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Dean jolted awake in the dark, his heart trying to pummel its way past his sternum. For one long, terrifying moment, he didn’t know where he was.Logically, he was in a bed. It was cushy under his ass and those were blankets tangled around his knees. He could hear Sam snoring somewhere close, always too loud and yet still somehow comforting. The room smelled at least halfway familiar because Sam was in it.The other half, though... Dean hauled in another, deeper breath. The scent wasn’t engine grease, gunpowder, or even dust. It smelled... cleaner than that, with a hint of spice his stomach wanted to associate with pie.And the light coming from the curtained window to his left wasn’t the orange stain of a motel parking lot or the running streaks of passing headlights, nor the soft glow of an ancient security system on standby. It seemed to be moonlight. For some reason, it felt jarring. Incongruous. But he couldn’t figure out why.Dean frowned into the darkness.His dream lay heavy on him, a thick blanket of fog, both immediate and faded like a decades-old memory. He hated when dreams did that. Made reality feel wonky. He liked his reality solid and crunch-through-able, thank you very much.For some reason, he’d been taken back to an old job, one of those straightforward hunts that had made him feel so alive when they were younger. He remembered less and less of the dream as he lay there in the dark, but clearest of all had been Sam’s face, his eyes glittering the way they did when he really lent himself to figuring things out. He’d gotten more angular the older he grew, but it suited him. So did the earnest fervor for knowing things that the bitterness of age and loss had never quite snuffed.It felt like they’d been in the bunker. Sitting in the war room, at the table? Or maybe... in the library? It had been so long since he’d last walked the place, he could hardly remember the layout.The lighting was muted. Orange and spotty. The library, then. Sam’s favorite room.They’d ended up feeling so at home in the bunker, and Dean’s chest still twinged when he thought about leaving it behind. Even if it had been the best decision they’d ever made.The fog wrapped itself around the scenes of the dream, insidious and concealing, but one line of Sam’s stood out: “It’s like a Choose Your Own Adventure book,” he’d said, “only the pages turn themselves.” Dean’s frown deepened.Beside him, Sam shifted with a rustle of sheets, the mattress creaking.“Hey,” he said in his deep, half-asleep burr that Dean could never admit out loud was adorable. “What’re you doin’?”“Had a dream,” Dean said. Tried to. His throat felt like it was lined with gravel.He coughed mightily. “Geez, that’s better.” Still a grumble, but less an unpaved walkway.“Go back to sleep,” Sam murmured, turning over. He dragged half the covers with him.With a fond smile, Dean gently tugged them back where they should be. Sam's broad shoulders stretched the white t-shirt he slept in, his long hair still thick and shiny as ever even as it grayed. There, spread on the pillow, it caught the moonlight peeking around their bedroom curtains and held it beside Dean. There was something more poetic about it that Dean, now drowsing again, couldn’t quite capture.Outside, an owl hooted from the copse of trees that stood at the rear of their backyard. Dean thought once more about building that owl house he had the tools and half the supplies for in his shed.A flicker of his dream returned—a swing and a miss in someplace dark—but when Dean sank back down into sleep, he swam right past it. - - - - - He didn’t think about the dream again until mid-morning, when he’d already been showered and dressed in a comfy red flannel and doing his job at Winchester Woodworking Supply for more or less two hours. He stood behind the glass-top counter, leaning inches from bevels and other sharp objects, staring through the shelves he’d just stocked to perfection with finishes, polishes, kits, and clamps. Spacing out.It happened a lot when he was on his own.Sam wasn’t there—on even days, he held down the fort at the library—so Dean was managing alone. There wasn’t any issue, really. Just that he always preferred Sammy nearer than farther. Two blocks away wasn’t close enough.Some days, right beside him wasn’t close enough. Sam seemed to understand. Those were the days they closed the store early and reclaimed the work table, the wall, even the floor all over again.That line of thinking was entirely unproductive when Sam wasn’t there and customers were, so Dean shook himself aware and went to grab his broom. He could at least make sure the place was clean when Sam came back. Cleaning was plenty mindless and more useful than dissociating. And if there was a chance of reclaiming a random surface, they’d be less likely to find sawdust in unsavory places afterward.Sweeping up the curly shavings that always seemed to find their way from his workshop in the back to the edges of shelves in the front, Dean paused to cast about for where he’d set his dustpan just in time to hear a customer in the next aisle say to their companion: “...certainly an adventure.”It jolted him back to the bunker, the tungsten-orange cast of the place, nighttime seeping in through the vents. Sam had steepled his fingers and frowned down at his laptop, cast in the blueish light of the screen.He wasn't wearing his glasses. His face looked naked without them. Maybe that's why he'd been squinting.Dean’s chest twinged again, a deep resounding ache, and he had to stifle whatever noise had built up suddenly behind his teeth. He couldn’t let it out, whatever it was. Not right there in the middle of the store where people could hear.He leaned upon his broom, rubbing at his chest through the checkered pattern of his flannel. His frown had returned. - - - - - It was still a permanent fixture on his face when Sam showed up for lunch.The thin, tortoiseshell-rim glasses perched on Sam’s nose were freshly polished, meaning he'd probably been reading the whole time and only just realized how much dust and nonsense had gotten on them when he stepped outside. He did that. Dean had so many memories of Sam squinting up through the lenses to make sure they were clean that the older, faded ones of Sam without them felt less real.In contrast to Dean's lumberjack flair, his brother looked every inch the librarian in a neatly pressed Mister Rogers cardigan atop a button-down shirt. His slacks and Dean's jeans were easier to separate when folding laundry than Dean's newer denim vs his hand-me-downs used to be. And there was only one pair of boots by the door now, standing out amid loafers and Oxfords.Dean didn't begrudge Sam dressing the part, or however he wanted to on weekends—which was still lounge pants and Dean's old shirts—but the realness of the dream and this fixation he couldn't seem to shake really brought out the contrasts they'd built up over the years.“Dude,” his brother said, approaching the counter, still squinting the afternoon sun out of his eyes. “You’re just gonna make those wrinkles you bitch about worse.”“Shut up,” Dean said, shoving his latest project back into its box. It was a surprise, after all.“Real original.”“Oh yeah, like those.”The same sandwiches Sam always brought from the deli down the street halted in their descent toward the countertop.“You could get your own lunch, you know,” Sam said. He began to withdraw, as though he would take the sandwiches and himself right back out the door.Dean’s soul lept after him like it meant to follow.“Yeah, but nothing beats havin’ it delivered,” Dean’s mouth said. His heart thudded painfully. “And it helps that the delivery dude is hot.” He waggled his brows, belying the weird need he felt.Sam started in on a comeback. But something must still have shown on Dean’s face, because Sam’s got a look on it and he forfeited, setting the sandwiches back down on the glass.They ate in mostly comfortable silence until Dean—who could never keep secrets from Sammy long, especially not as the years wore on—blurted out: ”I had a weird-ass dream last night.”What he expected was polite interest or ribbing. Not Sam saying, disconcerted, “Me too.”They looked at each other.“You go first,” they said at the same time.Sam snorted.“I dreamed we were driving to a job,” he said. “It was something we’d fought before, but there was something about it that was different. I was trying to figure it out. I don’t know what, just that I had that feeling.