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The sun is blinding.

Dean wiggles his ass against the towel to sink down a little deeper and then throws his arm over his eyes. Where are his sunglasses? How could he go to the beach without them?

The sun is blinding, but it feels good on his skin. Seagulls cry out as they glide over the water. Waves crash into the shore just a few feet from his toes. It’s perfect.

Totally perfect.

Dean doesn’t even mind the fact that at the moment he can’t remember how he got here. All he cares about is that he’s baking comfortably, and he can smell the salt of the ocean unfurled in front of him.

And then cold water hits his feet and Dean has to uncover his eyes and glare at his brother standing over him with a bright and ridiculous smile.

“What the fuck.”

It’s not even a question anymore. Dean knows exactly what Sam is doing. Being a little brother.

“You need to turn over. You’re baking.”

“I put on sunscreen.”

He’s not sure what part of the California coast they’re on, but it’s pretty isolated. Dean can’t see another person anywhere. It’s just water and sun and Winchesters. And seagulls. Always seagulls.

“Just absolutely baking.”

Sam drops into the sand beside Dean, eyes squinted against the bright sun and hand coming up to shade it. His long and beefy brother glistens in the sun. Dean looks away.

“I know how to sunbathe, Bitch. It’s not that hard.”

“Sure, Jerk, except you’re rapidly becoming a singular freckle.”

Dean hates his brother. Hates the easy way Sam sits in the sand like he was made to do it, the way his skin just absorbs the sunshine and glows with it, the way he can’t stop staring at Sam. Absolutely cannot stop staring at him.

“I don’t have freckles. That many freckles. I don’t have that many freckles.”

Sam rolls his eyes and scootches over to knock Dean with his hip. Dean obeys the silent nudge and moves over so that Sam can join him on the giant beach towel. There’s not a lot of room, Dean’s left leg falls into the hot sand and Sam’s legs hang over the side and end at the same time.

But it’s comfortable. Dean isn’t sure why, but he feels like he hasn’t seen Sam in forever.

“Sure. Whatever. The point is you’re baking. So, roll over.” Sam indicates the motion with a finger as if Dean can’t follow simple directions.

Dean does, making sure to knock Sam with as many knees and elbows as he can before he settles on his stomach and feels the soft sand shift under him to accommodate the movement. It serves a secondary purpose in that the erection Dean has felt stirring is safely tucked away out of Sam’s eyeline.

He props his chin on his folded arms and looks at the rocky cliff face instead of the ocean. Scrub brush dots the sandy cliffs and the sun shines off of them like an overdone movie spotlight. Beside him Sam sighs and stretches, and Dean can feel flesh and more flesh press against him with the movement.

Sam is very warm.

“Sammy. Settle down. You’re disturbing my peace.”

His brother huffs once and nudges him in the ribs.

“It’s beautiful here, isn’t it?”

“Even more beautiful when it was quiet.”

Sam huffs again and flings a hot arm over Dean’s back weighing him down against the towel.

“I was just thinking. I’m glad we came here. Aren’t you glad we came here?”

“Sure.”

Dean can’t remember why they came here. Did they have a bad hunt? Are they on a good hunt? Did they end up here accidentally and then decide to stay?

It’s been a long time since they got lost somewhere.

“And it’s so peaceful and isolated.”

Dean was thinking that same thing. When it was quiet.

“Just the two of us and the ocean.”

And the sun, and the sand, and Sam’s muscular thigh pressed to Dean’s.

“We can do anything we want and there’s no one to see it.”

Dean opens his eyes then. There’s a tone to Sam’s voice that he knows, but he knows it separate of Sam. He’s not sure he’s ever heard his brother use it before.

“Yeah. Anything we want.”

Sam rolls onto his side, pulling the towel out from under Dean a little more and leaving more of him in the sand.

“Dean?”

His brother has a new wicked gleam in his eyes. Dean isn’t sure he likes it. His cock presses harder into the sand and against the mesh inside his swim trunks.

“Yeah?”

Sam doesn’t answer, he stares at Dean a long time with that goofy and disturbing look before standing up and stretching. Muscles upon muscles. Dean swallows, an audible click in his throat, as Sam hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his shorts and pulls them down.

Holy fucking shit.

“Let’s go swimming.”

His little brother is big. Everywhere.

Dean’s brain can’t pull itself together. Years of a feeling barely recognized let alone respected press against the thin barrier of self-control he has taught himself.

“Sammy. Put your trunks back on. There could be sharks or something.”

Sam rolls his eyes, and then before Dean can even utter a response to the look Sam crouches down and grabs Dean’s trunks. He has time to let out a very dignified noise before his brother is dragging his shorts off and running for the water. Leaving Dean bare and with sand in very uncomfortable places because the fucking beach towel has become a rucked-up nightmare.

He thinks about it. He really does. Dean stays in the sand and thinks for several long minutes as Sam’s naked body enters the water. As wet is added to tan and glisten and swollen.

And then Dean gives up. Maybe it’s the setting, or the feeling, or just the sensation of sand rubbing against his tender bits, but Dean is done holding back. He gets up and goes into the water with Sam. It’s cool against his sun-soaked skin. The spray is salty when it hits his face, and he manages to catch up to Sam and grab his trunks before they’re sacrificed to Poseidon.

“What the fuck Sam?”

His brother smiles, expertly shaking wet hair out of his face before he looks up to the too bright sky and then back to Dean.

“I feel free here.”

And Dean knows the feeling. He digs his toes into the ocean floor as the waves pull at him before throwing his trunks back out of the water onto the shore. When he turns back Sam is looking at him in a calculating and calm manner.

“Dean?”

He doesn’t answer. He knows what’s coming next. Dean spreads his stance to get better traction and ensure that he can stand steady and strong. Sam doesn’t disappoint. He steps forward and wraps one arm around Dean’s waist and the other slides up so that Sam’s big hand cups the back of his head. It’s ok like this. It’s right. Sam is starting it with no untoward influence from Dean, and that makes it ok and right.

His brother’s lips are salty like the sea, warm like the sun, and perfectly comfortable against his. Dean gives in, hands gripping at Sam’s shoulders as his brother kisses him chaste and soft. His heart beats hard against his chest, the waves battering into them, and then Sam pulls Dean closer and tilts his head and the kiss deepens. A tongue slips against Dean’s lips and he opens his mouth and lets Sam in.

When did his little brother learn to kiss like this? Did Jess teach him? When they were kids Dean tried to teach Sam using elbows and vague hand gestures but it seems like someone did a more hands on tutorial.

Or several someones.

Dean hears the growl deep in his throat and Sam responds with his own rumble before his brother is picking him up and slotting Dean against him. Now Dean’s cock, rock hard and still warm from the sand and sun, is rubbing against the incredibly firm muscles of Sam’s abdomen as the ocean and Sam rock Dean against him. They’re still kissing, but Sam is alternating tongue-fucking Dean’s mouth with nipping at his lips or squeezing his ass.

Then Sam is walking out of the ocean, still holding Dean against him, and Dean keeps his arms wrapped around Sam’s neck and keeps kissing him as the water retreats and Dean is left with the breeze adding to the overloading number of sensations he’s experiencing.

Sam’s hands lower him down, and Dean’s feet touch the sand before his brother is gone. He almost protests until he sees that Sam is shaking off the towel, laying it back down on the sand as straight as he can, and displaying that incredible ass in a show that Dean has a hard time keeping his hands off of.

Dean remembers too late that he doesn’t have to keep his hands off and then Sam is lying face down on the towel.

“I need lotion.”

The gears in his brain fail to catch for several rotations before Dean finally understands what Sam is asking for. Sammy is a fucking tease.

But that’s ok. Dean can deal with that. He’s got tricks of his own.

He kneels, knees ending up on either side of Sam’s thighs, and finds the lotion bottle before pouring it into his hands and starting at Sam’s neck. It, like everything else, is made of muscle and is tight. Dean works on it for a while, listening to Sam’s little grunts of pleasure, and then moves down to his brother’s shoulders. A gull shrieks over them, and Dean takes the moment to push his hips forward so his still hard and wet cock can rub against Sam’s ass.

It works. His brother lets out a little noise and then pushes back into Dean’s cock. Dean likes the feel of it. The smooth skin of Sam’s ass pressing against his dick. The tightness of the glutes causing his cock to bounce and skip.

Dean digs his fingers into Sam’s shoulders and works the lotion in to the rhythm of his hips grinding into Sam. His brother is moaning under him, pressing alternately down into the towel and then back up into Dean’s cock. His shoulder muscles ripple under Dean’s fingers as he pushes himself up a little and Dean is forced to ride Sam’s ass up and then down.

He crab walks backwards his fingers moving down Sam’s back, playing along the spine, and finally tracing the dip before the rise of the cheeks. Sam looks over his shoulder at Dean, squinting in the sunlight, and smiles brightly.

“Dean. Come on.”

He takes it as a personal challenge. Dean digs his fingers into the meat of Sam’s ass and pulls the cheeks apart to look at Sam’s hole before releasing them and doing it again. Things are escalating quickly, quicker than Dean could have imagined even in his wildest and most buried fantasies.

And Sam’s loving it. His thighs flex and his toes dig into the sand beyond the edge of the towel as he moves against Dean’s hands. Dean thinks about it for a second, takes a breath and then leans down and pulls Sam’s cheeks apart to blow on his brother’s hole. Sam makes a noise, a growl and gasp, and Dean takes it as a good sign and does it again. His hole clenches and Dean leans in and blows a little closer to the source. It’s wildly effective. Sam bucks back and Dean is surprised by his lips pressing right against Sam’s flesh. Dean accepts the green light that Sam is showing him.

He’s never done this on a dude before, but he’s never had a woman complain. Dean sticks his tongue out hesitantly and then presses it against Sam’s hole. His brother shudders, his whole body shaking against Dean and his ass cheeks tightening down in Dean’s hands. So Dean slips his tongue out again and presses more firmly, tasting the salt and skin and everything else that comes with Sam. And then he goes for it. He runs his tongue along Sam’s hole, circles it lightly before pressing harder, and then presses against the center of the hole and deeper in.

Sam’s going nuts under him, pushing back and moaning, blabbering Dean’s name as he tightens around Dean’s tongue. And Dean loves it. Love the feel of it, loves the sounds Sam’s making, loves the way Sam’s muscles move and tighten as he reacts.

Dean keeps rubbing, pressing his fingers deeper into the muscular globes of Sam’s ass and taking his time with it as he licks deeper and broader. He sees out of the corner of his eye when Sam’s hand disappears under him and Dean can tell from the stutter of Sam’s hips that he’s jacking off.

That’s enough of a hint for Dean. It makes him shortly debate if he should follow suit or move forward. The decision comes pretty quickly. He pulls back enough to tug on Sam, and his brother rolls over without any other prompting. For a moment Dean simply looks at Sam. Looks at the length of him stretched out on the towel, the way the sun shines on his brother’s skin, the thick length of Sam’s cock. Parts of Sam Dean has never been allowed or able to stare at before. And while he’s looking Sam takes his cock in his hand and strokes it firmly as he licks his lips. And that inspires Dean.

He crawls up over Sam, eyes on his brother’s mouth, and then takes his own cock in hand and rubs the head against Sam’s already wet lips. Sam makes a face and Dean pulls back afraid he’s somehow crossed a line he didn’t know about. Sam instantly shakes his head.

“No. Hold on. You got sunscreen on your dick.”

Sam wipes at it, carefully, slower than Dean thinks is necessary. His fingers swipe and rub at the head, the tender fold of skin, and then the shaft. It’s not enough pressure or friction to get Dean off but it feels amazing. Sam keeps it up, eyes on Dean’s face as he keeps just sliding his fingertips up and over the skin, nail lightly scraping the vein once before working its way back down to the base.

Dean loves Sam, and he loves the sensation, but he’s gotta have more and he’s gotta have it now. He pushes forward past Sam’s fingers and Sam opens his mouth and accepts the head of Dean’s cock even as his hands lock down on Dean’s hips and hold him back. Dean tries harder to push forward, but Sam’s got an iron grip on him.

He pushes, Sam pushes back, his brother’s tongue dancing along the tip of his cock and pressing against the hole lightly before swirling around the head and going back to the beginning. Dean can only move as much as Sam lets him. It’s probably the singularly most frustrating and arousing thing he’s ever experienced. Dean flexes his legs and shoves forward hard and Sam just holds him still as he teases the hole of Dean’s cock with the tip of his tongue.

All that’s left to him is to sink his fingers into Sam’s hair and let his brother take over. And he does. He rubs Sam’s scalp with long slow strokes as Sam pulls his hips just a little bit forward and takes the tiniest extra bit of Dean’s dick into his mouth. It’s not enough, it’s making him crazy, but Dean can’t do anything about it except take what Sam’s willing to give him.

Dean tries to relax and let it go. He listens to the crash of the ocean, feels the sun baking his skin, and the wet suction of Sam’s mouth as he works Dean’s flesh. His brother’s hands squeeze his hips as Sam pulls him in a little deeper and then pushes him back out again. Dean moans, flexing his ass and stretching as Sam takes him halfway in. He pushes his fingers deeper into Sam’s scalp. Sam smiles around his mouthful, tongue slithering along the underside of Dean’s cock before he sucks hard and pulls Dean deep in.

There’s a cough, Sam moves him to readjust, and then Sam has a handle on it and is sucking Dean’s dick hard as his tongue moves in patterns around the head and down. His brother’s fingers are almost bruising in their tightness as they rock Dean back and forth. Dean’s the one babbling now, managing only Sam’s name and the word fuck over and over. Sam gives one last hard suck, and then he pushes Dean back and down until Dean is forced to walk back on his knees or be slid over the towel. He manages to make it down to where Sam wants him. His brother lines their cocks up and then catches Dean’s eye and smirks.

Dean’s hips jerk involuntarily at the look.

His brother’s big hand wraps around their cocks and Dean finds himself falling backwards and catches himself just in time with his hands on the towel. He digs his fingers into the fluffy cloth and tightens his legs to get a better angle. Sam grins at him, nods once, and then squeezes and starts to jack them off together.

It’s better than expected. There’s the rough friction of Sam’s hand, the firmness of his brother’s grip, and then the smoothness of Sam’s dick pressed against his.

Still, Dean has to say something because it’s gone entirely too long since he’s ruined the mood by speaking.

“Hey Sammy, pretty sure I’m the bigger one there.”

Sam looks down at their cocks, back up at Dean, and then the smirk gets wider.

“Longer is nice Dean, but thicker is what matters.”

And Sam, that cocky little shit, flexes his biceps before he squeezes them tight and bucks his hips so that they’re pressed firmly together and fucking into his huge hand.

Dean’s head falls back without his permission, he moans, and Sam picks up the pace as he rocks his hips and squeezes them together. He manages to force his eyes to open enough to see Sam biting his lip, gaze focused on Dean’s face as he works them together in a long steady roll. He flexes his thighs to keep himself in the perfect space as Sam keeps up the steady and relentless pace of his thrusting, holding the shafts together tightly as the heads bump against each other.

Sam’s grip is still firm, the two of them lubricated by leftover sunscreen, saltwater, and pre-come keeping them sliding smoothly and Dean feels like he’s been on the brink of something for forever. Sam’s still biting his lip, still watching Dean’s face, and Dean swallows hard as he keeps eye contact with his little brother.

A gull cries above them and Dean’s foot slips on the towel and digs into the sand beyond. Sam’s teeth slip out of his lip as he cries out, his hips picking up speed and their dicks pulling tighter against each other as Sam’s hand clamps down a little more on them.

“Faster Sammy. Little faster!”

His brother finally gives in to Dean and starts to move faster, his thighs slapping into Dean’s, his cock jerking against Dean’s in his grip, and Dean thinks that he’s going to go crazy if it doesn’t peak. It’s never been this intense before.

Right there. He’s right there. And then Sam says it and Dean’s done.

“Dean.”

He comes, messily, jerking against Sam’s cock as Sam pushes his hips up sharply and follows along. Dean can feel the pulsing, the hot spurt of Sam over the head of his dick, and Sam’s hand slips just a little before tightening down to keep them right there as they come together.

Dean pushes hard, practically launching himself so he can wrap his arms around Sam’s neck before slamming their mouths together. He kisses Sam through the aftershocks, thighs trembling as he opens his mouth and dips his tongue into Sam.

The sun is so bright.

Finally they break apart and Dean lays down beside Sam on the towel, the sun shining in their eyes as the water presses on relentlessly and Sam’s leg slips under Dean’s so they’re tangled together.

“What part of California is this anyway?”

It’s the first time Dean has even hinted at his confusion, but he feels so relaxed it doesn’t seem like it could possibly backfire.

How stupid could he be?

“We’re not in California Dean. This is Mykonos.”

