Dean is packing his
duffle when he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and for the fraction
of a second, he’s convinced that a stranger is staring back at him.
He straightens his
back and looks again. He hasn’t looked at himself in the mirror a lot, these
past years – not much to see, he’d figured. Now, he looks.
New scars. The
same guilt-ridden tautness in his shoulders. He doesn’t look young anymore: the
fullness to his mouth that has been there has faded, the lines around his eyes
are sharp and tells tales of sleepless nights full of whiskey. There used to be
a playful gleam in his eyes, but he realizes now that he’s lost it somewhere
along the road: he looks somber and tight jawed, and there’s a touch of grey around
his temples.
He looks like John
had, the last years of his life; tired and pinched, the planes of his face a
little mean looking.
Dean looks away.
“Hey.”
Dean turns around.
Sam’s watching him, standing in the door opening with his arms crossed over his
chest. He smiles softly, and Dean’s heart flutters in his chest; nothing’s changed, there.
“What are you
doing?” Dean asks.
“Same as you,” Sam
says easily and steps into the room, one eyebrow arched. “Admiring the view.”
Dean scoffs out a disbelieving
laughter and feels his cheeks go a little warm. “You’re cheesy.” His eyes
flickers back his reflection again. He adds in a murmur: “Ain’t that much of a
view anymore, anyway.”
Sam walks up
behind him, and Dean’s breath catches a little in his throat when Sam’s fingers
curl around his waist. It’s a little softer these days, and he bites his lip as
his gaze drops to the floor.
“Dean,” Sam mumbles
into his ear, his warm breath sending shivers down his spine. “Look up for me.”
Dean does. He
stares at them in the mirror: Sam’s behind him, one arm wrapped around Dean’s
waist, his long hair falling in a soft curl around his face. He still looks
young, Dean thinks: his mouth is still pink and soft, his gaze glittering. He
looks like something Dean doesn’t want to tarnish.
“Do you know what my
biggest fear has been?” Sam asks quietly, running his knuckles softly against
the scruff of Dean’s jaw.
Dean’s eyes meet
Sam’s in the mirror, and he shakes his head. “No.”
Dean feels Sam
swallow, his grip around Dean growing a little tighter. “That I never would get
to see you like this,” Sam says. Dean almost, almost, misses the tremor in his voice. “That I wouldn’t get to see
you age. Dean, I’ve been so terrified I’d have to go on living, without you.
With just. With just the memory of your young face, while I grew older.”
Dean’s fingers find
Sam’s; braids them together. “Sam.”
“You have no idea,
do you,” Sam murmurs. “Just how beautiful you are to me like this. You’re. You’re alive, and ageing. Dean, you’re so perfect.”
Sam turns Dean
around gently, lifts his chin, and Dean feels like he’s sixteen years old again;
melting into Sam’s arms, just as powerless as he had been all those years ago
when he’d first realized how gone he
was for his beautiful baby brother.
Sam’s mouth is hot
against Dean’s when he whispers: “Never been more in love with you.”
Dean throws his
arms around Sam’s neck. They kiss, and it’s so simple and perfect, and when
Dean’s fingers tangle in Sam’s hair, he thinks: I need centuries more ofthis.
Dean hears the shower going when he returns for his jacket. The wind had really started to pick up, the warmth of the spring day quickly dissipating into a bone deep chill. He’s got a date with a hot chick fresh out of high school and doesn’t want to be that douche who looks too proud to wear a fucking jacket. Besides, he’d get bonus points for giving her his if she’s cold and hey, when it comes to getting into a chick’s panties bonus points are important, ya know?
His jacket isn’t where he left it. It had been hanging on the back of a chair in their tiny ass kitchen in their dingy motel. He turned around, hands on his hips, brows furrowed in a frown, trying to figure out where his damn jacket was. When his eyes do land on the battered, hand me down leather, it’s the last place he would have expected.
His brows furrow deeper as he approaches Sam’s bed where his jacket is laid out, rumpled. It’s as he’s reaching for it does he see it, smells it. There’s a perfect white smear on the inside of the jacket, a wayward drop that was easily missed, the fabric around it dark and wet. The air smells like spunk, like sex. His eyes dart to the closed bathroom door and Dean’s breath hitches at the implications.
