Archive of Our Own

It shouldn't throw Dean off his stride as much as it does when Sam says he thinks he might be able to move on with his life. That's how he says it, too—move on with my life—as if he's figured out some trick of the light that lets him look past all the crap they've been through and see the future like it's a whole new world, full of possibility. That, Dean has to admit, he never saw coming.

An hour outside of Minneapolis, they stop for the night. It's been two days since either of them slept. Sam's been quiet most of the drive, and that's fine with Dean; he's had enough big revelations for one week. Still, he says, "You with me, Sammy?" and is relieved when Sam looks over and nods, alert and firing on all thrusters.

"Yeah, sure. You want me to get the room?"

Dean grunts, and watches Sam climb out. The last few hours, he's been fighting a quiet, hollow feeling in his chest, and it deepens as Sam crosses to the office and goes inside. Dean watches him through the window. It's been months since they had a day as uneventful as this one, and maybe he's actually kind of grateful to that smug, Egyptian sonofabitch. Dragging Jo out of the woodwork had been a low blow. But Sam defending him? He hadn't expected that. Even Jo hadn't been as bad as he'd expected. He actually feels sort of... less terrible.

It lasts until they're in the room getting settled. Dean's still thinking about Osiris, about what Sam said when he had Dean on the stand. Or is your heart just plain heavy, and none of this guy's business? For a second there he'd felt like they were on the same page, speaking the same language, and it had felt good.

Those three weeks up at Rufus's cabin when Sam was locked in his own head, a million miles away from Dean—they'd sucked. Dean had felt helpless and useless and pissed off, alternately snapping at Bobby and at Sam, asking his brother the same stupid questions, to which Sam insisted he was fine. So, maybe that—on top of being flat on his ass—had made Dean a little crazy. And maybe it's more or less weird, this new-and-improved Sam. He doesn't trust it, doesn't expect it to last, but he'll take it over Sam twitching and pointing a gun at him any day.

"You okay?"

Dean realizes he's been staring. "Hm? Yeah." He clears his throat. "Sorry, just—"

Sam meets his eyes, and for a long second, Dean can't look away. Trust me, that look says. Like it's easy. Like anything in their lives ever has been.

"Long day," Sam says, one corner of his mouth turned up.

Dean nods. Then he thinks about the third witness, and how he’d been ready to die rather than see the look on Sam’s face.

The hollow feeling blooms like an ache, and he pushes it down hard; when he reaches into his bag, the bottle presses cool and reassuring against his palm.

The thing is, Dean might hate Sam a little for being able to let go of his guilt, but he gets it. Anyone asked him if Sam deserves a break, if he's paid for his sins, he'd say yes, a thousand times over.

He's even mostly over Sam leaving him stranded in that cabin and going after Amy on his own. Stealing his car was a pretty major offense, but Dean figures he made his feelings on that particular subject clear. And yeah, it would be nice to think that after all this time, Sam knows the difference between the real him and a hallucination, but it's not like he can realistically blame Sam for that.

Most of his anger at Sam he can put aside—maybe because he's not exactly proud of his own actions, maybe because he's too tired to sustain it. But he doesn't know what to make of Sam turning his phone off. That part still stings. It’s hard to fathom that after all this time, Sam doesn't get what shit like that does to him, and even a week later, thinking about it is enough to send Dean's blood pressure into the stratosphere.

Dean doesn't know what to do with that anger, except shove it down and try to forget. It's not like he wants to be thirty-four years old and still have these hangups about his brother, but what the hell is he supposed to do about it? And Sam being Sam doesn't help. He doesn't get that he is, for at least fifty different reasons, the last person Dean wants to open up to right now. Sometimes he wishes he could talk to Sam about Cas, about Lisa and Ben and all the rest of it, but what is there to say? When you share the same hundred or two square feet with the same person every day of your life, telling that person your problems means you can never get away from them. It's bad enough as it is, with the nightmares every night, and only the most fleeting kind of relief at the bottom of a bottle. Worse, Sam's acting like Dean's the one in trouble. Like Dean's the one who needs help. But he's not the one circling the cuckoo’s nest.

