This concludes my Christmas present to all my lovely readers - five tags in a week. I hope you have enjoyed and have a nice holiday! I am off to spend Christmas with a host of psychotic relatives, so that'll be a good time. I'll do my best to keep writing so I have something to post when I get back!
Contains dialogue from the episode It's A Terrible Life, it belongs to Eric Kripke and Sera Gamble.
Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page. They will make more sense if read in order. :)
Sam sits down on the desk, and Dean gets his company-issued first-aid kit out of the drawer and walks over to join him. The ghost is gone, they freakin' Ghostbustered it, and Dean can't seem to get his heart to stop racing. Sitting behind a desk all day long, pushing paper around like it means something – he never realized how boring and pointless it was.
"I gotta tell ya, I've never had so much fun in my life," Dean says.
"Me neither," Sam answers quietly.
"It was a hell of a workout, too, wasn't it?" Dean sits beside him and roots through the kit for a bandage. Sam is covered in blood, but Dean doesn't think most of it is his own.
"We should keep doing this."
Dean laughs. "I know!"
"I mean it. There've gotta be other ghosts out there. We could help a lotta people."
"Yeah, right, we'd be like the Ghostfacers," Dean jokes.
"No, really. I mean, for real." Sam sounds serious, and Dean frowns.
"What, quit our jobs and hit the road?" he scoffs.
"Exactly!"
Dean's pretty sure now that Sam isn't joking, and it freaks him out. Mostly because the idea, however crazy, sounds kinda awesome. "How would we live?"
Sam shrugs and makes a noise like he doesn't know what to say.
"You gotta be kidding me. How would we get by? What, stolen credit cards? Huh? Eatin' diner food drenched in saturated fats? Sharing a crap motel room every night?" As the words come out of his mouth, Dean realizes there's a part of him that wants exactly what he's pretending he doesn't.
"Those are all just details."
"Details are everything!" Dean insists. "You don't wanna go fightin' ghosts without any health insurance!"
Sam sighs and looks down at his hands. "Alright, uh, confession."
"What?" Dean asks warily.
"Remember those dreams I told you about, with the ghosts?"
"Yeah."
"I was fighting them."
Dean nods. "Okay."
"With you," Sam adds, and then Dean understands why Sam was so weird the first time they met, in the elevator. "We were these, like … hunters. And we were friends … more brothers, really … I mean, what if that's who we really are?"
Dean just stares at him, not sure how to react to any of the things that are coming out of Sam's mouth. Also, he sort of wants to kiss him, which is freaking him out just as much because he's never wanted to kiss a guy before. Especially not one who just said they were like brothers. Because, gross.
"I mean, you saw us back there, working together," Sam continues. "The ghost was scrambling people's brains, what if it scrambled ours?"
"This is insane," Dean says, standing up and taking a few steps away from Sam.
"Is it? Think about it for just one second. What if we think this is our life, but it's not?"
Dean sits down on the file cabinet behind his desk and takes a deep breath, attempting to wrap his head around this.
"Hey, man, the ghost is dead and we're still standing. I'm sorry, but – "
"Look, all I know is, this isn't who we're supposed to be!" Sam cries, getting up and turning to face Dean.
"No," Dean says. "I'm Dean Smith, okay? Director of sales and marketing. I went to Stanford, my father's name is Bob, my mother's name is Ellen, and my sister's name is Jo."
"When's the last time you talked to them?" Sam asks. "To any of them?"
"Okay, you're upset," Dean says gently. "You're upset, you're confused – "
"Yeah, 'cause I only moved here 'cause I just broke up with my fiancé Madison, but I called her number and I got a damn animal hospital!"
Dean blinks and shakes his head. "Okay, what are you saying? Are you trying to say that – that my family isn't real? Huh? That we've been injected with fake memories? Come on!"
"All I know is, I got this feeling in my gut. And I know, I know that deep down you gotta be feeling it too. We are supposed to be something else. You're not just some corporate douchebag, this isn't you!"
Dean raises his eyebrows at the insult, but Sam just keeps going.
"I know you."
"Know me?" Dean asks angrily. "You don't know me, pal. You should go."