Sam had just… on Dean’s jacket… Jesus. And just like that, he can imagine it. His baby brother all laid out on the rucked up sheets, one hand stuffed in his underwear, long fingers stroking up and down his shaft. In Dean’s mind’s eye he can see the long fingers of Sam’s right hand clutching the collar of his leather jacket, drawing it in close to breathe in Dean’s scent as he jerked himself to completion. And then finally he comes, face twisted in pleasure, ropes of pearly white streaking his quivering stomach. A drop had landed on Dean’s jacket…
Dean’s sporting a chubby before he even realizes how aroused the thought of Sam rubbing one off on his jackets makes him. He presses his hand to his mouth, bites back the groan that tries to climb out of his throat. There’s no way. No way his baby brother would want that. Want him.
Right?
But before Dean could convince himself otherwise his feet are already carrying him to the bathroom. He finds the door unlocked, hand shaking as he silently turns the knob. It’s so fucked up. He’s so fucked up, but he has to know. Has to know that he’s not the only one messed up in the head. That the guilt he’s been carrying since Sam turned fifteen and Dean noticed the way he grew up, filled out, how those dimple smiles made Dean feel more than just love and joy for his boy…
Dean let’s the door close with an audible click and watches the blurred form of Sam behind opaque glass and steam quickly cover himself.
“Hey! Wait your turn!” Sam yells, shrill and sounding like he’s been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Dean swallows down all common sense and locks the bathroom door. Dad’s gone for at least a week but he feels safer behind a locked door. Especially with what he’s planning.
“So I came back for my jacket,” Dean throws out casually despite the desperate, rapid thud of his heart against his ribs. Sam goes completely still under the hot spray. It’s enough to make Dean bend down and remove his shoes and socks. “Wanna explain why I found it on your bed, Sammy?”
Sam’s breath hitches audibly as Dean’s removing his shirt.
“Dean, I can explain,” he says, but doesn’t continue. Dean thumbs the button of his jeans open and pulls down the zipper tab, certain Sam can’t hear it.
“I’m listening, Sam. Really curious as to why it smells… ya know… a little funny,” Dean prompts as he slithers denim down his thighs. He can see Sam push his hair back with his hands, can sense his baby brother on the verge of a panic attack. Dean pushes down his underwear, hard cock springing free in the humid air and pulling out a hiss from him.
“It’s uh, it’s not what you think!” Dean pads over to the shower, almost feeling bad for the frantic note in Sam’s tone. He pushes the glass door aside, catching Sam’s flinch and the wild, panic look in his eyes. His chest is heaving, rivulets of water streaming over a flushed chest. His cheeks are bright pink, like a girl’s, and Dean’s caught by how kissable Sam’s bitten lips look.
“Then tell me, Sam. Tell me you weren’t just jerking yourself off while laying on my jacket.” Sam jerks and his eyes dart down, goes wider when he sees how hard Dean is, a perfect pearl of pre cum beading at the tip. Dean doesn’t miss the way Sam licks his lips or how dark his eyes are when they dart back up to meet Dean’s.
“You too?” He asks, young and so damn hopeful, gaze deliberate at it drags down Dean’s body again. Dean waits until lust blown hazel eyes meets his again before he answers.
“Yeah,” he says, stepping into the shower. “Me too, Sammy.”
He closes the shower door with one hand, other already reaching for Sam’s cheek. He brings their bodies flush under the pounding spray, feels Sam thicken against his hip as he kisses Sam, licks his baby brother’s soft lips open. Their hearts are wildly beating in tandem against their chests and Sam’s hands clutch, rub, clutch at Dean’s wet skin. He completely forgets about the girl he was supposed to take out that night. There is nothing else on his mind but Sam.
Sam startles, blinking out of his reverie. He knows he’s staring, but he just can’t help it. It’s been three long months without his brother, three long months with an insane archangel in the driver’s seat of his brother’s body, and he can’t look away. He’s so grateful for every single part of him– the grey hairs, the deep lines carved into his cheeks, even the weary set of his shoulders.
Sharing a nightcap before bed, Sam has to admit that he’s drinking slowly. He’s so afraid of letting Dean out of his sight that it’s embarrassing, but he needs to be able to see him. He’s been dreading their separation at bedtime all day, all during the drive back to the Bunker.