Dean squints into the sun before turning to look at Sam. The sun is still out, still blindingly bright and only getting brighter, but Sam’s skin has suddenly gotten cold. His brother’s hand slips into his and the fingers are like ice.

“What are you talking about?”

Sam points with his free hand, grains of sand clinging to his arm and shining in the sun like bits of ice.

“Do you see that little island there, Dean? The one off in the distance?”

He looks, sees the blob of darkness against the ever-increasing sunlight. His pulse is starting to race again and he can feel alarm outweigh the pain of the bright sun blinding him. It feels like there is a dark hole opening up behind Dean, something dangerous and deadly and yawning wide to swallow them both up if fails. Fails what?

“Sammy. What’s going on?”

“That’s Delos, Dean. The birthplace of gods. A place of renewal. Of forgiveness. I thought I would be forgiven. I knew I could be renewed.”

Dean turns back to Sam. His brother’s face is pale, gray, and Dean starts to rub Sam’s skin to get heat and warmth back into it.

“Sammy. Sammy, what’s going on? Tell me what’s going on!”

His little brother looks over at him, eyes sad and dark, and the light is swallowing him up. Blinding Dean so that he cannot see to hold on and save Sam. And behind the light there is something awful. Black liquid rushing at high speed, a dark, cavernous place looming behind Sam. It’s no longer behind Dean it’s all around them. Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they shadows of the things that may be only?

“People don’t just disappear Dean. Other people just stop looking for them.”

Dean wakes up with a start, heart racing and hands clammy. He looks around the motel room but there’s no sign of Dad anywhere. It’s just him in the queen bed, the sound of the air conditioner clanking along and some couple having a fight in the room next door. A TV somewhere else droning on, canned laughter and prompted audience applause.

Dad is missing. Dean leaps out of the bed and starts packing the things carelessly scattered around the room. Zips up his bag and washes his face before putting it all in the Impala and getting on the road.

He has to head West. He has to go to Palo Alto.

He has to get Sam.

Because Dad hasn’t been home in a few days. Dad’s on a hunting trip and he hasn’t been home in a few days.     
You’re in a bar.

You’re in bar and a man and his sister are sitting across from you. Their hands are linked on the table, fingers tangled together and eyes bright and excited. They look so happy it hurts to focus on them for any period of time.

Your hand hurts. It sits empty beside you. The other one is holding a glass that steadily drips on the table from the melted ice. You didn’t ask for ice.

You hate them. You hate how happy they are. You hate how happy everyone is. Your hand is empty and you don’t know why. Or you do, but goddamn you do not want to.

You see the moment that you didn’t want to see. The moment that happiness turns into sympathy. Pity.

You didn’t ask for pity.
   Sam is seventeen and Dean is twenty-one. He celebrated his birthday by getting drunk with Dad and getting a lap dance. When he got back there was a second lap dance with significantly fewer breasts and way more cock stroking. Now they’re just lying there, lazy and sticky, Sam breathing hard and Dean staring up at the ceiling as the air conditioner clanks loudly filling the room with just enough cool air to keep Sam from drenching him in more sweat. His brother has always run hot. If there was a time when it wasn’t this easy Dean can’t remember, but that doesn’t change the fact that the clock is ticking and he knows it. If dad hasn’t figured it out already then he might not before Sam takes off. And Sam will take off. Just as Dean always knew after Sam’s first time leaning over to steal a kiss while they star gazed he was permanently fucked, he’s known that eventually this won’t be enough for his genius brother. It’s not fine, but it is the truth.
 
The truth? Dean jerks hard, knee pulling up and barely missing hitting Sam in the stomach. His little brother gives him a dirty look before he melts into concern. “What happened?” He shrugs. Scratches at the drying come on his stomach idly as he processes what just happened. “I dunno. Probably that thing where your brain starts to fall asleep, and your body thinks it’s dying.” “You’re officially not allowed to talk about dying while we’re in bed together.” He raises one eyebrow, mouth pursing at Sam, and his little brother’s face is covered in horror as he seems to process what he’s just said. “No- you know. I mean. You know what I mean, jerk!” He leans forward, slicking his tongue against Sam’s flabbergasted mouth. “Bitch.” Sam’s eyes narrow and he straddles Dean angrily, grabbing at wrists and pinning them down. “We’ll see who’s the bitch.” And Dean forgets about the voice. Forgets about the memory of it, the feeling of familiarity. The sense that it was meant for him, but not for him to hear.     Mommy is having his little brother. She’s hidden behind those doors somewhere, people moving about in that fast and clean way hospital staff have. Daddy is back there too so Dean is left alone in a room with adults and families. He wonders where his grandparents are for the first time. It’s never occurred to him to wonder that, because it’s always been him and mommy and daddy, and now it will be him and mommy and daddy and Sammy. Grandparents not had or needed. Dean pushes against the swinging door, looking furtively from side to side to make sure none of the hospital workers see him before he starts to take quiet and small steps along the hall. He thinks that if he tries hard enough he can just sense the rest of his family somewhere waiting for him. A nurse steps out into the hall and Dean presses himself back behind a cart and waits until she’s gone. Then he starts to stealthily creep along again. But just as he’s making steady progress again he hears a sound that makes his blood freeze. A scream. Mommy’s scream. 
Not again. Please not again. I can’t see it again. Take Sammy. Dean take Sammy.
 The voice ringing in his ears stops being the gruff old man he doesn’t know and becomes his mommy’s scream again and his daddy much quieter. He starts to run down the hall, not caring when the hospital workers turn to look at him. He just wants to make good time there. He just wants to see why she’s screaming. Dean bursts through a door to find his mommy on her back, a sheet draped over her knees, his daddy holding her hand as she sweats and cries. He sees things he doesn’t understand, but he gets from the way everyone is acting that he is seeing the birth. And there’s something there. Something bright and shining and screaming all on its own. It sounds like the older man’s voice again. “Dean! What are you doing here?” He ignores his daddy, taking a step forward towards the light coming from mommy, towards the brightness of it, and he feels as if for a moment he’s forgotten who he is and where he is. There is something in that light and it is being born for him. Briefly Dean feels a hand on his shoulder but he’s too entranced to turn and see who. Or if any of it is real in the first place. And then it’s gone, the room suddenly uncomfortably dim, and the doctor is holding a bloody baby. Dean holds his breath because he knows that Sammy needs to cry now. When daddy holds his hand out Dean immediately moves and takes it. He’s shaking all over as Sammy is quiet and the doctor’s mouth turns down and mommy is asking what’s wrong. Finally, Sammy cries, and Dean knows everything will be alright.     Stanford campus is everything Dean secretly hoped it wouldn’t be. Beautiful, landscaped lawns, well-kept buildings, smart people hanging out with each other and having the time of their young lives. And somewhere here Dean’s little brother is one of them. He was always too smart. And sure, logically Dean had always known that Sam was set to fly the coop. There was no way that Dean would always be enough for Sam. It didn’t hurt as much as he thought it would when Sam walked out that night, duffel bag slung over his shoulder and darkness swallowing him like some half-remembered nightmare monster. The first and last text message Dean got from Sam was on Christmas. It’s still stored on his phone. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be, only?   He hadn’t known how to respond, so he sent Sam a question mark from his position hanging upside down in a motel bed in Minnesota with some girl sucking his dick. There was never any answer, and Dean didn’t want to push. Pushing, he knew from watching Sam with dad, never got them anywhere but across the Rubicon. Instead, Dean waited for when Sam would reach out. But he didn’t and now dad is missing and Dean has no other choice. Dean crosses the campus on foot, watching all the frisbee players and sunbathers and wondering what Sam looks like now. It hasn’t even been that long, but he feels like there’s going to be some kind of change. Sammy was still getting taller the last time Dean saw him. He catches glances, college girls looking his way and smiling, and he smiles back. It’s a reflex, meaningless, and then he’s to the other side of the quad and on the way back to his Baby. She greets him like always, warm and worn, built around him like armor.  It wasn’t hard at all to figure out how to find Sam. But now he has to figure out how to approach. He has a feeling he’ll go the less logical way because he thinks that Sam will appreciate him acting in character. 
This is a bad idea.
 Dean shakes off the voice, uninterested in its blunt logic. The apartment building his brother is living in is right off of campus, still a walk from classes, and that makes a perverse sense as Sam wouldn’t be able to pick a car and care for it. He slumps down, comfortable in the Impala’s worn front bench seat and used to the position. He slumps and he waits, watching people enter and exit the building as the day passes. There’s no Sam in the little stream of students going about their lives, but that’s ok. Sam is probably staying in studying. At one point a hot blonde number strolls past, glancing once at Baby but missing Dean, and he raises his eyebrow and clicks his tongue against his teeth. 
You’re like a dog in heat.
 “But only for you Sammy.” He feels Sam roll his eyes. He waits for the sun to set, and when it does Dean gives up on the waiting game and goes for option two. Breaking into Sam’s apartment.      Mommy rolls her eyes and then holds Sammy out to him. His little brother’s face is a bright beet red, scrunched up in distress as he wails to the sky. Mommy has made sure that Dean is sitting on the couch very still and serious while she gets ready to hand his baby brother to him. They learned this trick a week after Sammy came home. Dean takes his little brother in his arms and holds him, gentle and soft, and then he starts to sing the Journey song daddy used as a lullaby when Dean was just a little boy. He is no longer a little boy. He is a big brother now. It’s his whole life. Sammy goes quiet and attentive instantly. He watches Dean. Or stares his way. Dean is not sure if Sammy can focus yet. But it doesn’t matter because in that time Dean is Sammy’s everything. Dean is the world that holds and cradles Sammy. Dean is the solid foundation that Sammy rests on. Dean likes that for some reason. Mommy seems surprised at how much Dean wants to be involved, but being a big brother is the only thing Dean wants now. It’s what makes him special and valuable.     The apartment is dead silent. Dean can smell baked goods, and he stops at that and tilts his head. Sam was always pretty handy with a spatula and a pan, but he was never a baker. Dean looks around the apartment. There’s not even a trace of Sam here. Nothing that cries his little brother’s presence. And not a single goddamn protection in place which makes Dean even angrier. He touches things as he crosses through the small apartment. He’s trying to find even a hint of Sam anywhere here, but there’s just nothing. Not even a lingering feel. Worse still the place stinks of old smoke and ash. There must have a been a fire here, and the lingering scent of it sets Dean’s teeth on edge. He’s staring at a print on the wall of a little boy in a fountain when he hears the floorboard creak behind him. For a moment he knows that it’s Sam, creeping up for an attack. And then he knows it isn’t. He steps to the side and misses the bat swinging towards him by centimeters. He catches it on the pull back and his hand vibrates with the force of the swing. “What the fuck are you doing here?” He hears the voice, wholly feminine and a little husky, and tries to process what’s happening. Something tickles in the back of his brain for just a second and then the bat is gone and the light turns on. Dean is momentarily blinded before he sees the hot blonde from earlier standing there in boy shorts and a Smurfs t-shirt with a dip cut in the front. “Uh. Howdy. Wow.” Her eyes narrow even as her lips curl a little bit in a ghost of a smile. “Howdy? What are you a cowboy?” Dean shrugs, licking his lips to buy just a little time. This is Sam’s apartment. He’s done the research, he knows this is Sam’s apartment. Maybe his stupid little brother hasn’t been checking in with him, but Dean would be damned before he let Sam settle down somewhere unsafe. “No ma’am. Just looking for my little brother. I heard he was shacked up here and I thought I would surprise him.” The smile dies instantly, her eyes going a little wide. Dean can’t help but notice the parallels physically between her and himself. He files it away to give Sam a pat on the back later. “Do you mean Sam? Are you Dean?” 
 Sam talks about him.
 “Yeah. He out tonight?” The girl finally puts the bat down, her hand hanging at her side and her eyes going soft with pity and sympathy. “I’m so sorry. You’re about a month too late. Sam moved out.” Dean’s throat clicks dryly on the confusion. He can’t seem to find anything logical to say so he simply stares at her like that’ll make what she’s saying make sense. “Do you want to sit down? You look pale.” Sam used to make jokes about Dean’s skin. The freckles, his inability to tan well, his constant cold hands and feet. Warm and safe, wrapped up around Dean, Sam always had a lot of complaints about Dean’s cold limbs that he tried to make into jokes. He sits. “Moved out? Well. The little bastard certainly didn’t tell me.” The girl sits across from him on an ottoman, her face still full of that pity that Dean doesn’t really like to see. “He didn’t tell me either if it makes you feel any better. Let me get you some water.” She moves out of his sightline, and he hears the rustling in the kitchen while he rubs his face and then the back of his neck. Didn’t tell her? Sam shacked up with this girl for who knows how long before just taking off? And wasn’t his graduation date next month? Dean had it marked on a calendar in the bottom of his bag where dad wouldn’t see it. He’d been planning to sneak down to Stanford that weekend to see it at the very least. Maybe embarrass Sam with an airhorn. A cold glass of water finds its way into his hands and Dean lifts it gratefully and drinks.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Sam has spent his whole life questioning everything. Just everything. Dean never minded, because he learned the hard way that it’s impossible to be poisoned if you question everything anyone feeds you. But sometimes, late at night, Dean wished Sam would shut up and go to sleep. Right now his brother is telling him everything he apparently read today that explains why Dean’s hands and feet are so cold. Dean on the other hand has the very important mission of getting his cold toes under Sam’s shirt and against his back. There’s a lot of wriggling and slapping punctuating each of Sam’s smarmy factoids. “I only smoke at bars.” “That’s not true. I’ve seen you smoke other places. And it makes your circulation bad so-“ Sam lets out a shriek as Dean’s toes find their destination and the warmth instantly floods him. “Hah. Take that.” “I want to try it.” Dean pauses, toes curled in tight so the tops of them get the warmth from Sam too and considers what that could possibly mean. Last night Sam kissed him. Dean kissed back. “Smoking?”  He sounds super calm and collected, a very responsible older brother indeed. “Yeah, Dean. Smoking.” “You’ll puke.” “People smoke in the bars we go to all the time.” Dean rolls his eyes, and then slips sideways so his upper half is hanging off the bed as he fishes for his hidden pack. When he finally finds it he stays upside down to light the cigarette. The warmth of Sam’s skin leaves his toes and then Sam is hanging upside down next to him. Their faces are close and Dean can feel the bed warmth leaking off of Sam and onto him. “Open your mouth.” Sam does, wide like Dean is about to shove something big in there. Dean shakes that thought off and then gently nudges Sam’s chin so that his brother’s mouth isn’t gaping. Then he takes a deep pull of the cigarette and leans that last few centimeters forward to gently touch his lips to Sam’s. The smoke curls up around the corner of their lips as Dean blows it into Sam’s mouth. His brother coughs once, only slightly, and then his lips are pressed harder against Dean’s and he’s sucking the smoke and Dean’s breath away. Dean will never forgive Sam for being such a quick learner.     “Are you ok? Dean?” He looks up from the empty and obviously decorative ashtray to the green eyes staring at him. “Sorry. Drifted off for a second.” The lips curl into that smile again. She puts a gentle hand on his and speaks like she’s prepared for him to not hear her again. “Jess. My name is Jessica Moore. It’s nice to finally meet you. Sam talked about you all the time.” Well of fucking course he did before he disappeared again. “I’d say the same to you but he and I ain’t been talking recently.” Dean forces a laugh, fighting hard to figure out how to act natural in this situation. “Isn’t he supposed to be graduating soon? Why would he be taking off?” Jess’s eyes cut to the side and she seems to think about that for a long moment while she studies the decorative ashtray Dean was just looking at. It’s not Sam’s. Dean knows his brother wouldn’t keep something so useless hanging around and taking up space. Sam’s always been good at purging useless things. After a bit she breaks the silence with a chuckle that is almost bitter. “I wish I could tell you what happened. He had an interview for the law school here. We’d finished exams early and there was time before the big walk so he was just feeling out what he could afford. And then one night he comes home looking all out of it and tells me Brady needs his help with a final project-“ “Brady?” She blushes, and Dean sees what Sam must have seen in her. He can picture it in his head. His little brother catching her eye across a café, both of them tired from studying and being smart, and there’s the attraction instantly. Sam would be dorky about it, play it nice and easy as he approached her and talked her up. Something smart, maybe a quote at the beginning, and she would give him a run for his money with a better quote Sam didn’t know. Love at first geek. “A friend of ours. He set us up actually. But when I went over to Brady’s the next day he said Sam slept on his couch for a couple hours and then took off with a duffel full of his stuff.” “Déjà vu.” Dean doesn’t even mean to say it, but out it comes. “What does that mean?” He shrugs it off, looking to the side and letting his face go sad because he knows already intuitively that she isn’t the type to ask again if he makes that face. She buys it and he lets her. “I’m sorry. Not my business really. But. Look let me get you Brady’s address. And if you want you can crash here tonight.” Dean lifts his eyes up to her in surprise. She’s nice. Way too nice. “Thanks. That would be awesome.” Jess stands, stretching to show Dean a delicious expanse of skin without the least bit of self-consciousness. Maybe not that nice. “I’m glad to hear it. Hey, if you find him you can give him back the only shirt he left.” With that she’s gone briefly and then back with a slip of paper and a shirt with a purple dog on it. Dean accepts both, a very natural grin coming at the sight of the shirt, and then watches her walk away. 
Good job, Sammy.
     