Sam's face falls, but he nods and leaves. Dean turns around and stares out the window, his mind racing. There's no way anything that Sam said could be true. It doesn't make any sense. So yeah, Dean really liked taking that ghost out. And yeah, ever since he met Sam, it sort of feels like he's known him forever, like they used to be friends and Dean just doesn't quite remember it. But that's a coincidence. It has to be. Maybe Sam just reminds him of someone, some childhood friend that he's forgotten he had. But Dean doesn't know what to do with that. And Sam was right – Dean does feel it. He feels like he doesn't belong in his skin lately unless he's with Sam.
His legs carry him over to the door of his office and he steps out of it, looking down the hall and hoping Sam will still be there. Dean catches just a glimpse of the back of him rounding the corner, and he calls out Sam's name. Sam turns around, and Dean beckons him back. He doesn't know what he's doing. He still doesn't want to quit his job and pack up and run off with some guy he met a few days ago. He just knows he doesn't want Sam to leave. Maybe ever.
"What?" Sam asks, walking back into the room. He looks annoyed, and Dean feels bad for kicking him out in the first place.
"I'm sorry," he offers quietly, and Sam sighs and leans against the door frame.
"It's fine. I shouldn't have … we can't just leave everything and take off together. You're right, that's crazy."
Dean licks his lips and says, "Couple years ago, I had this girlfriend. We were living together, but then it didn't work out and we broke up."
"Okay. And?"
Dean frowns and shakes his head. The memory feels like sand falling through an hour-glass all of a sudden, like it's slipping away from him. "I can't … I don't remember her name. I mean, I remember that she existed, y'know? But I … I can't remember what she looks like. This was like three years ago, why …" He trails off and looks up at Sam. "What is happening?"
"I don't know," Sam says, sounding just as freaked out as Dean is. "Look, I don't … ever since I started working here? I can't explain it, I've just felt … wrong. Like something's off, something's missing. But then when I'm with you, suddenly I don't feel that way anymore. As soon as I see you, everything starts to make sense again."
"I don't know what that means," Dean says. He feels the exact same way about Sam, and it terrifies him.
"I don't either. I just know … something about you, about being around you, makes me feel like we're supposed to be …"
He doesn't finish the sentence, and Dean just looks at him for a moment. He stares into Sam's warm hazel eyes, at his lips, at his stupid haircut. He feels like he's seen them all before, and not just in the last few days. He feels like he knows what that hair would feel like between his fingers, what those lips would taste like against his. The palms of his hands itch with the ghost of how warm and soft he knows Sam's skin would be if he touched it. His heart races again, the blood speeding up in his veins and his brain going fuzzy like snow on an old TV. Sam stares back, his breath quickening visibly as he watches Dean watching him. For a moment, time is suspended between them, the air in the room charged with the tension and excitement of what could happen if one of them takes the chance. In the end, they move at the same time, surging forward and crashing into each other, their lips smashing together in a kiss that's rough and instantly desperate.
Sam's tongue pushes into Dean's mouth and Dean sucks at it, shoving his hands into Sam's hair and pulling him in closer. Sam wraps his hands around Dean's back, his arms big and possessively tight, and swirls his tongue around Dean's. He walks Dean backwards toward the desk while they attack each other's mouths, fire burning in Dean's chest and all the blood in his system heading directly to his cock. When Dean's ass hits the edge of the desk, Sam rocks his hips forward into Dean's, his hardening cock rubbing against Dean's through their pants. The inside of Sam's mouth tastes exactly like Dean thought it would, sweet and warm and eerily familiar, and his hands feel amazing on Dean's back, gripping handfuls of his shirt. Dean was in a bad car accident once – at least, he thinks he was – and it felt a lot like this. Like the world is spinning at break-neck speed and all Dean can do is hold on to the one solid thing his hands can find.
"Fuck," Sam mumbles, pulling back for a quick gulp of air and then diving back in to nip along at Dean's jaw. "Been wantin' to do this since I first saw you."
"I knew it," Dean says, around a noise that's halfway between a laugh and a moan when Sam's lips find the sensitive spot below his ear. "You said you weren't into guys."
"I'm not," Sam answers, although the erection pressing into Dean's thigh betrays his words. "I mean, I … it's not guys. It's you."
That doesn't make sense but at the same time Dean knows exactly what he means. He pushes one hand into the back of Sam's pants, palming at his fantastic ass and encouraging Sam to grind against him again. Sam does, slowly and seductively, and Dean shudders at the pressure. Dean had no idea feeling a dick against his own would ever be on his list of turn-ons but suddenly it's at the top. And Sam is enormous, his chest solid and his arms still wrapped around Dean's back, and Dean feels like he's suddenly about twenty pounds with this giant body surrounding him. Another thing he never thought he'd be into but so is.
