I don't like dogs.
Seems like people always flip out whenever I say that. They just can't believe it. What? Everybody likes dogs! How can you not like dogs? Really freaking easy is how.
Dad likes dogs, even. He's got one right now. Some kind of Rottweiler? I don't know. I've only ever seen it from a distance. Don't know the name, either. I don't care. It's chained up out in the scrapyard and not like I'm home all that much.
Kevin says only psychos hate dogs, cause they can tell there's something wrong with them, but I've got another reason. There are a ton of monster dogs out there, and I've run into a lot of them. Black shucks, grims. Axehandle hounds. Now those are weird. Hellhounds. I really hate those. Fucking Xolotl.
Jesus, don't even get me started on Xolotl. What a dick. Guess I can only hope I never run into him again, but seriously, why me? Most hunters hardly ever even come across a demon and I've got a god crawling up my ass every few years. Can't be a coincidence.
Anyway, I just don't like dogs. And nothing's gonna change my mind.
- Personal journal of Dean Singer, c. 1986
"One I did was real easy to find," Dean told Sam. "I got lucky. One of those things where one person summons a crossroads demon and it uses that as an in to make a whole bunch of deals in the same area. They all started coming due while I was looking for my First Trial."
"Yeah, a bunch of people losing their marbles and being mauled to death by dogs'd kinda be a dead giveaway," Sam agreed. Eyeing the screen of his laptop, where he had about twenty tabs open, he sighed. "Wish one would just fall in my lap like that."
"Hey, we're looking," Dean encouraged. He was sitting on the floor, every cheap newsrag he'd been able to pick up along I84 spread out around him. The colors had already bled off onto his hands. And his face, his jeans, and Sam, where he'd touched all of them. "Deals go down all the time. We'll find one."
"I'm afraid it's not gonna be 'til after the hellhounds have come and gone, though," Sam replied. "And they're kinda central to this whole thing." He paused, tapping his pencil against the notebook that he was jotting down potential leads in. "Can you walk me through exactly what I'm gonna do, again? One more time?"
"Well." Dean straightened up, hands on the knees of his folded legs, and looked at Sam. "It's pretty simple. On paper, at least. There aren't that many steps. It's just that the first one's a doozy." He started ticking them off on his thick fingers. "Kill a hellhound. I used an angel blade, but that super special knife of yours oughta do the trick just fine. 'Bathe' in its blood. I caught it in a bowl, some of it, at least, and dumped it over my head, and apparently that was enough. Recite a spell, then you, uh, glow, and boom. You're doing the Trials."
Sam felt a frown flicker across his face. "I sure hope you remember that spell."
"Have a little faith. Course I do." Dean turned his attention back to the tabloids. "One of the many, many things that little memory spell of yours dredged up, and no wonder, considering how many times I had to practice it." He flipped a few pages telekinetically. "And good thing. 'Cause I got no idea where the demon Tablet wound up. Pretty sure Kevin still had it when I bit it."
"Right," Sam said. "I better start practicing sooner rather than later, so if you could recite that for me sometime, that'd be great." He felt invisible fingers in his hair and sighed. "Is it sticking up again?" He'd spent the entire ride from that tiny town in Idaho to this even tinier one in Oregon messing with it, but he still couldn't get it to look quite like it had the first time Jake had done it.
"Yup." Dean grinned, and even as Sam returned an unimpressed look, he wondered if it'd be weird to lean into a psychic touch. "Should've kept Jake alive for a while, so he could've given you some tips...I'm kidding. I think it's cute." He smoothed Sam's hair down. "In an Alfalfa kinda way."
Sam scoffed, raising both eyebrows. "Careful, Dandelion. I might say something about your freckles."
"What about my freckles?" Dean asked defensively. Sam just shook his head and looked at his computer again.
"Might be easier to put a want ad out there," he muttered, mostly to himself. "Craigslist or something. 'Did a red-eyed stranger approach you offering the impossible roughly a decade ago, then actually deliver? Call our toll-free - '"
"Seriously," Dean interrupted, and Sam glanced at him. "What's wrong with my freckles?" He had his hands on his face like he was trying to feel them. But he wasn't doing anything but smearing more newsprint onto himself.
