It's a strange thing, he acknowledges, that someone could love so deeply, so powerfully.
He never imagined that someone could love too much.
He leans down, and presses shaking fingers to the stone. Tears fall down his face.
The shared grave of his baby brother and brother-in-law is a mocking sight, and one he had never hoped to see. It hadn't been a consideration, really, because his baby brother was immortal. He could barely remember the four years he lived without him, and now, he faces the rest of his life without any family left. He chokes on a sob and sinks to his knees.
The woods and gravestones say nothing.
...
He tells the judge that he had no choice. If he had taken his baby brother home, the boy would have cut his arteries with a razor. Or put a bullet in his head. He knows his baby brother could not live without his husband; they meant everything to one another. His brother-in-law was the first and only home that his baby brother had ever known.
The outcome is inevitable. At least this way, he says, it doesn't have to be messy. At least this way, he repeats. At least this way, his baby brother wouldn't have to live with the pain of it for more than he had to. At least this way, he is at peace.
The judge lets him go.
Maybe it's the look on his face. Maybe it's the breaks in his voice. Maybe, maybe, maybe, but he doesn't know and he doesn't care.
...
"Gabriel?"
He can remember it clearly. It was only yesterday, it seems. But that's not true. It was a month ago.
"Gabriel, can you hear me?"
He leans on the wall as his baby brother crawls into the bed with his husband, tears on his face and hope draining from his eyes. His brother-in-law is still. "Please, Gabriel, please... I love you so much. You're my light and my life and I can't go on without you. Please. Wake. Up."
There is no response.
His brother looks over. "Two minutes," he begs. He feels his heart break, and stares at his baby brother for a long time. It's been many years since he was a baby; at thirty-three, his baby brother can make his own choices. "Please," he whispers, brokenly holding to the still body on the bed.
He knows what he's asking.
He leaves the room, and he closes the door gently behind him before sinking to the floor. It feels, suddenly, as if the world weighs heavy on his shoulders.
He counts five minutes on his phone. Then he stands and goes back in the room.
The plug is out of the wall, on the floor. And the needle filled with morphine is in his baby brother's arm, turned all the way up. The bag is nearly empty.
There is no way that the drugs didn't stop his baby brother's heart. He can feel the cool moisture on his cheeks as he stutters forward, heart in his throat. He checks for a pulse and finds none.
But the tears on his baby brother's cheeks are still wet. His body is still warm. And he looks peaceful.
He calls for a nurse and sits on the floor, staring at the video camera, knowing that there is where the truth lies. The black of it is stark against the oppressive white, white walls and pale blue curtains.
He wants to destroy the evidence of his baby brother's suicide. He wants to be called in, and he wants to be put on death row for murder.
"Sammy..." he whispers.
...
It's been three weeks and his brother-in-law hasn't woken up. His baby brother cries himself to sleep.
...
He gets the call while he's in Kansas.
"Sammy?"
"It's Gabriel. He. He was hurt. Badly." Silence. "The doctors- they don't know. If he'll wake. The brain damage. They have to. They have to do a CAT scan. Dean. Dean, what am I gonna do?"
He knows that voice. He remembers it well. That's what his father sounded like when the fire caused too much damage to his mother for her to survive it. His father had known she wouldn't live.
His baby brother knows that too.
...
They want to adopt. The revelation isn't so much a surprise as it is a confirmation of what he already knew. His baby brother speaks of a fair-haired little girl in an orphanage in Sacramento.
"You should come see her, Dean. I know how much you love kids."
And he remembers. He remembers that his baby brother was a little kid once, and that he was too, and.
"I'd love to, Sammy. When?"
"Anytime, you're always welcome, Dean. Really," his brother-in-law says, and the couple looks so happy and in love that he has to look away for a moment.
"Okay."
...
The second time he meets his brother's husband in person is when he takes his lover and the four of them go to dinner.