Sam's lips are like fire against his, kissing him breathless, and he's better at it than anyone Dean's ever kissed before. Although, right at this moment, he can't actually remember ever kissing anyone else. Dean doesn't know if it's because of whatever's making them both forget their lives or because kissing Sam is so good it's erased every other pair of lips Dean's kissed. Sam kisses him with his whole body, rolling into Dean like he's trying to smush them into the same physical space. Dean can't say he'd be too opposed to that. He nips gently at Sam's bottom lip and Sam moans, so he does it again a little rougher to hear the sound again. He's so hard now his head is spinning, and Dean's not sure he's ever gone from zero-to-sixty that fast before. Sam is everywhere, in his nose and his head and under his skin, and he's never been so turned on in his life.
"What d'you want?" Dean asks, the words smeared and messy against Sam's lips.
"Anything," Sam answers huskily. "Everything."
Dean's stomach does flip-flops. It's the perfect answer, really, because it's exactly what Dean wants. Anything Sam's willing to give him, and at the same time everything there is. "Have you ever …?"
"I …" Sam stops for a moment, and looks down at Dean. His gaze is out of focus, his eyes turned dark with lust and his hair sticking at odd angles where Dean's fingers were in it. Suddenly Dean wants to do so much more to alter Sam than mess his hair up. Dean wants mark him, stain him permanently, so Sam can't ever belong to anyone else.
"What?" Dean asks, when Sam doesn't go on.
"I don't know. I don't remember it, but I feel like I have. This is gonna sound crazy, but I feel like we have."
Dean blinks and thinks about it for a second, and then he feels it too. The reason this feels so good, so right, is because it isn't new. This is something he knows, something he's done a hundred times. Something as second-nature as brushing his teeth. It doesn't make any more sense than anything else has today, but Dean's starting to think Sam might have been right about everything. Maybe something supernatural did screw with their heads; maybe they are supposed to be something else, someone else. Maybe they're supposed to be together.
"Yeah," he answers, still freaked out but starting to be okay with the feeling. "I think you're right. It is crazy, but it …"
Sam nods, and then he kisses Dean again. The small moment of calm is gone in an instant, and Dean snaps back to desperate and aroused and wanting to be inside Sam right-the-fuck-now. He tugs at Sam's shirt, untucking it and pushing it up Sam's rippled chest. Sam lifts his arms and lets Dean pull the ugly polyester over his head and toss it to the floor, and Dean has no control over the exaggerated breath of air he sucks in at the sight of the tattoo on Sam's chest. For a few seconds, Dean's heart thuds against his ribcage like he's being chased. His mind screeches to a halt. The tattoo is round, black, about the width of a mandarin orange. It has spikes around the edges that look like flames and a pentagram in the middle. It's exactly the same as the one Dean has, and it's in exactly the same spot.
"What?" Sam asks, confused.
Dean shakes his head, mouthing helplessly because what the fuck does it mean that this guy has a tattoo that matches Dean's even though they only met a few days ago? He tugs the collar of his shirt down to reveal his own tattoo, and Sam's eyes widen instantly.
"Holy shit," he says, and Dean can't think of a better way to sum it all up. "When did you get that?"
"I …" Suddenly, Dean can't remember. "A few years ago, I guess? I'm not sure. You?"
"I don't know either. I can't remember not having it."
"This is seriously fucked up." Dean's head is already full of too many other crazy things to think much about it, though, so he just mumbles, "Whatever," and pulls Sam back in.
Sam's fingers attack Dean's buttons, ripping one or two of them in his haste to get the dress shirt off, and Dean doesn't care. He fumbles blindly with Sam's belt and the zipper on his pants, not wanting to detach his lips from Sam's, managing eventually to get them undone and shoved down Sam's legs. He rubs at Sam's erection through his underwear, and it's hot and stiff and feels right in Dean's hand in a way he wasn't expecting.
Sam goes for Dean's pants, getting them undone quicker than Dean did, and pushes them down Dean's hips. Dean kicks them off his feet and then he spins them around, pushing Sam against the desk and taking the lead. He pushes stacks of paper and office supplies off of its surface – the computer monitor goes tumbling onto the chair and then the floor, and if it's broken Dean will have to pay for it but he doesn't care – and pushes Sam down onto it. Sam knocks an elbow into the wood but he ignores it and pulls Dean with him, kissing him until Dean forgets how to breathe.
