I had never been so pissed in my life. Okay, so pissed was a very large understatement, livid, furious, rabidly angry was probably a better description. The wall of the motel we were in could attest to this. I had been unable to channel my anger at those that deserved it so, instead, I had taken it out on the disgusting paisley wall and my fist. Thank God we always got a room at the end away from everyone, cause all I needed were the cops showing up to investigate sounds of disorderly conduct.

I paced the floor, pissed at myself. I knew better than to spout information over the phone where I wouldn't be in a position to keep Dean out of trouble or be there to back him up if he needed it. I realized as soon as the words left my mouth that I had fucked up by telling Dean that Djinns liked ruins. That was slammed home no more than an hour later when Dean hadn't made it back and wouldn't answer his phone. It was staked through my heart thirty six hours later when I found him hanging from a pipe like a piece of meat, his life blood draining into a bag.

I almost lost it when I rounded the corner, trying to be quiet, through the noise of my heart slamming, and the absolute certainty in my veins that Dean was there. All I could see was the blood draining out of his body through a tube and the gray parlor of his skin. I couldn't even tell if he was breathing till I was right on top of him, his shallow breaths just barely visible in the slight rise and fall of his chest. Oh yea, I was pissed at my brother for scaring the shit out of me.

I knew what Djinns did. They weren't the nice, three wish granting, characters portrayed on TV. They were nasty, vile parasites that fed on the lifeblood of their victims. All the stories I had researched described the few victims that had managed to survive as being delusional, despondent, and seemingly broken. Of those that had made it out, about 80 of them had committed suicide, unable to live in the real world. Their innermost desires had been given to them, they had been blinded by their hearts wishes and it had been ripped away, thrusting them back into their unsatisfying, unhappy lives. For those that had managed to cling to their sanity, 5 had written about their experiences, describing a wonderful dream created through trauma or coma, unable to either face or believe that the supernatural existed. They told of riches of untold proportions, loved ones long since lost restored to them, anything one could think to wish was there for the taking.

I was pissed at the people who had made it impossible for me to take Dean to the hospital, forcing me to treat his injuries and blood loss in a dingy motel room. Dean's only crime was protecting and sacrificing himself over and over again so that no one else would have to know about the things that lurked in the dark, waiting to rip their lives apart. I watched time and time again as he had given everything to make sure no family had to live through what he had at four and then again twenty two years later. But what had it gotten him? A false fucking murder wrap or three, assault charges, prison escape, fraud charges, okay well those maybe and God only knew what else. I hadn't taken the time to check his charges pending lately.

I called the police and ambulance reporting screams, telling them I had found a girl unconscious on the floor suffering from blood loss and two others already dead. I left them to find the smoking remains of the Djinn, letting them draw their own conclusions, not that they would be right, but what the fuck did I care? I didn't have time to deal with them or it. The girl needed immediate medical attention and I had to get Dean out of there and take care of him. He had passed out right after saving my ass, again. I hauled him to the car laying him gently in the back seat and wrapping him up, trying to stave off shock before I shagged ass out of there.

I managed to get him to the room without incident where I jacked the heat up and laid him down on the bed. I turned on the shower as hot as I could stand it before manhandling him out of his clothes. It took the better part of an hour to get him cleaned up and warm enough that the shivers racking his body slowed to just occasional shudders. I was able to get him coherent enough to drink some water, no telling how long it had been since he had any, and a couple of iron supplements that we kept in the first aid kit, for just such emergencies. Okay not the genie thing, cause really, how often do those pop up, but for the blood loss.

Once I had Dean settled in the bed I started slowly treating the minor cuts and abrasions. Besides the blood loss there were several cuts on Dean's collarbone and chest. Apparently, the twisted fuck liked to play with his meals while waiting for the main course. Dean's wrists were in pretty bad shape too, not surprising since he had been hanging from them for almost two days. The skin had been rubbed off and some of the coarse threads of the rope were still embedded in the raw flesh left behind, even after the shower. I gently tweezed those out, catching myself every now and then just rubbing my thumbs over the back of his hand or across his pulse point reassuring myself that he was still here, that he hadn't left. I applied antibiotic cream and wrapped his wrists in gauze to protect them then crawled into the bed, pulling him up against my chest and wrapping myself around him. I'm not sure if that was for him or for myself.

I woke several times through the night and early morning hours to Dean mumbling broken fragments of memory, voice rough with emotions, that during the waking hours he hid behind walls and barbed fences. I caught enough partial sentences and phrases to know Dean's wish was what I imagined it had been. He had wanted his family and he had wanted me to be happy. It broke my heart to hear the pain woven through the murmurings as I caught flashes of how things had been.