Sam nods his head vaguely, a very unsure answer to Dean’s unsure question. They both know he’s not okay. They both know Dean’s not okay. They’re much better than they were, but there’s something they need. A hug, or a touch, a reconnection of body, mind and spirit. But they still, after all this time, don’t know how to ask for it.
“Missed you,” Dean says quietly, with a soft little Sam-only smile.
Sam breaks first. He falls forward out of his chair, landing hard on his knees in front of his brother.
”Missed you, big brother,” he sobs, wrapping his long arms around Dean’s waist, burying his tear-soaked cheeks into his brother’s belly. “Missed you so bad, Dean. Don’t leave me again, p-please, I– I can’t– I’m not– you’re everything, and I–”
“Sammy,” Dean murmurs, his rough hands gentle in Sam’s dirty, unkempt hair, shushing him gently as Sam sobs and sobs, pouring out his grief into the hands of the only person who could ever hold it. “Look at me, Sam. Look at me, baby.”
The pet name causes Sam to slowly pick up his face from Dean’s stomach, sniffling and looking as all-around pathetic as he feels. A 35-year-old man needing his big brother this bad is such a joke; he’s so useless and–
That thought is cut off by the light press of Dean’s lips against his. He gasps wetly against Dean’s mouth, balling his fists into Dean’s shirt. He’s wanted Dean for so long he stopped hoping for it, for fear of not having it killing him.
“Michael was always reading your mind,” Dean tells him around sweet, life-affirming presses of his soft mouth. “Imagine my surprise when he picked this up– that, that you wanted me like– like–”
“Like this?” Sam murmurs, climbing into Dean’s lap, folding his long limbs so he can eat at his brother’s mouth, drink from his lips, live off his sustenance alone.
Dean groans as Sam’s tongue trails the seam of his mouth. “He told me how you felt to– to hurt me, to make me turn away from you. But, god, Sammy– it– it just made me stronger, made me that much more determined to get back to you. So I could–”
“Have me?” Sam guesses. “God, Dean. Have me. Have me. I’m yours– to, to have. So have me.”
Dean moans against Sam’s pleading mouth, and he does what Sam asks. He has him.
Dean should have pushed Sam, that night he gave her the spell. “I know what Rowena is dealing with,” Sam had said, his face soft and vulnerable in the way that always catches Dean’s heart. “She’s not the only one who feels helpless.”
“What do you mean?”
Dean asked. He did ask. But he didn’t want to know. And Sam had seen it on his face, the not wanting, and had sniffed a little and blinked and his eyes had shuttered over, and he’d given Dean some bullshit spiel about getting to Mom and Jack.
It’s not like Dean doesn’t know the kind of thing that happened in the Cage. The dark stuff. The stuff Sam doesn’t talk about, that they can’t ever talk about because the only time Dean heard it was from Sam half-deluded during those scary six months when his wall came down. (Then, and from Crowley in the sticky depths of some no-name dive, when Dean was drunk and a demon and certainly couldn’t care less.) (“Nasty stories about what happened to poor old Moose,” Crowley had said, testing the waters, and drip-fed the gory details until Dean sloped off to get laid.)
It’s better to talk about this shit. Dean knows that. He wants Sam to be able to talk about it; Sam whose walls are more carefully constructed than anything Death ever built him. He wants to know. And yet he’s been pussy enough to be glad Sam can’t say it out loud.
All this to say
that when Sam stumbles into the campsite crusted with blood, a miracle in brown plaid and ugly jeans; and then behind him, Dean recognises Lucifer’s familiar shape; he sees the sick, dull shame in his brother’s eyes and he remembers all of it, is hit with it, this weight of what he doesn’t (does) know.
“Okay, little brother,” Dean murmurs, holding Sam in his arms, smoothing back some hair off his forehead. “S’finally time.”
Sam coughs, blood bubbling in his throat, squeezing Dean’s hand. “You’re…you’re gonna let me go now? For real? No bringing me back?” His eyes are relaxed – peaceful. Not a trace of fear.
“Yeah,” Dean whispers, and he kisses Sam’s forehead. “I’m gonna let you go. I’ll be right there with you.”