She came in with her brother. She keeps her eyes on yours when she talks. Everything she says is a lie and you know it.

She cannot trick you.

She strokes her brother’s hand from time to time. Slow and soft like a lover’s caress. You think that you know why. From time to time she looks over the crowd in the bar. There’s drinking and cursing and kissing. There’re a few couples out on the dance floor, feet shuffling to some country song that you don’t know or care about.

She coughs once, displeasure on her face as she looks at the room around her. Here in the deep South there are fewer regulations. When you were growing up it was normal for people to smoke in bars. It was normal for people to simply light up, ash into half empty beer bottles, stomp out their butts on the floor. It’s not so normal anymore. You would scoop up the bottles when people weren’t looking, sliding them into a bag to recycle later for money. Then that money would get put into the pool and used for betting to bring the family budget back up to something reasonable.

She’s said something. Something that you didn’t quite hear or understand. You tilt your head and she repeats it. It’s another lie.

She’s going to trick you.
     
 
The shirt still smells like Sam. Dean puts it in the trunk by itself, separate from his clothes, and then shuts it before getting back in the driver’s seat. It’s early, earlier than he’s usually coherent for, but Sam is missing. Jess was still asleep when he got up, and he didn’t bother to wake her to say goodbye. He did snag a cookie. Dean’s entire remaining family is now missing. What a great fucking twist. He turns on the Impala and heads for Brady’s. It’s a much nicer apartment than Sam’s, in a nicer neighborhood and further from campus. The kids that come in and out of this building stink of privilege and money. Dean wonders how Sam possibly made friends with someone that would live here. They had never fought about Sam wanting material things. It was always a relief and a pain at the same time. Dean knew it bothered dad non-stop that Sam never whined about getting a shiny new bike or a skateboard or some other kid shit. Instead his brother had always just accepted what was given to him and longed for the dream of settling down somewhere quiet and modest. When they would travel Sam would point to little houses, smaller than the one that Dean knew Sam didn’t remember in Kansas. He’d ask Dean if they could share a room, bunk beds maybe or just one nice double. Back then a double was a reasonable size for both of them. If Sam’s grown any taller though Dean doubts they would fit in a double together anymore. He gets out of the car and starts getting looks from the residents of the complex instantly. He ignores them to climb five flights of stairs before knocking hard on a door. There’s a long pause before it opens and the world’s most polished man peeks his head out. Dean instantly distrusts him even as he studies what seems to be a very boy scout appearance. “Can I help you?” “Yeah. Jess just sent me over here. I’m Sam’s brother. Looking for him.” It’s a little curter than he should be, but damn it Dean wonders what Sam got up to while he was away at college. Why he seemed to have picked polar opposites to crowd into his life. If Dean’s tone bothers Brady at all he doesn’t show it.

He doesn’t make eye contact with his sister much. He seems less happy than he did at the beginning of the conversation. You’re willing to bet that if he had an option he wouldn’t be here anymore. He’s a little fancier than her, a little more delicate looking. This is not his sort of crowd.

He sips some kind of wine. You don’t know what. It’s not that you’ve never had wine before it’s that you don’t really care for it. There was a time when you were domesticated, just a little bit, and wine was served by a woman that seemed to know you but really didn’t.

He wants to take her home, away from you.

He’s spoken maybe two times in all of your time sitting here. He doesn’t ask the questions. She seems to be in control of the situation, but you have a feeling he’s waiting for the moment when he can be involved in the decisions. Being the older sibling has its perks.

He reaches across the table to grab your hand and shake it. It’s your empty hand. A part of you is missing. He thinks that he knows what that part is, but he doesn’t. Nobody knows what that part is but you. From time to time you would pretend that the world saw your missing piece. That the world saw it and didn’t appreciate it the way it should. But that’s not what he wants.

He wants to take you away from here too.
     Brady even sits prissily, crossing his legs delicately and leaning his elbows on his knees to move in closer to Dean when he talks. For some reason every time he gets closer Dean thinks that he’ll start to sweat, like he’s being grilled by a fed. 
“I got a lot to celebrate. I mean, after all, seein’ you two in chains?”
 “Dean?” He jerks back to attention, but unlike when he drifted off with Jess, Brady just rolls forward. “I have a tennis game in an hour, so I hate to rush you but can you tell me what it is you needed?” The tone rankles, but Dean can’t imagine a world where this fucker cared about anyone, even his little brother. “Jessica Moore let me know that you might know what my brother was up to before he took off?” “I had already told Jess this, but he showed up here acting like he was high. He said he needed to sleep it off, no big deal, and crashed on my couch. I didn’t even get an answer from him about the duffel bag.” “What did you get instead?” He can see that he’s surprised Brady. “I mean it when I tell you I don’t know anything useful. Sam’s a smart guy. He’ll show up when he wants to.” It takes everything he has not to get up and start shaking the fucker. “He’s my brother. I can’t just let him disappear. People don’t go missing, other people just stop looking for them.” He can’t remember what movie he heard that one in, but it works. Brady’s body leans back into the couch and he no longer seems like a flight risk. He’s actually focused on Dean now too. All good signs. “He was raving. Talking about fate and destiny. He said that he couldn’t outrun the hunt, couldn’t outrun the eyes.” Dean’s hackles fly up the second Brady says that, but he doesn’t interrupt because he knows that if he does the guy will get off track and possibly lose the recall he currently has. “He said that he had to start looking. Hunting. He used the word hunting there too. That’s when I was sure whatever he took was some serious shit, because Sam was not the hunting type. Can you imagine him holding a gun?” Brady snorts instead of laughs. Dean very much can, but he gives a polite headshake and Brady steamrolls on. “I told him to lie down, to get some rest, but he asked me if he could look at my books first. I told him sure, nothing I’m currently using is in there so he could borrow anything he liked, and then I got him some sheets and a blanket and went to bed myself. When I got up in the morning he was gone. Everything was folded neatly and stone cold, so I assumed he’d been gone for a while. When Jess called and said he didn’t come home I checked the alarm codes and sure enough he’d gone out the door a couple hours after I laid down.” “Did he take a book?” Brady looks surprised. “You know, I never checked? If you go down the hall and take a left through the first door that’s my study with the bookshelf. I haven’t used it in a while since we’ve finished finals.” “Don’t- I know you have tennis but don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back and I have one more question.” Brady checks his wristwatch, something huge and shiny, and then nods tightly. “Understood, but I’m out in twenty. I have to go get changed.” Dean walks in front of him and then splits off into the door Brady indicated and stops just inside it to listen until the door at the end of the hall closes. Then he makes a beeline for the tremendous bookshelf that takes up the back wall. He’s surprised to see that the majority of the books have a used look. Brady seemed more like the type to collect books for show. There’re three shelves of philosophy books that Dean scans, but his gut tells him that’s not what he’s looking for. Law books, a few old textbooks, and then a small section of mythology books from a couple of cultures with used stickers on them. Tucked in between the Greek and Norse volumes is a leather spine he knows. Dean’s fingers touch it, gently, and then he pulls it out and lifts it to his nose to sniff. Leather, real leather, has a habit of taking in smells and keeping them. He can get from this one the faintest bit of gun oil, but more prominently salt and iron. He tucks the book into his outer shirt and then grabs both of the books on either side of it just in case Sam hasn’t lost the habit of having a method to his madness. When he comes out Brady is just exiting in the sort of dopey getup rich villains wear in soap operas. His tennis shorts are too short and show off extremely tanned and muscled thighs. Dean hates him a little more for being so friendly with the sun. “Did you find anything?” “No. But thank you for letting me look. One more question?” A sigh. “As long as it’s quick.” “When he said he couldn’t escape the eyes, did he say what color they were.” A shadow crosses Brady’s preternaturally sunny face. “Why would- wait. Wait, yeah, he did. He said yellow. Is that important?” Dean doesn’t answer. He’s already on his way out the door.    Sam is sulking in the bathroom. His fight with Dad is practically still echoing in the little house that they’ve been squatting in. The water doesn’t even run here, so Sam can’t use his usual technique of running the shower to cover the post-fight tears. Dean hovers outside the door for a little while before deciding that it’s braver to not smother Sam with his concern. This excuse carries him out the back door and across the yard to the woods that back up to the property. There are no neighbors anywhere in sight, a real boon for squatting, so Dean can sit on the ground out here and enjoy the night without worrying about getting them busted. After a while of watching the stars silently, after the moon has crested to the top of the sky, Sam shows up. His brother is silent, pale in the moonlight, and Dean thinks again that it’s a shame he can’t tan the way Sam does. Sam looks strange as pale as Dean. He plops down beside Dean with a huff but no words and immediately wraps his arms around his knobby knees and pulls himself in close. It’s an invitation, but Dean doesn’t immediately take it. “Why do you do that?” Sam doesn’t turn to look at him. He’s too busy staring up at the sky. Thirteen and too fucking smart for any of them, but unable to control his moods at the worst times. “Seriously, Sammy, why do that? Why start up with him when you know it’s just gonna get you upset?” “Because someone has to tell him. Someone has to tell him he’s wrong.” Sam puts his face into his knees, blocking out even the sight of the stars. “And it won’t be you. You’re too far up his ass to see his flaws.” The fight is so old Dean can’t even get up the energy for it right now. He’s seventeen. He has to be the mature one here. “You’re an ass.” His brother sits perfectly still, a sculpture of misery in the pale light, and then his shoulders start to shake. Dean waits, waits, and when Sam lifts his face he’s laughing. “That doesn’t even make sense. That wasn’t what I said to you.” Dean shrugs and hooks an arm around Sam’s shoulders. They stay like that until the moon disappears behind the trees.    Dean is sitting in a motel room in a motel he can’t remember the stupid name of. It’s just as cheap and shitty as normal but he has to give it to the cleaning crew that they’ve done an excellent job of keeping it at least not sticky. There’s a pizza box next to him, because he knows that he needs to eat even if he doesn’t necessarily feel like it. Brady’s calm agreement to the color of the eyes that Sam said he was running from haunts Dean. It’s careless shit like that, just letting people obviously in danger wander in front of the train, that really makes Dean hate fucking people. Hate them and mistrust them. Sam never got that. Sam always seemed to think that Dean’s view was small-minded, a little pessimistic and a little overly influenced by their dad when he was particularly out of it. That’s long since been added to the list of times Sammy was dead fucking wrong. The journal is sitting on Dean’s lap but he doesn’t have the courage yet to open it. He needs something. Maybe a beer or maybe the right song. A talisman to help him unlock whatever it is keeping the journal shut to him right now. He’s already thrown the other two books in the bottom of his bag because with the yellow eye confirmation it’s unlikely that they were anything other than cover for this most important item. There’s a question rooting around in the back of his head, one that refuses to do anything but jangle cheap alarm clock loud all the way along his spine. Who did Sam leave it for? Did he know Dean would eventually come when he went off the grid? Is it just hopeful thinking that Sam was planning on helping Dean follow him? And if that was true then the follow-up is why the fuck didn’t Sam just call Dean? He has at least three ways of getting in contact with him almost instantly. The journal stubbornly refuses to open itself, probably because it’s Sam’s. He takes a bite of a slice of all the meats pizza and then stretches his arms up over his head like he’s about to do heavy lifting before picking the goddamn thing up and cracking it open. He starts on page one because that’s where you start a book. It opens with Sam’s ramblings about college. Notations about deadlines and tasks, commentary on professors. One interesting passage about Sam having a dream about Dean but the little fucker doesn’t go into detail about the dream. Dean is starting to wonder if Sam wrote this journal just to punish him. About halfway through Sam says that he’s having other dreams. These he goes into detail about. They’re all graphic, they follow people he’s never met, they cover incidents and mishaps at first and then ramp up to catastrophes. He gets a fair chunk of the way through this portion, noting that Sam’s usually orderly handwriting is starting to slant a little bit diagonally across the page, and then he stops. Sam has a page devoted to one sentence, written in the center, pen marks so deep they break the page. “Everything is happening in real life.” Dean gets up just long enough to grab that beer and the laptop. He starts with the biggest thing, a plane crash overseas. Sure enough, according to the date that Sam labeled the entry with he recorded the dream two days before the crash. Some of the smaller things are harder to prove, but Dean muddles through as best he can. In the end he can confirm at least fifteen of Sam’s twenty-one recorded dreams. The math is not looking good. The handwriting only gets worse from there. More than once Sam writes what he thinks Dean would think of the whole thing. How he believes that maybe if Dean were there he could at least have a sounding board that would hear him out before calling him crazy. Dean’s frustrated that his little brother would think that Dean would ever just blow something like this off. Sure, Dean’s never been a big fan of the whole psychic schtick, but he’s seen enough in his short lifetime to never rule anything completely out until he has to. Like unicorns. He’s flipping through, getting progressively more tense and stressed along with Sam, when suddenly he comes on ripped out pages. Not a few of them either, but a lot. Dean traces the ripped edges carefully, counting each one, and comes up with thirty-two. At least a month of Sam’s time and it’s the month before supposedly he just walked away from the life he just walked away from Dean to have. Fuck. There’s only a handful of pages left and Dean is already fairly sure that he won’t get what he wants in them. He’s not wrong, because next up are sketches Sam has made. One is a temple, vaguely Greek looking, but Sam has put hashmarks through part of it. The next is of a beach where Sam has gone to the trouble of shading to indicate how high the sun is and how it drags against the rocks of the beach. From there Dean encounters one blank page, and then a final page. Here Sam tells about his newest dream and Dean realizes that he’s out of beer and suddenly starving. He gets a new one, eats three slices of the pizza, and then knows he can’t put it off any longer. So, he picks up the journal and opens it to the last page. Sam says he dreamed of Jess dying. Pinned to the ceiling and on fire just like the stories Sam has heard his whole life whenever he pushes the subject far enough with a drunk John. Dean doesn’t tell that story. Dean never tells that story. In the dream Sam is frozen in place. He can’t help her, he can’t save her, so he stands in place and watches her reach for him as she burns. Then the apartment burns around them and Sam just stands. Somehow he comes out of the fire ok. The detail is so intense that Dean can feel the heat of the fire and the breeze it gives off. He can feel the desperation in his mother’s gaze. He wants to put the journal down, but the heat has melted his skin to the leather cover. This page is probably the day before Sam packed his shit and bugged out. That’s confirmed by Sam saying that he has to find the thing. He has to find the thing that will let him be forgiven before the most important person in his life burns to the ground. Before he can’t get them back. There’s a tinymaybehuge surge of jealousy that Dean swallows bitterly along with his cheap beer and then he reads the last line that his brother left him. 
“If even Dean can’t forgive me maybe I can start again. Before I lose everything. I’ve heard stories about a series of confusing deaths in Jericho.”
 It’s the day after Halloween and Dean is going to Jericho to find Sammy, come hell or high water. He’s gonna need to discuss that shit about forgiveness.     “Is that even a thing?” Sam is squinting into the microscope they found in the rich kid’s room. Downstairs their father is rooting through the crime scene and Dean has been put on Sam watch. Which would be more unfair if it weren’t for the fact that Dean slipped off with a girl named Sophie and Sam managed to break his wrist while Dean was gone. So, obviously the kid can’t go unwatched, and Dean is the only one who can really do it effectively. “Yes, that is a thing. It’s called a tardigrade.” “No but what was the other thing you said.” “Water bear?” Sam looks up from the microscope and Dean, not for the first time since they settled in this room that has shit to distract the little egghead, wishes he had come in first and lined the eyepiece with something. “Yeah. That. Why the fuck would they call it that? Bears are huge.” “Yeah, but they kinda look like bears. Check it out.” Sam broke the non-dominant hand which means he can sketch out for Dean the rough shape of the thing he claims is as tough as the xenomorph from Aliens. It looks simultaneously pathetic and cute, and Dean is too old to call it the second thing. “It looks like a turd.” Sam frowns and balls the paper up, shoving it in his back pocket to be conscientious of leaving new evidence for the police. He doesn’t talk again for a while, returning to the microscope. Dean busies himself with a one-man game of catch using a model of Mercury. Would Sam want a room like this? Is that what Sam thinks about when he thinks about them having one house? Dean casts his own memory back, trying to recall what his room looked like as a kid and what adorned the walls. He realizes, with only a small amount of embarrassment, that he can’t remember it all. What he remembers is Sam’s nursery room. He remembers the chair his mother sat in while she rocked Sam or fed him. He remembers the mobile and the crib, the colors and patterns of the wallpaper, the feel of the carpet under his feet. Is that weird? That seems weird. Something strikes him in the back of the head and he turns around to see that Sam is glaring at him. Dean missed something. “What, nerd?” “You told me that we would get out of here in time to have a movie night. Why are we still waiting on him? He doesn’t need us.” He rubs the spot Sam struck on the back of his neck. “He might, and he’s our family. We take care of our family, Sam.” “Did anybody tell him that?” Anger rushes through every inch of him, lighting him up in a way that he’s never been lit up in all of his sixteen years. He moves forward and grabs Sam’s shirt, lifting his little brother in the air. There’s obvious surprise on Sam’s face, maybe even a tinge of fear, and it doesn’t quell the anger in the least. Dean might not remember the way his room was decorated or what he liked as kid but he fucking remembers his father throwing the two of them out of the house, stopping himself long enough to do so before even trying to help his dying wife. “Dad loves us. I get that you’re moving into this pouty shithead phase, but grow the fuck up. If dad didn’t take care of his family he would’ve dumped you the minute he realized how worthless you are.” 
Don’t say that don’t say that he’ll remember that one later when he’s weakest.
 Sam’s lip is trembling, eyes filling with tears, but he doesn’t struggle against Dean and he doesn’t argue. It’s not like when Dad yells at Sam. Instead his little brother lowers his head and tries to hide his shame and grief. Dean wonders if the floor will swallow him up if he requests it. If he can sneak downstairs just right and get their dad to shoot him. He lowers Sam gently, but he doesn’t try to take it back or apologize. He can see from the way Sam moves to the bathroom that nothing he says right now will work. Even if he wanted to come up with the right words to do something Sam is so closed into his own grief and guilt that Dean will never get through. Instead he sits outside the door and listens to the tiny strains of Sam crying over the sound of the shower. It’s what he deserves after all.       Dean hits Jericho late at night. If Sam’s still here he’ll be holed up in the only motel in town and that’s a huge boon to Dean. He doesn’t have to weed a single place out. Instead he checks in and then very carefully feels the clerk out. The man smiles, big and broad, and holds out one oily looking hand while keeping Dean’s gaze. Dean doesn’t pause, tucks a twenty in that hand, and the man makes a big show of pulling out a ledger and flipping through it. “Yup. Had that guy a while ago. College boy prissy.” Dean rankles but holds his tongue. “He took off and left some stuff. I got it in the back.” “Can I take it?” “You got anymore twenties?” It costs him forty dollars, but Dean gets the little box of Sam’s stuff. He takes it to his room and then lays down protections and shuts all the curtains tightly. The box sits ominously on the bed Sam would take if he was here, and Dean spends an extra-long time washing his face after a day of driving and learning new things. He feels wrung out, and he struggles to remember when he last slept. Was it when he had that dream? What dream? He can’t remember. The vaguest of impressions, something about the beach and sun, and then waking up to the goddamned air conditioning unit. Why, after so many years, has he never gotten immune to that sound? He takes a deep breath and stops fucking around. The box waits for him, much like Sam’s journal did back in Palo Alto, and Dean doesn’t make it wait as long to prove it won’t behave. He grips the lid firmly, pulls it off, and then stares at the incredibly small bounty that rests there. There’s a picture of Sam and Dean as babies, Dean sitting on the couch and very carefully holding his precious little brother while his parents hover and make sure that he’s being responsible. Underneath that is a little slip of paper with Sam’s handwriting on it. Δ placed sure and steady in the center. Dean stares at the little triangle for several minutes, turning the paper every which way to try to figure out what the fuck Sam is hinting at. Whatever it is it’s too obscure and Dean puts it to the side for later. Underneath all of that is a piece of paper with Dean’s name. For a second, just the briefest one, Dean’s heart swells with joy to know that it was indeed him that Sam was banking on. It was Dean that Sam thought of in a pinch. Then he sees that it’s dad’s handwriting and his joy goes crashing into the ground. It’s replaced with a thin nausea and a bitter taste in his throat. Dad is missing. Sam is missing. Sam is leaving things from Dad around. Where did Sam even get this? Briefly it crosses Dean’s mind that the two of them hooked up somewhere, maybe Sam reached out when he started feeling like Yellow Eyes was chasing him, but he dismisses that as paranoia. There’s no world where Sam spends time with dad without Dean. Dean’s name is in the center of the page, one obviously ripped out of a journal, and circled. Underneath it is a set of numbers. Dean stares at them for a long time before putting the paper to the side and checking the box for the next clue. Except there isn’t one. There’s nothing else Sam left, and Dean fights the urge to throw all of it. Two clues that are impenetrable, a picture Dean doesn’t even know how Sam got, and Dean is supposed to do fucking what with this? He sits down and runs his fingers through his hair until his scalp feels raw and his arms ache. He can’t figure out where to go next. “Talk to me, Sammy. Talk to me. What the fuck did you do? Where are you?” The box doesn’t respond. It does nothing but sit there and mock him with its helpless contents. Dean gets up, grabs his jacket, and drives to the nearest bar.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