I was Joe College again, engaged to Jess, mom was alive, but dad wasn't. What had me wrapping myself even more securely around him, whispering how much I loved him and needed him, were his broken apologies. He pleaded for a second chance to make things right, to make it up to me. He promised he could be a better brother, that he would be a better brother.

I just held him tighter, running my hands over his arms and through his hair, my tears wetting the soft hairs at the nape of his neck, telling him over and over that he was the best brother in the world and that no one else even came close. I told him I didn't want anyone but him, that I loved him and wanted him.

Dean slept pretty much the whole next day, waking up long enough to eat, drink and take the several different pills I laid out for him. The fact that he wasn't fighting me on the pills or bitching about my mother hen act not only told me he was below empty physically but that his emotional state was on shaky ground as well. I noticed that on the occasions he stayed awake for more than the time it took to follow my directions, he tried to keep his distance, kept his eyes down and away from mine. The few times I initiated any kind of contact outside handing out pills or treating his wounds were met with quiet acceptance but ended as quickly as he could pull away without being completely obvious. At least, I'm sure he thought so.

Before this, I had spent months trying to rebuild some of the damage that dad and I had done to Dean's self esteem and self-confidence, reminding Dean of his importance not only to our family but as my lover, how much he meant to me and just how special he truly was. Boy, you don't know how hard that was to do when said brother didn't do chick flick moments or the whole talking about his feelings thing. I felt like I had made some progress, not necessarily leaps, but small baby steps and was absolutely enraged to see that progress crumble away, crushed under the belief that whatever he had experienced in that non-world was real. Somehow, I had to get him to talk to me. There was just no way to combat something I didn't understand. How could I refute lies that hadn't been voiced to me?

Four days of reinforcing that I was where I wanted to be and who I wanted to be with, done as subtle and noninvasive as possible, finally netted me a quiet "I missed us, Sammy."

I worked my way through the things I read online, asking in off handed remarks if this happened or that, trying to shield my fishing expeditions as clarification for documenting what to do and not to do when encountering a Djinn in our journal.

It had been like pulling teeth to get details out of Dean but I managed a few. I knew mom had been living in our old house, that dad had been into baseball and had a great life before dying in his sleep from a stroke. I learned that Dean was a mechanic and dating a nurse, a fact that had my eyebrows climbing to the ceiling. The down side was that everything Dad and we had accomplished was wiped away. All the people we saved had died.

When I tried to find out about me, Dean really shut down. All I could get was that I was happy, living in California and finishing up law school. Jess and I had even announced our engagement at supper the night we were all celebrating mom's birthday.

With that little admission, Dean had actually told me a little more than he thought. The distance he was trying to keep, his quiet statement that he missed me, the slump to his shoulders and the way he tried to avoid my eyes whenever I tried to talk to him, all told me that even in that world, everyone else's happiness meant more than his own.

Once Dean pulled back and locked up, I had only two ways to handle things. I could piss him off to the point he let something slip from his almost Fort Knox control and then used it as leverage to pry the rest of it out into the open, or I could make it all about me. As much as I hated to do either, I knew that if I allowed him to continue to hide behind his walls, he would bury everything so deep it would eventually destroy him. The question was, which one would hurt him less but still get the job done?

The answer was really simple. After everything he had been through and the hurt he was hiding, I refused to throw something else at him to piss him off that might damage him further. So, I went with the 'it's all about Sammy' method. It made me sick to my stomach and made my skin crawl to do it but in the long run if it helped Dean, I knew I could suck it up and make it up to him later.

It had been a week and a half since I found my brother hanging from a pipe more dead than alive and in that time Dean hadn't allowed me to touch him in any way other than to tend his wounds and normal day-to-day contact. We had moved motels and I made the mistake of letting him check us in, finding two queens instead of our usual king when the door swung open. Until then I had let it slide, giving him the space I though he needed and letting him sleep alone, but that shit was about to stop.

I waited till Dean had settled in for the night. I could tell by his breathing he was in that in between place of waking and dreams and if I was going to do it the time was now. I slipped out of my bed and slid in behind him, wrapping my arm around his waist and pulling him snug against my chest. I felt his body stiffen before he asked me what I was doing. I leaned down next to his ear and told him how much I needed him, that this was killing me, that I needed him back, that I needed us back.

I felt the small tremors running through his body as my breath ghosted across his neck. I told him what I thought had happened in his wish world, guessing at some and bluffing at others. It took an hour or more of talking, reassuring and finally letting the desperation and pain I had been feeling for a week bleed into my voice.

