it could end in death by car accident, but, as Anna says, "Angel. I can fix most anything."

Still, Sam holds his breath when Dean's eyes meet his in the rearview mirror. And he's not wrong; the tires screech as Dean jerks the wheel in surprise, and Sam slams against the passenger's side door when Dean overcorrects. But Dean manages not to run into trees or oncoming traffic and pulls to the side of the road, which is really what counts.

"Sam?"

"Hey, Dean," Sam says, rubbing his side.

Dean turns and scowls at Anna. "Who the hell are you?"

"Someone you know," Anna says lightly. She doesn't make the statement loaded, but she's blushing just a little when she looks around at the backseat. Sam raises an eyebrow, but she ignores him. "Usually know, anyway."

"Uh-huh. Sam?"

"She's right."

Dean pinches his nose a little. "You got your memories back?"

"We should probably talk." Anna nods when Sam looks her way. "Outside."

Dean eyes Anna warily again. "Good idea."

"I'll be here," Anna says, waving at Dean as he climbs out of the car, and she shrugs sheepishly when Sam rolls his eyes and follows.

Clearly, the remnants of the spring snowstorm Sam and Dean had been caught in earlier are still around; half-melted snow and slushy ice cover the dirt that keeps them from the occasional passing car. Light flakes slowly flutter down from the sky and catch on Sam's bangs and Dean's nose.

Sam knows this because Dean grabs Sam into a big hug and clings. And then they kiss.

"Mmf," Sam says, surprised, but he relaxes into it. For a split second. Then he pushes back just enough to separate their mouths and say, "Uh, Dean?"

"You're okay," Dean says quietly, pushing a hand into Sam's hair. "You scared the hell out of me, you know that?"

"Yeah." Sam didn't see him scared this time, but he knows what it looks like. "And I'm sorry, but I kind of have to do it again."

"Excuse me?"

"You need to go meet with Bobby Singer. And you can't tell anyone I talked to you first."

"But..." Dean tilts his head a little. It reminds Sam of Castiel, oddly enough. "You're okay."

"Yeah."

"You know what's wrong."

"Yep."

"And your head's fixed."

"As much as it ever can be," Sam says wryly.

Dean laughs, and it's the kind of sound where he's letting go of some of his worry. That, at least, is a good thing. "God, you're exactly the same asshole you were before."

"Thanks, I guess."

"So what's going on?"

"I'm...actually from the future." When Dean's eyes go wide, Sam holds up his hands. "Not far! Just a day or two. I know enough to know what happens to you, and we can't screw up the timeline."

"Or what?"

"Or..." Sam glances back at Anna in the car. She's carefully watching traffic and not them. "Bad things."

"You trust her?"

"As much as I trust anyone who..." Isn't you. "As much as I can, really."

"Okay." Dean exhales hard, and his breath comes out in front of him in a cloud. "So what do I need to know?"

"The word 'no', mostly."

Dean rolls his eyes. "Cryptic much?"

"An angel's going to talk to you."

"An..." Dean snorts so hard it sounds like it hurts. "Like, halo, wings, harp?"

"No, like 'a ball of light that'll burn you to a crisp if you piss him off'."

"So like demons if they were Tinkerbell?"

When the archangel protecting Chuck had filled Lilith's motel room, there hadn't been anything particularly small and fairy-like about it. "If Tinkerbell could take out entire towns."

"Huh. The Bible didn't make up that fire and brimstone crap?"

"Really not."

Dean swallows. "And I have to talk to this guy?"

"I'm thinking he'll do most of the talking."

"What'll he say?"

Sam laughs. Or he think he does; it doesn't feel very funny. "Things that'll probably make you hate me."

Dean narrows his eyes. "Sam..."

"Don't worry about it right now." Sam waves a hand. "It'll be better if your reactions are genuine, and...we'll figure out the rest after we both make sure there's a later. Okay?"

"So what am I saying no to?"

Here's the hard part. Especially because Sam's still not sure he understands. "To being his vessel."

"Vessel? Like..."

"Yeah, like what demons do. Except I guess angels ask first."