They’re in love with the idea of your plan but that doesn’t mean they believe in it. You can see how their eyes lock every now and then from the corners, gazes intersecting peripherally. Messages shared without a single word. Other people wouldn’t catch it, but you know the feeling. You hate them a little more.

They hate you too.

They’ll never understand why you’re here no matter how many times they claim they do. At the end of the day there is no similarity between the group of you minus the surface level stuff. Same number of limbs, fucking your sibling, speaking English.

They keep their fingers together when a man wanders past them. You see the way that his eyes go blank and cloudy as he gets too close. The other two at the table don’t seem to pay any attention to him, but you can’t imagine that trick is subconscious. No one comes close to the table. Even when a fight breaks out the fighters and the audience stay away from the table.

They hate you but they want to help you.

They’ll outline a better plan. A serious one. It relies on a lot of variables, but they seem to know what they’re doing.
      It’s the weirdest thing that Sam has ever asked of him, and Dean is trying not to make a big deal of that even though he wants to. Because there’s something desperate in Sam’s face that Dean doesn’t recognize. He rolls out the plastic bags along the bottom of the molding and then turns around to see Sam pouring the paint into the roller tray. “You’re sure about this, Sammy? This is basically hard labor, not a fun Saturday.” Sam gives him a sarcastic look as he puts the can down. “Yeah, compared to what dad has us do to train this is super hard labor.” “Shut up.” “No.” Sam pulls the roller out of the bag and looks at Dean before putting it in the tray and adding paint. He lifts it then and gestures Dean forward. “Sam, there is a limit to what I’m interested in doing.” Sam gestures him closer. “Sammy. No. I like this shirt.” Sam gestures him closer. Dean waits, sees that Sam’s face is no less expectant than it was before, and then gives in and takes his shirt off. If Sam insists he can deal with this. Dean sidles up and Sam smiles, big and bright, and rolls paint down Dean’s face and chest. “This is, like, your entire Christmas present.” His little brother laughs and then holds out the roller to Dean. He doesn’t take his shirt off, and Dean is just a little bit sad. He takes the roller, looks at it, and then lets it dangle at his side while he steps in to press his painted front flat against Sam and rub his face all over Sam so that he leaves streaks of wet paint on Sam’s chin and cheeks. The only part he leaves is the lips, because he brushes his own against them. “Is it everything you dreamed, Sammy?” His brother takes a deep breath right up against him and then brushes Dean’s lips back without giving in to a full kiss. Whatever this is, it isn’t sexual apparently. Which kind of sucks at the moment. “Well we haven’t even started yet.” Sam hits the play button on the boombox and out bursts ZZ Top. Dean is a leg man because of this song. His brother turns to one wall, so Dean pulls the second roller out of the bag and loads it with paint before heading to another wall. It takes several hours, Sam eventually changing out the tapes and replacing ZZ Top with the Allman Brothers. Dean finishes his two walls about ten minutes before Sam does, he’s earned their supper more than once joining day labor painting crews. His brother is smiling, big and bright, singing along off-key to the Brothers and Sisters album, and it rolls from “Ramblin Man” to “Jessica.” And Dean starts to feel like something is going wrong as Sam caterwauls his way to the end of the wall. “I recall once upon a time, Livin was so easy and I felt so fine, But, my, my, my right before my very eyes, Satan came with fire to burn me.” Sam looks over at Dean and winks. It leaves Dean feeling cold and strange. Distant like he’s floating somewhere else watching this scene unfold. “Now that it's all over and gone, Somehow I just don't feel so alone, But, lie, lie, lie it seemed like such a waste of time, She did not ever seem to know me.” And Dean gets up, feeling like something behind him is pushing him forwards to Sam. He wraps his arms around Sam’s waist, presses up against him from behind, and mouths at Sam’s neck. Sammy tilts his head, giving him access, and as he finishes the last wall. Dean makes sure that his mouth is keeping Sam from finishing the song. He puts Sam’s roller down for him and then leads Sam to the center of the room where they had shoved the mattress Sam has been sleeping on. Pressed close together they move as one, all hands and teeth, trying to get a better taste of each other and a better understanding of what buttons the other one has out on display to push. Dean’s loving it, loving every second of it, loving every gasp from Sam and every aggressive move Sam gives him back and how perfectly they fit together. Unison. Dean thinks that they are in perfect unison. He feels that the two of them have always been together, always like this, even though it hasn’t been that long since the first kiss. It feels like they were always meant to be this way, but also that they’ve been traveling a long time to get back to here. “Dean?” Sam is breathing shallow, one hand down the front of Dean’s pants pulling on his cock in rhythm to Dean’s own movements. “Yeah? Yeah, Sammy?” Dean doesn’t want to talk right now. He needs to focus on making sure that he’s doing this better than Sam since he’s the older brother. “I love you.” And it’s not like it’s the first time Sam’s said it, but it’s the first time Sam’s said it since they started this and it has a different sound now. Dean likes the sound of it a lot. “I love you too. Even if your kink is painting a room and hanging up posters.” “They’re-“ Sam gasps and spills all over Dean’s hand. “They’re art.” “Sure. Art. And kinda porn, that one’s a naked lady riding a naked man’s back.” “That’s Greek, Dean. It’s art.” Dean comes then and forgets his comeback. It makes him laugh anyway.      Drunk and hanging upside down from the bed Dean sees it right. Coordinates. Fucking coordinates. This is how dad rolls and Dean should have realized that immediately. He’s glad that dad can’t see how long it took him since he obviously believed that Dean would get it quickly. He left it for him after all. Dad was never one for extra details or unnecessary words. Not after he started them hunting. Did Sam find this somehow ahead of Dean? He tries to sit up and instead crashes into the floor, slamming his head and tweaking his neck before his body comes to a full rest on the floor. Dean groans and rubs his face before reaching into the depths of his brain to get the answer. How long ago did he really confirm that dad was missing? Was he sure that was the real time? After all, the two of them have been increasing the amount of time and the distance they split up to cover more of the states than they would if they were working as a team. Could it have been a month? He thinks that’s possible. More than possible. There are all sorts of scenarios that can fit that timeline. Dad reached out to ask Sam something. Dad stopped in to check on Sam and got spotted. Much as Sam would love to argue it, dad does still love Sam. Always has and always will. Maybe they ran into each other. Exchanged some words. Sam wouldn’t wait for a follow-up, so it was dad that requested it. When Sam couldn’t get a hold of dad how long would he assume it was just dad being unreachable as usual? A couple days? A week? When they hit that point then Sam would go past frustrated to logical. Dad’s hard to get ahold of when you need something from him, but he’s impossible to get rid of when he needs something from you. The dreams already have Sam on the fucking edge. Now here comes dad going missing, looking for the same thing that Sam thinks is following him and threatening his girlfriend. Sam would start looking. He wouldn’t reach out to Dean because either he was worried Dean would show up or afraid Dean wouldn’t show up. Sam always deals in extreme assumptions. Jericho isn’t crazy far from Palo Alto. Why wouldn’t Sam just make a day trip? He knows dad’s patterns; he knows the rules. He gets into dad’s room and looks for clues and finds the journal. Finds the clue and figures it out cause he’s Sam and he’s smart like that. Sam writes in his journal about the dream of Jess dying and looking for forgiveness. Did he want that from dad? It seems fucking impossible, but stranger things have happened. His little brother being psychic is certainly a huge one. Maybe he thought that if dad forgave him Dean would too? The idea gives Dean’s drunk brain a tiny thrill and he reaches out and runs his fingers over the solid heft of Sam’s journal. The closest thing he has to get to Sam other than the purple shirt. “Sammy. This is so stupid. You shoulda called me. Why didn’t you call me?” His brother doesn’t magically answer. Dean hauls himself slowly off the floor and crawls his way to the bathroom to wash up a little before staggering back out to drink enough water that tomorrow won’t be deadly. He’s gotta hit the ground running after all. He pops aspirin pre bed, drinks a little more water, and then uses his phone to look up the coordinates. Colorado? Ok. Colorado. Thank fuck for smartphones because pulling out the laptop is a Herculean task Dean can’t even begin to approach right now.      If you were to give Dean a thousand years he would have never imagined a situation where he would turn down the hottest thing in the bar when it was a sure thing. It almost breaks his heart to tell Cindy that he has to leave. She keeps one hand on his dick and the other on her heart as she swears to him that this will be the best night of his life. “I promise, sweetheart. If I had any other option I would take it but my little brother is in trouble and I gotta go.” “But how do you even know?” He tilts his chin at the window. “Cause he’s peeked in at least five times in the last twenty minutes and he’s seen you so he knows interrupting right now is a death sentence unless it’s an emergency.” She’s pleased, the hand on his dick rubbing happily for a second before pulling back. “Ok, but don’t forget me.” Whatever that means Dean is not sticking around to find out. He gives her a kiss and heads out the front door. Sam is leaning on the Impala and it takes all Dean has not to snap at him. Either for not being careful on the touch up paint job Dean just did or for the relaxed air he has despite what is apparently an emergency. Instead he slides into the driver’s side and pops the passenger door lock so that Sam can get in. Once in the safety of their home Sam turns to him. His eyes are fever bright but his voice is calm when he speaks. “The motel is haunted.” A blink, a breath, and then Dean leans towards his little brother. “What the fuck are you talking about?” “The motel. That we are staying in. It is haunted.” Every word has an emphasis and speed that lets Dean know English is no longer his primary language in Sam’s opinion. “Why would you think that?” “I saw- “ “Because you weren’t supposed to leave the room. So unless you saw a ghost driving a car through the window or you broke the wards there’s no way you saw fucking anything.” Sam’s lean little face flushes, bright red and unhappy, and he looks out the window. “You don’t- I was thirsty, ok?” “And the drinks in the cooler were all gone?” “I wanted ginger ale.” “Were you sick?” “…no.” “So, you decided to break the rules and leave the room to get a ginger ale and while you were out and about you saw what?” It is obvious from the look on Sam’s face that his next answer will dig the grave a little further, and that he never expected Dean to put two and two together in the first place. “I saw in the lobby- “ “The lobby. The drink machine is to the right on the walkway Sam. The lobby is across the parking lot on the other side. Its windows face the road. How did you see into the lobby?” “Do you just not care about the fucking ghost at all?” “I care that you seem hellbent on getting us both in trouble by putting yourself in danger. First by leaving the room and just walking all the fuck over the place for no reason at night and then by walking to this bar to get me when you could have waited. I’m not saying I don’t think you saw something you thought was actionable, I’m telling you everything else you’ve said you did was wrong.” Sam surprises him by reaching for the door but Dean’s faster and his arms are longer. He reaches past Sam, slapping his hand off the door handle and popping the lock down on Sam’s side. “I’m gonna take you back to the motel. We’re gonna check out what you saw together. If it’s a ghost we’ll handle it. If it’s not I’m gonna barricade you in the bathroom and go back to Sally.” His brother’s eyes cut sharply left to the window he was peeking in, and then he nods without making eye contact with Dean again. It is obvious from every line of the kid’s body that he is totally miserable. Dean starts up the car and drives them two miles back to the motel, studying the road that Sam walked along the whole way to get himself just a little bit angrier and more righteous. He’s just about to trash the whole fake ghost hunt and start yelling when he pulls up to the lobby and sees what Sam saw. The man standing behind the counter, the one staring up at the ceiling, is see through. Behind him there’s a big advertisement for some cave tour and a sign that tells when the motel’s checkout is and the fee for missing it. How long has the thing just been standing there? Where is the night clerk? Sam must have seen this, walked the two miles, then he was trying to get Dean’s attention, then they argued. Fuck. An hour? Maybe more? What was it doing? Dean looks Sam’s way and sees his brother watching the ghost with not a trace of smug on his face. It’s surprising, because Sam could definitely pull out the smug here. Instead his brother is focused and Dean is gratified to see the look of a beginning hunter there. He touches Sam’s shoulder and when the focus is shifted Dean nods. “I’ll go in the trunk and get the iron. You stay in the car.” “The hell I will. I’m going in with you. Dad doesn’t let you hunt alone yet.” “I don’t think this is a hunt.” “Still.” The set of Sam’s jaw suggests that Dean will be here longer than the ghost can survive on its own if he tries to fight with Sam. He weighs the pros and cons and then nods and gets out of Baby as slowly and quietly as he can while Sam mirrors him on the other side. They move to the trunk together and it is only years of practice being quiet as they flee from one rental to another that allows Dean to so smoothly open the trunk, get what he needs, and then close it again. He gives Sam the salt and he takes the iron. Better at least that Sam will be handling the less violent of the two jobs. They step into the lobby slow and steady, but the ghost is too entranced with the ceiling. Dean looks up to see what he’s staring at and spots a pretty big hole in the solid plaster ceiling. It looks new. Dean clears his throat and the ghost turns to him. Sure enough, it’s the guy that checked them in the night before. He looks surprised to see them. “How can I help you tonight, sir?” It’s not what he’s expecting. He responds honestly. “What are you looking at?” “Oh. It was the craziest thing. I was back here and I thought that chunk of the ceiling hit me but it must have been such a close call I just imagined it went all the way.” Sam is slowly moving up closer, salt clutched in both hands, and Dean holds his left out to stop him. “Huh. That is crazy. It’s a pretty big chunk.” “Yeah, this whole place is falling apart. When I finish school I’ll never see it again though, so it’s worth it.” Dean steps all the way up to the counter, the ghost still hasn’t questioned the iron bar in his hand, and looks over to the other side. Sure enough, there the guy is. There’s a big chunk of plaster, but that’s not what killed him. Dean can see from the blood that he must have fallen and then hit his head on the big metal handle sticking out from the safe under the desk. It’s terribly placed. He takes a deep breath and then points down at the body. The clerk follows his finger and then gasps in horror. “What the- how the- what the fuck? Pardon me, sir, but what the fuck?” Customer service, it turns out, can be so deeply ingrained in some people that it robs them of free expression even in death. Dean once again thanks his lucky stars that will never be him. “I’m sorry. It seems like it did go all the way. Do you want us to call someone? Before you move on? Because believe me buddy, you wanna move on. What happens if you stay is pretty ugly for everybody. You don’t strike me as the type that wants to hurt people.” The guy looks totally lost. He looks at Dean then, really looks at him, and then looks at the bar in Dean’s hand. Then he sees the salt in Sam’s. The confusion on his face shouldn’t be funny, but there’s a part of Dean’s maybe tipsy brain that thinks it is. He keeps that off his face while the dead guy processes everything in front of him before replying. “Move on. Like. The afterlife?” “Yes, sir.” Sam steps up closer to Dean, ignoring every vibe that Dean is sending him, and speaks gently in a respectful tone Dean hasn’t heard in years. “You need to let go so that you can move on to your final rest.” “Oh.” The dead guy looks everywhere as if someone else will pop in and give him a better outcome, but when that doesn’t show up he turns back to Sam and Dean. He looks resigned. “Can you call my mommy? She’s gonna be really broken up about this. Tell her I said that she was the best and that she should be happy?” “Of course.” Dean glares at Sam, but his little brother has apparently decided he’s the voice of the duo. “Can you give us the number?” The guy lists it off and Sam, the little shit, puts down the salt and writes it down. There’s a long moment where Dean is afraid that it will go wrong and Sam will have no chance to get the fucking salt before the guy just pops out of existence. It’s abrupt and Dean isn’t ready for it so he jerks around with the iron bar waiting for something to come at them but nothing does. It’s never gone so easily before. “Should I call?” There is a tint of smug to Sam. “Yeah, sure, and then when your voice cracks you can tell her that you’re on the junior sheriff’s league. No, you idiot, call 911 and I’ll call the mom and tell her what’s going on.” Sam is wounded but Dean doesn’t care. Sam doesn’t seem to be super concerned that he did everything wrong so far other than catching that there was a ghost in the lobby. A ghost that certainly wasn’t enough of an emergency for Sam to walk a highway to find Dean. Or to take him away from Suzy. Dean waves his little brother towards the payphone outside and then uses the lobby phone to call the mom. She takes it just as badly as her son thought she would, but Dean can tell that the goodbye is something she’ll remember long after the pain dims. A goodbye is always something to treasure since it’s so rare. When it’s all over Dean checks the time and figures it’s far too late to go back to the bar. Plus, Sam is pouting now and that’s something he needs to deal with. It’s not too late to order pizza and Dean does that with a side order of ginger ale to remind Sam that even though he’s a liar Dean’s always on the higher ground. They eat together, not talking but fine with it as the TV plays an old black and white Western that Dean vaguely recognizes. Eventually Sam leans on his shoulder and when Dean looks over his little brother has fallen asleep with the ginger ale tucked between his thighs and his mouth open. He’s drooling. Dean considers a lot of things he could do, all sorts of pranks and fun ways to wake Sam up, and then he remembers that even if Sam did everything wrong this was the first time Sam approached taking on hunting all on his own. He moves slow, a skill he’s picked up from taking care of Sam since the kid was an infant, and eventually gets Sam on his back with his shoes and pants off and under the covers. Just as he’s headed to the other bed Sam grabs his wrist, eyes half closed and cloudy, and makes a face Dean is all too familiar with. So, he sits back down and lets Sam cling to his wrist while he drinks the last beer in the room and watches TV. He does that until he falls asleep sitting up.        Colorado holds the story of a group of hikers that were helped by two forest rangers. There’s not a lot beyond that, it appears the family that they saved moved shortly after in an attempt to get away from the bad memories. The sheriff is new as well, but he heard the story from his predecessor. There were arguments about what sort of wild animal was tearing through hikers and locals. Dean heads out into the woods with a feeble hope that there will be something left behind for him to follow, but there’s nothing. Camping has never been his thing and he gets tired of trekking through the woods without any hope pretty quickly. He heads back to the motel room and spreads all of the material Sam left him out in front of him. Why would he think that such an old clue would help him at all? It was stupid to get his hopes up. He tries everything with the piece of paper that has the coordinates. Heating it up, lemon juice, different types of light. There’s nothing outside of the dark ink that he can see with his eyes and nothing to even hint that there is more to the message than the coordinates that took him to a dead lead. Dean tries to breathe slow and stay calm, but it’s not easy. The more time that passes the more he feels like there’s a clock that’s running out on him. That there’s a time limit before Sam is all the way out of his grasp. Dean can remember a time when it seemed like it would be impossible for Sam to ever be anything less than in Dean’s pocket and under Dean’s skin, but here he is. There’s a knock at the door and Dean struggles to get up without knocking anything out of place. Standing at the door is the night clerk, who smiles at Dean in a familiar way. He holds out an envelope and winks. “I’ve been holding this for you for a little while. I didn’t think you’d really show up.” The moon shines over the man’s shoulder and lights his blonde hair up so that it’s almost white. Dean doesn’t want to invite him in because he’s got wards set up and it will be a big red flag so he steps out of the room instead. Fuck anyone who’s interested enough to eavesdrop. Dean takes the envelope and feels how light it is before he speaks. “Who gave you this?” “A tall guy, thin, shaggy hair down to here?” The clerk gestures and then leans on the wall with his hip. Dean isn’t sure if he’s flirting or just really uninterested. “He was here with another man. Shorter. Although I guess most people are short compared to him.” Sam. Definitely Sam. Dean wants to rip the envelope open right now but there’s no telling what’s in it or how long he can keep the clerk’s attention. “Did he say anything? How did you know I was the one he left it for?” “Oh honey, he described you.” The clerk scans Dean up and down, and then shrugs. “He didn’t do you full justice though. He said that you would show up alone and that I should wait until you’d settled in and deliver it. He prepaid me so I had to do it.” “You coulda tossed it.” Dean’s brain is only partly in the conversation, the rest going over how strange Sam’s movements have become. How foreign to everything that Dean knows. “I couldn’t. It was a duty, and I fulfill my duty until my replacement comes.” Dean looks up, the flirtation is gone and the guy sounds cold and distant. Somehow he’s become even more reflective of the moonlight when Dean’s gaze shifts, but after his eyes adjust he can tell that’s an optical illusion from the parking lot lights and the full moon above. “Well. Either way, thank you. A lot.” Dean tips the guy a ten and then slides back into the room checking the locks and the salt line before heading back to the bed. His hands are practically shaking as he opens the envelope and looks inside. There’s a postcard inside with no stamp on it but addressed to a place in Wisconsin. Dean flips it over nervously to look at the message and is crushed to see a symbol he doesn’t immediately recognize. “ή” glares at him, out of context and alone it offers nothing. He flips the postcard back over and looks at the front as if there will be an image of Sam pointing to the right spot on a map to find him. Instead what he finds is a picture of an idyllic lake with a bold and colorful font at the top proclaiming that you wish you were at Lake Manitoc. It’s gotta be the next stop, but somehow Dean knows that Sam won’t be there. He and Dad, and what the fuck how are they sticking together without killing each other, will have already taken off. What will be left dangling for him there? Why did the two of them decide to hook up and leave Dean behind? Dean collapses back against the headboard and drops the postcard. This is fucking ridiculous. He’s on some sort of wild treasure hunt with no idea how long it is or how many clues have been left behind. Will he ever catch up with Sam? Will he lose his chance while he’s running several steps behind? He should have never let him leave alone. Sam was right, Dad didn’t need Dean to stick around and take care of him. He made that clear when he got the truck and started to take off regularly for longer and longer. It wasn’t like Dean being around had ever curbed their Dad’s bad habits. If he walked out with Sam like he’d been asked to, if he’d run to the bus stop and hopped on with his little brother, he wouldn’t be so far behind. He would have had an eye on Sammy this whole time and made sure that his little brother never disappeared. That Sam stayed right where he belonged at Dean’s side. It’s hard to pack everything up but Dean does. He falls asleep after hours of tossing and turning, imagining all the ways Sam is getting hurt while Dean is failing to find him.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

