AN: Here's my contribution to "Sam and Dean in Heaven" fic. Reviews make me smile.
You're my Blue Sky
He knows he's going to die on the werewolf hunt as soon as he drops off the dog. On the drive from Lebanon into Texas, he'd been on the fence, pretending to himself that he wasn't really considering it as he did. He tells Morgana, a hunter he and Dean met years ago, that he'll come back for Miracle in a week tops, but when he says goodbye to the dog, he's got tears in his eyes he expertly refuses to shed. The dog can tell it's a final goodbye, too. Sam knows by the way he whimpers.
It's harder without the dog. Alone in his motel room, the first one he's stayed in since Dean died. A room with one bed, not two. A room just like the ones he slept in during those six months he hunted Gabriel the fake trickster for letting Dean die permanently in Sam's arms. That period was such a long time ago and preceded so many other major life events of Sam's that it almost doesn't feel real anymore. It feels like something Sam might've dreamed or a story somebody else told him. He doesn't remember how he survived those six months, how he lasted that long without his brother. He was young and untouched by Hell. Now, he's forty with more traumatic baggage than most human beings could withstand, and he's tired. Heartbroken, not in a new way but in a final one.
He won't put the gun in his mouth and pull the trigger because he promised Dean he would keep fighting. Every night, before he goes to bed, Sam looks at the gun—Dean's gun that he couldn't bear to leave behind in the bunker—and reminds himself he promised.
Hunting counts as fighting the good fight. It's how Sam and Dean fought it the last twenty years. Saving civilians from a pack of werewolves. What could be a more noble act befitting a Winchester who never gives up?
Sam works the case just as he's worked thousands of others, without Dean to bounce ideas off of or divide the load with. He works it in that quiet, unsmiling way of his. He's professional, but he doesn't try to hide how sad he is. He sits in the Impala at the end of each day, parked outside his motel room, and cries just a little because hunting without Dean now really does feel like pouring salt in the bloody wound.
Sam knows before he goes in how many werewolves there are in the nest. Five, three of them male. If it was both Winchester brothers cleaning the nest out, five wouldn't make them consider backup at all. They've handled more than that just the two of them. But Sam alone against five werewolves is risky behavior, even though there's more than a fifty percent chance he kills the pack without sustaining any serious injury. It's risky, but it isn't suicidal because he's Sam Winchester. Now the best hunter in America. That's what he tells himself feebly as he drives to the nest under a black sky and the milky light of the moon.
When Sam Winchester dies for the last time, he's alone. His last thought is: Dean.
They meet again on a bridge Sam has no memory of, and despite knowing he's dead, he can't help but feel like he's dreaming. Dean looks just the way he did the day he died, except his eyes sparkle when he looks at Sam, and when they hug each other, Sam can feel how much lighter his brother is now. The realization that Sam can feel his brother, the way he can feel any other part of him, dawns on Sam slowly and without his full comprehension. His pain and grief are gone, but still recent enough that Sam can't fully embrace the joy Dean so clearly feels at their reunion.
They get into the Impala—and holy shit, it's the original car, exactly as it was the day Sam left Stanford with Dean—and Sam says, "Now, what?"
Dean starts the engine, still grinning. "Let's go home," he replies.
They're not sure how they know the house is theirs before they even walk into it, but as soon as they see it, they both silently know it's been waiting for them. A charming log cabin with a covered porch and a bright red door, a single-space car port for the Impala attached. They share a look before getting out of the car and going inside to explore the place.
The first word that comes to Sam's mind is cozy. The sprawling sitting room has a brick fireplace, sofas and armchairs in brown leather and earthy-colored fabrics, a flat screen TV big enough for Dean without being obnoxious, rustic wood tables, colorful but understated rugs, soft blankets on the sofas that add more color. A pair of rifles is mounted on the wall, along with a print of Edward Hopper's Nighthawks that, when Sam looks more closely, turns out to feature Sam and Dean at the diner counter.
The kitchen is to the right of the house's entrance: a big window over the deep farmhouse sink filters in the sunlight. There's a spice rack, a coffee maker, a toaster, and a tea kettle on the counter. The refrigerator is a vintage green General Electric model with a pizza delivery card magnetized to the front.
"Oh, damn right, there is pizza in heaven," Dean says when he sees it. He checks the contents of the fridge and finds it fully stocked with all the food the Winchester brothers could want, along with plenty of Dean's favorite beer. He grabs one, pops the cap off with his bottle opener, and takes a long drink.
There's a table for two pushed against the far wall and a side door to what must be the car port. Curiously, on the kitchen table is a bouquet of sunflowers in a vase, their petals a brilliant yellow. Sam goes to read the card attached and grins warmly.
Welcome home.
Jack
The central corridor leading through the house is decorated with framed photographs of Sam and Dean and all the people they cared about in life. There's even a picture of Sam and Jessica from his senior year of college that makes Sam freeze in his tracks and stare in wonder. He moves on to photos of their parents he's never seen before, stops again when he reaches a picture of himself, Dean, Cas, and Jack in the bunker that he doesn't remember taking. His eyes sting. There's a picture of Dean and John that looks like it was taken while Sam was at Stanford, a photo of Dean smiling fondly at Cas who isn't paying attention, a picture of Sam and Dean with Charlie. The images make Sam's heart ache in a bittersweet way.
There is a large study that feels like it belongs to Sam, though he's never seen it before and obviously didn't pick out any of the interior décor. A large desk below the window, an overstuffed recliner in one corner that's perfect for reading, a bookcase full of titles he either loved in life or always wanted to read, and a sofa that's already got a blanket and pillow waiting on it in case he stays up late in this room and doesn't feel like making the trip to bed. He finds a leather journal on the desk with his name embossed on the inside cover, the pages blank. At the edge of the desk directly across from the chair is a framed 4x6 of Sam and Dean.
There are two bedrooms, but it's clear the smaller one is meant for guests. The full-sized bed is pushed into the far corner of the room, against the wall with the window in it, and there are not personal effects in the room of Sam and Dean's. The king-sized mattress in the master bedroom, neatly made with two pairs of pillows, is something the brothers consider only for a few seconds before wordlessly accepting. They're both starting to understand that this place—like everything they'll find in heaven—is their joint desire made manifest. It is the way it is because they actually want it that way, whether they knew it before or not. There are already framed photographs on the night tables: little Dean and Mary on the right, the whole Winchester family in Lebanon on the left.
"Dude, check out this bath tub!" Dean says from the master bathroom.
Sam just smiles in his general direction as his eyes roam over the bedroom. He checks out the closet and finds it split down the middle, clothes his size on one side and Dean's clothes on the other. He touches one of the flannel shirts, feeling its softness between his fingers. There's an ash tray clearly meant to be used as a change dish on the dresser top. Sam recognizes it after a moment: something Dean saw in a casino gift shop in Vegas once and thought was cool. He opens a few of the drawers in the dresser: well-organized socks, underwear, t-shirts.
"We got a stand-alone tub in there that looks big enough for you to actually fit in it," Dean tells him, coming out of the bathroom. "I haven't checked the water pressure in the shower yet, but I bet it's awesome."
His eyes sparkle, and Sam's heart aches again, just looking at him.
"Come on, go see," Dean says.