“Good bye, Dean,” Sam whispers, his eyes starting to close.
“Nah,” Dean says, voice thick and full of tears, “it’s, ‘see you later.’”
–
Both Winchesters wake up at the same time.
And when they hear the fireworks, they know they’re finally home.
They get everyone squared away. Mary back in her room, New Charlie and New Bobby as close to Dean as he can reasonably put them. Ketch and Mary seem to have come to an uneasy truce, but he still puts the man as far away from her as possible. Some people have already partnered in one way or another, and others pick roommates. It works. It’s fine. Most of the good guys made it through safely, neither of the bad guys did, and dear god Sam is alive. He’s here and alive, standing in the kitchen in bloodstained jeans and someone else’s sweatshirt, drinking whiskey. They don’t need to think about how it happened. It happened, and nothing else matters.
(Sometimes Dean watches Sam do something he never did Before – an overly-startled flinch at a loud noise, a very specific hands-clenched thousand-yard stare, the way he accepts Cas’s healing with fearful eyes and a stubborn jaw – and he thinks this is from Hell, this is Lucifer’s doing. And if he allows himself to think about it further, which he tries not to do, he thinks if I had let him go to Heaven after Cold Oak, if I’d just had the balls to let go, he never would have gone to Hell. He never would have met Lucifer. This is all on me.
He has never mentioned it to Sam, because he’s terrified that his brother will turn to him with those sad, fearful eyes and say yeah, I think about that too.)
The party’s winding down, so they’re digging dusty cots out of a
back corner of the bunker where Sam had vaguely remembered seeing them stashed
when Sam stops. Takes a breath and wraps his arms tighter around the bedrolls he’s
carrying, and says, “Dean.”
If his tone didn’t give away that he’s
serious, the way he glances at the closed storeroom door does.
“Yeah?” Dean asks, straightening up, trying to sound like he’s not
too tired for whatever’s coming.
“You need to talk to him,”
Sam says. “To Jack. About his—about Lucifer. Jack needs to know, to understand
what he’s really like.”
“We were trying,” Dean points
out. “Kid didn’t seem like he wanted to listen.”
“No.” Sam shakes his head.
“He’d listen, he just—he needs the truth. Everything. What Lucifer’s tried
to do—what he’s done. To—to everyone.”
Jack would care, Dean thought. The kid
had been angry enough about Michael, what the archangel had done to his own
world; he probably wouldn’t be thrilled to hear Lucifer had tried for his personal Armageddon here, on Jack’s own world.
But a world’s abstract. What’d really
gotten Jack fired up was getting to know the people Michael had hurt, the
people he wanted to protect. And if Jack knew that truth, about what Lucifer had really done—to everyone, yeah. But
also… “What he did to you,” Dean says.
Sam flinches, barely—a twitch of the
shoulders, a shadow across his eyes—confirmation Dean would’ve rather done
without. “Thought that was yours to tell,” Dean says, pitching his
voice light.
Sam’s spine stiffens anyway; he
swallows, throat tightened. “Yeah, well. I meant to—I tried. And I—couldn’t.
I don’t know how to—there aren’t—” He squares his shoulders, faces Dean
like he would a firing squad. “But you—you could tell him. You know.”
Know what, Dean could ask.
Because Sam doesn’t know how to talk about this, not even to Dean.
But Dean’s been to Hell himself, not the Cage, but enough to know that maybe there aren’t words for this. Words for
whatever Sam’s remembering, when occasionally light glances across a metal
blade and he jerks back, whole body twisting away. When there’s a rattling
sound and his eyes dart up, scanning the ceiling for something unseen over him.
Years later and there are still foods
Sam won’t order anymore, that he looks away when Dean digs in, until Dean
figures out what he shouldn’t order. There are injuries he won’t let Dean tend
to—bandaging up his hand is fine, his calf, his back; but if his face gets cut
he’ll clean it up in front of a mirror; if his thigh’s gashed he’ll let Dean
thread the needle but sews it up himself.
