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The next several weeks are Heaven on fucking Earth. Better than, actually. Because Heaven was never like this. Not in its wildest dreams.
Dean is so wrapped up in Sam every single, solitary moment that he barely pulls back long enough to breathe. He hasn’t let his little brother leave his sight for one millisecond since that amazing night. Not that Sam has actually made any attempt, all blissed-out and gooey-eyed and just as desperate for him. They fuck on every spare surface they come across, his brother’s long, perfect cock spearing him to his very core so vigorously and so often that Dean’s surprised they’re not permanently attached at the hips yet. Sam leaving desperate kisses and little nips of his teeth along Dean’s throat and over his shoulders while he pounds into him like their Father isn’t watching. And then, when they’re both tired of sex, Dean spends long, lazy hours simply exploring Sam’s skin in return. Mapping out every single place on his brother’s body that makes him shiver and moan with just his lips and teeth and tongue and fingers and lips again—and by that point, Sam ends up grabbing him and pinning him down to the floor, or bed, or table and then they just get right back to the sex.
Any and every time they’re not needed by their siblings (or their hunter), with no pressing matters for them to attend to, they’re together. And goddamn insatiable. Four and a half billion years of no sex will do that to you, apparently. Dean just can’t believe it took them that long to get with the program—because, fuck, those little mud monkeys sure know what they’re on about.
They even make use of the Toreador Motel’s vacancy after Cas has abandoned it—after they’ve got the whole Lilith situation under control, of course. At least, for the day. Sam gets all huffy and horrified as he protests at first, but he folds like a piece of origami paper the instant Dean gets his mouth on him. A motel room is a motel room is a motel room. What may or may not have almost happened there doesn’t make it any more or less sketchy. And Sam shuts up pretty damn quick when Dean digs his fingers into his ass and yanks him down on top of him.
Basically, Dean’s skipping on air. Literally, sometimes—when he wraps Sam up tight in his arms and flies them to the best spots he can think of. Paris and Bali and even behind the stacks of the British Library after hours. Give the kid something else to think about the next time he feels like doing some light reading. He takes them to the penthouse suite of the Ritz-Carlton, affording them a perfect view of the lights and glamour of Central Park as Sam fucks him up against the floor-to-ceiling window. His brother chuckles a little, deep in his throat, and then teleports them to the wet jungles of Vietnam a few days later, moonlight piercing through the thick canopy in sporadic beams as Sam sinks down to his knees and makes Dean see those same lights again.
It’s been two straight months of flirting and fucking and then fucking some more, and Dean couldn’t be happier. He hasn’t felt this good in his entire life. Alright, yes, a little, niggling feeling of doubt does manage to worm its way into his brain every once in a while, reminding him of his ultimate mission—and of what that means in the ever-approaching future—but he shoves it back every time. He can’t feel guilty about Cas right now. Especially not when he has Sam, all needy and eager, in his arms any and every time he feels like it.
For instance, a motel in the middle of Nowhere, Minnesota doesn’t amount to a hill of beans by any reasonable measure, but the privacy it provides means that Dean can get his hands all over Sam’s gorgeous back with no unwanted commentary from the peanut gallery. Plus, they’ve got a surprisingly impressive view of the motel’s creepy Paul Bunyan statue from their not-quite-so-impressive room, which Dean can’t help but find weirdly hilarious.
Sam lets out a whispery sound of pleasure as he works through a particularly tense knot, leaning back more and more with each repeating pass of Dean’s fingers, the warmth of his little brother’s skin bleeding into his palms through the thin material of Sam’s shirt. He’s smiling. Dean knows it for a fact, despite not being able to see his face. Can tell just from the curve of his back. From the careful measure of his breath. And he knows why, too. Same reason Dean’s got a matching grin plastered on himself. It’s because it isn’t needed, this slow seduction. He could have Sam any which way he wanted him in an instant, and then a thousand times after that—but this little game of theirs is so damn fun to play, he can’t bring himself to shatter the pretense.