“You looked younger. I felt younger. You put in Back In Black, and you were drumming on the wheel, but not singing.”Dean nodded. It’s what he’d always done when he mused. Still did, in fact, even though they didn’t do much driving in this sleepy little town.“I miss Baby,” he said.“You say that every day,” Sam returned, polishing off his last bite.Affronted, Dean pursed his lips. “Do not.” He crumpled up his sandwich wrapper like it, not Sam, had offended him.“Dude, come on. You’ve missed driving every single day we haven't, which is most of them, for as long as we’ve been here.”“Every day? For eight years?”Something in Sam’s eyes softened. “Nine, in July,” he said.Dean blinked, his hands stilling.“Nine years,” he said. “I’ll be damned.”Sam laughed. “You were once. We both were.”“Yeah, what happened with that?” Dean had to laugh too. It seemed so long ago, before his joints just ached for no reason instead of being thrown around during hunts.Before there were no more hunts at all anymore. - - - - - Later, they found their way into the bed, as they usually did.Sam had started rubbing Dean’s shoulders on the couch after dinner, as Dean flipped through channels on their crazy curved flatscreen TV and found nothing worth watching. Sometimes they sat through half a movie before one or both of them started yawning. They hadn’t had a proper movie night in ages. It wasn’t even that either of them did too much in a day anymore, even with the regular morning runs Sam still went on and Dean’s home gym routine. It was just... part of getting older, Dean supposed.That was fuckin’ weird in and of itself. Growing old. He remembered pretty vividly the days when he didn’t think he’d see thirty. The slow onset of shock and denial when, despite dying and seeing way more than a person ever should, thirty came. Then went. Dean just kept living, and the longer life kept going no matter what happened, the older he felt. Worn down. Tired.Sam had felt the same way. They were both so damn tired by the time they finally got a break that taking the out wasn’t a hard decision at all.But Dean still felt young in the bedroom. That was what mattered, he told himself. Not however gray he got—and he refused the lie of dye jobs, so that was that—nor however many wrinkles appeared each time he looked in the mirror.He could still make Sammy scream. That would never get old.Kisses grated with stubble and stung his lips. He loved that almost as much as he loved seeing his brother spread out beneath him, cheeks rosy and eyes aglow. Sam’s hair—still long, the stubborn little shit—was threaded with gray too, the angles of his face still as sharp as ever. He was so hot, Dean thought, staring down at Sam’s bare chest and the fading tattoo on his pec. As he dragged his gaze back up to those gorgeous hazel eyes, Sam glanced aside. Self-conscious.Dean quickly moved in to kiss that look away, sucking his brother’s lip between his teeth. He was the only one in this relationship allowed to doubt himself. Sam needed to know how beautiful he was; how he only got more so, each day.He was getting harder against Dean too, already at half-mast by the time they’d gotten their clothes off. Somehow, despite living together for so long, the slow removal of each article while staring each other up and down was hotter than hell. Like their bodies were still new discoveries each time. There was still that disbelief, too, that they were allowed to look. Allowed to desire.It had taken long enough. They’d been at the bunker awhile. But eventually, it came out that they’d both been harboring feelings they’d caught decades prior.Dean had a hard time believing it even now, that Sam returned it all and more. That they’d wasted so much time thinking something so stupid as “he couldn’t possibly want me.” He’d laughed when Sam said that. For a moment, Sam had looked so hurt. But then Dean had told him quietly that he’d felt the same damn way. He’d caught Sam’s huge calloused hand and held it to his chest, pulled Sam in with it until he was close enough...Those first sweet kisses remained in Dean’s top five cherished memories.Now, he pressed soft ones down Sam’s chest, the plane of his stomach, biting along his side and pelvic ridge. Nuzzling through wiry hair til he got to the base of Sam’s cock. It was so thick, hard and waiting for Dean to suckle along its length to the tip. To mouth at it and listen to Sam whine.It felt like a relief when he swallowed his brother down, relaxing his throat to take Sam as deep as he could. Pulling back off, swirling his tongue around and diving back down, wrapping his fingers around the lowest inches.“Dean—!”“Mm hmm,” he hummed, just to hear Sam swear, just to feel the hardness in his mouth swell even further. He paid special attention to the head and watched through his upper periphery as Sam arched into the mattress, scrabbling at their sheets.But it was Sam who finally slid inside him instead of the other way around, pressing Dean’s upper body into the bed to angle his hips up just right. He’d left his brother so hard and wanting that Sam had panted, “Wanna fuck you,” and how could Dean say no to that?Now, he was moaning out his pleasure, face down, spreading spit all over the comforter as Sam coaxed his orgasm closer and closer. No condom between them for years—no one for either of them but each other ever since they’d confessed—and he could feel every inch scratching the itch just right.Sam could fuck him so deeply, so thoroughly, his legs would feel like rubber tomorrow. At the moment, he flexed and drove back even harder, wanting as much as Sam could give him.He loved the smack of Sam’s hips against his ass. He loved the way prickles ran down his nerves to the tips of his fingers and toes, each nudge of his prostate building the slow-motion sunburst that suddenly took him by surprise when it exploded into shaking, groaning ecstasy. He loved that Sam was right behind him, pounding through it with a cry, grunting as his rhythm failed and he fucked his load as far into Dean as he could.After they cleaned up, wobbling to and from the bathroom with dopey smiles on their faces, Dean lay on his back with Sam’s sweaty head on his chest.Sam was tracing the asterisk scar below his sternum with a thoughtful, ticklish finger. His eyes were locked on it.“Penny for ‘em,” Dean said softly, even though he could guess.“Just thinking about how lucky I am,” Sam rumbled, his cheekbone digging into Dean’s skin. “Sometimes it hits me, that if this hadn’t worked... if we hadn’t made it back to Cas in time...”“Well, it did. We did.” Stroking his brother’s hair, combing it back from Sam’s ear, Dean stared at the ceiling and remembered how the knife had burned going in, how Michael had burned out inside him. How Sam and Jack had looked as Dean fell to the ground, bleeding out: stunned. Horrified. “We’re here now, and that’s all, folks.”It had been such a simple decision to make. He had known he couldn’t trust Michael as far as he could throw him, and he couldn’t throw him far once he’d let him in. So after Lucifer betrayed them and got his ass handed to him for it—as soon as Lucifer’s eyes stopped shooting fireworks—Dean did the only sensible thing.He didn’t give Michael a chance to react. To betray him. Dean yanked the archangel blade from Lucifer’s vessel and drove it straight into his own chest with all the strength and determination he had.He hadn't imagined he'd survive.Nor could he have imagined how it would feel. How holy fire would hollow him out, inch by inch, scouring Michael from his bones with all the grace of a salt and burn. Less, even, because Michael fought it til the bitter end; to drag Dean with him, body and soul, into the Empty. Dean had only stayed, he thought, because Sam had been watching. Instants stretched into eons.They’d been in midair. Dean fell. All the lights were swirling out by the time he hit the ground harder than he ever had, breath-stealing impact the last thing he felt until he gasped awake to Cas’ hands on his chest and Sam sobbing, begging him to “wake up, you jerk, wake up.” All this Dean relived as he traced the swirls of the spackle above him, Sam a grounding warmth at his side.He shivered.Sam smoothed a hand up his midsection. “Shh,” he said. “I’m sorry.”