Dean snorts. "So that's this dick's play? Ask me nicely?"

"He, um." Sam clears his throat. "Says he can help me. Me in the present, anyway."

"Seriously?"

"Well, what would you have said? If you didn't know?"

Dean bites his lower lip and looks at the ground.

"So you have to go with it. Pretend I'm on that bed in the motel room because guess what? I am."

Dean's eyes widen. "Wait, does me doing this talking thing...is that how you get better?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Sam..."

Sam holds up a hand. "I know. But you trust me, right?"

Dean's quiet for a minute. "How do I know you're you?"

Sam snorts and takes a couple steps back. "I expected you to ask five minutes ago."

He pulls out holy water and takes a swig. He rubs salt in his bare skin. He even draws a silver knife against his arm until it bleeds – away from the remnants of salt, of course – even though Dean won't know right now what that means.

But when Sam's done, Dean nods like he's satisfied. "So what, I say no and hope he doesn't squish me like a bug?"

"Pretty much."

Dean puts his head in his hands. "Fuck."

And then he straightens and kisses Sam again. Sam doesn't push him back, but his stomach churns. Not because it's Dean, necessarily, but because it's not his Dean. Or a Dean who knows what's going on, at least.

Still, if Dean wonders why Sam isn't kissing back, he doesn't show it. Dean's eyes are still closed when he pulls back, but he pushes two small kisses against Sam's lips. Sam can't stop from shivering a little.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam whispers. "It's gonna be okay. I promise."

When they walk back to the car and Anna climbs out, Sam prays to no one in particular that he's not wrong.

"You doing okay?" Anna asks when they appear in the woods behind the house. They're close enough to see what's going on – Bobby's already there, leaning against his car in front – but Anna said Michael shouldn't be able to sense them..

Sam nods.

"You won't run over? No matter how it looks?"

"How will it look?" Sam asks, eyes narrowing.

"Blinding," Anna says. "But Dean will be protected. Michael needs him."

Sam shifts from foot to foot. "Why?"

"Your family's got Michael's vessel bloodline," Anna says. "Just like the vessel Castiel uses has relatives that would work."

"Cas...he's using a person?"

Anna nods.

Sam exhales hard. "That's really screwed up."

"That's the nice thing about losing your grace, I guess. I got a human body all my own."

Before Sam can think of anything else to say, he's saved by the bell. If a bell was a big white light and a high-pitched whine.

Except...it almost sounds like words. Like someone's got the TV on in the next room in some crap hotel, and Sam can't really get the dialogue, but he gets what kind of show it is, generally. He tilts his head a little.

"Sam?" Anna asks.

The whining's getting louder, and god, it hurts. Sam grabs at his ears, but covering does nothing.. "He's pissed!"

"Just wait," Anna says, half-yelling. The ground's shaking, and Sam falls to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut. It doesn't help anymore than the hands still over his ears. If he's not wrong, they're bleeding. And this is with hundreds of feet between them. God, if Michael finds out they're there...

But just when Sam feels like his eyes'll burn out of his skull, it vanishes, and Sam collapses on the ground, chest heaving. Or so he thinks. He can't hear anything, but at this point, it's a blessing.

Anna's hand touches his forehead, and just like that, he's fine again. She offers a hand, and Sam takes it, shaking as she pulls him to his feet.

"You okay?" Anna asks.

Sam doesn't answer or give his feet a chance to recover. He starts to run toward the house, stumbling over his feet. If Michael laid Sam out flat when he wasn't that far away...if Dean wasn't seen as useful...

"Sam?"

Dean steps out the front door, wearing a leather jacket over the sweater, and Sam's heart basically stops. Until Dean grins at him, and Sam's running forward, wrapping his arms around Dean.

"Shouldn't I prove I'm me?" Dean says in his ear, and Sam laughs, gasping quietly.

Anna appears next to them. "Don't worry, I can see just fine. None of that angel crap in your system."

"Thanks," Dean says dryly.

Sam forces himself to let go, even though he doesn't really want to. Judging by the way Dean's hand clings to Sam's arm, he doesn't, either. "How's Bobby?"