"Nothing," Sam stated. "I like them. Let it go, dude. We've got work to do."
"Shouldn't've brought it up in the first place, then," Dean muttered under his breath, picking up a copy of Weekly World News. Sam made a mental note to give his freckles the attention they deserved later. Maybe he'd kiss every single one, or at least every single part of Dean that had them on it. For now, he changed the subject.
"It's gonna be tough to kill a dog," Sam commented. "Hellhound or not. I had a problem with it when they brought me one at the cabin, and that one'd killed three people."
"Yeah." Dean grimaced. "I hate dogs."
Sam gave him his full attention, incredulous. "Excuse me?"
"What?" Dean shrugged, defensive again. "I hate dogs."
"Yeah, but - " Sam took a second to rein himself in. "Nobody hates dogs. Who hates dogs?"
"Uh, me," Dean said dryly. He wasn't looking at Sam, gray-smudged nose pretty much buried in the magazine.
"I don't think I've...ever met somebody who hated dogs," Sam said honestly. "Not even cat people. I mean - " He put both hands on his chest. "I love dogs. Growing up, pretty much all I wanted was a dog. That, and to stay at one school for a whole year. But my dad always shut me down on both counts." He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. "Didn't 'fit with the life.'"
"Okay, your obvious daddy issues aside," Dean began, clearing his throat and lowering WWN. Sam scowled. "If you like dogs so freakin' much, how come you didn't have one at your cabin?"
"I..." Sam hesitated. He walked slowly across the room, not going anywhere, just moving. "I thought about it. At first. I almost asked Bobby about it, which ought to tell you how early on it was, but I decided against it." He shrugged at Dean, standing at the edge of his circle of cheap paper and cheaper ink. "I wasn't sure I could take care of it. Y'know, physically. And it wouldn't've been a good place for a dog; dogs don't like monsters. And a lot of monsters don't like dogs. I was trying to accommodate them." He folded his arms across his chest, feeling the tip of his tongue sneak out of his mouth as he looked down at Dean. "Never heard anything specific about demons and dogs, though."
"I hated dogs before I died," Dean replied. "Becoming a demon had nothing to do with it."
"Why d'you hate dogs, then?" Sam asked, spreading his hands and shaking his head. Dean might've put WWN down, but he was still looking at it rather than Sam. "Did something happen to you? Did you have a bad - "
He stopped abruptly, eyes falling closed and hands dropping to his sides as a realization hit him like a bullet between the eyes. It was funny, how Dean relied on him to be the more emotional and human of them, and the one who was more into research, and he hadn't even been able to put an obvious two and two together. Dean being a demon. Dean hating dogs. Hellhounds.
God, I am such a fucking idiot.
Sam stepped over the line of shock tabloids and sank down on the floor next to Dean, ignoring the way the muscles of his left calf fluttered. He leaned against him, putting an arm around his waist and feeling his warmth. Alive, there, just not quite human. After a second of Dean not moving, Sam turned his head so he could rest his chin on his shoulder, and murmured, "I'm sorry."
To his surprise, Dean responded by chuckling, low and deep in his chest. Sam pulled back slightly, and Dean turned to him with a grin. Those stupid freckles were on full display, sprayed across his nose and cheeks, picked out by the light coming through the dingy curtains and only partially obscured by newsprint. Sam wondered if he'd been this pretty before or if he'd tweaked his vessel some while he was healing it.
"Jesus," he said. "You are so easy to guilt. How the hell'd you even survive? My money would've been on you letting a vampire out of its cage after a sob story in the first week."
"You would've lost that bet," Sam pointed out. "I let a monster out of its cage 'cause it told me it loved me, not because of a sob story, and it happened a few hundred weeks in, not the first one." He tossed a hand up. "And it hasn't even killed me. Yet."
"Smartass," Dean accused. "And yeah, you better keep that 'yet' in mind." He lifted a hand and cupped the back of Sam's head, playing with his short hair. "I accept your apology. I hated dogs before I died, actually, but the whole hellhound thing definitely didn't help."
