Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thing is – and Sam knows this now – it started long before that day in the dive bar.

It – the thing that didn’t have a name for a very long time – was so longstanding that sometimes Sam was certain it had always been there. Simmering, festering, boiling - the thing they’d both shied away from again and again. A spark – sometimes a flickering flame – sometimes a burning pit of lava that threatened to swallow them up if their feet shuffled too near, if their toes crossed that last ditch line in the proverbial sand. That constant shying away from it, day in and day out, from the first moment of waking until the last bit of consciousness dimmed into sleep - they had paid a price for that. It – the way the two of them really felt about each other – was always there, lurking underneath years of carefully constructed defenses. Every time consciousness bled into unconsciousness, thoughts took a turn down a road so familiar that either of them could have walked it without any senses at all. Again and again, when everything else was black and cold, they unerringly turned toward the warmth that flickered at the edge of awareness. It should have been clear that warmth was never anything but each other.

How many years had they ground their heels into the dirt, forcing a sudden stop, and turned away from that warmth no matter how frozen they were? They had both convinced themselves that if they gave in and turned toward each other and sought that heat, that it would be too much, incinerating them instead of easing the chill.

They ignored it at their peril.

Countless black eyes and bruised ribs and--even worse--hurt feelings, when sparring pushed them too close to the fire and frantic retreats could only happen with fists that had to land too hard and words that had to do the same to push each other away. Even now, Sam could recall the way it was back then – the heat of his brother’s body smashed against his own on a scorching summer day, the pressure of a powerful forearm against his throat, the bright burst of pain as fingernails scraped against his back. There was no escape from his brother; he was always too there, overwhelming all Sam’s senses as he gasped in the smell of sweat and the sound of Dean grunting against him. Pushing, always pushing, with hips and hands and a want that felt primal and unstoppable.

There was one day, or maybe it was many, when panic bubbled up cold and brutal as sparring turned to something else. Sam's fingers had tightened down on the vulnerable piece of Dean exposed to him between waist and hip--unexpected bare skin unable to shield the nerve. Sam was unrelenting, putting too much force into the grab until Dean’s gasp and whimper sounded too much like something else and Sam suddenly let go. Get away get away get away roared in his head as he kicked and punched and beat his way out from under his brother’s body, until he rolled away with tears stinging in his eyes. He got up without looking down, avoiding looking at his own body’s reaction – or looking at Dean.

He’d always suspected that it wasn’t just him.

Sometimes Dean was unnerved first, and it was Sam with the black eye left behind, lying flat on his back, still trying to strike back with rage-garbled words even if the target was more Dean’s heart than his body. Sam didn’t know when it started, but he knew it was that same heated want mixed with cold terror that made him take a high school teacher’s encouragement to break away from the family business seriously. That same panic to get away bled over into rage the night he told their father he was leaving. The fight was with John, but every anger-fueled threat Sam hurled across the motel room wasn’t about his father at all. He can’t even remember what John said or what expression he wore. He can only remember the ghostly white of his brother’s face from where he stood frozen in the corner, shocked into silence. Sam could still see the depth of pain in Dean’s eyes, the way his lower lip trembled as he tried to hold it together, keep It away, locked up, denied.

God help him, Dean’s clear agony made Sam even more determined to get away. Fuck Dean for letting Sam see the depths of his brother’s vulnerability, for letting Sam see his own power to inflict agony – because he knew, in that moment he fucking knew, that there was only one reason he had that power. Only one reason he could destroy his brother with the one thing neither of them could survive – leaving. In that moment, Sam knew – for just the two seconds that he couldn’t clamp down the defenses that would let him deny it – that Dean loved him in the same all-consuming, soul-crushing, damning way that Sam loved his brother.

And for that moment, Sam had hated him for it.

If it hadn’t been for It – that thing that had entangled them so tightly it made Sam struggle to both get closer and get away – if it hadn’t been for that, Sam knew now, Dean would have cried that night. Dean would have pleaded with him not to go, would have grabbed Sam by his shirt and shook him and let Sam see how much it was tearing him apart. And Sam would have cried too, and given some reasonable explanation about having your own dreams and living your own life that would make no sense in the context of Winchester expectations, but Dean eventually would have listened. He would have wiped his eyes and blown his nose and insisted on driving Sam to the bus station. He would have visited, even if John refused. They would have gotten through it, maybe even over it.

Instead, Sam walked the eleven miles to the Greyhound station with only what he could jam into his duffle in three minutes, desperate to get away before he had to see Dean’s stupid stricken face for another second. Before one of them threw the first punch and didn’t pull it at all--before one of them didn’t exist anymore, because that was the only way to stop It and Sam wasn’t that insane yet.

Everything would have been different if this thing hadn’t grown up between and around and inside the two of them, sticking its roots down so deep and so tangled that there was never any getting free, no matter how many miles that bus drove.

Of course, Sam realized now, there had been another solution all along, if they hadn’t been too terrified to consider it. They could have both dared to swallow those roots as deep as they would go and welcomed the vines pulling them closer and closer together, until neither knew where one started and the other began – and neither cared. If either of them had known for certain that they weren’t alone in those feelings that were too big and horrible and terrifying to let into awareness, let alone into reality, they might have let themselves see it.

In the end, Sam thought with a wry smile, It had won anyway. It was too strong, too ingrained in them both, too integral to who they were and what they needed. The battle was long, and there were many casualties, and Sam regretted all of them. But in the end, It had won, and Sam was glad.

* * *

There were many times that things could have gone south for good before that Friday night at the Chez Vous Lounge at the end of some Main Street in some godforsaken town. Sam remembers thinking that the town only had three or four streets anyway, which made its designation as “Main” darkly funny. But what happened there wasn’t funny at all.

There were plenty of times over the years that things slid sideways after one of them fucked up and got too close to acknowledging how it was between them. Inevitably ugliness followed, and some innocent people got caught in the crossfire, and then they went right back to ignoring their feelings for each other. Maybe they would have ignored it forever, if the supernatural hadn’t intervened in their lives that night.

Now, Sam was almost glad. He had never been able to ignore the people who got stuck in the force field between them and hurt, who didn’t deserve it. He knew he had something to atone for; it just took a while for him to get around to actually doing it.

* * *

PRESENT DAY

Sam goes to the little church on the outskirts of town sometimes, when too many sleepless nights in a row of not being able to push the guilt away have started to take a toll.

“Get your head on straight, Sam,” Dean will grumble. “Or I’ll do it for you.”

They can’t afford for him to get too exhausted, because there’s too much to do now and it isn’t fair to put it all on Dean. So Sam walks the couple of miles to where the old stone church sits on a hillside, the path to its wooden doors winding through a field of grass and wildflowers in the summer.

Sam curls his long legs into the little confessional and waits for Father Maguire to slide the door aside. The priest never asks why he doesn’t see Sam at services, or encourages him to come more often. Father Maguire just listens, absolving Sam with his warm voice that still retains a little hint of an accent. It’s similar to Rowena’s, Sam thinks with a smile. Probably not a comparison that Father Maguire would welcome, considering where Rowena is now, but in Sam’s book, she'd paid her debts. He still remembers what it felt like when the knife sank into her belly, how she'd put her tiny hand over his to help push it in.

“Do you have something to confess?”

The priest’s soft voice was all genuine concern the first time Sam visited, but Sam almost wanted to laugh. Something to confess? A whole lifetime, Father. If you only knew the half of it.

“Yes, Father.”

We’ve got a life, Sam. And I need you in it. All in.

Those had been Dean’s words when Sam came back from his run that morning, his hair messed from sleep, beautiful in a too-small wrinkled T-shirt that stretched tight across his broad back when he turned to pour some coffee.

“Okay, yeah. Umm, bless me Father, for I have sinned. That’s what you’re supposed to say, right?"

“Well, that depends,” Father Maguire answered, the simple question tinged with a bit of amusement. “Do you have something you want to confess?”

Sam hesitated, and after a few seconds, the priest continued.

“Sometimes people aren’t ready, and if you’re not, that’s okay. I’m guessing God doesn’t want hollow confessions anyway, and they’re unlikely to do you much good.”

Sam guessed he was right about that.

“I mean, I guess I do. I know that in the eyes of most religions, I’m doing something that’s not okay. Not . . . sanctioned. But that’s not really what I want to confess. What’s important is that I don’t think it’s wrong. Or no, what’s important is that we don’t think it’s wrong.”

“We,” Father Maguire repeated.

“Me and my . . . my partner. I think the only thing that’s important is how we feel about . . . well, about us.”

Sam could hear the priest shift position, leaning closer to him. Trying to figure him out, Sam thought.

“And are you concerned that your partner doesn’t feel that this is all as okay as you do?”

“No!” Sam protested, raising his voice for the first time. “No, I’m not – not anymore anyway. For a long time neither of us was sure this was okay. And honestly? That caused a lot more shit to happen and a lot more people to get hurt.”

“What kind of shit?” the priest asked.

Sam barked a laugh.

“I didn’t know you were allowed to say shit.”

“Sometimes the best way to understand someone is by using their own words – words carry a lot of meaning.”

“Huh,” Sam said, settling himself a little more on the bench.

“So what kind of shit was it then?”

Sam paused as he gathered his thoughts.

“I’m thinking about telling you the big thing,” Sam admitted, then stopped, biting his lip to keep the words in.

“God hears things large and small, and can still forgive.”

Sam shuddered. He sure as hell didn’t want God to have anything to do with this. It wasn’t God who he was worried about having wronged, it was all the innocent people that ended up as collateral damage to this thing that had taken so long for them to put a name to.

“It’s just that the big thing – that’s not really what I feel bad about. At least, not anymore. Maybe I should – I mean, I’m sure if you knew what it was, you would tell me I should, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Go on,” Father’s Maguire’s soothing voice urged.

“What I can’t stop feeling bad about is all the people I hurt – we hurt – while we were avoiding the big thing. We were so afraid of it, so terrified of how powerful it was, that every time it got obvious – every time it smacked us in the fucking face – sorry – every time we had to realize it was there, one of us would do something to sabotage it. And that meant that people who were in the way got hurt too. In the crossfire, I guess you could say.”

“Tell me about them,” the priest said.

I don’t want to. I want to bury my head in the sand again like I lived for so long. I want to be happy with the way things are now and not remember when they weren’t, and not worry that maybe they won’t be again. Maybe I’ll lose what I have now, what we have…

“If you want,” Father Maguire clarified, as if reading Sam’s mind. “You don’t have to.”

Sam sat back on the little seat, staring at the shadowy figure behind the screen. Father Maguire had white hair, a gray beard. He looked like the most stereotypical priest ever. But his voice was kind and Sam believed him when he said that the decision was his alone.

“I want to. I need to. He’s right, I need to get my head on straight somehow, especially now. I guess I should talk about Jess. I can’t talk about her with him, not even after all these years. I think he feels even more guilty than I do about what happened to her. I think a part of him still believes I would’ve been better off with her, staying away and out of the life. Being normal.”

There was a long pause, as Sam struggled to put into words a loss that still carved a deep ache into his chest when he thought of her.

“And what is that,” Father Maguire asked. “Normal?”

It was a good question. Sure as hell not what they had now.

“Something that was never in the cards for me,” Sam answered. It felt very true when he said it out loud.

“Why is that?” the priest asked.

“A hundred reasons. The way we grew up, the way my mom died. The things I knew when I was ten that nobody should know even when they’re thirty.”

“Sounds like that wasn’t your fault. You were a child.”

“It’s not that, not what you’re thinking. I mean, not in the traditional sense of child abuse anyway. My dad . . . he did his best, I think. What happened ruined him, fucked him up - sorry – messed him up, and he just couldn’t see anything else except revenge. Getting back at that sonofabitch who took everything away from him. He couldn’t see that he still had us – not all the time, anyway. But that’s not the only reason. It’s me too. I’ve always been tainted. Since I was a baby.”

“Son,” Father Maguire said kindly, “No one is tainted since they were a baby.”

Why am I telling him this? It’s not even what I feel guilty about. And now he’s probably thinking tainted means something it doesn’t.

“It’s not being gay, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t give a shit about being into guys too, I never have. But anyway, normal was never in the cards, despite what he thinks. I shouldn’t have run away and tried to fake my way into it, with her. She didn’t deserve to be drawn into that, and she wouldn’t be gone if I hadn’t convinced myself I could find normal with her.”

Sam swallowed hard, the guilt and grief that always bubbled to the surface when he thought about Jess tightening his throat. The priest waited, silent.

“It was me running away from my feelings for him, me being so freaked out about it that I wasn’t thinking straight. And I was selfish, so fucking selfish, dragging her into that.”

“I see,” said the priest, though Sam was sure he probably didn’t. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”

Sam hesitated. It felt dangerous, even now, talking about this. So many years Dad had drilled it into them, we do what we do and we don’t talk about it . But that was doing a number on Sam’s head, and had been for a long time. And now he had more reason than ever to keep his head together.

“Dead, I mean she’s dead. Died at 22, how unfair is that? Never even got to graduate.”

The pain of it all hit him again, like it did every time Sam took his walls down and let himself remember.

“Did you have something to do with that?”

Sam jerked upright so fast his head slammed against the back of the confessional. “What? You mean, did I kill her? No! I loved her.”

“But you feel guilty anyway,” the priest said, and Sam nodded.

“That happens often with loss, even when it’s not something you could have prevented.”

Father Maguire sounded kind, trying to reassure Sam that how he felt was normal when Sam knew nothing about his life had ever been that.

“It’s hard to explain.”

Sam sat back, rubbing at the back of his head, trying to find the words to make someone who had no clue what was really out there understand.

“I would never have hurt her. But I should’ve known – I should’ve known that being with her would paint a target on her back sooner or later. It wasn’t Dean’s fault at all, even though he thinks it is – it was mine.”

“How was it yours?” the priest asked, his voice carefully neutral.

“He came back and that saved my life, but it was too late to save hers. The fire was too hot, too widespread by then. He pulled me out, he came back for me, even after I’d left him, even though I chose her. But I never really did, that’s the thing. I didn't choose her. Did she know that, I wonder? What did I think was gonna happen?”

Sam put his head in his hands. The priest stayed silent.

“She was the first casualty of both of us refusing to face what was going on between us. Or maybe she wasn’t the first actually.”

“There were others? Before her?”

Father Maguire’s voice was still calm, but the prompts put Sam a little on guard anyway.

“I’m not a serial killer,” Sam said, “If that’s what you’re thinking. Shit, I’m not explaining this very well.”

“I’m not thinking anything,” Father Maguire insisted. “Just take your time, you’re doing fine.”

“There were lots of others, I guess. Countless others. I remember one time – we were young, he was maybe seventeen – it was that summer, that first summer that everything felt fucked up all the time, like I couldn’t even think straight because he was right there, all the time. I couldn’t get away. I didn’t wanna get away. And we were wrestling, because that was a rule, every fucking day. And it was hot, he never had a fucking shirt on, just stripped down to boxers. It was dumb – it was so fucking stupid that we thought we could wrestle like that, both of us sweaty and half naked, what were we thinking?”

The words tumbled out, now that Sam had started, held back for way too long.

“Because you see, that’s just it--we didn’t think about it, we never fucking thought about it, because that would freak us out, and we were so good at not thinking about it that it snuck up and smacked us right in the face again and again and again. Jesus, we were so stupid!”

“You were attracted to him and didn’t want to be,” the priest said, matter-of-factly, as though it were the most mundane thing in the world.

Sam was kind of impressed with Father Maguire’s ability to stay nonjudgmental. Then again, the priest didn’t know some of the pertinent details.

“I don’t even know if attracted is the right word, honestly. Even now, I don’t think there really is a word for what I feel – what we both feel. He was like the sun, everything good and beautiful and safe in the world. Just literally my everything. It sounds so stupid and sappy when I say it out loud, like some twisted Hallmark card, but honest to God that’s what he was to me. And I knew that if I got too close, it would burn me up - and even worse? It would burn him up too.”

“So you tried to run away from him.”

Sam shook his head.

“Not right away. Not that time. But later, yeah. That day, when I felt him against me – when I felt what that did to him, that he was – that he had an – is it okay for me to talk about this?”

“Of course,” Father Maguire reassured, still sounding impressively neutral. “The reaction you’re talking about, it’s a normal human reaction to being aroused.”

Sam snorted again. Maybe in their case not exactly normal.

“Well, he wasn’t the only one. I freaked out, and so did he. Stormed off and put on his jeans and a tee shirt and roared off in the car without even saying goodbye. I thought I’d ruined everything, thought maybe he wouldn’t love me anymore, there was so much rage in his eyes when he realized. I thought it was my fault, that I’d somehow done something to give away what I felt for him. I don’t think I even knew what it was that I felt yet, but I still thought it must be me, because it couldn’t be him.”

“That must have been very painful for you both,” the priest said, his voice kind.

Sam grimaced, remembering. Anger suddenly flooded him, and he forced himself to stay calm and unclench his fists. Even after all this time, it burned.

“Know what else was painful? What he did next - he came back with a girl. Must have used a fake ID to get into a bar because she was older, she was a woman – a beautiful woman too. He brought her right in and looked me in the eye and smirked, said ‘Might wanna get outta here Sammy, unless you want an eyeful.’ I was so shocked – not at the woman, she seemed nice enough actually – but at how much hate there was in his eyes when he said that. It was like a rejection, a warning that he did NOT feel what I felt, no matter what the evidence in his pants had told me. And then he just started pulling her clothes off, right there in front of me, and I couldn’t move, it was like I was frozen. She started saying hey stop it, cut it out, and he didn’t, not for way too long. She finally slapped him and he came to his senses a little, and he looked over at me and there were tears in his eyes and his face was all red, and I ran out the door and just kept running. Didn’t come back until it was almost morning.”

“I’m so sorry.”

Sam swallowed, wiped his face with his sleeve. He hadn’t realized he was crying until the priest’s voice interrupted his memory of that awful night.

“I’m not sure what you want forgiveness for, though,” Father Maguire said gently.

No one was really going to understand, but Sam’s chest felt a little lighter having confessed some of the truth anyway. A tiny slice of the chaos their love had left in their wake, for so many years.

“That kind of thing happened a lot. We’d go back to ignoring our feelings, and then something would happen that would make them hard to keep ignoring, and then he’d lash out at me and try to hurt me. And usually that retaliation would drag someone else into it too, some poor girl who saw a gorgeous guy and wanted to get lucky and instead got some psychopath who mostly wanted to fuck her to get back at his… at me. He was an asshole to so many people. Then I started doing it too, because at some point I realized that it would hurt him just as much to have to see me get with other people. I used a lot of girls who didn’t deserve that.”