"Fine," Anna says, peeking inside the house. "Just like how we found him later, minus a little extra snow."

Sam scuffs his foot on the porch. He should be asking Anna to fix Dean's head, to put them back where they were, something.. But it seems...wrong somehow. Like he should say good-bye to Dean Smith before Dean Winchester's back in full force. Never mind that they're the same guy. Technically.

"Can we talk somewhere else?" Sam asks Anna. "Before we fix everything?"

Anna frowns, but she shrugs. "Probably a good idea. Michael could still be watching."

She grabs their arms, and they reappear not too far away. Sam doesn't recognize it, of course, but the light and trees are similar.

"Give us a minute?" he asks Anna.

"Sure." She starts to step away, but she pauses. "Where did you say you woke up again, Sam?"

"Oh. Um..." Sam can't remember. But he has the address in his pocket, so he pulls it out and hands it over.

Anna nods. "Thanks."

She wanders off, but she's still in visual range, her red hair standing out amongst all the cloudy gloom. Probably for the best.

Dean lets out a breath. "Gotta say, I nearly wet myself when the light started talking."

"What did he say?"

"Basically what you said he would. Sam's sick, he needs your help, blah blah." Dean shifts. "It was hard to hear."

Dean slides a hand on Sam's arm, and Sam lets him. But he doesn't step closer, and judging by the way Dean's eyes narrow, he notices

"Anna'll give you your memories back," Sam says. "And then you should spend a couple days keeping your head low."

"Seriously?"

"We should make sure the timeline's somewhat fixed, you know? You...you already don't get a lot of time." And he'll need the time to process what he and Sam actually did while they didn't have their memories. Hell, forget the sex; Dean hadn't seen him drinking demon blood before. He might not want to see Sam again when it's all over.

Dean's forehead creases. "I don't know."

"Just...think about it?"

Dean nods, and then Sam really does hug him, definitely more in a brotherly way, complete with claps on the shoulder. It doesn't stop Dean from leaning in like he wants something more. Sam does his best to pull back in a somewhat smooth manner, but it doesn't really work. He can feel Dean's eyes on him as he walks back over to Anna, but whatever. That's over. It has to be.

"Can you drop me at Bobby's before you give him his memories?" he asks Anna quietly.

She frowns. "Why? Is something wrong?"

"No, just...he should get some space. Process everything that went down."

Anna's face blanks, and she looks oddly like Cas for a moment. But soon, she shrugs and nods. "Hold on."

She raises her hand slowly, giving Sam a last chance to lock eyes with Dean. Dean swallows a little and nods, looking for all the world just like he always does.

When her fingertips hit his forehead, he's gone, and Bobby's standing next to him in his kitchen.

"Well?" Bobby asks.

Sam says, "Yeah," and drops in the chair he'd left behind so many hours before. It's still warm.

When Anna reappears a half-hour later, she has rings under her eyes. She waves Bobby off and sits on the couch by herself.

"I'm just out of practice," she says. "Sam, I made sure the past version of you had the right protections. I figure that's how Cas found you and Michael didn't."

"Oh." Sam hadn't thought about that. "Thanks?"

Anna nods. "Dean should be here any minute. You still have the bed in the panic room, Bobby?"

"Sure. Be my guest."

She doesn't bother disappearing; instead, she walks out of the room, slumped a little.

"What's their deal?" Bobby asks Sam..

"Time travel, I guess." Sam doesn't really care. He's staring in the direction of the door, waiting...

One of Bobby's kitchen phones rings. Bobby picks up, and judging by Bobby's regular, "Yeah?", it's a personal call. Sam waves a hand, but Bobby hold ones up and says, "Sure. See you when you can."

"Well?" Sam asks when he hangs up.

"That was Dean. He's on his way, but he got caught in a hunt in Topeka. You think you'll climb the walls if you stay here a night?"

Sam smiles a little, but it's forced. "Someone should angel-sit, I guess."