In fact… Dean quirks his lips, tugs reality in a certain direction, and then Sam is suddenly shirtless. And he can tell the very second his brother realizes it too, because Sam lets out a long, low groan. The sound painfully ambivalent, like he’s trying to be irritated by the development, but can’t think past the bliss of the sudden skin contact. Dean takes an idle moment to wonder if he can get his brother to purr. He bets he could if he tried hard enough.
“Y’know,” Dean murmurs into a newly bared shoulder as he brings his hands up to stroke over the long line of Sam’s spine, “we could do this the right way. I’m not gonna be much help if you’re only giving me your back.”
Sam lets out a little huff of amusement, twisting his neck around to catch a glimpse of Dean’s extremely innocent expression before turning back to take in the Bemidji Inn’s weirdo view again. If Dean didn’t know that this was just part of the game, he’d think the dork had a freaky thing for Paul Bunyan or something. “I thought you said you were just offering me a massage,” Sam reminds him. “Goodness of your heart and all that.”
“I am offering a massage,” Dean points out insistently. “I’m massaging as we speak. I’m simply giving you the option of a better one.”
Sam makes an obnoxious sound deep in his throat. It makes him sound like a cat trying to hock up a hairball, and Father smite the both of them where they stand, Dean still can’t stop finding his brother irresistible. Despite the dumb noises he makes. “We both know what it’s going to turn into if we, in your own words, ‘do this the right way’,” Sam says with the appropriate air quotes.
Dean chuckles into Sam’s naked back, letting his lips drag across warm skin along the way and leaving a trail of goose bumps in his wake. “No trust at all,” he lets out on a playful sigh. “Is that what you think of me?”
Sam just snorts in lieu of answering, which is probably better for Dean’s ego in the long run, but he slowly phases his wings into sight nonetheless. Finally giving into what Dean’s been after this entire time. They both tend to keep them shifted to the next plane over because they’re a hassle more often than not, bumping into shit and molting feathers everywhere. Human society just ain’t built for accommodating a pair of giant limbs coming out of people’s shoulders all willy-nilly and human eyes aren’t even capable of seeing the things—but they’re fucking beautiful to Dean’s. Always have been, ever since he first saw the kid. A sleek dove gray from Sam’s scapulars all the way down to the coverts, with a deeper charcoal blending through his flight feathers. Tipped with white at the edges, like a mockingbird’s plumage. Gorgeous and stately.
And leagues better than Dean’s own embarrassing coloring. With his brown and white sandpiper-esque speckles flecked across the back of each wing, contrasting embarrassingly against the more solid bronze of his primaries. Ridiculous fucking freckles making him look like he’s still a fledgling despite his very adult—and very impressive—wingspan.
Dean immediately sticks his hands up to his wrists into the soft curtain of his brother’s feathers instead of wasting time bemoaning his own—gently, like he’s done thousands of times before. None of it new. Hell, Sam usually just rolls over, flops the heavy things down on top of him, and lets out a few impatient sounds until Dean caves and starts petting at him like his little brother wants. It’s not like either of them are freakin’ shy about it. Grooming’s normal. They both do it. All angels do.
…But it’s different now, with this thing between them. They both know it. Dean can practically feel it on the very air. Crackling between them like ozone, but ten times as sweet.
He lets the delicate, hollow shafts trail between the webbing of his hands as he reaches deeper, curling his fingers through the softer down until Sam shivers. Dean knows what it must feel like, has been on the receiving end of it himself whenever he can goad his brother into reciprocating. Sam lets out the softest sound Dean’s ever heard, not even quite a breath, too low for any human to make out, and Dean leans forward until his shoulders are pressed up against the fine bones of his brother’s wings.
“Feel good?” he purrs, nudging Sam’s hair out of the way with his nose so he can press a warm kiss to the nape of his neck. The first knob of his spine.
“Don’t stop,” Sam sighs, relaxing his full weight against him like he could melt into Dean’s body if he tried hard enough. It’s making it really awkward for Dean to actually get at his brother’s wings though, with Sam all draped over him like that. He slips his hands around his waist instead, teasingly trailing over his lower abdomen and stopping just shy of the impressive, straining bulge in his slacks. Making Sam shift and twist against him to try and get his hand where he really wants it to be.