Are you sure? says an inner voice that sounds a lot like Cas.

That's the kind of crap he's got running through his head when Sam catches Dean watching him over breakfast, the sun glaring mercilessly off the cars in the parking lot. Sam stops with his coffee halfway to his mouth, then sets it down with a thump.

"Dude, what?"

"What?" says Dean, playing dumb.

"You're staring at me like I've got three heads."

"Wouldn't be the weirdest thing you've done."

"Dean."

You're imagining things, is on the tip of Dean's tongue, but that's no joke any more, and he bites it back just in time. He lets out a sigh, and folds his paper back.

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah. I do."

Dean considers telling him for a second. It flits through his head: what if? It's not fair to be pissed at Sam when he's the one with the secrets. But Sam's looking at him, clear-eyed, patient and hopeful, that I'm here, you can tell me expression on his face that makes Dean want to shoot something, or run for the hills.

Dean's lip curls in a smirk he doesn't feel, and he takes a bite of sausage, washing it down with lukewarm coffee. "Just trying to figure out how a face that ugly could be related to me."

Sam huffs out a sigh. "Dean—"

"I mean seriously. Have you looked in a mirror lately?" He makes a vague gesture toward his own mug. "Your hair looks like it's trying to eat your face."

That wins him an eyeroll—pure vintage Sammy. "Hilarious."

Dean flips his paper open. "You asked."

Dean's still pissed, and more than a little freaked out, but he's not about to tell Sam how close to losing it he was, not knowing where Sam was, or who was riding shotgun. He's not about to confess that sometimes he makes bets with himself about whether he'll get through the week. What's the point? Sam can still get under his skin like nobody else, but there's only one thing his brother could do these days that Dean couldn’t handle, and that's check out on him once and for all.

Some days, the worst days, Dean thinks it would be a relief if he did. At least Dean could finally sign off on this massively unfunny joke his life has become. But until then, there's one thing that keeps him vertical: he won’t abandon Sam now that he's dragged him back into this life.

Then again, he's starting to think that if this new, improved Sam is for real, if Humpty Dumpty has really figured out some magic trick to patch up all the crap that angels and demons and a brother who can't let him go have cost him over the years, maybe Sam would be better off without him.

It's a long two weeks between Osiris and the fiasco with the witches. Sam picks up a bug somewhere between South Dakota and Wisconsin—it's not much, just a low-grade fever, but it's enough to make him sluggish and irritable. Dean can tell the body-aches are bothering him by the way he can't get comfortable in the car, so he keeps the pace easy for a couple days, lets Sam sleep it off while he combs the web for signs of black ooze and mysterious corpses with missing organs.

"What, no run this morning?" he grunts, on a morning when Sam looks like death warmed over, and only a huge cup of double-strength joe coaxes him out of bed.

Sam doesn't dignify that, just ignores him and disappears into the bathroom.

"Good morning to you, too, sunshine," Dean says to the closed door, without much heat. He figures the way he's been acting, he probably deserves it.

Two hundred miles down the road, he steps out of a mini mart and crosses to the car. Sam's leaning against it on the passenger side, heedless of the cold rain that's started up in the last few minutes. His thin jacket is already dark with it, his hair a soggy mess. He doesn't move when Dean opens the driver side door, doesn't seem aware of him at all.

Dean stops half in, half out of the car. "Sam. Hey."

It takes Sam a second. He blinks once, too slow, then looks at Dean without seeing him. It's been a while since he did that, and Dean's stomach falls half a foot. But before he can drop his stuff and come around the car, Sam blinks again, raindrops sliding down his cheeks, his face pale except for two spots of fever. His eyes track Dean's this time, looking at him like he's surprised to see him.