It's an interesting sleepover. Cas wakes up long enough to make sure the world hasn't ended, and he passes out again on the couch. Bobby's takes his room back, which is a little surreal; it's not something that usually happens when Sam and Dean are there and down to the wire on some big hunt. And while Cas could probably sleep like the dead on the floor just as well as on the couch, it seems rude to move him when he betrayed Heaven to help Sam and Dean.

At least Anna took off after her nap to give them a little more space. "Besides," she'd said after she'd hugged Sam and given him one last angelic energy boost, grinning. "Something tells me everyone'll be on your back before long. You won't leave me out?"

"Promise." It was nice knowing they still had a couple of allies, at least.

After she'd cleared out, Sam had taken the panic room bed. It wasn't the homiest place, but at the same time, at least he knew demons wouldn't sneak in and screw with him.

He stirred to the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but by the time he opened his eyes, Dean was full-on standing over him. Sam stared up at him through narrow, puffy lids until his eyes adjusted to the light.

"Hey," Sam says, voice a little hoarse.

Dean nods. "Did you like leaving my ass in the cold snow?"

"Anna didn't drop you somewhere?"

"Of course she did, but..." Sam sits up, and Dean sits on the bed next to him. "Jesus, Sam. My head had been scrambled for weeks, and you just walked away?"

"I..." Didn't want to risk being around. "Sorry. That was kind of crappy."

"Damn right it was." Dean looks stern, and Sam's stomach churns. Until Dean breaks and smirks. "But I'm a nice guy who might've spent a few days getting wasted, so I can forgive you."

Sam snorts. If Dean had really been getting wasted, he probably wouldn't look as well-groomed or even washed as he does. But then, he had to drive, and he even had a little while to sober up. So maybe. "What about Topeka?"

Dean waves a hand. "Just a ghost that practically tripped over the car. God, it would've kicked my ass a couple weeks ago."

"No kidding," Sam says. He definitely won't miss that. "So what now?"

"So now we sleep, grill Cas, and hit the road again. Sound good?"

Sam stares at him for a second. Dean is being exactly Dean...the one before all this went down. Which said he was well on his way to pretending none of this ever happened.

Good. Sam can go right there with him.

"Absolutely," he says.

And it should've ended there.

Not the job or anything. No, there was a lot left, even if Cas didn't have anything useful to add beyond promising he was well and truly on their side. Everyone knew things would come to a head, whether Sam and Dean tripped over Lilith or Michael first, but Sam was good at ignoring things when they weren't an immediate threat, so it wasn't even in the back of his mind, really.

Sam and Dean Winchester were back. They were in their usual positions in the car, Sam knew what the little rattles and quirky noises meant, he wasn't bumping his elbows like he did in the too-tiny Prius, and they both knew how to use everything in the trunk. Sam knew to look in the journal if his brain was still a little weird – it wasn't for the most part, but he liked to be sure – and he knew that Dean trusted him at his back.

The little jobs they took were the same as ever, too. Just better than it had been when they couldn't remember. They got their asses kicked less, took less time, and moved around like they always did. Sam was himself again, and everything should've been perfect.

But.

No, Sam can't even think like something's wrong. Dean's not acting weird around him. He makes the occasional snide comment about Ruby or demon blood, but that's nothing he wouldn't do anyway.

Which is why Sam can't explain why he keeps looking over his shoulder for something that isn't there. Or why his hand gets sweaty and hot when Dean's is near his on a restaurant table or if they're cleaning their guns or whatever.

He expected Dean to be weird. He has no idea what to do when it comes from him.

About a month after Dean gets his memories back, they're in a dump – and Dean's still a little lip-curling whenever he walks in, which never fails to make Sam laugh – but they've got two beds, and Sam's out like a light pretty much as soon as Dean clicks off his lamp. They'd spent the day exorcising demons the old-school way, with chants and books, and it's tiring. No exhilaration anymore. It's really the opposite.

It probably takes Sam a few minutes to wake up, judging by how fuzzy his brain is and how loud Dean's whimpering is. But he should've woken up sooner. Because the noises coming out of Dean's mouth all sound like his name.

"Dean?" he says, tongue dry. He can see Dean gripping his blankets in the dark, his eyes closed tight.