Dean lets out a trembling breath at his brother’s wriggling, the drag of Sam’s warm, firm flesh and downy-soft wings against his chest quickly placing him in precisely the same boat.
There’s a second of pregnant stillness, rife with thick, silent want, and then they’re both turning as one in the exact same moment to scramble over to the bed behind them. Leaving the eerily paint-chipped effigy of Paul Bunyan to survey his parking lot domain uninterrupted. The game is over now, both of them too impatient and revved up to hold off anymore.
They reach the bed at the same time, falling sideways onto the mattress in a tangle of limbs and exchanged breaths. Dean manhandles Sam underneath him just long enough to wrestle his brother out of his pants—because there’s something scandalously primal about undressing each other the way humans do—before giving in and zapping the material far enough away that Dean can zero all of his attention in on the bare skin he’s uncovered.
Sam relaxes back fully at Dean’s insistence on stripping him the old-fashioned way, his wings stretched out beneath him to either side—dark, glossy feathers spread out across the faded blue comforter same as his hair against the matching pillow. “You too,” he says quietly, lifting his hips to playfully graze against Dean’s hardened length. “You too, Dean.”
And Dean’s not sure if his brother is referring to his extra appendages or his clothing, so he goes with both to be safe. Whisking his ensemble away in the blink of an eye and unfurling his wings to their full span, the cheap motel backlighting tinting the bronze edges a lighter gold in his peripheral vision.
Sam’s inhale is just the slightest bit shaky as he gazes up at him, and Dean can’t help but feel more powerful than he’s ever felt in this tiny, quiet moment. He’s razed cities to the ground. Tracked down, battled, and executed nephilim. He’s fought his way through the very gates of Hell itself. But this, Sam looking up at him with unrestrained awe and desire in his eyes, puts all the rest to shame.
His little brother swallows hard and reaches up to grasp Dean’s face in his hands, like he can’t stand not being able to touch him for one more moment. “God, Dean,” he breathes. “You’re so—” Sam cuts off then, like maybe he’s just realized that he was about to compliment his vessel.
He smiles, regardless. It’s a little weird that the thought doesn’t bother Dean anymore, but it doesn’t. Not at all. “So…what?” he asks anyway, shifting his head to press a kiss to the center of his brother’s palm.
“Everything,” Sam whispers. And that’s a safe answer if Dean’s ever heard one. “You’re so everything.”
Dean leans down to kiss him again, this beautiful perversion of their long-familiar ritual. Reaching deeper than he’d ever used to dare, touching in ways he’d never thought he could. Dean wraps his own hands around the back of Sam’s skull, his hair thick and soft between his fingers and just slightly cooler than the warmth radiating from the rest of their overheated skin. He wrenches Sam up against him until his brother lets out a sinful moan, sucks Sam’s bottom lip into his own mouth, runs the tip of his tongue along the plump flesh that he’s got between his teeth. Sam makes a needy sound at the action and surges forward, impatient and grabby, his hands clawing down Dean’s back and sides hard enough to draw blood if he were a human. But they’re not. They’re not.
Sam finally draws back from him with a gasp for air that he doesn’t need, ready and wanting and eager to meet him halfway. He’s got the hang of the preparation by now, and Dean can’t fully stifle his gasp at the feel of his brother’s heated grace suddenly sliding up inside him. “Motherfucker,” he lets out on a shaky breath. He takes half a second to adjust to the exquisite sensation and when he flutters his eyes open again, Sam’s grinning like a loon.
“Not quite,” he says.
Dean lets out an unflattering snort at the terrible joke, but it’s not enough to quell the lust he feels raging under his skin. He doesn’t think anything ever could be. Dean looses a wild grin of his own and sinks down onto Sam’s velvet-hard cock, savoring every hitched gasp and moan of their union as the light dappling through his feathers tints his brother’s skin a burnished gold.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean’s still staring at the lazily-rotating ceiling fan when Sam finally stirs against his side. His brother wasn’t asleep or anything, of course not, but one or both of them can drift a little bit after sex sometimes. Relaxing into the warmth and satiation and just letting their mind go for a moment. It’s…nice. It’s human.