"You okay?" Dean demands. It's a stupid thing to say, because of course, Sam is not okay. Sam is never going to be okay, and no health club routine in the world is going to change that.

It takes Sam a second too long to answer. He swallows. "Yeah, Dean. I'm good."

Dean knows his brother better than he knows anything, and he hears the emphasis Sam puts on his name. Like he's trying to reinforce the idea that it's really Dean he's seeing. Like he's not a hundred percent sure.

Sam gets in the car, and after a long second, Dean does the same, because what the hell else can he do? He glances sidelong at Sam, who looks more or less present. Then he starts the car.

He knows that at least some of the time, Sam's hallucinations wear his face. Sam's admitted as much. It bugs Dean more than he lets on, because that means Sam has trouble keeping them straight, and Dean doesn't like to think about that. How many times Lucifer must have pulled that shit on him down under. He wants to believe it was never his face Sam saw in the Cage, that it's not him Sam sees in his nightmares, but he knows better. He's got the all-too-recent memory of Sam pointing a gun at him to remind him.

Dean's depression settles back over him. He really wants a drink, even though he's still feeling shitty from the fifth he put away last night. All this crap is eating him up inside, and he wishes to God he could just wipe it out of his head. Where's Cas when you need him?

When your heart's heavy, let me tell you, real punishment's a mercy.

The worst part is the way Sam looks at him these days. Like all Dean has to do is ask, and Sam will tell him anything he wants to know. The irony chokes him every time.

He's the one with the secret, now. He hadn't meant it to be that way. But Sam asked Dean to trust him, and Dean said okay because he was sorry for using the F-word. Sorry for putting that look on Sam's face, for making him feel like a freak, the way he hadn't been for laying him out with his fist. It's ridiculous, how he still folds like a house of cards where Sam's concerned, no matter how many times he's told himself he won't do it again. But now he's stuck with the lie, and has no one to blame but himself.

He can't tell Sam. This is his burden to carry. What good will it do to confess? Yeah, Sammy, guess what, not only did I lie to your face about trusting you, but oh, hey, I killed the first girl you ever crushed on. Yeah, that's right, just one more way we can stick it to each other, bet you didn't see that one coming. But hey, we're cool, right?

In Iowa, the truth comes out in the worst way possible, and Dean takes the hit like it barely costs him a thing.

Dean expects Sam to forgive him, eventually. He tells himself that, anyway, because how else is he supposed to get up in the morning? Sure, he has a few bad nights. But he's really almost a hundred percent sure that Sam will get over it, so when Sam actually does, it's not like it's the best thing that ever happened to him or anything. Even if it sort of feels that way.

It takes them the better part of a week to get comfortable with each other again, or at least what passes for it these days. They’re sitting in a café in Virginia when Dean finally twigs to the fact that Sam, whose eating habits have been weirder than usual lately, is picking at his chicken salad and looking like warmed-over crap. Those blooms of color are back in his cheeks, vivid against his pallor, and he’s wearing an extra shirt despite the overactive heater.

"You still sick?" Dean asks, frowning. It doesn't take much to put Sam off his feed, but lately he's like the poster boy for Men's Fitness magazine, and that kind of thing requires at least a minimum supply of fuel. It occurs to Dean that he's been so relieved that things are okay between them, maybe he hasn't noticed something's wrong.

He reaches up to feel Sam's face, and Sam flinches away, but not before Dean confirms that he's hot to the touch. "How long's this been going on?"

"It's nothing," Sam says. "Just a little tired, that's all." He sells it pretty well, the right tone and everything, but he doesn’t quite meet Dean’s eyes.

Dean pays more attention then. He lays off the booze for a couple of days, two or three hits before bed and no more than that. On the third night, when Sam's in the bathroom (he's in there sometimes an hour at a time these days, and Dean's trying to give him some space, but he can't help picturing Sam having long heart-to-hearts with Satan in the mirror, or worse) Dean goes through his stuff. He argues with himself about it, but he does it anyway, because now that his radar's pinging, he can't help himself. He's like Maggie, the jealous wife. Well, Sam's the woman in this relationship, which makes Dean the poor bastard whose wife is running around on him, who wants to believe he's wrong, prays he's wrong, but inside he knows.