Sam obliges his brother. There are two sinks, a separate shower with pebble stone walls, and the tub that Dean will surely use three times as much as Sam. It's a surprisingly roomy master bathroom for a cabin in the woods. The towels are soft, and Sam's favorite aftershave is on the vanity. He looks at himself in the mirror for a second and the sight is strange. It's almost as if he's seeing somebody else. He's younger now than he was when he died, though not by much. Maybe it's just the absence of the grief and stress he carried with him in life. He looks good. He scrubs a hand over his face and turns away from the mirror, overwhelmed by all this heaven.
There's a woodshed behind the house and a field peppered with wildflowers: yellow, purple, and dusky orange. The field eventually runs up against more trees. Sam won't be surprised if they see rabbits and deer on this land. Their land.
"What do you think, Sammy?" Dean says, standing next to him in their backyard.
"I love it," Sam replies, his voice soft. Because it's ours.
"Me too." Dean nods, surveying the view. "Me too."
That night, their first in heaven together, they lie in bed side by side and listen to the cricket chirping outside. It's dark, almost too dark for them to see each other. They're both wide awake, unsure if sleep is even really a thing here. Sam lies on his back with his hands folded on his belly. Dean's on his back too, close enough to touch. They stare at the ceiling together, maybe because the energy between them is too overwhelming for them to look at each other much.
"I didn't live long after the barn," Sam says, breaking the silence. "About a month. I'm sorry."
"What happened?" Dean says, sounding unbothered.
"One last hunt. A werewolf pack in Austin."
"You went alone?"
"Of course."
They're quiet again for a while, and Sam wonders if Dean is disappointed in him.
"I imagined this whole long life for you, before you got here," Dean says. He keeps his fingers laced behind his head on his pillow. "You gave up hunting for good, got yourself a girlfriend, had a kid. You raised him better than Dad did us, and then you got old and died of natural causes. It wasn't perfect—but you were happy for a lot of it."
Sam chokes up at that, not knowing why. "I didn't want to live without you. I guess if I had survived that last hunt, I would've tried…. For you. But I'm glad I didn't have to."
"I just wanted you to be at peace, Sam. Find your little bit of good in the world. After everything you did, you deserved it."
A tear slips out of Sam's eye and into his hair. "So did you."
Dean's quiet for a minute, then says, "I'm sorry I wasn't there when you bit it. Somebody should've been."
"It's okay. Out of all the deaths I had, that last one was probably the best."
Because he knew it would be the last. He knew his brother would be on the other side.
They fall into silence, listening to each other's soft breaths. Dean finds Sam's hand between them on the mattress and takes it in his. It surprises Sam only for a second—then he's squeezing Dean's hand, their fingers weaving together.
They don't go looking for their parents or their friends right away. Without talking about it, they both agree they just want to get used to being here together before they face their long-dead family. Sam, in particular, needs the time. He doesn't want to share Dean with anyone else yet. He doesn't want to face anyone besides his brother. He's happy but he's also sensitive in a way he's never felt before, almost as if the loss of his body has left his soul raw. He doesn't think he could handle anyone else's energy right now but Dean's. Especially not for the kind of emotional reunions he and his brother have in store.
They don't know how many days pass because there is no real point in keeping track of time here. There is day and night, dusk and dawn, but Sam and Dean don't count them.
What they do instead is find their rhythm, creating routines. They wake up together and linger in bed, usually quiet with their thoughts. Sometimes, Dean wakes before Sam, and other times, Sam wakes before Dean. Whoever wakes first just watches his brother sleeping with reverence and gratitude until he stirs on his own. Many nights, they don't sleep so much as drift between consciousness and unconsciousness, holding each other. They don't need to sleep, but they want to hold each other in bed every night, so they do. They take turns making coffee and breakfast and savor it every morning because everything tastes good here. Sam starts going for runs, down the dirt path that leads from their house to the road and then on the road itself for as long as he wants. He never sees anybody else, no vehicle passing him by. The brothers sit on the porch together and drink beer as the sun sets. Some nights, they watch a movie together after dinner. Some afternoons, they go for a drive. There is nothing they have to do or worry about, nowhere they have to be, no responsibilities to address. The peace of it is strange—but eventually, they allow it to settle over them like snow on trees.
"I wonder how far we can go," Dean says, one day. "In the car, I mean. Is there enough heaven for a week-long road trip?"
Sam snorts. "Pretty sure there's enough heaven for an eternal road trip, Dean."
"We should go, then. Pick a destination. Anywhere in the continental U.S. And we'll go."
Sam smiles a little. "Soon. But not yet."
Dean doesn't push it.
Dean's sitting on the porch one night, after dinner, nursing a glass of bourbon. Sometimes, he likes to sit outside alone—Sam can sense when his brother wants to be alone—and Sam allows it without acknowledging the small part of him that wants to cling to Dean's company every waking second and demand to know what Dean thinks about. This night, Sam gives him an hour before coming out of the house to join him or retrieve him, depending on what Dean wants. The air is, once again, pleasantly cool now after dark. The stars are thick enough in the sky to cast some light on the Winchester brothers' little corner of heaven. They don't speak to each other at once, when Sam steps out onto the porch. They only glance at each other, smiling the gentle smiles they often do now in each other's presence.
Sam's been trying to get comfortable with all of the feelings he's got here that he didn't have in life or didn't feel in the same way or maybe wasn't aware of. Watching Dean these last several weeks, Sam's become convinced that Dean isn't struggling with any of this at all. The older Winchester is truly at peace, in a way Sam has never seen before. While Sam is glad for it, he's also the slightest bit lonely because he hasn't reached that same peace quite yet.
He steps closer to Dean and rests his hand on his big brother's shoulder. Dean looks up at him for just a moment, and Sam looks down at him.
"I love you too," Sam says. "So much. More than—more than I can describe."
He chokes on his words and stops, eyes welling with tears.
Dean just smiles, looking into the dark woods again. Sam can sense the warmth unspooling in Dean's chest, the bright joy.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you in that barn," Sam says, losing a single tear and squeezing Dean's shoulder. "I should have."
"You did," says Dean. He reaches up to take Sam's hand off his shoulder and holds it. "You did."
Sam closes his eyes and just feels Dean's hand in his and Dean's happy energy. "I know there were times when you must've thought I didn't love you as much as you love me, and—"
Dean hushes him. "I can feel how much you love me right now. It's never been clearer."
Sam purses his lips, at once relieved and self-conscious.
"I felt it the second you showed up on that bridge," Dean says.
Sam has never heard such pure, light-hearted jubilance in his brother's voice. It makes him weak in the knees. The way Dean rubs the back of Sam's hand with his thumb makes him want to cry. But he doesn't. He just stands there next to Dean's rocking chair, holding Dean's hand, and lets his emotions wash over him.
Dean empties his glass and gets on his feet, still clutching Sam's hand. He starts to lead Sam back into the house, and Sam finally opens his eyes again, wiping at them with his free hand. Dean takes him into the kitchen just to put his glass in the sink, then turns and pulls Sam into a hug.
They hold onto each other for a while, in silence. Dean doesn't let go of Sam until Sam feels better, calmer.
"Let's go to bed," Dean says, looking at him, glowing.
Sam just nods.
When they lived in the flesh, Sam never thought too deeply or analytically about his love for Dean. Or Dean's love for him. Their bond was a plain fact, their stone number one. It didn't seem to warrant reflection any more than "The sun rises in the east." Now that he's dead, Sam realizes there might've been more to that lack of reflection on his part: the enormity, the profundity, the exceptionality of his love for Dean—of their love for each other—would've made looking too closely at it overwhelming in life. They loved and needed each other more than brothers were supposed to, more than most lovers and spouses did, and some part of Sam hadn't wanted to face just how much. If he had, he would've been forced to reckon with the truth that he really was fundamentally different from the rest of humanity. He and Dean. He would've been forced to admit to himself that it was never just the hunting and psychic powers, the demon blood and his cosmic designation as Lucifer's vessel that made him a freak by any normal person's standards. The most important detail separating Sam Winchester from normal people was how much he loved and needed his brother—his brother who was also his soulmate. The two of them created together with a joint destiny, complementary purposes, a shared mission of literally epic proportions. What human being could even understand the meaning of that, except Dean?
