Archive of Our Own

The abandoned church—more of a rural chapel, really—stands alone and aloof beside a calmly rippling lake. Night has settled into its bones. Insects drone along the water's edge, holes in the walls let cool breezes whisper through, and the rafters groan as they sway and sag toward the ground. It's an atonal symphony.

Heedless of the aches in his joints, Sam kneels at the moldering altar. His soul aches as he stares up at what remains of the church's crucifix. Through weather and time, the Christ figure has been reduced to stigmata, only the hands and feet remaining. There's something Jungian about it, Sam thinks, the wounded healer hovering near while he makes his final confession. He wonders what will happen to him when he finishes this Trial. Death and rebirth notwithstanding, he is still the boy with the demon blood. He might wind up right back in Hell.

But whether the Trials have purified him or not—if all the demons are trapped down there with him, it'll be worth it.

Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, he thinks, despite never having been Catholic. That's how they do it in movies. He's faked it a few times to get information from a priest; he even did it for real once, when he was a kid, thinking maybe it's the phrasing more than the contents that makes it stick. It's been most of my life since my last confession.

He bows his head. He's supposed to let it all go.

All of what?

All the times I let Dean down? Yeah, that's a great place to start. All the times I wasn't enough. All the times I chose wrong—really, really wrong—and burned down the world with my own two hands.

I set Lucifer free. 

It was a failure of literal Biblical proportions. Sure, the joke will be on the demons who celebrated Lucifer's return when Sam's regret traps them all downstairs, but they won't know it, and it won't undo the lives that were ruined by their celebration.

Compared to that, all the rest feels mundane—which is darkly hilarious to Sam, given that none of it is.

I didn't look for Dean when he vanished. I drank demon blood—like holy shit, who does that? I made him think I'm a monster, made him want to hunt me after he said he wouldn't.

Dean called him a blood-sucking freak. Not to his face, of course; that would make it too real. But Sam listened to that voicemail until he had it memorized. He didn't want to forget. Doesn't. Won't.

If I had it to do over again—but that's not a confession, is it? He's spent enough time on the carousel of woulda, coulda, shoulda. There are other things to confess, so many other little things. I ruined Dean's Led Zeppelin shirt in sixth grade. I picked fights with Dad that he took out on Dean. I accidentally scratched the car, and told Dean it must have been the neighborhood kids. I left for Stanford and didn't look back.

They're flowing more freely now, the sins. I left him so many times, Lord, when he needed me. Even if he said he didn't, I know he didn't mean it. I shouldn't have left.

I scratched at the wall. I let my craziness drag him down. I got Bobby killed. I didn't look for Dean when he got sent to Purgatory.

I kill people just by existing, and I've gotten him killed, too.

It doesn't matter that they're both alive now, by the grace of God or some other, darker power. The fact remains. The guilt festers.

Sam casts his eyes upward again, past the crucifix to the giant holes in the roof, and the night sky beyond. Dim pinpricks of stars twinkle back at him. They blur when tears begin to surface, threatening to fall.

He clears his throat. Back to the task at hand.

I did all that and more. And worst of all, for so long, I've been—

Now this, he's never confessed to anyone. The old, familiar fear seizes his insides when he considers telling God, of all entities. But it's a sin, isn't it? One of the oldest ones? Even though he's read that all of mankind must have started that way.

Sam takes a long, deep breath, squeezes his eyes shut even tighter, and lets himself admit it.

I'm in love with him.

He exhales in a rush.

I'm sick, I know. I've been sick for so long. Ever since I knew what love was. Before that. For as long as I can remember, it's been him for me.

I've never done anything, or said anything. I've made sure he doesn't know. He can't know. It's selfish, but I know I'll lose him if I admit it, so I lie and say it's fine to keep him close.

I've tried to get over it, Lord, for years and years. I've really, honestly tried.

But he knows God doesn't care that he tried as long as he failed in the end. So it doesn't matter.

For a long moment, he simply kneels there, with nothing more to offer and a dull gnawing in his chest. Dean is always at the forefront of his mind. Sam feels more than he can conjure words for, so he sends all that up to the heavens too. God is omniscient and omnipresent, so he already knows, has already known, but the point is for Sam to let it go. Never mind that it's leashed to him, a pack of dogs in the shape of regrets. He can let it run all the way to the top. Nothing on the tablet said he couldn't call it back home once he's done.

He'll never let go of this, even if he manages to outrun it, or tame it, somehow. This sin is his favorite. Alpha of the pack.

I'm confessing all of this now to purify myself, to complete these Trials, he thinks firmly. He tells himself he's just getting back to the task at hand, not running from the baying of certain hounds. I want to do it—need to do it—and I'm hoping this is enough. That I'm—

I hope I'm enough.

He sighs aloud. It'll either work, or it won't.

Amen.

Six syringes down, it's all kind of funny. Sam's body is flagging with the blood loss, sore from the way he landed when Abaddon tossed him out the window, with a vicious throbbing in his forearm from the rabid demon bite—thanks, Crowley, really—but all of it dulls in comparison to the seething burn of power in his veins. He jabs the dirty needle into Crowley's neck again. The King of Hell seems almost grateful.

Not long, now. The orchestral medley of the derelict church, the wind, and the crickets sawing out by the lake; the alien song roiling under his skin; all of it is building into a crashing tsunami of sound, within and without. Waves of heat squeeze sweat from Sam's pores, turning streaks of blood and dirt into war paint. He jams the needle into the same bruised site again, just as sure as he was last time that when he pulls the plunger up, it'll get nothing but dust. He's empty inside, nothing but a vessel for the holy fire the Trials have stoked into an inferno that is hungry for release.

Crowley is sounding more human by the minute, wailing about needing to be loved. Sam would marvel at that if he wasn't so soap-bubble thin, nothing but smoke and a singular purpose inside, a light bulb whose filament is about to fizzle out in sparks.

“Exorcizamus te,” he says, all he can say, all he knows anymore. “Omnis immundus spiritus, hanc animam redintegra. Lustra.”

Drawing his knife, Sam slices his palm wide open—and instead of blood, bright shining light leaks out. As it should. He glances over at his mewling target, the sad lump about to be cleansed. It feels like the power is consuming him, streaming from every orifice, clouding his vision with gold.

Now's the time, the time is now. The chorus swells—!

“Sam!”

At the desperate shout, Sam hesitates. He knows that voice, would know it anywhere, any time, in any state of delirium. It rocks him back to himself, back to the present. His body balks at the change. Reminds him that it hurts. But his heart still leaps like it always does when Dean says his name, and he whirls toward the doorway, where Dean is smashing through so hard that the door slams against the wall and cracks.

Dean skids to a stop, his mouth open wide, his eyes stuck on the trickle of sunlight running down Sam's arm.

He raises his hands, placating. Soothing the agitated beast. Sam just stares. The important task is still at hand: the demon is just a few steps away, waiting patiently to be cured. Sam has a purpose. His heart is thumping madly. He has a purpose. Why is Dean interfering?

“Easy, tiger,” Dean says, holding Sam's gaze. He inches forward, hands still in the air like he's at gunpoint. “Okay. Just take it easy. We got a slight change of plan.”

“What?” The words taste salty. Saturated. Sam's head feels like it weighs a million pounds, and nothing at all. “What's going on?” He tastes copper. “Where's Cas?”

“Metatron lied. You finish this Trial, you're dead, Sam.”

Still moving forward. Slowly, so slowly.

Sam gapes at him. That's what this is about? That's all?

“So?”

He sees the word slap Dean across the face.

“So,” Dean says slowly, “that's bad.”

Unable to grasp what he's hearing, Sam says, “Look at him!” He jabs a shaking finger at Crowley, who flinches. “Look at him! Look how close we are! Other people will die if I don't finish this.”

“That's gonna happen anyway,” Dean says. “People die. Hell, we've died. But this? You do this, there's no coming back.” He's still moving infinitesimally forward. “There's no coming back from this.”

“What the fuck, Dean?” Sam all but shrieks. “Why are you telling me now?”

“I just found out—”

“And why do you think it's gonna change my mind?”

Dean is so close Sam can see the sheen of sweat on his upper lip and the way his hands are trembling. He looks—scared?

“Sammy,” he says, a little broken sound.

Sam blinks. The searing gold hasn't stopped dripping from his hand, and he's starting to feel lightheaded.

“Dean?”

“I'm sorry,” Dean whispers. 

Too quick to avoid, a fist slams into Sam's cheekbone, snapping his head back. Blood spurts from his nose, and he drops like a stone, pain splitting his face into fragments. The rotten wood floor rushes up to meet him with all the grace of an earthquake. He hits with a thud, his head bouncing off the hard surface, and for a moment, everything goes black.

Then he's back—back in a world where pain wracks him, shards of glass, bruises and sprains, all the power of the Trials bunched up in his too-skinny limbs. Arching back against the floor, unable to stop it, Sam's whole body spasms hard. All he can do is whine. His jaw is locked up tight.

“I'm so sorry,” Dean says, his voice cracking.

There's a tiny stab, sharp and new, in Sam's neck. He barely registers it before it fades into the patchwork quilt of all his other hurts. He's struggling to open his eyes, to focus. Vertigo swells as he watches the world swim, just trying to breathe right again, listening to Dean scrabble around beside him before a familiar running cadence picks up, putting distance between them.

“What in bloody Heaven is going on?” Crowley grunts. Sam can hear him twisting against his bonds, chair scraping on the floor.

Blinking, shivering, Sam rolls onto his hands and knees. The church’s doors hang open, and Dean is nowhere in sight. Clapping a hand to the side of his neck—the hand that isn't leaking light, which has now faded to ruddy orange—Sam stares at it when it comes away bearing a tiny smear of fresh blood. There's only one thing that could have done that. He knows, because he just used several on himself.

Panic reaches into his ribs and tears them open.

“Dean?”

He stumbles to his feet, digs into the wood, propels himself forward with all he has left and sprints toward the door.

“Dean!”

Outside, the air is cool. It smacks Sam in the face, chilling the sweat that's coating his skin, soaked into his shirt. He shivers violently but doesn't stop running. The Impala is there in all her sleek black glory, chrome glinting in the moonlight, and the trunk is open. Sam can hear Dean's voice echoing from behind it. It sounds like he's chanting, a cadence like Latin. That can't mean anything good.

Gravel crunches and skids under Sam's feet. He eats up the distance in no time, long legs churning. He reaches the end of the car and lunges clumsily around her only to see Dean, crouched in front of a flaming bowl—

His brother's eyes snap up to meet him, wide and terrified, full of too many emotions to name. Dean says something; Sam can't hear it over the rush of blood in his ears, but it's not meant for him. The fire in the bowl flares up in a dazzle of sparks.

Instantly, two things happen:

Sam feels amazing. Better than he has in ages, since before the Trials, since before Lucifer. Clear-headed and whole. The bite on his arm is gone, he's no longer dizzy. His hand is healed. His soul is healed. He feels so light he could probably leap into orbit—

—but Dean doubles over, screaming.

It's the most horrible sound Sam has ever heard.

He's heard Dean scream before—in terror, in pain, and a rare few times, out of sheer joy—but nothing, nothing compares to the sound that's ripping its raw, fleshy way out of him now. Sam skids to a stop so hard he rakes furrows up in the gravel, dropping to his knees beside his brother, grabbing him—Dean claws at him, hanging on, still screaming. High, hoarse, terrible cries. It's almost like he has to scream, or else he'll stop breathing at all. He clutches at Sam as his vocal cords rend themselves into ribbons of bloody meat.

“Dean!”

When Dean sucks in a breath, it whistles into his lungs, fast and sharp and not enough air. He's shaking like he's being shoved in a wood chipper. The screams are getting more and more ragged, his whole body rigid, and Sam holds him tight, curling around him.

Sam realizes he's crying, great big gulping sobs that might also be Dean's name. He's grabbing tighter around Dean's back, hands like claws as his brother bucks and whines, tugged halfway up into his lap. He's never felt this. Never seen a pain so bright it's blinding, felt it seizing in his arms.

Then Dean rears back, his legs splaying, boots digging up gravel. Veins bulge in his neck, his eyes wide and frightened, broken blood vessels in the sclera. His mouth is stuck in a horrible grimace, baring his teeth. He's panting like a dog.

All Sam can do is clutch at him. “Dean—”

“I—I can't,” Dean says, barely a sound to it. “I—” Another spasm wracks him and Dean bows backward, wordlessly crying out again. It sounds like he swallowed glass. “—Jesus Christ,” he pants, blood foaming out of the corners of his mouth. “I can't—”

His body contracts again. He lets out a garbled moan with no strength behind it. He buries his face in the crook of Sam's elbow, still shaking, finding Sam's arm with a jerk and a slap, and digging his fingers in hard enough to bruise.

Sam forces himself to look up and around. The bowl got knocked over, its charred contents scattered. Beside it lies the syringe that Dean must have used to steal his blood in the church. A ways away, he spies a piece of paper dancing away on the wind. No doubt it's a spell, whatever Dean was chanting, whatever did this to him. To them both.

Sam looks down, bends down, buries his nose in Dean's sweaty hair and inhales. Even bitter and wet, the scent of his brother is comforting. It hasn't changed. Dean is still Dean. He's shivering now, breathing in fits and starts, groaning from deep in his diaphragm. His fingers are losing their grip.

“What the fuck,” Sam says into his hair, “did you do?”

There's no answer, so he pulls back. Dean jerks his face out of Sam's shirt to look up at him, bloodshot eyes pleading, red spittle smeared on his chin. The shirt is soaked with rust.

“Dean—”

A whooshing sound high above steals both their attention, and Sam looks up to see streaks of bright orange fire begin to plummet toward the earth. More and more of them burn down from the heavens, lighting up the clouds and everything below.

In his arms, Dean breathes out hard, sounding horrified.

“No,” he groans, more just sounds than actual words, “no, Cas…”

“What? What's happening?”

More and more of the meteoric bursts spark, flare, and descend. There's hundreds, no, thousands of them. And they're getting closer. They're getting closer, holy shit, one cannonballing into the lake with a deep-toned splash that sends up a plume of water. Sam flinches when droplets reach him. He hears another one hit the ground somewhere behind them, out past the church in the forest. Then another.

“The angels,” Dean sighs, a sob and a curse. “They're falling.”

Then he sucks in another whistling breath and passes out in Sam's arms.

The last time Sam had to bear his brother's dead weight, Dean was literally dead, torn apart by hellhounds. Now, Dean is older and heavier, but Sam is stronger—and thanks to whatever Dean just did, he feels like he could lift the Impala herself. He bundles his brother up in his arms, gets to the passenger side, and crouches down to balance Dean so he can get the door open. He gently deposits his precious cargo on the bench seat. Dean's breathing is shallow, but steadier than it was before. He looks alarmingly pale.

Shutting the passenger door, Sam straightens up, marveling at how loose his back feels. The barest tightness lingers, but it's mostly in the lumbar region, and nowhere near as painful. The approach of the final Trial had him pulled taut like a mooring rope left tied while the ship sailed away. Now, he feels like he can breathe again, rolling his shoulders and standing up straight. He feels like he could wrestle anything and win.

But I shouldn't feel that way, he thinks. I didn't earn this.

It actually makes him nauseous.

The sky is once more dark and serene, the droning of insects picking back up by the lake again, nature righting itself after yet another cataclysm. Nothing ever waded out of the water. Sam spares it a glance anyway, expecting ripples any second, but there are none. He wonders if he should try to rescue the angel. That's what a good person would do. But he's already striding back toward the church.

He tries to be a good person, but he isn't one.

Candlelight streaming from the church's broken doors reveals Crowley on his side on the ground, still strapped to the chair.

“Moose? Squirrel?” he calls hoarsely. “What the fuck is going on? Get me out of here!”

Not breaking stride, Sam walks right up and toe-kicks him in the back of the head. Crowley's chin hits his chest and he's out. Not dead, of course—well, not deader—but makes it much easier to get him untied, outside, and into the yawning black trunk space of the Impala.

Slamming the trunk shut on him feels great.

But then Sam slides into the driver's seat and glances over to see Dean slumped against the window. He looks like he's sleeping off a hangover, but Sam knows he's not, and that doesn't feel great at all. That feels like a huge crock of bullshit. Whatever Dean did—and it seems a lot like he healed Sam at the expense of himself—he either didn't consider the consequences, or did and said, “fuck it.” Sam is betting on the latter.