In Sam’s duffle, tucked into a side pocket under his socks, Dean finds what he’s looking for: a fat blister pack of pills, labeled with prescription information bearing the name Smith. Antibiotics. It could be worse—he was prepared for worse—but it’s still cause for concern. More than a week’s worth are gone, which means this has been going on since before Lily Dale. He counts back: it’s been a month since Sam first got sick, and if this is the same thing, then something's definitely wrong. Neither of them gets sick like that, not since they were kids.

That’s not all he digs up. Wrapped up in a T-shirt, he finds two unopened rolls of gauze. And then, tucked into a corner: a crumpled up, bloody handkerchief.

Dean looks at the bathroom door. Every instinct he has is pinging now, telling him he should have known something was going on, that maybe it has been for a while now. That awful, sinking feeling seeps through his chest and gut. Should have known it was too good to be true.

He takes three long strides toward the bathroom door, intending to bust through it. But something stops him. He's remembering Sam in that motel room, weeks ago, saying, I'm never gonna be normal. Trying his best to be honest. Even after he found out Dean lied to him, he’s been trying.

Dean closes his eyes and braces himself against the door frame. He’s so damn tired of having the rug pulled out from under him, and he wants nothing more than to curl up at the bottom of a bottle and never come out, but he can't. He did this. Maybe Cas pulled the trigger, but this is his mess, and nobody else's.

He lays a hand on the bathroom door. "Sammy, open the door."

There's no answer. The faint rustling noises stop, and Dean can picture him in his mind's eye. Frozen. Caught. Deciding what to do.

"I mean it, Sam. Open the damn door. Come on."

Sam clears his throat. "It's not locked," he says.

It's not. Dean pushes it open.

He doesn't know what he was expecting. Something bad for sure; maybe something that would bring their crazy show crashing down once and for all. Either way, he has to know.

At first, Dean doesn't fully register what he's seeing. Sam's got a towel spread out on the countertop, and it's got several items laid out on top of it, like a doctor's field kit. That's not so far off, he realizes, his gaze sweeping the small metal implements, the cleaning cloths and alcohol, the spots of blood. There's a flat metal canister full of what looks like hypodermic needle points. For a second he thinks, drugs, and it makes sense, doesn't it? You start hallucinating Satan, who could blame you? And then a little voice says, maybe it's worse than that, and for a second he zeroes in on the blood stains and everything inside him goes cold.

But what he sees doesn't add up. Sam's small hunting knife. Suture thread. His lighter. There's also an unfolded motel washcloth with shards of blood-streaked, broken glass. Next to that, there's a plastic bag which Sam has spread out over the ice bucket, and in the bucket are more squares of bloody gauze and alcohol-soaked cotton.

Dean sees all this in a couple of seconds, but his eyes are drawn with life-long instinct to his brother, who's standing there shirtless, pressing a wad of folded gauze against the inside of his upper arm.

There's blood on the cloth, but that's not what catches Dean's gaze. That's not what makes his heart kick in his chest, his throat go dry.

The instinct to shut down, to push this out of his head, to back out of the room and just walk the fuck out the door and keep going is very strong. He doesn't want to know this. But Sam isn't hiding from him, letting him look, letting him see, and for some reason that's enough to keep him there. He can feel Sam watching him, but Sam doesn't say anything. He's too still—Dean can feel how tense he is, how much effort it's taking for him to let Dean look.

Dean's eyes roam over the bare, exposed skin of Sam's arms, his belly. His chest. For a second, his mind flickers over the possibility that this goes places he can't see, hidden beneath Sam's dark, frayed jeans, but he shies away from that, not ready to let himself think about it. What he can see is bad enough.

