Welcome to summer reading! One fic posted per week (excepting emergencies), usually Sundays, until season 13 (!) begins. Enjoy! -KHK

First appeared in Hunting Trips 7 (2015), from Neon Rainbow Press

Claustrophilia
K Hanna Korossy

It was hot underground. Who would've thought?

He wasn't even sure it was underground at first. There'd been zero warning: one minute he was hiking through the woods, wiping away sweat and razzing Sam about being a bug magnet. The next, he was dropping—sliding?—into, through, the ground, swallowing dirt, lungs constricted with panic, blind and grabbing at slipping earth. Then there was a second of falling before he hit the ground with a spine-jarring thud.

Into nothing.

00000

They thought they'd been playing it safe.

As usual, they didn't have much to go on. Three disappearances in the woods, no bodies found, no obvious animal activity in the area, no witnesses. People went missing all the time; it wouldn't have even pinged their radar except that Sam was going the extra mile these days, trying hard to make up for having chosen a demon over his brother and then nearly killing said brother. He'd dug a little further and found accounts going back to pioneer days of people disappearing in that region.

A lot more specialized research found mentions in local Native American lore about a "hungry land." The common interpretation was quicksand, despite there not being much water or sand in the area. Sam had had his doubts. Dean agreed.

They'd finally hit a wall with what they could find without actually going to the site. That happened all too often in hunts; at some point you just had to go in blind to get more information. They'd taken every precaution: not splitting up, taking just about every kind of weapon they could carry as well as a packet of herbs, going in daylight. It should've been fine.

"Maybe it's an Indian curse like the Oasis Plains one," Dean had suggested. "Bugs swarm in and eat you."

It sucked being the one all the gnats and mosquitoes seemed to love. It sucked even more having a big brother who made fun of you for it. "Those bugs left bodies behind," Sam said resolutely, cursing as he slapped at his neck. They'd have to check each other over for ticks tonight, too.

"Flesh-eating bugs," Dean amended. "Jacked up by the curse."

"Bones, Dean."

His brother was undeterred. "That would explain why only a couple people disappeared—they had to be bug magnets like you."

"I'm not—"

And then he was just gone.

There was no warning, no sound when it happened. Nothing but Dean's surprised intake of air. The ground just...silently caved at his feet, as if sucked down from below.

Dean was pulled down with it. Vanished from one second to the next.

Sam's heart stopped. "Dean!"

But he was gone before Sam could do more than cry out and lunge forward. His brother had disappeared. There wasn't even a hole to mark where he'd gone down, just seemingly undisturbed dirt and vegetation.

"Dean!" Sam bellowed, throwing himself at the ground that had just eaten his brother. He started digging with his hands. "Dean, answer me! Dean!"

But the hungry land only offered him silence.

00000

For a minute, all he could think about was breathing. No air, lungs not working, suffocating churned through him. Only when his seized-up lungs finally, finally loosened and let some air in and the lizard part of his brain grudgingly accepted he wasn't dying, did Dean start to register his situation.

There wasn't much to take in. He was lying on dirt, just soft enough that he hadn't broken his back...he thought. He wiggled his feet, hands. Nope. His muscles would hate him for a while, but they were all cooperating.

But that was about it. Because he was blind. Either that, or he was in some place that was utterly, deepest-hole-in-Hell, ink-black dark.

He rolled slowly onto his side, coughing dirt, blowing gunk out of his nose. Shoulders, arms, and back were all aching like a bitch, but nothing was broken. Tailbone was bruised but intact—thank God, because Sam had had a field day that time Dean had cracked his ass. Legs...okay, ankles were not happy. Made sense: he'd hit the ground feet first, and even though instinct had him tucking his lugs and rolling to absorb some of the force, impact was impact. He felt the tender skin through his socks, wincing. Not broken, maybe not even badly sprained, but a marathon would not be fun. Then again, a marathon was never fun unless your name rhymed with Bamantha.

No need to stand yet, anyway. Not when he had no idea where he was, if one step would take him off the edge of an even deeper cavern. No, first rule was take stock, not just of yourself but your surroundings.

"Sam?" he tried hoarsely, because that sure would've simplified things.