It shouldn't be that way. They should both be healthy. Why do things like this always happen? Why can't they catch a break, and do something for the good of humanity without it sacrificing one or both of them in the process?

Gritting his teeth, Sam turns the key, listening to the engine roar to life. He throws her into reverse, peels around in a 360, and races them out of there with a spray of gravel beneath the tires. If Dean were awake, he'd have so many things to say about the way Sam is driving—but it's because he's not that Sam is driving this way, all unavoided potholes and too-sharp turns. He rides the brakes along a stretch that's a well-known speed trap and almost expects Dean to wake up yelling about replacing the pads.

The bunker isn't too far away. It still takes too long to get there. Sam swings them up the driveway too fast with a scraping of metal and groaning of struts, and fishtails into the garage so wildly he almost takes out the vintage roadster in the spot across the way. Then he's leaping out of the car and around to scrabble at the handle on Dean's side.

Dean almost tumbles out when it opens. Sam barely catches him in time, but he doesn't flail, grumble, or even flinch. He's out cold. Sam finds a weak, steady pulse with shaking fingers, and presses his forehead to Dean's, his eyes squeezed shut.

Goddamnit, Dean.

“Sam?” comes a voice from the other side of the car.

He nearly bangs his head on the doorframe.

“Sam, what the hell is going on?” The voice, which he now recognizes as Kevin's, is getting closer. “The alarms in this place went haywire. It was like—”

Kevin cuts off when he rounds the Impala's rear bumper just as Sam is hefting Dean up and out of the door, cradled in his arms like a child.

Steadily, he regards Kevin, hyper-aware of Dean's shallow breaths on his collarbone.

“What happened?” Kevin asks, eyes wide. He steps back to make room for Sam to round the back of the car and head toward the stairs, then follows.

“Dean isn't doing too good,” Sam says, concentrating more on navigating stairs he can't see than what he's saying. “I have to get him to his room.”

“But he wasn't—you were doing the Trials, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it the angels? Did they do this?”

“Kevin,” Sam interrupts, trying not to snap and failing, “get the door. Please,” he adds as an afterthought.

“Okay.”

Dean's room is closer to everything than Sam's. Kevin lets them in, and Sam is overwhelmed with the comfortable scent of the place: their laundry detergent, gun oil and Dean's cologne, and a hint of the bunker's age beneath it all. It's dark, but he knows where everything is. He gets Dean to the bed and lays him down slowly, straightening his brother's legs, making sure Dean's hand isn't dangling off the side. Then he snaps on the bedside lamp and gazes down at Dean's still face. Stands there, and looks at him. Just looks.

It's so damn quiet in the bunker. It's like Sam can hear his own heartbeat echoing sharply off the walls. For a long moment, he hopes to God or whoever is watching that Dean just wakes up, sits up, and blinks at him grumpily like he does whenever he thinks Sam is being weird too early in the morning. But time drags on, and on, and nothing happens.

His ears are ringing like he can still hear Dean screaming. Like the resonance tinnitus has come back. He feels too right, too put-together, too awake. The wrongness of the rightness is sickening. The fact that Dean might have committed suicide by spell to save him again just makes it worse.

Dean's chest is rising and falling so slightly it may as well not be moving at all—but it is, it is, and that's what matters. Specks of blood still mar the pale skin of his cheeks, caught in his stubble. Absently, Sam lifts his own shirt to suck on a piece, then leans down to wipe the blood away. It's dry and doesn't want to budge.

“Sam?” Kevin hedges from the doorway.

Sam's gut lurches. He forgot the kid was there.

Straightening quickly, he puts on what he hopes is a bolstering smile. “Let's let him rest,” he says, and ushers Kevin out of the room before pulling the door nearly closed.

Out in the bright lights of the hallway, he draws a deep breath, letting it out until his lungs ache.

“You said the alarms went off?” he asks, not looking at Kevin as he turns and heads back toward the garage.

“Yeah.” Kevin follows him, trotting to match his pace. “All the buttons on the control panel lit up, then so did that map table. A whole bunch of red dots.”

Sam spares the table a glance as they pass it. No dots now. He didn't even know it could light up. He could, however, hazard a guess as to what the dots were.

“The angels fell,” he says.

“The—what? All of them?”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He knows he's too calm; he should be freaking out right now, but his thoughts are streamlined and his hands are steady. “Dean said Cas’ name. I guess he went through with the Angel Trials after all.”

“That…” Kevin trails off. “Wow.”

“Yeah.”

Taking the stairs to the garage at a two-step gallop downwards, Sam doesn't break stride until he's at the trunk of the Impala. He unlocks it and throws it open to reveal a red-faced, seething Crowley, still bound head and foot. Crowley opens his mouth, no doubt to call Sam every nasty name in the book, when he sees Kevin. The rage becomes calculating. His smirk is too wide for his mouth.

Sam can't fucking stand to see it.

“Say one word to him and I'll leave you in here,” he snarls.

Crowley's eyebrows rise. “Fair enough,” he says, bound hands up in a mockery of surrender.

Sam grabs the rope between his wrists and hauls him bodily out onto the floor. Crowley hits with a thud, hissing.

“Watch the goods, Samantha!”

“Shut up,” Sam says, and begins to drag him toward the stairs.

His shoulder is burning by the time he gets them to the dungeon, but the ache is worth it. Crowley's suit is covered in dirt and grime, his hair is sticking up in all directions, and he's swearing a blue streak in several different languages. Sam is deft with the iron-wrought collar, locking it in place before Crowley can bite him again. Then he steps back and hooks his thumbs in his pockets, watching Crowley gnash and rave with a bored expression his old theater teachers would have been proud of.

Crowley stops ranting mid-swear, and huffs.

“You're looking rather nonchalant for someone who just failed to close my gates,” he says. Then, “Wait.” 

His eyes dance up and down Sam's body with increasing suspicion.

“How did you do that?”

Sam arches a brow. “Do what?”

“Heal yourself, you nonce. You looked like a Victorian orphan the last time I saw you.”

Crowley squints at him beyond the stark pool of light from the overhead bulb.

“Did you drink my blood while I was out?” he hedges. “Is that it? A couple doses of demonic Mother's Helper, and you're right as rain?”

Sam scoffs. “You're mostly diluted, in case you forgot. It'd be like drinking my own blood at this point.”

“A spell, then, was it?”

“I'm here. You're here. That's all that matters.”

“Aw,” Crowley croons. “Sweet Samantha. You saved me because you care.” His voice cracks. A ripple of displeasure contorts his face, but his eyes are wide. Tell me you care.

“I deserve to be loved!” he howled in the church.

Does he, though?

No, Sam thinks.

“I saved you,” he says deliberately, “because I might need you. You're a powerful chess piece to hold. Although,” he adds with affected innocence, “it doesn't seem like Abaddon would agree.”

“Abaddon.” Crowley says the name like it tastes disgusting. “She doesn't respect the hierarchy. The chain of command. When I get free—”

“If. If you get free.”

“Oh, I will. I'll be back downstairs before you know it. And you, and that breezeblock-headed brother of yours—Say,” Crowley redirects with a coy tilt of his head. “Where is Dean?”

“Taking shots in the kitchen,” Sam lies smoothly, “and I'm about to join him, but I wanted you to know something.”

“Do tell.”

“If I find out you were lying, about any of it—”

“Any of what, darling?”

“The Trials,” Sam spits. “The tablet. The fact that there's only one. If I find out you were hiding anything behind that sorry sob-fest—”

“Of course there's only one.” Crowley sounds genuinely fed up. “Why would I waste my time otherwise?”

“Quit fucking interrupting me.”

Crowley waves him away, a gesture made far less grandiose by the handcuffs. “Bring me a drink, would you? Or better yet, tell Dean to bring it. He and I need to have a chat about your manners.”

Sam doesn't say anything to that. He waits until Crowley begins to laugh, thinking he's won, then turns out the light.

“Wait! Sam?”

Hearing genuine fear in someone's voice has never felt so satisfying. Sam might wonder what that says about his mental state, except it's Crowley, who despite his recent Trial-induced confessions deserves much, much worse.

“Sam, don't leave me here like this!”

He shuts the door.

“So… why are we keeping Crowley alive?”

Glancing away from the bookshelf, several manuscripts in his hands, Sam sees the hardened expression on Kevin's face and recognizes it from the mirror.

“He killed my mom,” Kevin reminds him.

Yeah, Sam knows how that feels. He's lost so many loved ones now. Lost Dean so much more than once. He sees himself in Kevin's tense posture, the set of his jaw, the clenching of fists that clearly ache to do some damage.

The circles under Kevin's eyes match his dark, oily hair. He probably didn't sleep the whole time he was here alone. Sam understands that too.

“Have you had any water lately?” Sam asks, setting his materials on the table beside his laptop. He's itching to get started, even though he knows that without knowing what exactly Dean did, he's flying blind. 

“I don't need water! I need—”

“Revenge?” The kid startles at that. “Kevin, it won't bring your mom back.”

“It'd make me feel better,” Kevin mutters defiantly.

Sam can't help a little smile. “I know what you mean. But trust me, it won't.”

“What happened to Dean, isn't that Crowley’s fault?”

“Not really,” Sam says. He glances down at his own broad hand splayed over the cover of one of the books. “He, uh. He makes his own choices.”

He remembers the way Dean looked at him. Those green eyes so wide, the way his chin held the barest tremble before his haymaker laid Sam out. Strength, stubbornness, and desperation. Dean looks at him like no one else ever has, like Sam is the whole world, the only thing in the cosmos that matters. Sam understands the feeling, if not why he deserves it. He feels the same when he looks at Dean.

“I'm gonna go check on him.”

He eyes Kevin.

“Don't bother with Crowley. He's not worth it.”

Kevin just stares at him. Sam knows he's preaching to a brick wall. But he has to try, right? It feels like he has to try, even if part of him would like nothing more than to watch someone go to town on Crowley with every torture instrument known to man. A memory of Sarah's red face, her mouth working as she struggled for air, rises unbidden to the forefront of his mind. Oh, but he wants to watch Crowley suffer. He wants to help.

But, a part of him supposes, Crowley is suffering. He's sitting alone, chained in the dark, with a newfound humanity to grapple with. Things he hasn't felt for hundreds of years are crowding around inside him now. He's suffocating in a different way, caught in a vise of guilt and despair, but suffocating nonetheless. He's torturing himself.

“Let him freak himself out in there,” Sam says. “He's hurting already. If you give him the satisfaction of seeing you out of control, he'll feel like he's in control. And he's not. Not by a long shot.”

“Yeah,” Kevin says. “Okay.”

Sam doesn't feel heard, but he's done trying. He needs to go check on Dean. It's been too long. There's still silence down the hallway, and though he was breathing when Sam left him—

What if he's—oh God. It hits Sam like a ton of bricks. What if while he dicked around out here, Dean—what if he—

“Oh shit,” he breathes.

Dean!

Then he's moving, maximizing his stride, eating up the distance between the two of them. By the time he hits the stairs, he's running. Navigating the hallways feels like it takes decades, his heart booming in his chest. His steps chant: what if, what if, what if.

Skidding, he grabs the doorframe to stop his wild momentum and throws open the door to Dean's room.

Dean is right where he left him, lying there on his back, so still. It doesn't look like he moved at all. It doesn't look like he's breathing.

Oh God, oh fuck, is he breathing?

Sam throws himself across the room, thudding painfully to his knees beside the bed. He grabs Dean's hand. Still warm.

Digging his fingers into Dean's wrist, Sam waits. Wills himself to stop trembling so he can find a pulse. After too long a moment, dread thick and bitter on his tongue, he feels it. A flutter of life hanging on by a thread.

“Dean.” Sam doesn't recognize his own voice. It's a moan and a prayer, fear and hope.

His brother sucks in air through his nose. The corners of his mouth twitch downward. Then his head lolls to the side, and his eyes slowly open, fixing Sam with a foggy stare.

“Sammy?” he croaks.

“There he is!” Sam breathes, reaching up to cup Dean's face, feeling the sandpaper quality of his cheek, his jaw. The warmth of it. The life of it.

Dean groans, shifting his whole body toward Sam with what looks like monumental effort. He's trying to roll onto his side, but his body seems to be fighting it every step of the way. He inhales sharply, triggers a cough, then coughs again. The more he tries to shift, the worse it gets.

“Hey, don't try to move,” Sam chides him; can't stop touching him, shoulder and back, waist and hip. Dean is solid and alive, even if he's starting to shake like a leaf. “Just relax, man. I've got you.”

He's so pale, even in the warm light of the lamp, and there are high spots of color on his cheeks that smack of fever. He's not looking away from Sam, barely blinking, eyes dancing over every part of Sam they can see. His diaphragm keeps rippling with every breath, like he's trying desperately not to cough, each exhale a series of winded huffs.

It's taking every ounce of Sam's willpower not to cup Dean's face in his hand again and stroke his thumb across Dean's cheekbone. He settles for doing so on Dean's side, feeling the ridges of his ribs, and the way they quiver with his labored breaths.

“What in the hell did you do?” he asks softly. “Don't answer, not until you can, but—oh man, why?”

Dean's eyes just roam his face, like he's drinking in every detail. Memorizing me, Sam realizes. He did the same before Dean's deal came due. Before he said yes to Lucifer. It's the desperation of a man who thinks he's dying.

You should have let me die, Sam thinks.

He doesn't mask it quick enough. He sees Dean clock it, sees Dean's eyes fly open wide in disbelief.

“Sam—”

More coughing.

“Goddamnit.”

Coughing.

Sam glares at him. “Stop trying to talk, idiot.”

“Shut up.”

“No.”

You should have let me die! Sam's brain projects, unbidden. 

“Look,” Dean rasps darkly, “don't you dare think—” His diaphragm contracts again in a flurry of suppressed coughs. “—th-that there is anything—past, or—or present, that I would put—in front of—you.” He falls into coughing out loud again, throaty and dry, with a sharp noise on the tail end of each one that hurts to hear. It must be so much worse for him.

“Sam—” He tries, coughing again. “Sam—my—”

“Shut up,” Sam says, still quiet, underneath the racket. “Shut up—” He can't stop saying it. “Shut up, shut up, shut up—Fuck!” Dean's arm has swung up and around, smacking him on the head.

“You shut up,” Dean croaks. Coughs some more. “Ain't—ain't gonna let you—die, you little—shit.”

Little. Sam snorts.

“Help me—” A crackling, labored breath. “—sit up.”

“Are you sure?”

Dean grunts, struggling to push himself upright. His arms shudder violently, like he's already done a full workout. Sam grabs him, manhandling him around until Dean is collapsing back against the headboard, breathing hard. His lungs sound like popcorn. There must be fluid in them.

Sam stands with a grunt, straightening his knees until the joints crack, then sinks down again to perch on the side of the bed. Dean's thigh is warm against his.

“I dunno—how you managed—this,” Dean says with a weak laugh full of wonder and self-loathing, staring up at the ceiling. “You were up and—and fightin’ like it was—nothing.”

Sam could shake him till candy comes out. He wants to grab Dean's face in both hands, force their eyes to meet, but instead just digs his fingernails into his denim-clad thighs.

“Tell me what you did, Dean.”

“Heh.” The little laugh breaks Sam's heart. Dean's forehead and the sides of his eyes crinkle when he smiles and says, “I fixed it.” He swallows, throat dry, the little click loud in Sam's ears. Sam is trying to understand, he really is, but—

“Fixed what?”

“You! The, uh, dying—part. Fixed it.” Dean sounds almost proud. “Ain't—gonna happen.”

Sam sits back on his heels. “How?”

Dean opens his mouth, but his forehead creases and he looks—not confused, but unsettled. His fist presses into his chest. A low little groan works its way out of his throat.

“Ugh. You remember—” he says, “—when we were—kids, and you—grew out of your—shoes.” He takes several quick, shallow breaths. “I had you—swap with me.”

“Yeah,” Sam says slowly, “and I was grateful. But it was stupid, because then you were the one wearing too-small shoes.”

Dean makes a scoffing noise and waves a hand dismissively.

Sam tries to understand. “So you… swapped…” Realization dawns, and all the blood drains out of his face. “You swapped our physical states?” His eyes are open as wide as they'll go and they feel so dry.

All he gets from his brother is a tired grin.