Sam's been cutting himself, but not just that. Dean gets that right away. He's been cutting into himself, burying what look like needles and straight pins and—jesus—shards of glass and god knows what else in his flesh. Dean can see the evidence of it marking his biceps, armpits, nipples. Three slices across the tender skin on the inside of his left arm, above the elbow, show the clear outline of fresh insertions under neat stitches. There's a ragged pattern of half-healed cuts on the underside of his pec, spreading down over his ribs. There are similar, older scars and burn marks on the underside of his other arm—Dean grabs his wrist, pulls his arm out to see the criss-cross ridges of two-inch needles buried under the skin, a sick topography that makes his stomach roll. They're all carefully placed, nowhere they'll interfere with his range of motion, his ability to hold a gun.

This is why all the layers. Not protection. Concealment. The methodical mutilation stops above his forearms, his wrists and hands unmarked save for the faded crescent-shaped scar on his palm.

Dean feels like the world is slipping sideways, a sickening tilt. There was a time, he thinks remotely, that he would have admired the methodical precision of Sam's work. He remembers digging his thumb into the infected cut on Sam's hand, using the pain to get through to him, feeling the stitches tear, the blood well. Nausea coils tight inside him.

"Dean, hey." Sam pulls free and spreads his hands, like that will calm him down. "Hey. It's okay." When Dean keeps staring, he rushes ahead. "Look, I'm being careful. I made a mistake, and some of them got infected, but I'm taking care of it, and it's not going to happen again. All right?"

Dean blinks. He feels like he's looking at a stranger. "All right. You think?"

Sam gives a pained expression, looks at Dean like he's disappointed, for fuck's sake. Like Dean's supposed to think this is in any way okay.

"This is not all right, Sam. I mean, do you even get that? How not okay this is?"

But Sam's not ashamed; he makes no effort to hide the evidence. "It's what I have to do. If I want to be sure of what's real, then this is the only way, at least for now. You were right."

Dean takes a step back, though there's nowhere to go. "I didn't mean— Not like this, Sammy. Jesus."

Sam lets out a sigh and finally—thank God—pulls his shirt on and rolls his sleeves down. He leans against the counter, bracing himself, and waits for Dean to blow up, or storm out, or fucking accept it—Dean doesn't know what he expects. Dean leans against the wall opposite and avoids his own eyes in the mirror. He wants to yell. Wants to slam the door on this whole thing and throw himself off a cliff, maybe. It's too much, all at once, and he sinks down to sit on the edge of the tub, his knees giving out on him.

"Dean, listen. I know it looks bad," Sam says. "I know that. But I'm okay. I swear. It's okay. I'm not doing it as self-punishment, or anything crazy like that. You have to believe that. It's just about the pain. It helps. And it's getting better, it is."

It takes Dean a long minute to be able to answer. "There has to be some other way." But the conviction in Sam's face never falters.

"There isn't. This is what works. I need—" Sam flushes. "I have to be able to control it." He reaches up instinctively to touch his bicep, to squeeze the place where he's buried God knows what deep in the muscle. The skin around his eyes goes tight, his lips pale with the pain, but his eyes shine like he takes comfort in it. "And this way, I can."

Dean's stomach feels like it's trying to crawl its way out of his body. This is his fault; he knows that. His chest hurts, and he thinks he might be dying. "Sammy," he says helplessly, "how'm I supposed to let you—"

Sam shakes his head. "Dean it's okay. It doesn't matter." He gestures at the open door, the guns Dean laid out for cleaning, the table spread with the detritus of their most recent case. "This, what we do, that's what matters. And anyway, it's not up to you. This is my choice. This is what helps. This, and you and me, on the road, saving whoever we can. That's what counts. And this is how I do that."

Dean's gaze follows Sam's gesture, not seeing any of it. It's the same thing he used to tell himself, that what mattered was the people they saved. It’s what Dad said, too, long ago, and he was just starting to believe it again.

