clockwork of lungs, two palms full of eyes

by DirigibleBoyKing

There's something in Sam's lungs. Maybe lots of somethings. Dean/Sam.

i.

You wake into darkness soft as moth-wings, lying splayed and dazed on Dean's bed. He's snoring gently, as if he knows you need that, the reassurance that it's him in all his safeness, all his Deanness. Comforting, even asleep; he's nearly always been tuned to your rhythms.

You both have your little selfishnesses. But at night, whether moon-bleached or floating in blackness, things- invert. As if the looming shadows can peer inside your ribs, strip you down to your sad stubborn loving parts. Take you back to the start. You've woken like this every day for months, now- his arm over your ribs, leg thrown over yours, spooning or spreadeagled or just tangled together in a huddle of warmed bones, but it never gets less strange to wake to a living human body beside you.

There's something lovely to the soft clockwork of breathing. The peace. Sleep was a holy grail for years; when you managed to sleep for eight hours last month Dean was so shocked that he insisted on a full medical check. All he found was a broken fingernail. You're still wary, and it still feels too good to be true, but. It's hard to wary, sometimes.

'Dude, it's only sleep,' Dean had yawned when you tried to talk to him about it.

And he was right, of course. It's only sleep. But it makes you happy; he makes you happy.

You turn over. Bury your face in the crook of his neck. There's an itch between your ribs, but it's nothing worth moving for.

ii.

There's a spider on your pillow when you next crack your eyes open. It's small, a speckled, glutinous brown. Spiders have a look of continually crouching, as if ready to spring. It doesn't move.

You get up. There's no real way of telling what time it is, not down here in the bunker, but Dean's already out of bed and something feels- not wrong, exactly. Something to do with the flat yellow of the light, the grit and slime riming your eyes, the way your hair tickles the back of your neck.

Not wrong, but off. Just a little. And your back's itching again.

You plod off to the kitchen, and Dean's there making burgers, and your stomach rebels against the smell. 'Dude, burgers,' you say. 'In the morning?'

He chuckles. 'It's three in the afternoon, sleeping beauty. You slept, like, fifteen hours.'

The shock on your face makes him grin. You can't remember the last time you stayed under that long- probably the last time you were in a coma. It almost feels like you're still sleeping; your eyes won't open properly and you're walking in this haze of warmth and bed-smell. You're suddenly certain that you had a bad dream, a bad dream in the way that children have bad dreams. Something in the hinterland between fantasy and nightmare.

'I'm taking a shower, you say decisively,' and trudge off, letting Dean's indignation echo off the tiled walls.

iii.

-and this feels good, finally, the tack and grime of half a day's slumber washed down a drain, standing like a heron to get a sliver of soap between your toes, rubbing soapy water from stinging eyes with a towel, scraping gunk from under your nails. It's a shower room, and the noise echoes into blackness; you've got the lights off because they still seem too yellow, giving you a barely noticeable headache.

But it's nice, like this. Nothing but the surety of your own fingers, the steam like a friendly cat, the absolution of water pounding down into shadowless black. Sometimes you have days when you feel nothing but seedy and used, when you want reach down your throat until you find the thread of this impurity lodged within you and pull; you imagine that it would emerge a tangled ball of black thread, clogging on the way, and you'd hawk it up like a cat with a hairball and then your life would begin.

It's an awful thing to think, when you've been so lucky, found such peace, but sometimes you wonder if being soul-spoiled and impure all your life, rotted like once-beautiful fruit, is like having been blind since birth. Perhaps if you managed to do it- become purged and pure- it would be like seeing for the first time; perhaps you'd experience the world in a completely new way.

The idea that you don't know what you're missing scares you. It scares you.

Suddenly there's hands on your hips. A hard flinch. It's only Dean; you know his calluses like shadows in the folds of a map. But you've not even tried to overcome the old reflexes.

Only Dean.

He doesn't speak, though you wouldn't mind so much if he did. Dean's voice has reached a melancholiac timbre of shuddering depth over the past few years, and all your bowstrings secretly resonate to it. You can't get a headache from a voice like that, especially pitched whisper-careful, lower than the gentle thunder of water.

But Dean doesn't speak, and you doesn't mind that so much either.

His skin is cool and warm all at once when he wraps an arm around your ribs, pulling you back to stand with your back to his chest. A reassurance. Another hand set gently on your forehead, and you go with it, letting your head fall back onto his shoulder, eyes closed, water slamming into your face.

These things are Dean's silent, tender gestures; there's no resturarants, no pecks on the cheek when you walk past each other, no grand speeches. You aren't dating, obviously. But the things he does do are- lovely. Really lovely. You can appreciate that, can appreciate Dean driving sixty miles to get the best fresh blueberries because Sam, you are kidding me, right, if you're going to drink these smoothie things we gotta know what we're putting in you, none of this shit about pesticides. You can appreciate him collecting every pillow in the bunker to prop you up on after you break your leg in three places on a rugaru hunt (not a word, Sam, you hear me?). You can appreciate the sweet, clumsy little gestures too- often self-consciously silly, always in terrible taste- buying, in a fit of irony, a dozen bad zombie flicks from a garage sale and persuading you (somehow) into a film marathon that inevitably ends with you both getting drunk and crying over Bobby; getting a ridiculous selection of glow-in-the dark novelty condoms and hanging them from the ceiling one night. And then acting all offended when you pretend not to notice.