“And you realize now how hurtful that was, and are sorry for that.”

Sam sighed.

“Really sorry. It was wrong, and every time I think about it now . . . It keeps me up at night. A lot recently.”

Sam felt a sense of satisfaction; he’d come here to confess, and he’d managed it. The absolution felt good, though it didn’t take away the guilt. Sam was just built like that, he figured. Guilt had been his companion for his entire life, and it probably wasn’t going to change because he went to confession once.

“Feel better?” Dean asked when Sam got back from the church. He was at the library table, a beer in one hand. His tool box was on the table between their chairs and one of the stairs that led from the bunker entrance down to the main floor was no longer loose.

Sam shrugged. “A little. Don’t think I’ll make it a regular thing or anything.”

Dean handed him the other beer that was on the table. “Movie night? You can pick it this time. Though I’m sure I’m gonna regret saying that.”

Sam let their fingers brush as he took the beer. Dean acknowledged it with a soft smile.

“Sounds good,” he agreed. “You know, we should get some rocking chairs for the Dean cave.”

He got the expected eye roll in return, and turned away to hide his smile.

Chapter Text

THEN

Things went south when Sam had been back in the life and with his brother long enough that neither of them stopped to think about It very often. It was just there, something they’d dealt with for what felt like all their lives. Something that would never go away. It was an uneasy equilibrium, and it didn’t always stay in balance, but they made it work. Mostly.

The shattering of that fragile equilibrium was the fault of a malevolent spirit who lured them to the long-deserted old house she’d once inhabited that now looked like something out of a bad horror movie. At least the first crack was.

“Jesus Christ, could this thing be any more of a stereotype?” Dean muttered as he climbed the stairs, gun full of rock salt at the ready.

The spirit – in the shape of a giggly teenage girl with blonde ringlets in a nightgown – suddenly appeared on the landing high above them, and Dean took the stairs two at a time to get to her. The second to last stair gave way with a resounding crack and Dean disappeared right before Sam’s eyes, plunging down to the first floor like he’d been on an elevator whose cables were just cut.

Sam screamed his brother’s name as he grabbed the railing and swung himself over the gaping hole, getting a brief but nauseating glimpse of Dean face down below him. He cursed the fucking job that kept him from just running to his brother while he continued chasing the ghost into what once was a bedroom. He blasted her repeatedly with rock salt, then spotted an old hairbrush, curly blonde hairs still caught in its bristles, on the dresser. The ghost screamed and rushed him when he grabbed it, but he flicked the lighter on anyway and it went up in seconds. The spirit girl howled until she abruptly disappeared.

Sam leapt back over the hole in the stairs and took the remaining ones at a stumbling frantic run, skidding to his knees before Dean’s prone body.

“Hey hey, Dean hey,” he said, because it’s what they always said, more eloquent than anything else because they both knew exactly what it meant. I need you to be okay, I’m here, I’m not gonna leave you, it was all there in those few words.

Dean groaned as Sam took hold of his shoulders and gently tried to rouse him.

“Dean, hey, you okay? Can you move?”

Sam knew better than to jostle him too much in case of a neck or back injury, but he hoped to hell that wasn’t the case. Just the fact that Dean had made a sound had sent a wave of relief through him like a flood, his heart double timing from the adrenaline rush of save-Dean-save-Dean-save-Dean.

“No, shit, aw fuck,” was Dean’s unhelpful reply. Sam settled for gentle pats on his shoulder while he waited for Dean to try.

It took another minute before Dean finally rolled over on his own with a loud groan.

Sam sighed audibly, biting back the almost uncontrollable relief-fueled impulse to lean down and kiss his brother right on his grimacing mouth.

“Thank god,” he said instead, and Dean opened his eyes.

“You incinerate that fucker?”

Sam couldn’t stop his smile. “Damn right.”

Dean smirked before cringing again as he tried to sit up. He jerked one of his hands out from under him and they both stared.

“Oh shit.”

“I don’t think those fingers are supposed to bend that way.”

Dean scowled at him. “Ya think?”

Sam rose to his feet then bent and gripped his brother by the elbow so he wouldn’t have to use his bad hand to hold on.

“C’mon, hang onto me.”

“Sonofabitch,” Dean swore as they made their way outside. He looked longingly at the driver’s seat before sighing and climbing in the passenger side. It felt wrong to Sam too, but there was no way Dean’s hands would be safe on the wheel. Luckily they had a lot of whiskey at the motel – and it was even kinda good whiskey – so Sam let Dean drink his fill before sitting him down on the edge of the bed and setting his fingers. Dean was stoic as Sam prodded and pulled the bones into place, though he went deathly pale. He managed not to pass out through sheer will, refusing to let Sam see him bested by the pain.

They holed up there for a few days because it was unfortunately clear that Dean wouldn’t be doing any hunting with three busted fingers on his shooting hand.

And his eating hand.

And his brushing his teeth hand, and his getting dressed hand, and his everything else hand.

After the first day spent listening to Dean curse his way through all of those activities and a pile of taco fixings landing on the rug from his left-handed attempts at getting it all the way to his mouth, Sam brought back easy-to-hold burgers and fries and pizza instead.

“This fucking sucks,” Dean stated for the five hundredth time. Sam nodded, reminding himself that it did indeed suck and that his brother didn’t do well with being rendered helpless in any way. He knew that Dean was a natural caretaker, endlessly patient when Sam was injured or sick even if he constantly complained about it. His hands always told a different story, gentle and competent and thorough whether he was sewing up a laceration on Sam’s side or applying antiseptic to a gash on Sam’s back. Especially when he thought Sam had drifted off to sleep, his fingers brushing Sam’s hair back with a tenderness he’d never admit.

Sam tried to take care of his big brother in a similar way, but Dean rejected a lot of his caretaking, grumbling “Can do it myself, Sam” whether or not that was true.

Sam distracted him with daily treats – donuts from the Dunkin on the highway, a slice of cherry pie from the diner in town, Jiffy Pop that he managed to pop (mostly) on the ancient hot plate their motel had next to the mini fridge. The TV mercifully gave them some halfway decent shows to watch, which occupied Dean for a few hours. Sam was never more aware that his brother needed something to do with his hands at all times as he was when Dean was prevented from using them. Cleaning the guns, checking under the hood of the car, fixing his hair and pretending he wasn’t, all were beyond Dean's current capability. Barred from his usual distractions, he was restless, unhappy, and grumpy as hell.

There were limits to Sam’s patience when it came to constantly bearing the brunt of Dean’s bad mood, which might explain why he didn’t hear any alarm bells go off that afternoon. He was closer to loathing Dean than lusting after him after the fifth day cooped up with his belligerent brother. So when he replied to Dean’s latest complaint with “why don’t you take a fucking shower, you stink,” it didn’t register that was a dangerous suggestion.

Dean held up his injured hand and its makeshift cast with fury in his eyes. “Nice, Sam, really nice – you know why I can’t do that, you did this to me yourself!”

“Oh, right, like I’m the cause of your broken bones – you fell through that staircase all on your own, jerk. I was just the one that had to patch you up. And I’m the one who has to listen to you complain about fucking everything all day long. And now I’m the one that has to smell you!”

“Fuck you, Sam!” Dean yelled back, and then, because he was a stupid asshole, he stood up and yanked his filthy tee shirt over his head with his good hand and then started fumbling his jeans open.

Sam barely restrained himself from laughing as his brother lost his balance and nearly fell on his ass trying to get his feet out of his pants with one hand; Dean threw them at him in disgust and stalked off to the bathroom in his equally filthy boxers.

The water started up and Sam stalked in, even more pissed.

“You can’t get that wet, you idiot, you’re gonna ruin all my hard work!”

Dean was just climbing into the shower, boxers discarded on the floor, but he stuck his injured hand out through the edge of the curtain as he yelled for Sam to get the fuck out of there.

“I’m not getting out of here, you’re gonna fuck this up trying to wash your damn hair with your other hand, you’re completely uncoordinated with it and you know it.”

“Fuck you, Sam!”

Sam sat there and waited while Dean tried to do everything himself, splinted hand waving ineffectually outside the shower and colorful curses streaming from inside every now and then. Finally the water shut off and Dean threw the curtain back. Sam handed him a towel.

The warm water had maybe calmed him down a bit; he looked a little chagrined as he wrapped the towel around his hips awkwardly and climbed out.

Sam sighed and shook his head, then got up from the toilet seat where he’d been perched to leave.

“Hey,” Dean said, and Sam paused. “I think I got the shampoo outta my hair but I don’t think I’m gonna be safe to handle a razor with that hand. You think you could, uh…”

Sam heard it for the apology it was.

“Yeah sure.”

Dean nodded, holding the towel in place with his one good hand while Sam got out the shaving cream they shared from the medicine cabinet.

He stood still waiting, so Sam squirted a handful and smoothed it over Dean’s face. He had five days’ growth there, the stubble dark and thick on his cheeks and chin.

Sam picked up the razor. He realized his mistake before he’d even touched the razor’s blade to his brother’s face.

Dean stood before him, face tipped up because Sam was taller. His skin was pink from the shower and damp, his hair dark and pushed into unruly spikes. Outlined by the stark white of the shaving cream, his mouth was red and moist, stupidly inviting.

Get it together, Sam. Just do it.

At the first press of the blade to his cheek, Dean’s lips parted, all of him relaxing into the touch of the only person in the world he trusted not to hurt him. It went through Sam like a hot shiver, warming him all over. He moved the razor down, slowly, carefully, letting it glide over the contours of his brother’s face that he knew as well as his own.

It shouldn’t have been a surprise.

Sam knew to expect his own body to react when Dean gave himself over to Sam to take care of. Dean trusted Sam to pierce his skin with the needle and draw the thread through, gritted his teeth and was grateful when Sam splashed alcohol on his wounds, let Sam cause him pain. It always made Sam hard--the intimacy of it, the intensity of Dean’s trust in him. He was pretty sure it was the same when it went the other way, but they were both careful. Plausible deniability, unusual situation, doing what needed to be done.

This was similar, except nobody was in pain. Instead the rhythmic glide of the razor over Dean’s face felt soothing to Sam, and apparently to Dean too. As Sam worked, Dean’s eyes slipped closed, long lashes dark against his cheeks. Sam could see the freckles there as he wiped the shaving cream away, making Dean look boyish and vulnerable.

Sam gripped Dean's chin, turned his head to get a better angle, and Dean just went with it, pliable and easy in Sam’s hand, his mouth falling open a little more. Sam felt overheated, dizzy, the warm air in the tiny bathroom a cocoon around them. The mirror fogged up from the hot water Sam left running in the sink to rinse the razor from time to time.

He let his index finger slip higher, across Dean’s cheek, checking for spots he hadn’t gotten. His fingertip brushed a spot under Dean’s ear that made him suck in a breath, his lashes fluttering. Sam could feel it in his dick, a throb of arousal so intense he wanted to press Dean to the counter, get some friction between them. Instead he brushed his thumb over the corner of his brother’s mouth, wiping away a remnant of shaving cream there.

Maybe Dean turned his head right then, or maybe Sam’s thumb slipped, sliding over Dean’s full lower lip and encountering the wet heat of his mouth, the soft give of his tongue. The eroticism of that simple sensation hit Sam like a punch in the stomach, and he couldn’t suppress the moan that escaped him when he realized that Dean wasn’t stopping him, that Dean was letting him…

The can of shaving cream clattered to the floor as Dean suddenly snapped his head back and stepped away, his eyes flying open, shock and fear clear in the vivid green and black.

Sam stepped back too, hitting the edge of the tub and tumbling backwards into it. Instinctively he grabbed the shower curtain on his way down, which served to break his fall, but then ripped free from its rings and ended up on top of him.

By the time he disentangled himself and dried himself off, Dean had managed to put on a clean pair of jeans and a tee shirt one handed and was halfway out the door.

* * *

PRESENT DAY

It was a month before Sam felt that itch he couldn’t shake again, the guilty feeling that wouldn’t let him sit down and do nothing for fear of remembering too much.

“You okay?” Dean asked as morning turned to afternoon. He had a grimy tee shirt on, tight over his biceps and smudged with things Sam wasn’t sure he could identify. It didn’t smell too good.

“You been working on the car?” Sam asked instead of answering, but Dean shook his head. “Don’t change the subject. You okay?”

Damn Dean and his perceptiveness about Sam’s feelings. I t had been wasted for most of their lives – denied even when it came to calling Sam on his feelings for Dean. But now that he had no reason to deny it, Dean was more than happy to turn his skills on Sam whenever he (almost always correctly) noticed that something was off.

“I am, I just…. I thought I’d take a walk down to the church, clear my head a little. It’s a nice day,” he added, just in case Dean needed a less loaded explanation.

His brother stared at him for a few more seconds, green eyes full of questions and a little bit of concern, but then he nodded.

“Be back by dinner,” he said, and Sam wasn’t sure if it was a command or a plea.

“Of course I will. I’ll be back in an hour – but if it isn’t a good time, I can…”

Dean cut him off with a wave of his hand. He had a dish towel in it, not quite as dirty as his tee shirt.

“Don’t be ridiculous, go ahead, it’s fine. Go do what you have to do, whatever that is.”

“Dean, it’s just a conversation, you know? It just – it feels kinda good, like it just gets my head on straight or something, I don’t know.”

Another pause, but this time Dean’s expression softened.

“It’s fine, Sammy.”

Sam’s turn to search his brother’s face. They had fucked up for a long time by not telling each other the truth, and Sam was determined not to fall into that trap again. Especially not now, when they had so much to lose.

“Thanks,” he said, and climbed the stairs, stepping out into the bright sunlight.

The walk to the church was part of its appeal. It was a little more than three miles; sometimes Sam jogged, taking the route that ran through the woods that backed up to their property and the walking trail there. He nodded to other people taking advantage of a beautiful day to get some exercise; the slight breeze and the sunlight intermittently warming his face through the trees felt good. He was outside St. Dorothea’s before he realized how far he’d come.

It was 2:45 pm and the church was empty except for a custodian lazily sweeping the area by the front doors where some morning worshippers had tracked in a little dirt and where dust had gathered since the last time he’d swept.

Sam nodded to him and got a dismissive nod in return.

It took Father Maguire a few minutes to join him in the other side of the confessional, leaving Sam to doubt his reasons for coming in the first place. He had just decided to leave when he heard the door slide shut, and then the priest’s lilting voice welcome him.

“It’s me again,” Sam said. “I don’t know if you remember me. I mean, you don’t need to, but I just wanted to say – last time I was here, you were – you helped me. I wanted to say thank you.”

“No thanks needed, but I’m glad to hear you found some comfort in sharing your sins before the Lord.”

“The Lord, right. Oh, and I guess I’m supposed to say bless me Father, for I have sinned.”

Sam didn’t say that he had his doubts about any kind of deity. After what they’d seen of prophets and angels and demons, Sam preferred humanity even with all its flaws.

“How long has it been since your last confession?” Father Maguire prompted, and Sam sighed and settled in.

“It’s been a while. Not sure I really managed it the last time. Kinda hard to know where to start.”

He pictured the priest nodding, but he said nothing, leaving it to Sam to go on or not.

“I want to tell you about the thing that changed everything,” he said finally, though he hadn’t actually decided to do that at all. “It was because he broke his stupid hand, and then he couldn’t shave, and so I offered to shave him, and that was a mistake – I should’ve known better and I did know better, but it was so easy to forget sometimes. So easy to just be normal, you know?”

“You worry a lot about being normal,” Father Maguire noted.

“Yeah well, we haven’t had a helluva lot of that,” Sam replied with a tight smile. If only you knew. He was surprised that Father Maguire seemed to remember him.

“Anyway, things got weird, things got kinda charged, you know? A lot charged. And so predictably he freaked out and stormed off and it took me a few hours to find him and by then it was too late.”

“Too late for what?”

Sam snorted, bitter. “Too late to stop him from making the biggest mistake of our fucking lives.”

And then he paused, because honestly he wasn’t even sure that was true. Was it the biggest mistake, or was it the thing that ultimately saved them in the end? Was it something they both regretted, or were they both grateful for how things had ended up? Sam supposed it was a little of both.

“And you feel guilty for that mistake? Did it hurt someone?”

“I do. It did. I don’t really know exactly what happened before I got there, he’s never really wanted to talk about it. He, uh…he’s not much of a talker, about his feelings or whatever, you know? But I'm guessing he stormed into that bar determined to prove his fucking masculinity or whatever – sorry – and he got pretty drunk, which made it worse. By the time I tracked him down there, there was a woman crying, and three guys with bloody noses and maybe some broken bones, and some other girl was screaming at him, what the hell’s the matter with you, get the hell away from her, you hear me, get the hell away from her. Dean was just standing there looking like he couldn't wait to punch somebody’s lights out--like all he cared about was fighting or fucking, and I knew it was all my fault. That it was all because of me.”

“You’re not responsible for his bad decisions,” Father Maguire pointed out.

Sam could still see it like it happened yesterday, like it happened in slow motion. Sam walking in, Dean looking up and catching his eye, his lip curling up in a sneer, rage burning in his eyes contorting his face.

“He just stared at me when I walked in, like he hated me for making him feel what he felt, for making him doubt who he was. Like I’d ruined that just by existing.”

“And what was he?” the priest asked, which was a good and relevant question. “Or what did he think he needed to be?”

“What dad – his dad – wanted him to be, I guess? Nothing but that perfect little solder his dad always ordered him to be.”

“Sounds….difficult.”

“Impossible probably, but you couldn’t tell that to him then. And I - I took one step toward him, called his name to try to convince him to stop, but then some stranger got in a lucky punch because I’d distracted him. It came close to knocking him off his feet and he just went crazy at that, just started whaling on that guy and anyone else who came near him. And I started pushing my way across the bar to get to him and stop him, and then suddenly everything froze.”

“He calmed down?”

Sam shook his head, remembering.

“No, everything stopped dead. I can’t explain it to you and I’m gonna sound like I’ve lost my mind, but time stopped. It froze, like some kind of surreal tableau. Except for this one woman who looked right at me, and honestly, I thought she was about to kill me because her expression was so venomous, but I couldn’t move even though I could see her moving just fine.”

“I – I don’t understand,” Father Maguire said, and of course he didn’t and Sam couldn’t really explain, could he?

“It doesn’t matter, it’s just – she was so pissed, probably pissed at lots of men who had been assholes, and she’d just had it, and…and she….”