"Do you have …?" Sam asks, his breath coming in harsh, ragged heaves of his massive chest.
"Yeah," Dean answers, his brain too scattered for a moment to remember where he'd left his briefcase. He locates it after a moment, getting a condom from his wallet, and then remembers there's a small bottle of baby oil in his gym bag.
Sam's propped up on his elbows watching him, laid out on Dean's desk like an ritualistic offering, and Dean gets distracted by how gorgeous he is for a moment – his tanned skin dusted with a light sheen of sweat, muscular legs dangling over the edge of the desk, hard cock obscenely tenting the fabric of his tight boxer-briefs. He looks like a centerfold spread in a porn magazine, the kind gay teenage boys would have hidden under their mattress.
"Why do you have that?" Sam asks, raising an eyebrow and nodding at the bottle it Dean's hand.
"It's good for your skin," Dean tells him, the words sounding douchey even to his own ears. Sam grins and shakes his head, and Dean mumbles, "Shut up."
He goes back over to him, leaning down to mouth briefly at Sam's cock through his underwear before he pulls them off. Sam's cock slaps against his abdomen, and Dean's mouth waters just looking at it. He's never done this before – at least he doesn't remember it – but he can't help it. He picks it up with his hand and sucks the head into his mouth, swirling his tongue around it. He pours the oil into his other hand, spreading it over his fingers, and pushes one into Sam without pretense. He should maybe take it slow but he's not sure he can; too keyed up and dizzy with how much he wants Sam. Sam doesn't complain, though, he just moans, this beautiful, broken sound, and it spurs Dean on.
He sucks harder around Sam's cock, bobbing his head up and down on it, while he preps Sam. He doesn't even know how he knows what to do, how he knows to spread his fingers apart inside Sam's body and to crook them up to press against Sam's prostate. Dean doesn't remember ever doing this before, but he still feels like he has. He just instinctively knows which spots to press, how to twist his fingers as he slides them in and out of Sam, how to lave his tongue along the shaft of Sam's cock to have him trembling and tugging at Dean's hair.
"C'mon," Sam mumbles. "S'enough, I'm good."
Dean pulls off his cock with a wet pop, and rubs at Sam's prostate again just to watch his eyes flutter closed in pleasure. The way it looks like that feels, they are definitely doing this again and switching positions next time. Sam's mouth falls open on a silent moan when Dean presses against the spot one more time, and yeah, Dean really can't wait to know what that feels like.
"You sure?" he asks, the instinct to protect Sam suddenly stronger than the erection that's threatening to pack up and leave if it doesn't get inside Sam within the next minute.
"Yeah, c'mon," Sam repeats.
Dean slides his fingers out and shoves his boxers off, ripping into the condom package to pull it out and roll it on and then slicking himself up with more baby oil. Sam watches him from his elbows again, his lips swollen and kiss-bitten, his eyes dark and intense. He reaches down and wraps his hand loosely around his own cock, stroking it slowly while his eyes travel up and down Dean's naked body, and Dean shivers at the attention and also at how freaking hot it is to watch Sam touch himself. Definitely going on the list of things to do next time.
Dean hooks his hands under Sam's knees and tugs him closer, so his hips are almost at the edge of the desk. He lines his cock up at Sam's entrance and pushes slowly inside, careful to rock in shallowly at first to let Sam get used to it, but Sam moans and pushes back against him to get Dean in further. It's tight like a vice and hot and slippery and Dean's eyes close as pleasure explodes inside him. He starts to move when Sam tells him to, thrusting into him quick and hard and dirty and loving every second of it.
Sam's legs wrap around Dean's waist and he pulls Dean down, resting his hands on the desk on either side of Sam's head, so their lips can slide together again. "So fuckin' good," he mumbles, groaning loudly when Dean changes the angle and nails his prostate. "Harder."
"Fuck, Sammy," Dean slurs, his head spinning again with how good it feels, remembering too late that Sam asked him not to call him that. "Sorry, forgot."
Sam shakes his head. "No, it's … I changed my mind. I like it."
Dean laughs shakily. "Good. 'Cause man, I don't know why, but it felt super weird to not call you that."