“You’re fine,” Dean said. And he was. It all was, had been for years. They’d...A laugh huffed out of him when he remembered the dream again. Fog had swallowed it up, all but that one frozen scene and Sam’s words. They’d chosen their own adventure, pages turning themselves be damned. And maybe they were. Maybe he and Sam still were, too.They had enough here, though. Each other.That was plenty. - - - - - The next morning, Dean was still thinking about it.He hadn’t dreamed last night—not that he could recall—so he dissociated and dwelt on the past while he pulled on his undershirt, jeans, and habitual flannel. It was weird that he had walked down the same sidewalks for so many years and never saw anything out of the ordinary. There was crime in the town, as there was everywhere, but normal human crime. Normal murders. Normal... everything.Take that morning, for example. His news apps had informed him about a B&E, two car wrecks, and vandalism outside the high school. That’s it. He walked to work, as he always did, and saw a few people out walking their dogs, jogging like Sammy, mowing their lawns. The vacant homes he passed amid occupied ones were still intact. So were the empty storefronts, typical of a small town. He waved when people waved to him, which he’d had to get used to when they first settled here.The only notable events of the past nine years had been when the lawyer’s office downtown caught fire, spreading to two other businesses; the time a bear had wandered into town—a normal, regular old bear that got released back into the wild—and the winter everybody called Snowmageddon, when he and Sam were snowed in for two weeks, lost power for most of it, and fucked to stay warm.There was nothing to feel jumpy about as Dean rounded the corner past Mr. Burson’s spectacular garden. No reason to avoid, much less scout, the moldering mansion two doors down.Nobody felt suspicious. Nobody sprouted fangs.It was weird. There hadn't been a single unexplainable headline since Michael and Lucifer died.Dean unlocked the door of Winchester Woodworking Supply, seeing nothing out of place, as usual. The metal of the door was cold against his knuckles. Fall wasn’t far off, the nights and early mornings already chilly. He let himself in and breathed deep the sharp scents of fresh-cut wood and Old English furniture polish.He rented the space from a property manager he hardly ever saw. He’d been on time with the rent every month. Being that his was the only specialty woodworking shop for at least fifty miles around, sometimes people drove an hour or more to come see him. He was never lacking in business. It was kind of funny, actually—the previous renter hadn’t managed his stock properly and eventually skipped town on his debt. All the supplies Dean started out with had been left behind. It was a gift horse whose mouth he hadn’t dared look in, who turned out to be a prize winner.Just more evidence that Sam, who’d been beside him every step of the way, was his good luck charm.It had been Sam who introduced them to everyone in the beginning. Sam whose charm had won over the community at large. It wasn’t the hot college chicks they were trying to woo. That had always been Dean’s forte. These were staples of the town, old folks mostly, their neighbors and business associates.They’d been prepared for a fight. So far as they knew, acceptance had never been a large part of small-town life. The first time Dean held Sam’s hand in public, he’d been expecting to get punched, but instead old Doris McElroy—may she rest in peace—had told them they were the sweetest thing since maple sugar candy.Dean stepped over the threshold and made for the bank of light switches near the back. The first time he’d kissed Sam in public had been over the counter there in the store. They hadn’t expected someone to walk in at that moment, but they’d just gotten a knowing grin, the kind Dean had always gotten when he left a motel room with sex hair.After that, they operated on the assumption it’d all be okay. It had been.His heart swelled to think of just how lucky he was.With the lights on, the register ready to go, Dean pulled out his secret project. It was a pair of carven bookends for Sam. Nothing too ornate, just two fat flourishes that each kind of looked like a calligraphic S. But Dean had been learning the craft for a while now and thought he was doing a decent job of it. He was taking his time, being careful, hoping to have them done by Christmas.There was something cathartic in peeling each small strip away from the emerging curves. Watching his idea coalesce. Knowing Sam would probably say he loved them even if they weren’t perfect. - - - - - “I had another dream,” Sam said later that day, as soon as he polished off his lunch.Dean stopped mid-chew. “Like that weird one?” he asked with his mouth full.“Yeah. This time, we were in the bunker. The laptop was hurting my eyes. It was like the blue light was way too intense. Remember how I had that screen dimmer program? It must have been disabled for some reason.”Swallowing, Dean set his sandwich down. There was a gnawing deep in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with food.“What were you researching, could you see?”“No,” Sam said. “It was too bright.” He frowned, staring aside, remembering. “I looked up at one point, and I could barely see you... you were washed out, for some reason. Gray. Your arms were over your head...”“Over my head?” Dean wrinkled his nose. “Was I stretching?”“Maybe. You were rolling your head around like your neck hurt.”Shaking his head, Sam put his sandwich down too, one hand absently reaching up to rub at the back of his own neck. Pensive.“I felt thirsty. Really thirsty,” he said slowly. “The light was hurting my eyes, but like... all of me hurt. I felt like I should get up, but I didn’t. I kept feeling like that, but I just kept staring at my screen.”“That’s fuckin’ weird, man.”Eyebrows rising, Sam let a gust of breath from puffed cheeks, finally meeting Dean’s eyes.“You’re telling me,” he said. “I haven’t had dreams like this... in a long-ass time.”His face fell. “Oh, no.”“You’re thinking they mean something,” Dean said, reading him like the books he lent. “Like back in the day.” Like the visions that precluded kids dying, Sam dying, all of it orchestrated by that jackass Azazel.But there hadn’t been any demonsign for years now...“Or something else, yeah,” Sam said. “Whatever it is, it’s not good.”Perversely, Dean felt a dread-soaked excitement brewing, struggling up through whatever foreboding sat heavily in his gut. Finally something weird. Something to do. He hadn’t realized that the quiet life had never sat one-hundred percent right with him until it wasn’t sitting still anymore.“What do we do about it?” he asked, rather than mention any of that.“I’ll look and see if we have any books on dreams.” Sam laughed, sighing. “I’m rusty. Go figure.”“Rust looks good on you, dude,” Dean said.“What does that even mean?”Leaning in quickly, Dean stole a kiss that left his brother looking surprised and slightly pink.“Does it matter?” he said. “You look good.” - - - - - When he closed the store at 7 pm, Dean meandered his way over to the library.There was something poignant and sweet about Main Street at sunset; only a few things were open late, everything painted in shades of gold. It sparked a nostalgia that still felt odd even though they’d been there long enough to earn the right to feel it. But he enjoyed it all the same.He waved to Frank Johnson over at his vintage Ford pickup. Carrying groceries, it looked like. Dean wondered if Frank’s kids had stopped by for the weekend. He remembered when Frank’s first grandbaby was born, how he’d paraded the picture around to everybody’s shop, how Dennis Ellis had clapped him on the back there at Dean’s counter and told him, “She’s a keeper!”With the old life forcing its way back to center stage, Dean wondered with a pang if any of Frank’s family had ever run into anything supernatural, or if that stuff was just fiction to them like it was for so much of the world.The old brick library loomed ahead, just past the squat little post office. Sam kept it open until 9 on the weekends to allow local students studying for tests and writing papers to use the resources longer. Dean wasn’t sure they ever did, but Sam insisted.Predictably, the place was empty. It smelled of old and new paper, dust, antique wood, and some faint floral scent Dean couldn’t place. The wine-dark carpet was soft beneath his boots. Easing the giant white door closed, he traversed the foyer with its circular racks of community event pamphlets and turned the corner to see Sam at the front desk, nose deep in what turned out to be a thick tome on dream symbols.