How is that even possible? Sam wants to ask. His jaw is working, but nothing is coming out. He stares into eyes like fresh-cut grass, hooded in pain but infuriatingly satisfied. Where did you even find a spell that does that? How did you even think of that? He supposes Dean thinks the shoe analogy covers it. Sam remembers how it felt to slide his feet into Dean's warm boots, and remembers how suddenly great he felt in the parking lot. Dean feels—felt like that. Sam suppresses a shiver. He feels—

Oh, man. He can still feel it. That warmth, that crackling alertness. Somehow he knows it's more than just Dean's kinetic energy. He feels more alive in his skin, more than himself, and it's because Dean is inside him.

When he thinks of it that way, the whole thing feels dirtier than it should. 

He kind of likes that.

Dean is inside me. And I'm inside—oh no, bad. Bad train of thought. Lock that down.

He hadn't thought about it in a long time, not until the confession. But feeling Dean's energy still running through his body feels like Dean's hands on his skin, pressing in, leaving bruises shaped like fingerprints, and it's actually turning Sam on something fierce. 

No, no, I gotta stop—

Dean shifts in front of him, and it snaps Sam back to the present. He stares. His brother, for all he's hunched and starting to sweat again, looks radiant. A soft glow washes through the room, rippling, warming the color of his skin, highlighting the summer colors in his eyes.

Wait. That's not just the lamplight.

Sam glances down. Both of Dean's forearms are glowing. Like his own did after every Trial—and after every Trial, along with the glow, there came the most intense, searing pain he'd ever felt. And he's dealt with a lot of pain in his life. So has Dean, but—

Sam meets Dean's eyes again just as Dean lets out a choked little noise and doubles over.

Sam catches him.

“You swapped our physical states,” he whispers, as Dean shakes in his arms. “Dean, you asshole.”

He gets a long, ragged growl in return, frustration bleeding through the pain. A withered cry escapes Dean then, a ghost of his screams in the parking lot.

Do you even really know what you did? Sam thinks. Did you care at all about what it would do to you?

He thinks back to what he confessed in the church, how hard he sought the purity that the Trials required. Now, he's cleaner inside than he's ever been—but he feels so fucking tarnished. So much worse than before. He didn't steal this refresher, but it feels like he stole it, all because Dean didn't think. He never thinks. He acts. He charges in all half-cocked and so sure of what he's doing, despite the fact that he's full of shit.

Dean didn't heal him. Dean stole his injuries to bear them. He's carrying Sam's dead weight again, and Sam had no say in it at all. 

How could you possibly think this is right?

“Thought I could handle it,” Dean says between chattering teeth. “Not as strong as you, little brother.”

Sam scoffs. “Don't give me that. You're the one who carries me everywhere. I'm just… baggage.”

Dean's teeth clack together hard, and grind. He squints at Sam.

“Do—do you actually think that?” he grunts.

“How could I not? You're always saving me.” Sam doesn't mean to sneer, but it's out there now. “So you're, what? Gonna finish the Trials for me? Die instead of me?” He's getting louder. His face is burning. “Is this because I ‘stole’ them from you in the first place, when I killed the hellhound?”

“What?—No.”

“Then what, Dean?” Sam is aware he's practically yelling in Dean's ear, but he can't let go of his brother any more than he can calm down about this. “What's the big idea? What's the plan?”

“I was gonna—” Dean says. “—get rid of it—somehow. I guess. I don't—know.”

He doesn't know. He doesn't know. Sam could laugh in his face. His abs clench hard against that, can't do that, but he still lets out a huff of hysterical indignation while he shoves Dean back up into a sitting position.

“And you don't think I could have done that?”

The glow is still there, writhing under Dean's skin, though it's faded somewhat. Sam wonders if it feels as hot on the outside as it did on the inside. He wants to clap a hand on top of it, but doesn't let himself let go of Dean's biceps. He's pretty sure Dean will topple over if he does.

“I don't—think you would,” Dean snaps. “You were about to—to argue with me back there, about how it was—” He lets out a little pained moan. “—for the greater good, or—what the fuck—ever.”

“It is! It was,” Sam says, running a hand through his dirty hair. “I needed to do it. I—” was being purified. I was finally good for something. Dean, I finally felt like I was fulfilling a purpose that would make the world better, for once.

“Well, I ain't—gonna let you kill—yourself.”

Sam fixes him with a flat look. “So you'll die instead.”

The glow of the power is fading again, leaving them in mere lamplight, a sickly artificial yellow compared to the supernatural warmth of that power. Dean's eyes glitter with flecks of imperfect gold when he stares right back at Sam. It's not a challenge for him, it's a fact, when he says:

“Better me than—than you, but—” He winces. Rubs his chest again. “Neither of us, if I can—help it.” He sounds so tired. His voice, his throat are shot. Talking is hard, but he's doing it. He'll only communicate with his whole heart when it's life or death.

God, you're such an idiot, Sam thinks. Smart as hell, but dumb as a box of rocks. You think I'm gonna let you just do something like this, then sit back and watch it happen?

“Let it go, then,” he says.

“I tried,” Dean bites out. “You don't—think I tried? Right away—in, in the parking lot. I didn't want to hold onto it. But it won't—fuckin’ go anywhere. It's got—claws in me, Sam. Doesn't—matter what I—flex, or how I breathe, or—or if I think happy thoughts.”

A couple more deep coughs wrack his frame but he's holding himself tense, refusing to double over. He's getting worked up. The glow is resurfacing in both his arms, a malevolent sunrise.

“Hey,” Sam says, “it's okay. We'll figure it out—”

“Will we? ‘Cause I don't—know. And to be perfectly—fucking—honest with you—Sam—” Light shines bright beneath his skin now, swelling in his veins, forcing his muscles to bunch and jerk around. “I—”

“If you say you don't care, I'm punching you.”

Dean clams up. The bolt of his jaw throbs with how hard he's grinding his teeth.

“Look, just—” Sam pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes squeezing shut for a moment. “Just tell me everything, okay? Be honest, and we'll figure it out.”

A measured exhale.

The glow beneath Dean's skin dims and disappears.

The whole story comes out in fits and starts.

After Sam runs and gets him some water, they discover that Dean doesn't cough so much if he's lying on his right side, so they shift him a bit. After a brief moment of hesitation from Sam—because it's been decades since they last shared a bed, but his knees are protesting the concrete floor like crazy—he lies down too, face to face. They're so close, Sam could count his brother's freckles if he wanted to. He can feel Dean's breath on his skin. He's not sure what to do with his hands, so he props one up under his head, the other extended awkwardly along his leg. The idea of curling it up to his chest feels too much like the idea of pillow talk, and this is too serious to risk half his mind wandering over maladaptive daydreams of afterglows and sweet nothings. There will be plenty of time to wallow in fantasy after this is over.

Dean explains everything in a low voice. He sounds exhausted. Sam can match each wince and shift with the symptoms he experienced himself just hours ago. It's weird to see them and not feel them. During one bad surge, when Dean's forearms flare back up like twin beacons and every muscle in his body contracts, Sam almost reaches out to see if he can cup Dean's cheek in his palm and feel it again, the power, the paradoxical weakness and strength that gripped him toward the end.

It was clarity, it was fog. It was a single thread of conscious intent, and a galaxy birthed in his synapses. It was tearing him apart.

Now it's tearing Dean apart.

“I was with Cas when Naomi found us,” Dean tells him. “She told us Metatron was working another angle; some kinda revenge schtick, trying to kick all the angels out of Heaven like he thinks they did to him, or whatever. Cas didn't take it well. He kept saying she was lying. But when she said you were gonna die, I—” His voice cracks, and he coughs. “I just couldn't take that chance. I had Cas fly me over.”

The lines on Dean's face are even more pronounced now, more than they were just yesterday and so much more so than when they were kids, the last time they laid together like this, whispered together like this. Déjà vu is threatening to overwhelm Sam's will and send him spiraling into fantasy anyway.

He glances at Dean's lips, dry and cracked, and just as quickly forces his eyes back up. Dean's are closed.

Dean keeps talking, energy sapping out of every word.

“I looked in through the window, saw you at the altar, praying, and I just…” He huffs. It might have been a chuckle, it might have been a scoff. Sam doesn't know. “I knew that no matter what I said, you'd never give it up.”

His next exhale is a deep sigh.

“So, I had Cas bring me back here.”

Sam startles at that. Blinks hard. Here?

“Yeah, I—I snuck in. Don't tell Kevin, I know he's all proud of himself for beating the demons at their own game, but his instincts are for shit.” Dean opens his eyes into tired slits. He's grinning now. “I was right behind him.”

“We can't tell him that,” Sam snorts. “He'll never sleep again.”

“No kidding.”

The urge is back, to touch Dean's face, to stroke through the bristles of his hair—not just to try and feel what he feels, but to connect with him on a greater level than just words and looks. Sam can't remember the last time they hugged. It might have been when Dean got back from Purgatory. It's always before or after something cataclysmic. Never just because.

He wonders what Dean would do if he slung an arm around him now and dragged him close. If he'd fight it off, or just let it happen. If he'd accept any comfort now. If he'd hug back.

“You showed me that thing—” Dean cuts off with a shiver. His eyelids slip closed again on a groan that escapes through his nose, and they don't open again for long enough that Sam tenses up, starts to worry. His lips start to form Dean's name.

“The organizing thing,” Dean murmurs, “for the library.”

“The concordance,” Sam says.

“Yeah.”

“You thought it was cool.” Disbelief wars with something akin to pride. “You said it'd make things easier.”

Dean hums. “Yeah. It did.”

“So you snuck in here and looked up a spell that would transfer the effects of the Trials from me to you? Just like that?” It sounds stupid when Sam says it, because it is, but also because it feels like it should have been more complicated than that. “And where was Cas?”

“Outside, clutchin’ his pearls.”

“Ew.”

“Not like that, you dork.” That's definitely pride in Dean's voice. Years of crude jokes have worn off on Sam, and he's proud. Jerk. But he still hasn't opened his eyes. “He was twitchy about getting back to Heaven.” Dean's lips and forehead scrunch into a frown. “I guess he wanted to get it over with.”

All the angels cast down to live among humanity. What an endgame. Apparently all those millennia of reading human stories didn't stop Metatron from developing a massive martyr complex.

Sam didn't ask, do you think Cas is okay? He's not sure Dean would have an answer—or even want him to be, after that chilling fireworks display.

Soft, even breaths reach his ears, and he realizes Dean has fallen asleep. His lips are slightly parted. All his worry lines smooth out when he's deep asleep, and he looks so much younger. Sam is seized, again, again, with the urge to touch his brother's face. Does it make him a creep to do it while Dean is sleeping? Or just cautious to a fault?

Either way, he gives in. He lightly trails two fingertips down from Dean's temple along the ridge of his jaw, which tenses at the touch, but Dean doesn't stir. Sam grows bolder. He flattens his palm along Dean's cheek, feeling the sting of fever in the warmth there, the unshaven texture. His fingertips rest above the stubble, on the fine-milled swath atop Dean's high cheekbone. He marvels at the way Dean's face fits in his hand just so—like they were meant to be lying here just like this.

He threads his fingers back through Dean's hair, stroking it away from his ear. His thumb trails down to the corner of Dean's mouth, and before Sam can stop himself, he's pressing in on Dean's plump lower lip, just a little.

It's too easy to imagine dipping his thumb into Dean's mouth. What would his tongue feel like? His teeth? Would he move instinctively in his sleep and suck—

Sam snatches his hand away like it burns.

Holy shit, he needs to get out of this bed.

When he leaves the room, he leaves the light on and doesn't close the door. He remembers what it was like to wake up alone in the dark, mired in half-remembered horrors. If Dean dreams like that too, if he snaps awake in a mindless frenzy of sweat and nightmares that don't fade fast enough, he's going to want to know he's safe in his own bed.

Sam would stay, but apparently, he can't trust himself.

Hours later, he's still awake. He doesn't feel like he needs to sleep. What he needs is right in front of him on the library table: the massive handwritten concordance of every book, manuscript, film reel, and artifact in the whole goddamn bunker.

It's an undertaking to just flip the thing open—it's two square feet in size, and heavy—let alone find anything. The Men of Letters had their own innate system of organization that, to put it lightly, makes no sense whatsoever. If Sam had never seen Dean working on a deadline, especially when it involved lives they care about, he wouldn't understand how Dean found the spell so quickly. But his brother is so fucking sharp. It's part of what makes him perfect for the job they do. It also makes times like these—when Sam has to play catch-up and save Dean from typical, reckless disregard for his own life—incredibly frustrating. To say the least.

Kevin pops in and out, offering to help, but also looking so dead on his feet that Sam practically has to order him to go back to bed every time.

“And drink some water,” he adds. “Maybe eat something?”

“No thanks, I'm—” An enormous yawn splits Kevin's face. “I'm good.”

“Right.” Sam lays the sarcasm on thick. “I don't want to see you again for at least three hours. And I'm timing you.”

They don't talk about the knapsack at the bottom of the stairs; how it's Kevin's, and packed full. The fact that Kevin is still here means whatever happened with the alarms in the bunker, when the angels fell, freaked him out enough to stay. Sam is hoping that the promise of safety and security here will get through to him, and he won't try it again. Too many things out there eat prophets for breakfast. Besides, why does he even want to leave? Everybody else he knows is dead.

By the time the sun is rising, Sam has made it through a third of the concordance. His nails are bitten to the quick, and he's working on tearing hangnails off in strips as he turns page after page. He's given up on finding relevant sections by keyword in the massive index, and has resorted to just scanning the entire thing from start to finish. He found the spell Dean used—it's a fairly straightforward incantation, a few herbs and the blood of both parties, and is almost certainly irreversible. Blood oaths usually are. Sam is a little disappointed in himself when he realizes he's not surprised to find out that Dean used literal blood magic to save him. Dean has done—and would do again, it's just the way he is—far worse. Hell, they both have.

What Sam needs, short of a miracle, is a way to disperse the power completely. Dean said something about letting it go. More than once, Sam wonders if it could really be that simple, like finding the right muscle to flex.

A sudden, heavy step behind him has Sam whirling around in his chair to see Dean on the landing. He's wearing a clean pair of gray sweatpants and a long-sleeved, army-green Henley, his hair in soft disarray. He's leaning heavily on the railing, dark circles under his eyes, but as Sam leaps up to rush over he smiles like sunbeams breaking through clouds.

“You should be in bed,” Sam says, getting an arm around him. A flash of déjà vu: Dean in a hoodie, pale and wincing. A motel room in… where was that? When was that?

“I'm not gonna die in a hospital where the nurses aren't even hot.”

The reaper. The first time they ever saw one. God, that was so long ago. Back before they both died.

That is such a weird concept, Sam can't help it; he chokes out a laugh. Dean plops down in the library chair and turns to face him, deadpan and questioning. Sam can't help but notice that the color of the shirt brings out his eyes.

“Gonna share with the class?”

“Nothing,” Sam says, “just our lives.”

“Weird as fuck?”

“Yeah.”

Sam sits in the chair next to him and drags the concordance between them. “I found your spell,” he says, “but I can't find anything to reverse it—”

“Sammy, I don't want—”

“—or,” Sam continues, louder, plowing over him, “to release it. Everything we have on the Trials is on the tablet, which obviously paints a one-way picture, but I was hoping to find something similar with, like, an emergency switch.”

Beside him, Dean sucks in a breath. His fists are clenched, pressing into his thighs. Though he's wearing long sleeves, Sam doesn't have to see the glow to know it's coming back. He remembers how it snaked its way up and down his arms, so bright beneath the map of his veins, swelling tighter and tighter until it felt like he would burst.

“That's not gonna stop,” he says, not because it's helpful, but because he has to.

“I figured.”

“It's killing you.”

“I know.” Dean says it so plainly. He looks over at Sam, looks him right in the eye, and says, “If we can find Crowley again—”

Crowley is downstairs in the dungeon, but Dean doesn't know that. Dean doesn't need to know that.

“No,” Sam says sharply. “Don't even think about it.”

“I didn't mean finish the Trials, Sam, Jesus. I meant…” Dean trails off, looking down at the table. “Never mind, that's stupid.”

“What?”

“I was just thinkin’... if the last step was purification, injecting a demon with human blood, then what would happen if I—”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Like I said, stupid.”