Now he lets you lay your head on his shoulder and wraps you from behind in his arms and just stands, solidly, the pad of one finger tracing the delicate gap between your middle and index. Sometimes you need to fade. Sometimes there's too much of you for yourself to bear. Dean's always ready to lay your head on his shoulder and wrap you from behind in his arms. Sometimes you need to let him.

You drift. Let yourself get eaten by the noise of water and steam-shadows in the blackness and Dean's gentle calloused hands. You slip into some soft dark hollow of your mind where words like pure and treacherous and beauty are allowed to understand each other. Maybe in the hope that some kind of higher meaning will emerge from the steam, crawl down your throat, give you a purpose.

It's a shock- snaps you back to your body- to feel Dean laying a hand carefully between your shoulderblades. You manage at the last second not to tense; it's a terror-spot of yours. Like fingernails or collarbones. But all Dean does is move his hands slowly upwards, tracing vertebrae, to reach your hair. He puts hands on your shoulders, standing you a few inches in front of him, then bends down; you hear the snick of a cap, a gentle squirt of something.

Before you can protest that you don't want sex, that you thought he'd read you better than that, his hands go back to the crown of your head; he weaves both hands into the locks of your hair, and as coldness touches your scalp you realise- shampoo.

Hands slide in, firm and gentle, lathering apple-scented bubbles over your head, careful not to let it go in your eyes. Dean's silent, tender gestures.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's kind of easy getting lost these days and you like that.

Dean's hands are back on your shoulderblades now, curious, as if he hasn't kissed along the space beneath them a hundred times before. His hands skim down, fingers like feathers, to rest against the small of your back and pause.

'What's this,' he says. Voice below a murmur.

'Mm?'

'You got-' his fingers are hesitant. 'Wait a minute, I need to get the lights.'

He tries to turn, but you grab his wrist, reaching straight for it even through the darkness. 'No,' you say, voice maybe a little on the desperate side. 'No, Dean, I like the dark. C'mon.'

He probably rolls his eyes. 'Okay, okay, you weird person.' You tense and let go of his wrist, and he stops. Drops the act.

'Okay, Sam,' he says, soothing. 'We'll sort it later, okay? I'll have a proper look at you later.'

You nod. God, you slept forever, but now you're tired again.

Exhale.

'Yeah, Dean. Okay.'

You need some air.

iv.

Living underground is- nice, mostly. Alright, you'd've hated it twelve years go, when you yearned and loathed and ached for the open road, missing Dean and loving Jess and needing a goddamned home, but Hell changed you, and that's okay. The Impala can't be replaced, sure, and maybe the Bunker isn't as impregnable as it thinks it is- having been invaded by witches, ghosts, angels, Frankensteins, the king of Hell, a knight of Hell, Satan, God, God's sister and the entire country of Oz- but there's a safety to it. To the electricity, to the pulleys and levers that have worked through a commendable amount of Armageddons; to the old sweet memories that blanket everything like another layer of dust. So you have to be careful poking around in the storeroom (never know whether this bottle of mead which Dean drank for some reason would make him the size of Godzilla, or that old vase would set you vomiting slugs, and wasn't that just a barrel of laughs). So you had a bad habit of wandering, of falling asleep in side tunnels and rooms stacked with forgotten writings, of sending Dean out of his mind with worry. So what?

It has a history outside of you two. You like that. You've been more important than any human, or nearly-human, should have to be.

Sometimes, though- sometimes you just need to breathe.

You leave a post-it note stuck to the table. You and Dean go to really dumb lengths trying not to worry each other, these days, which is nice if a little annoying because it means telling each other everything, right down to how far you filled the mouthwash cup that morning. Going outside, up the iron steps, and opening the heavy door.

Walking barefoot up to the road, you take a deep, deep breath.

It's stupid and probably sacrilege but you let the door stand open, rays of chilly sunlight patterning the bunker floor far below. It's a frosty day, bright and dreamy and glittering, and compared to the subterranean must of the bunker the air is like a brand.

Lebanon, Kansas is the middle of shitting nowhere. That's another thing you like. You definitely can't handle cities these days.

A hand on your waist, and this time you breathe in and don't jump.

'Goin' somewhere?' Dean drawls into your ear. You blink. You're standing in the middle of the road.

'Dean?'

'Yeah, buddy?'

'I... I was standing right there. And now I'm- here. How...?'

Dean shuffles you away from the road, onto the embankment above the bunker door, frost-stiffened leaves crunching like silver paper. He takes your hands and turns them over, examining them, and for the first time you see the purple-black bruising beneath the skin. Your fingernails look ragged.

Dean swears, gently probing.

'It doesn't hurt,' you say, bewildered, and he looks at you oddly. 'It doesn't?' He says. 'Because it should. Where'd you even get bruises like that?'

You shrug.

'Hang on,' he says, and then he's reaching round to pull up your shirt. Cold prickles your skin and you yelp, twisting away, but he hangs on- 'Just a second, Sam.'