“She what?”

Sam stopped himself, nearly putting a hand over his mouth physically to accomplish it. There was no way to explain what had happened next without the kindly priest being convinced that Sam was 100% out of his mind.

“She did something that changed our lives forever. To punish him, I guess. To punish both of us.”

“I’m not sure what you did that needed punishing.”

Sam shook his head, because she was right and the priest was wrong. “No, she was right. It was my fault too, not just his. We both let it go on too long, let it turn us into people who couldn’t think straight, couldn’t do the right thing when we were too busy trying to prove we weren’t what we actually were.”

The priest was silent; Sam knew he probably wasn’t making much sense.

“In love with each other?” Father Maguire asked finally, and Sam respected his fearlessness, he really did. “I’m not going to say you need to ask forgiveness for that, no matter what you might have heard about this church and our Lord.”

Sam’s instincts about Father Maguire were good, he thought.

“We were, and I’m pretty sure lots of people would disagree with you about that needing forgiveness, but it was all the other bullshit – all the people caught in the crossfire.”

“And this woman, she – what? She wanted revenge?”

Sam sighed.

“Kind of? The thing is, she was good at what she did. She saw right through us. Knew exactly what would gut us until we bled out – what we could never come back from. She knew it and she did it, just like that.”

“So you lost him?” the priest asked gently.

“No,” Sam answered, and his eyes filled with tears at the compassion he could hear in Father Maguire’s voice. “I found him – and myself. And we almost didn’t survive it.”

He waited a moment after that, wiping his cheeks with his sleeve, but Father Maguire apparently couldn’t make sense of that and Sam didn’t blame him.

“Thank you, Father,” he said before leaving the booth. “Thanks for listening.”

* * *

THEN

They didn’t know then what she was, the woman with black hair and unnaturally bright blue eyes who saw right through them that night at the Chez Vous. Sam knew she wasn’t human, of course, when the entire bar froze mid-bar fight. She had locked eyes with him and smirked like she could read his mind just like that.

“All these years, you two can’t get your shit together and innocent people keep paying the price.”

Across the room, Sam could see the panic in Dean’s eyes even though he too was immobilized. He could hear her; they both could. The rest of the bar was frozen and oblivious.

“Well you’d better fix that and fix it fast,” she said to Sam. “Because if you don’t? He’ll be dead without the very thing he’s so terrified of.”

She pointed at Dean, long red painted nail poised in the air. Sam could see Dean’s eyes narrow, wanting desperately to fight back. She could see it too.

“Oh you’re good at fighting, aren’t you?” she said, and she climbed off the bar stool and slunk over to Dean like she was about to eat him alive. Sam struggled in vain, unable to move a muscle. “So good at fighting it, but it’s always there, isn’t it? Just eating away at you, everything you shouldn’t be, shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want, but it just won’t GO AWAY, will it?”

Her painted fingernail poked his chest, trailed downward slowly for a few seconds toward his belt buckle, then she pulled back with a smirk. “Such a big man, so strong, too strong to ever give in.”

She turned back to Sam then, still smirking. “Both of you. You just keep that up – and you’ll get what you both deserve. Justice, call it.”

She winked at Sam, and then she walked out without looking back. A long thirty seconds later the occupants of the bar flew back into motion like they’d never stopped, two guys landing punches because Dean was so caught off guard by their sudden movement while they had no awareness whatsoever that anything was amiss.

“What the hell was that?” Sam demanded once the Impala screeched out of the parking lot.

“Fuck if I know – a witch?”

“That’s not even what I’m asking, Dean, and you know it. What the hell were you doing? What were you even thinking? And that was pretty powerful even for a witch.”

“I don’t wanna talk about it, I’m goin’ to bed,” Dean announced as soon as they got back to the motel, and he stomped off into the bathroom and slammed the door.

“At least let me look at your face,” Sam suggested reasonably. Dean didn't answer, but reappeared three minutes later with most of the blood washed off . He held a washcloth with his good hand to the side that took the most blows and stripped out of his jeans before collapsing on the bed.

“Whatever,” Sam said, half furious at his idiot brother and half in a panic about what the black haired witch-woman had said. What the hell did she mean? Get what we both deserve - a time lapse that gave us a disadvantage in a bar fight?? That can’t be it…

For a few days, as unlikely as that was, it seemed like maybe that was all it was.

Dean was cranky, but that was unfortunately another bad side effect of the times they tiptoed too close to this thing that wasn’t happening between them, but totally was, and Dean worked extra hard to put that impenetrable wall back up. His injured hand was still injured, though Sam’s makeshift splint had saved it from getting re-injured in the bar brawl at least. This time Sam was cranky too--pissed at Dean for making such a big thing out of what was essentially nothing, because nothing was exactly what had happened between them even if it had felt like something. He was also pissed at Dean for starting shit at the bar that resulted in both of them taking a bunch of unnecessary punches. Sam was getting too old for this shit.

They got a lead on a job two states away the next week, and to Sam’s surprise (and even greater annoyance) Dean insisted on waiting until the morning to get on the road.

“What the hell, Dean, why wait? Your hand still bothering you a lot or something?”

That wasn’t it, though, because Dean wasn’t lying down to get some rest. He was changing into a mostly clean shirt and splashing some cheap aftershave on his cheeks, now heavily stubbled again. It looked good on him, Sam had to admit.

“Seriously? You don’t wanna leave tonight because you wanna go out and get laid? Oh, man, you really are a piece of work, Jesus.”

Dean just glared at him, but didn’t say a word as he stalked to the door and swung it open.

“Can’t you just jerk off like the rest of us?” Sam yelled after him, not caring about the two women in the parking lot whose eyebrows flew up to their hairlines.

Dean gave him the finger with his good hand without turning around, and the Impala sped away.

It screeched back into the parking lot about 2 am, waking Sam from the fitful sleep he’d only just managed to fall into. The door opened with so much force it slammed against the wall, the one sad little framed picture falling to the floor with a clatter.

“Jesusfuckingchrist Dean, it’s 2:00 in the morning, what the hell?”

Sam sat up and turned on the small lamp on the nightstand. Dean closed the door and turned around and the rest of the accusations that Sam was about to throw at him were silenced instantly. He didn’t look like the Dean Winchester Sam was expecting, the one sauntering back to the motel room with a lascivious grin just to rub Sam’s nose in the fact that he’d just been in someone’s bed. Instead, he looked like shit. His cheeks were flushed scarlet and his eyes were glassy; there were obvious hickies all over his neck, but he didn’t look like a man who just got laid.

“What – what’s wrong?” Sam asked, throwing off the blanket and sitting up, blinking sleep from his eyes to get a better look at his brother.

It was a very bad sign that Dean didn’t retort “nothing” and stalk away to the bathroom.

“I dunno, I don’t feel so good. Think maybe I’ve got a fever or something.”

Sam got up and went to him, laid the back of his hand on his brother’s forehead like they’d been taught to do since forever.

“Yeah, you do. I’ll get some ibuprofen.”

Dean sat down the bed, unusually docile. Another very bad sign. He took the glass of water and swallowed the pills without protest. It was then that Sam noticed the tent in his jeans. Leave it to Dean to still be horny even when he was burning up.

“Uh, you want a little privacy?” He gestured in the general direction of Dean’s crotch.

Dean looked down too, then back up to meet Sam’s eyes. “I would if I could,” he said, stone faced.

Another very bad sign. Sam’s stomach plummeted. Something was very wrong.

“Been that way for over 24 hours,” Dean admitted mournfully, shifting on the bed uncomfortably. “Tried everything – six different girls, every kinky thing I could think of, or they could think of. Nothing. Zilch, zip, nada.”

“Shit,” Sam said, fear rippling through him. Dean sensed it instantly, tried to rally.

“Hey, at least they were all really satisfied,” he said with a shrug.

“Dean this isn’t funny, something’s obviously wrong.”

Dean gave up the attempt at humor, grimaced as changing positions caused a little friction. “Yeah, I know. I’m so sore now I can’t even think about sex – but I can’t stop thinking about sex. I think I’m gonna go nuts, Sam!”

He flopped down on the bed, curling up in a ball, miserable.

The witch’s words, spat at them with so much malice, came back to Sam and sent a shiver down his spine.

You’d better fix that, and fix it fast. Because if you don’t? He’ll be dead without the very thing he’s so terrified of.

Shit. What the hell did that even mean?

“That witch, or whatever she was. Could this be some kind of curse?”

Dean groaned. “What, some kind of sex curse? Can’t get off so I die of the world’s worst case of blue balls? I know I’ve maybe threatened that a few times when I thought chicks wouldn’t know it wasn’t true, but come on, Sam.”

Sam was already grabbing the car keys.

“Drink that entire glass of water, you need to stay hydrated. And don’t go anywhere,” he added as he closed the door behind him.

He got to the Chez Vous just in time to intercept the manager as he was closing up, cursing himself for not trying to find out more about the mysterious woman sooner. Risking being arrested for a bar fight was a small price to pay when his brother’s life might be on the line.

“You’re not welcome here,” the man said, reaching for something under the bar. Sam held his hands up, ignoring his own pistol tucked into the back of his jeans.

“I’m not here to cause any trouble – in fact, I wanted to apologize for the fight my brother started. I can pay you for some of the damages.”

The guy stared him down, eyes narrowed, but he didn’t pull out the gun that he’d clearly been reaching for. “Fine,” he said finally.

Sam reached slowly into his front pocket and pulled out the twenties he had, laying them on the bar. The manager scooped them up and put them in the cash drawer.

“Can I ask you a quick question before I go? There was a woman here that night, and I think she was really upset too – maybe my brother wasn’t good to her, I don’t know, but I wanted to find her and apologize too. Black hair, blue eyes, red lipstick, red nail polish – she had on a black leather jacket and jeans. Striking looking, a little older than most of your customers. Was sitting right here.”

Sam gestured to the seat at the end of the bar. “Do you know who she is?”

The guy shrugged, his posture more relaxed now. “Can’t say I do. Came in for a few nights, kinda kept to herself, just buying whiskeys and takin’ it all in. I assume she was just passing through, never seen her in here before. She left that night you guys started the big brawl and hasn’t been back.”

Sam’s stomach plummeted, disappointment feeling like a punch in the gut. “Anything else you remember about her? Anything at all?”

The guy frowned, shrugged. “Not really,” he said, and picked up the keys to lock up, glancing at the door and then at Sam pointedly.

“It’s just really important that I find her, that I try to – to make it right.”

They both started walking toward the door. Sam could feel his hands shaking, panic threatening. If he couldn’t even figure out who or what she was, what chance did he have of fixing whatever was happening to Dean?

“Oh, I do remember one thing, kinda odd.”

“Yeah?” Sam asked, and he knew it was much too emotional. He clenched his fists to keep from grabbing the manager and shaking it out of him. “What’s that?”

“She left me a weird tip – useless probably.”

“Can I see it?”

The manager sighed, put upon, but walked back to the bar and retrieved something from the cash drawer.

“Here, give it back to her if you find her – ain’t no good to me, it’s some kind of fake money or something. Needless to say she’s not my favorite person either. Now I gotta get going.”

He closed and locked the door and walked away without looking back.

Sam stood for a second in the parking lot, looking down at the odd looking coins in his hand.

It was something.

Dean was asleep when he got back and Sam tried to be quiet and not wake him. He tossed and turned, moaning and whimpering in his sleep, his hair damp at his temples from sweat. At least he’s sleeping, Sam thought. It can’t be that bad if he’s able to sleep.

He called Bobby from the motel parking lot, sending him photos of the coins from every angle.

“What did the idjit do this time?” Bobby grumbled, which was fair. Dean could be an idiot – had been an idiot.

“He pissed off a bunch of people at a bar, probably was hitting on someone’s girlfriend in an obnoxious don’t-take-no-for-an-answer way, and now he’s – he’s got a raging fever that won’t break, Bobby. And, um, a raging hard-on that won’t go away either.”

“Jesus,” Bobby swore, and Sam knew he probably hadn’t wanted to hear that, but it was too dangerous not to tell him the truth.

“And there was someone there – maybe a witch – who didn’t like what was happening. I got there just in time to see her freeze everything and then start it back up again so that Dean would get caught off guard and have to take a bunch of punches he would have avoided otherwise.”

“Freeze everything? What the hell do you mean, Sam?”

Sam described it as best he could. Bobby was quiet.

“Bobby?”

“Shit,” the old man said, and Sam could hear him slam something down on a table. “This ain’t good, Sam. Did she say anything?”

Sam paraphrased, made it clear there was a threat but left out a few details about the two of them.

“She seemed like she knew us, or she could see our pasts or something, that we’d hurt innocent people. She said if we don’t fix things, and fix them fast, Dean will be dead – that he’d get what he deserves, we both would. That it would be justice.”

“Shit,” Bobby swore again. “I’ll call you back, Sam. Try to keep him hydrated and keep the fever down as much as you can.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam said, intending to hang up but then putting the phone back to his ear. “Hey Bobby? Hurry up okay? I don’t know how fast this will progress and I’m – I’m really scared, Bobby.”

“Okay,” the old man said and the line went dead.

Sam woke Dean up at the three hour mark. He came to slowly, burning up and confused, kicking at the covers and trying to get up.

“Hey whoa whoa, take it easy,” Sam said, trying to ease him back down.

Dean swatted at him, struggled to get free. “Lemme go Sam, I gotta – god, I gotta go out, I gotta find someone, I can’t do this, I can’t…”

“Dean, you can’t go anywhere, you’re in no condition – and it’s not gonna work anyway, you already tried fucking this out of your system and it didn’t work, okay? I’ve got Bobby researching, we’re gonna figure this out, just hang in there.”

Dean reluctantly took the pills from his hand and swallowed them, then gulped down the entire glass of water.

“Christ, this hurts! I feel like I’m gonna explode – and not in the good way!”

“I know, I mean, I don’t, but I can tell – I’m sorry.”

Sam put his hand on Dean’s forehead to check his temperature, and Dean recoiled, shoving him away.

“Don’t touch me, Sam!” he growled, shuffling away from Sam on the bed.

“Fine fine, I’ll get the thermometer.”

Dean grabbed it out of his hand and shoved it in his mouth, still glaring like Sam was the one causing him such agony. Sam supposed that was a tiny bit true, but Dean would never admit that. He thought back over what the woman had said, wondered if she’d known somehow, if that was why she’d said what she said…

The ringing of his cell phone startled him out of that line of thought. He put it on speaker.

“Dean’s here,” Sam said. “You’re on speaker.”

“’m sorry, son,” Bobby said, addressing Dean. “I know this must be no goddamn picnic, but you gotta stay strong until we can figure this out.”

Dean made a hurt noise, half protest, half whine.

“What did you find out, Bobby?” Sam prompted. Dean was sweating more, droplets at his hairline and his armpits stained dark and wet.

“Not a witch.”

“What then?” Dean asked, eyes fever bright.

“More like a god, unfortunately. Called a Brigora.”

“Fuck,” Sam and Dean said simultaneously.

“A minor deity, not well known, but from what I can tell, she’s got some legitimate power. She’s not a big fan of humanity, and especially of men, it seems. Big on justice and people gettin’ what’s comin’ to ‘em.”

“And this is what’s coming to me?” Dean demanded. “The world’s worst case of blue balls? Am I cursed to never get off again?”

“It’s worse than that,” Bobby said, and his voice was purposely calm, which scared Sam more than anything. “If you can’t figure out how to – to uh, climax – you’re gonna die, Dean.”

“What?” Dean squeaked, both furious and terrified.

Sam realized he’d already figured that out, but having Bobby confirm it pushed the panic that had been constricting his chest into high gear. What the fuck?

“What can we do that he hasn’t already tried? He tried with – what was it, six women? Tried every kink they could think of…”

“Okay, I don’t need to know the details,” Bobby interrupted. “But these things are specific. The curse wants something particular, something that the Brigora feels is justice.”

“What??” Dean demanded, his voice high pitched, panicky.

“I don’t know, but you gotta figure it out,” Bobby said. “Think outside the box, go over exactly what she said, see if there’s a clue in there. I’ll keep looking for a cure, but don’t wait for that, try to figure this out – it might be the only way.”

Sam took a walk after they hung up; his panic wasn’t going to help Dean calm down, and then neither of them could think clearly. Think outside the box, think outside the box, he reminded himself. It’s what Dad had taught them.

Dean was still curled up on the bed and still looking totally miserable and in pain when Sam came back in.

“Look, this is awkward, I know, but we’ve gotta try to figure this out. She was angry at you, right? For the way you treated some girl – so maybe she wants you to be the one mistreated.”

“Huh?” Dean asked.

“Maybe she – you know, maybe you need to have sex with a woman who will – like, punish you.”

“You think I need a dominatrix? That’ll unbind my nuts and let me finally get off??”

Sam nodded. There was no time to care about Dean being even cruder than usual or Sam having to talk about Dean getting dominated by a woman with a whip. Or something.

“Fine, whatever, I’ll try anything, let’s go!”

He was already trying to get up, his one good hand pressed to the front of his jeans as he groaned. Sam shook his head.

“Just stay put, let me see if I can find someone to come to you.”

Sam started googling frantically, praying for a dominatrix who was local enough to make the trip and reading her messages at 9 am in the morning.

“Hurry,” Dean said. “Hurry, Sam.”

Chapter Text

Madame Klee looked Sam up and down when he opened the motel room door and then smirked very happily.

“Well well, who’s been a naughty boy?” she smiled, as Sam blinked.

“Come in – uh no, it’s my – uh, my friend – not me.” He gestured to Dean, who sat on the bed trying to look like he wasn’t going out of his mind and about to leap on her from across the room. He had managed to put on a clean shirt and wash up a little, but the perspiration was already beading at his temples.

Usually passing someone on to Dean would do nothing to dim a woman’s smile, but Madame Klee hesitated.

“Uh, okay – you sure you’re okay, though?” She looked back at Sam, uncertain. “He looks a little sick…”

“Oh no, he’s not sick, he just – he took some – he’s just tripping a little, was nervous, first time, you know?”

She looked relieved, and Sam was too. She believed him. He needed her to go through with this – it was a matter of life and death.

She took off her coat, revealing a sleek black leather catsuit underneath and an impressive figure. “You gonna watch, big boy? You get off on seeing him punished?”

“I – what? Oh, no, I – I’ll just be over here, I won’t watch, no. No, that’s not – I won’t be watching, don’t worry.”

