This is my first Supernatural fic. Beware of swearing. Kudos to Kripke. Thanks to Tensleep for giving it a read-through.

Loophole

Think. You know what to do.

The voice was quiet but it was insistent, and it was immediately familiar.

Sam twitched in his sleep. Dean snored, oblivious.

Simple solutions are always best. Less complicated, less room for error. Learn from your experiences.

Sam's hand stretched out, fingers curling and uncurling, grasping at air.

It's all right. You know what to do.

Sam sat straight up, abruptly and utterly awake. His brain was humming, buzzing with electricity. The dream had been so clear that for a moment, he expected to see John in the ratty motel room, cleaning the weapons as he watched them sleep, as he had when Sam and Dean were boys.

It had been eight months since Hell opened – eight months of hunting demons and werewolves and vampires and women in white and countless other things, some evil, some merely misguided. There had been moments when Sam had forgotten about the deal Dean made, and when he remembered, it was like standing in that graveyard all over again, with Jake insisting he'd severed Sam's spinal column. The fact that Dean had refused to meet his eyes told Sam that Jake was telling the truth, and he had been overwhelmed with such despair and love he almost lost his balance.

He rose quickly and crossed to the small table, then switched on his laptop. You know what to do. He felt monumentally stupid.

"Sammy?" Dean's voice was garbled with sleep. "You all right?"

"I'm fine. Go back to sleep."

Dean sat up and looked at him, both skeptically and expectantly. "Did you have a vision? A nightmare?"

Sam jerked his head toward his brother. "Um. I don't know. One or the other, I suppose."

After ten minutes of silence, broken only by Sam's large fingers clittering gracefully over the small keys, Dean pulled on his jeans and dropped to his knees to fish one of his boots out from under the bed.

"You're getting careless," Sam said without looking up. "Pants and shoes always at the ready …"

"… unless you want to hunt in your skivvies," Dean finished. It was something John had said to them. He squinted at the bedside clock. Four a.m. He sighed; all hope of more sleep was lost.

"Coffee?" Dean didn't wait for an answer before leaving Sam to his research, pulling the motel door quietly closed behind him.

He returned fifteen minutes later and set a Dunkin' Donuts cup down next to his little brother. The coffee sat untouched as Sam worked his way methodically from Web site to Web site, data base to data base, pausing to jot down notes and check John's journal.

Dean sipped at his own Styrofoam cup and waited. Something about Sam's demeanor prevented him from asking questions. He didn't turn on the television, didn't clean and check the weapons, he didn't do anything but sit quietly until Sam was ready to tell him whatever the hell it was he was doing.

He leaned forward keenly when Sam stood up, but the younger man headed out the door, flipping open his cell phone on the way. He peeked out the window and though he couldn't hear Sam's conversation, he could hear the urgent way his voice rose and he saw how Sam tipped his head back toward the sky, as if he were giving thanks.

He came in ten minutes later and looked at Dean intently, his eyes huge and determined.

"I know how to get you out of the deal," Sam said.

He outlined his plan between swallows of tepid coffee. Dean would go down to the crossroads and summon the demon. Once she appeared – they both thought of it as a she – Dean would lure her into a devil's trap and Sam would shoot her. With no demon to collect, the deal would be off – kind of like how your credit card companies didn't get the money if you croaked with the bill due. Dean would be released.

"It won't work," Dean said quietly.

"It will. I saw how it could." Sam bit back the rest of his thought: Dad kind of showed me.

"In the first place, she won't be that stupid twice --"

"She won't be expecting it twice." When Dean shook his head, Sam amended, "Then I'll shoot her as soon as she appears." His tone was foreboding as he said pointedly, "I have great reflexes. I was well-trained."

"There aren't any bullets left," Dean reminded him.

"But we still have the Colt." Sam pushed a piece of paper across the table. "And we have this."

Silver (175 grams)
Holy water (10 drops)
Boneset (stem with 5 buds)
Cat's eye shell (3)
Pinch salt

"A pinch of salt?"

Sam shrugged, almost embarrassed. "Can't hurt. Bobby doesn't think it'll mess up the equilibrium."

"Bobby," Dean repeated, suddenly realizing Bobby had been Sam's phone call. "And just what are you and Bobby making?"

"Bullets."

Dean closed his eyes. "It will come in a form. A person. Maybe even Mom or Dad."

"That's fine," Sam said harshly. "I know Mom and Dad are already dead. That would be easier than the random beautiful woman who usually shows."

"Another innocent life," Dean mumbled. He wasn't even sure where the words came from. He wasn't protesting, necessarily, just resigned. He thought of Meg, broken into pieces at Bobby's, and of the lovely, confused girl left in the devil's trap when the demon inhabiting her had been exorcised.

"You're an innocent life," Sam spat vehemently. "I'm an innocent life. Dad, Ash, Andy, Ava – even Jake, Dean. Mom, for God's sake. Our mother was an innocent life."

She knew him. The thought bit Sam suddenly and he forced it down. Shut up. Demons lie.

"I still don't think --" Dean began, and Sam exploded.