"So...you gonna be okay?" Sam asked quietly. "I know we still have to find a case, but once we do, we're gonna have to get pretty up close and personal with some hellhounds."
"Yeah." Dean's nose bumped Sam's. "I'll be fine. Stuff like that doesn't even bother me anymore." His tone was breezy, impossible to hear a lie in, but Sam was skeptical anyway. Dean must've felt that, because he went for his usual method of distraction: he kissed Sam.
It started out sweet, Dean taking upper lip and keeping his mouth closed. Sam angled his head a little so that they meshed together better, supposing he could stand to be distracted some for now. Dean's mouth was always so soft. And Sam could swear he felt all the power behind it, all the physical and psychic strength that Dean held back, so he wouldn't accidentally break his jaw or make his head explode. He could especially feel it wen Dean guided his mouth open with his own and lapped at the edges. Wet heat dripped onto Sam's tongue, tasting like honey. And sulfur, as always. A shiver wound its way up through Sam's stomach, and his thighs jerked apart by about an inch without him thinking about it. Blood was just starting to pound southward when Dean pulled back.
"Your lips feel kinda chapped," Dean rasped. Sam's barely-there arousal suddenly seemed to be threatened.
"I'm - "
"You're dehydrated, is what you are," Dean interrupted, pulling back further. He pointed at the bathroom. "Go drink a glass of water."
Sam just stared at him for a second, then demanded, "Are you kidding me right now?"
"Nope. Water." Dean snapped his fingers in the direction of the bathroom. "C'mon. Makes up ninety percent of your body, top it off."
"Seventy-five." Swearing under his breath, Sam got to his feet. "This is how you're gonna kill me, isn't it?" He shot Dean a dirty look over his shoulder as he headed for the bathroom. "This better not be 'cause of all those times I wasn't in the mood."
"Course not," Dean replied easily, shaking out WWN and lifting it back to eye level. It's my job to take care of you. And I take my job very seriously."
They did wind up having sex, once Sam had drunk enough water to satisfy Dean's mother-hen instincts. Dean rode him, saying he wanted a prostate orgasm ("I need one I can feel in my damn teeth right now. Not fair you get to have all the fun all the time."), and they fell back into bed as the sunlight sharpened into its noon form. Sam was torn, still horny from that filthy kiss but also painfully aware of the ticking clock. Hell was moving fast and not even Dean knew what they were doing. Hellhound cases were hit-or-miss. They needed to get this show on the road.
Dean made him forget all that, though, with slow, deep rolls of his hips, and open-mouthed kisses while he twitched his ass up to Sam's head, and callused finger pads on Sam's sensitive nipples. When his orgasm hit, he could tell it was going to be one that'd practically shake the bed apart.
At least until he made a reflexive and misguided attempt to wrap his legs around Dean, and something in his calf twinged. Then he was back in his cabin, breaking Gordon's neck with his feet, feeling the jolt of shattered bones ripping through a spinal cord, watching the split-second switch from life to death on his face. Never mind that he hadn't actually seen that when he'd done it. Guilt and horror still stopped his climax dead in its tracks, like a cork rammed back into the neck of a champagne bottle with demonic speed.
It hurt, to the point where it made Sam nauseous. It felt like he'd been kicked in the balls. Tears welled under his closed lids, and his voice came out far higher than he would've liked when he yelled "Fuck!" and pounded a fist into the mattress.
He wasn't sure how long it was before he could open his eyes, but Dean was still sitting on top of him. He was flaccid, and there was come puddled on Sam's chest and stomach; he hadn't even noticed Dean finish. They stared at each other for a minute, then Dean cleared his throat awkwardly and climbed off Sam. He'd already slipped out of him, along with a pitiful amount of jizz so thin, when Sam sat up to look at it on the bedspread, that it was practically precome.
"Well, that's never happened before," Dean announced, settling down beside Sam.
"It wasn't you," Sam said miserably.