She laughed easily, patted him on the arm. “If you decide to turn around, nobody’s gonna know – believe me, we’ll be much too busy.”

She winked, and Sam found himself blushing.

“Please,” Dean said from the bed, almost a whine.

“Oh, you’re gonna be delicious,” Madame Klee said, and crossed the room.

True to his word, Sam turned his back. He opened his laptop and tried to concentrate on what he was reading and not what was going on behind him, but it was difficult not to imagine what was happening. Sam was way too panic-stricken to find anything hot, but he had to work hard not to give in to sneaking a glance anyway.

“Mm mm that’s a nice ass,” he heard her say, and thought yes, it is. “Gonna get it such a nice shade of red, because you’ve been a naughty, naughty boy, haven’t you?”

Dean muttered something like just get on with it lady, and then Sam heard the whack of a paddle against his brother’s flesh. There was Dean’s startled grunt, and then the rhythmic sound of her spanking him. Sam wasn’t worried, that was nothing for Dean in terms of pain, but he was worried that she would take too long to get to the main event and thus save his brother’s life.

Eventually the slaps stopped, and then Sam could hear Dean panting, rapid and open mouthed, and maybe that was good? Maybe this was gonna work, this was the thing that would get him off – and satisfy some sick sense of justice that the Brigora had, god damn her.

“Oh yeah, you really like this, don’t you baby?” Sam heard the woman say, and then a harsh intake of breath. She was touching him. Oh god please let it work.

“So hard for me, just from me spanking your ass, Jesus – you’re a big boy, aren’t you?”

Dean moaned, heedless of Sam being right there in the room, and Sam gritted his teeth, determined not to look. He could hear the snick of a tube – lube, he figured – and then the slap slap slap of her jerking him off. Could it really be that simple? God please let it be that simple.

It wasn’t that simple.

“Fuck,” Dean swore, and he sounded so pained, it made Sam’s dick throb in empathy. “It’s not gonna – can you do something else?”

“Sure, sure,” she said, though she sounded a little thrown by the fact that Dean hadn’t climaxed despite her best efforts. Sam heard her rummage through the big bag she’d brought, heard the clink of handcuffs. “Maybe a little bondage will do the trick. Make you feel more helpless while I punish you.”

Dean didn’t argue. Sam heard the click of the cuffs, then the rustle of her digging around in the bag again.

“Are your nipples sensitive, big boy?” she asked, and to Sam’s surprise, Dean instantly answered “yes.”

“Yes ma’am,” she chided, and he echoed her. Something about his obedience caught Sam off guard, panic and arousal warring in his belly, making him feel nauseous.

“Such nice tits,” the woman praised. “Let’s see how much twisting they can take.”

There was a half strangled moan from Dean, and Sam could suddenly picture his face, the way his eyebrows would draw together and his lips would purse with the pain. It was quiet for a little while, with only the sound of Dean moving restlessly on the bed, his breathing more and more labored. It sounded like he was getting close, but then again, it had sounded that way with the paddling too.

“That’s it, you’re doing so good, taking it so well,” the woman praised, and Dean groaned more loudly, and Sam’s hopes went up again. “Your dick’s leaking, you’re loving this so much, aren’t you?”

That was a good sign, Sam thought, at the same time his brain went turn around turn around turn around, but he didn’t, somehow.

He heard the slap slap slap again, and then silence – and this time he did turn around for a second, just in time to see her take Dean's cock in her mouth and start deep-throating him.

Dean’s entire body was strung tight, bowed up off the bed, anchored by his wrists cuffed to the headboard as his head thrashed. Silver nipple clamps were affixed to his chest, his nipples as red as his face, his chest sweat-slick. Jesus.

Sam turned back around, shaking. Please let it work please let it work.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” Dean swore, and it wasn’t the sound of release, it was the sound of utter and complete frustration and a whole lot more pain than Madame Klee was capable of inflicting.

“Damn,” she said. Sam thought she was probably getting a little tired of all this. He willed her not to give up, desperate to believe this would work. Because if it didn’t, what else did they have to try? And how long did Dean have left?

“Can – can you fuck me?”

Dean’s voice, and for a minute Sam didn’t understand. Madame Klee did, though.

“Sure,” she agreed, though her voice did sound a little tired. “Got just the thing.”

Sam glanced back over his shoulder to see her taking a black strap-on from her bag, and his stomach swooped dangerously, a stab of arousal warring with a sudden increase in his level of panic. Was this something Dean had done before? Did he fantasize about it? A flush of shame swept over him, thinking about his own mostly repressed fantasies of fucking his brother.

Get it together, Sam. This is life and death. And it has to work.

“Legs apart, knees up,” she ordered, and Sam heard the snick of the lube again, and Dean’s gasp when she must have breached him. “Gonna give you just what you need, split you apart,” she promised.

Dean moaned, said “please please.”

It seemed to go on for hours, though a check of the time told Sam it was only 20 minutes. The rocking of the bed and the banging of the headboard against the wall came to a stop, and in the quiet Sam could hear Dean sobbing.

“Sorry,” Madame Klee said, “But I just don’t think this is gonna work. Some guys, that’s part of the torture, you know? They don’t get to come. It’s okay, you know? We all need different things.”

Sam found himself suddenly sobbing too. She didn’t understand, it wasn’t her fault, but Dean did need it – more than anyone else ever had. And he wasn’t going to get it.

He shoved the cash into her hand and practically pushed her out the door, mumbling a thank you.

“Hey, don’t worry, he’ll be okay, I didn’t hurt him,” she tried to reassure Sam. She seemed like a decent person, but Sam hastily closed the door on her reassurances anyway.

Dean had curled up into a ball on the bed, naked and soaked in sweat, his face red and tear-streaked.

Sam swallowed the panic that wanted to well up and burst out, the awareness that time was probably running out bubbling up like poison in his stomach, making his heart clench.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said, but he was starting not to believe it.

* * *

Dean slept fitfully, too exhausted to fight it. Sam paced and tried to eat, but everything tasted like sand. In the morning, he tried to get Dean to eat too, but he just shook his head and told Sam no through gritted teeth. Dean had the covers pulled up over him, but his straining erection was painfully obvious . At this point, Sam couldn’t even imagine how agonizing it must be.

Sam had spent most of the night online, frantically searching for a way out of this nightmare, but coming up empty time after time. He had come frighteningly close to throwing the laptop across the room more than once, so he knew he was right on the edge of insanity.

“Dean, think, is there anything else that might help?”

Sam sat down on the bed opposite his brother, watched Dean try to rally just to reassure him. Just shifting on the bed caused him to grimace in pain.

“C’mon, please. Anything. She said she wanted you to get justice, to get what’s coming to you. She wanted to hurt you, obviously. Make you suffer. Make you pay. What could she mean?”

“I dunno,” Dean mumbled, eyes closed and forehead furrowed.

“Think, Dean! She said ‘what you shouldn’t be, shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want, but it won’t go away, and if you don’t give in, it’s gonna kill you’. What the fuck IS it?”

“I don’t know, Sam, okay! If I knew don’t you think I’d go out and fuck it right now?”

He rolled over, turned away from Sam. The hair on the back of his neck was damp with sweat, dark against his skin.

Sam was about to get up and go back to the laptop when Dean spoke without rolling back over.

“Maybe a guy.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe a guy,” Dean repeated, “Something I shouldn’t want, but it won’t go away.”

A burst of hope rocketed through Sam. A guy, of course – it explained some of the fucked up dynamics between the two of them, didn’t it? Dean was closeted, and what? Bisexual? Hadn’t let himself explore that part of himself and that kept messing with their admittedly weird codependent too close relationship? Which was brotherly, just… close. That explained everything.

Sam tried to sound nonchalant when he answered.

“A guy, okay, that’s a good idea. I’ll uh – I’ll go see what – who – I can find.”

Dean didn’t turn over. The back of his neck and his ears were pink, and Sam wondered if his brother lived through this if he’d ever be able to look Sam in the eye again. Small price to pay, he decided instantly.

* * *

The guy was named Billy and he looked nothing like Sam. That was part of why Sam chose him. The other part was that Sam had exactly no time to be picky and Billy was the first guy he asked at the bar who said ‘sure’ to the ‘hey would you come back to a motel with me and fuck my brother’ question.

Billy was a little pale by the time they got back to the motel thanks to Sam driving close to 90 the whole way. He had no clue how much time Dean had left, and the panic was starting to feel like an unbearable thing, adrenaline pumping so hard and so consistently that his heart kept clenching in his chest. What if Dean wasn’t alive when they got back?

Sam threw the door open and nearly fell to his knees in relief when Dean’s fever-bright green eyes met them. He was still on the bed, one hand pressed against his crotch, his hips moving restlessly like he could no longer stop himself.

Sam pulled Billy in by one arm, probably a little too roughly, and pushed him toward the bed.

“Make it quick and I’ll pay you double,” Sam said, and Billy shrugged off whatever doubts he was having and pulled his shirt over his head, his jeans and shoes following. Smiling what looked like a well rehearsed cocky smile, Billy unselfconsciously stripped off his shorts and socks as he approached the bed.

“Don’t know why a guy who looks like you needs to pay someone,” he said when he was close enough to get a good look at Dean in the dim light. “But I’m not complaining.”

A wave of renewed anxiety flooded Sam at Dean’s expression when he looked at the naked stranger standing over him. It didn’t exactly look like lust, but Dean didn’t protest, pulling off his T-shirt when Billy said “Let’s get you out of some of these clothes.”

“God, you’re burning up,” he said when he put a hand on Dean’s chest, and paused, looking back over his shoulder at Sam, brow furrowed.

“It’s nothing contagious,” Sam assured him, and when Billy looked skeptical, Sam blurted out, “Three times your fee, come on, I swear it’s nothing you can catch, man.”

Billy frowned, but then sighed and turned back to Dean with renewed determination. He reached out and cupped Dean’s obvious erection through his jeans and Dean let out a plaintive moan, sounding every bit as desperate as Sam knew he was.

“Mmm, that’s more like it,” Billy chuckled, going for Dean’s zipper. “Feelin’ well enough, I guess.”

He was even more enthusiastic when he saw the size and stiffness of Dean’s dick, going down on him immediately. Dean cried out, his whole body spasming as he tried to thrust into Billy’s mouth. This wasn’t Billy’s first rodeo--he kept his hands on Dean’s hips to hold him down as he went to town on him.

“Oh please please,” Dean pleaded, his eyes screwed shut. His face was already beet red with the effort of attempting to finally bring himself off.

Billy pulled off after what seemed like forever, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Shit, you’ve got some kinda amazing control,” he said. He looked over at Sam suspiciously. “Or is this some kind of Viagra accident or something?”

“Or something,” Sam answered, not even caring that he’d made no attempt not to watch and that he’d told Billy the truth about Dean being his brother and that was undeniably weird. Dean thrashed on the bed, his hand on his wet dick.

“I think you’re gonna have to do more,” Sam said.

Billy didn’t bother to ask what Sam meant. He retrieved a condom from the pocket of his jeans and ripped it open. “He need to bottom or top?” he asked Sam.

“Bottom, I think.”

Billy grinned. “My specialty,” he said, cocky again as he rolled on the condom. There was lube on the bedside table, an attempt to keep Dean from stripping himself raw. Billy grabbed it as he pushed a compliant Dean over onto his stomach and shoved a pillow under his hips.

“Please,” Dean moaned into the mattress, humping the pillow mindlessly.

“God, he needs it bad,” Billy said, expertly pushing a slick finger into Dean. “That’s really hot.”

Sam stared at his brother’s pale ass, the slope of his broad back, the muscles in the backs of his strong thighs, while Dean kept moving his hips, driving into the pillow and then back onto Billy’s fingers. The adrenaline was making Sam nauseous, his heart racing, but his dick was hard as nails too and he hated himself for it.

“Please ohgod,” Dean whined.

“Just do it," Sam said It came out like a gasp, like Sam was the one about to get fucked. Billy did as he was ordered, pushing in and letting himself go from zero to sixty in seconds, plowing Dean’s ass like a machine.

“Please, please, please let it work,” Sam whispered, fists clenched so he wouldn’t give in to the almost overwhelming desire to jerk himself off as he watched. “Cmon cmon cmon…”

He watched Billy’s face get almost as red as Dean’s, sweat trickling down the small of his back as he bent over Dean, hips pumping increasingly frantically. It looked like he was trying every trick in his probably extensive book--pulling Dean up to kneeling so he could jerk him off, even reaching up to pinch his nipples, but nothing happened. Dean was crying, tears streaking his cheeks, his mouth open in a continuous gasping sob as the minutes ticked by.

“God, I can’t – I’m gonna have to,” Billy ground out, and any other time, Sam would have been impressed by his stamina. This time it just felt like another terrible defeat – maybe the last hope they had disappearing.

“Fuck!” Billy yelled, and came, pulling out after and half collapsing on the bed, trying to catch his breath.

“Dude,” he said, looking down at Dean, still sobbing and covered in sweat, his naked body trembling uncontrollably. “Shit man, I’m sorry.”

He seemed sincere, but now Sam just wanted him out of there. He gave Billy all the money he had, told him to call an Uber, and kicked him out the door.

Billy had been remarkably understanding. And was now considerably richer.

Sam went to his brother, pulling Dean into his arms, not caring about his nakedness, not caring that both of them were hard. Dean was so far gone he allowed it, wrapping his arms around Sam’s shoulders and letting himself be held. He was shaking all over, his skin so hot it felt like he was on fire. Sam didn’t think it would be long now, and that thought set him to trembling too, panic making it hard for him to think.

“Sammy,” Dean moaned into his neck, and that shocked Sam out of it enough to rouse him to action.

“C’mon, let’s get you into a cool bath,” he said. Dean didn’t protest at that either, let Sam half carry him to the bathroom and put him in the tub. Let Sam sponge the lukewarm water over his head and shoulders, wiping the tears and snot from his face gently.

The trembling eased, and Dean opened his eyes a little, searching for Sam.

“I’m here,” Sam said, running the washcloth over Dean’s wet hair. Plastered to his forehead, it gave him dark bangs, made him look young and vulnerable. Sam’s heart clenched, overwhelmed by a mix of love and fear so strong it would have brought him to his knees had he not already been on them.

“Sammy,” Dean said, and brought his hand up to close around Sam’s wrist. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Sam shushed him, wrapped him in a towel and got him back to the bed and pulled the sheet over him. He had no more ideas. Neither, apparently, did Dean. They were both quiet, and it felt like they were waiting for the inevitable.

Sam watched his brother sleep, exhausted and depleted. He wondered if this was how it would end, if Dean would simply slip away and he wouldn’t know. The thought was unbearable, so he sat on the side of the bed and laid his hand over his brother’s heart to feel it beating.

He woke up disoriented, wrapped around Dean on the bed, his hand still resting on his brother’s chest and feeling his heart beat.

Dean would need food and hydration after his stress and exertions, Sam knew. He got up and started fixing some chicken soup and a big glass of ice water. Think, Sam. think. He’s still alive, it’s not too late. Do something.

Maybe it was Sam’s exhaustion tearing away all his defenses and repression. Maybe it was the hopelessness of not having any more ideas. Maybe it was Sam no longer caring about anything else other than saving Dean, and what good were defenses in the face of that?

We all need different things.

Madame Klee’s words rang in Sam’s head as he stared at his brother.

So good at fighting it, but it’s always there…eating away at you… everything you shouldn’t have, shouldn’t want…keep that up and you’ll get what you both deserve…

Sam gasped, his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might burst out of his chest. He knew suddenly exactly what the Brigora meant. And he knew that if he touched Dean, they’d both be on fire, but not the kind that could kill them.

As though he’d sensed Sam’s revelation in his sleep, Dean woke with a groan, his eyes searching for Sam.

“It’s me,” Sam said.

Dean shifted uncomfortably on the bed, frowning at him.

“It’s us. What you’ve been fighting, what you – what we shouldn’t want.”

Dean didn’t answer, instead rolling away from Sam, caught up in his own agony.

“Dean,” Sam said, and laid a hand on Dean’s shoulder. He almost yanked it back, Dean’s skin was so hot. “Is that it? If it is, and if you keep fighting it, you’ll die - and that will kill me too.”

He pulled gently and rolled Dean back to face him. Dean's eyes were red-rimmed, glassy with fever and glistening with tears, but Sam could tell that he’d heard.

“Dean,” Sam said, pleading.

Dean swallowed, made an effort to stop his body from trembling.

“No,” he said, voice rough and quavering. “No, Sam. I’d rather die.”

* * *

Bobby called while Sam was still trying to get his head around Dean’s refusal and trying not to go ballistic and murder him for it. He was more certain than ever that he was right, and here Dean was refusing to even consider it.

“It won’t cure him, but I found some potions that should give you a little more time, or at least make him a little more comfortable while you try to figure this out.”

Sam could tell that Bobby was freaked out, but trying to convey the sense of calm and optimism that they sorely needed. He wanted to yell I did figure it out, but my fucking suicidal stupid ass of a brother won’t listen to me. Instead, he gave Bobby directions to the motel. Fortuitously, the old man was already halfway there.

After shouldering the rising panic of Dean’s worsening fever on his own, Bobby’s arrival brought such a rush of relief that Sam felt himself teraing up. Bobby unloaded the potions already mixed and ready to go, an IV saline drip, and even a heart monitor. Dean tried to pretend he was okay while they hooked him up to the drip, but he couldn't control how badly he was shaking.

“Jesus, boy,” Bobby swore, clearly rattled. He cared about them both, Sam knew, but he still couldn’t answer when Bobby asked if Sam had any idea what the Brigora had meant – or what Dean needed.

“I’ll keep digging,” he promised, looking back over his shoulder as he went to the door. Sam knew he was wondering if this was the last time he’d see Dean alive. Sam wondered the same.

* * *

It’s the heart monitor that does it.

Bobby will never know exactly how, but the heart monitor is the real hero of this story.

* * *

For three days, Bobby’s IV concoction kept Dean mostly stable. In agony, but conscious. Sam fed him chicken soup and made him drink a lot of Pedialyte. In between trying to keep Dean from dying, Sam pleaded with him to let Sam try to save him. Then cursed him to hell and back for not letting Sam try to save him.

“You’re seriously more afraid of having sex with your brother than fucking dying?”

Dean managed enough energy to roll his eyes and then nod.

“If you’re afraid we won’t be able to come back from this, you’re wrong – if it works, we can go back to being just who we are, we can never fucking mention it again if you don’t want to, I swear to you Dean, I will never ever say a word about it! Are you hearing me?”