“Mmm,” Sam hums into his shoulder, nuzzling in a little bit closer, “I should let you give me massages more often.”
Dean wants to chuck an appropriate joke back. Needle Sam about giving as much as he takes or some other harmless teasing like that, but his mouth won’t open, and his eyes stay fixed on that ceiling fan. Because for the last fifteen minutes straight, Dean’s been doing nothing but thinking back over his brother’s very own words from not that long ago.
“Screw the mission.”
Dean’s personal crisis of faith, popping up just in time to wrestle with the frankly unholy things he’s been doing with his brother and the guilt about Cas that always seems to be lurking somewhere in the pit of his stomach. Because they could tear it all down. If they wanted to, they could. Dean could warn Cas about Michael’s plans for him. They could save the other half of humanity simply by not playing along. Because what’s the point of it all, really? Michael and Raphael have been planning and plotting for millennia just to follow the ancient script. And for what? In the hopes that their Father might come back once there’s nothing else out there for him to abandon them for? Or maybe it’s just a plot to murder the favorite son so that Michael can move up a spot. Dean swallows hard at the thought, bitterest fucking pill to swallow. Why do they have to take the risk of springing Lucifer from the Cage just so that they can defeat him? They’re safer while he’s in Hell. Everyone is safer while he’s in Hell. His locks have held for thousands of years, surely they’ll hold a few thousand more. The garrison could have just snuffed Azazel out once he started trying to mess with the seals and been done with it.
“Hey,” Sam says from beside him, brow wrinkling in concern, “you okay?”
And how can Dean possibly put into words that for the first time in his entire existence, he’s thinking about rebelling against Heaven? Against God?
He slowly reaches out to trace a thumb over the soft give of Sam’s lower lip instead of replying, and the younger angel leans into his touch like he’s magnetic. It instantly brings to mind tens of thousands of memories of Sam doing that exact same thing. But it’s different now. And Dean doesn’t think he can ever go back to the way they were before. He doesn’t think he’d be able to stand it, not having access to every part of Sam, body and grace. If Michael does succeed, there won’t be anywhere left for them. Their brothers and sisters will straddle the Earth, enforcing Heaven’s laws and making sure that the two of them act like proper little soldiers. Once there’s nothing distracting the top brass, he and Sam won’t be able to sneak their indiscretions under the radar anymore. And how can Dean be expected to live like that? How could anyone call that Paradise?
Sam finally gets up from the bed, tossing Dean a suspicious side-eye at his uncharacteristic silence, but he lets the matter drop nonetheless. He strides over to the window again, then pats down his chest like he’s just remembered the clothing Dean had zapped away. “Where’d you put my shirt?” he asks over his shoulder.
“Namibia.”
Sam closes his eyes like it’ll make the smile twitching at his lips not count. “So he does speak.”
Dean lets out a long sigh and rubs a hand over the back of his neck, shifting up until he’s sitting against the headboard. “We should talk,” he says dully, and every single bit of Sam’s good humor evaporates into the air.
His brother’s got his suit back on, immaculate, in the next blink of an eye. “What is it?” Sam asks fearfully, all puppy-dog stare and nervous fingers. He steps back over to the bed, hesitates at the edge of it, and then stands there awkwardly. “Do you…do you want to stop?” he asks, every fiber of his being vibrating like he’s desperate for Dean to say no.
“I wanna stop…” Dean gestures upwards with a finger to finish the statement.
It takes Sam a moment to suss out his meaning, but the second he does, Dean is blindsided with an armful of heavy younger brother. “You fucking asshole,” Sam hisses into his neck. “You scared the crap outta me.”
“It’s a big fucking deal, Sam,” Dean insists defensively. “Do you even get what I’m implying here?”
His brother pulls back with a muted gleam in his eyes. “Yeah, you wanna stop Michael.”
“Yes, Sam. Michael. Michael. That is a very big-fucking-deal.”
He doesn’t even hesitate for a second. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Dean echoes incredulously. “Just like that?”