Would've made him feel better, too, to be honest. Even if things weren't exactly good between them right now, he still trusted Sam when the chips were down. Probably couldn't change that any more than he could change how he felt about the kid

But Dean wasn't too surprised to hear the soft echo of his voice and nothing else. "Sam!" he yelled louder, just in case, but he already knew there'd be no answer. Wherever he'd...fallen, he was alone.

Please, God, not blind. He still couldn't see even the tiniest glint of light. Muttering imprecations under his breath, Dean lifted his arm, pressed a button by feel on his watch.

Nothing.

His jaw clenched. That didn't mean anything; it could be busted. He patted himself down next—Colt still tucked into his side holster, knives in place, and...Yahtzee! He yanked the flashlight out of his pocket and turned it on just a little bit desperately.

It flickered once, too brief to see anything by, and went out. He was hit by a cold rush of relief that there'd been any light at all, before practicality reasserted itself. His way out of the darkness was dead. Batteries, the jolt of the fall, or, most likely, supernatural influence: awesome. Dean cursed again and jammed the flashlight back into his pocket. This just kept getting better and better.

Sam had the flares. The bag of gear Dean had been carrying...he felt cautiously around for it, but his fingers encountered only dirt and rocks. Probably hadn't made it down with him. Phone...it wouldn't turn on. Like the flashlight, either broken by the fall or supernaturally sucked dry. His phone had been in his back pocket, probably took a good hit. Figured. They lost more phones that way... But considering the similar failure of the watch and flashlight, who knew?

"Think, Dean," he muttered. Then rolled his eyes when he realized: duh, the lighter. No electrical power to drain there. He fumbled for it deep in his jeans pocket, grimacing when the twist of his body made new aches flare. They would definitely need a jacuzzi in their next room or, hey, he'd settle for a tub that wasn't disgusting. Heartened by the thought and the cool metal in his hand, Dean flipped it open.

If air could feel evil, the cold breeze that slithered by his face did. The flame instantly sputtered and died.

Dean shivered, and not for the lack of fire.

"Not alone, huh? Should've guessed, way my day is going." He rose stiffly to his feet, not wanting to meet the threat sitting on his rear. "So what's the deal, you get me down here, turn down the lights and, what, we make out?" His hand closed reassuringly around the grip of his Colt. "Well then, come on! Bring it!"

Nothing answered. Nothing moved. All Dean could hear was his rough breathing.

After a half-minute, he eased his hand off the gun and cupped it around the lighter. He flicked it on again.

Again, the light was instantly smothered. There was nothing there physically, yet the sense of thick, oily malevolence that had descended staggered him back a step.

"Don't like the light." Crap, his voice was shaking. "Got it." Dean fought the impulse a moment, then tilted his head back and hollered, "Sam! Get your ass down here!"

There was a faint echo again. But his voice had the tinny quality of a small sound in a large space. A very, very large space. Full of darkness and something that didn't like him and he had no freakin' clue which way to go, no wall to put his back to. Nothing but vast emptiness.

Dean dropped back into a crouch, wrapped his arms around himself, and quietly tried not to lose it.

00000

Sam called his brother's name until his voice was raw, and dug until his hands were streaked with blood. The ground wasn't packed but it was solid, no sign of a recent cave-in, and it didn't give easily to the claw of fingers. And of course, they hadn't had reason to bring a shovel. When at least ten minutes of digging yielded a narrow hole no more than a foot deep and no sign of Dean, Sam reluctantly left his gear, and his brother, and raced back to the Impala. He returned with a shovel.

Then, hours later, a bulldozer.

Ten feet down when he struck shale, he stopped, took a few wet breaths. His hands clenched. Okay. Okay, this wasn't working.

Time to start hunting smart.

00000

Funny how time didn't seem real when you couldn't see anything.

His stomach ached, but more from tension than hunger. When he counted out loud, the air seemed to absorb the words, sometimes leaving him doubtful he was even talking. He was tired—exhausted—but less from lack of sleep than from being battered and constantly on guard.

Because there was definitely something there to be on guard against.

There was never any sound of movement, never a touch besides the eddies of air that would put out any light he mustered. No proof he wasn't alone except for two dozen years of hunting experience telling him that something was watching, waiting. Something not good.

Dean Winchester wasn't one to wait for something to come after him, though. Nor for Sammy to rescue him like he was some fairy-tale princess. He'd never liked waiting, anyway.