Definitely—for several reasons, one of which being that the last thing they need is to introduce a foreign toxin to Dean's compromised system—but Sam can't stop his mind from running with it. Reverse the purification. Release the power. Draw it out, like… like sucking venom out of a snake bite, or… replace it with something else. Indiana Jones switching a golden monkey with a bag of sand, but in an alternate reality where that actually worked. Maybe the sand didn't weigh enough, or maybe the pedestal could sense the artifact itself. Maybe it could tell when what weighed it down wasn't pure gold. So, it follows that what they replace this power with has to be just as powerful, just as pure.

Wait, but Dean isn't pure. Not in the sense the Trials mean. He might be a righteous man in the eyes of Heaven, but he's never confessed his sins in a church. So far as Sam is aware, he's never copped to anything, ever; not to the authorities, not to Sam if he can help it, and certainly not to God. That means that by all rights, he can't finish the Trials—but doesn't it also mean that the power should have rejected him to begin with? Sam went through the steps. He gave himself over, body and soul, to the process, but Dean just… stole it. He may have swapped their physical states, but this runs deeper. Soul deep.

Sam glances over to where Dean sits, head bowed, fists clenched against his thighs again. No wonder he's hurting. Not only did he not take it one step at a time like Sam did, but the power is rejecting him. Somehow, he's containing it—but for how long? Will it explode and take him with it?

“Sammy!” Dean gasps.

His whole body spasms hard, jackknifing forward, slamming his head into the table. He topples sideways off the chair to seize violently on the floor. The chair gets kicked across the floor. Sam lunges out of his own chair to Dean's side. Dean's eyes are rolled all the way back, only the whites showing, and his teeth are bared, clenched, grinding. Light, burning white-hot, is spreading up from under his collar and down to his fingertips.

All Sam can do is keep a steadying hand on him until the seizure passes. It's gut-wrenching to watch. He can't help or make it stop. Dean is dying in slow motion, Dean is dying, Dean is dying.

Why didn't you let me finish? he thinks helplessly. If you'd just let me finish, none of this would be happening. You'd be okay. I need you to be okay.

It seems like hours pass. Dean's twitching eventually slows, his breaths evening out, his jaw relaxing as his eyelids slip shut. He's unconscious, but otherwise seems stable, for now.

Sam gets one hand under Dean's back, the other under his knees, and hoists him up. Being able to utilize his full strength again is a mixed bag of gratitude and spite.

Goddamnit, Dean.

He gets his brother once more situated in bed, but rather than heading right back to his research, Sam lingers there in the lamplight. He wonders if it would feel right if he laid down beside Dean again—if he actually pulled Dean into his arms this time and held him there, if it would help.

Help Dean, his treacherous mind whispers, or you, with your sick little crush? It's a wonder you thought you could ever truly be pure.

But, an even quieter whisper posits, who knows if this is the last time you'll get the chance?

They're both right. But despite knowing he's running out of time to give in, to take and give comfort the way he would have when they were younger—never mind the rest—Sam turns away from the bed, and leaves the room. He doesn't close the door.

Two days of this. Two days, and Dean hasn't left his room except to pee and occasionally, throw up. Sam can hear him retching bile all the way from the library. He can't keep food down—Sam remembers everything tasting and smelling like hot rotting garbage—so he doesn't even try. He's hydrating, at least. Sam makes sure the glass of water by his bed is always full.

Late evening on the second day, Castiel shows up at the door.

He looks like he's been through the ringer. His trenchcoat is gone, his face is haggard, and his eyes are sunken. Haunted. He looks like a puppy that someone drop-kicked into a mud puddle; diminished and exhausted, dressed in ratty old clothes that don't fit him. Wordlessly, Sam lets him in.

“Where is Dean?” Castiel asks, glancing around as they cross the library floor.

“I'll tell you after you shower,” Sam says. He's not going to say it, but he's surprised there aren't any flies. “You remember where the bathroom is?”

“Yes…” There's a faraway look in the angel's eyes that Sam recognizes. Dissociation. “Humans need to bathe.”

Sam frowns at that phrasing, but steps back and lets him shuffle toward the stairs.

Dean is in his bed in a rumpled black t-shirt, headphones on, hands clasped across his chest. The lamp is still on. Neither of them have mentioned it, but Sam is sure he's avoiding what he instinctively knows the darkness would bring. He's lost weight. From the doorway, Sam can hear tinny rock music, but for far too long, he doesn't see Dean’s chest rise or fall. Sam's heart thuds painfully out of sync. He's frozen. If Dean has—

If he just up and died—

Before Sam can move or even suck in a high, panicked breath, those green eyes flicker open and lock onto his. Dean has him on radar like always. Thank fucking fuck. Dean is still alive.

Relief floods Sam's whole body in a rush that leaves him lightheaded.

A hand that's grown far too thin, delicate bones beneath parchment paper, pulls the headphones off. The music gets louder before Dean taps his phone and pauses it.

“What's up?” he grunts.

“Just, uh. Checking in.”

Sam tries for a smile and knows instantly it was the wrong move, because he can't fake one right now, and he knows Dean hates it when he tries. He sees Dean's face cloud over, ready to storm, so hurriedly he says,

“Cas is back.”

“Really?” Dean asks slowly. He's frowning. Sam remembers the angelic meteor storm, and wonders if Dean even wants Cas here. But then Dean asks, “He okay?”

“He looks like a fresh pile of crap, but he seems to be in one piece.” More or less. “When he gets out of the shower, you ought to—”

“Don't tell him,” Dean blurts.

Sam blinks at him. “Why not?”

“Don't want him to know.”

“Uh…

Dean's glare returns full force, a sudden thunderclap.

“Okay, okay,” Sam says, hands up, placating. He resists the urge to back out of the room, hating how kid brother he feels whenever Dean threatens him. “I won't say anything.”

“About what?”

Castiel's low voice right beside him in the doorway nearly flinches Sam out of his skin.

“Uh, nothing!” he says, reaching out blindly, grabbing at the doorknob. “Dean's changing, and he's just super self-conscious.” He yanks the door shut.

“Smooth!” comes a shout from within.

Sam shoots a glare at the door.

He looks back to see Castiel staring in typical unnerving scrutiny. It doesn't make him nervous, though. If anything, he's tired. So fucking tired.

“Feel better?” he asks, hoping that a change of subject works.

Castiel blinks.

“The shower,” Sam prompts.

“Oh! Yes. I feel… refreshed.”

“Good. That's good.”

Sparing a glance at the door, Sam lowers his voice.

“Is it possible—” He hesitates, then charges ahead. “Can you heal Dean without knowing what's wrong with him?”

“No.”

Startled, Sam turns. “Okay,” he says, unable to keep bewilderment out of his tone, because it never seemed to matter before. “Well, he doesn't want me to tell you, so—”

“I can't heal him at all, Sam.”

That sets Sam back on his heels.

“What? You can't—I mean, if it's a question of how, I'm sure we could convince him to, you know… tell you…”

He trails off, because while he's trying to meet Castiel’s eyes, to somehow telegraph how important this is, Castiel is looking at the floor, frowning at it like it offended him. The expression deepens the lines on his face, carrying down to the slump of his shoulders. His entire posture is different now. Sam thought it was the stress of whatever journey he took to get here, but now it's looking like more than that.

“Cas,” he ventures, “what happened the other night?”

Castiel is looking everywhere but at him, eyes darting from the floor to the wall, counting the tiles so clearly Sam can almost count them with him.

Then suddenly, he says to the tiles, “Metatron stole my grace.”

“He—” Sam blinks. “What?”

Now those eyes find him, weathered blue like the oceans on old maps, and—Sam is shocked to recognize it from the times he saw it in himself—Cas looks dead inside. All the otherworldly energy he normally holds behind his gaze is gone. Sam didn't know that was possible. 

“I am, for all intents and purposes—” Castiel sighs. “—mortal.”

“Well, shit,” comes from inside Dean's room.

The door opens. Sam is still looking at Castiel, so sees the moment the angel—can they even still call him that?—takes in the extent of the damage. Castiel's jaw literally drops and he gapes, his eyes wide. He actually rocks back a step.

“Yeah,” Dean acknowledges gruffly, barely any sound to it.

“You're—Dean,” Cas says, clearly in shock. “Are you aware you're glowing?”

“What, this?” Sam turns to see Dean hold up an arm, lit from the inside again, trembling in midair. “Yeah, that's what I get for going on a date from Craigslist.”

Castiel blinks.

“It's fine, Cas.” He shifts forward. “Outta the way, peanut gallery. I gotta take a piss.”

Dean takes one step out into the hallway and promptly collapses.

Instinctively, Sam catches him. He's so much lighter than he should be. He's also burning hot to the touch, so much so that sweat prickles along Sam's hairline just holding him. He can't let go. Can't stand him up. Has to just look as Dean's eyelashes flutter, his face screwed up in pain again, again, God, how many times? Dean groans, low in his throat, and doesn't make any move to right himself, just hanging there in Sam's arms. The glow doesn't fade. Sam can't even be sure he's still conscious.

Sam looks up at Castiel.

“I don't know what to do. He's—” 

He has to look back down at Dean's face. It's taut with pain, more alarming for the fact that the rest of him is completely limp. Sam swallows against a lump rising thick and fast in his throat, a swelling behind his eyes, burning at the corners.

“He's such an idiot,” Sam whispers hoarsely.

He blinks, and unhelpful tears fall.

“Here,” Castiel says, gathering up Dean's other arm and slinging it over his own shoulders. “Let's get him to the bed.”

Sam can lift Dean just fine on his own, but instead of saying so, he lets Castiel help him. They walk Dean between them back into the bedroom, and lay him down as gently as possible.

He's breathing, Sam tells himself. He's alive. Dean's lungs struggle to fill, his dry lips parting again and again like he's trying to whisper something in his unconscious state, but they're still regular breaths. He's gonna be okay.

Why does it feel like a lie? There's still time.

There's still time. Even if it's just five minutes—

Castiel must see something on Sam's face, because he walks away instead of standing there staring. Sam lingers a bare moment more, wishing for the umpteenth time that he could just sit down, gather his Dean into his arms, and hold him. It's getting so difficult to deny the urge. He's so fucking tired, for so many reasons, of so many things.

Look, you're going to fix this, Sam tells himself firmly. Don't treat it like it's hopeless.

Even if it is.

Because it's not.

He leaves the room silently, and this time, shuts the door. He knows without knowing that Dean won't open it. Dean isn't getting up again until Sam makes this right.

“Come with me,” he says to Castiel. “Grace or no grace, I need your help.”

Sam doesn't go into the details. For all he knows, Cas can guess from the subject matter and all the resources Sam has already discarded as useless. Weary blue eyes pore over manuscripts and texts, all once neatly cataloged, now spread haphazardly over every inch of the table. It occurs to Sam that Cas might need sleep now, too, but if Cas doesn't say anything about it, Sam will let him keep on trucking until he falls right out of the chair.

The single-minded focus he's always employed when the chips are down won't come to him now. His attention is divided between the words blurring together in front of him and the empty stairs behind him. He keeps hoping Dean will pop back up, his fever down to a simmer and the power coaxed to rest—or better yet, gone. Sam knows that's highly improbable, but hope springs eternal, and he'll keep tapping that spring until it runs dry.

The third day is dawning by the time he finds anything even remotely usable.

He's running on fumes. Castiel is asleep in the chair across from him, head down on his crossed arms. The books have been separated into piles: ‘to reshelve,’ ‘maybe,’ and ‘needs translation.’ Sam has his laptop open and his translator algorithm running. It keeps coming up with NO MATCH FOUND. The words start to fuzz as the static behind his eyes gets louder.

The ‘maybe’ pile contains references to a process that gets mentioned enough times to definitely exist, but none of the authors wrote about it in detail. Sam has bookmarked each passage and keeps flipping between them, hoping the sum of their parts will equal something useful. “The energy (or “essence,” or “gift,” depending on context and language) is given back (“sent,” “released,”) to the sun (“universe,” “creator or creation”).” Phrases like that keep cropping up, but in an offhand sort of way—like in the authors’ times, it's common knowledge. On more than one occasion, running up against the end of a fruitless essay, chapter, or entire book, Sam is so frustrated he nearly slams the whole thing down on the table. He gets through the ‘maybe’ pile with some kind of solution still just out of reach, and it's only the presence of someone sleeping—who apparently really needs to sleep—that keeps him from knocking the whole mess to the floor.

Another difficulty that arises is the nuance of translation. So much time has passed since some of these were written; in some cases, thousands of years. Converting them into modern syntax and vocabulary is like wrangling angry snakes—and that's not even taking into account the fact that Sam has to switch mental gears from one text to the next. They're all in different dialects from different parts of the globe. It's giving him one hell of a headache.

When he’s done saving Dean, he's rearranging this rat's nest of resources into something far more coherent. One bare, handwritten concordance the size of the Impala's engine block is not enough. He's thinking Dewey decimal numbers. Summaries. Fucking translations, oh my God.

The Men of Letters. Those sanctimonious dicks. They cared so much about knowledge, but were too pretentious to assume that someday, someone would come along without a team of scholars fluent in every language ever but with a dire deadline. And they certainly never thought they'd all die at once, taking all their proprietary knowledge with them.

You know, Sam thinks dourly, if I wasn't in a race against time, I'd resurrect them just to smack them around and make them make sense of this shit. That, I do know how to do.

There's some kind of irony there, but he's too tired.

At one point, Kevin comes up behind him and says something like, “I'm going to buy my gum,” which barely cuts through the fog of attempts to interpret a particular sentence.

“Okay,” Sam says, nonplussed, not looking up. “There's some money in my wallet by my bed, can you pick up a six pack too?”

Some time later, a deep clank as the door shuts gets heard and immediately forgotten.

Despair keeps trying to slip a noose over his head. He keeps dodging it, but he's so fucking tired. He wasn't getting proper sleep during the Trials, and his renewed strength is running out. He can't keep this up forever. Eventually, the noose will land, and tighten. He'll choke on his own hopelessness. His uselessness. He's the fucking research monkey, and he can't even do that right.

Passing his phone camera over another page, Sam uploads it to the laptop, tapping the screen with a numb fingertip. This book isn't even spells, it's fucking recipes—but he's at the end of his rope, and hey, he's been told cooking is a kind of magic. Plus, kitchen witches do exist.

He snorts. Giggles. That kind of rhymes, he thinks. Kitchen witch. Kitchen witchen.

Oh, God. He's delirious.

His laptop finishes loading the new image, and Sam clicks the button to start the program scanning for recognizable words without even looking at the screen. His eyes feel like they're coated in a thick, rubbery film. His mouth tastes like something died in there. He probably ought to eat, but he isn't hungry. He hasn't been able to shake the revulsion from too many tries when it all tasted rotten, and knowing Dean has suffered the same doesn't help.

Hangnails aren't food, but Sam nips off another one anyway, worrying the tough little piece of skin between his teeth. Some of his fingers are bleeding. It's fine.

Just then, a bright red banner pops up on the screen, strange and new enough that it draws his focus. He blinks hard a few times, sitting forward, trying to wake himself up enough to read it.

MATCH FOUND, it says.

Match—

“It's a match!” he yells.

Castiel's head flies up off his arms, his bleary eyes wide.

Sam grimaces. “Sorry,” he says, quieter.

“It's all right.” Castiel's voice sounds like the bottom of a dry well. Slowly, he begins to stretch out his upper body at various angles, obviously unused to it. “Did you find something?”

“Maybe.” Sam frowns at the screen. “It found a translation—” He squints. “Sort of. But I still have to make sense of it. The program really only understands modern versions of languages, and this stuff is ancient.”

His heart sinks as he reads. The match it claims to have found is Arabic, which isn't even his tenth strongest language to begin with, and the text as it reads in English right now is gibberish. But it features some of the same keywords as the rest of the scattered references, with the added bonus of plant names that definitely sound like ingredients. It's a recipe, all right. And Sam doesn't care at all that cooking has never been his strong suit. He'll bake a fucking layer cake with frosting and candles if it means Dean will survive.

“Sam, what are you hoping to accomplish?”

Glancing up, Sam is glad to see that Castiel looks better for having slept—even if it was mostly upright at a table.

“Huh? I want to save Dean.” Duh, says his tone. Probably his face, too.

“Of course.” Castiel nods. “But how will you go about doing that? And what will the consequences be?”

“Don't know, don't care.”

Sam casts around for his legal pad, digs it out from under a few stacks of antique parchment, and uncaps his pen with his teeth.

Verbena. Sage. The mother… do they mean cider vinegar?