At some point in adulthood, maybe after coming back from Hell, Sam accepted that a traditional civilian lifestyle had never been in the cards for him. Despite his fantasies of it in youth, he wasn't built for it. And he stopped wishing for that alternative life, accepting himself and his calling and his bond with his brother for what they were. The drama of their lives kept him busy enough that he didn't have the time or the psychic space to dwell on what-if's. His love for Dean grew and matured. Their lives became more and more entwined. Even when they were fighting, even when they hurt each other as only they could do, their love was too powerful to allow for separation.
But the Winchester brothers on earth had barriers between them. Some of them chosen, some of them seemingly imposed on them. They wasted too much time holding back, hiding from their own feelings even as they killed and sacrificed for each other. For all the times Sam had been swept up in his love for Dean, propelled by it toward whatever actions he needed to take to keep his brother or get him back, he had spent an amazing amount of his life refusing to look his own love in the face.
Now, he doesn't have a choice. In heaven, the love between Sam and Dean is an almost tangible presence between them. Not only can they sense each other's feelings, but they also exist in constant connection to their own. It isn't just an overall heightened sensitivity to energy and emotion that Sam's experiencing here. He realizes he's also feeling his own love for Dean without a surge protector for the first time, without any ready ability to contain it and set it aside in order to focus on day to day tasks.
Sometimes, just the sight of Dean's face or the sound of his laugh or his voice is enough to make Sam's eyes well with tears and his heart overflow. It's ridiculous. On earth, Sam would've been embarrassed of this, and Dean would've given him endless crap about it. But here, if Dean notices Sam's emotional moments, he doesn't mention it, and Sam doesn't try to bury his feelings. He allows them to be. He tries to let his love for Dean flow through him without interfering, waits for the too-strong emotion to pass.
Sam and Dean take off for their first road trip through heaven on a beautiful morning, the Impala lighter than she ever was in life without their hunting gear in the trunk. All they packed was a bag each of clothing and toiletries. The green icebox sits on the back seat, full of beer and water bottles, and Dean's box of cassette tapes sits on the front seat between the brothers. Once they round the first big bend in the highway and the trees clear enough for the road to unspool beneath open sky, Dean hollers out in joy and punches the gas pedal. Sam laughs and feels his own burst of exhilaration. They've got the windows rolled down, the Impala's hood gleams jet black in the bright sunshine, the mild air whips through the car, a song they both love plays on the stereo…. It feels like the best of their days in life, when they were between jobs and their relationship was as good as it ever was. It feels better, now that they're free.
Dean is so happy, Sam can feel it as much as he can see it. The older Winchester brother drives with a huge, open-mouthed grin on his face that'll hurt his cheeks eventually if he doesn't stop. He looks about thirty years old, all of a sudden, only infinitely more lighthearted than he was at that age. Sam can't take his eyes off Dean, mesmerized by his brother's every detail, and after a couple songs, he feels the tears well up, forcing him to look away. He turns his head toward his window, trying to get a hold of himself, but his emotions are so overwhelming, he can't help but shut his eyes for a moment. A tear slips down his cheek, and he doesn't wipe it away.
Dean slides his hand across Sam's shoulder and onto the back of his neck, which prompts Sam to turn his head toward him again. Dean just squeezes him, knowing exactly what's going on with his brother and taking it in stride. He isn't the way he was in life. This Dean—Dean in his truest, purest, freest form—never shies away from Sam's emotions or urges Sam to stow them away. He allows Sam to simply be, allows everything to be, including himself.
Sam offers a small smile and nods, as if to reassure Dean he's just as happy as he was five minutes ago. Dean doesn't take his hand away from the back of Sam's neck for at least a few miles.
They hit the road without a map or a destination, deciding to let heaven take them wherever it will. So Dean drives and Sam rides along and they have no idea how much time passes or how many miles they've put behind them before they reach their first stop: Austin, Texas.
Sam snorts in shotgun as he realizes where they are, and Dean just glances over at him.
"You gonna be okay?" Dean says.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I don't think we'd be here if I wasn't."
Sam's last hunt obviously wasn't the first time he'd been to Austin, but it's the visit that comes to mind with immediate, vivid clarity. He shakes off the memories and does his best to stay present, here in the Impala with Dean. Dean, who's close enough to touch. Dean, who's never going to leave him alone again.
The werewolf pack and his solitary, dying moments disappear from Sam's mind entirely the second he sees where Dean has pulled up: Blazer Tag, the biggest laser tag arena in Texas. Sam breaks into a toothy smile, and Dean smiles too as he kills the engine.
This place opened in '99, and in 2000, for Sam's seventeenth birthday, Dean took him here to celebrate. They'd been in Austin since the start of that school semester because Sam had refused to keep moving around until summer break. He had his SATs to worry about. John found them a small, shabby rental house, and Dean agreed to get a job to help pay the bills instead of following John around on hunts. John would disappear for weeks at a time, leaving 16-year-old Sam and 20-year-old Dean to their own devices, and he was gone the day of Sam's birthday that year, arriving the day after. It wasn't the first of Sam's birthdays John had missed, and by then, Sam didn't care much, about his birthday or about his father's absence. He was skeptical when Dean pulled up to Blazer Tag in the Impala.
"Really?" he'd said. "Dean, I'm seventeen, not twelve."
"Stop being such a stick in the mud and show me what you got, nerd boy," Dean had replied.
They spent at least an hour playing laser tag in the darkened rooms of the arena, teamed up against a bunch of strangers of all ages. After they'd had their fill of that, they spent a couple more hours in the arcade, playing every worthwhile game there was. Dean used his tickets to get Sam a stuffed dog from the prize booth—and Sam took it with him to Stanford just over a year later. He hugged that thing and cried while trying to fall asleep more nights than he cares to admit his freshman year of college. It was consumed by the fire in his and Jess' apartment, like most of his personal belongings.
They go in and do it all again, playing laser tag until they break a sweat, then moving onto Mortal Kombat and PacMan and air hockey. When they're done, they take their tickets to the prize counter. Sam gets Dean another giant slinky, and Dean gets Sam a stuffed green alien.
"Stay weird, Sammy," Dean says, when he hands the toy to his brother.
For the rest of eternity, Sam will remember Austin as the place where he and Dean spent an afternoon playing instead of where he went to die alone. He stares at his big brother with adoring gratitude as they leave the city behind and hit the highway again.
They drive through Alamogordo, New Mexico at night, and on Highway 54, they see a giant, red, heart-shaped light materialize in the darkness from miles away. The closer they get, the bigger it seems, until they finally arrive at the light on the grounds of the World's Biggest Pistachio Farm. The heart is twenty-six feet tall, a neon red line drawing glowing softly in the middle of nowhere. The base it stands on reads "Heart of the Desert."
"Aw, man, I heard about this," Dean says, as he parks the Impala just off the road. "It's supposed to be the biggest heart-shaped thing on earth."
"That's cool, I guess," Sam replies. "Why are we stopping?"
"Come on." Dean gets out the car.