"Hey, Dean," the man says, and wow. He's like four feet tall. He had forgotten. He shakes the offered hand anyway and nods at his baby brother, who comes up behind the blond short stack and rests a hand on his shoulder. The age difference is noticeable, and he is suddenly reminded that his baby brother is only twenty-two. His husband is thirty at least.
But he doesn't really mind because his baby brother looks happy, and it isn't the happiness that comes with an exciting event, like his wedding was, all those months ago, it's the type of happiness that comes with having no worries, of having every single day be a good one. It's the kind of happiness that he has never known and his brother has obviously found in a prankster eight years older than him.
He looks at his lover and smiles at bright blue eyes, eyes that sparkle when they look at him.
...
"Do you remember the time you put Nair in my shampoo?"
His new brother-in-law howls with laughter, leaning heavily into his baby brother's side. He rolls his eyes and nods. "Yeah, yeah. And then you did something to the sunscreen and I looked like I had the plague from all the mosquitoes, I remember."
The video call is shaky. The laptop is running out of battery and it's way passed two in the morning, but he can't bring himself to say goodbye. His baby brother is in California, and he's in Maine, and living on the road has always been hard. But it's harder without his best friend by his side.
Arms wrap around his neck and lips press a kiss to his temple. "Come, Dean, you must be exhausted," a voice says, and he turns and smiles sleepily at his lover.
"That's true," his baby brother says, and he turns back to the screen to look at him. "Goodnight, Dean," he says, and he nods in return.
"Night, Sammy."
"Come," his lover says when the computer light goes out.
He follows willingly and burrows into his lover's open arms. "I love you, Cas," he mutters, laying down on the bed, dragging his lover with him.
"I love you more, Dean," he hears, and all goes black.
...
It's a beautiful wedding. A total of ten people attend, and Dean doesn't know most of them, not even the man who is baby brother is marrying. It's a sobering feeling.
A dock on the beach, and his baby brother is dressed to the nines.
It doesn't mean much with the way he won't stop moving and sweating though.
"Dude, you're going to be fine. Gabriel loves you, I could see it when I ran into him an hour ago, and I'd never even met him. But when I mentioned your name, he lit up like the sun. He isn't going to abandon you at the altar."
His baby brother pauses before resuming his efforts to burn a hole in the floor.
His words don't mean much, he knows. His baby brother has never met someone who hasn't abandoned him at least once, and some part of him doubts that his fiancé won't leave him, too.
But when the two of them take hands at the altar, he links his fingers with his lover and hears the music and the vows as if from underwater. He can't help but feel as if his baby brother isn't going to care about him anymore.
He knows, certainly, that their days of living on the road, side by side, are over.
...
"I'm getting married!"
Those are the first words he hears when he answers the phone.
"What?"
"I proposed and he said yes! Dean, I'm getting married to the love of my life. My Gabriel."
He knows what this means to his baby brother. But his baby brother is at Stanford and he still hasn't met this long-time boyfriend of his baby brother's and he doesn't know what to think. He's in northern Canada and it's going to take a long time to get there.
"You'll be my best man, right? Dean?"
"Of course," he answers automatically, hardly willing to believe his baby brother asked that question. Why the answer wasn't obvious.
The body at his side begins to stir. He quiets his lover and gets out of bed, stark naked but not feeling the cold. Sam is talking away.
"We want a small wedding, with only a few people there. You can invite someone to come with you. Aren't you still hanging around with that guy? What was his name? Cas? Invite him. And then we'll need a cake, of course, because Gabriel says it would be a crime to go without a huge one, regardless of the size of the wedding itself. And we need to figure out where we want to get married. Hey, what do you think of..."
He listens quietly and wonders when his baby brother became an adult.
It happened when he wasn't looking.
...
He gets the phone call in the middle of the night, but he was awake anyway.
The number is unfamiliar.
"Dean?" the voice questions, hesitant and shy, and he feels like he's been hit over the head with a sledgehammer.
He hasn't heard from his baby brother in three years.
...
He's in a bar, nursing the hurt. He thinks of a crumpled acceptance letter and of work orders. He thinks of being a bounty hunter and all that it means and the glass breaks in his hand.