“Sam—”

“Look, either help or don't, but if you care about Dean at all, you'll let me do this.” Sam knows he's being too harsh, too loud, but it can't be helped. “I don't want a therapist. I don't want logic. I just want my brother—” He jabs a thumb back at the stairs. “—to be okay again!”

“He did it to save you.”

“Yeah, but he also thought he knew what he was doing, and look how that turned out.”

Castiel's brow crinkles. “What did he think would happen?”

“I don't know,” Sam says in an aggravated sigh, running his fingers through his hair and wincing at the greasy feel of it. “He said something about letting it go. Getting rid of it somehow. I guess he thought he could just… will it away.” He frowns. “It sounded like he thought it would have been possible for me to do it, but that I just didn't want to.”

And he's right. Given the chance, I would have died in that church. Closing the gates of Hell… that's way bigger than just one life. And it's my life. All I've ever been good for is sacrifice.

Turning in his chair, he says aside to Castiel, “I'm gonna go check on him.”

Castiel stands too.

Sam shoots him a glance. “Alone.”

Nodding, Castiel begins to sink back down into the chair.

“You know, this place has, like, twenty bedrooms,” Sam says over his shoulder, heading toward the stairs. “You should go sleep in a real bed.”

He doesn't wait for a reply.

Closing the door to Dean's room was a bad idea.

When Sam opens it, he has to take a step back. The stale air inside is too warm, too humid, and sour. Dean must have woken up enough at some point to turn the bedside lamp off. Sam peers inside through the shaft of light being cast through the doorway and sees Dean lying on his side, pale limbs akimbo, tangled up in the sheets.

Sam pads over to the side of the bed and holds his own breath until he can hear Dean's, regular and rasping. A sheen of sweat catches the light on Dean's forehead, his neck, his nose. His brow is scrunched up. The pain won't leave him, even in his sleep.

As though it's reacting to Sam's presence—and maybe it is—a dull glow begins to surface along Dean's forearms. It begins at his wrists and spreads up to his elbows, swirling fitfully. It never did that when Sam held it. It only reacted to the nearing completion of each Trial. He's not sure what it means, that it's happening now, but he's sure it's nothing good.

“Dean,” he murmurs—

With a gasp, Dean flails upright like he heard a gunshot.

“Dean!” Sam sits on the edge of the bed, twisting, grabbing Dean's upper arms. “Hey! It's just me.”

“Sammy?” It comes out a dry, cracked whisper. Dean's wild eyes search his face. His hands follow, cupping Sam's cheeks, thumbs smoothing over his cheekbones, following them over to his temples and down his jaw. Sam's eyelids flutter, but he won't let them close. He resists the urge to lean into Dean's palm and instead surveys his brother's sharpening features. A few days’ growth darkens the lower half of Dean's face, making his eyes look even larger, pupils mere pinpricks in the bright light from the hall.

Dean lets his hands fall away. One of them rubs over his eyes, scrubbing down the front of his face, scratching at his cheeks, around his chin. The reddish golden hairs there dully catch the light from the hall.

His lips. They're so dry. He needs more water, Sam thinks, staring at his brother's mouth.

“Had a weird dream,” Dean grouses.

Sam's eyes snap back up to meet Dean's with a new stab of guilt.

“What was it?”

Something in his voice makes Dean's hands drop down to the bed. He sits there, slumped shoulders, lips parted, and now he's staring at Sam's mouth.

Something big is hanging in the air. Sam doesn't know what it is, but he feels like he's supposed to act on it before it disappears. A flash of pink tongue; Dean wetting his lips, and they glisten in the light.

His breath catches. Sam isn't breathing at all.

Then Dean's face screws up again, a low groan forcing its way through teeth suddenly clenched. He jerks his head to the side, breaths hissing in and out through his teeth.

“Dean?”

“I dreamed I was on top of a pyramid,” Dean says, heedless of his obvious pain. “The moon was out, and it was so fucking big, Sam, you don't even know. I felt like I could reach out and touch it, like it would be hard and kinda… dusty. Like chalk?” He's breathing even harder now. “And I looked down off the pyramid and there was a river, and I thought about how easy it would be to just jump.”

Sam realizes he's not gripping Dean's arms anymore, but rubbing up and down them gently, sliding even lower along his forearms to massage where that sickly glow still flickers.

“I thought, maybe this would wash out of me.”

He lets his jaw drop open again, working it around. Sam watches him run his tongue along his top teeth, under his lip.

“And I realized I was hurting. So much. I fell to my fucking knees, and the water was boiling.”

Green eyes, so close, so wide.

“Then you woke me up,” Dean whispers.

When did their faces get so close? When did Sam's heart start racing? He can feel Dean's breath, and he doesn't care that it smells rank, because the space between them has narrowed to an inch or so and his lips are tingling with anticipation.

He can't take that last step. Can't be the one to break the spell. But now, with Dean so close, so fucking close—

Do it, Sam thinks. Just do it. I'll let you.

I want you to.

But Dean closes his eyes, sits back, and lets out a gust of a sigh that sounds utterly exhausted.

Then he says, “Sammy. You gotta let me jump.”

Sam recoils. “What? No!” The tenuous moment is lost, and his heart begins to bruise where it thuds in his chest.

“I can't—”

Hands on Dean's upper arms again. Sam wants to shake him. He does, a little.

“Shut up,” he growls.

“But I—”

“Shut up.”

“I can't get it out of me!” Dean yells. He knocks Sam's hands away, legs scrambling around in the sheets like he wants to shove himself away, but can't find the leverage. “I keep trying, Sam, I keep screaming in my head that I don't want it anymore; praying, whatever. Hell, I'd do anything to get rid of it. I keep telling it that I'm not gonna finish the stupid fucking Trials, that it should just leave already, but it's eating me from the inside out!”

Sam lets go like Dean burned him.

“I know,” he says.

Dean stops thrashing.

“You know?”

“Yeah. Like there's acid in your veins instead of blood.” Sam was never going to tell him this, but he needs Dean to know he's not alone. “Every time I finished a Trial and the—whatever it is, power, light—flared up, you know how I screamed? I couldn't help it. And once I started the third one—yeah, it never went away.”

“Fuck.”

“Yep.”

Slowly, Sam reaches out again, slides his hands around Dean's back and tugs him close. He turns his face into the crook of Dean's neck and shoulder, his lips on Dean's clammy skin.

“I'm so sorry you know what it's like,” he says.

“You're sorry?” Dean's voice is a rumble Sam feels in his bones. “I did this to myself.”

“Yeah, but—” In speaking, Sam's lips brush hard against Dean's neck, and there's no mistaking Dean's full-body shiver.

Just in case it was a fluke, Sam whispers, “Dean,” wanting only to whisper across his brother's skin with his lips again, but some deep primal instinct has his tongue flicking out to lick the dried sweat from Dean's skin. It's so wrong, and it tastes like the purest Himalayan sea salt that money can buy. Sam is instantly addicted. He does it again, quick. Just one more taste. Just—

“Sam,” Dean moans, clutching at him. “What are you doing?” He's not pushing away, or getting angry. He's—

Oh, God. Does he like it?

The urge to open his mouth and close it around a patch of Dean's skin, sink his teeth in and suck, is so sudden and visceral Sam has to tear himself away. Put some distance between them, distance he hates. But it's safer. So much safer. He's breathing so hard his chest is heaving.

“I'm gonna fix it,” he says, standing in a rush, not looking at Dean, not pausing to see if there's shock or want or revulsion on his brother's face. “I'll be back.”

“Sammy—”

“Drink your water,” Sam says.

He leaves, but the door stays open.

Thankfully, Cas seems to have picked a room and fallen asleep in it, because when Sam finally translates the ‘recipe’ he found, he almost falls out of his chair.

He flips the cover of the book back over his hand to look at it again. It doesn't have a title, just an engraved illustration of a lotus flower. In his very basic understanding, he thought the heading on the page he found amounted to “food fire health,” but now he sees the first word is more like “to eat”—because that is definitely an unconjugated verb—and while “the burn of life” is more accurate for the second and third words, it looks awfully similar to several other words, one of which is far more carnal in nature.

It's not a recipe.

Well, technically, it is. For a spell.

But this is not a cookbook, like he first assumed, and common kitchen herbs be damned, it's not kitchen magic.

It's sex magic.

Sam stares at the words like they'll suddenly morph into something less dread-inducing. It's the only thing he's found that seems like it might work, so of course it has to be the one thing he's been trying with all his might to avoid.

This thing between him and Dean, years in the making, dancing around one another, only just now growing nearly too desperate to avoid—

The word ‘release’ has multiple meanings, and this one has now become clear.

“Oh, my God,” he whispers. “Oh, no.”

He scans the list of ingredients again. The instructions. In this new context, they're fairly straightforward. Flowery, vague euphemisms aside, he and Dean will have to be… joined… and both of them have to… release.

Well, his pragmatic mind posits, he can't fuck Dean in Dean's condition, and Dean certainly can't fuck him. He barely has enough energy left to argue with Sam, let alone get it up. Right? Or could he—

Wait, why am I suddenly so okay with this idea? Sam thinks, wild-eyed, staring down at the book. This is crazy!

But his unhelpful imagination feeds him an image of his brother, flat on his back with a raging erection, forearms aglow. Ready and waiting. It's so unrealistic and yet, so incredibly hot. It flares up parts of Sam's body he's been trying to ignore. Also unhelpful.

Not good at all. Not possible. For several reasons.

But he hasn't found anything else even remotely useful—plus, the references scattered in so many other texts now clearly point to this being the best solution, and the one everybody involved has been happiest using.

Yeah, I bet.

And they're running out of time.

Okay, that's it. He has to just—just go up there, sit down beside Dean, and very calmly ask him if it's okay if they have sex. Just a little. Little bit of sex. Between brothers. So one of them doesn't die.

Sam feels hysteria bubbling up inside him.

He bets the authors of the spell never predicted this.

It takes some serious convincing to get his legs to propel him back up out of his seat, up the stairs, and back to Dean's doorway. Sam stands just a few feet away from it, steeling himself for the most uncomfortable conversation he's ever had. Just because they were so close just a few minutes go, just because it seemed like they were going to—to—

A kiss is so far afield from going all the way.

And they've never even actually—

Sam never got up the courage to kiss him. Just kiss him! Just a tiny little peck of closed lips, but he didn't go for it. He knows that alone would ruin him, but maybe also ruin their relationship for good. Why would he risk alienating the one constant he has left in this life, the one person he's been so desperate to make proud?

This solution will not make Dean proud of him. Not happy either, or grateful. This will ruin everything.

Stop it! Sam tells himself. Deep breath. It'll be fine. He wants the power gone. He said he'd do anything. You can talk with him about this.

He steps into the doorway. “Dean—” Fear grips him, fast and tight. “Dean!”

His brother is lying there on the floor, crumpled in a heap, arm outstretched. He doesn't seem to be breathing. There's no glow, no indication of life at all, and when Sam falls to his knees on the hard concrete to gather Dean up, he's cold. Dark waves rise up from the pit of Sam's stomach, up through his chest, up over his head. Drowning waves. They squeeze from his eyes as he shakes Dean, trying to wake him up, propping his head up when it flops back.

Sam distantly hears someone screaming Dean's name, but it's so faint beyond the rush of blood in his ears, the static, the whine of a high-power motor.

He gathers his brother's frail body in his arms. He gets Dean on the bed, lays him out, and presses an ear to his chest. Nothing.

Someone's hand on his shoulder is foreign and unwanted. He shakes it off with a snarl. He can hear a low voice saying his name but it's lost in his own babbling.

Gotta do CPR, he tells himself, can't say it with words because it'll get in the way of saying Dean's name, of begging him to hold on. Start with chest compressions, then air.

He slams his flat palms over Dean's chest and shoves sharply downward. One, two. Then he fastens his mouth over Dean's, fresh tears at how cold it is, how wrong it is that nerves tingle and spark. His body can't tell this is wrong, all wrong. But he can't think about it.

He forces all the air in his lungs into Dean's.

One, two.

Wait. Then—

One, two.

Oh, God. It isn't working.

One, two.

Castiel interrupts. “Sam—”

“Get off me!” he screams, striking out behind him so hard it tears something in his shoulder. His flailing hand connects with something solid. Castiel's grunt of pain barely registers.

Sam is ducking back down to seal his lips on Dean's again. He is just beginning to share another breath when suddenly it gets sucked forcefully from his lungs, and he rears back, gasping, as Dean coughs and coughs.

Then Dean hauls in a deep, crackling breath. The next ones even out. Although they're labored, they're good enough for Sam to sit back, waiting, searching Dean's slack face.

Dean's eyes don't open.

He's breathing. He's alive. Sam's soul rejoices, but it's not enough. He knows, somehow, that Dean won't wake up again. They'll have to just go through with the spell.

It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

Sam feels sick knowing just what he'll be asking forgiveness for. He's not sure he'd forgive anyone else for taking without asking, not like this. Maybe, though—

The way Dean moaned his name earlier.

Maybe it'll all work out.

The thought does nothing to quell the nausea, or the guilt.

A twinge in the side of his hand reminds him that there's someone else in the room—someone who has no idea of his inner turmoil, and is probably nursing a bloody nose.

“Are you okay?” he asks Castiel quietly, not meeting his eyes.

“I will be,” comes the slightly nasal reply.

Nodding, Sam turns, searching around the room. He spots Dean's phone on the dresser and grabs it. The plastic is cold. A lump of pure emotion presses behind his eyes, and threatens to force fresh tears to fall. He swallows it.

Still not looking directly at Castiel, Sam presses the phone into his hands.

“Keep him alive,” he says. “I'll be back.”

“Sam, I told you, I cannot—”

“Cas,” Sam snaps, all at once overwhelmed again. “Sit in here, don't leave him, and call me if he stops breathing again.”

Then he heads for the door, sorting his next steps into a neat mental list. First this, then that. If he thinks about it too much, too quickly, he might not be able to keep going. Lists are good.

“What are you going to do?” 

Hesitating, one hand on the doorway, Sam turns his head to say over his shoulder, 

“I'm gonna fix this.”

He has to stop off at the kitchen first. Then he's got an appointment with the King of Hell.

The spell is pretty straightforward. Cast iron skillet on the fire, heat a cup of red wine to a simmer. Add the herbs—Sam triple-checks the list, and searches up a few substitutions based on the Men of Letters’ woefully limited stores, grinding them together in the mortar and pestle that has sat unused on the counter since they moved in. Stir continuously until fragrant, then add holy oil in a spiral counter-clockwise. The text literally says “against the turning of the earth,” so that's Sam's best guess. Then, let the whole mess cool.

While it sits, he's supposed to gather the final two ingredients. The recipe stresses that they must be fresh. He's not worried about getting permission—it's not like Crowley asked permission to kill their friends, or fucking bite him—but it might be difficult to get close enough, long enough to draw what he needs. The main issue, however, is the blood itself. Like he told Crowley before, it's diluted. Sam has no way of knowing if the purified blood would become tainted again by continued possession of the vessel. He can only hope.

He's uncertain of so many things right now. It feels like he's trying to walk along the edge of a cliff. One false step, and he'll fall—and Dean will fall with him.

Crowley will have to do, whether or not he's demon enough for the spell, whether or not he fucking wants to.

As for the other ingredient, the same uncertainty applies. With Castiel's grace gone, who's to say his blood is still angelic enough to fulfill the requirements of the spell? But again, it will have to do. At least Sam doesn't have to worry about consent. He's fairly certain that Castiel would do anything to save Dean; hell, he’s already done impossible things to save him a few times before. After literally dragging someone out of Hell, what's a vial of blood or two?

When Sam turns the dungeon light back on, Crowley blinks and squints at him, before slipping right back into the same old arrogance.

“I'm wasting away in here,” he says. “No linens changed, no room service. Zero stars. You're going to tank on Yelp.”

He's lounging in the metal chair like he owns the place, cuffs and collar be damned, acting for all the world like the only two people in the room weren't also present for his mid-ritual breakdown. It's like he's begging to be knocked down a few pegs. Again. Maybe the newly human part of him thinks he deserves it.

Sam hopes so, because that would certainly make this next part easier.

“Nobody uses Yelp anymore,” he mutters. His hands are full, or he'd flip Crowley the bird.

“What was that?” 

Pausing in the act of setting everything down, Sam glares.

“You don't need to eat,” he says. “You don't need to distract me, either.”

“Oh?” Crowley flicks a speck of dust off his slacks. “And what are we doing that's so important, hmm?”