You stay still after that, and hear his intake of breath as he peers at your back. When you look down, you realise there's similar bruising over your ribs, all black and purple, like the light at the bottom of a pond, and you brush your fingers over it. It doesn't hurt.

Something in the mechanism of your heart catches. Clangs. The first twitch of fear. Pain is so often what lets you know you're alive.

'You've got these- sores,' Dean says eventually. 'On your back. Over the worst of the bruising. Like the skin's just- worn away.'

You say nothing.

'What happened?' says Dean. He sounds confused. 'When did you get these?'

After a moment you realise he wants an answer. 'I don't know,' you say.

He continues poking and prodding. Gooseflesh rises on your torso. 'Dean.'

'What?' He speaks without looking up.

'Is there.' Pause. 'Is there something wrong?'

Both of you hear the with me.

A bird calls in the distance. There's the noise of a car somewhere far away. Dean straightens up, lets your shirt fall, and steps back. He looks you dead in the eye. 'There's nothing wrong,' he says, rough-soft. 'Not a damn thing.'

He takes your hand, the less-bruised one, and leads you back inside.

v.

You feel better after a nap. The bruising is probably from the spook in Wisconsin a fortnight ago. Sometimes deep marks take a long time to emerge. A little ashamed, now, of the edge of panic from earlier, you look for a case. It doesn't take long.

Portland, Oregon. The name sounds familiar, but you usually remembers places you've solved cases; hard not to, given the trail of devastation you tend to leave behind. Maybe Dean'll know. You walk into the kitchen, standing at full height.

'Mysterious animal attacks,' you announce. 'Six victims, torsos- butchered.'

Dean raises his eyebrows. 'Hearts missing?'

'Dude, chests missing.'

'Wow, Dean says, and a line appears between his eyes, 'Filleted. Where is it?'

You tell him. 'I feel like we've worked a case there before. But- can't place it.'

'Portland, Oregon,' he repeats. 'Hey- wasn't that that leviathan thing five, six years ago? With the real estate lady and the cursed objects? That little girl with the possessed ballet shoes?'

You remember kettle-death-woman and shudder a little. Dean seems to have the same thought; he shakes his head like a dog coming out of a stream.

'I don't think I slept the entire time we were there,' you say. 'That'll be why I didn't remember it.'

Dean looks at you sidelong.

'What?'

'It's just- are you sure this isn't above our paygrade? I mean, never use the same crapper twice, right?'

You roll your eyes. 'C'mon. Not valid.'

'Yeah, but it's more than that,' he says. 'We're a bit out of shape, y'know?

You are. Dean's forty in a month; he's got the same burliness, the same power, but he's gone kind of soft around the stomach and thighs. Neither of you work out a whole lot these days, and you've gotten skinnier despite the food Dean's constantly plying you with, lost muscle. Dean doesn't mind as long as you're eating, fondly calls you noodle-legs.

It's been nice to ease off a little. Six-foot-four guys were never meant to be thrown around, and your back has a mind of its own. Dean's got a leg that aches when it rains. You're not sure that shoulder you broke healed quite right, but despite all that you're both still up there. Still among the best.

'Just because we aren't what we were doesn't mean we aren't good,' you say steadily. 'Doesn't mean we aren't better equipped for this than a bunch of civilians. And we're running a little low on favours these days, Dean.'

He rubs a hand over his eyes. 'What about your bruises?'

You shrug. 'I'll live.'

'Right,' says Dean.

You stand, feeling awkward. 'So- we're going?'

'Yeah,' he says. 'If you really want to, I mean.'

You set your chin. 'I do.'

Looking slightly thrown, he starts closing the book he's reading- Dean reads now, it seems. He's become a bit more blatant about it, no longer tucks them under the seat when he hears you approaching. You squint at the cover. It's Breakfast Of Champions. Warmth spreads through your chest.

'You wanna get your duffel, then?' says Dean.

You blink. 'We're leaving now?' You don't know why it surprises you.

'Uh- yeah, dude, it's a day's drive. You okay?'

'Yeah,' you say. 'Yeah. I'll get my stuff.'

vi.

You uncoil fractionally once you're on the highway, hunkering into the window and folding your arms against the cold before the car warms up. Dean looks round at you and grins big and warm. You smile back.

Dean slides in a soft rock cassette.

vii.

Jerking awake to a hand on your shoulder. Twist your head- 'D-Dean?'

It's dark outside the car; you've pulled up in the parking lot of some podunk motel, neon sign spelling out something so bright you can't read it. Your skin itches.

'Thought we'd make a stop,' says Dean, voice gentle. 'Ain't so young as I used to be, and don't tell me you aren't tired.'

''Kay,' you say round a yawn. 'Sure. Sounds great.'

Your room, once you get one, is papered with dancing girls in silhouette. Dean doesn't even seem to notice, oddly enough. Two queens, because why the hell not, one for you both and one for the weapons- and this means that you can kick Dean out of bed in good conscience if you get pissed at him.

Which happens, shockingly, not that often.