Dean shakes his head a couple times and says, "Sam" so plaintively that Sam's heart just about breaks in half. He climbs out of bed and crouches, shaking Dean's shoulder.

"Hey, hey."

Dean wakes with a gasp and grabs onto Sam's arm hard.

"It's okay," Sam says. "I'm here."

Dean's fingers grip Sam's sleeve, and their eyes meet. Sam can't seem to breathe. But Dean pushes back, and Sam inhales deeply.

"You okay?"

Dean nods. "Just a dream."

Sam sighs. "Dean–"

"I said I'm fine." Dean turns away from Sam and grabs a pillow.

It takes Sam a minute to slip back into his own bed. But he stares across at Dean for at least another hour before Sam falls back asleep, and Dean's breath doesn't deepen, and he doesn't move like he's asleep.

Maybe Sam's not the only weird one after all.

Sam gets Dean coffee the next morning, and Dean's groaning as soon as he sets the carrier down.

"Come on," Dean says. "We don't have to play head shrinker or whatever, okay? It was just a nightmare."

"One where you were saying my name?"

Dean freezes with a hand extended toward his coffee. But he moves again a second later. "It happens."

"It's okay, whatever it is," Sam says. "We can talk about it."

"Except we're not."

Sam sighs. "I've been having dreams, too."

Dean goes pale. "Visions?"

"What? No. Are you?"

Dean snorts, and Sam relaxes into his chair.

"We had our memories screwed with," Sam opens the cap on his coffee to make sure he has the right one. The amount of times he accidentally took Dean's cup after Dean made it Irish was too high to count. "That's gotta take its toll, right?"

There's a clatter, and Sam's head snaps up. Dean's on his feet, and the chair's tipped on the floor next to him.

"I didn't say I was dreaming memories," Dean says in a low voice.

"Dude, it's okay."

"Are you? Dreaming about...the past?"

Sam shrugs a little. "Yeah? I mean, it's not like I don't usually..."

But he trails off when he sees, just for a second, the fear in Dean's eyes.

"We're not discussing this," Dean finally says, and he stomps off to the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

"Fine!" Sam yells back. When Dean doesn't come out and the shower turns on, Sam grabs his coffee again and mutters, "Just stay in there. Whatever."

It takes Sam a couple days to figure out why Dean isn't crying out in his sleep.

At first, Sam thinks he caught Dean on a bad night and that Dean's working it out when he's awake. Dean's showers often get longer when things suck, and not because he's jerking off. Sam's not really the crying in the shower type, but after Dad died, Dean's increased bathroom time could only be for one reason. It's probably true this time, too.

But on the third night, Sam finds an empty whiskey bottle behind the toilet, and he goes up behind Dean while he rummages through his clothes and takes a careful sniff.

He smells like mouthwash. Dean never uses mouthwash.

"You mind giving me some space?" Dean says, and his words are careful. Hell, he's probably been talking like this for the past few night. How did Sam miss it?

"Dean," Sam says. When Dean turns, he holds up the empty bottle.

"So?" Dean snatches it out of his hand and throws it in the trash. "I needed to unwind."

"Unwind." Sam should be getting pissed. He would've gotten pissed before. But now, he lowers onto his bed and has to remember how to breathe. Much less talk.

"Did I hurt you?" he finally asks. "Was it...god, after I got my memories back, I shouldn't..."

When he manages to make himself look at Dean, Dean's staring at the wall behind the bed, one of his plaid shirts in his hands. Sam hasn't seen any of the Dean Smith attire since the day Dean confronted Michael. He'll probably never see it again.

"Dad's journal," Dean mutters.

Sam frowns. "What?"

"I...when we got the car back, before we had our memories, but before. Before we." Dean laughs a little, harsh and quick. "I flipped through a couple pages, and I saw our names...I figured the answers were there."

"Dean." Sam's eyes sting.

"But I didn't want to know." Dean rubs at his own eyes a little. "Because I thought...I thought it didn't matter."

"You couldn't know," Sam says quietly.

Dean's chin shakes a little. "But I know now. And it hasn't gone away. What do you think of that?"