Sam can't help but follow.
They stand before the heart, hands in their jacket pockets, and Dean tips his head back to look at it like he's looking at the stars illuminating the desert instead. Sam wonders at the fond smile on his brother's face, then considers the heart himself.
"I'm so glad I told you I loved you before I died," Dean says, after a few quiet minutes. "I should've told you more when we were alive."
Sam suddenly feels choked up. "You told me all the time, Dean. You just didn't use the words."
"Yeah, well, I should've." Dean pauses. "I don't regret anything I ever did for you. I'd do it all again. I want you know that, if you don't already."
Sam just nods, his throat tight with emotion.
Dean smiles and tucks his chin back down, steals a look at Sam, and says, "This is going to sound corny as hell, but…. You and the way I felt about you, how much I loved you—was just like this heart, my whole life. The one light in the darkness."
Sam scoffs and rubs the back of his neck to keep from tearing up. "Yeah, that is corny."
Dean shrugs a little. "It's true."
Sam looks at Dean, his own heart overflowing now, and says, "You were my light too, Dee."
Dean nods, finally able to see and believe that his brother loves him, wants him, and needs him as much as Dean always loved, wanted, and needed Sam.
They stop in Vegas, the destination of their "annual sacred pilgrimage," as Dean once put it to that strip club waitress the year Becky Rosen kidnapped Sam. They go for drinks at Frankie's Tiki Room, and Dean is delighted to find that Heaven inserted the live mermaids from The Sip n' Dip Lounge in Great Falls, Montana here. Beautiful, young women in bikini tops and shimmering, fake mermaid tails wave and make eyes at him and Sam from inside their water tanks behind the bar. They order fruity rum drinks just because you have to go with the ambiance of the joint, and they're both buzzed by the time they empty their first mugs.
Halfway into his second mug, Dean stares dreamily at the red-headed mermaid who's been silently flirting with him since he sat down. "Women are great, aren't they?" he says.
A faint, indulgent smile touches Sam's face. "Yeah. I suppose they are."
"The world was worth saving just because of them alone."
Sam raises his mug to his lips. "Should I leave you and Ariel alone later? Go find myself a room to crash in?"
"Nah," Dean says. "I'm just admiring the view, that's all."
They hang out in silence for a little while, until Sam, approaching actual drunkenness he didn't know was possible in heaven, ventures to ask: "Do you feel like you missed out? Never ending up with the right woman?"
"Not really. Who's to say there was a right one, you know? The few times I actually tried having a girlfriend instead of a fling, it didn't end well. But man, those women I hooked up with…. The best ones were really something else." Dean grins and drinks more of his cocktail.
Sam can't remember his brother ever openly yearning for or even hinting at a desire for storybook romance and marriage. Sure, there was the dream fragment Sam walked in on when they took African dream root together for the first time—Dean picnicking with Lisa and co-parenting Ben—but Sam has long since come to understand that the fantasy was more about escapism during the year leading up to Dean's trip to Hell than about some hidden, fundamental desire for a wife and kids.
A part of Sam—the part that wants to know absolutely everything about his brother, wants to know him the way he knows himself—has long been curious if Dean would've chosen to marry and have children in the version of their lives where they never became hunters and had no cosmic destiny. He wonders if Dean would've been happy in that traditional life or if he would've tried and failed, only to struggle with the loneliness of needing something different and not being able to find it.
"What are you thinking about?" Dean says. "I can hear your gears turning from over here."
Sam sucks down the last of his second drink and looks over at Dean. "Nothing. You gonna order another round?"
"I think I'm good. Let's go pick up a snack somewhere and head back to the hotel."
"Gino's Pizzeria. The mozzarella sticks," Sam says. "I'll order them room service."
Dean stares at his brother in awe, mouth ajar. "The best mozzarella sticks in Philly and the whole continental U.S. You incredible bastard."
Sam smirks.
They're in Heaven's version of Malibu, California when Sam sees her from behind. He would know that long, blonde hair anywhere. She's on the beach Sam and Dean have been approaching on a dirt path, and she's playing with a Golden Retriever Sam vaguely remembers as the Moore family dog. He stops, feels something catch in his chest. She turns around, and their eyes meet. Jess. A slow, radiant smile spreads across her face and for a split second, Sam is twenty-two again, dumbfounded a woman so beautiful and good would notice him at all.
Dean recognizes her a few seconds after Sam does, quickly looks at his brother and back at Jess. Sam senses Dean's energy stutter and wilt. That shakes him out of his shock, and he registers the dog barking for Jess' attention. She just stands there, several paces ahead, smiling at him. Her golden hair shines in the sun, flutters in the breeze. She looks exactly the way she did when she died. Sam wonders if she sees him the way she remembers him or the way Sam sees himself: older, though without the wear and tear of his hunting life.
"I'll, uh, give you two some time," Dean says, beginning to step back.
Sam turns to him and takes his hand, which gets Dean's attention. Sam gives him a reassuring smile. "I won't take long," he says. "I love you."
Dean's energy lifts at that, and he smiles back at Sam gently. "Love you too."
He lets go of Sam's hand and makes a left, waving at Jess as he moves away.
Sam watches Dean for a moment, almost shaking his head. They're going to need to talk after this.
But for now, he goes to Jess. There's no big, sweeping kiss and embrace fit for the movies. It's not that kind of reunion, though they were in love enough for it once upon a time. Sam just closes the distance between them, hands in his pockets, and they grin at each other.
"Sam," she says. And god, it's good to hear her voice again.
"Jess," he replies.
Then, she moves in to hug him, and he hugs her back with all the love and affection and warmth he had for her as a college kid. She still smells as good as he remembers. She still fits against him perfectly, tall enough that he can't dwarf her the way he would most women. Sam closes his eyes and for some unknown amount of time, he holds onto her and just feels. That old, distant guilt over her death rears its head only long enough for the peace of this place and their shared love to extinguish it forever. Sam smiles wider at the relief.
When they finally come apart and look at each other again, Sam says, "I don't even know where to start."
Jess laughs, as the dog noses his way between them. "How'd you get here?"
"Here to this beach or here, Heaven?"
"The beach. If I wanted to ask how you died, I would've said so."
Sam grins. He'd forgotten how straightforward Jess always was. "My brother and I road tripped our way here from home."
"Some things really don't change, huh?" Jess says.
It suddenly occurs to Sam, looking into her blue eyes, that she wasn't waiting for him. However long Jessica's time in heaven has felt to her, she hasn't been spending it waiting for Sam to show up. And though he hoped in the back of his mind that he'd meet her again eventually, Sam hasn't been in a rush to find her either.
But Dean waited for him. And from the moment Dean died in his arms, all Sam looked forward to was their reunion in the afterlife.
He and Jess talk for about fifteen minutes, mostly about how much better Heaven's been since Jack changed it and how happy she is to spend her days here, in sunny Southern California. She's got the beach house she always dreamed of but probably wouldn't have been able to afford in life—"Unless I had lived long enough to marry a rich lawyer," she teases. She's driven up and down Highway One a handful of times already, just her and the dog and her favorite tunes in her Jeep.
"Did you have a good life, Sam?" she says.
And Sam just looks at her, not having any idea how to answer her and not wanting to spoil whatever hopes she maintained all this time in death.
They agree to meet again in the near future, somewhere in between Jessica's place and the Winchester brothers'. Sam promises to call her once he's home again.
He finds Dean ten minutes down the beach, sitting with his bare feet in the sand, looking at the water. Sam plops down next to him, close enough for them to brush against each other.