Dean just shook his head, turning away.

“Are you denying that this is what she meant? I don’t think you are, I don’t hear you denying it, Dean. And I’m not denying it. I never knew you were this much of a fucking coward! I’m telling you that I feel the same way that I think you do, and I have for a long long time, so What. The. Fuck. Is. Your. Problem??”

“No,” Dean said, aloud that time.

Sam confessed, and threatened, and pleaded. He cried, and screamed, and shouted. By the third day he wasn’t sure if he loved Dean or hated him.

And then the monitor slowed down.

It started to skip beats here and there, every time making Sam’s own heart pound nearly out of his chest. It slowed down so much it almost stopped while Sam held his breath and prayed, then picked back up again, frantic and too quick. Dean was pale, his breathing labored.

Sam rushed back to the bed and sat beside him, holding his hand that wasn’t attached to the IV. “Dean? Hey, you with me? Dean, what’s happening, talk to me!”

The look in Dean’s eyes when he forced them open, fixed on Sam, resigned, was something Sam had seen before, and he knew what it meant, without a shadow of doubt.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Sam screamed it, anguished, his whole body protesting what he knew was happening, choking on sobs that felt like they were going to shake him apart.

“No please Dean, please don’t leave me, please please – I can’t do this without you, please!”

Miraculously, Dean heard him. In one of those lucid and clear-headed moments like people get when the end is imminent, he raised a hand to Sam’s face and cupped his cheek tenderly. For an unguarded moment, Dean let Sam see the depth of his love, as the tears streamed down Sam’s face while he thought no, this cannot be the end.

“Please, Dean, I want to, okay? I want to – not just now, not just to save you. I have for a long, long time.”

Dean tried to shake his head and Sam just kept going, frantic, his tears dripping onto Dean’s bare shoulders, his hands cradling his brother’s face.

“No, no, don’t tell me you’ve never wanted this, don’t say that, because if you do I’ll stop. I swear I won’t do it if you haven’t ever, but please, if there’s ever been one second, one secret moment of longing you’ve felt, then please, please let me try, let me try to save you…”

Dean looked up at him, head wobbling, weak.

“Sammy,” he murmured, and his lips were bluish, his face so pale his freckles stood out like splatters of chocolate. The monitor slowed more, ominous, too loud in the quiet room….beep….beep……beep…..

“Please Dean – this is all I ever wanted, I swear to God. This. You.”

Dean’s eyes fluttered, like they wanted to roll up, but Dean heard him.

“Come back to me, please,” Sam begged.

Dean’s fingers flexed against Sam’s face, reaching back to tangle in his hair, and he blinked his eyes open again, staring at Sam. Questioning.

“I swear to God,” Sam insisted, voice breaking, squeezing Dean’s hand as tightly as he can. “I swear to you. Please Dean, I need you.”

Dean’s face crumpled in the face of Sam’s confession; he sobbed once, full of regret and pain and every kind of agony, and then he squeezed Sam’s hand back.

“Okay,” he whispered, and Sam couldn’t hold back a moan of profound relief. “Okay, Sammy.”

There was no time to mess around. Sam laid Dean back down and slid a hand down his trembling belly, wrapping his fingers around his brother’s cock. Dean whimpered, stiffened like it was killing him, but Sam shushed him, stroking as gently as he could. The heart monitor’s beeps were too slow, too erratic, but almost immediately Dean started leaking, slicking up Sam’s hand , easing the up and down of it.

“That’s it, that’s it,” Sam urged, “Let go, let it go, it’s just you and me. I can give you what you need, Dean, just take it, please.”

Dean was pale and too still, but his body responded as Sam kept going, refusing to give up.

It’s not going to be enough; Sam felt it deep in his bones. It had to be everything. All of them.

It was terrifying to let go of Dean long enough to stand up and strip. Sam nearly fell over in his panic to get his clothes off and get his hands back on his brother.

The heart monitor started beeping wildly as soon as they were no longer in physical contact. Sam kicked his shoes across the room, cursing them loudly before climbing back onto the bed with his shirt still on and grabbing the lube. He spilled half of it all over the bed, but managed to get enough on his hand to roll Dean over and open him up, frantic now to get inside Dean in time.

Sam was half astounded that he was hard enough to fuck, thanking God and anyone more appropriate for the effects of adrenaline as he pushed inside Dean. There wasn’t nearly as much resistance as he expected, and Sam started up a rhythm that he prayed would work, counterpart to the harsh warning beep beep beep beepbeepbeep of the monitor. This is crazy, he thought. What if it doesn’t work? What if I'm was wrong about this?

The monitor started to clang--time running out.

“C’mon Dean, don’t give up on us,” Sam pleaded, snapping his hips as quickly as he could, trying to fuck the life back into his brother.

There was no response, but Sam could see Dean’s expression change where his face was smashed against the pillow, a brief grimace – and then a harsh gasp as Dean drew in a breath and let it out sharply.

“That’s right, c’mon, breathe for me Dean, breathe for me.”

Sam leaned down and kissed his brother’s cheek, whispering encouragement in his ear. Dean drew another gasping breath and Sam brushed his lips over Dean’s nose, over the corner of his mouth, saying his name against Dean’s flushed burning skin.

The clang of the warning beeps stopped abruptly as the monitor went back to its erratic time-keeping of Dean’s struggling heart. Sam picked up the pace of his fucking, trying to drive into Dean deep enough to actually spark some pleasure.

Dean moaned, but Sam couldn’t tell if it was pleasure or pain as he panted desperately in his brother’s ear. Bracing himself on his arms so he didn’t crush Dean, Sam bent his head again to press a kiss to the nape of Dean’s neck.

“Sam,” Dean groaned beneath him, and the monitor beeps slowly grew stronger, more regular.

“Yeah,” Sam answered, working his hips, daring to believe for the first time that this might work, euphoric to think Dean might live through this.

With the imminent threat receding, Sam became aware of his own growing pleasure, a burst of it lighting up every nerve ending. He groaned too, saying Dean’s name and putting his teeth on the side of Dean’s throat, nipping gently

He let the want roll over him, seep through him. Let himself feel it.

“Oh god,” Dean said, and suddenly it wasn’t just a rescue, it was sex.

“Can I turn you over?” Sam asked, breathless. “Please Dean, come on, let me see you, okay? Come back to me, please.”

Dean didn’t protest when Sam pulled out and rolled them over, pushing Dean’s legs up and sliding right back in.

The heart monitor’s beeps were more regular now. Sam bent to kiss Dean’s tear-streaked face, whisper his name as his cock pushed in and out. He caught the rhythm of the monitor, the rhythm of Dean’s heart, and now all of them were in sync. Dean moved one leg, sliding it higher on Sam’s hip, and his arms came up to wrap around Sam’s back, pulling him down. The change in position made Dean cry out and this time Sam knew why, with the new angle bringing a stab of pleasure to him too and making Dean’s fingers rake across Sam’s back, eager.

Sam got a hand between them, finding Dean still fully hard, and Dean groaned like a protest and said oh God don’t touch me, you can’t, and Sam squeezed him and said I can, I can, I want to.

He felt the blurts of slick and the way Dean’s dick started to twitch, saw how Dean’s mouth fell open, helpless. Dean rolled his head back and forth on the pillow, lost to the mounting pleasure. When he opened his eyes again, the green was nearly black, shocked wide as he stared at Sam.

“Sammy,” he groaned, “it was always you. Always you who could save me.””

Sam knew the truth of it, felt it in his blood, the rightness of it. He bent lower, catching Dean’s open mouth with his own, drawing his brother into a proper kiss, his lips swollen and hot, salty from his tears. The taste of him seeped into Sam, made his blood boil as his tongue delved deep to take it all in, drinking in Dean’s moans.

Dean came so hard he passed out, like in the most badly written romance novelish way, and Sam came too, with Dean limp and sweat-soaked beneath him and the heart monitor beep-beep-beeping, fast paced but even.

* * *

It's not the sex that fucks them up so bad. It's the truth. It's having the one thing you've always wanted and knew you couldn't have.

That was it. The thing they couldn’t come back from. It wasn’t the sex--it was hearing the one thing that your soul has longed for, that will heal wounds so deep they should never be exposed to the light.

That’s what they gave to each other that night.

* * *

PRESENT DAY

Dean had just nodded when Sam got up extra early that morning and put on a jacket to go outside. It had been a long night, with many interruptions. Dean’s hair was mussed; he had a day or two of stubble. Sam left him sipping coffee in the kitchen to walk down the road to the church, still feeling warm inside from seeing his brother in that old man robe he favored now.

* * *

The little church on the hill was peaceful, especially beautiful in the spring, when the caretaker and his daughters planted rows of daffodils and daisies and the Japanese maples bloomed in shades of pink and peach and rose. The riot of color surrounding it made the old stone structure look even more picturesque, the morning sun lighting up its stained glass windows and warming the worn dark wood of its pews.

Father Maguire liked to leave the heavy front doors open to welcome in the fragrance of the flowers and the little bit of breeze. He was sitting on the front pew enjoying the breeze when the man who had never shared his name came in again. Tall and strong, long hair and a flannel shirt. He always looked like he was trying to make himself appear smaller, but his stride was purposeful as he made his way up the aisle.

Father Maguire turned and exited to the side, making his way into the confessional to wait for the man.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.”

“What is it you want to confess today?” Father Maguire asked, the response intended to be reassuring in its ritualistic sameness. He could hear the man shift restlessly before he answered.

“Well, like I think I told you last time, something happened that didn’t let us – me and Dean – hang onto our denial anymore. It just wasn’t an option, so we – I guess you could say we gave in.”

“So, you were intimate with him,” Father Maguire said with what he hoped was not any judgment.

“I was, but that’s not what fucked everything up, not really. Uh…sorry.”

“What was it, then?” Father Maguire asked. He appreciated the man’s apologies for using profanity, even if he couldn’t seem to stop himself from doing so and despite reassurance that the Lord didn’t really care about words much at all. It truly was the thought that counted.

“I don’t know how to put this in a way that you’ll understand, though I guess maybe your profession does give you a bit better understanding of souls than most people have,” the man allowed. “But it wasn’t the sex that changed things for us – it was admitting just how much we needed each other. That our souls needed each other. It was him finally knowing that I felt the same way about him as he felt about me. That I would have done anything to save him – anything. It was him admitting that what he wanted most was for me to be the one to do that. And I was.”

“Kinda sounds like a good thing.”

Sam chuckled. “You would think so. But this is us we’re talking about. He never wanted me to know how much he needed me, would never have admitted it. For sure would never have admitted that his deepest darkest fantasy was not him saving me, but me saving him.”

Father Maguire found himself smiling a little.

“And you did.”

“I did. And I’ve never regretted it, not for a second. Even when we found out what it did to him.”

There was a long pause from both of them; part of Father Maguire wanted to stay with the satisfaction of the good thing the man had just related. He suspected part of the man did too. They both knew that probably wasn’t what was best.

“Do you want to tell me what that was?”

“I don’t know,” the man answered, hesitating. “I’m not sure it’s my story to tell.”

“Mmm,” Father Maguire said, a wordless encouragement to keep talking if in fact there was more to say. After many years of listening, he knew the value of not just talking about the easy things.

“I don’t know why I wanted to come today,” the man admitted finally. “It just felt like a good day to walk, and I ended up here. Things aren’t perfect, not by a long shot, but…it could’ve been a lot worse. For me and Dean. Like a lot worse. I could’ve lost him. Almost did.”

“You two have been through a lot. What is it that hangs over you, that you feel you should have done differently?”

The man sighed.

“My whole life for like almost forty years?”

“That’s a lot of weight to carry,” Father Maguire said. The man was hard on himself. This was confession, but sometimes a parishioner needed a different perspective on all kinds of things. “Were there parts of it that you feel good about, of those forty years?”

There was a pause, and the priest knew the man was probably surprised. It wasn’t the sort of question people expected in a confessional box. When the man answered, his voice was more certain than he’d sounded before.

“Yeah, there were. Are. We’ve done a lot of good in the world – for the world. I guess I need to remember that sometimes.”

“We all tend to forget the good stuff. The things we regret, those take up more space – which is why confessing can be good for the soul.”

The man hummed agreement, then went on.

“I think I just wish I’d told him the truth sooner than I did – put it all on the table, you know? Challenged him to stop being in denial. We were all about helping people. And we did, we helped a lot of them. But there were individual people who got caught in the crossfire, who didn’t deserve to be treated like shit. And I know neither of us meant to do that, but…. You know, when you have those defenses up, you don’t always see what you’re doing all that clearly.”

“That’s very insightful,” the priest said. “You’re right, defenses can protect us, but they can also get in the way of us seeing ourselves clearly.”

The man shifted on the bench, pulling himself back in – not just physically. This might be all he could handle, for now. Father Maguire could read his parishioners’ nonverbals as clearly as if he could see them, and he waited to hear what the man would say next.

“You know, in the scheme of things, nothing he did – nothing we did – was unforgivable. She caught him on a bad day, it’s true – he wasn’t usually such a dick for no reason. And boy, did she make him pay. Made us pay.”

Father Maguire heard the man stand up and move toward the door.

“Do you want to talk about that payment? I’m guessing there was more than the fight you told me about in the bar. Or what this woman thought you did to deserve it?”

There was silence from the other side.

“It’s up to you,” the priest told him, reassuring.

“It’s just that it involves someone else,” the man said. “And he’s….innocent. Thanks, Father. I – we’re – good now. I need to remember that.”

He was gone before Father Maguire could say the prayer of absolution, but he said it anyway, hoping it would bring the man some peace.

* * *

THEN

In typical Dean Winchester fashion, he refused to talk about what had happened. Sam was at first so relieved to have figured it out and to have Dean alive that he went along with the no-talking-about-the-sex rule. Of course, that didn’t mean it wasn’t there between them 24 hours a day, sitting in the middle of every motel room bigger than an elephant, perched on the seat between them in the Impala as she ate up the highway. Dean was determined to drive them as far away from the scene of the crime as humanly possible. As though if they could put enough distance between them and the place where it happened, it would somehow cease to have actually happened.

For the first month or two, Dean was as promiscuous as ever. Possibly more. Whenever they were between jobs, he spent enough time at the motel to check in and take a shower and then disappeared, coming back late and smelling of perfume and cigarette smoke.

Sam figured Dean was working out whatever crisis of masculinity he’d endured from being fucked back to life by his little brother. And liking it. Sam had absolutely no doubt that he’d been right about how Dean felt, and had been unsuccessful at going back to denial himself about his feelings for his big brother. The sex had been mind-blowing, of course, because it was literally miraculous – but what they’d said to each other was so much more impactful.

Dean was it for Sam, he knew that now. And even if that love was never expressed physically again, Sam couldn’t go back to pretending the emotional part of it wasn’t true.

Even if Dean seemed determined to do just that.

Sam hoped Dean was at least being more empathic with his one-night stands, and that the goddess with the blue eyes was far far away from them.

They were brittle with each other – or Dean was with Sam.

They had always been physical, used to touching each other to wrestle, to comfort, to tend to each other’s wounds, to check for injuries. Dean was hesitant now, less likely to put a hand on Sam’s arm to get his attention or pat him on the back after a job well done. When Sam got hurt, Dean was all business, cleaning and stitching and bandaging like he was the efficient shift nurse in the ER. Sam realized now how much he had depended on Dean’s soft murmurs of reassurance, his constant patter of nonsense to keep Sam distracted while he worked.

When the tables were turned, Dean pushed him away more than ever, shrugging off Sam’s offers of checking on his injuries in return, insisting he could do it himself.

“You know you don’t have to be afraid I’m gonna touch you somewhere you don’t want me to, right?” Sam finally snapped one night, both of them bruised and bloodied. “You know I wouldn’t do that.”

Dean’s eyes flashed dark with anger, his mouth screwed up with it, an ugly expression on his handsome face. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he insisted, turning away. He stomped off to the bathroom and shut the door.

Sam sighed.

* * *

Four months after Dean narrowly averted death, Sam realized that he hadn’t been out to the bars in a while. He was no less cranky – in fact, if it was possible, he was more cranky – but he hadn’t been leaving Sam alone in the motel room most nights anymore.

“You feeling okay?” Sam asked on a Friday night after Dean had put a monster movie marathon on the motel TV and laid himself out on the twin bed. The pizza they’d picked up was open on the nightstand but Dean hadn’t dug into it yet, and that was…weird.

“Fine, mom,” Dean snapped. “Tryin’ to watch this movie if you can leave off the Florence Nightingaling for a minute.”

Sam left it alone and ate his half of the pizza, but when Dean hadn’t more than nibbled at a slice of pepperoni and it was midnight, he couldn’t keep ignoring that something was off.

“Okay, be bitchy if you want, but when you don’t scoff up pizza in less than ten minutes, something’s wrong. What the hell is it?”

Dean didn’t answer for a second, but Sam saw his hand go to his stomach and a pained expression cross his face.

“Dean, don’t lie to me, damn it, I’ve been through too much, are you not okay?”

It was like the panic that Sam had lived with for those couple of weeks had just been waiting in the wings all those months, eager for a reason to come back. Sam grabbed the corner of a bureau to steady himself. This can’t be happening again, it can’t be.

Sam’s panic in progress about Dean being okay seemed to prompt Dean to at least admit that he wasn’t.

“Probably ate something gone bad,” he said with a shrug.

Sam pointed out that they’d eaten pretty much the exact same things for days. Ten minutes later Dean was puking in the bathroom and telling Sam to leave him the fuck alone.

Once he staggered back to bed, Sam did not listen.

“Are we sure this isn’t the spell kicking in again?”

Dean groaned, his face still pale from nausea. “I’ve been fine, Sam.”

“Have you? You’ve barely been going out and hooking up, and now that I think about it, your appetite’s been off for a while now.”

Dean gave him a look that said Sam was a huge pain in his ass. “Seriously, now you’re upset that I’m not hooking up enough? You’re always pissy when I do, I thought you’d be happy about that at least.”

It was tiptoeing as close as they’d dared to the feelings they’d admitted to for a few hot minutes and then shoved back behind the walls of repression that Winchesters were so adept at keeping up.

“It doesn’t matter how I feel, Dean, the point is you haven’t been acting like yourself and now you can’t even eat pizza – doesn’t that worry you?”

Dean shook his head, buried himself under the blankets and told Sam to leave him alone, he’d feel better in the morning.