Sam smiles and nods, nothing but sincere trust radiating from every atom. “Just like that.”
Dean tries to contain the sheer awe his brother invokes in him for what feels like the millionth time. He fails for what feels like the same. “Okay,” he says.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Cas is dreaming about seagulls. Seagulls.
He’s seated at a park bench shoved up against the edge of a small jetty—the way architecture only makes sense in human dreams—an early evening sunset glinting off the reddish leaves of the trees lining the dock as he tosses pieces of bread to the squawking birds bobbing in the water in front of him.
“We need to talk.” Dean says bluntly, relishing in the human’s sudden flinch at his presence.
Cas lets out a frustrated sigh at the interruption. “I’m dreaming, aren’t I?”
Dean eyeballs one of the closest birds. It’s screeching as it pecks at its friend’s head, trying to steal away a mouthful of bread. “Seriously, dude,” Dean continues. “This is what you dream about?” He shudders as one of the seagulls turns its beady, dead eyes on him. “Rats with fucking wings, man.”
“It’s calming.”
“You should try fishing sometime. Little more rugged. Plus, free dinner.”
Cas tears off another hunk of bread, probably just out of spite, and tosses it into the water to another round of high-pitched squawking. “Is there something you wanted to say, Dean?”
“Well, it ain’t exactly safe here,” he points out. “We need someplace more private.”
“More private?” Cas says skeptically. “We’re inside my head.”
Dean rolls his eyes at the hunter’s short-sightedness. “Exactly.” He hands over the address of the abandoned factory Sam had scoped out. “Meet us here.” He stays for one more moment just to make sure that Cas is gonna do as he asked, and then zaps back to meet up with his brother.
He only has an unsettling fraction of a second to realize that Sam isn’t there before he’s violently sucked out of his vessel.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean comes to strapped to what looks like a goddamn dentist’s chair. His skull is pounding as he blearily skims his gaze over a too-bright office setup…right up until he realizes that he doesn’t actually have a skull at the moment. He’s him. Himself. No meatsuit.
His grace is lashed down though, wings too, and it takes a few more seconds of panicked struggling for him to realize he’s not alone in the room.
The angel seated across from him, hands linked over the desk she’s sitting at like she owns it, is watching him.
She’s wearing a vessel. Her eyes crinkle slightly underneath as she tosses him a wan smile, so the meatsuit must be a little older. Mid-40s maybe. Though the hair she’s got pulled back into a pristine bun seems to be a pretty uniform dark red throughout. Dean blinks in confusion as he racks his brain. Having a vessel is a sign of massive importance. If an angel is inhabiting a human, even up here in Heaven, then she’s definitely influential enough that Dean should know who she is. In fact, it’s pretty fucking suspicious that he doesn’t.
“Hello, Dean,” his sister says cordially enough. “Welcome back.”
“Welcome back to fucking where?” Dean asks tightly, unmoved by the lukewarm pleasantry. “Who are you and how do you know me?”
The other angel smiles again, less warm now. “Would you like the answers in order?” she asks glibly. She pushes up from her seat, strolling around the desk so that she can lean a hip on it. “You’re in Heaven, of course. My office.” She waves a hand around to illustrate. “I’m Naomi,” she says next, fingers pressed to her chest like Jane teaching Tarzan how to speak, and Dean scrolls through his memories to recall if he’s ever heard her mentioned before. He comes up blank though, and an uneasy pit settles in his gut at how strange it is that he’s never even heard of her. “And I know your name,” Naomi continues calmly, “because it’s my job to know your name, Dean. Among other things.”
“What ‘other things’?” Dean asks, quickly pulling out the pertinent info there.
Naomi smiles at him once more, but it actually looks sincere this time. Like she’s impressed. “Let’s just say that Michael calls me in whenever some of the ground troops need to be kept in line.”
Dean hesitates at the subtle threat. “So what am I in for?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Sammy. The thought flashes across his brain faster than he can catch it, and judging by the slight shift of Naomi’s expression, she’s already read his mind.
“Exactly,” she says smoothly. “Not to mention that whole trick you tried to pull with Castiel Novak.”