He probably looked ridiculous, arm held out parallel to the ground in front of his face, legs cautiously sliding forward and out like an ice skater, the right one toward one o'clock, the left one to eleven. At least no one could see him in the dark.

"Yeah, 'cause that's what you need to worry about, looking like a dork," he muttered.

One o'clock. His foot skimmed over a rock. Eleven o'clock. His ankles throbbed like a bitch, and he stepped even more carefully. One. Ele— Another rock? Bigger this time. Dean slowly crouched, felt the object bumped against his toe. Long, relatively smooth. Knobby at the end.

He fell back on his rear. That was a bone. The long kind in human legs.

Stomach roiling, Dean reached out again, forcing himself to react as a trained hunter, not a freaked-out human. Okay. Okay. He was no anthropologist, but he'd seen enough human remains to know that definitely felt like the right length and thickness for an adult femur. There were more bones, too, at either end, one a bowl-shaped pelvis. No tissue left that he could feel—the bones had been there some time. But they were still laid out like the fallen body, which meant no predator had been at them. Probably too freaked out to come down there wherever he was. And the fact the presence Dean could feel down there hadn't messed with the body was surprisingly not comforting.

"Okay, think," Dean admonished himself, out loud because the silence was worming into his brain. "None of the hikers have been gone long enough to turn into Boney here." Not without a serious invasion of flesh-eating beetles or an acid bath, and wasn't that a pleasant thought? "So, one of the older vics?" He fumbled fingers over the pelvis again. Yup, wide arch in front, probably female, and none of their missing hikers had been women. "So where the He—?"
He could feel it. There was no way you should be able to feel a smile, or satisfaction, yet that was exactly what brushed Dean's mind, bad-touched his body: a horrible delight.

Dean stumbled back from the bones. Two steps, and his heel nudged up against something else. Something that felt fleshy, giving way under his foot. Like an arm.

Dean scrambled the other way. And just caught himself before he put his weight down on a foot that had stepped into vast nothingness. His left ankle gave as he reeled back, and he went down to his knees

Rationality was snuffed out by the sheer flood of gut-deep panic.

"SAM!" Dean bellowed, frozen in place even as his hands shook. "Sam, get me out of here!"

If there was such a thing as a soundless laugh, that was what he heard in response.

00000

Okay, so there'd been no EMF at the site. Sam glanced at his pages of scrawled notes and the piles of books around him that he'd collected off the college library shelves. He'd found everything there was to find about the hungry land legends, which was less than he'd witnessed firsthand. He'd looked into the area's history and geography and found nothing besides historical Native American settlements and more recent land and environmental assays. He'd checked every supernatural resource he could think of that might help, put some feelers out for other hunters who might've looked into the area, and refreshed his memory about Native American lore of the land. He'd even put a call in to Bobby, who was still not very responsive since he'd gone home in a wheelchair, but who'd grudgingly promised Sam he'd look into it. What was left?

He knew their predator's MO now. And he had a desperate anxiety driving him.

It was over a day now since Dean had vanished. You could only survive three minutes without air, so if he'd been suffocated underground—and, God, was that an image Sam did not want—no rush would help him. But he could go three days without water, which meant that clock was ticking.

Okay. Sam ran a hand through his hair. So, what were the possibilities, assuming Dean wasn't dead and buried, literally? He'd tried tracking Dean's phone, but it was either broken or off, not traceable. Their etched ribs meant they were off angel radar. Sam had even dug up info on two of the hikers' phones and tried to trace them, also without success. So, basically, if Dean had been transported elsewhere, trapped someplace far away, Sam didn't even know where to look. He'd have to just wait and hope Dean freed himself enough to give Sam something to go on. Unable to save him, again.

But what if Dean hadn't been beamed away? Curses, which Sam was more and more sure this was, were almost always localized. One of the Native American tribes—or one of their "gods"—had cursed the land somehow. There was no reason it would "swallow" prey and spit them out someplace else. Which meant he was back to Dean being devoured by the land.

Sam swallowed, pen hand shaking. No matter how that actually went down, it wouldn't be good. It wasn't like there was any place underground for Dean to—

Jolting upright in his chair with a curse, Sam shoved aside the topographical map he'd been studying and reached for another volume. The one that described the area's caverns and caves. Maybe...

Maybe.