Laptop out. You start looking through local news reports as Dean flops facedown onto the bed. You're tired- the screen's light is sending a pickaxe through your brain- but an old fierce part of you needs to wear itself out before it lays down.

'Sam,' Dean says after a minute. Cautioning.

'Yeah. Just a minute.' You know what he means, and you're going to lie down in a minute. Your back hurts, anyway. Worse than usual. Just a couple more things you want to check; you're starting to put together an idea of what's happening in this town.

'Sam.'

'Just a minute.'

From what you can guess, it's a newly-turned werewolf. Newly-turned based on the savaged state of the chests; you'd observed a similar thing on the case with- the case of '06. There's a witness. That means interviews, and that means suits. Conversation. God, when was the last time you talked to anyone who wasn't Dean? Jody rang last week. Or was it the week before?

'Fuckin' hell, Sam. Come to bed.'

Dean's voice is very close. You turn. His chin is practically on your shoulder.

You give in. Stand up; Dean helps you pull your shirt over your head as if he knows your shoulder's been stiff today. He traces with his fingers the surgical scar, the wire of silver flesh that twists over your shoulder and gleams like an eye. Thumbs the puckered bullet wound on your abdomen from getting gutshot in '16; the marks from where you sliced your wrists open in an attempt to open the Werther box. Presses his lips to them. Inspects the violet bruising- that still won't hurt, Jesus- and pronounces, after a prolonged pause, 'Hmph.'

He lingers there a little longer, and you're worried he's going to make a big deal out of it, but then he just brushes his hand over the marks and turns, pressing his body up against yours, corralling you back against the bed. You let him; let yourself fall when your knees hit the foot of the bed, landing on your back on the duvet. God, you're tired.

Dean crawls up your body like an animal, fully clothed, boots still on, dipping his head to kiss your hipbones. Moves up, mouthing the careful bone of your sternum like he's drinking from a holy well. A few ugly welted scars where you got clipped by buckshot a while back; you feel his tongue on them, warm and wet. Fingers in your hair. Kisses at the crooks of your elbows. Things never used to be this way.

Hands on your waist, turning you onto your belly, and you tense. 'Dean.'

He squeezes your hand. Two ridged lines held in the hollow of your palm- the time you sliced open your hand trying to cure Crowley and the other one, from the first time after regaining your Cage memories that you saw your own blood.

You trust him; you can't help it. And, hell, you can always kick him out of bed if things get too much.

Dean's fingers probe over the pale, exposed nubs of your spine, and you can't suppress a shiver. Under his hands each bone could be a piano key. Fingertips settling into the hollows and notches, learning every vertebral apostrophe, and then wet heat closes over the base of your spine and you jolt up off the bed in shock. He's suckling a scar, the scar, the only scar you have that's over seven years old. Every time you've come back from the dead, all your scars have been erased but for the one in a knot at the base of your spine. Every angel, every demon that's resurrected you has left it. You're not sure why. Perhaps they thought it was funny.

Dean never goes near this scar. You've been fooling around since just after you got it and never, ever, ever. When he so much as brushes it by accident he flinches.

And here he is with his mouth on it.

He pulls away and you draw a long breath in. Try to relax. A hand stroking through your hair again, and that helps, but then there's one on your waist and one gently on your bare ass and you breathe in again, shaky.

Dean notices, of course. 'You okay?'

You're concentrating on breathing steadily, face shoved into the duvet. It smells faintly of nicotine. Fuck, what a turn-off.

His hand is still caressing the naked skin of your buttocks. 'D'you- wanna switch? I mean- we can, if that's what you want.'

'No,' you get out. 'It's fine.' It's not, not really, but you aren't remotely in the mood for getting up top. The two of you used to switch it up pretty regularly, right up until you got back your Hell memories and- well. It wasn't until you found the Bunker that you started this whole thing up again, and before long you were too sick to carry on, and then there was Gadreel and Dean refusing to touch you, and then there was the Mark and rough silent fucks in the dark because God forbid Dean allow himself to be vulnerable or anything.

Now that you've managed to get together again, so to speak, it's rare for you to want to do the whole dominant caveman thing. Something in you wants to hide at the thought of how crazy-aggressive you once were with sex. You're pretty sure that bit of you got all smashed-up in the Cage, along with most of your anger issues.

And Dean, when he does let his soft parts show, is as much of a caretaker as ever; just with some added grimness, a hint of restrained violence.

'You good?' he says.

'Yeah. Yeah.' This is barely even foreplay yet; you're fine. You want this, you really do. Only then Dean's hand slides down and the pad of his index finger flicks over your hole and you're not fine you're not fine you're not fine, you're scrambling to sit up and pull the duvet over yourself and making weird shuddery noises and you're sick, so so sick of being broken open like a fucking treasure-box. Like one of those jewelled caskets in the fairy stories that were always empty, really, always such a goddamned let-down. Sick of people knowing their way around your soft tender places when they've no fucking right, no right at all.

Dean is murmuring something soothing, hand hovering a safe distance from your back, and you realise you're apologising over and over again. You're not weird about sex. You're not. When it comes down to it, nine times of ten you'll be perfectly fine. Nine times out of ten.

'Sorry,' you say when you can hear your own breathing again. 'Sorry.'