Sam scoffs. Atop the metal table, out of Crowley's reach, he arranges his implements on a plastic tray that just a few days ago held Dean's midnight snack of old pizza and Fritos. Now, a couple of vials, a needle, tubing, and gauze in sterile packaging sit out on it like autopsy implements: unassuming, foreign, and to some, frightening.

Crowley peers at the little collection. Sam, adding alcohol wipes to the mix from his pockets, watches him recognize it all. Dark eyes dart up to Sam's face like they'll find answers there. Nope.

“You're not as subtle as you think you are,” Sam tells him, casually stripping open each little packet. “With your crush.” The word comes out like a curse.

When he glances up again, he's gratified to see Crowley's jaw hanging open.

“Speechless?” Sam teases. “Wow, if I'd known all that's all it would take, I’d’ve said it sooner.”

He fits all the pieces on the tray together into a phlebotomist's kit. Although he washed his hands prior, this stuff becomes less and less sterile with every second it's exposed to the air. He's trying to do this nicely. He doesn't need Crowley's vessel getting infected and stinking up the joint. Sure, he doesn't know if that's possible—but all bets are off on what Crowley can and can't do anymore.

Sam considers, again, fleeting, just how lucky they'll have to be for this blood to even work for the spell. He dismisses the thought again just as quickly. No time to hesitate.

“What are you up to?” Crowley asks, too late.

“Don't worry about it.”

“We've been over this, haven't we, Moose? As I recall, you said this wasn't about my blood.”

“Times change.”

“Mm hmm. Where's Dean?” Crowley leers. “Still taking shots in the kitchen?”

Sam stares him down. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”

“Oh? Do tell.” Crowley sits up in his seat, wiggling, his expression a grotesque parody of excitement. “I just love a good farce.”

He gets a snort for his troubles.

“Easy way,” Sam says, “you help me willingly, and I see about letting you go.”

Crowley scoffs. “How stupid do you think I am?”

“You don't really want me to answer that. If we do it the hard way, I'll just stab you with the knife and bleed you out afterward.”

He doesn't need to specify which knife. It's stuck through his belt under the back of his shirt, and if Crowley tries anything, it'll be stuck between his ribs.

The King of Hell abandons his composure completely.

“You think drinking blood again will save him? My blood?” He barks out a laugh. “Lucifer sucked that little party trick out of your knob like a straw.” He sits back, hands crossed with as much insolence as the handcuffs allow. “You're powerless.”

“Not exactly,” Sam says.

“Then what are you—trying to purify me? Again?” Crowley sputters. “It didn't take the first time, you absolute maggot, why would it now?”

Sam laughs. It comes out raw and humorless.

“I'm not trying to purify you.” A grimace that might have been a smirk in another life presses his lips into a thin line. “Not sure if you're aware, but this isn't consecrated ground.”

“What in bloody Heaven is all this for, then?”

“It's for Dean,” Sam snaps. “I know you want him alive just so you can mess with him. Just so you can look at him. All that crap you said in the church; band of brothers in the trenches, you deserving to be loved?” He stalks around the table, holding the kit in one hand. “You said you wanted to be forgiven. If you meant any of that, you'll help me now.”

Crowley eyes the needle. “And if I say no?”

“Then,” Sam sighs, drawing the demon-killing knife, “it'll be the hard way.” He glances down at it, turning it this way and that, making sure the light reflects off the sigils set into the blade. “I really don't want to have to kill you, since you're useful and all, but I will if I have to. Like I said, your blood is just as potent after you're dead.”

Brows knitting together, Crowley looks at him, and the condescending veneer falls away. He looks worried, and while Sam still doesn't trust him, it feels like the nail got smacked upside the head.

“What's, er—What's wrong with Dean?”

Yup. The nail is concussed.

“Don't worry about it,” Sam says a second time. “And don't bite me again, dick, or I'll carve a few devil's traps in you for fun.”

Crowley closes his eyes and tilts his head, exposing more of his neck from under the collar.

Sam can't help it; he chuckles. “Cute. But all I need is your arm.”

Opening one eye, Crowley gives him a flat look.

“I'm wearing a suit, in case you forgot. Or is it a magic needle?”

“Oh, yeah.” Sam hefts the knife. “That's what else this was for.”

He makes short work of Crowley's sleeve, ignoring the wheeze of surprise, and probably fear, when the blade almost nips Crowley's skin. He fits the needle to the vein at Crowley's elbow—more or less where he guesses it is, anyway; he doesn't suppose accuracy matters in this case—and quick as he can, draws three vials of blood. The swab of the alcohol wipe afterward makes Crowley hiss and shake him off.

“I can't get an infection. I'm the bloody King of Hell!”

“You keep using that word,” Sam quotes, taping gauze to the wound with no grace whatsoever. “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“The Princess Bride?” Crowley says. “Really?”

Sam shrugs. “It's a classic.”

He gets an exaggerated eye roll for his trouble.

He's all packed up and nearly out the door when Crowley calls, “Oh, and Sam?”

Sam turns with a glare. “What?”

“You might want to check on our friend, the prophet.” Something about the toothy way Crowley smiles sends a frisson of wrongness down between Sam's shoulder blades. “He seemed a tad distraught when we spoke.”

Spoke? Kevin came in here?

“Leave him alone,” Sam warns. “I wasn't kidding about those devil's traps.”

“Oh, cram it up your arse.” The chains on Crowley's wrists clank when he waves Sam away. “I mean it, truly. I'm concerned.” Dark eyes glitter. “He might try something… reckless.”

Without saying another word, Sam closes the dungeon up tight, shutting Crowley's cackling in there with him.

Come to think of it, the kid has been scarce for the past couple days. Sam remembers he left to get gum for some reason. He came back, right?

Of course he did. Where else would he go?

No time for that now. Sam will check on him later. And if he came through with the beer, and if Dean survives this mess, then they'll all crack one open together.

Castiel's portion is far less dramatic.

Sam finds him keeping the vigil at Dean's bedside, the cell phone lying on the nightstand. He doesn't even wait for the entire explanation. Sam gets as far as saying it will help Dean, and Cas calmly interrupts him.

“What do you need?” 

Sam blinks. “Uh—just some blood.”

A nod. Then Castiel snorts quietly. 

“What?” 

“Oh, just—I'm remembering something I said before, when we were trying to defeat Leviathan,” Castiel says. “I'm always happy to bleed for the Winchesters.”

There's no way Sam can keep from grimacing at that, but Cas looks kind, so he manages to turn it into a sheepish grin. He sets up there in Dean's room, fitting needle and tubing and vial together on Dean's dresser, trying not to get distracted by how still Dean is on the bed. He's breathing. He's alive.

Castiel sits in the chair and watches with interest as Sam tests his arm and finds the vein. He's more careful than he was with Crowley, unwilling to risk an injury in Castiel's far more fragile, mortal state.

He presses the needle to the skin, but hesitates. His hands are shaking.

“Sam.”

Looking up, he finds Castiel regarding him with no judgment whatsoever.

“It's all right.”

Sam nods, lets out his breath in a rush, and slides the needle in.

They collect the first two vials in silence. Sam keeps an eye on the process, careful not to let them overflow, but he can't help glancing over at Dean. Each time, he hopes against hope that something has changed for the better. Dean is so pale that his eyelids and lips have a bluish tint, evidence of not enough oxygen getting to his system. His chest barely rises and falls. The unsettling glow is peeking up out of his collar in veins of gold, funneling all the way down his arms to the delicate bones of his wrists—but it's subdued, as though the power knows it's about to kill its host and is content to ride it out without any fanfare.

“What, exactly, did he do?”

Sam startles, glancing back at Castiel. “I never told you?”

“No,” he replies. “You explained what we were looking for, but not why.”

“He, uh.” Sam huffs, running his fingers through his hair in a short, agitated stroke. “He swapped our physical states to save me.”

Castiel blinks.

“Yeah.”

“He asked me to bring him here, after Naomi told us you would die completing the Trials. I was—” Castiel frowns. “I was so anxious to fulfill my mission. I shouted at him when he came back out. And he didn't—It was like he didn't even hear me.”

“He found a spell. Something that siphoned the power of the Trials from my body to his.”

Sam is staring at Dean again, his eyes burning. He can't look away. He's tired, so tired, and all he wants is for Dean to wake up. Maybe so he can shout at him, too. Maybe so he can try to explain everything: why completing the Trials was such a big deal, and why it had to be him who did it. Maybe, if Dean asked, Sam would even tell him the crux of his confession.

“He said he did it because he knew I wouldn't let the power go. Even when I found out it'd kill me.” Sam shakes his head. “And he's right. I was going to go through with it. I didn't care.”

“But Dean does,” Castiel says. “And I have seen, time and time again, what you two do when one of you is in danger.”

Glancing up at the ceiling, Sam scoffs. It comes out sounding wounded. His face feels like it's swelling up as he returns to staring at Dean, his eyes burning at the corners. He traces his brother's profile, the unique configuration of lines and planes he knows better than any other. He'll look and look at Dean until his eyes fall out of his skull, because that's all he gets, and if this fucking spell doesn't work, it's all he'll ever get.

“He found the first solution he could,” Castiel continues, “and used it, to whatever good or ill, because he lo—”

Sam shakes his head, hard. He can't hear that, not right now—and not from Cas, even though he knows the guy is just trying to help.

“It's just—He shouldn't have, he didn't—” A high noise of frustration escapes. “Now I'll never be—

Pure.

Forgiven.

Worth anything at all.

“Those trials,” he says tightly, “were necessary.”

“I don't believe they were.”

Startled, Sam meets those blue eyes again.

“At least,” Castiel amends, “not in the way you mean.”

“How do you know what I mean?” It comes out bitter.

Castiel glances down at his arm. He flexes the muscle, watching his own blood move sluggishly through the tubing. 

“You self-flagellate whenever possible,” he says. “It stands to reason that you do so because you think you're still tainted by demon blood, despite having died and been resurrected since then.”

Sam's teeth clench on their own, an involuntary reaction to seeing Hell glaze over his vision again. Translucent flames paint everything. He can almost hear mocking laughter. It doesn't make him flinch like it used to, but every inch of him is tense.

“The Trials would not have satisfied the part of you that refuses to believe you are no longer an abomination.”

"Sam, of course, is an abomination."

That was so long ago, but Sam still remembers the sting of hearing it, and the way he truly believed it, especially when an angel—still such a new concept at the time—was the one who said it. After all, wouldn't that mean it's true?

He shoves the memory back where it belongs.

“Did you forget the part,” he says, “where those Trials would have killed me? I wouldn't have cared after that.”

Castiel regards him steadily. “So you think you deserve to die?”

“I think…” Now Sam is also watching the blood, how it drips into the vial, creeping toward the fill line. “I think it was the right thing to do.” One hand finds the other, pressing, rubbing absently at the rough spot on his palm. “Closing Hell is so much more important.”

“Dean doesn't agree.”

Sam snorts. “Of course he doesn't. He does the stupidest shit to keep me alive.”

Castiel's silence stretches long enough that Sam glances up—then has to look away again, because the measured way Castiel is looking at him says, plainly, and aren't you doing the same for him?

“This is different,” Sam mutters. He wants it to feel true. “I mean, this won't kill me.” Though I will feel guilty as fuck for the rest of my life.

He caps off the vial, grabs a gauze pad, and slides the needle free. He busies himself with an alcohol wipe and Band-Aid—a courtesy he never intended to extend to Crowley—so he doesn't have to meet Castiel's eyes. They'll see right through him anyway.

“I have to finish this,” he says, gathering up the vials. “I need to—I'm gonna—”

“I will be in the bedroom furthest away, if you need me.”

Sam nods. “Thanks, Cas.”

They both stand, and they both depart, heading separate ways. Sam leaves the bedroom door open.

Just keep breathing, Dean. We're almost there.

The herb and wine mixture is an oily, congealed mess in the skillet, gone completely cold, so burnt at the bottom it won't come off until Sam scrapes it into a bowl with Dean's stainless steel burger flipper. It looks like goat vomit, and smells terrible.

It's ruined. Right? He ruined it. He thought the spell said to let it sit—it did say that, he knows it did. But what if he got the translation wrong after all? What if Dean dies because he fucked up in the kitchen again? He can't even make scrambled eggs, and he's going to cook up some ancient sex potion? What is he, high?

His breathing is erratic. His pulse kicks into a sprint, and his vision starts to swim before he can grip the counter, hang his head, and snap at himself to get it the fuck together. It doesn't work. He can't calm down. He has to—has to—

Oh, God. Ohhh, my God. Okay.

Okay.

The only way out is through.

Fumbling with the vials of blood, Sam nearly drops them, and of course he didn't take the time to label them—but the recipe didn't say anything about an order to their addition, so far as he could tell. Hands trembling, he shakes every drop on top of the mess in the bowl, and begins to stir.

He has no idea how much time passes. He's being as careful as he can, though it feels like his whole body is vibrating. Finally, the mixture is turning smoothly over the spatula, dark as jungle mud, smelling strongly of sage and copper. Now he's supposed to stir in the goopy stuff from a jug of apple cider vinegar—the “mother”—and let it sit again until it separates.

A lungful of air leaves him in a hot rush, and weariness creeps back in. The acrid stink of the vinegar invades his sinuses as he stirs. He tucks a piece of hair behind his ear, taps the spatula on the side of the bowl, and stares down at the nasty mixture he's going to have to smear all over himself some hours from now.

The recipe doesn't explain why all these ingredients are necessary. There's no anecdotes or history, like the ones Dean prints from the web to put in his three-ring binder. Sam told him once that there's a button that just prints the recipe itself without all that, and Dean was so indignant—“Context matters, Sammy!” and “This chili was passed down for six generations, show some respect!”—that he never brought it up again. But now, he understands, if only because he wishes someone had taken the time to explain what any of this has to do with an orgasm.

Speaking of which—

When Sam gets back to his room, he shuts the door and quickly strips, tossing his clothes aside. His mind is racing. Should I take a shower? Is it important? He doesn't remember the last time he showered. He's probably disgusting. He doesn't have time. He hasn't eaten anything in days, it's fine. Shouldn't I be hungry? No time. He has lube, sure, but he's only ever used it on his dick, not—inside. Maybe he should look up some porn real quick. Just to see what professionals do. No, there's no time. There's no time.

He'll just have to do what he's been doing: wing it.

Grabbing the little lube bottle from his nightstand, he lies down on top of his blanket, flat on his back. His skin is cold, goosebumps raising all the little hairs on his body, but inside he's burning up. The click of the bottle's lid is louder than it should be, making him jump. He's jumpy. Am I nervous? Why am I nervous? He's given up trying to control his breathing. He gets some slick on his finger, hitches his hips up, reaches around, and—

Well, that feels weird.

Sam pets around his hole a little, feeling how it puckers around the edges, clenching as he moves. He dips his finger into the very center of it, frowning at how it feels. A little more—

His ass clenches hard, and he pulls the finger away. Lets himself go limp on the bed. His eyes slide shut.

I can't do this. I've never done this, and I have to do it, but I can't.

His eyes fly open. Yes, you can, he tells himself firmly. It'll save Dean's life. You have to.

He knows he has to work past the clenching. He knows he'll probably have to finger himself for the entire hour that stuff is sitting, just so he's loose enough to try and—and take—

“Just say it,” he whispers to himself. “To take Dean's cock.”

Ohhh, that's weird to say. That made it real.

Exhaling, shuddering—with cold or the mess of emotions building up again, he doesn't know—Sam slings his leg over to the side, giving him better access, and reaches back.

His forefinger isn't quite long enough to do the trick even at this angle. With a quiet grunt of frustration, he snatches up the lube bottle, gets a mess of it on his middle two fingers, and shifts back over again. The first two knuckles of one slide inside him with a tug and give of pressure at his entrance. After a few careful fucks in and out, he tries adding the second.

There's a big difference between one and two. Oh, man. He knows it's just his fingers, but they feel huge, and the thought of taking something bigger isn't helping him loosen up. Neither is knowing that he's on the clock.

Stop thinking about the time. Stop thinking about the spell. You're trying to get off, that's all. You're experimenting. Think about stuff that'll help.

Sam thinks, again, about Dean's cock.

He's seen it before. Accidental flashing comes with the territory: tiny motel rooms, sharing a bathroom, walking in on Dean fucking some chick. He never put a sock on the door, not once. So many positions, so little time. Sam has seen it all.