00000

He'd established one little triangle of clear space. There was a yawning chasm to the left. A body to the right, smell thankfully as muted as sound but still skin-crawling. Bones behind him. And him there in the middle, in his own little Bermuda Triangle. Dean laughed, shrill and brief. Because he'd disappeared just like the others.

He'd tried tossing a pebble into the hole beside him. If it had hit bottom, he hadn't heard it. The drop felt as endlessly deep as he himself already was, and Dean half expected a balrog to come flying up out of it. Or something more real but just as sinister.

In the dark, his senses had expanded, seeming to fill the huge space around him. He could feel the soft stirs of air, the press of the rock ceiling above, the depth of the drop on his left. And what he couldn't see, his starved eyes made up: spurts of psychedelic light, mirage flickers of coming rescue, eyes staring at him that vanished when he blinked. And through it all, the desperate sense of suffocation, of being buried alive.

He knew intellectually you couldn't be smothered by space, that the darkness itself wasn't what killed you. But intellect was no match for the instinctive horror that crawled along his spine at every phantom breeze, squeezed his heart with every hallucinatory flutter in his peripheral vision. There was no logicking away primal fear.

Dean shifted around again, never comfortable to have his back to the same place for too long. He was huddled on the ground, arms stiffly hugged around himself just so he had something to brace against. His pride was long gone in the desperate need to try to carve some sense of safety out of this vast void. But there was none to be found. In the absence of an obvious predator, his mind stretched to find something, anything to latch on to, cracking as it strained too far.

"Sam's coming," Dean whispered to himself. If he didn't say it out loud, he wasn't sure he even thought it, and he needed to hang on to this. "Sam's coming. Sammy's coming." Screw manliness or his issues with Sam; he'd put on a Disney princess dress and sing his forgiveness if that was what it took for Sam to show up and get him the Hell out of there.

Hell. That was what it reminded him of. Of course, then he'd been strung out on hooks and wires, hanging agonized and bloody over the abyss. This was better. Nothing here to torture him but his mind. And the creepy shadows he couldn't see.

"Yeah, this is awesome," he whispered.

Hell had boarded him up into tiny airless corners like that Poe story Dean had had to read in high school. Sealed him in coffins, crushed him into sweltering boxes with decaying damned, froze him naked in pitch-black rat cages. But even Alistair hadn't guessed that he could've just plopped Dean down into the vast nothing like this and watched him unravel himself. What a freakin' joke, Dean chortled. The claustrophobic who had too much space.

His heart was thudding against his chest. Panic attack: he had talked Sam through enough as a kid to know the symptoms. Dean pressed a hand hard against his chest, trying to still the tremors of both. Deep breaths. Calm thoughts. Cherry pie. A stripper dancing to "Cherry Pie." His baby, her windows gleaming in the sun. His eyes closed, the more natural darkness another layer of reassurance. Just a little longer and Sam would be riding to the rescue, all big anime eyes under that floppy hair, maybe even a teasing grin at having found Dean curled up in an anxious huddle. Fresh air and sunshine. Burger and fries and coffee—or, God, water...

A draft brushed over his cracked lips, as if caressing the last bit of moisture from them. As if it'd known what he was thinking.

Dean gave another laugh, too wet and wild to be anything but crazy, and rocked where he sat, waiting.

00000

There was, officially, no cavern under the spot where Dean had gone down. But there was a cave opening a half-mile away that hadn't been fully explored, and it was a possibility. The only possibility Sam had just then, so he'd take it.

Finding a guide was a little harder, but the local ranger station was able to recommend an area spelunking club. Three phone calls and a promise of all the emergency cash they had stashed in the Impala's trunk, and Sam had a guide who could start right away.

Rudy was more laid back than he would've preferred. Wiry and small with an easy grin, the man didn't seem to know the notion of hurrying, double- and triple-checking their rigging and supplies before he even stepped foot inside the cave. Sam had been vague about the reason he was looking for Dean down there—how did you explain someone getting lost underground without, you know, ever having made his way underground?—but he finally got through the concept of life-and-death, and they picked up the pace.

Which, it turned out, wasn't too fast considering Rudy's relentless drive for safety and other crap Sam couldn't be bothered with.

It was a day and a half since Dean had disappeared. So very much could happen in thirty-six hours.