'It's fine, Sam.' Oh, fuck, he's giving you that look. That soft, gentle, I'll never hurt you look. Your throat suddenly aches with tears.

You take a second to get yourself under control. Your dad's voice echoes in your head, man the hell up, Sam, you're not a goddamn six-year-old, and you wince. The worst time to think about John Winchester.

Dean's hand touches your back and you flinch. He jerks it away.

Okay, okay, okay.

You move back up the bed, resting on your elbows, and look Dean over. He doesn't look angry, not at all. Your eyes slide to the bulge between his legs.

'You, uh,' you say. Swallow. 'I could- take care of that for you?'

He hesitates. Then, 'It's fine. Get some rest.'

'Dean-'

'It's fine, Sam.'

He sees the look on your face.

'Hey. Hey.' Puts a hand under your chin, tilting your face up. 'I don't blame you. Okay? Not for a damn thing.'

You nod. Slide under the covers, and Dean switches off the light. You hear his footsteps going into the bathroom and listen hard.

Five minutes later, the bathroom door creaks open. Footsteps over the floor. He slides into bed behind you, hooking an arm round your waist.

You both lie there, awake in the darkness, not saying a word.

viii.

When you wake, the bed's empty and something is wrong.

Your hands immediately go to your head, combing through your hair, and strands slide out, whole locks coming away on your fingers and at first you don't get what's happening. Then you look down at the curls of chesnut hair left on the pillow.

Scrambling upright in bed, clutching at your head. Cold air hits your bare chest and for a moment you could swear you feel something shift in your ribcage-

Out of bed, over to the distorted motel mirror, and at the first sight of your reflection your stomach lurches.

It's not just your hair. Your hair doesn't look any different from normal; it's pretty thick, not enough of it's come out to make a real difference. It's the marks on your chest.

You've seen a lot of corpses. You've seen a lot of bruises. It's pretty common for a dead person to be lying flat-out for hours after death, and when that happens their blood sinks, pooling in the parts of their body closest to the ground, creating livid patterns like war-paint.

You scramble out of your sweatpants, kicking boxers to the ground, and stand naked in front of the mirror.

The marks on your body are the colour of violence, the colour of Hell, a deep purplish red like rope-burns. Mottling your ribs. Blooming in livid constellations down your arms. Speckling your thighs like spilled blood, like jewels, like Byzantine rubies embedded and bleeding into your flesh. Shading through to black in places- at your fingertips, a spot on your collarbone, the soft place inside your right thigh.

You stumble backwards and something squashes beneath your foot. Oh, God, it's a spider, what the fuck, a crushed spider with limbs all flattened and stuck to your instep, Jesus. You haven't killed a spider since before you can remember- even as a kid you were the one to put them in jars and release them outside the motels. There's bile in your throat. It's a big one, body all smushed to your foot, and you hobble into the bathroom and get your foot into the sink and rinse it for ages, cringing.

When you're still in there, squeezing motel soap all over your foot, you hear the slam of the door. 'Hey,' comes Dean's voice, 'Coffee,' and fucking fuck you've left the bathroom door wide open. 'Don't come in,' breaks free from your throat, all scratchy-sounding, 'Dean,' but it's too late, he's standing in the doorway.

He takes you in, naked and bruised all over and with one leg raised and jammed into the sink and 'What the fuck,' he says.

His coffee cup hits the floor. He's beside you suddenly, hands steadying you, inspecting the bruises. 'What the hell, Sam, where did these come from?'

'I don't know- my hair, too-'

He touches it, stroking through the strands, and curses when they come away on his fingers. 'What is this?'

'I- I just woke up like this- those marks have spread-'

'Jesus.' He shakes his head. 'Jesus.'

'My hair.'

'We gotta- Sammy. Do you need a hospital? Fuck it, you're going to the hospital. C'mon-'

Your hand snakes out to grab Dean's wrist. 'No.'

'Sam-'

'No way. This isn't a hospital thing. Okay? This is- something else.'

Dean's always had to have a direction to move in, something to do. When he doesn't is when he starts to lose bits of himself. You see that desperation on him now.

'Let's just finish this hunt,' you say. 'Let's just finish it and go home. Please.'

'Like hell.' He goes into the bedroom. You hear the hum of a zip, and something clinking, and you tense. Balance to take your foot out of the sink.

You need to put your damn clothes on.

Dean comes back in, brandishing scissors. He grabs you by the shoulder, steering you to a chair, and you realise what he's going to do. 'Oh, no. Hell, no.' You twist away. 'No fucking way.'

Your jeans are crumpled on the floor and you step into them, belting them securely. When you reach for your shirt, Dean's hand comes down over your wrist.

'No, Sammy, come on. You know we gotta do this.'

Swinging to glare at him. 'My goddamned hair, Dean.'

'Look. I don't like it either, okay, but it's this or it all falls out, by the look of things. Common sense, Sam.'

You know he's right. It doesn't make you want to give in. You pull your hand away. 'No. No. You're not cutting my hair off.'

'Sam-'

'I said no. Not now, not ever- just no-'

ix.