Sam stayed up all night, watching Dean sleep, vigilant for any sign that another curse had settled on his stupidly stubborn brother despite his best efforts.

Dean woke up at 7 am, sat up in bed and started to give Sam shit about being creepy and watching him sleep, then doubled over and ran to the bathroom to puke.

Sam called Bobby.

“Whatever you figured out to do to bring him back from the brink of death last time, that you don’t wanna tell me about – can you do that again?”

“No,” Dean said from across the room.

“Shut up,” Sam said, and they could both hear Bobby sigh. The “idjits” was unspoken.

“Does he have any of the same symptoms as last time?”

“No,” Dean said again, and glared at Sam for good measure, miming beating off – which apparently continued to be successful when Dean wasn’t too busy throwing his guts up.

“No,” Sam admitted. “He just feels like shit even though he won’t admit it, and he pukes every time he even looks at food recently.”

“Maybe he just picked up a crappy norovirus,” Bobby said, and Sam’s stomach sank, anxiety gnawing at him. What if it wasn’t that? What if it was part two of the curse that had almost killed Dean?

Bobby heard Sam’s silence for what it was.

“I’ll see what I can dig up though,” he offered, and Sam let out the breath he’d been holding.

“Thanks, Bobby,” he said as he hung up.

“Fucking norovirus,” Dean swore as he headed back to the bathroom.

For a week they laid low, Dean’s lack of protest the most ominous sign that he wasn’t okay at all.

Sometimes he felt better and was hungry; Sam went out and bought whatever Dean said he felt like eating. He drove 36 miles to get Tastykake lemon pies from a gas station where Dean remembered they had them. He got four different kinds of chicken soup from three different diners and one convenience store in the vicinity of the motel they were at, relieved every time Dean kept them down.

Dean slept a lot and Sam hardly slept at all. Every time he wasn’t doing something, his mind convinced him that the curse was back, that the blue-eyed goddess had left a lingering death sentence hanging over Dean’s head. Maybe it had kicked in because he’d gone back to his one-night-stand love-em-and-leave-em ways. Maybe she had never intended his recovery to be permanent, and it was just a cruel joke – a way to get them to give in to their darkest desires and think it had worked, only for Dean to waste away anyway.

The bags under Sam’s eyes were so noticeable that Dean gave up on his glaring and sounded a little like the old version of Sam’s big brother.

“You look like shit,” he said one evening. They were watching American Idol and Sam was half falling asleep stretched out on his bed. He shook himself awake.

“I’m fine. You okay?”

“Better than you right now, I think. Try to get some sleep, okay? I promise I’ll wake you up if I start feeling bad.”

Sam started to say no, I’m all right, and Dean threw the remote at him. “I mean it, Sam. Close your eyes. I’m worried about you.”

It felt so good to hear the concern in Dean’s voice that Sam was mortified to find his eyes welling with tears. He quickly turned away, brushing at them with his sleeve.

“Yeah okay,” he said, mostly to avoid having to turn back towards his brother.

He was deep in a nightmare about Dean being ripped to shreds by hellhounds when his phone rang.

“I have an idea what might be wrong. You’re not gonna like it,” Bobby said.

“Is he dying?” Sam blurted out, disoriented but instantly awake, panic ripping through him.

“No,” Bobby assured him, “I don’t think he’s dying. It’s – it’s something else.”

“Put it on speaker,” Dean said from the other bed. He looked like he’d been asleep too, the liar.

“What is it, Bobby?”

“I don’t know any other way to ask this,” Bobby said, sounding uncomfortable. “The other curse – the sex curse – did the cure involve being with a guy?”

Sam dared a look at Dean, who stared resolutely at the phone and not at Sam.

“Uh, yeah,” Sam answered when it looked like Dean couldn’t.

“And Dean was – uh, the uh, recipient?”

Ohgod. Were they really having this conversation with Bobby of all people?

Dean had gone white as a sheet and looked like he might be sick at any moment.

“Sam?” Bobby prompted. “This is important, I’m sorry. Did the guy use a rubber?”

“Uh, yeah,” Sam finally said, his voice squeaking. He cleared his throat. “Yeah that’s right and yeah, I think he did.”

Sam was determinedly answering for Billy. Not for himself.

“I don’t understand, why is that important?”

Bobby did not ask why Sam knew that, just kept right on talking.

“I’ve got an address for you boys to go to,” Bobby said, “A healer who’s not exactly human but someone I’d trust with – with something like this.”

“Something like what?” Sam asked, confused and starting to panic all over again.

He looked across the room at Dean, who had his hand over his stomach again.

“Oh god,” Dean said, and then he did look up and meet Sam’s eyes. “Oh shit.”

“The healer can confirm it but I think – look, I know this sounds crazy, but this kind of creature, they’ve been known to do this, and I don’t know what the options are, but…”

Sam threw up his hands, shouting into the phone.

“But what, Bobby? What the hell is wrong with Dean?”

“I think he might have a – a baby in there,” Bobby said.

Sam saw the look on Dean’s face and knew that he had already figured it out.

“Ohgod,” Sam said, and without meaning to he stared at Dean’s stomach beneath his splayed out hand.

He’d told Bobby the truth, Billy had used a condom.

“Ohgod,” Sam said again, still staring. Not just a baby – our baby.

Chapter Text

They drove to Oklahoma to see the healer.

Dean had started to unconsciously rub his stomach sometimes. When he was driving, when he laid down, when he came out of the shower in a towel to grab his jeans. Sam tried not to look, but it was like his eyes were magnetized. Was Dean’s stomach less flat than usual? Was there really something in there? Something that was a part of Sam too?

It was too bizarre to make any sense of, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it anyway.

Dean refused to let Sam come into the room with him and the healer, who was an older man with long gray hair and an impressive beard.

Sam waited, pacing the floor, feeling foolishly like some 1950s husband waiting for his wife to deliver their child. Maybe Bobby was wrong. Did he want Bobby to be wrong? Of course he did, Dean couldn’t have a baby. Would Dean hate him if Bobby was right? Was it his fault for doing this thing they shouldn’t have done?

He knew the impossible was in fact true the second Dean walked through the door.

“Here,” the old man said, “sit down.” He offered them both some herbal tea, assuring them it would calm them. Sam was pretty sure nothing could do that, not now and perhaps not ever again.

“You okay?” Sam asked, and Dean’s eyebrows flew up, incredulous.

“Whaddya think, Sam? No, I’m not fucking okay!”

The old man regarded them quizzically, sipped his tea. He looked at Sam.

“You’re the father,” he pronounced, like it wasn’t the most scandalous, ridiculous thing anyone had ever said.

“I – I’m his brother,” Sam protested.

The old man shrugged.

Dean groaned and put his head in his hands.

“This isn’t happening,” he muttered, miserable.

“What – how is this possible? He can’t – I mean, this could kill him, couldn’t it? Do we have to – to do – do something?”

Even saying the words made Sam’s stomach twist violently. Dean kept his head in his hands and refused to look at Sam.

“The Brigora seems to have made it possible, from what I can sense and what I can see inside. I don’t think it will harm him, but eventually a surgery will be needed. Unless you decide you want the surgery now to…”

“Oh,” Sam said, still reeling.

“Not something I can do, but I know people who can. Who will come here to help. Now or then.”

Dean suddenly stood up, so quickly he knocked the cup of tea on the table sideways, spilling the remainder of its contents.

“I can’t – I can’t fucking do this!” he said, and was out the door.

“We’ll call you,” Sam said to the old man mopping up the tea as he ran after his brother.

They stopped at a motel about an hour away, the ride silent, Dean staring out the front window and Sam staring out the side one.

“What do you want to do?” Sam asked, but Dean just shook his head, didn’t answer.

“This can’t be happening,” Dean said out of the blue, but his hand was on his stomach again.

“Are we going back to see the old man?” Sam asked three days later. They were still in the same motel, stuck in a sort of time freeze, immobilized by a reality they couldn’t wrap their heads around.

Dean looked at him for the first time since they’d heard the news. His eyes were steely, determined. Like he was gearing up for a fight.

“No,” he said.

Sam’s stupid eyes teared up but he didn’t look away.

“Okay,” he said. “We’ll figure it out. Let’s lay low for a few days.”

* * *

Sam waited until Dean went out the next day, left a note about needing to drive three towns over for some ingredients he needed for a spell, and drove back to the old man’s house so he could ask the questions he didn’t want Dean hearing.

 “I don’t get it – I mean, obviously I don’t get it, it’s impossible. How do you know I’m the – the father? That doesn’t even make any sense, it’s not like you can mix a bunch of sperm together and somehow make a baby for chrissakes! Are we even sure it’s – it’s human? Maybe it’s just his child - his DNA and some magical egg addition courtesy of the monster. Couldn’t it just be that?”

 The old man nodded. “It could be, I’ve seen that happen, rarely. But not with this monster. They see babies as all about the joining of two souls. And considering what she said to you – to both of you. This isn’t a curse just on him, it’s on you too.”

 “No kidding,” Sam muttered, raking a hand through his hair. “It’s a nightmare.”

 “I’m not even sure she meant for it to be a nightmare,” the old man added, his voice gentle.

Sam scoffed.  “Really? Well, bang up job on that, lady!”

 “You pushed through the thing that she thought was getting in your way – I’m guessing that was denying your feelings for each other – which should have ended the curse. This addition, it’s more like a bonus.”

 Sam raised his voice without meaning to. “A bonus?? You think my brother – my brother – being pregnant is a bonus??”

 The old man waved a hand at Sam, trying to calm him down. “No, I don’t – but she might have. The monsters, they’re fertility goddesses, a baby is the most special gift.”

 “Oh yeah, such a fucking gift. Dean is practically suicidal – or maybe homicidal is a better description!”

 “I’m just saying, she might have thought this was a way to keep you together, make you admit your feelings for each other. I don’t think the Brigora care about the uh – the brothers thing.”

 Sam sat down heavily on the old man’s overstuffed floral appliqued sofa.

 “I’m afraid it’s gonna be the thing that tears us apart,” he said, and put his head in his hands.

* * `*

 “Do you think you’ll ever be able to forgive me?” Sam asked the morning Dean said no to a job for the first time. He was 7 months now, and it was obvious for the first time. Maybe not to other people who might be expecting a beer belly on a forty year old man anyway, but to Dean. Sam caught Dean staring down at himself more than once, self consciously pulling his shirts out in the front to stretch the material so it wouldn’t cling as tightly to the bulge there. He’d done it a lot over the past few days, and then that morning he’d just said no when Sam put a case on the table.

 “Forgive you? What, for the shitty coffee you made this morning?”

 Sam didn’t point out that Dean had such bad heartburn now that he wasn’t even really drinking the coffee Sam got them every morning anyway. It was an insignificant attempt at normalcy – what passed for normal for them – so Sam kept buying it and Dean kept sipping from his cup, but most of it went down the drain at the end of the day.

 “You know what.”

 Dean sighed, put upon. “What am I supposed to forgive, Sam? You saved my life. Am I supposed to hate you for that?”

 “Just like you were saving my life when you put Gadreel inside me.”

 Dean was shocked enough to look up at that, and Sam had a moment of regret. There was a flash of guilt in his brother’s eyes before he swallowed and looked away.

 “Just because you’ve never forgiven me…” he began, but Sam wasn’t going to let him go down that path.

 “I have,” he interrupted, “Even if you don’t believe me, I have.”

 Dean looked at him again, eyes narrowed. “Since when?”

 That was a good question. Probably deserved an honest answer.

 “Completely? Not that long ago.”

 Dean nodded, like he’d always known there was a part of Sam that was still angry.

 “I mostly forgave you a long time ago,” Sam went on. “If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would’ve said of course I did, you were forgiven, totally. But then this….this happened, and I saw what it did to you and I see how angry you are, and I realized I get it. I knew how much it would tear you apart to do what I did, and I did it anyway. To save you.”

 Dean didn’t answer, staring at the back of a chair across the table. Sam went on.

 “It was a violation, and I knew it would be. And I did it anyway, because I was selfish. I didn’t want you to die – couldn’t live with you dead.”

 Dean raised his eyes, met Sam’s. They both knew he’d said those exact words, a long time ago, before he sold his soul and went to hell and changed both of their lives forever.

 “I get that now too,” Sam said. “Right now, do you hate me for it, for what I did?”

Dean shook his head, and the ever-present ball of tension in Sam’s stomach loosened just a little.

“Do you hate me for how I did it?”

Dean didn’t pretend not to know what he was talking about. There had been no need for the way Sam had made it about making love instead of life-saving sex. No need for the tenderness he couldn’t help in the way he’d touched his brother, or the way his heart soared when they were finally together.

 For a while Dean was quiet, and Sam finally turned to go. He got as far as the doorway before Dean spoke again.

 “We’re a piece of work, aren’t we?”

 Sam turned around.

There was just the hint of a wry smile on Dean’s face, as much sadness in it as joy. Not exactly forgiveness, but a door cracked a half inch open.

 “Guess so.”

 Sam walked back to the table and sat down across from his brother. Dean looked down at his stomach, then back at Sam.

 “I don’t know if I can do this,” he admitted, eyes moist. “Sometimes I hate – I hate everything. That bitch. It, you. Myself. Sometimes I have so much hate in me it feels like I’m gonna explode.”

 “Yeah. Yeah I know that feeling. I’m sorry, I wish I could take some of it away, make something better.”

 Dean looked at him for a long time, so long that Sam wanted to squirm a little.

 “Gonna hit the hay,” he said finally, and Sam nodded. He stopped in the doorway of the bathroom and half turned back, making sure Sam was listening.

 “Mostly not you,” he said. “The hating.”

 Sam couldn’t help but smile for real.

  * * *

The next few months were hard.

Dean was not vain in the usual sense, but he wasn’t clueless either. He knew what he looked like, had known it was an asset from the time John sent him out to the lot where the tractor trailers were parked to distract the truckers so John could pursue the monster hiding out in the truck stop. He was accustomed to people looking at him approvingly at least, and with desire more often than not. Now his shape was distorted and different. Even his walk was changed, no longer the cocky bow-legged swagger that Sam had come to love.

Being pregnant changed how Dean looked at himself – the way he felt about himself. When they still went to diners, instead of sauntering in like he owned the place, Dean made a beeline for a booth, hands over his middle, and scooted into it, clearly focused on hiding. Sam had never in a million years anticipated missing his brother being a ridiculous flirt, but he did miss it. Dean without his playful cockiness was muted, and Sam – surprisingly – missed that aspect of his brother. He guessed that Dean probably did too.

Dean was also accustomed to going out and getting laid on a regular basis, and that wasn’t happening either. Sam had some fleeting ideas about offering to give him a hand job, or even getting down on his knees for a blow job, but he was half afraid he’d end up with a fist in the mouth instead of Dean’s dick. Didn’t stop him from fantasizing about what it would be like, though.

They couldn’t hunt either, and not hunting meant that Dean was going stir crazy most days.

“You could still go out, you know,” Sam ventured one evening, after Dean’s pacing had worn a path in the cheap motel carpet.

Dean gave him a disdainful look. “Oh right, sure – just ignore my stomach, honey, it’s just a beer belly, honest. And ain’t it hot to look at?”

“Dean, it’s not that…”

Dean interrupted him, spinning to face Sam and pulling up his shirt. “Really, Sam? It’s not that what? I doubt if a chick could even find my dick at this point, let alone suck it!”

The visual went right to Sam’s dick, too close to some of those fantasies he was never gonna own up to. Maybe it was the need to stop that line of thinking that made Sam say what he said next – which turned out to be the best idea he’d had since the whole nightmare began.

“Why don’t we just hole up for a while then? We've got that whole Men of Letters bunker. Henry made it sound pretty great. And we’re, you know, legacies and all, so why not? It’ll save us money and it’s safe and…”

“Not a bad idea,” Dean said, to Sam’s surprise. He’d been expecting push-back. “We can see what’s there, get some stuff cataloged or whatever you librarian geek types like to do.”

Dean was clearly in a bad way to be sounding almost excited at the prospect.

“I’m sure there’s some more interesting stuff than just books there,” Sam reminded Dean, who looked even more into the idea.

“Morning?”

Sam nodded. It felt like a win.

Walking into the cavernous underground space that was now their sort of home for the first time felt significant. The power whirred to life and the lights blinked on one by one, and they both drew in a breath at the size and grandeur of this place that they’d inherited. A chess set still sat on the landing, pieces poised for another game. Down the metal stairs, there was a war room of sorts, with a map table that lit up.

“Check this out,” Dean said from the next room over. “Right up your alley. Men of letters legacy and all that.”

It was a library, with texts both modern and ancient, and all sorts of weapons displayed on the shelves. A big wooden table in the center provided a work space, and behind them an alcove housed a giant telescope that pointed upwards through an opening right up to the sky.

“Wow,” was all Sam could say.

They each chose a bedroom, and the next day Dean had done some almost-decorating, placing the few photos he had of their family on the dresser and his favorite guns on the shelves. Sam got a lump in his throat seeing it, and a shiver ran through him, wondering what the future would bring.

The kitchen was still stocked. Dean made them chili from a can and some kind of toast with garlic butter from the loaf of bread they’d brought with them, the smell of coffee drifting in from the kitchen as they ate. He looked happier than Sam had seen him in a long time.

“Not all your ideas suck,” Dean said as he got up to carry his dishes to the sink. He paused and ran his hand through Sam’s hair as he passed, and the simple gesture of affection brought tears to Sam’s eyes.

Maybe things would be okay after all. He wanted to think so.

Sam suggested they take on some temporary part time jobs, now that they were settled for the time being, both to fill the time so they weren’t driving each other nuts and to make some money now that hustling pool was out of the question. Dean got a job at a hardware store and immediately geeked out over all the various tools, even if he would never admit it. Sam got a job at a grocery store the next town over. There was a little church a half mile from the grocery store, a little ways up a hill so you could see its simple cross from a distance. The priest came into the store sometimes, always giving Sam a nod and a smile.

 My brother is pregnant with a baby created with monster assistance, Sam thought as he smiled back. And I was infected with demon blood when I was six months old and oh yeah then I was possessed by Lucifer himself and for a while I drank demon blood for the fun of it. 

 Okay, not exactly for the fun of it. But Sam thought that probably the priest wouldn’t smile quite so warmly at him if he knew.

* * *

Sam thought about it sometimes, of course. What they’d done to get to this point.