"All right, so, here's the fork I told ya about," Rudy drawled, holding up his lantern to add to the light from their helmet-mounted flashlights. "We know the right dead-ends 'couple hundred feet in. Left goes on a bit before the drop. No one's gone down it to see what's there, far s'I know."

Left. Sam consulted the compass on his watch. That was the right direction. Depending on how much "a bit" was, a drop could lead down into some cavern under the shale he'd dug up. Sam immediately started that way.

"Hold on, gotta mark the trail."

Clenching his teeth, Sam waited impatiently for the guide to make his little cairn of rocks. As if they really needed the marker to know which way to go. As if it would matter once he'd found Dean.

"Why hasn't anyone explored the drop?" he asked tightly, trying to distract himself. Or keep from grabbing Rudy and dragging him down the tunnel.

Rudy placed the last rock just so and straightened up to look at Sam. "Lots of cave systems around here—'least half of 'em haven't been explored yet. Ain't like any of us are paid—usually," he tipped his head to Sam, "so we do it when we can."

"Great. Got it. Let's go."

With a sympathetic smile, Rudy ambled back into the lead. Great, he was humoring Sam. Probably figured if Dean was really in that direction, he'd gone over the cliff and there was no rush anyway.

If he wouldn't need help descending that cliff, Sam would've been seriously tempted to toss Rudy over the edge.

00000

He squeezed his eyes tighter shut, humming "Nothing Else Matters" as he pictured his baby around him, the give of leather beneath him, the cool steering wheel under his hands, Sam grinning at him from the passenger seat.

Cold invaded the picture bit by bit. The steering wheel bit at his bare hands. The windshield was frosted with ice. And Sam's smile turned rictus in his blue skin. Dean's startled breath puffed white in the air.

His eyes snapped open, to complete black. But he could feel the vapor of his breath, the caress of unsubstantial chill across his skin, down the collar of shirt, up the legs of his jeans. His companion down there was obviously getting tired of waiting.

Dean grunted and lurched away. Something his hand landed on squished under it, and his gasp was lost in the huge space around him. He sidled away from the body, feeling the edge of the unseen precipice at his boot heel, tried to skitter back along the edge. It was all drop, though, enormous and confining, pressing all around but nothing to press back against.

He crushed his hands to the side of his head and rasped Sam's name.

"Dean?"

He'd heard whispers in his ears, vague echoes, and booming voices in his head, but this was the first call that sounded like it actually came from a long distance away. It felt like his fleeing sanity. He rocked harder, hummed louder, one tune splintering into another as his focus faltered.

"Dean?"

It sounded like Sam. Damn whatever it was.

Dean opened his eyes, unsurprised to see a distant prick of light. Right, because what good was a hallucination if it only had a soundtrack?

But, maybe... Hesitantly, not daring to hope, Dean pressed the button on his watch.

Nothing. He huffed a laugh, lip curling. "Not getting me yet, you son of a bitch." And screwed his eyes shut again.

"Dean! "

The slips of air had picked up, plucking at his clothes, soon whipping his hair.

"What the—?"

He thought for a moment that the words came from him, but no, they still sounded like Sam. Closer now. He bet the light would've been too, if he'd looked. He wasn't falling for it, though. No way, not Dean Winchester. Sam would give him... Sam would...

There were words, sounds that weren't any language he'd ever heard. Even his hallucination was going nuts.

The caress of his skin turned harder, latching on, clinging, digging into his chest, his brain.

Dean clutched his fingers in his hair, grinding his teeth at the pain. It wasn't Sam. Sam wasn't in Hell, too. It was the only good thing he could hold on to, no matter how they tried to fool him into thinking otherwise.

Malignancy wrapped around him like a cocoon. Tight, too tight, he couldn't breathe—

Something shrieked in that same unknown language. And then it shattered, tumbling him loose and gasping.

"Dean. Hey. Thank God! Dean."

Something grabbed onto his shoulders, fingers digging into him, almost knocking him off the edge of the cliff. This was it. This was it, something he could fight.

Dean snarled, pushing back, fists curled. The right cocked, the left grabbing and clutching something soft. His eyes snapped open as he started to swing.

The light was blinding. It made him shrink back, arm falling, the rest of his body almost following it over the edge.