"Yeah, I figured. I felt that, uh, pity party bomb that went off in your head right as you were getting close." Dean waited a beat. Tentatively, he began, "D'you wanna - ?"
"No." Sam dragged a hand through his sweaty hair. His fingers coming out of it much sooner than he'd expected made him grit his teeth.
"Okay. Fine." Dean's head bobbed. There was a smeared thumbprint of ink on the side of his nose. "Great - I respect that." He shifted closer to Sam, their shoulders brushing, and reached into his lap. "At least lemme give you a real finish."
"No," Sam repeated, cocking his pelvis away from Dean's hand as he made contact with his dick. Frustration nearly choked him: he hadn't even come and he was still dealing with a refractory period.
"Sorry." Dean took his hand back. Sam laid down on his side, back to Dean, curled up around his aching stomach. He could feel Dean moving on the mattress, like he wanted to touch him but didn't know how. Something close to a minute passed before he said, again, "I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault, Dean." Sam scrubbed a hand over his face, pressing hard into his stinging eyes. "It's just - I'm fucked up. I'm just fucked up. That's all."
"Guess we match, then." Dean laid a hand on him, comfortingly rubbing his side from his armpit to his hip. Sam didn't want to admit it, but it felt good. Even when Dean's calluses caught on his moles and scars. He missed the contact when Dean climbed off the bed, but he was back before long, with a threadbare washcloth. After Sam wiped himself off and handed it back, Dean pulled a blanket over him. It was scratchy and smelled vaguely sour. But at least it was warm.
"Thanks," Sam muttered, more habit than real gratitude.
"Yeah, whatever." He heard Dean grab his jeans. "I'm gonna get back to work. You recharge your batteries." He dropped down on the foot of the bed, making Sam bounce and dragging a groan that he definitely didn't exaggerate out of him. "And if you feel like slinging around any of those sticky human emotions, you know where to find me."
"No," Sam grunted.
"That makes my life easier," Dean replied easily. "You know I suck at all that touchy-feely stuff." He patted Sam's foot under the blanket and stood up.
Sam didn't want to stew, to fixate on what'd happened or what he'd remembered. His brain didn't seem to care what he wanted, though. Business as usual for stuff like this. He spent about ten minutes laying on the bed, breathing deeply as the physical discomfort slowly faded, before he realized that he wasn't going to be able to sleep. He threw off the blanket and crawled to the edge of the bed to grab his backpack.
"I'm going for a run," he announced. That'd probably help more than a nap.
Dean, on his stomach in the middle of his trashy circle, looked up. "I mean, it's, like, twenty degrees out, but okay," he said. He watched Sam put on all of his gear, some of it newly bought as the weather turned, and let him get all the way to the muffler before he said, "Before you go, wanna look at what I found?"
Sam threw his arms wide, exasperated, and Dean answered with a shit-eating grin and raised eyebrows. And maybe it was stupid. Probably, it was. But Sam felt just the tiniest bit better.
"Fine," he said through the fleecy fabric of his muffler, clumping over in his running shoes and thick woolen socks. Dean displayed his find for Sam like a kid with a coloring book. It was in a Christian magazine, a shittily-Photoshopped, televangelist-type thing, just a blurb near the back.
I SOLD MY SOUL TO THE DEVIL! dramatic text proclaimed, imposed over flames and Galle's Lucifer. Interesting choice. And now he's coming back! it continued below, in smaller letters. Former sinner appeals to Father Eddie Norton, True Voice of God, and his many pious followers for help. Father Norton to hold prayer revival in Ballinger, Texas this coming Saturday. Come save this man's soul!
"All right," Sam agreed once he was finished, scanning it. "Sounds like that's worth checking out. Interviewing the, uh, 'former sinner,' at least." He made a face. "Texas, though. Jeez. And we gotta get there before Saturday...that's gonna be a long drive."
"Yeah, I know," Dean agreed happily, then looked up at Sam. "You clearly don't appreciate your dad's baby, so I'm just gonna have to appreciate her enough for both of us."