He braces himself against the edge of the tub, knuckles going white. Christ, he feels about a thousand years old, and all he wants to do is sink into the floor and disappear. He hasn't really lost control of himself in almost two years, not since that day at Lisa's, a month or more after Sam stepped into that hole. But he thinks this might be the thing that pushes him over the edge.

If you wanted to kill your brother, you should have done it outright.

He thinks of what he would have said five years ago, if he'd known one day they'd come to this, and it’s enough to make him take a choked breath and lean forward, resting his forehead on his fists. Sam waits and doesn't say anything. After a long second, he lays a hand on Dean's shoulder, his touch light. “Dean, talk to me.”

It's a while before Dean gets himself under control enough to admit, in a low voice, "I don't know if I can keep doin' this, Sammy."

Sam's hand drops away. "You can," he says, matter-of-fact. "You need it, too. We both do. You know I'm right—you've said it yourself."

Dean closes his eyes. "For how long?" he whispers.

"I don't know, man. The duration, I guess?"

It's not a reassuring thought, not with where Dean's head's been at, lately.

Sam lets out a breath, shifting in Dean's peripheral vision to crouch down in front of him. "Dean, look, I know you think this is your fault, somehow. But it's not." Dean looks up at last, and Sam holds his gaze, irresistible. "If it wasn't for you, I would never have made it through any of this. I'd be Lucifer's meat suit, and the world as we know it would be a smoking hole in the ground. So give yourself a break, all right? You said you were gonna work on trusting me. Well, this is your chance."

Dean swallows bile. He bows his head, then finally wipes a hand over his face and looks back at Sam.

"Come on," Sam says, and gets up, reaches a hand down. Dean lets him help him up.

Dean moves numbly into the other room. Sam follows on his heels, watching him. Dean stands there for a minute, lost, then sits down on the edge of his bed.

Sam sits down next to him, like it hasn't been years since they let themselves get this close to each other, like there's anything he can do to make this better. Like Dean used to do when they were kids. Except now Sam's freaking mutilating himself just to get through the day, and there's no part of Dean that knows how to not feel guilty about that. He told Sam to put his faith in Dean, to make him stone number one, and then went and lied to his face. Sam can talk rationally about it all he wants, but this is on Dean, one way or another. His eyes track aimlessly around the room, and he wishes to God he could have a drink without seeing that look on Sam's face.

It’s just that he'd thought maybe things were getting better.

"Look, man," Sam says at last. "I’m sorry. I know how this must look to you. But it's not the worst thing in the world. People do worse stuff for kicks, right?"

"Don't joke about it, Sam. There's nothing about this that's funny."

"Okay. But if this is what it takes, there's worse things. That's all I'm saying."

Dean looks at him then. "I hate this," he grits out. "I hate every fucking thing about it, just so you know."

"Yeah, I get that. That’s why I didn’t tell you. And I don't need you to approve, but Dean—I need you to be okay with it."

Sam's asking him straight up. His broken, damaged brother, who's faced down Lucifer and Hell and the demons in his own skull, and is still stronger than anyone Dean's ever known.

Without warning, Dean feels the heat burning in his sinuses, pressure he's denied for too long—fuck, he hasn't felt like this since the day he broke down and cried himself sick, unable to stop, hiding in his car in Lisa's garage. Even thinking about it makes his chest hurt. He looks away, fighting for control.

Sam leans forward. "Dean, listen to me. You did the right thing. You got me out when nobody else could have. And whatever happens, whatever I have to do to get through this, it's better than being down there."

And the damn thing of it is, Dean knows what he means. No matter how bad Cas screwed things up, no matter how pissed Dean was at him, he's never forgotten that it was Cas who pulled him out of that place.

Goddamned angels, Dean thinks, then, with all the bitter and impotent rage he's been carrying for months. Cas did this to Sam. He could have fixed it, and he refused, out of childish spite. And what does it say about Dean, that he still misses the guy? That he still wishes things could have been different? It doesn't help that Sam doesn't blame Cas for any of this. Doesn't blame Dean, either. It would be better if he did.