The pain of knowing that my brother was hurting and I couldn't stop it, that he had again taken the brunt of both the physical and emotional abuse being doled out. The desperation was nothing but total fear, fear that I wouldn't be able to make it right even if I could get him to tell me what had happened, fear that I would lose my brother, lose my lover.

When he finally started talking, I realized I had been right about a lot of things but others were so much worse than I had expected. He told me how he had been a total ass growing up, that everyone thought he had been drinking again and how no one seemed to trust him. When I caught him stealing mom's silverware, it hadn't even been a big surprise to me. I had been bitter over the fact he had slept with my prom date before the prom and we never talked outside of holidays. He had the impression those conversations were stilted and sad. We were barely brothers much less anything else.

I knew that if I interrupted him before he finished his story he would just shut down again but his final admission had me breaking my vow to keep quiet. It was just that his heartbreaking confession that he had forgotten mom's birthday was more than I could take

Up until that point I had allowed him to face away from me but I wanted him looking right at me when I told him how wrong he was. I wanted him to see the truth in my eyes and not just hear it in my voice. I pushed, pulled and shifted till I had him turned toward me, lifting his chin up with my fingers till he looked at me. I was terrified that one wrong word, one misstep would shatter him and any chance I had at fixing the mess the Djinn had caused.

The first thing out of my mouth was there was no way in hell that he would ever forget mom's birthday. When we were kids, he was the one that always insisted on making cards for her birthday and mother's day. We kept them in a beat up shoebox that to this day had a place of honor in the trunk of the Impala. There was no way in hell he could have known what month it was much less what day, especially finding himself in a turned upside down world trying to figure out what was going on and why.

I wanted him to understand that even if he had known what day it was his time had been better served finding a way out, especially since he had gone all Haley Joel seeing dead people who weren't actually dead yet. That had at least gotten a quirk of his lips so I figured I was on semi-solid quicksand yes I do realize that is an oxymoron so I kept pushing forward. I knew that his self-image was so warped from years of self depreciation that everything was colored with shades of doubt over his self worth. As much as I had worked on it, I was years of reinforcement behind and this incident probably smashed what little I had been able to achieve into oblivion.

I told him not only was he the only person in the world I trusted 100 but he was the only one I had given my heart to completely. Jess had never had all of it, because no matter what happened, he had always had that piece of me that was most important. It was the part that cried out for him every night I was away from him, the part that railed against me not taking his calls, the part that was shattered and pieced back together when he finally stopped calling, giving me what I thought I wanted. It was the piece that would never let him go, never let him leave and never ever stop loving him no matter what.

I pulled his chin back up when he dipped his head, trying to hide again, and told him that he was what kept me going, he always had my back, that I knew no matter what happened he would be there, whether I deserved it or not. I had to keep trying to catch his eyes because every time I said something he didn't agree with or that threatened the tenuous grasp he had on his emotions, he managed to drop his eyes, hiding what was there so I couldn't see.

I told him how sorry I was that I stopped taking his calls and how stupid I had been for trying to act like someone I wasn't, hurting him in the process. I knew that us not being close in that place all stemmed from my childish, hurtful methods of trying to keep myself together when I was missing him so badly I thought I would die from it.

I told him how he saved not only me time and time again but also countless others. People that would have families of their own, couples that would grow old together and see their children grow up. I knew it wasn't fair but all the sacrifices and all the pain was worth it knowing that he had made that happen. He slowly relaxed during my nonstop dissertation, burrowing into my side and closing the distance he had tried to put between us, at least physically.

I felt like I had finally made some progress when he lifted his head, pulling mine down to meet him as he kissed me in a slow gentle slid of lips on lips, tongues stroking against each other, bodies realigning in an unconscious shift to fit together. I pulled back, nipping at his bottom lip before resting my forehead against his, trying to leash my all-encompassing need to mark and reclaim him. I desperately wanted to reassure myself that Dean was mine but this wasn't about me and what I needed. This was about what he needed. I concentrated on getting air into oxygen deprived lungs, watching all the feelings Dean would never voice shift through his eyes.

I saw the fear, the lust, the hope, and the need before he leaned forward. His kiss was almost chaste, if not for the lightest sweep of his tongue on my lips. And then he softly whispered, "please."

I had to know what he was asking for. I had to know what he needed, what he wanted, because I didn't want it to be about me. Dean always had an innate ability to pick up on what I wanted or needed and I had no intention of letting that happen here. I told him anything he wanted it was his, that I was his.

He breathed out a shaky breath before murmuring, "you, I just want you, please, Sam. I want you to... I want you inside me I need you inside me."