Her? "Okay, well, I'm going for a run before we leave." Sam raised both index fingers, the movement made stiff and awkward by his thick gloves. "Nonnegotiable."
"I wasn't even gonna try to negotiate," Dean assured him. "I'll pack us up. You work on keeping that girlish figure of yours." He patted Sam's ankle, and Sam kicked his hand away. Gently.
"Wash your face while you're at it," Sam suggested, and Dean touched it as he headed out the door, smudging pink onto the hollow of his temple.
"Love you too, honey."
Sam went for a run. A quick one, because the schedule was even tighter now. It was freezing out, just like Dean had said, and felt even colder than it actually was because of the humidity. Sweat froze in Sam's eyelashes, seed pearls glittering in the light streaming through the gappy cloud cover like something off an inspirational postcard. He liked the way the air burned in his lungs, though, and how it made it harder than usual to get his legs moving. It distracted him from how good he'd been doing all the way up until today. If he was thinking about how bad his chest hurt, he wasn't thinking about how nothing at all had triggered the flashback. He wasn't stressing over how bad it'd be if that happened while he was trying to do the First Trial.
When Sam looped around back to the motel, it wasn't like everything was magically better. He wasn't sure he could handle a run long enough to do that, even if he had all the time in the world. But at least he'd managed to pack it all away for now where it wouldn't bother him so much anymore.
Which always worked out so well for him in the long run. Hopefully, though, the long run wouldn't catch up to him until after the First Trial was over with. Or even until the Gates of Hell were actually closed.
It'd started to snow, lightly, as Sam approached the car. Dean was sitting on the hood, legs out in front of him, back against the windshield. His arms were folded behind his head and Sam's headphones were over his ears, plugged into the tape player he'd picked up over the summer. He cracked an eye open, then slipped one of the cups off. "You ready to bounce?"
"Yeah, I can change when we hit a rest stop." Sam eyed what Dean was wearing. T-shirt, flannel with the sleeves rolled up. He'd gotten the ink off his face. "You could've at least put on a coat. People're gonna get suspicious."
"I'll just tell 'em I'm on Texas weather already." Dean slid off the hood and dropped into the driver's seat, transferring the tape from the player to the car and popping the keys in the ignition. Sam swung himself in on the passenger side, landing heavily on the leather. "How's your leg?"
"Uh." Sam pulled his gloves off, scrubbed at his numb nose with one hand. "Fine?" Dean hadn't asked him that since the first couple times he'd gone running.
"Great." Dean backed out. "Got some stuff for you in the back. Grab a drink."
They decided Dean would drive straight through down to Ballinger, Sam sleeping in the back at night, only stopping when the Impala needed gas. Dean pulled into a filling station a few hours down the road to top up the tank and let Sam take care of any human needs he might have. They weren't out of Oregon yet, so the attendant jumped to his feet when Dean parked next to the pump.
"I hate this goddamn state," Dean muttered.
"You'll survive," Sam assured. "Just keep reminding yourself it's his job to touch her and try not to beat him up."
He made to climb out of the car, but Dean grabbed his elbow before he could, pulling him back for a quick kiss. Sam closed his eyes, caught halfway between irritation and something much warmer and gooier.
"You're okay." Dean's voice was serious when they broke. It wasn't a question.
"Yeah," Sam agreed, figuring he could use the confirmation.
He grabbed his backpack and headed for the bathroom, where he put on fresh deodorant and swapped his running clothes out for normal ones. He was probably gonna be pretty ripe by the time they got to Texas, but that was life on the road, and it wasn't like Dean minded. Sam pulled off the beanie he'd been wearing, winced at his hair, and put it back on. They probably wouldn't be stopping again for a while, so he took care of a few other things. Stepping out into the cold air, he was about to go back to the car when his phone buzzed in his pocket.
He pulled it out, checked the number. He didn't recognize it, but he hadn't recognized Charlie's, either. Maybe she'd gotten another new phone. Maybe Garth had. Sam flipped it open and answered.
"Hello?"
"This Sam Winchester?"