There’s no way for Dean to lie his way out of this one, not with the unfiltered access she’s got to his thoughts, so he goes for persuasion instead. “Please,” he says evenly, trying to keep his cool, “Michael doesn’t have to know about this. You can just let me and Sam go. He’d never guess if you don’t tell him.”
Naomi lets out a surprising bark of laughter, jarring against her carefully cultivated demeanor. “Of course he’d guess,” she says, apparently amused by Dean’s argument. “It’s happened so many times before he’s actively expecting it at this point. I swear, the second the two of you get vessels, you’re on each other like rabbits.” She reaches into her desk drawer and pulls out some kind of electric drill, wagging it between them to emphasize her point. “It’s the Egypt debacle all over again.”
Dean falters as his feeling of dread grows exponentially stronger. “What are you talking about?” he asks uneasily.
Naomi lets out a short, benign sigh at having to recap. “You and Samuel do this constantly,” she says. “It’s ridiculous how many times you’ve been in here. Honestly, I’m starting to think you both came off the production line with a few screws loose.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Of course you don’t remember, Dean,” she chuckles. “That’s what I’m here for.”
Dean’s world spins nauseatingly as all the pieces slowly fall into place. “You took our memories,” he whispers. “Sam and me, we were—” Dean cuts himself off, simmering as white-hot anger suddenly flares up throughout every filament of his wavelength. Sam was right with his stupid sun metaphor. He’d been right the entire time. There was something more between them. Feelings from years of being together. They fit perfectly because they’d learned to, over and over again, fading remnants of muscle memory and emotional déjà vu the only evidence of their shared past.
Who knows how many years she’s taken from them? Eons of precious, lost moments that rightfully belong to him and Sam. They could have been together all this time. They had been. They could have been fucking for centuries. Completely joined, physically and spiritually the way they were meant to be, but instead, this stranger is trying to take Sam away from him. She’s planning to rip them apart. Again, apparently.
“I want them back,” Dean threatens lowly. “The memories. Every single one you tore into my head and stole from me!” He lunges against the restraints and lets the blinding light of his grace burn through his eyes, hoping he comes across more terrifying than he feels, all trussed up like this. Dean strains against his bonds and lets out a vicious growl. He’s gonna crack Naomi’s skull open with her own drill. He’s gonna shove an angel blade so far down the bitch’s throat that she’ll choke on it. He wants to see the charcoal brand of her wings burned across the sterile, blank walls of her office. He wants to taste the flaking ash in the air.
But his sister doesn’t even flinch at his little display. “I don’t have them in my desk drawer, Dean,” she says with an air of muted amusement. “I reset you—both of you. Multiple times. The memories are gone. I can’t bring them back.”
“You can’t take him from me,” he snarls. “I won’t let you.”
“I have before,” Naomi continues calmly, like she’s trying to soothe a child’s tantrum. Yet somehow, her tone still manages to maintain that clinical, impersonal edge. “And I’m sure I will in the near future as well.” She chuckles to herself, like this is all one big inside joke. “You two can’t seem to make it more than a few decades or so before I’m forced to step in all over again. But for now,” she says, “we’re going to try something a little different. Michael’s orders.” She steps up closer to the side of his chair and finally turns on the drill, a low, menacing buzz filling the room. “Let’s call it…aversion therapy.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Dean streaks out across the sky as a flash of smoke, tumbling sickly through the air every few feet as he attempts to regain his bearings. He needs to find his vessel. He needs to find Cas—so that he can assist the Righteous Man with whatever help he needs. He needs to keep Castiel Novak safe so that Michael can use his Sword against Lucifer. He needs Castiel Novak to trust him so that he can convince him to break the final seal—No. Dean scrapes Naomi’s dispassionate voice out of his thoughts. He needs to find Cas because that’s where Sam will be. Dean shakes his metaphorical head and tries to focus. He needs to find Smith first. That’s the priority.