"I..." Sam's breath hitches. "What?"

"I still want you. I shouldn't, but I do. I should've put five states between us when I realized...but I'm too selfish. No matter what kind of memories are in my head."

Dean drops the shirt, and this is it. If Sam says the wrong thing, or does the wrong thing, or even waits too long to answer, Dean's gone. He might stay, or he might leave, but this is the last time he'll lay himself open like this. And the moment passes in the blink of an eye because Sam, for all his waffling and uncertainty, does actually know what he needs.

So Sam stands up from the bed, and Dean finally looks at him, eyes wide as saucers. For the briefest of instants, Sam's convinced Dean'll bolt. But he doesn't, not even when Sam grabs his hips, and Sam knows Dean wasn't kidding. He needs Sam just as much as Sam needs him.

Words just aren't going to work. Dean won't hear them, and it's not like Sam knows what to say. So he kisses Dean to tell him everything he can't say, and immediately, Dean arches closer to Sam, wraps his arms around Sam's back, whimpers into his mouth just the littlest bit when Sam's tongue slides in Dean's mouth.

They always sucked at talking anyway.

This time, Dean's body is even more familiar. Sam's known it his whole life instead of just for weeks – not that he'd lost that lingering knowledge, not fully – and now he has the fresh memories of the way Dean's face looks when he comes, the spots that make him writhe and leave him breathless. A drag of teeth on his earlobe, rough fingertips over sensitive nipples, the brush of Sam's clothes over the skin on Dean's upper thigh. He strips Dean fast to get to him, and when Dean starts shaking from the stimulation, Sam takes his own clothes off. It's only fair.

Not that being naked makes Sam feel any more exposed than he already is. Just because Dean is letting Sam take care of him and clinging desperately doesn't mean Sam's not holding on just as much, that the touch of Dean's hands on his bare skin doesn't make him flushed and hard, that he isn't alternating between whispers that sound like "Dean" and "you" between kisses.

After Dean's dick leaks from the attention, Sam drops his head and licks, dragging his tongue over a vein on the side of Dean's cock. Dean doesn't grab onto Sam's hair when Sam takes the head into his mouth, working the base with his hand. No, he keeps pushing his fingers through Sam's hair, almost in the same rhythm as Sam's mouth and hand, and it's everything Sam wanted for weeks without knowing it.

The fingers only tug the littlest bit when Dean's close, and Sam figures he doesn't quite have enough experience to swallow, so he pulls off and jerks Dean through. He meets Dean's eyes after he's collapsed, sweaty and spent, on his pillow, and he obviously wipes his hand on the motel bedspread. Dean laughs a little.

"This is why these go on the floor, huh?"

"Yep," Sam says, and lays next to Dean, tucking his head on his shoulder.

That makes them cozy when Dean jerks Sam off. Dean had started to get up, but Sam pushed him back down, kissing his shoulder as he took himself in hand. Because yes, Dean would totally call him a girl if he knew, but being with Dean like this, feeling his breath on his neck and his warm skin against his own, is better than wacky positions or kinky crap.

But then, Dean tangles his fingers in Sam's and won't look away from his eyes, so at least he's not the only one.

He comes, and of course Dean wipes his own come-covered hand on the bedspread, and then they kick it off and climb under the sheet together. There's more than enough warmth between the two of them.

"So what are we looking at?" Sam says as he comes up behind Dean, pressing against his back to see the map.

Dean points down. "That should be the vampires' nest. If what the cop was saying was right, they're luring teens out there with booze and sucking them dry."

"Nice." Sam kisses Dean's neck. "You think we can do this without getting covered in dead man's blood?"

"That was one time. One. And let me remind you, you were the one who didn't screw the cap on right."

"Uh-huh." Sam rolls his eyes, but he lets Dean kiss him when he straightens up. "You keep that up, and I won't rub your shoulders when we get back."

"Whatever. You love me."

Sam grins as he grabs for his machete. He really kind of does.

art post

More than the dirt it takes to bury them - Supernatural, NC-17, Sam/Dean.

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