"Did you want the hell hounds to come after you?" he cried, eight months of worry and regret and fear pouring out in his voice. "That's what you saved me for? So I could lose you? Oh, yeah, 'cause that's so much better. You selfish prick."

"Don't --" Dean hated the helpless whine in his voice. "Sammy, I --"

"If you're that fucking suicidal, put a gun to your head and be done with it." Sam turned away, unable to bear looking at Dean any longer. Dean's heart hammered in his chest like a murderous jackrabbit.

Sam scrubbed a hand over his face, maybe crying, maybe not. He took a deep breath, the anger gone as quickly as it had come. "We don't have anything else," he said, struggling to keep his voice steady. "This is all I have. You're all I have. You have to let me try. You have to. Don't fight me on this."

Dean didn't answer. He couldn't answer. He couldn't refuse and Sam knew it. Because Sammy was right.

"Bobby said he'd help with the bullets," Sam continued, beginning to gather his things. "If we leave now, we could make it by tomorrow, I bet. And I think we should go back to that same crossroads in Wyoming."

Dean didn't want resurrect Sam's anger, so it took him a long moment to finally say, "I want to wait."

"Wha .. wait?" Sam stammered. "Wait? Until when?"

Dean looked at him steadily. "Until a year minus one day."

"No. No. That's insane," Sam protested violently. "If it doesn't work, we'll have four months to figure out something else."

Dean paced the room. "We only get one shot. The deal is … if I try to welch on it, you … you'll …"

He was unable to continue. Sam gazed at him with slowly dawning horror, waiting for Dean to reign in his emotions.

"If it doesn't work, that's it," Dean said bluntly. "Down to Hell, bang, four months early. And you'll be gone, too. I don't want to take that risk unless it's absolutely necessary." He shook his head decisively. "No. My soul, my call. We wait."

They melted the silver mixture over a fire laced with salt and eucalyptus, with holy water sprinkled on the flames for good measure. They used the first one two weeks later on an unexpected werewolf.

It worked, but silver kills werewolves anyway, and the whole incident reminded Sam too much of Madison. He didn't say much for nearly a whole day after that. He was too lost in the memory of what he'd done back in San Francisco, tied up with how he'd asked Dean to do the same for him if necessary, and the irony that as it turned out, it would be Dean leaving him unless he got his ass in gear.

He wanted a dry run. He allowed Dean to talk him out of it when he saw, despite the wisecracking bravado, how frightened his big brother really was.

The remaining days passed and the brothers grew closer, more introspective, less willing to be apart. They came to a new understanding – not quite what Dean loathingly referred to as "chick flick moments," but something nearly so -- a quiet nod, a touch to a knee or the back of the neck. Dean's right arm across the back of the seat, one finger lightly on Sam's shoulder blade, as the Impala drove through the night. Sam waiting for Dean to fall asleep, his brother's steady breathing a lullaby. Sometimes Sam heard John's voice in his memory, calling out, "Boys? Boys!" and he wondered how he could go on if there were only a "boy."

Not an option.

Not going to happen.

Sam had never lived alone. He'd gone from the shabby apartments and motel rooms of his childhood to his dorm at Stanford to the duplex with Jess. He'd never even had his own bedroom, not since he was six months old. It had become his habit, when he started praying, to do so in the shower.

And so it was, in the early evening of the three-hundredth-and-sixty-fourth day, he knelt in the tub, hot water sluicing over him, and begged for success. He implored all the deities he knew, the Christian saints, and the loved ones gone before him. Pastor Jim. Caleb. Mom. Dad. Jess. He recited every prayer he knew, in English and Latin, sobbing into his tented hands.

He had lost so much. All he wanted was to keep his big brother. Surely, with all the sacrifices they had made, this was not too much to ask.

They drove to the crossroads in silence. Dean parked the Impala and ran one hand lovingly over the steering wheel, then shut her off and handed the Sam the keys.

It was time.

"Dean --" Sam choked, grasping his shoulder.

"I love you, too," Dean said, shaking him off. "Now shut your pie hole and let's do this damn thing."

They set the devil's trap in the weeds – there was no place else to really hide it – and Sam stood a distance off and watched Dean bury the tin. He aimed the Colt steadily toward his brother, waiting, and chanted to himself, I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil, I will fear no evil.

"You're early." It materialized out of nowhere, the same woman with the beautiful face Dean wanted to punch, over and over again until there was nothing left.

But his voice belied none of that as he replied, "Yeah, well, patience was never one of my virtues."

"You didn't come to ask for more time, did you?" Its voice tinkled merrily.

"Nope. Thought I'd save you a trip, then maybe I'd get time off for good behavior or something."

"There's no such thing as good behavior where you're going." It smiled. Dean felt a chill in the depths of his being. "Shall we?"

There was going to be no getting it near the trap. Dean smirked at it, then took two steps in Sam's direction and dropped flat, covering his head. Three shots rang out and Dean waited for the sound of the body hitting the dirt road, but it never came. Instead, there was an enraged roar and a swirling of black and everything went dark.

Some eternity later, Dean opened his eyes and saw his little brother crush the Demon in a kiss.

The End