It doesn’t take too long for him to latch onto the human’s location once he manages to brush off the cobwebs, and he makes a beeline for Illinois. He finds his vessel cowering outside of an abandoned warehouse and straight-up looking like he’s about to piss himself. He’s still wearing Dean’s jacket as a barrier against the cold, but he’s clean-shaven and he’s got his shirt tucked into the waist of his jeans, absolutely ruining the awesome leather and scruff look Dean had worked so hard on.
“Where’s Sam?” Dean can’t even feel guilty about the way Smith flinches at the booming question. He’s all blinding light and ethereal smoke to the human’s eyes right now, divine wrath like the second coming. “Where is he?”
“I-I don’t know, okay?” Smith finally manages to spit out, terror dangling from every word. “The other guy, Wesson, he’s still in there with that hunter. I managed to escape when the de—” He takes a sharp, panicked breath. “When the demons weren’t looking.”
The thought of Sam’s vessel in there, facing demons alone, sends Dean’s insides roiling. “You left him.”
“Yeah, I left him!” Smith snaps at him. “A couple of demons were about to kill me! Demons, you freaky, hopped-up Precious Moments figurine!”
“Let me in again.”
“No!”
Dean balks at the unexpected refusal. The humans really do have the power here. If he continues to say no, there’s nothing Dean can do. He’d been relying on the man’s reverence to get his way earlier, but maybe sheer, outright self-preservation can work too. “Listen up, Smith,” Dean snarls. “You either let me back in, right this minute, or I will make every second of the rest of your—admittedly very short—life a living Hell. You can’t even imagine the things I’m capable of. Now, we’ve shared a very particular one-room cabin, you and me, so you should already know what I’m willing to do to keep him safe.”
“Y-you’re supposed to be an angel.”
“So is Lucifer,” Dean threatens darkly. “Get me?”
Smith blinks back the tears in his eyes, his throat tight as he glares at Dean with every bit of hatred he’s ever seen from a human up-close. “I wish I’d never met you,” he chokes out. “You or your twisted sickness for your fucked-up brother.”
“All I need is a ‘yes’, Tim Gunn.”
A cold breeze blows past them, sending a shiver down Smith’s spine, and one tear slips loose down his face. “Yes.”
Dean floods himself into his body as fast as he can, smothering Smith down and out of the way. Then he yanks his shirt out of his jeans and blasts the door open in his very next move.
He strides into the warehouse, scanning over the desperate situation. Four demons. Two humans. No Sam.
Cas is struggling with one of the abominations across the room, his opponent landing twice as many blow as he is, but he’s alive and holding his own for now. Two demons have got Sam’s vessel by each arm and the last one must be out back, searching for Smith. One of Wesson’s demons jerks his head up at Dean’s arrival and makes straight for him, only stopping long enough to pick up a loose pipe from the ground. As if that could do anything to something like him. Dean catches the steel bar in one hand and smites the demon into oblivion with the other. He’s got the second one smoldering on the ground before Cas’s chick has even noticed he’s there.
Wesson blinks a little at his sudden and unexpected freedom and Dean winces at the odd juxtaposition of the man who should be his brother. He’s still wearing Sam’s slacks from before, but his button-up is hanging open over his t-shirt, and the blazer and tie are completely AWOL. He looks pleased for about half a second, but his eyes fly open in shock the instant he realizes who exactly it is that’s stalking towards him. “Look,” he starts, hands defensively up and out, but Dean doesn’t give him a chance to finish.
He yanks the human down by his collar and glares into his eyes, letting his grace well up threateningly as he growls. “You say ‘yes’, you understand me? The instant he asks.”
Wesson swallows carefully and nods. “Yeah, man.”
Dean shoves him away the instant he’s of no more use and heads directly for Cas. The hunter’s finally got his demon on her back, but he’s curved over her form oddly. He might already be injured or in pain. Dean summons his grace into his palm, intending to help, but the light flickers out and dies once Castiel straightens up and turns to face him.
He’s coated in blood, nose to chin. Demon blood. He’d been drinking it.
They’re too late—He was supposed to stop this. He needs to press harder. He needs to stop him. Castiel Novak is committing a sin. The demon blood will make him too strong. He needs to—Dean claws Naomi out of his head again and tries to school his features as Cas turns back to stab his Kurdish knife into the woman beneath him.