Sam slings an arm around Dean's neck, then, and Dean lets out a breath that's too shaky for comfort. “It’s okay,” Sam says. “Dean, I’m fine. Really.”

Dean swallows thickly. It’s pathetic, the way his whole body reacts to the physical contact, the way his heart thumps gratefully against his chest. "Man, we are so messed up," he says.

Sam gives a soundless laugh that shakes his body. "Tell me about it."

Dean looks at him, able to do it now, and Sam's solid presence, the calm way Sam's watching him, steadies him.

"You really think it helps?" he asks at last, with a vague gesture at Sam's body, hidden now under layers of clothing. "Doing that—that stuff to yourself?"

Sam nods. "Yeah. I do."

Dean looks at his hands. They're smooth, barely any scars at all. Cas brought his body back shiny and new, even if inside he would never be the same.

"What if you came to me?" he says in a low voice. "When you needed it? At least then I could—"

"Dean."

There's so much emotion and understanding in the way Sam says it, Dean flinches in spite of himself—a soul-deep recoil that hurts like being kicked in the chest. "No," Sam says, with all the conviction he's capable of. He lets Dean go, but leans his shoulder against Dean's, solid and warm. "Not happening." After a long moment, he says, "But I swear to you, I won't hide it from you if I need help. Okay? And if anything goes wrong, I'll tell you."

To Dean's surprise, it's a promise he believes. It isn't much. But it is something.

Sam shifts away, but Dean's already flushed from the heat of Sam's body close against his. They don't do this. Not in a long time, anyway, and Dean feels like he's one breath from doing something he can’t take back. Stupid, stupid—he's told himself a thousand times not to let his guard down where Sam's concerned, and here he is with his guts spread out all over the place.

“So, we good?” Sam asks.

Dean chokes on a laugh. Whatever they are, it isn’t good. It was that damned case, he thinks desperately, his face too warm. It stirred up things they haven’t talked about, haven’t thought about in years, and now on top of everything, things are weird between them again, in a way he thought they were long past.

But that’s not what Sam’s asking. And bottom line, it’s Sam’s body. It’s his mind, and no matter how much Dean wishes he could fix it, he can’t.

Sam sees his acute discomfort, and says, "Right," with a wry half-smile. "I get it. We get any more chick-flick tonight, you'll never speak to me again."

“Thinkin’ about it,” Dean admits. It’s the safe kind of lie—the kind they’ve told each other most of their lives, and that they both recognize for what it is.

Sam claps his hands on his own knees, and Dean knows Sam won’t touch him again, not tonight. But fast on the heels of that thought, he's already wondering what'll happen when Sam does.

“So, TV then?” Sam asks. Without waiting for an answer, he gets up and turns on the set. He grabs the remote, and changes the channel a few times, stopping when he finds a western.

Despite the mess in his head, Dean knows the movie in a second. The irony isn't lost on him—or on Sam, judging by the look on his face when he meets Dean's eyes. "Good?" he asks, one corner of his mouth quirked upward. At Dean's nod, he hesitates a second. "Beer?"

Dean's not too proud to say, "God, yes." If it's mercy, or sympathy, Sam manages to keep most of it off his face. He goes and grabs one for each of them, pops the caps off and hands one to Dean before settling against the headboard on the opposite bed.

It's early in the movie, the scene where the audience first sees Butch and Sundance together. I didn't know you were the Sundance Kid when I said you were cheating, says the poor schmuck in the saloon. I draw on you, you'll kill me.

There's that possibility, Sundance replies, cool as ice water.

Numb and shaky, trying not to show it, Dean leans back. He stretches his legs out like Sam's, and takes the first cool sip of his beer, pretending for all he’s worth that the sharp, familiar ache he feels will fade in time.