The scissors make an odd sound when they close round locks of your hair. When you look round you see the little damp tendrils all clinging to the side of the bath. Dean's hand cradles your skull, holding it still and close. His pinky strokes over the shell of your ear. You jerk when the scissors come too close.

'I hate this,' you say, much quieter than you meant to.

'I know.'

He cuts it short. Shorter, anyway. Perhaps a couple centimetres shorter than when he went to fetch you at Stanford. It feels weird when you put your hand to the nape of your neck, all velvety clumps.

You feel wrong all over. When you leave the bathroom, the sun breaks through the windows of the motel room, light drifting in shafts over worn carpet, dust motes rising like souls fresh out of a jar. It's shadowy in the corners of the room, and the sunlight seems eerie. Silent and dreamlike beyond the windows. Waiting.

Dean's fingers rubbing against your scalp shock you. His hand jerks away when you jolt.

'Those marks,' he says. 'What the hell are they?'

You rub your hand over them, trying not to look down. There's still no pain. You press hard into them, ribs bending a fraction, but then Dean's yanking your hand away. 'Hey, don't do that, moron. Poke a freakin' bear with a stick, why don't you?'

Your hand creeps back up, but you only touch the marks this time. 'Dean,' you say, trying to keep the edge of disturbance from your voice, 'It doesn't hurt. It won't hurt. I just- I just need it to hurt.'

Dean stops. His fingers curl a little farther round your skull.

'No, Sammy,' he says. 'You don't.'

You shut your eyes, tight as you can.

x.

Dean wants you to go to a hospital. When you flatly refuse, he moderates that to the bunker. Then it's the Impala. Then it's anywhere, fuck, Dean'll take you anywhere, Sammy, just say the goddamn word, anywhere you want so long as it's somehow gonna fix you, c'mon, this hunt's dumb anyway.

The last one actually gets a reaction from you. 'Since when is a trail of mutilated corpses 'dumb', Dean?'

He scowls. 'Stow the quotey fingers, you hear me? And I didn't say dumb. Well, I didn't mean dumb. I meant it's a hunt, okay, a normal hunt, all we gotta do is ring up someone to come out here and take care of it.'

'Like who, Dean?'

For a moment you think you've stumped him. Then he clicks his fingers. 'Bald dude. What's his name. Keith something.'

'You mean the guy you shot in the leg?'

He scrubs a hand over his face. 'Shit. Uh. That Marcus guy?'

'You want to ask him for help? After Ohio?'

'Jesse and Cesar.'

You tense up. 'No fucking way. They're out. You know they're out. That's not fair.'

He holds his hands up. 'Okay, okay, cool it. What about Tanner? Luther Tanner?'

'Dude. You shot his mom.'

Dean sits, a vein twitching in his forehead. Then he swivels to look at Sam. 'Do we have no friends left on the list?'

You have to think about it for a second. 'Well, I suppose there's still Garth. And Jody and Donna. And, uh. Um.' You work through the years. 'Linda Tran?'

'So a pacifist werewolf, a mother of two, an inexperienced policewoman, and Kevin's grieving single parent.'

'Uh. Yeah.'

'Dude.' Dean shakes his head, staring down at the carpet. 'That's- that's bad.'

'Uh. Yeah.'

'But I guess some things just suck. Because we're leaving-'

'Dean.'

'No. No, Sam.' He comes to kneel in front of you, hands coming up to frame your face; his thumbs brush your eyelashes. 'You ain't looking good. You know that. And I'm not choosing anyone else over you, okay? You don't get to sacrifice youself anymore. Not after everything you've been through.'

'Yeah? And what about you, Dean? What about everything you've been through?'

You watch him struggle not to shut down, turn away. Finally he looks away. Stands up.

'First thing in the morning. Okay?'

You start going through your contacts.

xi.

'Six years old. Six fuckin' years old.'

'I know.'

'Just- fuck. Fuck.'

'I know. I know.'

Dean rubs a hand over his jaw. Spreads an arm. 'I mean- how are we supposed to-? Why do we always get the messed-up shit?'

'Not your fault, Dean,' you say. 'Couldn't have known, right?'

'Right. No, I know. It's just- you know.'

The call came in while you were asleep. A child ripped open by an animal. Broad daylight. She's dead now.

Dean, hunched over, clutching a whiskey bottle. He always gets like this when it's a kid. It's why you don't take those sort of cases very often. It's too much for him to bear and honestly you're numb.

'We just gotta work the case,' says Dean. 'Like it's any old job. Which it is.' He takes another slug at the bottle. Sets it down. Picks it back up again.

'Can't save everyone,' you say. It's a lie, of course. You can save everyone. Or could. Once.

'Yeah. Yeah, of course.'

You know without discussing it that you're not leaving the case; not after this. It's all there in the vein at Dean's temple, twitching like a grave-worm.

xii.

By noon you've tracked the werewolf to the sewers. The closer you get the more Dean's face changes. It's like he can catch its scent, face tightening, eyes clear and hard and bright and feral. This is probably what he looked like in Purgatory. Like he's ready to sink his teeth into the werewolf's jugular and maul it dead. You used to wonder which Dean was the real one- the predator or the caretaker or the little lost kid- but you don't wonder that any more. It's not an either/or thing. You get it.