She flickers out just as a flash of light surges from somewhere behind Dean, a feeling like all the air in the room has been depressurized letting him know that Sam has finally joined them.
“Is that all of them?” his brother asks, stepping up beside him. And he sounds more like himself than Wesson did, but his tone is all wrong. His voice sounds…measured. Too measured. Unemotional and blank in a way Sam never is.
Dean studies his brother’s face for a long moment, and then they both flinch as Cas suddenly turns his palm against them. An overt threat of expulsion from their vessels. But glancing over his shoulder reveals the final demon behind him, and Dean steps out of the way to let Cas exorcise her from the human woman she’s riding.
Sam watches the interaction with passive eyes until it becomes clear that the human will be alright, and then he strides right past Dean like he’s planning on leaving him behind.
“Sam, hold up.” Dean raises a hand to catch his brother’s arm, but Sam flinches from his touch.
“What, Dean?” he asks reservedly. And it’s like most of him has been sanded away. Like he’s been replaced by some more obedient automaton.
“We still need to talk to Cas.”
“No.”
Dean can’t stop himself from gaping. “What?”
Sam blinks rapidly at the grimy warehouse floor, but doesn’t meet his eyes. “That goes against our mission,” he says.
Dean can’t believe what he’s hearing. He’d expected Sam to be a little off-balance after their ordeal, sure, but they must have really done a number on him. “Heaven’s mission won’t allow us to be us,” Dean explains carefully.
“Well, maybe we shouldn’t be.” Sam finally brings his gaze up—wet, desperate frustration in his eyes. And there’s the crack in his brother’s armor. There’s the real Sam flickering through whatever torture their bitch sister had done to him. “Weren’t you listening to what Bartholomew said?”
“Uh, I had Naomi.”
Sam’s forehead creases in confusion. “Who?”
But Dean just waves him away. “Doesn’t matter. What’s your point?”
“My point?” Sam scoffs with an exasperated breath. “My point is that it’s family lines, Dean. Our vessels. It’s why—” He cuts himself off with a sharp turn of his head, biting at his lower lip until it goes white. “It’s why we feel this way,” he says, softer.
“Every single human I’ve ever possessed has looked like this.” Sam tugs at his t-shirt listlessly. “Him.” He swallows painfully, and then makes an aborted gesture at Dean’s own body. “Everyone you’ve ever possessed has looked like that. Subconsciously, we’re equating the bloodlines with each other. Even if we can’t actually remember the details.”
Oh. Dean feels a wash of grim understanding slowly creep over him as he pulls himself together enough to really look at his brother. For the first time ever maybe. And holy fuck if the kid doesn’t have a point. The skin tone, the bone structure, even down to the color of his hair. It’s all Sam. Dean can feel it in his bones—always has, on some primal level—and apparently, it’s thanks to a parade of slightly varied, but essentially identical, descendants throughout the centuries.
How many forgotten versions of his brother has Dean made love to? How many of them, male or female, have looked at him with those same, perfect eyes? How many times has he fallen hard for the quirk of a flirtatious dimple, or the sarcastic lift of an elegant eyebrow?
And how many times has Sam longed for his vessels in turn?
“Alright,” Dean starts weakly. “So we look…like we look. So what?”
Sam scoffs at the simple question. “So the feelings aren’t real, Dean.” He tightens his hands into fists at his sides, trying to convince Dean. Or maybe just trying to convince himself. “They’re just an echo from the sexual memories we never should have made in the first place. That’s all they are. Nothing more.”
Dean counters with a determined shake of his head. “You don’t mean that, Sammy,” he says lowly. “Hell, you don’t even believe it.”
But his brother sets his jaw and holds his ground. Against him. Against Dean. “I learned my lesson while I was up there, Dean. We serve Heaven, we don’t serve man.” He swallows hard and finally turns his back to leave, tossing one last remark over his shoulder. “And we certainly don’t serve ourselves.”
And watching his brother’s slowly retreating back, with uncertainty tingling in his gut, Dean only wishes he could say that he learned the same.