The voice was gruff, older, had a bit of a twang to it. Not Garth or Ash. A bad feeling had Sam swallowing hard as his stomach dropped some, and he wanted to hang up. Something, though, made him quietly say, "Yeah."
"Well," the guy on the other end said loudly. "Hey, there, you murderin', cock-suckin' son of a bitch. You enjoying your alone time with your demon fuckbuddy?"
Sam cleared his throat painfully. "How'd you get this number?"
"Well, you'd better be." The guy ignored him. "'Cause it ain't gonna last. We're comin' for you. Gonna kill that black-eyed bastard what's fucking you. Or exorcise him, maybe that'd be better. And you? We're gonna skin you alive, gimp. You're gonna pay for what you did."
"And what - what d'you think I did, exactly?" Sam rested his free hand on the building, tapping his fingers against the greasy bricks as anger started to simmer between his chest and stomach. He knew it was dangerous. But he didn't shut it down.
"Flipped." The other hunter was growling now, furious. "Sold us all out to Hell when the demons've been kicking our asses all around the East Coast for months now. Killed Gordon, another human being, in cold blood. You even a person anymore? You gonna bleed red when we catch up and start cutting? Or did one of your monsters get to you a while back?" A snort. "Wouldn't be surprised, you treatin' 'em like puppies and kitties. Rumor going around you let 'em all jump your bones and that Knight we practically killed ourselves to get is just the latest in a long line. That true?"
"Is this Kubrik?" The voice was starting to sound familiar to Sam, like it might belong to one of the hunters who'd delivered Dean to his cabin in the first place.
"Bet you diddled the wraith kid."
"When I killed Gordon," Sam began in a carefully-controlled voice, "I was tied to a chair. He'd knocked me out, tied me up in my own home, and tortured me while I was out."
"'Cause he knew what you were up to," maybe-Kubrik returned.
"And what was I up to?" Sam demanded. "You knew Gordon. He hated me, he hated how I did what I did 'cause it was so different from his methods. A lot of you did. He was just looking for an excuse, and he found it when he jumped to conclusions and assumed the worst. He never asked me what I was doing, and when I told him, he didn't believe me."
"And what were you doing, then?" Kubrik wanted to know. "Besides fagging around with something you should've been figuring out how to kill."
Sam's stomach was starting to hurt like it had earlier, and the anger ballooning like an aggressive tumor inside him was only part of it. "It doesn't matter. You're not gonna believe me no matter what I say. You're exactly like Gordon: you want my head on a stick because of what you think you know and you're not gonna let anything change your mind." He clenched his hand into a fist on the wall, so fast he scraped his knuckles. His cold joints ached and stung. "The Knight knows how to close the Gates of Hell. How to get rid of all the demons, forever. Deals, daevas, everything. Everything. And considering I've got my ass on the line trying to save the world, including all of you, I don't really think that anything else I do with him is any of your business."
There was silence on the other end of the line for a solid few seconds. Sam didn't know what to make of it, not sure if Kubrik was actually mulling over what he'd said or if he'd hung up. But then a sound came rumbling through the phone, mocking and so deep that Sam had trouble identifying it as a laugh at first.
Sam just stood there, jaw and hand clenched, and wondered why in the hell he was waiting this asshole out. His thumb twitched towards the button that would've ended the call, but he didn't press it.
"Son," Kubrik began, when he was finished, "I'm honestly not sure if you're a liar or just an idiot. Neither one's an excuse, though."
Sam swallowed again, and felt his jaw lock forward to form what Dean called his "stubborn bitchface."
"Fine," he said, very quietly. Not like I need support from any of you to do this.
"Bet you think you can't be caught, huh?" Kubrik taunted. "You're too fast. You're too smart. It'd take us too long to track you down. Well, maybe you're right. But there are still plenty of people out there singing your praises, somehow. The Harvelles, y'know? That weirdo Garth kid. The rug muncher - Charlie. And we all know exactly where they are."
The anger that'd slowly been rising in Sam, twisting and heating his guts, boiled over at that. Or maybe a better analogy would've been somebody dropping a lit match in a gas can.