Sam starts to say something else but then Dean hits his prostate again and he just grunts instead. He plunders Dean's lips, licking around the inside of his mouth, and bucks up against him wildly. Dean can't see straight anymore, or think about anything other than the slide of his cock in and out of Sam's ass. It's too good, too right, and Dean loses himself in it. He reaches between them to wrap a hand around Sam's cock, stroking it roughly in time with their movements. Sam's nails dig into his back, crying out softly in pleasure, and Dean just thrusts harder, wanting to climb inside Sam and never climb back out.
He rests his face against Sam's when it's over, his breath ragged and his body trembling with the effort it takes to keep his knees from giving out. He's covered in sweat and his hand is covered in Sam's come and Sam is still wrapped around him, not letting him move away, and Dean wouldn't even if he could. Sam's breath is warm and moist against his cheek. The smell of them together infects Dean with crazy, impossible ideas of spending every night like this with Sam. He'd find them a bed, next time, so he could take his time tasting every inch of Sam's body, pulling those gorgeous sounds out of him for hours, making him fall apart and piecing him back together again. He wants to find every spot on Sam that would make him shiver, to know what Sam's mouth would feel like wrapped around him, to fuck Sam and be fucked by him until they can't move, to fall asleep with the scent of Sam's hair in his nose, to lie tangled up together until the morning. He wants everything, but it breaks his heart because he can't have it.
"Run away with me," Sam whispers, and Dean wants to more than anything. But he can't.
Dean whips his cell phone out of his pocket the second Zachariah disappears in a flutter of wings. Of the angels Dean's met, this new one is by far the biggest asshole. He dials Sam's number and paces agitatedly as it rings. Everything's coming back to him slowly. The stupid angel plucked them from a motel in Kentucky and dropped them in wherever they are right now, and then just left. Dean doesn't know where Sam is, where the Impala is, or even what state they're in. All in all, the situation is really not helping his already fairly fiery hatred of angels. Dean is sick and fucking tired of being used as a pawn.
"Dean?" Sam answers after four rings, sounding as confused and upset as Dean is.
"Are you okay?" Dean asks automatically.
"I don't know what's going on," Sam says.
Dean frowns. "Are you hurt?" he asks sharply.
"No," Sam answers, and Dean breathes a sigh of relief. "I just … fuck. Somebody must've … I don't know, drugged me or something. I was having the weirdest dream, and then I just woke up on a street somewhere. Dean, I have no idea where I am."
"Let me guess, you worked tech-support at a company called Sandover Bridge and Iron, and I was your boss?" Dean supplies, and there's a long pause on the other end of the line before Sam speaks.
"How did you know that?"
Dean sighs and scrubs his free hand over his face. "It wasn't a dream, it was angels."
"What? Wait, it was real?"
"I'll explain later. Is there, like, a street sign anywhere around you? Or a restaurant or something?"
"Uh …" Sam pauses again. "Yeah, okay, I'm at the corner of Fifth and Water. Where are you?"
"Stay right there, I'm comin' to get you." Dean hangs up without saying goodbye. He roughly pulls the tie off his neck and tosses it to the floor, and then he brings up the browser on the computer and Googles the company they've spent the last three weeks working at to find out they're in Ohio. The address Sam gave him is only a few blocks away, so Dean leaves the building and starts walking.
He almost laughs when he sees Sam, standing on a street corner in that stupid yellow shirt, looking around in complete confusion like a lost little boy, but then it just makes him even angrier at Zachariah. The angel stuck around to give Dean an explanation, but he just left Sam, alone in an unfamiliar city, with his memory all messed up. Dean is completely over the fact that the angels are so interested in him and yet don't seem to give two shits about his brother. Sam spots him after a moment and waves awkwardly, his eyes still full of questions.
"Where are we?" he asks as soon as Dean is within earshot.
"Ohio. You sure you're okay?"
"Yeah, Dean, I'm fine. What the hell is going on?"
"We got a new angel pullin' the strings. His name is Zachariah, he's Cas's boss, and he deserves to win the Dickbag of the Year award in a landslide. I've got half a mind to make one out of an old bowling trophy and then shove it up his ass."
"What are you talking about? What did he do?"
"He thought I needed a little refresher course on why I'm a hunter, so he dropped us into a haunting and wiped our memories."
Sam blinks and shakes his head, like he's trying to absorb all that. "So … have we actually been here for three weeks? Everything, the ghost and the people that died, that all actually happened?"