It didn't help his longing any, then. But it'll help him now.

Eyes shut tight, Sam lets his fingers work in and out while his mind roams. Image after image, snapshots of their lives: Dean grinning lewdly, Dean showering while Sam brushes his teeth; Dean pumping away inside some faceless woman so hard she can't even scream. Folding her up against the headboard—

Folding me up. He can do it, too; he's strong enough.

Pulling out almost to the tip and then slamming in deep just to make her squeal—

Fucking me so deep I can taste it.

Sam's other hand finds his cock, finds himself hard as nails and dripping as his fingers work. He presses them in until his knuckles are buried between his ass cheeks. He jacks himself slowly as he works them around in there. His insides are soft, hot, and tacky with lube. It's not really all that different from fingering a girl. 

None of them ever wanted to take it up the ass. He never minded. He never thought it was necessary. Apparently, it doesn't matter, because his fingers can't tell the difference. He's finding a rhythm between both hands, fucking and being fucked.

Fantasies start to pile up.

Dean, coming up behind me in a small town library, hands on my shoulders, breath on my neck. 

Dean, yanking the shower curtain open to get in the water with me, pressing me against the tile, one hand around my neck, the other on my dick.

Dean, crawling into bed with me late at night, drunk as a skunk, handsy and bold—

Still moving inside, Sam brushes against something that sends a wild surge of pleasure all the way down to his toes. The shock of it freezes him in place, his eyes wide, mouth agape.

What the fuck was that?

It must be his prostate. He's known it existed—just like he's known that both he and Dean should probably get exams at some point—but he never had any inclination to try it out, as it were. Now, he could weep for all the wasted years he could have been feeling like this.

Long past the awkwardness, he strokes his fingers around in a loose semi-circle behind his balls.

He finds it.

His whole body snaps back, taut. Sucking in a breath, he rubs the spot again, feeling it play beneath his fingertips. Static begins to crackle behind his eardrums, negative spots of light clouding over his vision with each stroke. His other hand is paralyzed around his cock, a dribble of precome tickling his slit. He's so hard. His body is wound up so tight. He could come from this, he realizes, and he wants to come so bad—

“Oh, shit!” he exclaims, pulling his fingers out with a wince, yanking his hand away from his cock. He can't come yet. He can't. He has to save it.

He hadn't considered it until this moment, but lying here, hard, staring up at his ceiling with lube all over his hand, Sam realizes that he doesn't want to come yet. Physically, of course, he's hot to go—but his head, his heart, they want to wait. He's just getting himself ready. That's all.

He'll have to avoid that spot—oh, how he really doesn't want to avoid it—and focus on making the hole looser. More adaptive to size. They always say you should stretch before any strenuous activity.

More lube, and Sam dives back in.

He never laid claim to a “dead guy robe” like Dean did, so he slips on a loose pair of sleep pants to make his way back down to the kitchen on wobbly legs. Walking with lube between his ass cheeks is a new and interesting experience. So is the fact that he has now had three of his fingers scissoring deep inside himself, and it's only thanks to his iron will that he didn't just rub on his prostate until he came. As it is, his cock is thick and sensitive, dangling at half-mast, barely contained by the thin material. Sam really hopes he doesn't run into Castiel or Kevin. He knows he reeks, his hair is sticking up with lube on one side because he forgot he had it on his hand, and he's a drawstring away from being completely obscene in the hall.

Down in the kitchen, he finds the nasty mixture has separated, just like it should. An inch or two of pinkish liquid lies in a rancid puddle atop a dark, gritty sludge. It looks fine. He didn't fuck it up. Tension begins to percolate from his shoulders. 

Grabbing the text, he scans it for the next step.

Oh, right: the incantation itself. He's supposed to say the spell out loud as he applies the stuff to—

Sam squints at the diagram.

Pulse points, forehead, sternum, stomach… legs, feet, hands… and right above my crotch. Got it. Shit, it's a good thing none of this goes on my back.

He pointedly doesn't think about why.

They don't own a paintbrush, but then again, the stuff is so thick it'll have to be daubed on anyway.

Okay. Stir clockwise this time, and say this line no less than three times while I do.

Stumbling a little over the pronunciation, Sam reads the verse again and again, stirring more carefully than he's ever stirred anything, flat-out terrified of spilling even a drop.

The third recitation ends. He peers down at the bowl. Should something be—Oh, there it goes.

A deep, heart's blood red begins to glow at the center of the bowl, where the mixture is slowly swirling to a stop. Wide-eyed, Sam continues to stir, watching the uncanny glow strengthen and spread.

Once more, for good measure, he repeats the verse.

By the time he's finished, the stuff is a bright garnet, the light of it washing the sides of the bowl, reflecting onto the ceiling and walls in pale shades of rose. Sam dips a finger into it and is surprised to find that it's warm, like it was only cooling for minutes, not over an hour.

He reaches up to his forehead before he realizes he's an idiot, and can't do this without a mirror.

Thankfully, the bathroom is on the way to Dean's room.

Once he's there, he laments the lack of a door for the barest moment before he shucks off his pants and stands before the mirror completely naked. The clinical light in the bathroom reflects off the cream-colored tile walls. Sam tries not to look at himself as a whole. He knows he won't like what he sees. He focuses instead on dipping a finger into the warm red stuff and daubing it onto his face. It still smells strongly of herbs and blood, but there's more to it now—like the Impala's engine after a long drive, or a city street after it rains.

It's difficult to paint the sigils backwards, but he manages. The one on his forehead dips toward his nose, directing toward the stylized cross on his chest, which in turn points out along his arms to the ones on each of his wrists. The lines on his legs go straight down the center. The dots on his hands and feet are meant to serve as grounding marks, keeping the spell confined.

The one on his stomach is a small, fragile thing, and it almost touches the largest one, a spreading tangle of scrollwork right above his pubic hair. That one has him sweating, trying to do the finer lines with just his finger. He regrets not looking for a brush or something, anything—but the steady mantra of no time, no time, no time is beating against the walls of his skull, and it's pretty much a miracle that he's managed as well as he has.

When he finishes, Sam glances back up at himself in the mirror. He can't help it. He's pale, dark bruising under his eyes, all the health Dean thrust upon him waning. The look on his face is grim. His hair hangs limp, stuck together in places with lube and sweat, and his jaw is clenched tight. The sigil on his forehead is still glowing, but not for long, not unless he proceeds. Roxanne won't keep the red light on forever. He has to keep going.

The text only gave him one more verse.

Holding his own gaze in the mirror, he says it.

He isn't sure how much time passes.

Gradually, he becomes aware of a foreign warmth spreading throughout his body. He can feel it between his fingers when he spreads them, his lips when he runs his tongue between them, and everywhere in between every time he moves. He wiggles his toes, flexes his thighs, his pelvic floor, and glances down. His dick is hanging full between his legs; not hard, but not too far from it, either. Clenching the muscles attached to it makes everything even warmer.

Glancing up, peering at himself in the mirror, Sam tries to see if there's any change to his skin, or maybe his pupils, but he can't tell—until he brings his hand up to his face. Rose-gold tracers of sparkling light follow the outline of his fingers through the air.

Oh.

Holding the hand up, he wiggles his fingers, twists it around, watching in delight as the air dances around it.

That's cool.

Sam looks around the bathroom—and when he turns, he feels his brain move in his skull, his eyes following the movement a beat too late, everything jostling slightly out of phase. Every plane and point along the walls and floor are glinting beneath the overhead lights, like they always have, but now Sam can see just how warm the light is. How inviting. He's never thought of regular old incandescent light as inviting before. As he turns his head back and forth, the light sways with him, with a single thread in the middle of it all tying the whole scene together like a bundle of newspapers.

The distant grumble of the air conditioning has taken on a low, subtle harmony, like a vast choir humming.

He takes a deep breath. He can smell the individual ingredients that make up the mixture drying on his skin, and the heat it took to join them. He can smell his own unwashed body, his layers of flop sweat, the scrapings of his insides underneath his fingernails. He can smell the soap Dean left on the floor of the shower, the traces of water that ran off Dean's skin. Dean's presence haunts the bathroom like a specter that tickles its way up Sam's nose, then deeper, into the pathways running through his brain that have always housed the vast concept of his brother, and the complicated snare of their bond.

He can smell Dean.

His head whips around, the wavering outlines of objects and points of light swaying drunkenly, and his eyes fix upon the open doorway.

Dean.

Out of the corner of his eye, in the mirror, he sees a ruby red glow get brighter, hotter, more crimson, then scarlet as he steps forward. The air is awash with scents, and they part like curtains on a stage, ushering Sam into the spotlight. Swirls of gold spark at the corners of his eyes. Every step feels like he's walking on a waterbed, but still, he's poised. His back is straight. When he pauses at the doorway, his hand leaves streaks of gold on the woodwork that fade when he steps through.

The empty hallway is a work of art. It's built of shimmering lines, each tile its own masterpiece, with bright glowing baubles where lamps should be. The path to Dean's room teases in front of Sam like a woven cord shot through with light, swirling this way and that—and as he pads down the hall, it swims around him, ushering him forward. The warmth inside him is like sunlight now, like stepping out of a cold, dark room into a sunny field of wild roses. The choir stirs, the harmony strengthening with more voices, more notes. He can hear instruments join them, low and gentle.

Dean's door is still open. Sam can see it, he can smell it, the rich scent of his brother no less tantalizing despite how tainted it is right now. There is darkness, and longing; a chained beast is waiting there, patiently, for the right word to unleash it upon the world.

That beast is not Dean. It doesn't belong anywhere near him. It seems to think it does, though, by the way it sinks its claws in deep. The wrongness is so entwined with the rightness, they seem irrevocably enmeshed—but the spell allows Sam to see the difference, the errant puzzle pieces that must be discarded in order to solve the one that's on the box.

The woven cord swims around him as he steps up to Dean's doorway, and the moment he's standing abreast of it, all those teasing strands disappear.

A thin, tremulous note rises above the hum in his ears, a new melody inspired by what he sees inside.

His brother is flat on his back. Sam's own breaths have been matching the tempo of the music, but he can hear Dean's, too, and they are discordant. They strain and catch in his lungs. He's being strangled by the beast, the distorted promise of redemption halted in its tracks and tethered—it has spread up past the collar of his shirt, around his neck, in veins of copper. To Sam's heightened vision, it looks infected. Each delicate, metallic tendril is rimmed in black. Corrupted energy seethes up and down Dean's body, looking for a way out.

Every cell in Sam's body is tingling. The high instrumental melody is joined by a lower set in its own harmony atop the choir, still low, but building. Above it, despite it, he can hear every mundane sound in the room crystal-clear. The faint zing of electricity in the walls. His own breaths. Dean's breaths. Dean's heartbeat—and when he notices that, the tempo of the song speeds up to match it, amplifying it into a resonant drum.

And he can hear the very moment Dean hears him, and starts to struggle awake.

Careful steps are abandoned. Sam rushes to Dean's side. Part of the song kicks into double time. The golden tracers of light fly toward Dean's face and are lost when Sam grasps Dean's head, smoothing his thumbs over Dean's cheekbones. Gold smears there and sinks in.

“Dean?” His voice joins the choir, somehow right within its harmony. It feels familiar, but better, like whatever he did to this music before was just a dress rehearsal. This is the performance. This, and nothing else, is what he's meant to do. He hums low in his throat and it, too, harmonizes with the layers of music and noises around him, feeding the rich, red glow of the runes. As his thumbs move over Dean's face again, again, the gold begins to gather in earnest, pooling, too much of it building up to fade anymore.

There's a stirring. A faint wrinkle of confusion on Dean's brow.

“Dean!” The sound of the choir swells, and a clarion instrumental note stacks on the vast harmony, gathering it up in its arms. “Hey!” 

Green eyes open, and Sam's whole world blooms in color and sound.

He is staggered, struck through, lost in the universe that is Dean's eyes, the nebulas of green and gold, the depths of the soul behind them. The choir multiplies, splits into soaring highs and bolstering lows, more of the orchestral instruments and percussion joining in. Amid the thunderous symphony, Sam stares into those eyes and experiences birth, age, death, rebirth in the span of the few moments it takes Dean to blink and realize it's Sam grabbing him.

Sam has never eaten his own name before, but it tastes like Dean's breath. Dean's lips, pressed against his. He slides his hand around behind Dean's head, the short strands of Dean's hair like silk in his fingers. He tilts his head to get more of Dean's mouth on his, to run his tongue along the ridges of Dean's teeth, to map Dean's mouth and learn the lay of it by heart. 

Sputtering, Dean shoves at him. “Sammy?” he gasps. 

He keeps gasping.

He can't catch his breath. Sam holds him, presses their foreheads together until the fit passes, until it's just him and Dean and their breaths in tandem.

“Sammy,” Dean pants. “The hell?”

The spell is spreading through Sam's veins like molten honey. He can see the glow of the runes reflected off the walls, knows he's lit up like a neon sign, and wishes he could explain. No time, no time. And it's fine. It's all fine, the choir sings. He wants to do this, wants to fix this, and then they'll have all the time in the world. He can explain after it's done.

“It's okay,” he murmurs, butting Dean's head lightly with his on a downbeat. “I've got you.”

“Sam—”

Sound never tasted so good. One single syllable, moaned and cut in half, how sweet could it possibly be? But Sam has never, in his entire life, had something like this on his tongue. He could drink only this, and be quenched forever. He could subsist on this alone, bread and wisdom be damned. Every atom smothered between them, every split second between the moment their lips meet and the next, every point where their bodies touch.

And it takes a moment—a long, fraught moment—but Dean gets the memo, gives in, and kisses him back.

Dean kisses him back.

The choir, the orchestra, they multiply into a glorious host of thousands. Sam's soul sings when the kiss deepens, Dean's shaking fingers finding his shoulder and tugging him in close. Sam grips his brother's face with both hands, inhaling hard through his nose all those familiar scents that make up who Dean is, who they are to each other. He leans hard into his grip on Dean's face. Presses Dean back into the pillow. Bites at his lip, growls down his throat. Dean's lips are dry; they crack, and Sam tastes copper. He tastes the chemical composition of his brother's blood. He tastes like home.

The spell soaks through Sam's body in waves of pomegranate and blush, twenty-four karat sunshine, frissons from the music igniting his nerves again and again. He presses in harder, harder.

A moan is smothered. Dean's hand, bedecked in veins of seething bronze, finds his wrist. But it's not shoving him away—Dean is gripping him tight, tighter than anything. Dean wants him there.

Dean wants him.

As much as Sam wants to just kiss Dean until the record on the turntable of his mind snaps in half, he knows he has a job to do. Breaking the kiss, he pulls back far enough to search Dean's eyes, his jaw working, no sound coming out. He doesn't remember how to make words. There's all this joyful noise in his ears.

Trust me, he wills into his stare. Wills Dean to understand. Please, trust me.

His hand finds Dean's thigh. The sweatpants bunch up slightly when he moves that hand higher, slowly, giving Dean time to react. Even in the throes of the spell, all that red and gold and harmony urging him to take, crush, release—the deepest, most honest part of him can't do it without permission.

Dean's eyes widen.

“Sam,” he croaks.

Smiling, Sam nods encouragement.

The look on Dean's face morphs into something awed, horrified, heartbreaking.

“No.”

Sam's gut lurches. He feels his smile drop like a stone. Dean's hand is on his wrist, Dean's whole arm shaking with the effort it's taking to hold him off. The rotten pyrite power of the Trials ripples beneath his skin, tendons standing out like live wires. 

The song slips into a diminished chord, eerie urgency in its waves. It vibrates along Sam's spine. Keep going, the choir urges, you're almost where you need to be.

“Don't, Sammy.”

I have to, he wants to say. You're dying. But when he opens his mouth, nothing comes out. He bites down on empty air with a frustrated huff. Jerks his hand another inch up Dean's thigh, testing the tenuous resistance.

“Don't!” Dean gasps, beginning to hyperventilate. “Please!” he spits out. His chest heaves, his glowing arm shaking violently, air whistling into lungs working too fast to take it properly. Alarmed, Sam yanks his hand away from Dean's thigh.

The song doesn't like that at all.

It assaults Sam's ears with an unsettling, dire chord, all the voices shrill and scolding. The runes flare up in an angry puce. He ducks his head, but it's all in there anyway, and his ears can't outrun what they're not really hearing. Tears squeeze from his eyes as he watches Dean gulp air. Dean's jaw, lips, and chin are trembling.