In the morning Dean starts up Baby and heads for Wisconsin. It’s not the longest haul he’s ever done but it’s also not one that he’ll be able to do in one go. He weighs the necessity of a motel and decides to skip it this time around. Just past Lincoln on 80 there’s a rest stop that Dean is familiar with. He stops there, washing off in the bathroom and then grabbing food before getting settled in Baby. It’s a little past halfway and even though he’s vibrating to get moving and get to Lake Manitoc his vision is starting to blur and he knows he has to stop for the night. Sam always hated these nights the most. He didn’t seem to care when they would pull off in the middle of nowhere and drop the front seat to create a bed, but he hated sleeping at rest stops. Dean never got it. In the woods there were so many things that could sneak up on them, but rest stops typically didn’t offer much in the way of concerns. He’d seen horror movies about it, but some of these places were like mini malls. Parked close enough that the lights will keep most problems away Dean stretches across the front seat and props his back against Sam’s window. Or what would have been Sam’s window if he had stuck around after Dean started driving. It’s not the first weird thought that’s snuck into his brain since this particular journey started. He eats his burger slow, watching people walk in and out of the rest stop. There are families that look exhausted and ready to snap and single travelers that look like they’d give anything to be anywhere else. People just moving through their lives with no clue of what goes on around them and why. Sam wanted to be one of these. A civilian in a war that their family was conscripted into. He built a nice little life, but it was obvious that it wasn’t going to last. Sam’s eyes were opened to monsters years ago, earlier than Dean wanted, and they couldn’t be closed again. Sure, Dean didn’t see any protections in the apartment but considering how long ago Sam left that made sense. Jess probably found them, wondered what they were, and then dumped them out along with everything but Sam’s shirt. He should’ve checked in more. Why didn’t he check in more? Why did he let himself get so wrapped up that he missed Sam just getting up and taking off on him? This, Dean thinks as he polishes off the fries and balls everything up into the trash bag, is what happens when you take your eye off the ball. One second everything is going fine and the next second everything’s in the shit. Weren’t they doing fine? He’s half asleep now, watching the increasingly less frequent visitors to the rest stop dripping and drabbing in and out. They were together and it was all fine. They could’ve been fine. Sam could have recovered with him. Dean’s always been able to put Sam back together. He did it for broken bones, for broken hearts, for broken minds. This should have been their time to work together in sync again. Dean tilts his head, eyes drifting past half-mast into fully closed, and takes a deep breath. He imagines he can still smell Sam. Like his brother was just here and then left. Dean’s fingers slide along the worn in leather of the front seat, over a dent that’s been pressed into the seat by years of riding and dying together. It feels like Sam’s within reach again and Dean stretches and stretches but doesn’t quite make it. When he wakes up the memory of imaging that Sam was close lingers like a bad taste on his tongue. Dean brushes his teeth and washes up again in the rest stop before grabbing breakfast and getting settled in the driver’s seat with all the coffee they could legally sell him. It’s never been this hard to wake up before and yet here Dean is. Sunglasses only help a small bit with lowering the glare of the bright morning light, but Dean doesn’t have the option to linger and wait for whatever bad sleep hangover is trying to slow him down. All he’s gotta do is reach Wisconsin. He’s just gotta find the next clue and the clue after that and get to Sam. The minute he does everything that’s broken in his life will be fixed. Dean just knows it.        Sam’s sitting on the bed rubbing lotion into his hands and arms. Last winter Dean made fun of him for it, but this year Sam’s caution has paid off as they’re in the frozen North and while Dean is dealing with deep bleeding cracks in his hands and along his fingers Sam is sitting pretty with hands fully intact. Dean sends Sam the most pathetic look he has and his brother rolls his eyes before moving over so Dean can join him. His brother has hit puberty and all of his limbs are too long and thin. No matter how much training they do or how often Sam lifts firewood and carries it into the little cabin they’re squatting in while they wait for Dad to come back the muscle stays lean along his bones. Dean doesn’t think Dad will be back any time in the next month, but they’re fully stocked so Dean doesn’t have to worry about them hiking it through the woods to town to try to steal anything. In the meantime he’s worked to get Sam into a routine that doesn’t end in either of them beating each other up or getting frostbite. While dad’s been gone they’ve reached a fairly comfortable truce and Dean is overwhelmed with joy about it. Usually there’s at least a fistfight to prove his dominance before Sam calms down and stops being an asshole. Dean lets Sam spend the first three hours of the day studying or fucking off, whichever he prefers, and then the next five are for training. On days when the wind is particularly brutal or the snow blinds them they stay inside working out, wrestling, and cleaning either the guns or the small living space. The cabin they picked has a “cozy” main living area with two chairs, a fireplace, and a prep station next to an industrial freezer and a small fridge. Attached to it is a bathroom that is obviously a recent addition and honestly the reason Dean picked this cabin instead of some of the hunting cabins he saw where the outhouse would end up with their ass cheeks frozen and chapped. Up a ladder is a loft that is big enough for a lamp, a bed, and a fur rug. If the bed was a little smaller Dean might have looked to set up a pallet situation with the fur rug, but luckily they have enough space to sleep close but not on top of each other. Sam rubs the lotion in gently with his long fingers, tilting Dean’s hands this way and that to make sure that he’s getting every inch. It feels so good after hours of frozen hands vibrating with each strike of the ax into wood that Dean doesn’t have a chance against the urge to close his eyes and lean back. Sam’s fingers are magic as they spread the lotion firmly around the cracks and then softly into them. It loosens the muscles and comforts the sting. He lies all the way back and lets Sam hold his hands as he just rides the joy of the massage. When Sam moves to his tightly corded forearms Dean actually groans with relief and ignores Sam’s derisive little snort. He rides it and rides it, right up to the edge of being asleep actually, when the sensation slides up to his elbows and he feels soft lips press against his. Sam apparently uses Chapstick too. Dean lets it go for several minutes, tilting his head left and right to be active in the kiss. Sam moves with him, smooth and gentle, lips getting slicker and wetter as they open and close with each other. Eventually he feels pressure as Sam straddles his stomach. It’s more than they’ve ever done before but Dean is so relaxed he doesn’t feel like figuring out where his line is right now. It changes from day to day anyway. Sam lets go of his elbows and Dean moves his lotion slick hands up the length of Sam’s bent and bony spine to the base of his shoulder blades. He rubs the skin and bone together feeling all the pieces of Sam, listening to the happy little noises Sam makes as he rubs the muscles there, and considers what his next move is. He can stop this. He can stop this right now and other than a minute or five of pouting Sam will let it go too. Once or twice when the kissing hit him the wrong way Dean’s shut Sam down before and his brother never pushes and never asks for more. He could do that, but he doesn’t really want to. He wants to see how far Sam is planning on going. How far Sam is brave enough to go. His thumbs roll in circles down the length of Sam’s spine until his hands rest on the knob at the base above Sam’s ass. He keeps them there, letting Sam set the pace of the whole thing. When Sam sits back enough to press his ass against Dean’s getting interested dick that line pops up in his mind again and then he tosses it and focuses on the feel of Sam grinding down on him. He doesn’t move though, he lets Sam do it. Lets Sam press back hard and then soft, harder, and then eventually Sam seems to realize that isn’t enough for him. Maybe Dean’s smirking, he doesn’t know, because Sam frowns at him and then presses down too hard and laughs when Dean grunts in pain. He almost pushes him off right then, but curiosity stills his hand. Instead he watches as Sam looks all around the room before reaching out with one of his overly long arms and hooks the lotion bottle. He drags it in and then blows Dean’s goddamn mind when he drops every inch of the cautious little brother that Dean has gotten used to and pops the button on Dean’s pajama pants. He reaches in, easily working his hand into the pouch and pulling Dean’s half-hard cock out. His fingers are cold on Dean’s hot skin, and in the time it takes Dean to take a breath Sam’s pulled his own cock out too. That does it. Dean is full hard and he watches in both fascination and shock as Sam squirts lotion into his hand and then grips both of them together. He almost thinks that Sam will puss out right there, but instead he’s shocked again as Sam pulls his hips back and then thrusts forward to fuck his cock against Dean’s. His big, skinny hand holds both of them with no problem and the heads pop in and out of the grip with a beautiful little pull on the inside of Sam’s knuckles. Dean closes his eyes, folding his hands behind his head and letting Sam do all the work. It’s amazing. Sam works them both, hard, his breath speeding up with his hips until it seems like he’s pulling Dean into the rhythm of his heartbeat because Dean is just as out of breath. Eventually Dean finds himself biting his lip just to make sure that Sam doesn’t get the satisfaction of Dean coming first. He fights it, brain running through a thousand things in an attempt to get as far away from the moment as possible, but Sam gasps and it pulls Dean back in. It’s a cheat, the kind of cheat that only Sam could pull off, and Dean’s body betrays him thinking that Sam is finishing and immediately going right over the edge. He comes all over both of them, gasping, hips finally moving against Dean’s will. He opens his eyes to see Sam’s victorious little grin right before it turns into a pleased orgasm face. They lie side by side, come cooling on them both as they get their breaths back. Dean thinks about asking Sam what the fuck that was, if it was planned, if it was something that Sam would think to do again in the future, but all that comes out is, “Huh.” Sam looks over and then rolls onto his side to stare full on. “Huh? That’s it?” “It was pretty good. For a virgin.” “Who said I was a virgin?” Dean dodges the first hit and takes the second one. Riding the strange wave of impulse he’s been in all night he hooks his arms around Sam and pulls him in. They’re gross, need to clean up, need to do something, but instead he props Sam’s head on his chest and relaxes into the bed.      
It’s the end of the night and you know it. The sister is looking a little tired, she’s been talking for years it seems, and the brother strokes her hand again gently as he considers the people getting their coats and hats and wandering towards the door. Soon the sun will rise, and it seems to be taking it out of her. You wonder why they need coats around here.