The first time they watched this movie, Sam was twelve, Dean seventeen. It was cold out, February in Michigan. Dad was in Ohio, tracking down a long-shot lead on a case, and Dean remembers how bad he wanted to be out there with him. He's not sure if that was before or after he dropped out of school—before, he thinks. It wasn't until that case in Pennsylvania, the possessed girl, that he'd walked out on his senior year. He remembers how pissed Sam had been then.

That day in February, though, Sam had been happy. Dad was away, and it was just him and Dean. They had enough money to last through the end of the month, and they were warm and well-fed, holed up with basic cable and the snow falling outside. And on a Sunday afternoon, they'd sprawled on the couch with cocoa and popcorn and watched Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

They've watched it at least half a dozen times since then, but neither of them suggests changing the channel. They never do. It never gets old, and Dean's pretty sure it never will.

He keeps to the one beer, even if it goes down too fast and leaves him wanting about six more. He's not sure he could take the hard stuff tonight, anyway. It's not that he doesn't want to—it's just that he can't face it, not tonight. Not with Sam beside him, broken and damaged and still willing to fight for whatever this is between them. Still believing in him, the stupid sonofabitch. In the face of that, Dean doesn't think he could swallow one more bitter thing.

"So when I say Bolivia," Butch tells Sundance, "you just think, California." Dean huffs an involuntary laugh. Beside him, Sam toes off his shoes and bunches another pillow up under his shoulders.

"Good luck with that," Sam says to the TV. Dean wonders whether it's Butch or Sundance he's talking to. His eyes flicker toward Sam as his brother stretches and gets comfortable. Does it hurt him all the time, Dean wonders? Or is he so used to it that it's only when he needs a sharp reminder, something to anchor him to the here and now, that he digs into the self-inflicted wounds and makes them bleed? Dean has to admit it does seem to be working, but that doesn't make him sanguine about the whole thing. Sam said he was getting better, but Dean can't help wondering if that's just what he's telling himself.

Outside, the last of the day is bleeding out of the sky. It's dusk, and the room is in shadow save for the single bedside lamp and the light from the TV. "You just keep thinkin', Butch," Sundance says, and Sam and Dean finish the line with him in tandem, "That's what you're good at." Dean smiles despite himself, and catches the quick flash of Sam's grin.

Dean swallows against the sudden pain in his throat, and makes himself look back at the television. You did the right thing, Sam said. Dean thinks maybe he's needed to hear that for the better part of a year.

It doesn't change anything, not really. He's been afraid to count on anything, to let himself hope for anything, for longer than he can remember. But still, he wants to believe it.

They can't follow us, we're safe.

You really think so?

I will if you will.

It's when Butch and Sundance are on the run, before things get bad, before they make it to New York, that Dean always wishes he could turn the movie off. He never can, though, even though he knows how it ends. It's like, every time they watch it, he can't help hoping this time the ending will be different. And it's always at the same place, the same line, that he has that feeling. It's this scene, right here, when Butch says, "Kid, the next time I say, 'Let's go someplace like Bolivia,' let's go someplace like Bolivia."

"Amen," Dean murmurs. Sam doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.

Sam falls asleep first. He waits until Butch and Etta and Sundance are on the ship, leaving America behind them, before he starts to snore, soft and even. It goes on for a couple of minutes before Dean lets himself glance over.

Sam looks pretty stupid when he sleeps, especially if he faceplants in a book. Sometimes, there's drool involved. But once in a while, he looks like he does right now, so innocent and untouched that it knots up in Dean's chest. Stupid fucking kid, Dean thinks helplessly. He doesn't even know what he means by it.

Except he does. He means he was an idiot if he thought he could do this again with Sam, and not care. He means he knows he can't give up, not if Sam won't, and the human race is still alive and kicking because there was never a goddamned thing in the world that would make his little brother lie down and quit, or give up on Dean. The whole planet almost went down in flames for the same reason, so what chance does Dean have?

He watches the end of the movie stone cold sober, listening to Sam's snores and the stubborn thump of his own heart, the pulse of his blood in his ears, until gunfire drowns everything out.