“Sammy,” he pants. “Dunno—what—but you—you can't—” He stops, takes a few more deep breaths. “Don't fuck yourself up for me, Sammy,” he says in a rush. “Ain't—ain't worth it.”

Sam blinks at him, uncomprehending. Fuck myself up?

The song abruptly calms, two voices winding their way wordlessly through his head. They gently dance around the rhythm of Dean's breathing, which slows as Sam stares into his eyes and doesn't move a muscle. He can't believe—doesn't want to let himself believe what he thinks he's hearing. Dean thinks this will fuck him up? This, out of everything he's ever done? Had done to him? All the things he's seen, heard, been unwillingly privy to? Hell, the things they've had to kill?

Even if Sam didn't already want Dean carnally, this wouldn't—

Hang on.

Images swirl through the rose-gold haze settled over his mind's eye. So many sordid things, the dirtiest ways to show Dean how he feels. So many times Sam almost told him. So many times Sam glanced over at Dean over the years, heartsick and so in love, only to find Dean already looking back.

A single note hangs as the other falls away, quavering, a penny in the air.

Dean—

The music stops.

“Dean, I'm already fucked up,” he says aloud, his voice profound in a silence so loud that to him, it's deafening.

Dean gapes at him.

Sam smiles. Slowly, he leans down, and Dean doesn't stop him. He keeps going until the tip of his nose brushes Dean's, until he can tilt his head just so and whisper against Dean's lips,

“We can be fucked up together.”

With a whimper, Dean grabs at him, uncoordinated, yanking him down into a crushing kiss. The symphony, the choir, everything crashes back in with cymbals and fireworks, and Sam—

Sam feels like he's flying.

Wind that isn't really there rushes over his skin, through his hair, and it would chill him but he's burning up inside. In his periphery he can see the runes on his arms flaring, knows they're doing that everywhere, feels them doing that everywhere, brighter and brighter red rippling all over the room every time his lips leave Dean's only to find them again, harder, deeper. It's not so much a kiss as it is a rejoining of person and shadow, man and reflection—and they are both to each other, all at once.

He has to yank himself away from kissing Dean to work Dean's sweatpants down around his ankles, and he does it with a growl of frustration, the volume of which doubles when he hears Dean whine at the loss.

“Sammy—”

One finger finds Dean's lips, shushing him with a wash of red light. Then he grabs the hem of Dean's shirt, yanks it up; Dean barely has time to raise his arms before it's off completely when they're crashing back into one another again.

God, but Sam could spend the rest of his natural life kissing Dean. He would gladly waste away to nothing at all, joined at the lips, breathing in his brother's scent until he didn't breathe at all. But there are spells to resolve. A life to save. There will be all the time in the world to kiss with Dean still breathing, still alive on the other side of all this.

One hand cups Dean's jaw as he pulls away. The other finds Dean's cock, hefts it, forms a fist and drags hard up to the tip.

Dean gasps, his whole body going rigid. Power flares all up his skin in response. 

Angry tangerine veins are snaking up over Dean's jawline now. The choir warns Sam that they don't have much time. Glancing down, he sees that those jagged runnels of spiritual rot have made their way around Dean's shoulders and down his torso, encroaching on that sacred place Sam means to claim for himself. Sam considers what lies just out of their reach: Dean's cock, standing up straight and ready from the dark thatch of hair at its base, longer and thicker than Sam ever remembered seeing it in his stolen glimpses over the years.

“Yeah,” Sam says, but it's lost in glorious, vibrant song. He grips Dean's jaw hard, possessive, as he strokes again, just as hard, and again, just to watch Dean writhe.

The paradox of soft skin and hard want in his hand is a revelation. He tugs up over the tip of Dean's cock, milking sticky drops of precome, and holds his brother's eyes through a sheen of translucent cerise as he brings his hand up to his face. Dean watches in stark fascination as Sam licks the precome from between his fingers. An appreciative quirk rings through the music. The spell approves.

“Hot damn,” Dean croaks, his gaze dark.

The music thunders now, all the high notes lost, and it pushes Sam down, away from Dean's face. His hand falls away, palm pressed flat on the bed. His other hand works over Dean's cock. It's so hard in his hand.

Low notes hold as a curious twist on the melody rises. You should have him in your mouth, the choir sings. You should taste him there, too.

In a fluid motion, Sam is down the bed, staring at it—licking it, suede and sweat on his tongue—and taking it into his mouth. It hits the back of his throat and slides in. He barely feels like gagging; he feels as though suffocating on Dean's cock would be one of the best ways to die. Dean is squirming, making the most delicious choked-out noises above him, and that just makes Sam want to take it even deeper. He bunches his shoulders as he draws up, wraps his tongue around it, and then plunges right back down.

The song weaves its way around him the more he suckles, the louder Dean gets, high whines fitting beautifully into the harmony. Dean's hips buck up in reckless abandon, but Sam just folds an arm over his brother's sharp pelvic ridge and holds him down. This is the best thing he's ever tasted. The best thing he's ever done. He's hard as nails himself, his own cock hanging hot and heavy between his legs, his ass canted up as his head bobs down.

He could suck Dean's heart and soul out of his cock, but this is no more the endgame than kissing was. The spell stirs deep within him, red-hot beneath his skin. The complicated herbal smell piques his sinuses, sharp and fresh, like it's cooking anew. Maybe it is. Maybe he's burning up from the inside out. Maybe this magic will boil him like a lobster. He doesn't care.

Sam rises up off with a pop of his lips, standing tall on his knees on the edge of the bed. Staring down at Dean with eyesight tinged rose and wavering, Sam languidly slings his leg over Dean's waist.

Dean gapes up at him, both hands flying to his thighs on some deep-seated sexual instinct.

As Sam looms over him, the song quiets to a concentrated hum, and the light from both his runes and Dean's infected glow intensifies. Sam reaches back, grabs Dean's cock, and the hum grows louder. The colors, brighter. Dean is baring his teeth in a grimace as power rages under his skin, but his eyes are incendiary in a different, better way.

The symphony has once more risen to a fever pitch.

Sam wriggles, situating the head of Dean's cock against his slick, waiting hole. Dean's fingers tighten, pressing bruises into his skin.

There are no fireworks when Sam begins to lower himself. Choral harmonies hold steady, entwined within themselves, encouraging and strong. The muscles in his thighs bulge with the effort of going slow, sweat beading anew on his skin. The head of Dean's cock breaches him, shoving open that ring of muscle he'd tried so hard to stretch open enough for this—and goddamn, but it feels so much thicker than it looks, even thicker than it felt in his throat. Tears well in the corners of Sam's eyes. But he doesn't stop. The spell wouldn't let him, anyway, but he doesn't want to. He wants Dean seated inside him as deep as he can possibly get.

Inch by excruciating inch, he takes Dean's cock, until Dean's pelvis is digging into his ass and Dean is so deep inside that to Sam—out of his mind on both the spell, and the heady drug that is Dean—they may as well be one body, one mind. One heart, and one soul.

Sam lets his breath out in a rush, and Dean gasps like he forgot how to breathe until just then.

There it is, the choir sings. There you are.

Between one blink and the next, their fingers are twined together, and Sam is riding Dean's cock as hard as he can, needing every inch as deep as possible. The rhythm is chaotic, in time with the song and yet, outside of it. Every pull out is a loss, every punch back in blows his mind. Again, again. Dean's hips work up as Sam slams back down, taking him harder, deeper, and the rose-gold haze over Sam's vision swirls to caress Dean's face. The way his mouth hangs open. The disbelief and wonder in his eyes. Sam hears Dean's little wanton grunts join the symphony, and his heart swells. His thighs are burning, his hair is dripping sweat; how long have they been doing this? Dean is breathing like he's running a marathon, Sam can't spare a thought for air. And the music—

The spell—

“Sammy, oh my God,” Dean moans, snapping his hips up hard, all that power under his skin flaring in vibrant sunset hues.

But it's different now.

Sam perches atop Dean's pelvis, working his hips, squeezing Dean's cock with every muscle he's got, rocking back and forth. He sees the sickly citrine of the Trials, sure—but it's more cinnabar than it was, even at the beginning, when it first flared in his own arm.

The song lilts, the choir encouraging him to look closer.

Dean breaks their grip, reaches for him, and as Sam lurches forward to catch himself on his hands, he sees it. There is more red to Dean's incandescence, now, and there is more pure gold shining at the center of the painted runes.

He grabs at Dean's face, eats into his mouth, and twines their tongues together, still working his hips up and down in little dirty thrusts until Dean sobs. Sam eats that, too. Now that he's noticed the colors shifting, he realizes he can feel the Trials’ power being siphoned. It's the bastard offspring of what he felt in the church, corrupted by disuse, its own displeasure at such. It's not Dean's fault. None of this is Dean's fault. He made a choice, and as the song swells all the more in Sam's head, he knows he would have made the same one. 

“Dean.” Sam's first word, now the only word he can say. “Dean.”

I love you so much. My big brother.

Then Dean's hand finds his cock, and all Sam can do is snap his head back as the choir finds a full, triumphant chord, and the symphony erupts in his head. Gemstone light sparks and flares over everything. He speeds up his thrusts, his hips working doggedly between the thickness filling him up so perfectly and the rough hand jacking him off. Dean speeds up, Sam tries to match him but God, fuck, it's too good. He's climbing to the peak at unparalleled speed.

And the runes all over him flare.

Dean's arms, his chest; it's all on fire.

They both hang suspended between colors, between time and space. The sound that resonates in Sam's head now is the choir chanting Dean's name, and the praise of the symphony. The time is now, the time is now—!

Sam screams and comes like a thunderclap all up Dean's chest, his neck, his face. Dean grabs at Sam's hips, slamming up into him, rough and sure—one, two, three and he's spilling hot, deep inside Sam with an answering roar. It sounds like anguish, love, and release.

Twitching, wracked in pleasure, Sam stares mindlessly up at the ceiling as ruddy orange light flares, and flares, and whites out everything.

The innumerable choir, the vast orchestra, they all join in on one final, unspeakably beautiful chord that shakes the entire room and brings hot tears to Sam's eyes. He thinks he hears his and Dean's voices joining it—before he knows nothing at all.

He comes to with a blink and a snort. It takes a moment before he clocks the sensation on his head as Dean petting his sweaty hair. He's cold. His skin feels tacky, his ass is sore, and his ears are ringing.

Blinking his eyes open, he scrunches his nose up at Dean, who is gazing down at him with a bemused little smile.

“Hey, Sammy.”

“What—” Oh, God. His throat is so dry it's sticking together. He tries to clear it, and croaks, “What happened?”

Starting, his hand stalling on Sam's hair, Dean's face goes pale. His brows crinkle up over wide eyes.

“You don't remember?”

“No, no, I remember.” Sam shifts so he's mostly on his back, bringing his arm up under his head so he can watch the way relief washes over Dean's face, renewing the flush across his cheekbones, under his freckles. “I mean after.”

Dean snorts. “When you passed out on top of me?”

Sam blanches.

“I mean, I caught you, but you were still on, uh—”

In unison, they cough. Sam glances away, but can't help smiling.

“Yeah,” he says. You were still inside me. He can't help but wonder how long they stayed that way.

Sam looks back up at Dean to find his brother staring down at him with an incendiary, almost predatory expression that Sam has only seen Dean turn on the most forward of women, the kinky ones that Dean can't wait to tell him about afterward. Sam's cock stirs, and since they're still pressed together, Dean obviously feels it. The corner of his mouth curves up.

“You're somethin’ else, little brother.”

What did it look like? Sam wants to ask. What did I do, really? What did I say? He remembers it all like it was a dream, so vibrant at first, but fading more and more the longer he's awake. He remembers color, and music so glorious there aren't words to describe it, and now that he's thinking about it, it feels as though it's lodged in his throat, behind his eyes. He blinks, and a tear threatens to fall. God, but he can't let it. Dean will think he's unhappy. He's not. He's not. How can he be, when he's in Dean's arms? It doesn't matter that the only reason they fucked, the only reason they ever would have fucked, was to save Dean's life. It doesn't. Because here they are, together, and—

Sam blinks again. The tear runs hot and damning down his cheek.

Shit.

Dean reaches to wipe it away with a thumb, frowning.

“It's okay,” Sam says, voice wavering. He clears his throat. “I'm okay.”

“Sammy—”

Sam's smile is just as wobbly, but he puts it on anyway.

“It's fine. All that matters is that you're better.”

Another tear, then another. A mountain spring is forcing its way through the rock of the mountains, running down in rivulets past his nose to his chin. He's still trying to smile, but the longer Dean looks at him, searching his face, pain and concern and confusion dawning, the more he just wants to break the fuck down.

So he does.

It all comes crashing down, and Sam abandons all pretense of being okay, ducking his head to bury it in Dean's shoulder and sob like he's all of nine years old again. Bullied at school. Burdened with feelings he doesn't understand. He presses his nose into Dean's skin and sucks in a snotty breath heavy-laden with his brother's scent. It should feel comforting, but all it does is remind him that it's over now. It doesn't matter what they said in the heat of the moment. Doesn't matter what they did. Dean loves him, but he can't possibly be in love with him, and any moment now—

Any moment now—

Sam presses even further into Dean and whines.

The bubble will burst. The song has already ended.

Any moment now, Dean will let him down gently, or just kick him out, and life will go back to the same weary grind it's always been.

“Hey, Sammy.” Dean is nudging him up. Oh, God, here it comes. Oh, no. “Hey. Look at me.”

Sam shakes his head, resisting the gentle tugs.

No, if I stay here forever then nothing bad will happen. You can't leave me if I'm stuck to you.

“Sam.”

Dean rocks back, unearthing Sam's face, and before he can burrow in again, callused fingers find his jaw. Lift it up until he can't help but follow. He raises wide eyes, beneath a creased brow, to look at Dean helplessly.

“There he is,” Dean says softly. “Hey. You're just crashing, okay? Let me take care of you.”

Sam sniffs, trying to clear his nose. “What?” He hates how pathetic his voice sounds, weak and childish.

“You're comin’ down off whatever that stuff was. You were all into it, and now you're drained, and it's hitting you hard. Right?” Dean is searching his face. “Your head’s going places it doesn't need to.”

“How—” A brow arches as a thought occurs. “How do you know about that?”

Dean coughs, cutting his eyes to the side. 

“Don't worry about it.”

He looks back to Sam, almost defiantly, though he's beginning to smile again.

“Let's get you into a shower. That'll help.”

Rolling slowly off his side of the bed, he pads around to where Sam is sitting up, just as slowly, feeling every joint in his body. They're all complaining with individual voices, clamoring inside him, and it gets worse, louder, the more he moves. So reminiscent of the choir. He supposes that's a part of him now. So many things will probably always remind him of this night.

Then Dean is there, helping him up. They get a blanket around both their shoulders and hobble to the bathroom, Dean's strong arms holding Sam up, holding him close. Dean never moves further from him than an inch or so.

When the blanket falls away and Sam is led into blissfully hot water, Dean guides him around under the spray, wiping the remains of the runes away with a washcloth. The cloth makes its way around his body, scratchy but good. It's all good now. Lassitude is replacing the clamoring in Sam's limbs.

He opens his eyes, water dripping down around them from his hair. He hadn't realized they were closed.

Dean is looking at him expectantly.

“Feels better,” Sam says.

“Good.”

Standing there, gazing down at his brother, Sam can't believe he freaked out the way he did. Look at the way Dean's eyes shine. He takes care of me. He doesn't do that for anyone else. 

He really does love me.

Sam sucks in a sudden breath.

“I—”

But there are no words, he quickly discovers, and so he simply grabs Dean's face in his hands and ducks down.

Kissing him now is one new revelation after another: Dean's surprised little huff that blows tiny droplets against Sam's cheek; the way his wet hands fly to Sam's sides, then one to his chest; the way they both instinctively tilt their heads to slot in like they were made for this. Sam isn't sure which of them moves first, whose tongue finds the other first, but it's fine. In fact, it's so much more than fine. It's perfect.

Dean is breathing. He's alive.

He's hard against Sam's thigh.

They pull apart, panting, staring at one another amid the forgotten spray of the shower.

“Lemme make it good for you this time,” Dean says.

“Oh, God,” Sam stammers, “yeah. Yes.”

I may not be pure, but somehow, I'm enough, he thinks as they scramble to dry off, hands all over each other, kissing like the world will end if they don't.

I'm enough.