"So," Dean says. "Good talk?"
"Yeah," Sam replies. "Nothing deep—we're saving the real catching up for another time—but it was good to see her again. See for myself that she's happy, you know?"
Dean nods, keeping his gaze trained ahead.
"Dean," Sam starts and turns his head to watch his brother. "I'm not going to leave you to run off with her."
"I know," Dean says, in a light tone.
"Do you? Because I felt you back there and I feel you now. You're worried. And you don't have to be." Sam pauses, facing the sea. "We're soulmates. Remember? You and me. Not me and Jess. I was in love with her a long time ago, and I don't think I ever felt the same way about any woman after her. But that was a part of my life on earth. Things are different here. I belong with you."
Sam glances at Dean, sees his brother smile a little. He reaches over and lays his big hand on the side of Dean's face, and Dean looks at him. Sam caresses Dean's head, then presses his brow to Dean's temple, snaking his arm around Dean's back.
"I belong with you," Sam says again. He reaches over to rest his right hand on Dean's knee, and Dean covers it with his own.
They sit like that until Sam opens his eyes to look at Dean's face, then turns his head to the ocean again, arm still around Dean.
"You know what I thought about every once in a while when we were alive?" Dean says. "If Jess had survived that night, in 2005, you never would've hit the road with me. I tried so hard to feel guilty for getting what I wanted at her expense…. For getting what I wanted when it cost you what it did. But the selfish part of me…. The selfish part of me never stopped being grateful you had a reason to come back to me."
Sam lays his head on Dean's shoulder, his arm still around his brother and his hand still on Dean's knee. The confession isn't a surprise to him at all. And he understands what Dean means. His brother was never happy Jess died the way she did, when she did. He would've saved her if he could've because that's always who Dean was. There's a difference between wishing for somebody else's despair and finding the good in it.
"I was always going to end up back in the hunting life with you," Sam says. "It was my destiny. Our destiny. Chuck was never going to let us get out. Jess was doomed before I even met her, the second the demons picked her out as bait."
"It's not exactly a comforting thought, Sam," Dean says. "The only reason you ended up with me instead of living a civilian life is because the universe was pulling the strings to set it up. Not because…. Not because it's what you really wanted more than anything."
Sam squeezes Dean's knee. "Dean. What I wanted when I was twenty-two doesn't matter now. We're here, together. Forever. And I don't regret the life I lived with you. I don't. I just wish we hadn't suffered so much."
Dean rests his cheek against Sam's hair.
"You deserved to be happy," Sam says. "You still do."
"So did you," Dean replies, his voice rough.
"I was happy with you. Sure, we had a lot of tough times. It wasn't always easy between us. But we had a lot of fun too." Sam smiles softly, remembering.
The brothers sit there on the beach for a long time, listening to the tide crashing on the shore and smelling the salt water on the air. Sam senses the tumult of Dean's emotions—the guilt, the forlorn smallness, the doubt, the relief—and instead of worrying the way he would have in life, he just allows Dean's feelings to be. Knowing they'll pass. Having faith in the power of his own steady, eternal love for Dean.
Sam raises his head from Dean's shoulder and hooks his arm around Dean's neck, pulling his brother's head to his throat. He kisses Dean's hair, and Dean quiets, leaning into Sam, letting himself be held.
They're sitting around at home one night—who knows what day of the week it is, they hardly keep track—when Dean says, "Wouldn't it be great to go rent some movies?"
Sam, who's sitting on the floor with his back to the sofa that Dean's lying across, raises his eye brows and looks over his shoulder at Dean. "Dude, I'm pretty sure we could make literally any movie ever released show up on our TV by just wishing for it."
"Yeah, but that misses the point. Don't you remember going to the video store? Browsing the shelves, getting your titles together, bringing them home and having to watch them all inside of a week? And at the store, if Dad was feeling generous, he'd let us get snacks and candy and whatever? Half the fun was just making the trip."
Sam hums, tipping his head back against Dean's thigh. The book he's been reading rests in his lap, his legs stretched out in front of him. He thinks about it, then says, "You wanna try seeing if we can find a Blockbuster somewhere around here?"
Dean smiles. "Hell, yeah."
"We should probably figure out what we want to rent before we go."
"Oh, I know what you're getting."
Sam cranes his neck back enough to look over at Dean.
"The Last Unicorn."
Sam snorts. "Yeah, says the guy who jerks off to anime."
"Hey, at least I didn't keep watching cartoons as an adult for actual entertainment."
They don't have to drive too far past Harvelle's Roadhouse before they see it: an honest-to-god Blockbuster, with the signature blue and yellow sign. It doesn't have a paved parking lot or anything else around it. The building just stands by the side of the road as if it appeared solely to fulfill Sam and Dean's wish and will disappear once they leave.
"Damn, I love this place," Dean says, as he pulls the Impala up to the Blockbuster.
Sam knows he means heaven, not the pop-up video rental store.
The Blockbuster is empty of other souls. There's not even anyone in the checkout booth, just a sign stuck to the interior of the Plexiglas that says "Enjoy!" Music from the late 80s and early 90s plays softly over the speakers, as if they've gone back in time to those days when John would take them to rent movies or, in his absence, when Dean would take Sam and spend what little money he had to spare on a video for them each.
The brothers browse the entire store, from one end to the other, and end up with a stack of DVDs that will take them at least a couple weeks to get through. Sam watches in amusement as Dean raids the snack section, tucking a couple of Snickers ice cream bars and a box of licorice and a pack of microwaveable popcorn into the crook of his arm. Sam grabs some Raisinets and a carton of Dippin' Dots, for which Dean predictably teases him. They bag their loot in one of the reusable blue tote bags hanging on a hook near the door and leave.
Later that evening, when Sam and Dean are sprawled out on the big sofa in their sitting room and watching Lethal Weapon 2, Sam lays his head in Dean's lap and curls his knees over the arm of the sofa, his feet dangling in the air. Dean just smiles and rests his hand on Sam's chest, his other hand combing through the popcorn bowl periodically. Sam listens to the movie more than watches it—they've seen it several times—and by the time Riggs is lying wounded in Murtaugh's arms at the end, Sam's dozing.
Only when the credits start to roll does he crack his eyes open and says, "Did you ever get scared and crawl into Mom and Dad's bed at night when you were little?"
Dean doesn't answer at first, eyes glazed on the TV screen. "I'm sure I did. But I don't remember. What I do remember is sleeping in Dad's bed after the fire for a while. And I wanted you in the bed too but Dad was scared he'd crush you on accident, so he kept you in this bassinet right next to the bed. I'd wake up at least once or twice a night and check to make sure you were still there, if you didn't wake us up crying first."
Sam's quiet for a moment. "You ever wonder what our childhood would've been like if Dad had died in the fire and Mom had lived?"
"I used to think it would've been radically different," says Dean. "And probably better. That was before we found out Mom was a hunter long before Dad knew the job existed. I think if she'd raised us as a single mom after losing Dad, things would've been the same in a lot of ways. She would've raised us in the life and hated herself for it. Maybe she would've found Yellow Eyes sooner than Dad. I don't know."
Sam feels a surge of wistfulness. "She was never going to get the life she wanted or deserved. None of us were."
"Yeah. But it doesn't matter anymore, Sam. All of that is ancient history. Now, we're here. We get to have what we deserve for the rest of eternity."
Sam smiles and closes his eyes again. "True."