It couldn’t go any better than this and you know it.

It’ll be a long time before you see them again. You know that even if they don’t say it. Where you’ll go, how much you’ll remember, how much you can help you don’t know. But you do know that by the end of this conversation there will be no renegotiating and no turning back. You can’t control everything in life. You learned that the hard way. Many years ago the woman that domesticated you made you listen to a song about good deeds. Were you seeking good or seeking attention? Is that all good deeds are when looked at with an ice-cold eye?

It could’ve been an instant fix, and that would have been better than this. You’ll have to die instead if you want to fill your hand again.

It hurts when they both take your hand.
      Dean rings the bell much earlier than he planned. It’s autumn so the sun is weak despite the early hour, but Dean is just glad that it’s out considering at this time of year Wisconsin could easily be a foot deep in snow. He shakes the nerves off, focusing on his cover story, when the door opens and a woman carrying a facial expression that suggests she’s never worked a day in her life answers the door. She raises an eyebrow and studies Dean before tilting her head. “What is it?” The story flies out of his head and all that Dean is left with is a burgeoning sense of disgust. “I’m a private detective looking for someone, ma’am. Sorry to bother you so early but I have a lead on a missing person and I’m following up on it.” He expects to have to back up this cover that sounded so much stronger before he saw her face so his hand is already going for his fake ID when she steps back and waves him in. The house is very nice, put together and super clean, and Dean wonders if she bought it with family money or got it in a divorce. There’s no ring on her finger but there are pictures of a kid that has her dark hair and eyes. She leads him to a sunny kitchen and then sits on the counter with her arms crossed looking down at him. The distaste gets stronger. “What lead brings you to my door this morning, detective?” “Technically I’m just a private dick, not a detective. I don’t work for the police. You can call me Jimmy.” Her mouth curls and she studies her fingernails. “What leads you to my door this morning, Jimmy?” Dean pulls out the postcard and sits it on the table. It’s obvious from her face that she expects him to do more, and they sit in a standoff until finally she hops down and picks up the card. She studies it for a long moment before looking back up at Dean. “My missing person left that. It leads directly to you. Do you know this man?” He drops the picture of Sam on the table and makes sure that he doesn’t give a name and blow a cover. She leans in and looks at it. There’s instant recognition and Dean is glad for it. “What a nice frame. He’ll fill out well.” It’s the thing he least expected her to say and he didn’t know it until it came out of her smug mouth. Dean looks around the kitchen at the pictures on the fridge and the lack of dishes. “Am I interrupting you getting your son up for school?” Brief hesitation, confusion not fear, and then she shrugs. “He wasn’t feeling well last night so I’m letting him rest today. I didn’t want to push him.” Dean clocks it but doesn’t find it particularly concerning. “I’m sorry to hear it. Other than his frame, do you recognize him?” She looks at it again, picking the picture up and turning it in her fingers over and over as if seeing the back will give her some new information. Finally she puts it down and looks up. “Yes. I recognize him. Why?” It’s the work of a lifetime to be calm. To not immediately snap at this woman and her holier than thou attitude. The sun shines through the window and off her dark hair briefly making it golden in the light. “I think I told you this already, but I’m looking for a missing person. He’s the missing person.” “He’s not a missing person.” She pushes the picture back Dean’s way and smiles in a way that reminds him of the rich prick back at Stanford. “He left here with his partner. He had a destination in mind. Usually don’t missing people not do those things for those reasons?” Dean is so flabbergasted by this response and what to do with it that he actually doesn’t know how to move forward. The urge to fight is so strong but he knows that doing that won’t get him anywhere. It’s like she’s trying to slow him down. Trying to obstruct him from finding Sam. It makes something dark and ugly in him growl and roar, but Dean takes a breath and ignores that animal instinct in the interest of getting to the final goal. “Yes ma’am, usually that would be true. But his family is looking for him because he displayed a number of red flags before disappearing in the middle of the night. They’re worried that he’s had a mental break. He may have told you some strange or disturbing things.” Dean studies her for a second, the way she’s taking this information in, and then he takes a big gamble. “He may have even pretended to be some sort of law enforcement. He could have approached you about the possibility of you being in danger. You or your son. Does any of that sound familiar?” He sees her mouth purse in thought, her considering the best way to respond to him, and then she shrugs and stands up. She goes into the drawer beside the fridge and digs for several seconds before coming back to drop a child’s drawing on the table in front of him. “It does. He helped my son and I with a problem actually, but he did seem very troubled. He worked on this with my kid but I didn’t… there was something about him and I thought it was better to just store it instead of putting it up to remind him of the problem and the visit.” “What was the problem?” He doesn’t want to ask but he has to. “A man my ex hurt that wanted to get back at him through our child.” She’s hesitating again but this time it’s a lie. Dean doesn’t push. He knows why she’s lying. If Sam helped her then it wasn’t a man, and whatever it was would have certainly killed her son. Instead of pressing it he takes the picture and stands. “I understand. Thank you, ma’am.” Dean takes seven steps before it hits him and he turns around. “By any chance did he tell you where he was going?” “No. He just told me that he and his partner had to go. Time was running out.” Dean heads out to Baby with the picture in his hand and sits down in the driver’s seat while he thinks about what he should do. The thinking takes the form of him driving her to a spot that looks just like the postcard. He holds it up to compare and then puts it down before picking up the drawing. Sam worked with a kid to draw? What would he do to put a clue in? Dean flips it over and looks at the back but there’s nothing written there the way he’s gotten used to. On the front Dean studies the picture. There’s two figures in front of the water, obviously the boy and his mom, and nature blooming around them. It’s not particularly detailed because of course it’s not. None of the pictures on the wall suggested that the boy was very old. The trees are green clouds scribbled on top of trunks, the birds are V’s flying through the sky, and the sun is in the corner as a partial circle with little rays. It looks just like the pictures that Sam used to bring home to them after kindergarten. He was so sweet back then. So kind and cuddly, like a little monkey, and Dean used to love it. It made him feel like a superhero picking his tiny little brother up and swinging him around. It’s not like it lasted but it was great while it did. Dean rubs the picture absent-mindedly with his thumb as he stares at the lake and then the picture and then back again. It’s not bad. It’s a lot like the site on the postcard actually, if it was drawn by a child. Going back up and then down again let’s Dean see the spot the difference style problem. There’s a bird upside down. And it’s not a perfect V it’s more like a wishbone. Dean stares at it for a long time, something picking at the back of his brain, and then he pulls out the other clues and pops the driver’s seat flat. It gives him space to put it all in line and he sees all three characters in a row. “Δήλ”. Greek. It’s Greek. Dean pulls out his phone and searches for it. According to the internet the letters spell ‘that is’ in Greek which probably isn’t right. What is definitely right is that right underneath the Greek symbols are three letters. He pops the seat back up and drives at high speed to find the nearest motel. This is finally a real clue. This is finally something that he can follow and do something with. Because he missed the first fucking one.      Sam is lying naked and sweaty on the picnic blanket. Water sloshes gently against the shore and the trees block out almost all of the moonlight and the stars. The lake has only the sounds of water and the sporadic noises of nocturnal animals hunting and fish splashing above the surface of the lake. Of course, there’s also the sound of both of them catching their breath. Dean took Sam’s virginity. He looks over at his seventeen-year-old brother and pokes at that line again but he’s so relaxed here next to Sam that he can’t even figure out what he originally drew the line for. Or did the line just exist and Dean was never smart enough to notice it? He strokes Sam’s thigh and listens to Sam’s breath hitch in the quiet night. Then his brother rolls over and straddles him. Dean is more than pleased to join in a sloppy kiss, feels the warmth of Sam’s lengthy body in contrast to the little whiffs of cold when the breeze hits his own sweat and starts to dry it out. Sam’s mouth is so hot, so warm, and Dean doesn’t mind that it’s not his show anymore somehow. Sam is running this now and Dean is willing to obey. Chasing, chasing, always chasing after the little glimmer of Sam’s light. Dangling just in front of him and teasing him forward when he slows down. Dean can’t even get up the interest to be embarrassed when the little gasp comes out of his mouth as Sam reaches in between them and grabs his cock. Instead Dean arches up into the hold and feels himself filling up. He’s lucky Sam chose this period of their life to explore sex with Dean, because it’s probably the last few years he’ll be able to get it up that fast again. Sam angles Dean’s dick and then sinks down on it. He’s so loose and sloppy from their first time. Dean can’t believe his cleanliness is next to godliness little brother is willing to be like that, but fuck it is hot at this moment. Maybe after they can step out into the lake. Maybe Dean and Sam can skinny dip a little, and Dean can see Sam in the full moonlight. Maybe they can wash off in the water, exchanging kisses and groping one another, and then Dean can lay Sam out on one of those boulders and try licking him out again. Sam really seemed to like that one. And then Sam arches and tightens and Dean is back in the present where’s he’s balls deep in Sam and under him and the trees sway above Sam’s head like a crown of black leaves. Dean puts his left hand over Sam’s heart and his right hand on Sam’s hip and uses them to straighten and steady the erratic movements that Sam is currently using. It’s not control, Dean thinks it as Sam grins down at him in the darkness, teeth catching the little bit of light in a Cheshire grin, it’s a desperate ploy to hold on just a little bit to an unstoppable force. Does that make Dean an immovable object? He doesn’t feel that way. He feels like he moves with Sam all the time. Not just right now as he squeezes his ass and digs his heels into the picnic blanket to move up and deeper and harder, but every time Sam smiles or cries. Dean feels like a tree that bends in Sam’s wind, a chariot chasing behind his little brother as he rides into bright glory. Is that insane? Dean doesn’t know because Sam reaches down and pinches one of his nipples just right and now it’s a race to see who’s going to finish first. It was Sam last time, but Dean thinks that it won’t be this time. He tries, he really does, bites his lip and clenches and focuses, but it doesn’t work. Dean loses round two and Sam’s grin as he arches and comes all over Dean’s chest shows that he knows what his brother is thinking. Sam slips off and Dean eyes the lake and then eyes Sam. His brother nods and off they go, dipping into the cool water and swimming in a black sky of stars. They end up on their backs, floating together and holding hands, and it feels like the world is upside down and they’re looking at the sky from above. It’s the best stargazing they’ve ever experienced in Dean’s opinion, and neither one of them is willing to break the silence. Dean will try for best two out of three later. For right now he soaks in the moonlight and holds onto Sam.      The mythology books at the bottom of the box are simply waiting for him to figure out that Sam fucking tricked him by making it too simple. Or Sam tricked somebody. But who did Sam trick? He rubs his thumb across the front of the mythology book. Either Sam rearranged Brady’s bookshelf without telling him and without Brady noticing or Sam brought three books into Brady’s house to mask his journal. The leather of the Greek myth book is a similar color to the one that Sam wrote in and Dean takes that as a sign that it was the latter. Most people buy a paperback of Bullfinch’s and have done with it, so in this case Sam brought a special one in just to match. 
Or one that has a very special story.
 He pops it open and starts thumbing through until he hits the index. Dean takes a pen and then starts making marks next to each of the entries that he recognizes. Sam never loved fairy tales the way he loved myths. Dean blames that for Sam becoming a serious believer. They never would have had problems with him blindly worshipping angels and god if only Dean had gotten him stuck on fairies and dragons instead of- For a second Dean rubs his head and tries to work out the headache that has appeared out of nowhere. He fights the nausea and ringing in his head until the whole thing is under control and he can focus again on the printing in the book. Being distracted by complaints and the past isn’t going to get him his brother back any faster. He makes marks next to the listings that are stories he doesn’t instantly recognize, things that might be specific to this volume, and then he realizes he needs to eat. He can’t remember his last meal, so he drives five minutes to the closest fast-food restaurant and gets a bag of tacos before heading back to the room. Sam would yell at him. Sam would yell so hard to see Dean handling his books in one hand and greasy tacos in the other. But Sam ain’t fucking here and Dean thinks that maybe this is the closest he will get to vengeance any time soon. He scarfs the tacos down as he works his way through the stories that he didn’t know. Dean’s not even sure what he’s looking for honestly, but he does know that he wants to get there as soon as possible so he can yell at Sam for taking so many years off his life. This morning when he parked Dean caught a glance at his face and between the constant driving, the stress, and the sleep deprivation he looks like he’s gained several years over the course of a few days. Bits and pieces about gods and goddesses, punishments to mortals, lessons to be learned slide past as Dean finishes the tacos and loudly sucks the last of the sauce and grease off each finger. This is another little passive shot at Sam, even though he’s aware his brother can’t hear it and wouldn’t be surprised to know later that Dean did it, but he enjoys every second of it anyway. In front of him there’s a story about Poseidon getting tired of his position and entering the underworld to live. He tilts his head as if the book will better explain itself when he questions it. Gears turn loudly in his head, clanging against each other, but he can’t recall a single time he ever heard of a god retiring to death. The next story is about the death of Athena. The gods and goddesses gather together afterwards to carry her body into the underworld so that she is complete and no one can try to take her power. At this point Dean flips back to the beginning of the book to see who the fuck published this and if there’s a foreword included. The publishing house is listed as a group called “Redemption, Inc.” and the editor is “Diana Phoebus”. It’s either a fake name or the nerd that put this together was way too in to their study. Not that Dean’s never met an academic like that. There’s a reason so many accidental rituals that end in death come from professors. He rubs his thumb along the page paying close attention to the address that’s listed for the company. It’s in Minnesota, not so far really if he books it, and maybe there will be some kind of answer there. It’s unlikely, honestly he imagines the place isn’t even open anymore, but fuck it might be. When he googles it all he gets is a street view of a small business with a sign covered in bushes that the drive-by car didn’t get through. Could still be the place listed here, could still have someone there. It’s the only hint that he has at this point. Sam left him nothing else at this stop. Nothing to grab onto but this little possibility. Dean drags himself into the bathroom and turns on the shower waiting until he sees steam before getting in. He’s never felt more weary and tired. It’s almost like his body has picked up more scars and damage without him even experiencing it. He rubs his thumb absently along a scar on his hip before getting under the water and soaking in the heat. It’s always nice to have a place that can actually keep the showers hot and the water flowing down the drain and not backing up. After several minutes of bending and turning to get the water spraying against the worst offenders on the muscle list Dean soaps up and washes his hair, staying extra time under the water until he feels scrubbed squeaky clean. After the shower Dean stretches out on Sam’s bed and jerks off slow and gentle. He doesn’t really think of anything or look at anything, his eyes have fuzzed out and his brain has turned off, but he curls his toes in the rough blanket and his fingers into an angry fist against that scar on his hip while he strokes his cock harder and faster. The little pills attached to the comforter scratch at his legs and feet, the air conditioner blows cool over the damp still lingering on his skin, and his hair clings wetly to the sheet and the pillowcase behind him. Release hits him out of surprise and he rubs the hot liquid over his cock and his fingers and soaks it in for a long time before going back to the bathroom to clean off again.      Sam’s looking at him like he’s never seen him before. Like the two of them are strangers meeting in a bar, making eye contact for the first time and making their way towards each other. Dean takes the stool beside him at the table and then nudges Sam’s knee with his own. He’s never seen his brother look at him this way. They’ve known each other for so long that there’s not a time in Dean’s life that he remembers Sam not reaching for him or chasing after him or being right there by his side. But this time he hasn’t seen Sam in two weeks, the longest they’ve been apart since Sam’s birth, and Dean doesn’t know what to do with that. He doesn’t know how to deal with the swell in his heart and the shake in his hands as he tries to pretend that everything is normal and that he’s not overwhelmed at the sight of Sam here and excited to see him. He picks up Sam’s beer and takes a long and slow pull from it, keeping hold of Sam’s eyes as condensation rolls over his fingers and the beer slides down his throat cold and stout. When he puts the beer down Sam hooks both hands in Dean’s shirt and pulls him in tight for a kiss. Dean lets Sam lead, tilting his head and opening his mouth to let Sam’s tongue in. He gets leaned back, his not so little brother basically dangling him from the two fistfuls of shirt that he’s hanging onto as the stools front legs lift off the floor and Sam’s strong thigh rubs against Dean in passing. If it was anyone else Dean would be afraid of dropping, but even with the pranks they pull on each other Dean knows that Sam won’t drop him right now. He shouldn’t have gone on the hunt. Dad didn’t even need him, just used him as labor to clean and prep the weapons and the traps. He didn’t want Dean’s input, he didn’t take him to run any of the cons, and he didn’t request Dean to join him for the final attack. If dad hadn’t come back to the motel to tell Dean he could head back to Sam now he wouldn’t even have known the goddamn thing was dead. And, to be fair, Dean wasn’t even sure what they were hunting. He had guesses, but dad never confirmed and Dean didn’t push. By that point he just wanted to go home to Sammy. After a while Sam seems to remember that they’re in public. It’s a gamble that this is a crowd that won’t react badly to the sight of two men kissing, and fuck if they only knew the level to which their self-righteous dander could get up, but the gamble seems to have paid off this time around. There’s a couple of grins thrown their way, and one squinting look of anger, but for the most part nobody seems any more interested in them than they are in the blonde riding her boyfriend’s lap at the bar. Sam pulls him off the stool, guzzles the last of the beer with his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down dragging Dean’s gaze along with it, and then plops the beer down and pulls out a five before dragging Dean out of the bar. They get outside and hook a left, hands brushing against each other every now and then until Sam seems to get tired of the distance and reaches back out to tangle his fingers into Dean’s waistband. It’s not comfortable, but Dean’s not complaining. It’s nice to have Sam so desperate for him. “How you been, Sammy? Other than drinking on a school night.” Sam shoots him an angry look and Dean sticks out his tongue and waggles it. “What a bad boy you are.” “How was the hunt without me?” Sam is mad, so mad, and it shows on every line of his face. He’s getting taller, leaner, meaner looking. One day Dean’s little brother is gonna break hearts and heads. “Shitty.” Dean isn’t even lying. He’s just so happy at the moment to see and feel Sam all over him. “Yeah. Same here.” They head back to the motel, and Dean luxuriates in the feeling of over-washed sheets, worn out duvet, and Sam. Does he have to leave again? Does he have to go when he wants nothing else but to be here? Why would he do any of this? There’s no telling why Dean does what he does. He’s only slightly more reliable than Sam when it comes to picking the worst fucking thing. They end up naked eventually, all wrapped up and cocooned in each other. And then Sam starts to talk, his fingers brushing gently and dipping along Dean’s hips and thighs. “Did you know that there was once a time when Apollo was tired of being a god?” Dean grunts and Sam goes on. “He was tired of being a god because he had been through everything, felt everything, and didn’t want to anymore. He was sick of having to suffer, and he believed that being alive was suffering. After all, the one person he loved he couldn’t be fully with. Apollo was sick of being alive so he walked down into the Underworld and told Hades that he wanted to be done. And Hades was able to give him that, but he couldn’t give him death because the water of the River Styx would only paralyze the gods long enough for them to be punished by Zeus. What he could do was give Apollo water from the river Lethe.” “The one that makes you forget?” Dean pushes into Sam’s questing fingertips. It’s probably one of the nicest things he’s ever felt in his life. “Yeah. That one. Hades gave Apollo a cup of the River Lethe, and Apollo drank it. He forgot that he was the God Apollo, he forgot his duties to keep the sun moving in the sky and the earth rotating, and he forgot all the pain and suffering he had experienced being alive. Except then he missed something he couldn’t remember. Missed it so terribly that his hand would cramp and his heart would weep. When he went to Hades and told him that something was missing, that he didn’t know what but something had been taken from him, Hades told him-“ “You didn’t lose it you left it behind.” Sam’s staring at him with his mouth wide open, but Dean doesn’t know where it came from either. “You must’ve told me this one before. I remember that part. I don’t remember the rest though. Keep going.” “Ok. Yeah, so Hades says, you didn’t lose it you left it behind, and Apollo responds by asking if he can go find it. Hades tells him that he can, but if he wants to do that he has to swim his way to the bottom of the Underworld and out through the womb of the world.” “The womb of the world?” Sam turns to Dean now, looking for all the world like a teacher that is about to scold a poor student. “The womb of the world. The place that Apollo’s world was created in.” “I know about the navel of the earth Sammy, but I don’t remember a womb of the world. How would that even be possible? In Greek mythology the world was born from the woman that would be called the womb.” Dean feels weird, a little nauseous, and Sam must sense it because he rubs Dean’s stomach a little as he looks into nothing in the distance. “I didn’t say the world was created there. I said Apollo’s world was created there.”