“Find anything?” he asked, getting a rush of déjà vécu. So many times, too many to count, he had asked Sam that. He’d gotten a variety of answers. This one was the frown down at the page. Habitual frustration, mostly sympathetic, welled as Dean approached.Sam flipped a page over, peering down at the list on it.“Not really.”“Can we go home?” Dean asked hopefully.“I guess.” Sam sighed, flipping the book closed with a thud. “All of this is so vague. The internet was no help either. Everything is so subjective, and none of it really struck a chord.” He glanced around. “Nobody ever shows up this late, anyhow.”Dean put on a sympathetic face, swallowing “I told you so,” and “thank fucking God.” After Sam locked up, they made their way back up Main Street together, the last of the failing light slipping away. The air was still warm but losing that, too. Dean was sure he’d have to start wearing a jacket before the week was out. Sam already had his on, the same brown number he’d worn for over a decade. He kept his hands in his pockets, his hair teased around his face by a slight breeze, his expression still pensive.It made Dean’s heart beat faster, to think that they’d been together so long, that Sam still had the same jacket he’d had when it was just the two of them and the road, the two of them underground, now the two of them in their own little house. The quiet life.He thought about all they’d gotten up to since they “retired,” in every room in that house, in the store; hell, in the back room of the library. His heart skipped a beat remembering the look of ecstasy on Sam’s face when he’d hit that sweet spot just right. The way the table felt under his own clutching fingers as Sam pounded him into it.Dean coughed. His heart was pounding, actually, and it was starting to feel too fast even for the stirring in his pants.“You okay?” Sam asked. He’d stopped, and Dean stopped too. His heart skipped another beat, making him cough again. What the hell? Glancing over at Sam, he started to say something, but fell to his knees instead. The concrete was hard. It bit through his jeans.“Dean!”He was looking up at Sam, and then Sam was down there on the sidewalk with him, hands on his shoulders.“Hey,” he was saying, “hey, you’re okay, you’re gonna be okay...”The last thing Dean thought before he keeled over into Sam’s arms was, unreasonably, “I’m fine.” - - - - - His eyelids felt crusty.Dean blinked them open and they creaked, shedding flakes that burned on their way out of the corners with tears that felt sludgy. His skin was caked with grime. Sweat. But he was so cold.His arms ached. They were held aloft for some reason, his wrists burning, and slowly Dean realized his abs were aching too, stretched tight by the weight of his legs. He was up on tiptoe. Suspended.Hanging and dangling like the slab of meat in Rocky, just as worked over, bruised by fuck knew what.A bright point of pain lanced his right forearm, but he couldn’t turn his head to see what was causing it. The pulse in the crook of his elbow throbbed with unreasonable force.“Sam?” he tried to say. But his mouth was stuck shut, gummed up somehow. He could barely part his lips, which were dry and split painfully with the effort. The sound of his brother’s name crawled up his throat. All that left him was a moan.He tried again. “Sssmmm...” It was such an effort to make any sound at all. Dean stared into the darkness ahead of him, dingy and empty, a stretch of floorboards strewn with unidentifiable refuse. “Sssaa—!”Struggling, he tried to move around and found that by kicking his legs, he could swing on the fulcrum of his arms. His muscles screamed. But he moved.A surge of horror struck him at the sight of Sam hanging beside him, just beyond some nightmarish contraption of knobs and switches and two thick reddish tubes. His brother’s head was lolling, his arms suspended too in thick chains hanging from a gigantic meat hook. There was blood on his face, in his hair. He was too pale. He looked so young...Dean strained with all his might to yell his name.
“Sammy!”
He jolted awake, still terrified, the last of the plaintive cry ringing in his ears.A huge hand tightened around his. Sam whipped his head up from where he must have been dozing beside Dean to blink at him, eyes wide.“Dean?”The room around him was unfamiliar beige, and he looked like he needed more sleep. But he was alive. He was safe.“Heya, Sammy,” Dean replied, sagging with relief.Sam surged forward to grab ahold of his head and kiss him soundly.“You—” He kissed him again. “—idiot!” And again.“Wha—” Dean became aware of a heart monitor scolding him at the same time a nurse appeared in the doorway of what he was just realizing was a hospital room as he said, “What’d I do?”Sam, looking somewhat guiltily at Dean’s elevated vitals, sat back in his chair and pulled his glasses out of his jacket pocket to put them on. Dean watched, amused, as he immediately pulled them back off to squint at them, then clean them on his shirt. So many times he’d seen the little ritual. How could his brother cleaning his glasses be so fucking endearing?Moreover, it was normal. The beeping behind him began to even out.“Your doctor will be in soon,” the nurse said, slipping behind him to check the monitor.“But what can you tell us?” Sam asked quickly.“Well, do you know what tachycardia is?” she asked.“A rapid heartbeat, palpitations, right?”“Yes.” She made her way back from the monitor over to the opposite wall, where she pulled a computer stand to her chest and tapped away at the keyboard. “Says here,” she said, inspecting the screen, "he shows signs of supraventricular tachycardia.”“Of huh?” Dean asked intelligently, as Sam said with great patience, “Irregular rhythm.”Dean glanced between him and the nurse.“Am I gonna have a heart attack?” That would be wild, he thought. Of all the things in my entire life that I thought would kill me—that did kill me—for a heart attack to do the trick... of all the mundane bullshit... “Not if I can help it,” said a masculine voice from the door.He looked familiar. Dark hair, ovular face, tall. Dean’s doctor. Chesterfield came to mind. Martin Chesterfield, M.D.“Hey, doc!” he said heartily. He couldn’t recall when he’d last had a check-up. Had to’ve been ages ago. “How’s things?”“Could be worse, Mr. Winchester,” the doctor said. He picked up Dean’s chart and tsked at it. “Still taxing the old blood organ, hmm?”“Can’t avoid it, apparently,” Dean replied.It didn’t escape him that Sam was frowning, but he couldn’t focus on that at the moment. It would just have to wait until they were alone. - - - - - Sam was still frowning later when they left the hospital with three prescriptions and as many pages of instructions. Dean’s diet would have to change. He should join Sam on his morning runs. This, that, and the other thing, the whole you’re getting older and more fragile rigamarole.Jostling his brother with a shoulder on their way out, Dean grinned up at him, trying to coax out a reluctant one in return. But Sam was determined to be a stormcloud.“Wait,” Dean said when he saw Baby gleaming in the parking lot. She’d been under her protective cover ever since they took that trip upstate last spring, except for regular tune-ups, and she looked beautiful. “You drove me here?”Sam scoffed. “An ambulance would have taken forever,” he said, glancing up from the paperwork and pushing his glasses back. “This way, I got you here in half the time and only had to pay for gas. That doesn't cost thousands of dollars we don't have.”No fault in that logic. With a shrug, Dean headed for the passenger seat. It still felt weird, probably always would, but he knew Sam would never let him drive after what just happened. He felt tired, anyway. He didn’t mind being chauffeured. Hell, at the moment, he didn’t even think he’d mind Sam’s music.But Sam pulled out onto the state road with the radio off.“Penny for ‘em?” Dean had to ask.He watched his brother grind his teeth as the car picked up speed. Finally, Sam relaxed back into the seat, leaning on the door beside him with a finger pressed to his lips.“Did anything about that seem odd to you?” he asked.“You mean, besides me passing out?”“No, just...” He shook his head, shifting around, unable to figure out which frustrated tic to appease next. “I guess I must have spaced out. I just can't seem to recall what exactly Chesterfield said to you.”“He said...” Dean frowned. He could see the man's smiling face, and the papers he took from an outstretched hand, the same ones on the seat between them. The actual conversation was eluding him, though. He did remember thinking dude's teeth were ridiculously white.He had to admit defeat. “I don't either.”