After two hours of getting lost in the dark and inhaling through your mouth, you find the wolf's den: a chamber off to the side, full of rust-stained pipes, light breathing down through vents above your head. The floor's messy with tiny bones, bird carcasses, and the smell is awful. You and Dean move back-to-back, guns held at the ready. A squelch, and you move your foot out of a pile of glistening insides. Try not to gag. Wiping sweat from your face with a sleeve.

'You see it?' Dean says.

You don't see it. Eyes roving over thinly lit metal, trying not to glance down. Trying not to wonder how much of the gore at your feet is human. There's too much stuff in here, too cramped, too easy to hide in. Moving closer to Dean. Your shoulderblades slot together. There's a tic going in your left eye.

'I don't think it's in here,' you say. The chamber's small, and you'd've heard it by now, right? 'We could wait. It's got to come back som-'

The world turns over with noise. A crash so immediate and thundering that you duck, and Dean goes 'Shit' and his gun goes off once, twice, and there's a whimper like an injured dog and you straighten up, trying to get your bearings. Christ, the wolf had jumped down onto Dean-

'Sam,' Dean grits out, and you turn. He's clutching a hand to his face, leaning hard against the wall; you tug his bloodied palm from his face and there's a gash from above the eyebrow all the way down his cheek, fuck fuck fuck. You let his hand go and he presses it back to the wound.

'Can you see?' You're shouting, but it hardly registers. 'Dean! Can you see?'

'Yeah, yeah, just-' he breaks off, cursing into that bloody palm of his, and you turn back round, gun gripped in both hands. There's no sign of the were. Dean injured it, you heard the howl- perhaps it left, limped off or went in a raging fury to attack some other six-year-old girl. But that's not how these things go down, or very rarely. You shift your weight, trying to tune out Dean's tooth-gritted noises of pain, the heave of your heart and everything inside you and focus. Focus. Breathe in and gag on the stench. Breathe out, shaky. Your hands are trembling round the gun, and that's when you see it.

A glint of eye between two pipes. Unmoving. Barely visible. But it's there.

Wolf.

You raise the gun, slowly, slowly enough that it won't bolt, and train it with precision- one shot, can't miss, straight through the eye. Breathe. Breathe. Sighting along the barrell. Finger squeezing the trigger- three, two-

And something cracks deep in your skeleton, maybe several somethings or maybe everything because fuck, fuck, you're on your knees with your arms wrapped around yourself and crying out in agony and the gun clatters to the floor and you barely hear Dean shooting the wolf straight through the skull before everything's fizzing out at the edges, you're doubling over and it's so hard to stay conscious and Dean's hand is on your shoulder and you hope that isn't his bloody palm because you liked this shirt and oh God you haven't felt pain like this since-

'Hey hey hey. Fuckin'- hey. Sam. Sammy.'

You're breathing too hard to answer, ears filled with the groan of your ribcage, but you close your eyes and pin yourself on Dean's voice in your ear, think it's only a feeling. It's only a feeling. You need it to hurt and it hurts, it hurts, it hurts.

Somehow you manage to get to your feet, leaning on Dean as he leans on you. Your mouth tastes metallic; you probably bit your tongue. Or maybe not. Dean can barely see. His eyes are all filmy with blood and you hope it's just what's dripped down from the cut on his face, but the two of you stagger out of there somehow. At least the were's dead.

xiii.

You pass out twice on your way back to the motel. The first time Dean manages to support you; the second time you both end up collapsed on the car park.

When you stumble inside Dean's legs give way and he pitches face-down onto the bed. You fumble around for the first-aid kit, one arm still wrapped around your ribs. You no longer feel like all the bones in your body are cracking open, but that doesn't mean the pain's gone. Dean turns onto his back and you sit on the bed beside him, too dizzy to stand, and clean out the gash on his face with clumsy trembling hands. It's long but not deep, bleeding like a faucet, and you hold a cloth over Dean's eye, careful as you can, while you sluice it with whiskey. His arm flops up to grab your wrist, and he groans, but he mostly holds still.

The toughest part is stitching the gash up. Your hands are shaking so hard. You down a handful of painkillers, sit curled over yourself until your heart slows. When you realise how pale Dean's gone under the blood that you haven't wiped off yet, you start trying to thread the needle; it takes five minutes. Before you start, you check his pupils, opening his eyelids with finger and thumb. One's dilated farther than the other; a concussion. Great.

You make the stitches as neat and tiny as you can and it still ends up looking horrifying, still looks like something split Dean's face open with a hatchet, still makes him look like a rag-doll someone cut up with a pair of scissors. It's stupid because you've seen so so much worse on him, but just looking at the seam in his slack face makes you want to cry.

Laying your head on the covers. They still smell of nicotine, but this time there's no careful calloused hands stroking the backs of your knees. Eyes closed. You try to blank out your mind, but the smell of the sheets is building up unbearably. That's stupid, too. Motel sheets are pretty much the scent of your childhood. But now they're itchy against your skin and you sit up, knuckling your eyes. And blink.