But it felt more like a hallucination, like a fever dream that was both terrible and ecstatic but not real. There was proof that it had happened right in front of him, growing more obvious every week, but still Sam had a hard time believing they’d actually consummated their relationship, so to speak. It didn’t help that Dean refused to acknowledge it at all. He was less angry now, ever since their tiny bit of conversation about the insane and questionable things they’d both done over the years to save each other, but that didn’t mean he wanted to have a heart to heart about how his belly looked like he’d swallowed a watermelon. Maybe a beach ball. Or, god forbid, exactly how it’d gotten that way.

 They drove back up to see the old man when Dean was eight months into his incredible journey. Dean complained about “it” getting in the way of the steering wheel and patting his first Baby as if to apologize for the imminent replacement.

“He’s not gonna be able to tell us anything,” Dean insisted when they were about halfway there. “Nobody knows what’s gonna happen. Face it, Sam. I might just explode like that dude in Alien, blood and guts everywhere, and you’ll have to be there to pick up the pieces. Literally.”

“Jesuschrist Dean, can you not say shit like that?”

Sam’s stomach lurched, unwanted images far too vivid assaulting him. I didn’t do whatever it took to save you only to let you die nine months later, he thought, but he didn’t say it out loud.

“I’m just saying, we don’t KNOW what’s gonna happen. You gotta be prepared.”

“Oh, I gotta be prepared? What about you, Dean? Are you prepared?”

It was a mostly rhetorical question. Dean had been the king of denial long before he had a reason this good to keep at it.  Dean half turned to glare at Sam across the seats.

“And what is it that you think I should be doing, huh? There’s not exactly a ‘get ready for baby’ book that’s gonna be relevant in this case, is there, Sam?”

“I just mean…. Psychologically.”

That was not the right thing to say. Sam had no idea if there were magical hormones involved in this whole thing, because Dean had always had a temper anyway, but right now the look he was sending Sam’s way was downright murderous.

“Psychologically?? You think there’s a way for me to DEAL with this, is that what you’re saying? That you expect me to put some mantra on the fridge about change what you can and accept what you can’t or some bs like that? Huh?”

Sam counted to ten, and then to twenty, and then promised himself that he would learn to shut the hell up.

“No, of course not, I didn’t mean…”

“What DID you mean?”

“I – okay, I don’t know what I meant. I just know this is happening and we never talk about it and I don’t think either of us are ready.”

Dean snorted his derision. “There’s no getting ready for this, Sam. Accept that!”

The old man had a witch with him when they got there. She looked as ancient as him, but both Sam and Dean regarded her with suspicion. Even the most harmless looking witches were still witches. 

“This is Andra. She has a colleague who’s a surgeon, who owes her some….favors. You’ll need him for the surgery when the time comes.”

Dean sat down heavily, swearing under his breath.  Sam was half relieved and half terrified. At least they had an option, and it was someone who knew what they were doing medically. Hopefully this situation wasn’t so out of the ordinary that it would render everyday medical knowledge irrelevant.

“How do we know this doc will be able to handle something like… like this?” Sam asked.

Dean looked up and scowled at him.

The witch shrugged, not really making much attempt at reassurance.

“We don’t,” she admitted, looking at Dean. “But this guy’s your best hope. He’ll know how to cut you open and he’ll know how to stitch you up and he’ll know how to give you blood if you need it and he won’t ask questions. You’ll just have to hope that he can also figure out how to get whatever you’re carrying out too.”

To Sam’s surprise, Dean shifted in his chair and sent a scathing look her way. “Whatever? What the fuck do you mean by that?”

The witch was not in the least intimidated, and Sam thought to himself that underestimating Dean was a bad idea, but kept quiet.

“We don’t really know what it is,” the witch explained, like she was talking to a child. “The Brigora are usually quite serious about reproduction, some might say sentimental even, so that bodes well. But you angered this one a lot, so who knows exactly what she did to you.”

Dean had unconsciously moved his hand to his belly. Protective, Sam thought, with some astonishment. He’s protective of it. Sam was surprised to find himself relieved that Dean felt that way, suddenly realizing that he too felt protective of the baby. If it was a baby. Sam turned to the old man.

“I thought you said the chances were good that this wasn’t part of the curse.”

“When did he say that?” Dean asked sharply, but Sam ignored him.

“I think they are,” the old man insisted. “No guarantee of course, but I think this is likely to be a normal child. As normal as it can be considering how it was created.”

Dean stood up abruptly. “Are we done here?” he growled, hands clenched into fists.

“Yeah, I think we are,” Sam said hurriedly, taking Dean’s elbow without forethought and ushering him toward the door. “I’ll wire the funds, like we discussed.”

Sam didn’t realize that Dean hadn’t tried to shrug him off until they were already in the car and driving away.

* * *

“Can I – can I see?”

A few days after their visit, Sam had walked into the shower room after his morning run and almost crashed into Dean on his way out. He had a towel wrapped around his waist that barely fit, his belly round and obvious beneath it and Sam knew that Dean probably wanted him to look away.

Dean paused, pulled the towel around himself more tightly.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have asked, I know this is hard enough. Forget I asked.”

Sam carefully looked away as he walked past his brother, headed for the giant tiled stalls. Behind him, he heard Dean sigh.

“It’s fine,” he said, and turned back around. “Just – I know it’s bizarre, so don’t freak out.”

Sam’s heart beat too fast in his chest. It felt like a change, something significant, that Dean would trust him with this. To see.

Slowly Dean inched the towel down, exposing his rounded stomach. Sam drew in a breath, the weirdness of it so much more obvious without the big flannel shirts Dean had taken to wearing. The trail of dark hair beneath his belly button looked incongruous with the clearly pregnant swell of his stomach. He clutched the towel under it, oddly modest in front of Sam, who had seen him naked a hundred times. Who remembered the throb of Dean’s dick in his hand as he came with Sam inside him.

“What’re you thinking?”

Dean’s voice cut through the thought he shouldn’t be having.

“I don’t know, man, it’s – I don’t know what I expected.”

Dean yanked the towel back up. “Yeah I know, weird doesn’t even cut it.”

Sam walked back over to him, stood close enough to see that the look in Dean’s eyes wasn’t angry. It was scared.

“Sure, it’s weird, but it’s – Dean, it’s also, I don’t know, it’s life, you know? I mean, it’s yours, so I guess I feel kinda, I don’t know.”

“What?”

God, Dean’s eyes were green. Sam could smell him, the scent of soap and shampoo and clean flesh. His hair was wet, dark spikes like his eyelashes.

“You feel what?” Dean asked, and it sounded sincere.

“Can I touch it – you?”

Sam held his brother’s gaze as Dean looked at him, like he was trying to figure out what exactly Sam felt about all this. Finally he slid the towel down to below his belly button again. Sam laid a hand there, on the warmth of Dean’s skin, finding it tight and stretched taut, firm beneath Sam’s fingers. He swallowed hard, suddenly overwhelmed with a deep sense of protectiveness.

“Feel that?” Dean whispered, and Sam did then, a poke against his palm, then another, barely there and then gone.

“Oh my god,” Sam said, and looked up to find Dean smiling.

“Weird, right?”

Sam nodded, his hand still pressed to Dean’s stomach.

“Wow, and you’re usually so articulate,” Dean teased, but still Sam couldn’t find any words.

Dean snorted, then put a hand over Sam’s, gave his fingers a squeeze. “Hey, you okay?”

Sam nodded again. Dean reached up and brushed a tear from the corner of Sam’s eye. Sam finally managed to take his hand back.

“I need you to be okay, you know that, right?” Sam said, and his voice came out choked.

It looked like Dean was about to make a joke of that, but he thought better of it. “Yeah Sammy,” he said instead. “I know.”

* * *

Sam kept in close touch with the old man and the witch, who both advised that the surgery should take place before anything happened. Nobody knew if there was any such thing as labor in a situation like this. Dean didn’t look any different than he always had other than his huge protruding belly. There weren’t any hormonal changes, nothing remotely feminine about his appearance at all. Sometimes when he hadn’t shaved recently he looked like a bearded lumberjack dude … who happened to be pregnant. That made it all weirder, but Sam was pretty sure it made things easier for Dean that he still looked and presumably felt mostly like himself. He had always been pretty, and had often been teased and called a girl when they were young. If those bullies could see him now they would have a field day, but it would have been even worse if the rest of Dean looked more in line with how pregnant people usually looked.

“You know how hard it is to jerk off with this in the way?” he complained one morning at breakfast, and Sam was immediately assaulted by all kinds of visuals. He would like to say they were appalling but unfortunately he found them kinda hot. Not that he’d ever tell Dean that.

He thought again about joking back “You want some help?” but decided it would only piss Dean off. That was a taboo subject, Dean had made that clear. Nevertheless, the fact that Dean could joke about sex to him again seemed like a step in the right direction – if that direction was totally brotherly.

“You need me to buy you one of those one-handed vacuum pump things?” Sam asked instead, and was treated to Dean’s comically raised eyebrows.

“Sammy Sammy Sammy, all those people who think you’re a prude are so wrong.”

Sam wanted to say well yeah, I fucked my brother and liked it, that is definitely not in prude territory. He just shrugged instead.

“I’ll suffer – it probably won’t be for much longer, right?”

Sam was suddenly concerned. “Why, does something feel different? Do we need to get you to see that surgeon?”

“Whoa whoa, easy tiger, I’m fine. Just uncomfortable. And horny. Can’t exactly hit the bars and explain this.”

It was the longest he’d ever gone without getting laid for sure.

“Well, it won’t be long now. And then you can go back to slutting it up all you want.”

It came out a lot more biting than Sam intended. Is that what Dean would do? If he had a child, would that make any difference?

“You got something you wanna say, Sam?”

“No, I just – I haven’t actually thought about what things might be like if… afterwards.”

Dean rubbed a hand over his belly and didn’t answer.

Three days later he handed Sam a mug of coffee in the morning and casually said “I think we should probably make that drive today.”

“What? Did something happen? Are you okay?”

Dean shrugged off Sam’s hands on his shoulders.

“I’m fine, I just – I dunno, I just have a feeling. It feels like – like it’s time.”

Sam gulped the rest of the coffee down and went to throw some clothes and phone chargers in a duffel. Adrenaline made him move so quickly he tripped on the stairs to the library and landed in a heap.

“Jesuschrist Sam, we don’t need you tapping out right now!” Dean said, and reached down to help him up.

“We?” Sam repeated, unexpectedly thrilled by his brother’s choice of words.

Dean rolled his eyes. “You really are a sentimental idiot, you know that? Come on, let’s get going.”

Dean insisted on driving because Sam was way too nervous and would probably kill them. Sam did not laugh at all when Dean could barely fit himself behind the wheel and still reach the gas pedal and the brake.

* * *

PRESENT DAY

“I’m ready to tell you the hard part now.”

Father Maguire was probably nodding on the other side of the confessional, his usual encouraging self.

“Not all of it, because if I did you wouldn’t believe me. You’d think I was lying and I’m not – I’ve never lied to you.”

“To God,” the priest clarified.

“Oh no, I’ve lied to God lots of times,” Sam corrected, chuckling a little. “But not to you. What would be the point? I mean, the whole point of coming here is to unburden myself, right? And ask for forgiveness.”

“Yes,” Father Maguire said, though he sounded a little doubtful.

“So I told you we – how did you put it? We were intimate. Me and him. And I'm sure it was wrong in lots of people’s eyes, maybe everyone’s, but I’ve never regretted it. I would have done anything to save him, anything. And the truth is, that wasn’t even a hardship. If he hadn’t been dying, I would’ve done it in a heartbeat if I’d ever known he wanted it too. If that’s wrong, oh well.”

“He was dying?” the priest asked.

“Cursed. And yes, dying.”

The priest didn’t answer, and Sam thought he was probably treating both of those as in the metaphorical sense, but it didn’t really matter.

“And I saved him. And that was what he’d always wanted, you know? More than anything, to know that it wasn’t only him saving me, it was me saving him. Wanting to – desperate to. God knows, I’d tried before, but…”

“And you did.”

“I did. And something wonderful came out of that, so how can it be so wrong? Something that should be weird and unnatural and maybe cursed too, but he’s not. He’s not, and he won’t be, not if we have anything to say about it.”

“Do you still believe you’re cursed?” Father Maguire asked. He had a good memory; Sam had only admitted that in passing, many visits ago.

Sam thought about it. Thought about the night they hooked Dean up to an IV and gave him a shot in the back to numb him and tried to hang a drape so he couldn’t see when they cut into him, but of course he insisted on watching the whole bloody thing. Sam had to sit on his hands to let that surgeon slice into his brother, until Dean reached out for his hand and squeezed it so hard that tears came to Sam’s eyes and started streaming down his face as the astonished surgeon lifted a squalling little boy into the air and wiped him off and laid him on Dean’s chest and he quieted, just like that. Sam put his hand on the tiny back and so did Dean, and together they patted him while the surgeon put Dean back together again, and when Dean looked up at Sam neither of them could say anything at all.

“No,” Sam finally answered. “I think after all these years I feel… I’m finally blessed.”

Chapter Text

THEN

Andra and the old man both came with them to the surgical center in the middle of the night. The place was deserted, the only building in a four block area. The surgeon--a middle aged man who said to just call him “doctor” --seemed less than excited about having to repay Andra for a favor in such a bizarre fashion. Sam couldn’t really blame him.

“Take off your clothes,” he instructed, and Dean sighed and took off his shirt. The sight of his pale freckled shoulders in the harsh light of the exam room, the awkward way he climbed up on the table, his stomach in the way and achingly obvious – it all made Sam’s heart clench, a wave of protectiveness washing over him.

Dean glanced over at him, and the fear Sam could see in his brother’s eyes nearly made his knees buckle.

“Can I stay?” he asked, willing Dean to see how much he wanted to – needed to.

Dean looked at him for a few long moments, and Sam wondered if they should say something meaningful to each other, just in case. Then Dean found his game face again and shrugged as he stripped off his sweat pants. “Suit yourself, Sammy,” he said.

The doctor gave Dean an epidural from a needle that looked absurdly long to Sam, and Sam pushed aside the irrational urge to punch the doctor in the mouth for sticking that in his brother. He put what Sam guessed were the customary drapes for a C section on Dean once he laid down, and started an IV and an oxygen cannula

Christ, this was really happening. And none of them knew if what was going to emerge from Dean’s belly was going to be a human or…

“Think good thoughts,” Andra said, “There’s no reason to expect anything other than a healthy baby.”

Sam tried to unclench his fists as the doctor tested Dean’s perception of sensation and then reached for the scalpel.

To his shock, Sam’s stomach tried to rebel and lose its contents as soon as the first layer of fascia was cut through. This was Dean, and watching someone cut him open felt wrong to Sam on a primal level. It was all he could do to stand still and not look away.

“Sam. Sam, c’mere.”

Dean needed him; Sam moved to stand at his head, put one hand on his bare shoulder to anchor him. And himself.

Dean was trembling, little shivers going through him as the doctor cut deeper.

“Does it hurt?” Sam whispered, his own body so tense he knew he’d be aching later, coiled and ready and screaming for him to protect Dean.

Dean shook his head, brought the hand that didn’t have the IV in it up and laid it over Sam’s. “Tell me what’s happening,” he said. “Please.”

It’s not like Dean couldn’t look down and see too, but this was Dean’s way of making sure that Sam was looking when the doctor pulled a baby’s head right through the slice on Dean’s stomach, tugging it upward. Inch by inch, as Sam held his breath. Dark curls of hair, tiny little shoulders, a skinny arm outstretched and Sam could count five fingers, a tiny round belly, and legs that looked as bowed as the baby’s father’s.

“A boy,” Sam said, and felt Dean’s fingers squeeze his own. “It’s a boy.”

The doctor held him up, looking in awe himself, checking the infant’s features, no doubt counting limbs and fingers and toes.

The baby opened his mouth and took a gasping breath and let out a squall that was unmistakably human.

“Ohmygod,” Dean said, staring up at his son.

Sam forgot himself completely and leaned down and kissed his brother.

* * *

They stayed the weekend at the surgical center since it wouldn’t be opening until Monday morning and thus would be safely deserted. Dean grumbled about wanting to get the hell out of there but Sam agreed with the doctor that this had been a major – and majorly weird – surgery, and infection was always a risk, even if it had been more normal.

Sam held the baby the first night while Dean gave into the sedative the doctor had given him and actually slept.

He unwrapped the hospital blankets to inspect the tiny naked person, turning him over to be sure there were no strange scales or wing buds or, god forbid, a tail starting to sprout, but everything looked – normal.

Sam huffed a laugh. As if anything about this baby could ever be normal.

The baby complained with the beginning of a cry, probably cold without his blankets, and Sam hurriedly wrapped him back up.

“Don’t worry,” he reassured, keeping his voice down so as not to wake Dean. “Nothing about our entire family is normal anyway.”

Wide dark blue eyes peered up at him in the dimly lit room, and Sam found himself smiling. Was this a miracle, like Andra had said?

“Hey, little guy. You hungry? Got a nice bottle right here. I can run it under the hot water, get it a little warm for you. Sorry we can’t – I mean, it’s formula.”

Sam shook his head as the baby kept staring up at him. “It’s just that – well, it’s hard to explain, but you don’t actually have a mom, so there’s no…I mean, nobody has boobs so…”

He stopped and rolled his eyes at himself. There was never going to be any explaining this even when the kid was old enough to understand words.

The baby started to fuss and Sam put him down on the other bed where they’d rolled up towels to make a little enclosure for him. He grabbed a bottle from the little fridge in the corner, running it under hot water until it felt like it might approximate body temperature. Little Dean didn’t seem to mind; he sucked greedily, his eyes slowly closing until he was passed out again, his tiny body heavy in Sam’s arms.

Little Dean, Sam thought, looking over at his brother asleep on the hospital bed. He had his T-shirt back on, but the IV was still in and his bare arms were pale against the sheets. Sam remembered the thin ribbon of red as the scalpel sliced into him, then shook off the memory.

“Okay you, back in your little pseudo crib.”

Sam pulled his chair up next to Dean’s bed and let himself go under too, his head pillowed on the mattress.

He woke to Dean ruffling his hair and the baby fussing.

“Bring him to me and I’ll feed him,” Dean said, voice still gruff with sleep. “Didn’t mean to pass out on you last night.”

“That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

Dean made a face, but didn’t argue any more. Sam stood up and stretched, shoulders stiff and sore from being hunched over for hours, then grabbed a bottle from the fridge and held it under the water while Dean cranked up the bed to sit up.

“Heats it up,” he explained when Dean threw him a questioning look.

“Look at you, being a great mom already.”