It's a mild summer night, Sam and Dean are drinking behind the house, and they're laughing. It's the kind of laughter that builds and builds on almost nothing, the two of them egging each other on until they're hysterical. Red-faced, tears streaming down their cheeks, short of breath. Dean falls out of his chair and lies on the ground howling, which only makes Sam laugh harder.
When they finally calm down, Sam drying his eyes with the back of his hand and looking down at his brother, who remains on his back in the overgrown grass, they feel satisfied, as if they've just eaten an exceptional meal. They gaze at each other with open fondness, and Sam is tempted to join Dean on the ground, flop right onto him and just cuddle him there. Instead, he polishes off his beer and drops it in the crate of empty bottles and cans the brothers started weeks ago.
"We should set off fireworks," Dean says.
"Fireworks?" says Sam. "Where's that idea coming from?"
"Nowhere. I just think we should. It's been a long time."
So long, that Sam's not sure they ever did it as adults. They might've been kids—or Sam might've been a kid—when last they had a fireworks night.
"Where are we gonna get fireworks?" Sam says to Dean.
"The magical shed."
Sam makes a little snorting sound in the back of his throat.
"Pretty sure if I go look in there right now, I'll find some," says Dean.
"You want to do this now?"
"Yeah, why not? It's a beautiful night. Clear enough for fireworks."
Dean sits up, his long limbs loose in front of him. His bare arms are tan from his time in the sun over the last several days, his face too. He looks thirty-two or thirty-three right now, the hair on the top of his head the most flattering length on him. Sam admires his brother's good looks quietly, watching him as if Dean might disappear one day, even though Sam finally knows for sure that they'll never again be parted.
"All right," Sam says softly. "Go get 'em, then."
Dean grins and gets on his feet, then disappears around the corner of the house to check the shed.
Sam sits in his chair and looks out at the clearing stretching ahead of him to the edges of the woods, at the silhouettes of the trees, at the night sky thick with stars. It's quiet, except for the chirping of some frog or insect and the occasional hooting of an unidentifiable animal in the distance. He closes his eyes for a minute and just breathes, savoring the peace.
He deserves this. He's really starting to internalize that. Sam deserves to be this happy, this at peace. Dean deserves it too. Despite all their sins and mistakes, they do. They deserve this heaven the way they deserved happy, peaceful lives on earth.
Sam opens his eyes when he hears Dean coming back. His brother's got a crate full of firecrackers in his arms and a bigger grin on his face.
"We are in business, my brother," Dean says with gusto. He sets the crate down on the ground when he reaches Sam and pulls his lighter from his pocket, testing it out.
Sam gets up from his chair and takes the crate, leading Dean to the middle of the field. They start lighting the firecrackers, the whistling and explosions splitting the silence, their darkened property suddenly illuminated under the showers of red and gold and green and blue and white light. They can smell the heat in the air now. They're laughing again, as they get the hang of setting the fireworks off after decades out of practice. Dean hollers and whoops as one of his firecrackers bursts above them in a brilliant bouquet of purple and silver, and for a moment, Sam feels like a boy again and doesn't know why. They work their way through the whole crate, and the further along they get, the less time between explosions they leave.
Finally, they set up the last few firecrackers right next to each other and light them all at the same time, then stand back and watch the climax of their show, shoulder to shoulder.
Sam looks at his brother's face, the multi-colored lights casting their glow on Dean's skin as he watches the sky in delight and wonder. Sam feels his heart swell again, his throat tighten. He smiles the same kind of wobbly smile he's so frequently made since he died, not at all trying to hide his emotion as Dean ignores him.
But finally, Dean turns his head to look at Sam, eyes landing on his brother's face with a gleam that might just be the light or might be unshed tears. Dean could be twenty-one, thirty-one, or forty-one in this moment; all Sam sees is his brother in a state of pure, carefree happiness. Sam has no idea why the fireworks have moved Dean so deeply, and he doesn't care. He loves seeing his brother so beatific, loves the way Dean looks at him now like Sam himself created everything good in the universe, from the fireworks to the stars to brotherhood itself.
Sam feels like he should say something, but he doesn't want to break the spell of free-flowing emotion between them. He reaches over and takes Dean's hand in his, sees something in Dean's face melt at the gesture, feels his brother lace his fingers in Sam's and squeeze a little.
When the leaves change color in their woods, Sam and Dean go for an afternoon drive down roads they haven't already traveled. The trees shudder around them in scarlet red, deep orange, and gold, the sunshine stealing through the canopy unevenly, and they debate over whether the two-lane highway they're on and the autumn scenery have been modeled from New Hampshire or Vermont. Dean starts humming and half-singing under his breath to the music playing in the tape deck, and Sam closes his eyes for a little while, basking in the peace and perfection of the moment. He's trying to hide his emotions from Dean less often now—not that he was doing a great job of it before—and slowly, allowing himself to be completely seen and felt is becoming easier. When he opens his eyes again and looks over at Dean, his brother just glances at him with a smile.
Dean drives until the brothers notice the mouth of an offshoot road on the right side of the highway. He's going fast enough and the entrance is discrete enough, they almost miss it. They have to turn around and go back to follow the path into the thick of the woods, which they do on a mutual hunch they don't even have to verbalize. The dirt road is only wide enough for one vehicle to comfortably fit, and it takes them downhill for a couple minutes before leveling out and opening up.
They roll to a stop in a front of a house they couldn't see from the highway. There are two vehicles parked outside, one in the car port and the other not far from the house. This house looks totally different stylistically from Sam and Dean's cabin, though it does have a covered porch with a swing seat right by the front door. At the left end of each step leading up to the porch is a potted plant.
Sam and Dean get out of the Impala and approach the residence tentatively, not sure what to do but both drawn to the place for no discernible reason.
"Hello? Is anybody home?" Sam calls out.
The brothers keep their distance, standing several yards away from the house. At first, nobody answers, but after a minute, somebody emerges through the screen door and comes out to the top of the porch steps.
"No way," Dean says under his breath.
"Alicia?" says Sam, loud enough for her to hear.
"Sam?" she replies, matching his furrowed face and squint. Then, she breaks into a grin and starts jogging toward the brothers.
Sam opens his arms before she reaches him, and Alicia barrels into the hug, almost knocking Sam off balance.
"I don't believe it," he says.
"Alicia Banes," says Dean. "Long time no see."
She lets go of Sam and gives Dean a much less enthusiastic hug, which he returns with a pat.
"How did you find me?" she says, once she stands back to look at the brothers.
"We were just passing by on the highway and got a feeling," Dean tells her. "Nice place."
"Yeah, isn't it? How far are you guys? How long have you been here? Aw, man, we have so much catching up to do. Come on."
Just as Alicia turns around to lead Sam and Dean to the house, another figure materializes on the porch: Max, his fingers slid into the hip pockets of his jeans and his cool, almost steely demeanor just as Sam and Dean remember it. He looks the same age he was the last time Sam and Dean saw him in life.
"Oh, wow," says Dean.
Sam's mouth falls open a little, as he makes eye contact with Max and looks back to Alicia. "When?" he says.
Alicia gives Sam a complex expression, lips pursed together. "He died a couple years after I did. That's what he told me, anyway."
"You guys going to stand out there all night?" Max hollers across the distance.
"He'll tell you all about it," Alicia says to Sam and Dean. "Or he'll make me do it. Come on, I want to give you a tour of the house."
Inside, the Banes residence looks and feels exactly the way Sam would expect it to: colorful, comfortable, a little bit cluttered but clean. He doesn't know the twins well enough to recognize which parts of the interior décor are Alicia and which are Max, but he can tell their home is a perfect expression of the two of them combined, just as Sam and Dean's home is of them.