“That's weird,” Sam said grimly.Dean had to admit that, too. - - - - - The hospital, though just in the next town over, was still a fair few miles away from where they lived. By the time they were pulling in past the outskirts, it was dark. Porch lights began to welcome them with less and less distance between. Stop signs gave way to traffic lights.They hadn’t said much since that last conversation, mired in their own thoughts. Dean had given up wracking his brain for information it didn’t hold, trying instead to recall the awful nightmare he’d had in the hospital. Only flashes of it remained.The ordeal that surrounded it, however, had underscored his own mortality.As Sam made to drive straight through an intersection, Dean broke the silence.“Turn left.”Sam glanced at him but did it anyway. Baby’s headlights cut through a swath of untrimmed hedge, swooping into a deep decline of road that soon bent its way skyward again.At the top of the hill lay the town cemetery.It was something unique, Dean thought. He was strangely enchanted every time he passed it at night. Even more so, now. Every grave in the sprawling complex was marked with a tiny light, solar-charged and steady—and under the rich black rural sky, it looked like a field of stars. Their evocative tapestry swelled and dipped with the landscape.No more instructions were needed. Sam pulled in, parked, and turned off the headlights. They sat for a long moment. Gazed out over the stillness and let silence fill the gaps.Then Dean opened his door.Sam mirrored, as he always did, and they slammed them in sync. It was more than habitual. More than familiar.It struck Dean often, as it did then, that no matter where they happened to call home... his true home would always lie with his brother. - - - - - They made love there in the dark, in the middle of an open space, careful not to defile any graves—though Dean would have laughed and said he was sure they’d be happy to see some action, if this were that kind of night. But it wasn't. Instead, it was somber, reverent touches, and silence save for the healthy racing of pulses and low moans that left Dean in spite of himself.He was beneath Sam again, but he loved it. He probably wouldn’t ever say so aloud. He figured Sam knew. Not like it wasn't totally obvious.Dean tossed his head against the damp grass. “Sammy...”“Shh,” his brother soothed, a lilt of amusement to it. “You’ll wake the dead.”“Wake somethin’ —ah!” Dean clutched at Sam with his legs, hauling him in even deeper, gripping his brother’s forearms tight as he sought any leverage he could find. “Sammy, God—”“It's Sam,” his brother growled, shifting the angle and thrusting in deep, so deep, Dean couldn’t help it. He threw his head back on his pillow of sod with an animal cry.Chuckling at him, Sam leaned in, covering Dean’s mouth with a kiss that slid and shook with each sure jolt of his hips.Time slipped and slid around them. It seemed like they were fucking forever and yet, all too soon, Sam’s thrusts were growing more erratic, his breathing harsh in Dean’s ear. His head hung and sweat dripped onto Dean’s face. Dean swiped shakily at his forehead, clearing it for him like he’d always done.“Come on, baby,” he said. Urging. Come for me. But with great effort, grunting through clenched teeth, Sam stopped entirely.“I want you inside me,” he said.That rocketed straight through Dean’s core, his cock swelling harder so quickly he gasped.“I just—” Sam’s cock twitched inside him. Dean involuntarily clenched in response and felt his brother shiver. “Earlier, I thought... maybe this is it. You know? So many times back in the day, I thought maybe we’d made our last mistake. And now it’s been so long since then...”He collapsed atop Dean then, grabbing ahold of him so quick clumps of grass got yanked from the earth and so tightly it drove the breath from Dean’s lungs. Dean fiercely returned the embrace, clutching at Sam with arms and legs, holding him as close as possible.Sam said, muffled: “I thought I’d lost you for good.”“You didn’t, though,” Dean countered fiercely into the wet strands of his hair. “And you’re not gonna.”Rocking his hips, Sam shifted, a slow wet grind so deep inside Dean that for a moment, Dean couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t from his brother’s bulk crushing him, nor even from the cock nudging his prostate, but the closeness and just how much he loved Sammy then and had for so damn long. It overwhelmed him. Stole his oxygen and tugged a lump up into his throat.He found a rhythm again because it was all he could do at the moment. Thankfully, Sam seemed to understand. Their bucking back and forth melded into a solid, sinuous figure eight. The eternity symbol, Dean thought. Then: Jesus, that's fuckin’ sappy, even for me. But it was true.Sam started to pull away and out inexorably slowly, drawing a hiss from Dean along with his length.“I wanna come hanging off you,” he murmured against Dean’s neck. He began to slide his way down Dean’s chest pressing kisses along the way. It made Dean shudder, the way he said it—again, and again, with each languid touch of Sam’s lips.By the time Sam got down to his cock, which perked straight up as soon as it was free, Dean was more than ready to make that happen. Sam, of course, had to spend some time down there. Make sure Dean really wanted him, or something else equally ridiculous—Dean had to focus so intently on not coming in Sam’s mouth he didn’t really get to enjoy it. He was so hard when Sam pulled off with a succulent pop and smack of lips that he itched all over with need.Another packet of lube was pressed into his hand. The graveyard lights twinkled in Sam’s dark eyes.Dean got up off his back with a quiet groan, all his joints protesting. He told them firmly in his mind to hush. This was too important. Too immediate. He guided Sam to hands and knees and got a finger slicked up.Neither of them needed much prep anymore. They were far too active with one another. It wasn’t long before Sam was arching back on the fingers Dean was zoning out on giving him, panting, “Just do it already.”“Bitch,” Dean said fondly, lining up.“Jerk—ah! Ohh...”“Yeah, that’s what you wanted, huh.”With a whine, Sam dropped to his elbows, driving back, establishing a deep and brutal rhythm Dean was all too happy to keep up.He ran a hand down the broad plane of his brother’s back, smoothing his thumb over the wing of one shoulder blade, feeling the tension thrumming through the muscles around it and the need with which Sam moved. The way he clenched around Dean was divine. The noises he made... Dean would never tire of them. Never. I love you, he thought, losing himself in overwhelming sensation. I love you... Sam got his wish. He didn’t even need a hand on himself; Dean plowed him into the ground and he soared, sobbing into the grass. His body spasmed around Dean and dragged him over the edge too, and when they fell over on their sides, still connected, still coming, for one instant Dean felt weightless. - - - - - A comfortable silence reigned as they found their way back to the Impala. All around them twinkled the little lights, cheerful and otherworldly. Nothing malevolent stirred, nothing rose to challenge their presence. The days of digging up graves and salting them, burning them, leaving tired and dirty were so far behind them. Dean could actually enjoy being there. And now, there was a fresher, far more enjoyable event to remember whenever he passed one—especially this one.Sam didn’t insist on driving. He looked blissed out. Dean was floating six inches above his own body, but he had more experience behind the wheel when he felt like that. He wasn’t sure how many times Sam had even driven her, much less drank or fucked beforehand.At first, he didn’t put on music. Just the sound of Baby’s tires crunching over the asphalt as he swung her around and pointed her home was enough. But soon, he felt the itch in his brainpan, the need for sound while he twitched the wheel with two fingers and kept her course true.He leaned forward, an amused hum leaving him at the pleasant twinge in his ass, and snapped on the radio.The song that flooded Baby’s speakers was an oldie but a goodie. He’d hadn't heard it in years.Sam started singing raucously on the next line.“—still the one I want whisperin' in my ear—
You're still the one I want to talk to in bed
Still the one that turns my head—”Sam was grinning, Dean could hear it. He glanced over and they sang the next line together:
“We're still havin’ fun, and you're still the one.”