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The office is there, and there’s a sign in the front window that says it’s open. Dean parks Baby three buildings away in a shopping center parking lot to throw off any efforts to ID him. He walks into the front of the shopping complex and then winds around inside for a while before going out a back door. He doesn’t think he’s being followed, but he can’t change the feeling that something or someone doesn’t want him to get there. Better safe than sorry. Dean opens the door and listens to the chime, looking behind him one last time before he steps through the door. On the other side of it he sees an office, with an androgynous looking receptionist sitting behind a massive oak desk. They look up at him and open their eyes wide before pulling out a pair of glasses and putting them on. “Oh. Oh my. Can I help you?” “Yeah, I hope so.” Dean puts the book on the desk in front of them. “My friend told me that they picked this up at an antiques shop. Unfortunately, they told me that after my brother accidentally ripped a page out. I was hoping that if I came here you guys might still have some copies of it that I could buy?” The receptionist stands up, opening the book and flipping through it before looking up to Dean. He hopes that they can’t tell from Dean’s face that he was the one that ripped the page out for this very lie. They turn it this way and that before looking up at Dean again with obvious trepidation on their face. “I don’t think we do, but I’m just sort of here holding down the fort. I’ve never met the owners. I know there’s an old storage room full of shelves of old books. Maybe there’s one there? I can let you search through it and if you see one bring it up and I’ll probably have a price by then. If I don’t we can discuss it. Sound good?” Dean nods and they smile brightly before casually pushing their cellphone under the ledge of the desk. Dean catches the movement but gives nothing away. As he’s following the receptionist Dean cuts his eyes hard left and sees the screen. His panic ratchets down because what’s on the phone screen is just porn. Regular porn. The room they open for Dean is large enough to hold about sixteen shelves, some arranged neatly and some just stacked, and the lights flicker above making Dean wonder if he’s perhaps stepped into the wrong fucking movie. “Is uh. Is this normal?” He points up and the receptionist looks that way before looking back at Dean and shrugging broadly. “They don’t make me leave my desk, so most days I don’t. It’s good money.” And that? Dean can believe that. He thanks the receptionist and then goes to the far left side of the room because his gut tells him that if he starts there he might spend less time sifting through all of this for whatever the next clue is. He knows Sam’s habits, and he’s seen the running theme of the scavenger hunt so far, so it can’t be that hard. Dean opens every book, shaking them out one by one, reading inside covers and flipping through pages to look for markings or highlights. The material is all mythology, and the more Dean flips through the more disturbed he gets. They have gone way past myths that he knows, and some of the illustrations are the stuff of nightmares. He finds one that shows a woman carrying four gutted men on her spear, another of a man eating the entrails of someone else that is not pictured clearly. It goes on and on, and Dean stops reading the words flashing past his eyes because his blood pressure is fucking high enough, thank you. And then Dean’s hand stops on a book. He pulls it out, looking at it, and suddenly his eyes hurt like he’s just glanced into the sun. He blinks wildly, the flashing lights making it even harder for him to recover from the blast of feeling with no light, and then he stabilizes and opens the book. Its title is in Greek which Dean is not great at, possibly terrible if you asked Sam, but skipping that with the knowledge he can translate it later Dean flips through. The text is in Greek too, several pages of just normal print, and then the words begin to spread out. They curl on the pages, changing typeface and ink weight as they bleed slow and gross over pages Dean feels that he hates. Hates. Here, it’s here, he can feel the cold and the darkness now and he knows that if he pushes just a little further this stupid fucking scavenger hunt will be done and Sam will be in his hands again. And then they’ll- what was it that Dean was doing? What was he headed towards before he came to find Sam missing without a trace? It was dad. Could the clues be from dad instead? Could Dean be chasing the wrong trail? Panic, guilt, the knowledge that Dean would rather be on a hunt for a missing Sam than a missing dad, and he looks down at his hands and sees that they are shaking open to release the book. He lets the right side go suddenly and grips his left hand with his right one to hold it closed. Steady. Then he lifts the book, lays the right cover down onto a shelf at face height, and he blows. Softly. Gently. The page turns over, and Dean sees a cave, a sea spread out in front of it drawn with those white highlights that indicate moonlight in old illustrations. As Dean stares at it the water begins to move, and there is a great black ship traveling over the surface. Standing on it, shining in the moonlight, bright and beautiful and too large suddenly for the dimensions in the image is a woman. She carries a bow and there is a quiver on her back with a collection of arrows. Her hair shimmers in the moonlight, sometimes mixing with her, and now that the picture is moving it’s in color too. The water is dark but covered in the light, and the light isn’t coming from above. The cave ahead is the exit to light, what’s shining here is her. Behind her is a giant shadow, rowing the boat along, and Dean watches as she bends down and places her bow out of sight onto the boat’s deck. She comes back up and there is a man in her arms. He is dark. He carries no color and no light. He is a weight in her arms that Dean suddenly knows. Knows so well it is like an old knee injury or a deep wound that takes too long to heal. It comes with the fear of infection and rot. This feeling blooms in Dean’s heart, rots out the parts of it that he thought were strong and stable, and leaves him gasping. She turns to look at him, and Dean knows her. Knows her well. That is Sam’s girlfriend Jess, and the body in her arms is Sam. Dean wails, falling to his knees, one hand slipping, which he doesn’t know, and then he sees that it is just a book with an illustration of Charon’s boat crossing the silent expanse of the Acheron River. The entrance to the Underworld in Greek mythology. The woman carrying the body is dark haired and beautiful but unknown, and the man in her arms is light haired and not Sam. Dean scrubs the tears off his face, gasping in better air, and then he looks up at the shelf that he took the book from. He stands, slow, quiet, sneaking up on whatever horror is about to greet him. Sitting silent and alone with a piece of paper wrapped around his waist is the toy soldier Sam lodged into the ashtray in Baby. The one that Dean has refused to remove for all these years. That he fought dad to keep in. That’s sitting in that ashtray in the car he parked a few lots down, right? That’s still there because he would never let it not be. The paper comes off with care and slow, deep breaths. Written in Sam’s handwriting on the tightly folded slip is ος. He goes out the storage room like a shot, crashing into the lobby where the perplexed receptionist leaps up and then holds out both hands to say, “Sir? Are you alright, sir? You look like you saw a ghost.” Dean holds up the toy in one hand and the book in the other, still gasping a little, and watches the receptionist flinch back. “How much for the book?”       
She asks one final question, and it is the one that you never wanted to come up. Of course it is. She asks how you plan on getting out. Is your other half that controlled? Could they really resist the temptation to turn around? The deep-seated disbelief in all human hearts that the worst has happened then causing it to? Can they ignore that constant knowledge that the lump is malignant, the call is about a death, the request is denied? No human before has. Not from the first to the very last.

And you know he’s not. You know that he’s impulsive, that he’s uncontrolled, and that he’s too obsessed to be able to let go. To let it ride until the prize is handed to him. He has always been the type to rip that prize out of his opponent’s chest. It’s one of the qualities you like best in him. And that means you have to look at it sideways. You have to zig where he will zag. You look down where their hands are holding yours, and then back up again.

You tell them that there’s a way, but it will require them to help. They will need to build the blinders based on your specifications. If he can’t look around, he can’t see what’s coming and ruin it. You tell them that he’ll forgive you, because what else are you doing this for if not that? There is a poison that has been inside you for so long you have become it. Everyone and everything around you is exposed, and begins to slowly wilt and fade. You have killed every man and woman you loved at least once, and sometimes more than that.