"Listen," Sam snapped. "You douchebags wanna come after me and...cut my legs off, or whatever, I don't care. Go right ahead. But don't you dare go after my family. They're not part of this. One of you already burned down the Roadhouse, didn't you? Try anything like that again, I can promise you'll regret it."
"Yeah?" Kubrik didn't sound impressed. "And what're you gonna do?"
"I've got seven years' worth of interrogation experience and a Knight of Hell," Sam spit into the phone. "Figure it out."
Then he hung up. Finally.
The fire in him went out after that. He wasn't mad anymore, just tired and troubled and guilty. He told himself he shouldn't be feeling that last one, but didn't really believe it.
Something was really bothering him, besides the obvious. It was like a splinter in Sam's brain: just how in the hell had Kubrik gotten his number? Only a handful of people had it, and thinking any of them might've given him up made Sam feel like he was going to puke, just thin, burning acid.
Thinking about that made him realize that, if Kubrik had his number, he (or somebody else) might be able to track him. Or call him again. Right now, Sam honestly didn't know which was worse.
He whipped his phone at the ground, using his whole arm like his dad had told him to when he was teaching him to throw knives. That cracked the casing and the screen. But it totally destroyed the phone when he stomped on it, grinding it into about twenty different pieces underneath the heel of his boot.
Sam was just standing there, staring down at the wreckage, when Dean came around the side of the building.
"Well, there you are. Figured you'd fallen in." He paused, either seeing the remains of Sam's phone or feeling the wall of emotion coming off him. "What happened?"
"I, uh." Sam pointed at the ground. "I dropped it."
"I guess you did," Dean agreed. "And that really upset you, huh?"
Sam stared at him, and there was a long moment where he almost didn't tell him. He didn't want to talk about how close the people who hated them might be, or how somebody he'd trusted had sold them out. He didn't want them to have to worry about it together.
But what Dean had said about acting like part of a couple rather than a solo hunter had burned deep into him, sinking in like a bullet that couldn't ever be dug out. And it wouldn't let him keep his mouth shut about something this big.
"I," he began. "Got a call. From...another hunter. Not just another hunter, one of the guys who used to run with Gordon. He didn't say anything I didn't expect, but - fuck. Hearing it from somebody? Knowing that he. That he found me, or at least my number?" He swallowed. It hurt, his mouth tasting sour like blood or vomit. "Or that somebody...somebody gave it to him? I couldn't..." He trailed off. Dean was watching him patiently, doing that not-blinking thing that always squicked Sam out, and he brought both hands up to his head. Almost ran his fingers through his hair, remembered he couldn't just in time. "And of course it'd happen now, right fucking now, when I'm already wound up about...you know. About all of this. Starting the Trials, killing a hellhound. The last one I took out, it was in my demon cell, and it was leashed. On an iron chain." Once he'd started telling the truth, the rest of it poured out of him. It must be vomit his mouth tasted like, because it felt like throwing up. "And...when we were having sex earlier, if that happens while we're hunting - "
"Okay. Slow down." Dean stepped forward, shaking his head, and put both hands on Sam. One on his shoulder, the other cupping his jaw. "First of all: that asshole's miles away from you, and even if he ain't, you think I'm gonna let him, or any of 'em, get anywhere near the two of us? It was just a phone call. One you made sure isn't gonna happen again." He stared, hard, into Sam's eyes. "And second of all: you're gonna be okay. You're gonna be just fine. What happened earlier didn't happen with the ghoul hunt, it didn't happen yesterday, and you were totally freaking awesome yesterday. You're good at this, Sam. You practically lost a leg and you didn't even let that take you outta the game the whole way." He ducked in, kissed Sam loud and wet on the lips, and just that had him smiling involuntarily. "You've got some jitters right now, and that's totally normal, but you chose to do this. You even roped me into it. And you're gonna see it through to the very end."
Sam closed his eyes and stepped in, wrapping his arms around him.
"We're gonna take it one step at a time," Dean said quietly. "And our first step's to get to Texas." He paused. "Or to get you a new phone. 'Cause, jeez, man, are you ever rough on 'em."