The Banes siblings have a Jack-and-Jill master suite: their separate bedrooms joined by a shared, spacious bathroom. There's a study with a bunch of green, leafy plants crowding the wide windowsill that strikes Sam as Alicia's space, though she doesn't say it is. There's another room that feels more like Max, tucked in the back of the house: one wall covered in floor-to-ceiling mirrors, wide windows, and almost no furniture or other objects taking up space on the wood floor. There's a beaded curtain separating the kitchen from the sitting room, and the house smells of earthy incense. Stout, fat candles burn throughout the house, and there isn't yet an electric light on, though it's almost dark outside now.
Sam stops to look at the photographs magnetized to the refrigerator door: one of the twins' mother, Tasha, when she was a young woman with long hair, and several of the twins themselves, both individual shots and pictures of them together. In all of the photos of Max by himself, he's giving the camera—presumably held by Alicia—a skeptical or sour look. One picture's got him flipping the bird with both hands. But in the centered photograph of the twins together, Max looks genuinely happy, his eyes soft and his face relaxed. Alicia's wearing a huge, sparkling grin next to him. Sam smiles back at them.
Once situated in the sitting room with beers and water and a tray of snacks Alicia seemed to pull out of thin air, the siblings look around at each other. Max is sitting on the back of a square armchair, his shoeless feet on the seat in front of him. He lights up what smells like a joint. Sam and Dean are beside each other on the couch to Max's right, and Alicia is in the chair across from her brother, on the opposite side of the coffee table.
"How you been?" Max says to the Winchesters. "You look good."
"Thanks," Sam replies. "We are good. Really good. Heaven's gone through some major improvements since the last time we saw it."
"You mind if we skip the small talk?" Alicia says, brimming with energy as she tries to sit still. "I really want to know how you guys died. How long after me? Did you go at the same time? Was it a bad hunt or something worse?"
Dean gives her an indulgent smile. "It was about eight years after you, Alicia. And no, we didn't go at the same time." He glances at Sam. "Unfortunately. I died first. Vampire hunt. I'll spare my brother a retelling of the grisly details."
Alicia snaps her attention to Sam. "Oh, no. You had to go on without him? I'm sorry."
She sounds genuinely sad for Sam. He just purses his lips and ducks his head, glancing at Max to his left. Max bounces a quick look from his sister to Sam. Unlike the Winchester brothers, the Banes twins have only had to die once. Alicia never had to find out what it feels like to live without her brother. But by now, she must know well enough how Max felt without her. If they're like Sam and Dean—and it wouldn't surprise Sam if they are—then they can feel each other's emotions up here.
"It wasn't long," Sam says. "A few months. Then, I took a werewolf job in Texas, alone. That was that."
"Mazel tov," Max croaks.
"What about you?" Dean says to him. "What happened after we saw you last?"
Max hesitates, looking down at his feet. He puffs on his joint before answering. "I burned my sister's body like I told you I would. But not before making a twig doll of her and taking that old witch's magic."
Dean leans back, face darkening, and Sam looks at Max in horror.
"Long story short," Max continues. "A few years after that, I got myself killed and went to hell. Alicia figured out where I was and asked Jack to get me out. So here I am."
"Jesus," Sam says.
"Been there," says Dean, raising his beer to Max before drinking.
"Hey, I made my own choices," says Max. "And I probably wouldn't make them any different if I could do it over again."
"We're just lucky Jack was in charge of things by the time Max died," Alicia says. "If it had been the original god, we would've been screwed. We heard he was a real douche bag."
"Yeah, you got that right," Dean replies.
"You remember everything?" Sam says to Max. "From hell."
Max nods. "Every colorful detail. It's all right. The memories don't bother me here. They're just like every bad thing that happened to me in life, you know?"
Sam reaches out and lays his hand on Max's knee. Their eyes meet, and Sam can tell Max is a little surprised.
"I'm sorry," Sam tells him, as earnest as he always is. "I wish I could've done something to spare you all that."
"It wasn't your job," says Max.
"Doesn't matter. I should've called to check in on you after Alicia died. I thought about it more times than I can count, and I just let all the drama of my own life get in the way. It's not an excuse."
"There's nothing you could've done, Sam. I was toast the moment my sister died. And you already know there wasn't any clean way out of that magic."
Sam squeezes Max's knee, feeling the bitter sadness of compassion so intimately informed by his own pain and loss and trauma. He may not have been more than a decade or so older than the Banes twins, but he still felt protective of them in an almost paternal way. They reminded him so much of himself and Dean when he first met them at their father's funeral, and they seemed so young to Sam, younger than they really were because he felt so much older than he was.
"You didn't deserve any of it," Sam says to Max, his voice thick with emotion now.
"You already know it doesn't matter what you deserve," says Max. "Life just has its way with you."
Sam gives a small nod and pats Max's knee before taking his hand back.
"So Jack did you two a solid," says Dean, shifting the energy in the room back out of heaviness effortlessly. He smiles to himself. "Sam and I will have to thank him for that. I take it you've met him."
Alicia nods. "He delivered Max to me himself. He explained who he was, that he heard my prayers and had to help because we had known you guys and your mom."
Dean and Sam exchange looks and sentimental grins.
"What were you to Jack?" Alicia says.
"His family," says Sam. "His father figures, I guess. Before he became god."
"Damn," Max says. "You two really did have your hands in all the big, cosmic shit."
"Well," says Dean. "It did have its perks."
The siblings fall into an easy silence for a minute, each of them reflective and introspective. Alicia's got music playing quietly in the background, something that matches her feminine, witchy vibes. The marijuana smell of Max's joint laces the air now, mingling with the patchouli incense. One of the twins' black cats jumps up onto the back of Alicia's chair and settles in for a nap.
"You two," Alicia starts, looking over at the Winchesters. She's leaning forward, elbows on her knees, beer bottle in her hands. "You're soulmates, aren't you?"
Sam and Dean make eye contact, both of them nervous for a moment, as if they've been caught doing something wrong.
"Of course they are," says Max, sitting in his chair properly now, right ankle resting on his left knee. "You can see it as well as I can, Leesh."
"Well, maybe not exactly as well," Alicia replies. "I want to hear them acknowledge it."
"Yes," Sam says, looking at her. "Dean is my soulmate. And something tells me Max is yours."
Alicia smiles a little.
"Not quite," says Max. "We're not like you two. Few people are. That's something I've learned since I got here. Alicia and I have a spiritual bond that not a lot of siblings do. We're twins, so that's part of it. In life, we were each other's most important person. We choose to spend eternity together because we want to. You guys—you're on a different level."
"What do you mean, you can see it?" Dean says, turning his head to make eye contact with Max.
Max takes a drag on his joint and gestures at Sam and Dean with his other hand. "Your souls and the way they're connected, how you're constantly responding to each other energetically even when you're not totally aware of it. I can see it. It's kinda like auras. Color and light. Must be the witch thing."
Sam raises his eyebrows, at once surprised and intrigued and self-conscious. He still hasn't grown fully accustomed to his connection with Dean in heaven, to the way Dean can see him and feel him now. That anyone can see his and Dean's souls in a way the brothers themselves can't makes him feel exposed in an entirely different way.
A subtle smirk slowly spreads through Max's lips, as he stares at Sam. "Dude," he says. "Chill. Nobody can get into your personal business. You and Dean being soulmates? Alicia and I can see it the way we can see ya'll are fine and tall as hell. Seeing ain't the same thing as experiencing."