"Whoa," a voice says, and he turns as the bartender hurries to clean the mess of whiskey and blood. "Are you all right?"
"What do you want?" he demands, swinging around and he stops. Bright, beautiful blue eyes blink at him in bemusement and he can't take air into his lungs.
"I wanted to know if you wanted to get out of here," the man says, and he measures him.
An inch or so taller than him, with those beautiful blue eyes, dark hair, and obvious strength in those arms? Oh, hell yes.
...
He buries his father alone.
...
He cowers in the corner of the musty old hotel room, hating himself. Tears are in his eyes and he refuses to let them fall.
"Why can't I have this?"
"You're a fucking fool if you think this will get you anything!"
"You're just a control-freak, asshole!"
The wood creaks.
"You walk out that door and we're done. You walk out that door you're not my son. You walk out that door and you don't come back, you hear?"
The door slams shut, and footsteps sound heavy on the sidewalk.
...
The fighting is continuous and the gunshots echo in the dead of night and soon, he can hardly tell the difference between words and bullets.
They have the same effect.
...
He drops out of high school as soon as he turns sixteen and when his baby brother is twelve.
The only regret he has is that he can't catch is baby brother's bullies in the act. But they were going to different schools the next year anyway.
He goes out more, has a fake id that his father made for him and he drinks himself to sleep every single night. His father watches, says nothing, and does the exact same thing.
His baby brother recoils when he tries to comfort him in the middle of the night when the nightmare wakes him up.
It sobers him up and he feels himself wither. His baby brother grits his teeth, but doesn't fall into his arms like he would have a few months ago.
When his baby brother turns sixteen he gets up at six am and walks to the school he's currently enrolled in and then graduates with honors two years later.
...
He's pushing his baby brother back and forth on the swing set in their backyard. His father works at the grill, and his mother is taking a nap inside.
He never could have predicted the cat crawling in the open window from the tree, on the second story of the house, and knocking over the candle. But he sees it anyway, and takes his brother through the side gate and down the street, abandoning his mother, who was burning, and his father, who had abandoned both he and his baby brother for his doubtlessly dead wife.
He looks at the tear-streaked face of his baby brother and decides he hates that look.
He vows he will never cry again.
...
"Dean?"
He peers cautiously out from behind the wall, eyes narrow. His mother looks half dead, but happy. The squirming bundle in her arms lets out a wail.
His father leans close and coos at the blankets, eyes fond in a way that he never looks at him.
"Dean, come meet your baby brother, Sam," his mother says, tired and hopeful.
He refuses.
...
The phone rings in his pocket.
The unforgiving stone in front of him reads his brother's name and his brother-in-law's name and he sniffs before hitting the "accept call" button.
There's only one person that would call him now.
"Dean?"
The voice is broken, and frightened, and sad.
"Cas," he sighs, and a choked sob echoes over the line.
"I thought- after the past two weeks- you didn't call- I found out in the newspaper... Dean, my love, are you okay?"
He doesn't know that he'll ever be okay.
"I buried them next to mom and dad in Kansas."
He says that instead, and his lover says, "Yeah. Okay. I'll be there tomorrow, my love. Stay strong for me until then, okay, Dean?"
He sobs a little and nods, wiping at his face.
"Yeah. Okay."
"I love you, I love you, I love you, my Dean, my love, my heart, and I can't believe this has happened. I'm coming, now, I'm on my way to you."
"I love you more," he mutters, and his lover sobs a little more, and a weak voice replies.
"That's impossible."
He smiles.
It's weak and he knows it, but he also knows that as long as he has his lover, he won't be alone.
Once upon a time, it was he and his baby brother against the world.
And then. And then, once upon a time there was a boy that loved too much, and so deeply and so beautifully that he captured the hearts of everyone he knew, to the point that they no longer knew what to do with themselves.
He stands.
And he wipes his knees of the dirt and his face of the tears and he walks away from his baby brother for the last time.