His voice had dropped to barely a whisper but it was all he had to say. I could see the need to belong, be loved, be who I wanted, and the fear that he might not be flash across his eyes before hiding behind the long sweep of eyelashes that still fascinated me to the point of obsession. I leaned forward kissing first one eyelid and then the other, then moved down to those freckles that I was still trying to number but always lost count of when I couldn't stop the irrational desire to lick each one.

Dean's low moan had me moving further down to the shell of his ear, my teeth grazing the tender skin before sliding my tongue inside, lapping in and out, losing myself in the slow rhythm. Dean's whimpers and the squeeze and release grip he had on my waist urged me to continue for just that little bit longer. I finally pulled myself away, licking a path from his ear to his neck and latching on to the spot I knew from experience would have his back arching and his head thrown back, granting me even more access to suck, bite, and mark him as mine.

I bit down once more, licking over the imprint before moving further down till I could suck the taut nub of his nipple into my mouth, worrying it with my teeth and running my tongue over the heated skin, sliding over to give the other the same attention, until he was thrusting his hips against me with fevered intensity. I left them spit slick and sensitive to pinch and roll them between my thumb and finger, while Dean's fingers dug bruises into my hips. I licked my way across his tight abs stopping at his navel to tongue fuck that little hole, relishing in the broken gasps and moans falling from Dean's mouth, the sounds going straight to my dick.

Dean had passed the state of coherence and I pulled away long enough to remove both of our boxers and slide my whole body over his, both of us groaning at the exquisite feel of skin on skin contact. I stretched up, grabbing the lube out of the table drawer. I reached out, taking that hard hot shaft in my hand, marveling at the satiny feel of skin over steel. I caught his stare as he watched me lower my mouth to his cock, my tongue flicking across the head several times before dipping into the slit. A moan spilled from his chest as he watched me suck the head in past my lips, teeth grazing just enough to send shivers of electricity up his spine.

I held his hips down till I worked my way down, slicking the length with spit and precome, tongue curling around and over the head, flicking across the large pulsing vein and lapping at just the right spot under the crown. I hollowed my cheeks and sucked in slow languid pulls watching him watch me. I pulled up halfway, locking eyes with him, telling him it was okay in our non verbal way of communicating before moving my hands from holding him down and sliding them under his ass, urging him to let go and fuck my mouth, smiling when his hands fisted in the sheets and he closed his eyes. He was breathing deeply through his nose, trying not to come.

When he finally had enough control he started short shallow thrusts upward into the heat of my mouth. I slicked my fingers, sliding one hand under his balls to his flexing hole, my other still gripping his ass, kneading the strong muscles. I pushed one finger in and started the slow slide in and out, preparing him. When I added the second finger, his movements changed to deep bruising thrusts hitting the back of my throat. By the time I added the third finger and worked him open enough to take my cock, his rhythm had become erratic. I started a low hum in the back of my throat and he yelled my name, his body going stiff as he spilled down my throat. I started a gentle up and down glide with just my lips, tongue lapping his spilt seed until the aftershocks had passed and the over stimulation became painful, before pulling off and licking my lips savoring the taste of him.

I crawled to my knees, lubing myself quickly and pulling him up onto my thighs. Lining up my long neglected dick with his hole, I pushed forward in one, long slow glide until my balls rested against his ass. I held perfectly still, feeling my cock twitch as it was completely engulfed in tight, wet heat, trying to stave off my own orgasm. Gritting my teeth till I had enough control not to blow my load like a twelve year old touching himself for the first time, I pulled back until the crown of my cock caught on that impossibly tight ring and then pushed forward in slow, long, deep thrusts, hitting Dean's prostate each time.

His whole body had started to shake and a low keening noise was coming from the back of his throat as I continued the languid rhythm, watching his head thrash on the pillow. His hands finally came up to grip my arms so he had leverage to push down into my thrusts, pulling me impossibly deeper. It only took a few more strokes of push/pull, so good never want to stop thrusts, for my control to shatter. Liquid fire ran up my spine and out my cock, filling Dean with my come, his back arching off the bed and his cock pulsing his second release, leaving him pliant and barley conscious.

I pulled out gently moving off the bed long enough to clean us both up. Once I had settled back on the bed Dean rolled over to face me, draping his body along my side and half on top of me. I started slowly stroking my fingers up his arm from his wrist to his shoulder and back down again, feeling warm skin against my caress and breathing in the scent of sex and Dean, thanking every deity that I hadn't lost my brother.

I felt him smile where he had his nose buried against my neck. I asked him what was funny and he kind of chuckled before telling me that he had cut the grass for mom. I smiled back just imagining the scene.