Sam shot his brother a fuck you look, but Dean was smiling so he couldn’t really sustain it. And honestly, if it made Dean feel better to call him the mom after being the one to actually carry the baby for nine months, Sam could take it.

Dean propped himself up on the pillows and held out his arms for the now squalling baby.

“He’s got some good lungs, huh?” Dean asked, and the fact that he looked proud when he said it made Sam smile.

“Takes after you probably,” Sam agreed. “Always gotta make your opinion known.”

“Pfft,” Dean protested as Sam put the baby in his arms. “You might not be as loud as me, but you damn sure make your opinion known too.”

Sam handed him the bottle and he tilted it just right for the baby to suckle. It made Sam so unexpectedly emotional to see Dean with the baby that he didn’t even have a comeback.

The old man and Andra showed up with a car seat from Costco on Sunday night. Sam paid them for all their expenses and then some, and they helped strap the baby into it while Sam tried to force Dean to let himself be helped getting into the passenger seat of the car.

“Not a baby, Sam,” he grumbled, but he was still moving stiffly and clearly in some pain. The doctor had pronounced the incision to be healing well, and they had some antibiotics just in case, but Sam didn’t want to take any chances. All his life he’d been terrified that something would happen to take Dean away from him. It had happened twice already, in the jaws of the hellhounds and whisked away to Purgatory, and Sam was not letting it happen again. Especially not now.

He felt a tremendous surge of gratitude when the doors to the bunker finally closed behind them, along with a not inconsequential wave of terror. They had a baby now – how the hell were they going to do this?

“You go lie down, I’ll give Little Dean a bottle and get him changed.”

Dean stood there looking at him instead.

“You know, Sam, you can’t keep calling him Little Dean. That’s what I call my dick.”

“I – that – jesus, Dean, what the hell?”

Dean shrugged. “I’m just saying, he needs a better name than that.”

“I’m used to calling him Dean,” Sam protested, and as soon as he said it, he realized how true it was.

Dean sat down at the map table, wincing as he did. “Might get confusing when he’s older, don’t ya think?”

Sam honestly hadn’t thought about the baby getting older at all. Being a kid. Being a teenager. Being a man.

Sam sat down, feeling queasy. Dean put a hand on his shoulder, worried.

“Hey, you okay?”

“Yeah I just – I guess I wasn’t thinking that far ahead is all. Jesus, Dean, we’ve got a baby here – I mean, he’s here and he’s – I guess he’s gonna stay here, he’s gonna grow up!”

Dean nodded patiently. “Uh huh, that’s usually how it goes.”

“How can you be so calm?”

“I guess I’ve had nine months for the reality to sink in. Looks like it’s just hittin’ you now.”

Dean looked a little amused.

“Fuck you,” Sam said. He was suddenly so tired he felt like he could fall over at any moment.

“Too tired,” Dean answered amiably, and then they both paused and stared at each other. Dean was no longer pregnant, and the evidence that they had in fact already fucked was gearing up for some impressive crying, impossible to ignore.

“We’re gonna have to talk about it sooner or later,” Sam said, and Dean rubbed his eyes.

“Not now,” he countered. He picked up the baby and pulled a bottle out of the backpack they were using as a diaper bag, popping it in the baby’s mouth without any warm up attempts.

“It’s fine,” he said at Sam’s reproachful look. “You never complained.”

They both watched the baby drink with enthusiasm for a few minutes.

“How about Dean Jr.?”

Dean frowned, looking from Sam to the baby and then back.

“You really want him named after me?”

Sam realized he very much did. He tried to be casual when he answered so Dean didn’t get too freaked out about that.

“I guess. Just seems to make sense. Anyway, I’m used to it. And we can call him DJ or something.”

Dean looked down at the baby, a soft smile on his face that he probably wasn’t aware of.

“Okay,” he said finally. DJ finished the last few drops of the bottle and Dean laid him over his shoulder and patted his back. “Hey, Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“Did we buy any uh… baby stuff? Like clothes or diapers or – like somewhere for him to sleep?”

“I sorta didn’t want to jinx anything by assuming…” Sam began, and Dean motioned his agreement.

Neither of them had dared to believe that the universe would not – as it always had before – make a mockery of any hope they might have held for a positive outcome. Certainly not when the supernatural was involved.

The baby, draped over Dean’s shoulder, burped out an impressive amount of air.

“Thatta boy,” Dean said proudly.

The first night DJ slept in a bureau drawer lined with a few towels, in the single onesie that Andra had very considerately brought to the hospital. The next day Sam spent more money at Walmart than he ever had in his life.

* * *

Sam had no idea babies were so much work.

The first few months went by in a blur of not sleeping enough and trying to get used to the fact that the baby was real and not something that Sam had dreamt or hallucinated.

On a Tuesday morning that was like every other morning, 8 am came and went and Dean didn’t appear in the kitchen like he usually did, wrapped up in the dead guy robe and grumbling with his hair a mess and a hint of dark circles under his eyes. Sam gave DJ his bottle and put him down for a morning nap at 9 and went to check on his brother.

Was all this too good to be true after all? Had Dean been damaged in some way they hadn’t realized? Sam threw open the door with more force than he intended, the anxiety making his adrenaline spike.

Dean rolled over and sat up, blinking and sleep rumpled in a faded grey tee shirt.

“Sam? Is the baby okay?”

“You’re okay,” Sam answered instead, and Dean frowned.

“Huh?”

He looked worried suddenly, and Sam shook his head hurriedly.

“DJ is fine, sorry, didn’t mean to worry you, he’s napping.”

Dean frowned again, confused. He ran a hand through his unruly hair and it made Sam smile. Even with a crease on one side of his face and his hair sticking up like a hedgehog, Dean looked beautiful. And fine.

“Sorry, sorry – it’s after 9 and you’re usually up by now. I – I got worried.”

Dean swung his legs over the side of the bed, and Sam took in his pale freckled thighs and black boxer briefs. He looked at Sam with one eyebrow cocked. “I slept in and you – got worried about me?”

It was as good an invitation as any for a conversation that was long overdue. Sam crossed the room and sat down beside his brother.

“I’m only just now starting to let myself believe that you’re not gonna die.”

“I’m not…” Dean started to say, but Sam hushed him with a hand.

“I’m only daring to believe you’re actually gonna be okay now,” he went on. “That you’re not gonna explode from the inside and fucking die, and – and it would’ve been all my fault, it would’ve been me who did that to you, me who put that inside you and who went along with asking you to do something inconceivable, something that’s too much to ask of anyone – that we didn’t know if it would work. I mean, why did we think it would work?”

“Sam,” Dean said, and shifted on the bed, moving closer so that their knees were touching.

“No really Dean, think about it, you could’ve died – you probably should’ve died, nothing about that was normal, and it was dangerous, it was fucking dangerous, and I let you do it, and I looked at you every day and I didn’t know – I didn’t know if you were gonna survive it, Dean! What would I have done? What?”

“Hey, hey,” Dean soothed, in that voice that had gotten Sam through every nightmare, from the time he was a little kid tormented by dreams of monsters until he was a grown man tormented by visions. “I’m okay, Sam, I’m fine.”

“But you could’ve not been, the odds weren’t good, you could’ve been – god Dean, you coulda been…”

Sam couldn’t bring himself to say it again, and to his embarrassment he felt his eyes water and his voice catch as a sob broke from him that he couldn’t contain.

“Sammy,” Dean said, soft, and then his arms were around Sam’s shoulders pulling him in.

Sam fell against his brother’s chest, ducking his head instinctively so Dean could hold him like the big brother he was. All the terror of those long months, and all the heartbreak that came before, bubbled up out of Sam, his tears dampening Dean’s tee shirt where Sam’s face was pressed against his chest.

“It’s okay, I know,” Dean said, his fingers carding through Sam’s hair. “I’m here, okay? I’m here.”

The sobs subsided but Sam was reticent to move from where he was. They hadn’t hugged in a long time, and the feel of Dean’s arms around him, Dean’s fingers stroking his hair, made Sam feel safer than he had in even longer.

“You still think about it?” Dean asked, after they’d sat there quietly for a while.

Sam didn’t bother to ask what.

“Yeah.”

Dean’s fingers didn’t stop their soothing motion, untangling Sam’s long locks, tugging a little every now and then.

“How often?”

It was easier to be honest when his face was buried in Dean’s chest.

“Pretty often.”

“Mmmm” Dean hummed. He slid his hand a little lower and rubbed the back of Sam’s neck. It felt heavenly. “When you jerk off?”

Sam tensed, but Dean’s fingers kept rubbing his neck and he didn’t want to pull away to see the expression on Dean’s face.

“You fucking with me?”

Dean huffed a little laugh. “No Sam, it’s a real question. Do you think of it when you whack off?”

“No.”

Dean’s hand paused for a second, maybe unconsciously, and then resumed. But the pause had happened and it gave Sam the courage to keep talking.

“Not it. Not then. That time, you were about to die, and I don’t wanna remember that part. But….you. I think of you.”

Dean’s hand paused again, and Sam could feel him draw a breath, his chest rising under Sam’s cheek. The moment seemed to drag on, Sam wondering if Dean was about to push him away, plunge them back into a denial they’d have to live with for the rest of their lives, no matter what the Brigora had wanted to teach them.

Dean’s fingers squeezed the nape of his neck, and in a whisper that Sam could only hear because he was so close, he said “Yeah, me too.”

Sam pulled back, needing to see the expression on Dean’s face now.

Dean blinked back, his eyes soft, no trace of a smirk on his mouth.

“Never gonna be anyone else for me,” Sam said, because he wasn’t sure Dean had ever really understood. “Hasn’t been for a long time.”

Dean slid the hand he’d had on the back of Sam’s neck down to his shoulder, then lifted it to Sam’s face. In slow motion, he pressed his fingertips to Sam’s mouth, and Sam felt it like an electric shock. His lips parted instinctively, and Dean smiled a little, ran his fingers over the bow of Sam’s upper lip and then down to his chin.

“You sure?” Dean asked. His voice was gravel, still sleep rough, and the words went straight to Sam’s dick, like it was hard wired to respond to Dean’s words.

“So sure,” Sam said, and reached over to touch Dean’s mouth in return, thrilling to the way his full lips parted and Dean’s eyes went dark.

“Okay,” Dean whispered, and the tip of his tongue nudged hot and wet against Sam’s fingertips, and Sam couldn’t stifle the whimper that slipped out.

They leaned in at the same time, eyes locked together, slowly enough that the other could back out and call this insanity. Sam held Dean’s gaze until they were too close, and then his mouth was on Dean’s and Dean’s warm wet tongue was pushing against his own and the electric shocks were all over him, his entire body on fire and wanting.

Dean’s fingers slipped into Sam’s hair again, grabbing a handful as their kiss turned rougher, deeper. Sam wrapped his arms around Dean’s back, pulled them even closer together, fingers spread to span the breadth of Dean’s broad back. He could feel the muscles there, the strength.

They pushed against each other, hungry, until the force of Dean’s kiss made Sam fall back on the bed. He pulled Dean with him and they collapsed on the welcoming memory foam, Dean half on top of him, their teeth gnashing together as they grappled, trying to get even closer. Sam slid his hands lower and grabbed Dean’s waist, hauling him where Sam wanted him, the warm weight of him welcome, real. Sam could feel Dean’s erection through the thin barrier of briefs and Sam’s sweatpants; he shifted his hips to line them up, and as soon as Dean felt their cocks slide together he gasped and thrust down.

It felt fucking incredible, bursts of pleasure running through Sam, making his dick even harder. He slid his hands lower and grabbed Dean’s ass, fingers digging into the flesh and muscle and encouraging Dean to grind against him. They bucked against each other, awkward and increasingly desperate, kisses becoming sporadic as they concentrated on the rhythm they needed, arousal spurring them to go faster, harder.

“Fuck, fuck,” Dean muttered against Sam’s mouth, and Sam ground out a “Don’t stop”. It felt like he might die if Dean did, if they couldn’t keep going, if they couldn’t get there together. Sam didn’t know how long it had been since he’d been with anyone other than his right hand, but he couldn’t remember ever feeling such need for someone, both to take and to give to.

Dean lifted his hips and Sam sobbed, unable to stop himself, but then he felt Dean’s hands on his stomach, shoving his sweatpants down far enough to free his aching cock. When Dean ground down on him again, his shorts pushed down too, it was dick against dick and Sam cried out with the ecstasy of it, his hips jumping as he arched up off the bed to get more of that delicious pressure.

“Christ, Sam,” Dean muttered, and then the world spun disorientingly for a moment as Dean flipped them so that Sam was on top, his hands clutching Sam’s ass to smash their bodies back together.

Sam couldn’t bite back the growl that burst from him at the sight of Dean beneath him, his eyes blown nearly black and his mouth bitten blood red from Sam’s kisses. He pushed his cock against Dean’s, thrilling to the feel of silky hard flesh against him. They were both leaking, the slick making the slide easy as they bucked together. Sam leaned down to kiss his brother and Dean craned his neck up for it, eager. His T-shirt was damp, and the room smelled like them, their sex and their sweat, and Sam never wanted it to end. Dean got a fistful of his hair and pulled it, rough and possessive, echoing the possessive thrust of Sam’s body pinning him down, the two of them pumping against each other’s bodies, fast and hard and perfect, until Sam felt Dean tense and spill between them with a strangled moan. Sam shoved into all that delicious warm wetness and came too, both of them grinding together again and again until every ounce of pleasure had been wrung from them.

Dean gave him a good minute to catch his breath and savor the afterglow before he pushed Sam to the side and off.

“Weigh a ton,” he complained good-naturedly.

Sam lay on his back and looked up at the ceiling and tried to wipe the grin off his face.

Dean turned his head to stare.

“That good, huh?”

“I hate you.”

Dean poked him in the side. “Nah.”

Sam took a deep breath, looked around at the photo of DJ the hospital had given them, propped up on the nightstand. The baby monitor on the bureau. The dirty diapers piled in the too-small trash can.

“Nah,” he agreed.

Dean poured them some whiskeys that evening, after DJ had gone down for the night. “Wanna talk about it?”

Sam shrugged.

“Gonna be a hard thing to explain,” Dean said, taking a sip of his drink. “Two dudes who had a baby. Who are brothers.”

Sam nodded. He didn’t think they’d probably be explaining it like that to many people. He took another sip of whiskey, savoring the warmth that suffused him. It had been there since the morning, a better warmth than alcohol had ever given him. Dean was looking at him, trying to read his mind.

“I love that you’re my brother,” Sam said, and Dean raised an eyebrow, listening closely. His hand - that had tangled in Sam’s hair that morning, stripped Sam’s sweatpants down to free his dick, grabbed Sam’s ass to encourage him to fuck down harder and make them both come – wrapped around the whiskey glass. Sam licked his lips.

“I love that you’re my brother, but that’s not why I love you. I just….do.”

Dean took another sip and then put down the glass. He slid his hand across the table and laid it over Sam’s.

“You’re always gonna be my baby brother, Sam.”

Sam nodded, turning his hand over to entwine his fingers with Dean’s.

“But yeah,” Dean went on, giving Sam’s hand a squeeze. “That’s not why. I – me too.”

* * *

PRESENT DAY

The other one comes to the church just one time.

Father Maguire caught a glimpse of him before he ducked into the confessional, lurking in the back of the church and looking reluctant to approach. For a second, the priest thought for sure it was the mysterious man who comes to confession every now and then – the stranger is tall, and carries himself with the same predatory grace, as though he’s always prepared for and maybe expecting danger. As soon as the man opens his mouth to speak, he knows it’s not.

“Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good,” the priest says. There’s no rote reply and for a minute the priest wonders if the man is going to flee. Then he clears his throat.

“Yeah, I’m sure he is sometimes. But I didn’t come to talk about him.”

“How long has it been since your last confession?”

The man laughs. “A long time, I guess. Would probably take too long if I started going through all my sins, and I don’t think you’d really want to hear them.”

“God always has time to listen,” Father Maguire reassures, and the man snorts.

“Well, that ain’t true, but whatever, I didn’t come here to talk about me.”

Father Maguire is only human; his interest is piqued. He waits to see what the stranger will say.

“I know my – my Sam – comes here sometimes.”

Father Maguire knows instantly. This is Dean, the man his mystery confessor has talked so much about. The man whose denial almost destroyed them both. Father Maguire's only-human side wishes he’d paid more attention to this man lurking around the back of the church before he finally entered the confessional. He pushes his curiosity about what the mysterious partner looks like aside, chiding himself for the way his mind has strayed.

Sam. The mysterious man is named Sam. It fits him.

“Go on,” he encourages.

“I get it, why he feels bad, why he questions this. What we have. It’s not – it’s not the usual, you know? Hell, most people would say it’s wrong, I get that.”

“And what do you think?” the priest asks, remembering Sam’s questions; his struggle to try to do the right thing.

“I never expected to be normal, never wanted it. Wasn’t raised to it. But Sam, he did. For a while at least, he did.”

“And you’re worried that he gave that up – for you?”

“You a shrink or a priest?” the man asks, and Father Maguire can imagine the smirk on his face.

“A little of both sometimes,” he allows.

The man laughs; it makes him sound younger suddenly. “Fair enough. I don’t have a lot of experience with either. But yeah, he kinda did.”

“If your – your Sam – is a grown man, I’m guessing he can make his own decisions. Perhaps it’s just hard to let him.”

There’s a long pause, and then the man answers, his voice a little softer.

“You don’t know the half of it. You’re right, he’s grown now. I forget sometimes.”

“And what about you?” the priest asks. “Do you think Sam worries about what you’ve given up?”

No pause this time.

“Nothing that wasn’t worth it a million times over. What we have now, all three of us, it’s nothing I ever dared to hope for.”

“Mm hmm,” the priest acknowledges. “Maybe Sam feels the same way.”

The man sits quietly again for a few moments. Father Maguire can hear the sound of him scrubbing at his face, the scratch of some late day stubble against his fingers.

“Maybe,” he allows, and then the priest can hear him get up to leave.

“Are you looking to do some penance?”

The man scoffs. “No sir, done plenty of that already.”

Father Maguire listens to him start to make his way out, then shuffle back and speak again.

“He thinks sometimes that I don’t want this, that I gave in that first time only because I had to. He’s wrong.”

And then he’s gone, his footsteps loud and swift with purpose on the wooden floor.

“Go in peace,” Father Maguire says aloud.

He has the sense that Sam and Dean have been looking for peace for a long time – and that maybe they’ve finally found it.

Fin