“God, you’re good,” Sam yelled over the music.“You!” Dean said, punching his brother in the arm without taking his eyes from the road.“Nah, I mean it,” came quieter, so lost in the song Dean almost didn't hear it. “You’re so damn good.”Dean didn’t say anything, but he grinned like a fool the whole rest of the drive. - - - - - The doctor had scheduled a check-up for three days later. They went during Sam’s lunch break; not because they’d planned to, but because some unspoken wariness meant they would do it together, or not at all. That instinct had meant the difference between death and survival before. So many times they'd walked in together and only by merit of that had come out again.Dean had spent the morning with the shop closed and his nose in dream interpretation literature with Sam. They still weren’t finding anything conclusively akin to what they’d seen. Nor was there any connection between heart problems and old memories, unless you counted heartbreak, which thankfully didn’t fit their situation.But there was too much of a connection between the imagery of both their dreams to be ignored. How could they possibly have that much in common? Sam did muse at one point that maybe Dean’s subconscious had just latched onto what Sam told him about his arms being over his head, entwining that with other horrific latent details picked up over the course of a life such as his. That felt too easy, though. It was never that easy.Much as they both might wish it was.There was no denying that whatever the cause, their old life was at long last invading their new one.In the waiting room, Dean studied the weird abstract prints framed on walls which were just as beige as those in the hospital had been, while Sam fiddled with his phone. It didn’t take long for Dean to get bored, and so, curious.“Whatcha doin’?” he murmured.“Setting up a recording app,” Sam said quietly back. “I want to make sure we know exactly what he says.”Impressed, Dean sat back in the uncomfortable waiting room chair.“See? The smart one,” he said.Sam snorted, but Dean could see a flush on his cheekbones, just beyond the sweep of his hair.A door opened at the far end of the room, and a nurse called Dean's name. He and Sam stood in tandem like they’d always done. It was a struggle not to laugh at the dude's confusion.Taking pity on him, Dean gave a quick little wave.“That’s me.”The nurse led them back to an exam room that smelled like faded air freshener, beckoning Dean to the cushioned exam table. Sam took the chair in the corner.And they waited.They ended up waiting for thirty-two damn minutes, most of which Dean spent jiggling his leg, rattling the table, and annoying the hell out of Sam.“Good thing I can set this thing to ignore white noise.”“Yeah,” Dean said with a waggle of eyebrows.Sam raised one. “Obnoxious white noise.”“You love me and my noises.”“Some of them.”A pleasant shiver ran through Dean at that. His lips quirked up, then pursed, warmth spreading in places that enjoyed it and the imagery currently piling up in his imagination.“Man,” he said, “if we weren’t here on business...”Just then, a brisk knock sounded on the other side of the door. The brothers exchanged wry looks. Speak of the devil. - - - - - Too soon, they found themselves in the car.Dean blinked down at the steering wheel. His legs felt like they’d just done some walking, his ass felt like he’d sat for a while. He remembered voices, a vague notion of a face. Why had it all faded so quickly?Was he just getting old? Instincts stirred in the attic of his mind where they’d been packed away for years. Was there something more to this? Something... connected? Everything’s connected, somebody told him once. Or he saw it on TV.The tinny crackle of static through a tiny speaker exploded from the passenger side, and Dean glanced over to see Sam poking his screen. Hot damn, that’s right! Dean thought. He recorded it all. Smart kid. A voice replaced the static: Chesterfield.
“And how are we feeling, Mr. Winchester?”
“Oh, you know,” Dean heard himself say. “Same old.”
“No more episodes?”
“Nope! Not even a flutter.”
“Good, good.”
It was disconcerting, to say the least, that Dean could barely remember having formed these words. He sounded at ease in the recording but here, now, his heart rate was picking up.“Is there something in the water?” he wondered aloud.Sam paused the playback. “I think we would have noticed before now,” he said, musing. “We’ve been here—”“—a long-ass time,” Dean finished.“Yeah. And if that were it, we’d probably notice other people being affected.”Dean peered over at the phone screen. “How much more is there?”“Uh...” Sam squinted down at it, only for his eyes to widen in shock. He looked over at Dean. “Half an hour.”He pressed play, and they listened to the doctor go over preliminaries, general check-up stuff like taking Dean’s blood pressure and listening to his heart. He pronounced all of that normal, though he said that Dean should take extra care to make sure his blood was flowing as uninhibited as possible.“Wait, play that again,” Dean said, frowning.Sam’s finger was already on the screen. “We want a nice, steady flow through those veins,” Chesterfield said. “You’ll want to watch what you’re eating. Maybe consider drinking less. Thins the blood, you know.” “That’s a tall order, Doc,” Dean heard himself joke, though he hadn’t drunk as heavily in ages as he used to when he was younger. Hadn’t felt the need.Sam’s eyes were on him again. “What you thinkin’?” he asked as he met them. “Vampire?” It felt so strange to say that after so long.“It would be a good gig for one. Hide in plain sight. Access to potentially unlimited food supply, depending on where he ordered it from.” Sam didn’t look convinced. “But it doesn’t explain the memory loss.” He sighed, slouching back in his seat, more languid than before but still tense. “Or the dreams.”“Does correlation equal causation?” Dean asked, quoting Sam, wanting to make Sam laugh. It wasn’t a laughing matter, he knew. But he was hardwired to try.He got a soft snort. “Can’t say for sure,” Sam said, discontent. “All we really know is... something’s definitely up.” “We have to be careful with our health,” Chesterfield was telling them in the recording. “The past likes to catch up with us. It’s the little things, you know.” With a quiet noise of disgust, Sam turned it off.“Yeah, I don’t like it either,” Dean said.He cranked Baby’s engine, taking solace in the familiar surge of relief when she roared to life. At least she and Sam hadn't changed. He found, as he had in the past, that he could handle anything life threw at him so long as he had them. - - - - - The house was so quiet when they let themselves in. Twilight approached, and the last rays of sunlight filtering through the curtains limned the furniture with oddly foreboding threads of gold. Dean felt like if he breathed too loudly, the whole thing might fall open like a magician’s box.Sam was a taut line beside him, a scarecrow of angles and clothes. Dean ached to be rid of the latter so he could get his hands and mouth all over the former. He could almost hear the gears turning in his brother’s head. He’d make the old tired joke about smoke coming out of Sam’s ears if he weren’t so preoccupied with it himself.Light waned, then slipped away. Neither of them moved to turn on a lamp as shadows lengthened. The whole town had felt... not empty around them as they drove, per se, but set apart from what it had been for them before that appointment.They stood in the dark and felt the loss.At some point, Sam moved past him to sit heavily on the sofa, leaving Dean feeling awkward when he was the only one left standing. His legs felt too heavy when he directed them forward. He ended up plopping down as hard as his brother had.He stared across the room between their nouveau floral rug and the TV, somewhere just above the molding on the far wall. He remembered Cas helping them move that beast of an entertainment center when they moved out here. He’d been wearing a blue, short sleeve button-down open over a white t-shirt. No, wait, it had been Jack wearing that, his goofy grin just visible above the lip of the piece.No, wait...Dean frowned at the wall. He found he couldn't remember; but not that the memories were faded, more like they were skipping all over the place and swapping details at random. Cas visited after his trip to Peru, but then it was like the tape jammed for a second and it was Dr. Chesterfield in the raucous Hawaiian shirt with sunscreen on his nose.He almost remembered Mom toasting them with lemonade from her perch on their bench swing out back, but the rest of the world looked like an unfinished sketch around her. And then...Why couldn't he remember where she'd gone after that? Where she was now?Sam seemed to be having similar issues, because as Dean opened his mouth to ask if his brother could remember where their mom was living, Sam asked, “Do you remember where Jack lives?”Thinking, reaching, trying, Dean could only come up with the one memory, which repeated the same as he'd seen it before and went no further.