It's dark. It wasn't dark when you lay down; barely seven P.M. But now it's at least past midnight, it feels past midnight, and moonlight pools and pools in the motel room. But you could have sworn that you'd only been lying down a few minutes.

Dean is gone. There's no warm weight at your side, and the bed is perfectly made except where you've rumpled it by sleeping. Your heart's clanging like church bells. Trying to claw its way out of your ribs. You take a deep breath, and another, and then you get up.

You try the door, but it's locked and you don't know where the key is. Dean isn't in the bathroom when you look in there. You turn the light on anyway, staring into the mirror. It's a naked bulb and when it spasms to life the world goes flat and yellow. Your mouth tastes bad in a way you can't place, and your scalp itches.

The bonebreaking pain of earlier comes to mind. You watch your reflection flinch. Then you're tugging up your shirt, and it doesn't surprise you at all to see the ugly gaping maw of your chest, hollowed out, flesh stripped back, ribs cracked open like a birdcage door. Nearly all your organs gone, only all that slippery shining red-black-purple muscle and the white eye of bone glinting out, and your heart somehow still in there, a dark dark lovely red, and you watch it thump with a pulse like the ocean. Reach through your ribs to touch it, wet and tender and staining your fingertips. As you pull out your hand, liles spring up from somewhere deep in that cavity where your guts should be, stems twining loving round your ribs. Bloom-heads yawning white mouths in place of lungs.

You watch as your body becomes a garden. You watch as your fingernails come out, soft and necrotic, leaving behind rawness, blood welling up in your nail-beds to trail delicately over your hands.

When you wake to the light of day, Dean's snoring on the bed beside you. You check your fingernails. They're fine. There's a spider on your foot.

xix.

Dean's on a high the whole way back to Lebanon; it may or may not be chemical-based. You try to make the most of it, though you can barely look at the stitches on his face. He plays AC/DC obnoxiously loud, whooping along to it. If he's cool with singing songs about Hell, he must be feeling pretty great.

The concussion seems to have cleared up. He doesn't remember you buckling over in the sewers. Probably a good thing.

'Hey, Sam,' he shouts over For Those About to Rock. 'As soon as we get back, you know what we're gonna do?'

You blink. Think about it. Look at him. 'Is this, like, a kinky thing?'

He looks blank for a second. 'Dude,' he says. 'Uh, no, Sam. It's a you thing. We're gonna fix your little-' he gestures to basically his whole chest- 'problem. Sound good?

You nod. He grins, long and lazy, and cranks up the volume. You wonder what he'd say if he could have seen you last night. You wonder why you don't tell him. But you don't tell him.

xx.

All the way back you feel it making a home inside your bone-nests. Crouching in your skull. So gentle in your lungs. It rises and rises and rises.

You tell no-one.

You place a hand on your sternum.

Your fingernails are still fine.

xxi.

Wheels crunch on gravel. Home.

When you walk inside you feel the dust motes against your skin.

'Home sweet home,' says Dean behind you; you hear his grin. You don't turn. You head for the nearest bathroom.

'Sam?' Dean says. 'Sam? Hey, are you seriously planning on letting me do all the work here?'

And then, as you keep walking- 'Sam?'

You don't bother closing the bathroom door when you enter, although you can hear Dean's uncertain footsteps behind you.

'Sam?'

Your eyes pass over the scissors, the tweezers, the toothbrushes. The knife on the cistern. The bloody machete soaking in washing-up liquid in the bath.

'Sam,' and Dean's voice is concerned and apprehensive and prepared, 'What are you doing?'

Your knees buckle. You grip the edge of the toilet bowl as your gorge rises, and you begin to heave, retching hard and dry into the toilet. Dean scuttles to your side, saying 'Easy, easy,' but his hands hover without touching. Perhaps he does sense it. Perhaps he does know.

You retch and retch until something comes up and then for long moments you're retching too hard to see what it is. You retch until your throat is sore and your jaw hurts and your lungs hurt and your muscles hurt and you're bringing up something black, something crawling, something dead and soft and brittle in your mouth.

'Sam. Sam.'

When there's a break between bouts of vomiting you manage to look down into the toilet, and you see what was in you, what was inside you, and it takes you a moment to get it because all you see is floating balls of black-mottled tangles, floating thinly in blood. Then you get it.

They're spiders. They're all spiders. Some of them are still twitching.

You wipe your mouth, spit, retch again. Dredge up a fact, nonsensically- the average person swallows eight spiders in their lifetime. All those curled-up bodies. There's a lot of them. You wonder how there can be so many, and you retch again, bringing more up. Finally you feel Dean's hand in your hair.

You retch again. There's tears on your cheeks. Slowly you realise you're laughing. Dean's eyelashes tickle the back of your neck. 'Hey, hey,' comes Dean's voice. 'Sam. C'mon, buddy. Sam.'

Your lungs are full of cobwebs. You can feel them tickling. You raise your hands, looking at your palms, and watch as the flesh gathers itself into folds, eyelid-folds, and then those folds split open and two pearly eyes blink out, one in each palm, set like marbles in your flesh. They open and close.

You spread your fingers.

'Sam,' Dean's still saying. 'Sam. Sammy. Sam.'