"Whoa, hey, watch it." More grabbing. Warm flesh over solid bones. "Let me pull you back, all right? Dean? C'mere, man, you're about to go over. Hey, you with me? Dean?"

He let himself be tugged, dirt and pebbles sliding under his jeans as he was hauled away from the emptiness. It should've been into more emptiness, but there was a wall of muscle instead, and flannel and the scratch of a zipper.

Breath ragged, Dean forced his eyes open a sliver.

Still too bright to see, but as he let himself be manhandled closer, he smelled sweat and...coconuts. That shampoo he got Sam as a joke but that his brother actually used. Warm breath gusted over Dean's face, and long hair briefly tickled his forehead.

"He all right?" an unfamiliar drawl came from somewhere.

"Shut up." Sam. That was Sam, the voice, the smell, the fingers—tattered Band-aid still around the ring finger he'd caught in a wire fence—the worn cotton now crumpled in Dean's fists. And, as his eyes finally got used to the light, that little frown of worry half-hidden by a flop of lank hair. "Dean?"

Chewing on his lip hard enough to draw blood because, screw it, he wasn't going to cry like a girl, Dean nevertheless shoved up against his brother, arm pressing into arm, the left one around Sam's ginormous shoulders, fingertips leaving bruises over Sam's collarbone. Holding on, just for a minute, just to remind himself that there were walls and buttresses in this world that wasn't Hell but felt like it sometimes. But there was also Sam, a rock to put his back to in this vast open bull's-eye. The brother who hadn't been able to save him from Hell, who'd walked out the door with Dean broken on the floor behind him, had come after him and saved him from this Hell.

Sam's mouth opened, closed again. His fingers just flexed tighter into Dean's right shoulder like he knew Dean needed him to hold on.

And slowly the vast suffocating space shrank down until it was just the two of them again, and Dean could breathe.

00000

He didn't stop worrying when they found Dean.

If anything, the first sight of his brother, wedged between a bloated corpse—one of their hikers, Sam presumed—and a terrifying precipice, rocking and humming broken snatches of song, racked Sam's concern up to new heights. Yes, Dean was alive. Yes, Sam had found him. But he wasn't sure yet if it was in time.

Their lights couldn't cut through even a fraction of the dark space they were in. Rudy had whistled at the first sight of it, tried some kind of laser thing that was supposed to calculate distance, but even that hadn't reached far enough. If Sam hadn't known the exact coordinates where Dean had disappeared, he didn't know how long it would've taken him to find his brother.

And that was before their own lights had started flickering.

He was less surprised than relieved: that this was what he'd suspected, that he knew what to do. Ritual cleansings were a standard part of Native American lore and it hadn't been hard to find the right chant or materials. With Rudy staring at him gape-mouthed, Sam had done the cleansing, shouting out the final words over the wind that rose up, wailing, then died just as suddenly.

That was when he finally saw Dean.

His brother didn't react to Sam's shouts as he ran to him. Dean had been in that living inkwell of darkness, immersed in that ancient hatred and threat, for almost two days, with only bodies and bones and gaping chasms to keep him company. Sam couldn't help wondering in those seconds as he crossed the corpse-dotted landscape between them if Hell had been anything like this.

Dean didn't even recognize him at first. Sam interrupted the broken notes that had maybe once been Metallica, and grabbed hold, as much to tell Dean he was there as to pull him away from the drop he was scarily close to.

But fight surged where there was no place for flight, Dean coiling to lash out. And in that moment when he'd opened his light-blinded eyes, Sam knew he'd seen madness. It filled him with a whole other kind of terror.

He got it. Predators knew more than anyone what it meant to be out in the open, blind, defenseless. Nothing to put your back to, nothing to hide behind, not even a touchstone for your sanity. Big open, black space like this? Sam could imagine what it would do to a normal person's head, let alone one as screwed up by Hell as Dean's.

Something finally got through, though. Dean's arm dropped. He let himself be yanked away from the abyss. And as that idiot Rudy asked an idiot question and Sam shut him up, Dean was squinting at him, pupils huge and shell-shocked.

"Dean?" he said, honestly not knowing if his brother would hear him. If his brother even wanted to hear him, or if Sam's betrayal had annihilated any reassurance he could give.

Then Dean suddenly surged forward again, this time to grab so tight on to Sam, he was pretty sure there'd be bruises and rips later.