“No...” he said, feeling his voice echo in the next room, in his own ears, several feet removed from where he sat. “And where’s Cas?”“He’s... in Providence, isn’t he? Rhode Island?”“What’s he doing there?”“Teaching, I think.”“Cas?” That felt both right and wrong, natural and yet... Dean shook his head, rattling the thoughts around in there like Yahtzee dice. “Are you sure?”“I—” Sam’s voice cracked. “No.”They stared at each other.“Where’s Mom?” Dean asked softly.Sam’s eyes widened. He simply shook his head. Quickly, like he was trying to deny not knowing.“We’d remember if she died, right?” Dean was talking faster; probably for the same reason, he didn’t know. “If any of them did? We should... we should know where they are, Sammy. We wouldn’t just... lose touch. I mean, life’s been great, but... nah. We wouldn’t.” Would we? felt set in whatever expression was on his face. But the only answer he got was a frown, a little sadder than it was before.Sam didn’t know. He hoped, but... he couldn’t remember either.That was honestly scarier.Dean’s heart began to beat faster. Wary of that now, he began to rub at the spot, hoping he wasn’t about to collapse again. There was a strain on it, a tightening of the skin from his heart outwards. No, not the skin. Beneath it.He felt like something was pulling his veins out of his body. His entire nervous system. Slowly enough that it only itched, and dragged, a network of twine being tugged from—Extending his arm, Dean stared at the veins at his elbow. Nothing there. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see.As he stared, Sam placed two warm fingers atop the pulse point, two on his own.His lips moved silently.Counting.“Dean—” he began, sounding strangled. Then suddenly, inexplicably, he was yanked backward in midair, folding in on himself and vanishing.Time screeched to a halt. Dean gaped at the spot where Sam had been sitting. His skin was still warm from Sam’s touch. He couldn’t conceive of what had just happened, just that Sam was gone, his afterimage discoloring the air.Tears of shock welled in Dean’s eyes.In that moment, everything within him pulled. - - - - - He gasped into reality, cold and cramping and loosing a yell, just in time to see the corpse of a djinn drop from the knife in Bobby’s hand. Bobby! He’s alive? Dean’s thoughts raced. No, beret—that’s right, he’s the alternate—
Goddamnit.
That old pain struck Dean anew, along with a residual loss of Sam from what he now knew was the djinn’s crafted fantasy. His own paradise.They’d... oh, wow.He looked around wildly, finding Sam with magnetic polarity, dangling in shadow three feet away on the other side of the weirdest jury-rigged piece of medical equipment Dean had ever seen. He felt like he’d seen it before, somewhere, but the sensation was quickly shoved to the back of his mind as he watched his brother shake himself awake, never before so glad to see Sam toss the hair out of his face with a wince. They were both dirty as hell, but they were alive.In the real world. Where they were still in their thirties, still fighting everything, still... not... together. Not like that.Dean was quickly surrounded by people he hardly recognized but knew were the refugees from the apocalypse world, a ragtag army mobilized and strung together by the fact that for too long, they’d been nothing else. They set to work dismantling the contraption that held Dean aloft while Dean dissociated, remembering what only moments ago had been rock-solid reality.Sitting in the living room. The way it had smelled, comfortable and familiar. The furniture they’d picked out together. Sam’s stupid ergonomic chair.He and Sam had had a life together, a real honest-to-God retirement, with a house and jobs and—And—Somebody freed his left wrist, somebody else gingerly removing the long wicked needle from his arm, and Dean scrubbed at his face with a grimy hand before anyone noticed the hot tears he was blinking down his cheeks.He ached for the life they hadn’t really ever had.Horror was setting in, too, dread roiling thick and oily right behind where that asterisk scar had been. It was just a dream, he told himself, resisting the urge to rub at his chest and make sure the skin wasn’t raised and puckered there. No reason you'd say yes to Michael. No chance Lucifer could make a play for anything anymore. They’re gone. Stuck. It’s over. But he couldn't let it go. He accepted the helpful hands that eased him down from the djinn's rig, murmured his thanks, extricating himself from all of them to make his way to Sam's side. Sam was staring at him with the most hollow expression Dean had seen on that face in a good long while. He wondered which part Sam was remembering.“Hey,” Dean said when he reached him, for lack of anything better to say.He could preemptively reassure Sam there was no way Lucifer would be back, no way in hell Dean would lend himself as an angel condom after years of fighting just that, regardless of how on earth the situation would even arise. He could try to suss out how Sam really felt about their... relationship...“Hey,” Sam replied in the same sort of tone.As they stood there, massaging their wrists and avoiding one another's eyes, Dean realized the best choice was probably not ever talking about it, like it had always been.“You boys alright?” Bobby asked, startling them both.Dean glanced at Sam and caught his brother's glance back. They acquiesced with nods. It was easier than trying to quantify the mess.Bobby scratched his head. “Damndest thing I ever saw. It had you two hooked up together.”“What?” Sam glanced over at the tattooed corpse. “Djinn don't do that.”“Well, this one did.”“What could it have possibly gained?” Right away, Sam was back in analytical mode. “What about the other victims? Were they...”While the two of them debated ramifications and all that technical crap, Dean glanced around the dilapidated room. He had no idea where they were. His brain was stuffed full of fake memories. He barely recalled the case or where they’d driven to take care of it. The djinn must have gotten the jump on him and Sam somewhere closer to the front door, which if he was remembering the size of the building correctly could be anywhere from there.They’d gone to a barn raising in the fantasy world, he recalled with a snort. Helped pull the ropes and everything. Sam had looked radiant, his top button undone, laughing with a beer in his hand afterward. He was wearing suspenders, something Dean never let him live down. It had been a few years ago...Whoa. Dean might need to sit down.Most of a decade lived. Gone. A whole swath of his life. Their lives.No wonder Sam was jumping back into the job. If Dean thought on what they’d just been through too long or too hard, he might run headfirst into an existential crisis and never recover. Okay, he told himself, swallowing determinedly. Focus. The djinn had been running an enormous, complicated operation. There were still several other people strung up in similar rigs. A few, Dean could see, were hooked up together just like he and Sam had apparently been.As the refugees worked on getting them all loose, one came awake with a cry, still halfway entangled in the simplest setup of them all. Beside her was an empty chair.“It will come to pass!” she said, struggling weakly to stand. “The battle and the betrayal! The—” She grunted in pain. “—parallels, Ilchester and Stull!”Beside Dean, Sam flinched hard.“There will be but one opportunity, yet boundless rewards,” she shouted, staring around in a frenzied way. “There will be but one left standing, though at first, he shall fall. There will be but one in the eyes of many!”Her eyes found Dean's and locked there. “Thus saith the Lord,” she said in a tone like she was commenting on the weather, and then she collapsed in a heap.Dean stared at her still form in shock as several others crowded around her.When he finally glanced at Sam, his brother wasn't looking at him.“She’s a prophet?”“I’ll be damned,” Bobby breathed. He left them, heading over to the small cluster of people trying to tend to the girl.Dean shook off the memories that phrase invoked. Those past few days hadn’t really happened. They hadn’t.“That djinn was drinking prophet blood,” he said, slower, forcing his way through the scream winding up against his jaw. “That explains why shit was so wonky—”An idea blossomed like a surge of oxygen to his brain. “...Hey!”“Dean,” Sam said quietly.“If it’s true… if it ends up that we gotta take the big one out, we know how.” Dean couldn't believe he was considering it, didn't believe he needed to, but prophets meant business and everything the others saw had come true. He couldn't just toss it aside like he tried to do with so much else.Sam was opening his mouth again and his expression held so many things, none of them small or pleasant. Dean had to keep going. He couldn't backpedal, Sam hated that. But neither could he let his brother dwell on the potential—permanent—consequences.“I mean,” he babbled, “I don't have to try to kill myself if I know I can just stab wherever—”“Dean!” Sam said with more force. Be stupid later, his watery glare said. “Do you remember any of it? What we saw?”“I—” Dean cut off. Oh.