There is no runway left, the plane needs to lift up now or you will crash.
       Sam is looking at Dean from across the room, and there is something in his gaze that Dean knows but not from Sam. He gets up, crossing the threadbare carpet to bend down and look into Sam’s eyes. They’re open, wide, staring at Dean with apathy and disappointment. And Dean can’t take it anymore. “Yeah? Join the fucking club, Sam. How could you do this to me? How the fuck could you do this to me?” His little brother doesn’t blink, that stare digging deeper and deeper into Dean’s defenses as he starts to crumble under the weight of Sam’s disapproval. “No. You don’t get to look like that! You don’t get to do that! Not here and not now. I know this. I know this room. I know this place, Sam. I don’t how, I don’t know why, but I know you brought us here on purpose. And fucking. I can’t. I can’t do this again, Sammy.” His voice is shaking. When Sam still doesn’t respond Dean crosses the room, lifting Sam up by his shoulders and shaking him hard. “TALK TO ME GODDAMN YOU!!!” But Sam doesn’t. He doesn’t talk. He stares and stares and Dean begins to realize that this is madness, this thought that is within him is madness, how could they have done this before? How could they possibly do this twice? Sure, Sam’s mad at him, Sam’s always mad at him for one reason or another. And if Dean can’t remember the reason right now? Well, welcome to Tuesday. He lets go of Sam’s shoulders, softly, gently, because now he’s not sure if he’s in the right. Now he’s not sure if he’s thinking clearly or madly. Where did they come from? How did they get here? Dean looks around the room, recognizing it and not knowing it all at the same time, and then he dry scrubs his face and turns back to focus on Sam. “Please? Just tell me what’s happening, Sammy. Please? Can’t you please tell me why I think I’ve done all of this before? Can you just talk long enough that I’m not alone here? Please. Please, Sammy, please don’t leave me here.” Sam still lies there on the rotting bed, Sam is rotting too now Dean realizes, and he collapses onto the chair across from the bed and puts his face in his hands. “You know when we were little, and you couldn’t have been more than five? You just started asking questions. How come we didn’t have a mom? Why did we always have to move around? Where’d dad go? He would take off for days at a time.” There is rot in Dean’s mouth. He has been here before, giving this eulogy, and he is here again. 
He's starting to fear that he never left.
 “I remember I begged you quit asking, Sammy. Man, you don’t want to know. I just wanted you to be a kid. Just for a little while longer. I always tried to protect you. To keep you safe. Dad didn’t even have to tell me, it was just always-“ Dean looks up, and sees that the sun is setting in the window, that’s not right. He gets up, step by gruesome step across the room, and finds there behind the ratty curtain a scene out of an apocalypse movie. He stares, watching as the world changes to a frozen sea, the moonlight reflecting on it, and there is a boat coming their way. A hand touches his shoulder, burning hot where Dean’s flesh is cold. Sammy always ran hot. 
“Keep going.”
       Dean fucking hates being wrong. He’s never been good at any part of the process. Not at the admitting, not at the reconciliation, and most importantly not at the forgiving. If you asked Dean a million times what he wanted least in the world about 999,998 of the answers would be to be wrong. The other two would be to have lost Sam. And here he fucking is. The drive on the way back to Stanford is the longest of his life. Dean takes it partially in silence to punish himself for being so easily tricked. Sam would never have left. That’s Sam, he chose to come to Stanford and he would stick it out to the very bitter end just to prove a point. If Sam wouldn’t leave that only leaves the possibility that the woman who tricked him took Sam. Dean didn’t even lose the slippery little bastard, he just had him stolen from underneath his nose. His very, very far away nose. Had they even really had a relationship? Or did she just hole up in Sam’s apartment after doing whatever she did to him. Not kill. She didn’t kill him, because Sammy isn’t dead. He can’t possibly be dead. Dean would know if Sam was dead. Sam wouldn’t have the audacity to die before Dean came to see him again and apologize for never taking Sam’s side at the end there. For not fighting for him to stay. Unfortunately Dean isn’t able to go the whole way in one night, so he crashes at a motel that has the world’s most horrifying looking pool. There is definitely poop in there, he thinks, while he carries the bag of burgers into the room. Sitting on the bed by the door Dean eats the food without tasting it and considers just what he could have on him that would protect him from this. What the fuck could it possibly be anyway? Greek. Something Greek. For some reason Dean is reminded of a picture of the Furies in one of those books. He finishes the last burger and throws away the bag before he takes out the book he stole and puts it on the table. Careful typing into Google Translate names the picture. Ascension of Apollo to Rebirth. But then who’s the woman? He flips through the book, translating chunks at a time, and the story becomes a little clearer. Apollo, bored with his life and unhappy with his duties, determined that he wished to be mortal again. In the interest of completely shirking his duties he didn’t tell anyone he would do this either. He walked into the Underworld and drank from the River Lethe to forget everything that he was trying to leave behind. One of those things, though, was his sister and the other half of his position. Artemis, furious that her brother would leave her behind and that he would leave her a night without a day, went down there herself and carried him out. Carried him to a new world. And it worked. According to the story there was joy and life again in Apollo, and the sun shone brighter than it ever had. Artemis shone brighter too under her brother’s renewed light. Dean spreads out all the clues and then lifts the pieces of paper and puts them in the order in which he found them. He puts that into Google Translate, and then stares unsure at the answer. Delos. Delos? Now Dean googles that, and what comes back is a lot of shit, but the most important one shows up right at the top of the search. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the island of Delos contains no one. It is an island made entirely of ruins, that exists only for said ruins, and that is preserved by tourists’ money during the day so that at night it can sit silent and alone but sparkling in the moonlight. There are temples to all sorts of things of course, because why not have haunted and desecrated ruins all over the place, but right up at the top there is a temple that is known for a very special thing. A specific one. It is where the god Apollo was reborn into the world. Dean flips back to the book, staring in growing horror as he realizes what this means. That temple is not a womb for the gods it is the entrance to the Underworld. Artemis carried her stupid brother out of the darkness and up through the temple. He bets if he looked all over the fucking place he would find little nods to another famous tourist that came through that hole. Why? Why would Sam be wrapped up in this? Why would they want Sam? Which is it? Did Sam get taken or was Sam lost? Dean can’t tell, doesn’t know, and doesn’t know how to find out. There is a very real chance that he will arrive and the woman will just kill him immediately. Dean’s never fought a god, and he doubts now is the time to start. The next morning he loads up, more questions than answers, and rides out again. He blasts Boston the whole way, good luck because it’s what Sam always wanted him to play when he started up Metallica, and the road spreads out like it always has before. Except when Dean gets the apartment building and parks in the street what he sees makes no sense. There is a burned-out building, a very long ago burned-out building. Running, running the whole way, Dean slams into the locked lobby door and then stops and takes a breath before picking the lock. He doesn’t care who sees him, after all, what he’s doing is just a criminal trespass at best. Inside there is soot and smoke, but the higher up the stairs he goes the worse the soot is. It becomes obvious the moment that he reaches the front door that this is Sam’s apartment, and it is the source of the fire. Creaking the whole way to make sure that he’s on a razor’s edge the bits of door left over swing open and show him the layout of a place he’s seen fully built. There is little here, some trash and detritus spread out over the floor. The whole place is dead. Empty. He runs his fingers through the thick black soot and tries not to scream. Not to scream and throw things and trash the fucking place. He goes back down the stairs and out the front door and almost collides with a little old lady tottering under two re-usable cloth grocery bags. Dean instinctively takes one and then holds out a hand for the other. Nothing makes sense anymore and that’s all he has left, to be polite to an old lady on the street. She lets him, and Dean looks down to see that one sack has a lot of brussels sprouts in it and he shouldn’t have helped this lunatic. The old woman leads him next door and through the bottom floor apartment entrance. Sweet. It’s the first word that comes to mind and the best one. The place is decorated and set up sweetly. There is no rhyme or reason to the portraits on the wall, but they are all of chubby cheeked kids and men fishing and people baking bread. Dean bets her name is Doris. He puts the bags down on the counter and then turns around to see her pulling three dollars out of a little wrist purse along with a hard candy. He takes the candy but leaves the money. “No, thank you, Ma’am.” As he’s leaving she calls out. “Young man, listen, can you help me with one more thing?” Dean bites his lip and nods. “I’ve got a wobbly light, fell during the fire and I haven’t been able to hire anybody to put it up. Imagine that, a town full of starving college kids and not a one will take a job for ten dollars!” “The youth are changing, ma’am.” He expects her to shoot him a look because he is right about the visual age of a college student. She does not. “Tell me about it. There hasn’t been anyone nice here since that young boy that lived in the apartment. Tragic story.” Dean’s got a screwdriver in his hand and he looks over his shoulder at this and turns too tightly stripping the screw a bit. “You knew him?” Her eyes go very wide and Dean clears his throat and tries again but quieter. “I’m sorry, you knew him?” “I did. He used to help me with my broken things. Almost always for free.” She smiles fondly as she fidgets with a handkerchief, and then she sneezes into it and taps under her eyes carefully. “What happened to him?” Dean is afraid. Dean is afraid of her. Dean is afraid that she’s going to casually gossip to him that his brother is dead. That he was gored and burned and dismembered. That he was tortured by someone, something, screaming and then dying there alone without Dean. “Oh, he left. After the fire.” Dean blinks, blinks again, and then he leans forward, and the woman picks up on the problem. “Oh, yes, I’m sorry I didn’t know her as well. He was dating this beautiful young woman, very bright and friendly whenever I saw her. She died in the fire. He was saved. He said it was by his older brother, but the boy was shorter than him, so I don’t know if that was right.” Dean finishes the screw, puts the screwdriver down carefully, and then turns around so slowly he can feel his knees creak. “What? Did you. Did you see him? I ask because I was friends with Sam.” “Not up close. Had hair a lot like yours though, although it looked different in the night.” She peers at Dean for a moment and then nods. “And he was shorter than you. I mean you look about Sam’s height.” “Thank you. Ma’am. Thank you.” Dean stumbles out, makes it to the Impala, and then nods and breathes out before driving to Brady’s apartment. He finds someone that tells him poor Brady was murdered, several years ago, and no one ever figured out who did it. Well-loved on campus. Rich boy. Kind of smug, but nice. Or nice looking for certain. Dean doesn’t stick around to research it. He can’t. He drives to the nearest bar and finds a college kid. A college kid that knows a dealer. Dean buys the strongest downers he can find, and then he drives to San Francisco, springs for the nicest of the parking lots because he plans on coming back. He plans on coming back with his fucking brother. He’s coming back. It's one last fucking kick in the teeth when Dean opens the phone and sees that he’s not even in the right year. Now that he looks at himself in the mirror the blinders are off. He can see it. The extra scars, the aches and pains, all the changes that he was made to ignore. Made to ignore by who? Miraculously, or maybe not so miraculously, he has a card that can handle the purchase and a good fake passport, and there’s a flight that goes right to Mykonos. There’s a weight on his shoulder, but Dean doesn’t turn around. He’s come this far without knowing, why should he know now what’s behind him? What he’s lost without knowing. What he’s been forced to repeat without consent. After all, the biggest insult, the one that he must repay the hardest, is that he’s about to get on a plane. He takes his downers with whiskey at the bar closest to his gate.       
You tell yourself that it’ll work. It has to work. Because you can’t live this way anymore. You can’t keep running endlessly. You can’t keep looking at what’s missing and know that it’s never coming back.

Your hand hurts. You can’t remember why. You can’t remember much of anything really. They tell you that’s normal. Everything is getting bright, and then brighter, and then brightest until you are fully blinded and in need of something to shut your eyes.

You can’t shut your eyes anymore.

You hope that the other half of you knows why you did this.

You hope he looks for you. And only now can I tell you all of this, because I finally found you. I didn’t stop looking.

You’re an idiot, Sammy. The biggest idiot on the fucking planet.

Please, Sammy. Please. Come back.
      Dean is shaken awake in Mykonos. It is apparently a process that has been going on for some time because there are two flight attendants and a pilot in front of his bleary eyes when they open. The one attendant bends down to help Dean up. He chatters the whole way off the plane. “I was a nervous flyer too when I first started. Took this job to get over it, and believe me you do. By the time you’re flying home you’ll be an old salt.” He helps Dean onto a chair and then looks around. “We ordered a wheelchair for you. Did you have more than one checked bag?” “None.” Dean shakes himself and then looks around. Everything looks different. Nothing has changed. Airports are apparently airports all over the world. He stumbles up and then catches himself on the chair as the flight attendant surges up. “Where do you go for a ride to Delos?” It turns out flight attendants are pretty good tour guides. Dean gets clear instructions that he’s able to follow despite needing his phone to help with the basic translations in conversations. He makes it to the ferry, joins the last group going to the island, and rides over the choppy waves with a group of tourists that are all taking pictures and talking in multiple languages. Ahead of them the island looms large and bustling. They must have a ton of groups here a day that just pile on top of each other until the place is a little haunted ruins Disneyland. Dean moves around with everyone else, watching the patterns in the groups and the guards, paying attention to the details of the island and where everyone wants to be. And where they don’t. It’s a shit deal, Dean hates it, but he has no options. When no one else is looking he starts to climb down the rocks, just far enough to hit a ledge where he can sit comfortably but not easily visible. And he waits. He waits for the sun to set. He waits for whatever is coming at night to come. He waits.        It’s the last night. Dean knows it. Dean knows that this is the last night but there’s nothing he can do about it. Sam’s lying with his head on Dean’s chest, the two of them breathing slow and even together. Dean runs his fingers through Sam’s too long hair, feels the length of Sam, treasures the last of this warmth and sweetness. He hates it, he hates it so fucking much. He hates that he is here again, and it is all Sam’s fault. It is Sam’s fault he has to lose again. Or maybe it’s his fault for not being good enough to keep. “Sammy?” He wants to tell Sam. He wants to tell Sam that he saw the letter and he knows what Sam’s going to do. He wants to beg Sam not to go. It’s not pride that stops Dean’s mouth, it’s shame. Shame for wanting more than he’s allowed, shame for asking more than he was offered, shame for being a bad son and a bad brother. “Yeah?” Sam sounds guilty and Dean knows why. “What do you want for Christmas?” There’s silence, a long silence, and then Sam looks up at him. “What? Why did you ask me that?” Sam looks startled. Too startled. It’s not like Dean’s never asked him that question. “You didn’t ask me that.” His head suddenly hurts. Too much Sam in too little time. Dean closes his eyes and rubs them before re-opening them. “Jesus Christ, Sammy. Give me a break. I just. I like this.” Things feel right again as Sam’s body loosens back up and he lowers his head again. “I do too, Dean.” But not enough, Dean thinks. Not enough to stay. “And I’ll do anything to keep it.” “You didn’t say that either.” And suddenly Dean feels like he’s coming out of his skin, like something’s brushing against him and around him that wants to take the life out of him. He keeps moving forward, keeps moving forward every second, because forward is the way to go. Forward is where Sam will be. All the time. Except when he isn’t. “I felt terrible. I felt terrible about it. I felt like every second was a lie and I was poisoning you with that. I was filling you up with all the things that are bad about me.” Dean’s fingers tangle in Sam’s cold hair. Or is Sam’s hair hot? Is it so hot that Dean’s cold fingers are burning? He looks down at them and sees just his fingers in Sam’s hair. “Did I stop?” “No. You’re still going. You’re almost there. You just have to keep chasing.” He closes his eyes and lowers his head back to the pillow. “Sammy. Sammy. Why did you do this? Why did you do this to me?” Sam starts to cry. His big, ugly tears, face screwing up, and then he puts his face in Dean’s chest and cries it out. Cries it out while Dean holds him. Cries the whole time and Dean thinks that there is nothing that could hurt more than this. “I just didn’t want you to hate me anymore. All the things I did when I wasn’t me. I couldn’t live with you looking at me like that.” He was wrong. There was worse.       Dean wakes up to a shout of his name and his legs going over the side of the cliff. His heart ratchets up into his mouth, beating at the highest speed possible, while Dean scrambles backwards digging his fingers into the rock and dirt as hard as he can and flailing his way back against the solid rock. He looks up, and there is a man staring at him. A very good-looking man. Dean, to his horror, recognizes him. “Do you need help up, Dean Winchester?” The man holds out one hand, the sunset light glinting off him, and Dean reaches up and takes it. The man lifts him all the way clear of the rock and then puts him down. He’s dressed in modern clothing, and that is fucking Dean up because the rest of him is a statue. A statue Dean has seen before. “You’re-“ “Yes. And it is time. We must do it now.” A woman comes up behind him, putting one arm around the man’s waist. “Yes. She’s right. Almost always.” The man smiles at her fondly, and then the two of them split apart and each holds a hand out to Dean. He pauses, and then he takes them. “What’s happening?” He sounds like a child, lost at sea and starving. They both look at him that way too. “You’re almost there.” She takes the lead and Dean and the man try to keep up. When they reach the temple it is…new. Beautiful. Glowing in the light of the sun setting and the moon rising. Dean looks around but the rest of the island is still ruins sitting in their little roped off quarters. “What do I do?” He looks to her, because he knows somehow that this is where he’s supposed to look. That this is the face he’s supposed to focus on. The light is strange. The light is so strange. Dean looks once and is almost blinded. There they are, the moon and sun, the shadow of one meeting the light of the other in the sky in one glorious eclipse that Dean knows for a fucking fact was not scheduled. Was on no one’s radar. The world goes silent. Even the roar of the ocean slamming into the rocks of the island has fallen silent. All that’s left is Dean and this woman. Then he realizes that his left hand is empty, and when he turns the man is on the ground. He is dead. He is old and rotted and dead. Dean turns back to her in horror, knowing she will go insane with Dean in response to the death of their little brother, but she smiles and shakes her head. “I’m going to take him down, and you’re going to carry him up. And we’ll meet in the middle and change.” Her smile becomes gentle. “There’s a boat waiting for you on the other side of the island. You knew that though because you brought it here. There’s also a beautiful beach. He’ll be there. Go, Dean. Go and enjoy the life that’s been forced upon you. I know that I did.” And then she turns all the way around, lifts the corpse in her arms with no hesitation, and walks into the repaired temple. As soon as she is out of sight the whole temple falls behind her, dust careening into Dean’s eyes and sending him reeling away coughing with his arm flung over to protect himself from being blinded. The dust chokes him, it tastes like rot and death, and Dean has had enough of that. He starts to move, high speed, knowing for certain that she’s right. He’s been on that beach. He’s been there with Sam. Dean runs and in the running he knows that he will find his little brother whole and well if he can just make it there in time. Ruins fly past the corners of his still weeping eyes and he coughs occasionally in sharp and harsh barks with no breath in his lungs left to steal. His knees want him to stop, his body wants him to stop, his head is screaming and wailing, and then there it is. The beach. Dean knows it. He rushes, fast as possible, the eclipse is ending above him and Dean will lose Sam forever if he doesn’t make it. Sand bogs down his shoes, gets inside of them, into his socks, his pants, his teeth. The beach flies around him in his urgency and then he skids to a stop in the sand and looks in front of him. There is the water, there is the sea, but there’s no Sammy. Dean hits his knees, crying, crying because he is pretty sure without Sam he won’t even know the depths of what he has lost out on by being just a step too slow. A step too far behind every fucking time. He should’ve put Sam on a leash he thinks as he clenches his filthy fists in his hair and screams until his throat is raw. The eclipse ends. The moon shines bright and the sun is gone. Dean closes his eyes, he doesn’t want to see it even as feeling it makes him whole and strong again. Hands land on his shoulders. Lips touch his ear lending warmth back into his suddenly frozen body. “Hey, Orpheus.” Sam.