Sam sagged with relief. It didn't matter. Dean did need him, and that was all Sam needed. He was the anchor now, and he would hold firm.

I gotcha, he wanted to say. It's over, you're safe. But that wasn't what Dean needed to hear.

"I'm here. We're good, man. You got me. All right? You got me. We're getting out of here."

Dean's grip loosened, clenched, loosened. It was all the answer he gave, but it told Sam everything that mattered.

By the time Dean finally cleared his throat and said, "You'd better have brought water, bitch," Sam's worry had dialed down to empathy and a silent, grateful relief. Not just because his badass brother was back safe. Not because it was the first time Dean had called him a bitch in...well, a really long time. Not even because he'd been afraid there for a few minutes that this stupid case would be the trigger to bring all his brother's buried Hell memories flooding back, drowning him.

"You gonna stop holding my hand so I can get it for you, jerk?"

But because even when Dean did pull back, he defiantly didn't let go of Sam's sleeve. Because the past and Ruby and Lucifer weren't forgotten, but had been forgiven. And his brother still wanted him there.

00000

"...So that's when I did the cleansing ritual. Rudy thought I was nuts, but he probably thought I was nuts from the beginning, so..." Sam smirked at him, and Dean huffed. He could barely remember the spelunker guy even though the dude helped him climb out of the Hell pit, but he had vaguely noticed that the guy was about half Sam's size and had shut up when Sam had loomed between him and a still-disoriented Dean.

Dean idly picked at the bandages around his fingers; he hadn't even realized he'd scraped them raw in the cavern, not until Sam had started cleaning them...with gauze-covered fingers of his own. Dean didn't ask about that, having a feeling he knew the answer. He cleared his throat and asked instead, "So I nailed it, it was an Indian curse."

"Native American," Sam corrected absently, and swatted Dean's prodding fingers away. "Sort of. Not like Oasis Plains—this wasn't about cursing white invaders. Best I can figure is either some ritual went seriously south, or it was a tribe's way of trying to protecting itself, albeit in a really stupid way that outlasted them by a few hundred years."

"But it's gone now," Dean said cautiously.

"I think so?" Off Dean's skeptical look, Sam grimaced and hurried on. "You said your flashlight and watch didn't work, right? Well, the lights were fine after the cleansing, and you heard that scream at the end. And I never felt the...presence you were talking about."

Dean tried to repress a shiver at the reminder, probably didn't succeed the way Sam's brow pinched together. Great, Sam had seen his brother's shadows: six weeks of mother-henning were sure to follow.

Then again, considering where they were having this conversation, Sam didn't exactly have to be psychic to figure out Dean was still spooked. Yeah, that's what he was going with: spooked. Beat the heck out of "traumatized."

He tipped his head back against the wall behind him. His shoulder was pressed against another, the toes of his boots propped on the third as much as his wrapped ankles would allow. Closets weren't exactly built for extended stays, let alone for a guy over six feet, but Dean was plenty comfy right here. He would've even shut the door except that his screwed-up brain was probably capable of being both claustrophobic and space-hating—he'd have to look up if there was a word for that—at the same time. Not to mention, Sam would doubtless have a fit if he couldn't keep an eye on Dean. Considering the bandages on his little brother's hands, Dean couldn't really fault him on that one.

He rolled his head to the side to look obliquely at Sam. Who was sitting there keeping him company even hours after getting him out of that pit and checking him over. Bowed and weary.

"I knew you were comin'," Dean said quietly, the absolution slipping out before he'd even realized he had chosen mercy over pride.

Sam startled as if he'd been poked. Gave him a sad puppy look that no longer quite fit his adult features. He wouldn't forgive himself as easily as Dean did; Dean knew that. But the small smile was not nothing.

Sammy took a swallow of beer, hesitating. Which reminded Dean of the bottle in his hand, and he followed suit. If Sam needed liquid courage to say whatever he was going to say, Dean probably needed some to hear it.

"Was, uh..." Sam swallowed air this time. "Was Hell like that?"

Dean snorted, knowing his smile was grim. "No." He clenched his jaw, made himself unclench. "It was worse."

Sam didn't say anything, just nodded silently after a moment and took another drink.

When Dean finally crawled out of the comforting enclosure of the closet some time later, it was to put his drunk brother to bed.

The End