...Do you?
He searched Sam's face but found nothing he could translate well enough to tell for certain. He thought, maybe. And maybe Sam regretted it all.He knew in that moment he had to give his brother an out. Just in case. Then Sam could deny it, say it was all a blur—and life would be okay. Maybe it would even progress the way it did in the dream world. Maybe they'd...But maybe they wouldn't, and Dean figured he owed it to Sam to let him decide.Sam did.“...‘cause I do,” he said with the tiniest, most hopeful smile.It hit Dean like a sucker punch. But in a good way.“You—” he stammered. “I—”For some reason, Sam looked like he was steeling himself, and that was funnier than it should have been.Glancing around, Dean saw all the rescuers busy with weaker patients. No one was paying attention to them. After all, the Winchesters had died a few times; now that they were standing upright, everybody probably just assumed they were fine. And they were, more or less. In some ways, more, Dean thought. Way more. “Come on,” he said with a jerk of his head. Heart pounding, he swallowed his new fear of cardiac nonsense and led Sam into another part of the abandoned building.As soon as they were out of sight, he barreled into Sam's chest, wrapping his arms around his brother as tight as he could. After a beat, Sam grabbed on just as tightly. He was warm, he smelled of sweat and blood, but best of all, he was here. For a while, they just stood like that and breathed in sync.Then Sam turned his nose into Dean’s hair and said softly: “Penny for ‘em?”What Dean had always asked him, in the... in there.It was too much. It all welled up inside Dean’s chest and up into his sinuses, winding tighter and tighter until he had to blurt it out.“I love you, okay?”He'd never said it in the dream world. They'd been beyond saying it then. So many years together. Years stuffed into days. And he'd never actually said it.So he said it, muffled into the crook of Sam's neck, and when suddenly Sam relaxed all over Dean felt all his knots loosen too. He pulled back so he could look up at his brother, all those beautiful angles, grime in his hair, radiant as ever.“What you remember me sayin’... what I haven't said yet... That's weird,” he said with a laugh. “But it wasn't a lie. None of it. I—for the longest time.”“Me too,” Sam said hoarsely. “I—I love you. Jesus Christ.” He laughed, high-pitched and giddy. “It does feel weird. I remember saying it so many times, but... but I never...” He looked like he might have been about to cry, though it may just have been the lighting and recent blood loss.It had been so recent, so visceral, so habitual a thing in that dream world that Dean was on his toes and kissing Sam before he realized it was supposed to be something new and forbidden.It wasn't. Any hesitancy and awkwardness had been stripped away by the false set of years they'd almost, kind of lived. Sam kissed him back and it was so familiar, Dean was the one almost crying. Sam kissed him back, holding him close. Safe.Sam kissed him back.That was all Dean cared about.“Still the one, bitch,” he said between kisses, suddenly unable to get enough of Sam's lips despite the need to breathe and the giddy feeling welling up inside him. “Always.”“You too, jerk,” Sam murmured, and then there were no words at all. THE END except... The very next opportunity Dean had to go into town by himself, he kept driving.He’d found directions to the closest woodworking shop. It was still an hour or two away, but he figured he could make it there and back without having to answer too many questions. Sam had his hands full with the junior hunters’ brigade; and anyway, they’d been keeping each other up so late every night that Sam looked overdone each morning. Dean had two cans of RedBull in him just to make the trip. He was fairly confident that by the time he got back, Sam wouldn’t even realize how much time had passed.When he reached the place, parked and walked in, the sharp scent of fresh wood and the sight of a few stray curly shavings wrapping around the legs of new chairs brought the threat of tears to his eyes. Dean blinked a few times, glancing down at a shelf without seeing its contents. He had to get it together before the guy behind the counter finished his current conversation.He’d expected it to affect him, probably bring back at least a few flashbacks. He wasn’t prepared for the flood of nostalgia that swept like a rug out from under his feet. He was lost for a moment in memories of standing behind his counter, helping people find the perfect tool for their project, and Sam... Lunches, quickies, locking up to walk home. The way his heart had soared every time he heard the little bell above the door ding and he’d looked up and it’d been Sammy stepping through. Gray hair, Dean thought with an inaudible chuckle of disbelief. Glasses. His own salt-and-pepper stubble. So weird, remembering all of that, stuff that hadn’t happened yet and still might not. Or might. The way things were going... the knowledge they had now... He and Sam might very well live to see each other grow old.Dean looked forward to every fucking minute of it.Lost in the past and his own speculation, he was thankful that he wasn’t greeted or forced to interact with anyone until he approached the counter. He was able to make his way up there in his own time, recognizing things on the shelves along the way, remembering times he recommended this or that to someone and the projects they’d proudly shown him however long afterward. It had been a more peaceful exercise in helping people. The crux of the family business.He and Sam had been more at peace with themselves, too. Even though that life had vanished, the feeling remained; now, they knew it was possible, and though they’d been thrown back into the chaos at hand, there was less pressure to satisfy whatever parts of them had insisted they weren’t doing it well or fast enough. Whatever it was at any given time.They’d never known satisfaction. Not really. It felt weird to be thanking a dead djinn for the experience.With another appreciative glance around the place—it was larger, thus better stocked than his own had been, but they didn’t carry a few choice implements and there his pride remained unsullied—Dean unfolded a shopping list he’d written. It was pretty damn long. He’d need to start from scratch, tools and all.“Do you have any of this stuff?” he asked, handing it to the guy, who began to peruse it with active interest.“Sure do! What’s your project?”Dean grinned. “A pair of bookends.” *