"Apparently," Dean mutters, completely unamused by it. He looks around, wondering how in the hell they're supposed to get back to the motel in Crestwood where all their stuff hopefully still is. Although, come to think of it, since they haven't been back there in three weeks, there's a more-than-decent chance the manager of the place threw it all out. If anyone touched the Impala, Dean is going to fucking lose it.
In the end, they steal a car and drive back. Sam's not thrilled about it, but he reluctantly agrees when Dean points out it's kind of their only option. It turns out the motel's owner thought they had been kidnapped when they disappeared and didn't come back for their belongings, so he'd called the police and now their bags and clothes are all at the local sheriff's office, probably locked up as evidence. And they towed his car to an impound lot, and Dean knows it isn't really the guy's fault but he has a really hard time not decking him just on principle. They can't just waltz into a police station and pretend to have been found after nearly a month, so they have to break in after the place closes to get their stuff back. The Impala looks more or less like she did when Dean left her, which means they probably didn't find the false-bottom in the trunk, and for once Dean's actually thankful for the idiocy of small-town cops. Sam manages to hack into the computer system and delete the missing persons report, and Dean finds physical records of their fingerprints and takes those with him too. They might still be screwed, but it wouldn't be the first time they've tangoed with the law and come out mostly on top.
They drive to the next county, just to be safe, and it's the middle of the night before Dean finds them a motel room. Sam was quiet the whole way, and Dean was more than okay with it because he's still so pissed off about the whole thing he doesn't exactly feel like talking about it. Mostly, he'd like to just go to sleep and start pretending it didn't happen, although he's not stupid enough to think there's a chance Sam will let them put it behind them that quickly.
"So, he wanted to remind you why you're a hunter?" Sam asks finally, after more than an hour without saying a single word.
"That's what he said." Dean throws his bag onto a chair and immediately starts stripping out of the stupid, yuppie suit Zachariah put him in. Dean has never, in his life, known there to be a legitimate reason for wearing suspenders. The person who invented them should be shot.
"Why?"
"I don't know. It was his dick-hole version of a pep talk, I guess. Psych me up for having to stop the apocalypse."
Sam shakes his head. "That doesn't make sense."
"You're telling me." Dean looks over at him, making a face at the pale yellow polo Sam's still wearing. "You need to take that off. I mean it. I can't take you seriously in khakis."
Sam laughs a little, but he reaches behind himself and pulls the shirt off anyway. Dean watches without really meaning to, unconsciously licking his bottom lip at the sight of Sam suddenly shirtless. The miles of smooth skin over perfectly sculpted muscles, the arms that feel so good around him, the stomach Dean can vividly picture covered in sweat and come. It didn't escape his attention that they found their way to each other like that even when they didn't know who they were. Sam catches him looking, and Dean clears his throat and turns away again; busing himself with getting out of the suit and into sweats and a t-shirt.
"Do you … remember everything?" Sam asks slowly, and by everything he means that thing, the one where Dean humped him into a desk two days after meeting him and with mostly no memory of ever having done it before. And Dean knew he was going to go there.
"Yep," he answers shortly.
"You wanna talk about it?"
"Do I ever?"
Sam sighs. "Not usually, no. But maybe we should anyway."
"What is there to talk about?" Dean asks, folding the suit up to avoid having to look at Sam.
"I don't know. We didn't … we thought we were other people. We didn't know we'd ever met before, or done anything, and we still did. Don't you think that means something?"
Finally, Dean turns and looks at him. Sam's still standing there with the yellow shirt in his hands, his chest bare. Dean looks at the tattoo over his heart and remembers how much it freaked him out when he found out bizarro-Sam had the same ink as Dean does. All the irritation that has been swirling around in his head all day long just kind of melts away, because honestly, Dean hadn't actually thought about it that way until right now. He'd been too busy being annoyed at the angels to really think about it at all, but now Dean looks into his brother's eyes from across the room and nods. Looking at it from this angle, suddenly Dean's almost happy about what Zachariah did. Dean always thought it was their fucked-up childhood that drove them to each other, but maybe that wasn't the only thing. It's almost comforting, in a way, to know he and Sam would end up together regardless of the situation.
"I … yeah. I kinda do, actually."
"You and me … seems like maybe we're supposed to be like this, you know? I mean, that was the whole point, right? To take us out of our lives, out of our history, and let us find our way back to each other and hunting anyway? So we could see it's something that's in us, something we can't change."