Dean could tell Jack about that year after the wall came down, hunting
Leviathans and watching Sam coming apart stitch by stitch and Dean wasn’t
strong enough to keep him together—trying to hold on with all he had and it
wasn’t enough, not then, not in the years after, no match for what was
tearing Sam apart. Lucifer, bursting through the seams of Sam’s existence, and
the only reason there was anything left afterwards was because Sam’s made of
stronger stuff than any mortal man possibly should be, fireproof, imperishable.
Yesterday, give or take, he got to hug Sam again, jacket crusted with blood but breathing, and no,
Dean will never understand that strength, where it comes from; but he’s
grateful for it, every fucking day.
“Please,” Sam says, looking Dean
straight in the eye, for all his shoulders are hunched like he’d rather be
looking anywhere but. Making himself beg because it’s what he has to do; strong
enough for that, too. “Jack needs to—”
“Yeah,” Dean says. “Okay.
I’ll talk to him. If he’ll listen,” because the kid likes Dean, for some
damn reason, but Jack never looks at him like he looks at Sam.
But Sam’s back relaxes, shoulders
unclenching. “Thanks.” He gets a better grip on the bedrolls in his
arms, pulls another one into the pile.
“Maybe we don’t need to
anyway,” Dean remarks, as he picks up the pair of cots. “With Lucifer
back there—maybe Michael will off him.”
“No,” Sam says, barely even
resigned; he might as well have been talking about the date of the next full
moon. “He’ll be back. Jack will have to deal with him again.”
And you, Dean doesn’t
say. Maybe this time he’ll be there, able to watch. Sam facing Lucifer, with
Jack at his side—Jack knowing the truth, and knowing that, he’ll be able to see
it, see how much hurt Lucifer inflicts just by existing in the same dimension
as Sam. Jack with his human heart and his growing protective instincts, and all
his power.
Dean isn’t going to tell Sam this,
either, but he’s looking forward to it.
Can Sam please tell Jack about what Lucifer did to him
sam looks at lucifer talking to jack, feeling sick, and he knows he has to say something, he knows he does. but if sam can’t even say it under the best of conditions, then he DEFINITELY can’t say it with lucifer smiling at him over jack’s shoulder.
and jack’s a child, he’s not even a year old, he don’t deserve to be saddled with this burden, this legacy of evil, these crimes too huge and hideous for sam to speak.
“I’m gettin’ to Jack, one way or the other. The only question is, you coming with? Or that?”
Lucifer shines his flashlight on the swarm of vampires clawing at the entrance, and Sam knows he’s right. With or without him, Lucifer will get to Jack. To Dean, to Cas, to Mom – everyone. As always, Sam’s choice is no choice at all.
The voice inside his head is screaming a siren of “I told you so.” Letting Lucifer into the bunker, letting him anywhere near Sam or his family is always a mistake. No matter how many times they think they have him trapped, it always ends the same way: with the Devil on the loose, and standing in front of Sam. Again.
But “I told you so’s” mean about as much as his illusion of free will right now. Which is to say, nothing at all. Even if Sam chooses the the vampires, there is no doubt in his mind that Lucifer will bring him back and offer him the same deal again. And again, and again, and again, until he gets what he wants. It’s not the first time they’ve played this game, after all.
(Sam’s mind flashes back to motel rooms and overdoses, and guns pressed against his temple and waking up gasping every. Single. Time. “I’ll kill myself before letting you in” hadn’t worked then either.)
And Lucifer is looking at him, looming large in the shadows with his fingers poised to release the horde of vamps, and Sam wishes he hadn’t brought him back. He would rather be dead in a foreign world than feel this helpless again. As much as he wants to say “go to Hell” he knows it won’t change the outcome.
The Devil has a chain wrapped around his neck as sure the blood drying stiff on his throat, and no matter what he chooses he’ll have to say yes.
Scenes from the cutting room floor – missing scenes and rewrites for 13.21, “Beat the Devil.”
“Go to Hell,” Sam says.
Lucifer smiles. “See you there, kiddo.” He snaps his fingers and the horde of vampires spills into the room. Sam had hoped he’d have time to grab a weapon, but they’re on him in a second, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway; there’s no way he could have fought them all off. Make it quick, he thinks, and he bares his throat as Lucifer laughs.
He wakes gasping, sprawled in a bloody heap. Lucifer sits cross-legged on the floor in front of him. He points his flashlight at the vampires snarling at the door.
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