"You try'na seduce me?" Dean asks with a raised eyebrow, and Sam chuckles.
"Not really. Or, I guess, yeah, kinda. In a way." He shrugs sheepishly, and Dean laughs too. It feels good to laugh.
"I was gonna go with you, you know."
Sam tilts his head to one side. "What?"
"I changed my mind," Dean tells him. Dean doesn't know why, but it's really important to him that Sam knows that. Sam had been the one pushing for them to leave their boring lives behind and take off together, and Dean was the one who said no. "Zachariah, he was my – well, I guess I thought he was my boss at the company. Earlier today, before he gave us our memories back, he was in my office and I quit. Told him I had more important work to do. I was gonna find you, and … I guess that's what he'd been waiting to hear, 'cause that's when he flipped the switch."
Sam bites his lip and then smiles a little. "It was weird, I – I didn't get it, but when I wasn't with you? I just didn't feel … right. I felt like I didn't know who I was. And then when we started hunting that ghost, and then we … I mean, everything just clicked. And it was like, okay, this is who I'm supposed to be."
"Yeah. Me too." Dean nods again. "I haven't freaked about about, y'know, us, in a really long time. But you're right, it was like … confirmation, that it's okay. That it's not 'cause we're screwed up, that this is just …"
"Who we are," Sam finishes.
Dean chews on his bottom lip for a second and just looks at his brother, still trying to wrap his head around everything and the fact that he didn't see things that way before Sam pointed it out. And then his brain snaps into a decision and he walks over to Sam and pulls him into a kiss. Zachariah may have been trying to teach Dean that being a hunter is in his blood, but Sam's right. Dean learned that lesson, but he learned another one too – that Sam is in his blood. He always has been, and Dean doesn't want it to be any different. He slides one hand up into Sam's hair, angling his head to deepen the kiss, and Sam's hands wrap around him and slide down his back. Sam pulls him in closer, pushing his hips into Dean's and his tongue into Dean's mouth.
Dean lets his tongue slide against Sam's for a moment, and then he pulls back a little and says, "So, was it just me, or was amnesia sex …?"
"Oh god, crazy hot!" Sam agrees with another laugh. He looks down at Dean, his eyes lit up with a smile, and Dean can't help smiling back briefly before he kisses Sam again.
"We should get our memories wiped more often," Dean jokes against Sam's lips.
"Maybe not. Although, yeah, I didn't hate corporate Dean."
Dean smiles again. "He was a douche."
"Yeah, he was," Sam agrees. His hands settle on Dean's hips and he squeezes, dropping his head down to mouth along Dean's neck. "But a hot douche, that fucked the hell outta me on his desk."
"Mm," Dean hums, arousal blooming in his chest at the memory. "Okay, so then maybe we should get a desk."
"Which we would put where, exactly?"
"I don't know. Why are you poking holes in this?"
Sam chuckles quietly and kisses Dean again, dipping his tongue into Dean's mouth and sealing their lips together until he has to pull back to gasp for breath. He's hard against Dean's hip, and the blood in Dean's system is heading quickly south too, his head spinning with the way Sam feels against him. He squeezes his handful of Sam's hair and licks along Sam's smooth jaw.
"How 'bout a shitty motel bed instead?" Sam asks, and Dean shrugs.
"Good enough."
He backs Sam up and pushes him down onto it, crawling after him. Sam gets up high enough to rest his head on the pillows and Dean lies down on top of him.
"Hey," Sam says, cupping Dean's cheek in his hand, stopping Dean from kissing him again.
"What?"
"Just …" Sam looks up at him, his hazel eyes dark and glassy. "I know things've been crappy lately. And I know I haven't been sayin' it a whole lot, but I just … I love you, okay? Everything else, we can figure out."
Emotion tugs at something in Dean's chest and he nods and dips down to press his lips against Sam's. Sometimes it seems like he'll never regain control over everything, with the angels and Ruby and every other damn thing in his life spinning too fast for him to catch up, but there's also a tiny, optimistic part of Dean that feels like as long as he's got Sam, everything just might end up alright. After the giant mess with Alistair, after Dean had to torture someone again and found out he's the reason the apocalypse is happening in the first place, Sam was the only thing that kept Dean going. He doesn't even like admitting it to himself, but Sam is everything. Dean makes a promise to himself to never forget that.
"You don't have to say it. I always know."