"How are you two different from Sam and I?" says Dean, facing Alicia. "You don't seem that different to me."
Alicia looks at Max, who meets her gaze, then back at Dean. "I guess it depends on how you define soulmates. If the only requirement for two people to be soulmates is being each other's most important person and also being meant for each other—like, there was a pre-birth intention on the souls' part or on god's or somebody's that the two people would be together in life—then sure, Max and I are soulmates. And by that same definition, so are you and Sam. But you and Sam…. There's a lot more to your bond than that. Some things true of your relationship aren't true for me and Max. They're not true for most pairs. Most people don't have a soulmate the way you and Sam have each other."
Dean just blinks at Alicia, absorbing her words but still not fully comprehending her point.
Alicia rubs her lap with both hands, then reaches for her mug on the coffee table. Her eyes flit to Max again, before returning to Dean as she sinks back into her chair and curls her legs up on the seat. "I'm not the expert on soulmates, man," she says. "And I'm definitely not the expert on your relationship with Sam. Most of what I know about you guys, I heard secondhand. Nobody understands you two better than you two."
"Then how do you know you and Max aren't soulmates the way we are?"
"We can sense the difference," Max says.
Sam and Dean both look to him.
"And not for nothing but my sister and I weren't born siblings to be agents of the apocalypse. We sure as hell never had to save the world together."
The Winchesters consider his point. Sam suddenly feels self-conscious, even bashful, while Dean just quirks his eyebrows and sips on his beer.
Alicia sits up in her chair, coming away from the seat back, and says, "Sam, why don't I show you the yard before it gets totally dark out?"
Sam just rises to his feet and lets Alicia take him by the hand into the kitchen and out the back door, grateful for the fresh air and the break in group conversation.
There's not much to see behind the house, just a grassy area enclosed with trees. The twins keep a pair of chairs near the door, and there are more potted plants that are obviously well-tended. A huge hunk of rose quartz sits on the little makeshift patio, about two feet tall. Sam spots a swing suspended from the branch of a sturdy tree on the outskirts of the yard, a big slab of wood for the seat and thick rope for the x. He can easily imagine Max pushing Alicia on that swing, the two of them talking about who knows what.
"We spend a lot of time out here," Alicia says, smiling softly as she surveys her land. "We play tag and hide-and-go-seek, just like when we were kids."
Sam grins with one corner of his mouth.
"I'll do anything to make him laugh," she continues. "Or at least smile. I know he said he's okay, and I mostly believe him. But I can feel the scars Hell left on him. You know?"
Sam does know. Better than anyone in Heaven. His own trauma has finally faded to a significant degree, since he arrived here for the last time. Dean's is practically gone; Sam can sense that easily. Sam hasn't healed completely—he needs more time for that—but he's come further in the short period of time he's been dead than he ever could've hoped to get in life.
"I'm glad you've never been to hell, Alicia," Sam says. "And I know Max is too."
She glances at him and purses her lips. "I'm so used to sharing everything with him," she says. "It's hard not to share the worst things that ever happened to him. When he first got here, I felt like there was some kind of distance between us because of that."
"I understand. But you don't have to know what it was like to bury your sibling or spend time in hell in order to be as close as you possibly can to Max. You have the rest of eternity to share now. Pretty soon, those bad experiences he had without you will feel so far away to him, it'll almost be like they happened to someone else."
Alicia nods. "I hope you're right."
They stand side by side for a little while, watching the last of daylight vanish and the sky darken more and more.
"Do you ever think it's weird, the way you and Max are together?" Sam says.
Alicia shoots him a sideways look. "Do you think it's weird?"
"No. But I'm not exactly the best person to make the call."
Alicia looks away again. "You're worried what people think about you and Dean."
"Not exactly. I mean, nobody's said anything to us about our relationship since we got here. I'm not picking up on any judgmental vibes. Our parents didn't even blink when we met up with them for the first time and told them we're staying together."
"So, what's the problem then?"
Sam thinks about it, trying to find the right words. "I guess I'm having a hard time adjusting to how it feels here. How my relationship with Dean feels."
"Why?"
"I love him…. So much, it—it scares me, sometimes. Not because I think I should love him less but because I feel like I can't control how I feel. It's like a pot of water boiling over. I'm not used to it being like this. I have to wonder if it's too much because sometimes it feels like too much to me."
Alicia touches Sam's elbow, and they look at each other.
"Sam," she says. "Heaven doesn't change us. It reveals us. It strips away all the crap and makes us honest. Yeah, that takes some getting used to. I don't think you'll be overwhelmed by your own feelings forever. You'll figure out how to handle them. And as for worrying about loving your brother too much…. I know you didn't say this, but I can read between the lines. A little part of you worries it isn't right or normal how much you and Dean love each other. You mostly don't care either way, but there is that small part. And maybe I'm not the best person to make the call, for obvious reasons, but seriously? Who decides how much any of us should love anyone? So what if your soulmate is also your brother? So what, man? Just because you're different from most people doesn't mean there's something wrong with you."
Sam smiles at her with genuine gratitude, and her hand falls away from him.
"I guess if you really want some authority figure to tell you whether or not your relationship with Dean is okay, you can ask Jack," Alicia says.
Sam huffs, his smile widening. He knows exactly what Jack would tell him.
Inside, Dean and Max share a companionable silence for a minute or two, until Dean says, "Have you seen your mom?"
Max nods, a hint of a smile in his lips. "Yeah. My dad, too. They're good. I'm supposed to go hang out with him in a couple days, just the two of us."
"Did you tell them what you did when Alicia died?"
"Yeah. Mom wasn't happy, but she understood. She felt sorry for me. I could tell. And maybe a little disappointed that Alicia and I didn't make it further in life. But she's over it now. None of that shit matters anymore."
"No, it doesn't," Dean replies. "But I'm curious…. What do you think you would've done if your sister had lived?"
Max thinks for a moment, slouching low in his chair. "We would've kept hunting and working magic. We definitely would've stayed together. I'm sure we would've tried to live in a way that our mom could be proud of."
Dean nods. He's quiet, then says, "You think you and Alicia would've ended up married off to other people?"
Max looks at him directly for the first time in a while. "I don't know. Probably not."
"You never dreamed about it? Hoped for it?"
"Not really. I mean, don't get me wrong, I had my fun with men. But I never fell in love. Not really. Alicia dated a little bit too, but there was never anything serious. She was too focused on the job and our family and whatever. Mom was single most of our lives. I know our dad fooled around with plenty of women, but he never got married or even lived with a girlfriend. I don't know. I never believed in the whole romantic happily ever after. I never wanted kids. I knew I could be all right without a husband."
"But not without Alicia."
"Not without Alicia," Max says.
Dean nods, then bows his head between his shoulders.
"I'm guessing you were pretty much the same."
"Yeah, I never really wanted the whole wife-and-kids, house in the suburbs life. When I was young, I fantasized about it a little bit. Just because it seemed easier and happier than the life I grew up in. But that's all it ever was, you know? A fantasy I never actually took seriously or wanted to commit to. Like being a rock star."
A wistful smile flits through Dean's mouth as he remembers being a teenager who dreamed of being the next Mick Jagger or Bon Jovi.
"I had a couple girlfriends when I was a young guy. I cared about those women. They were good to me. But life never really felt right when I was trying to be a civilian boyfriend or whatever. It just never fit the way hunting did. And Sam…. Nothing was ever right without Sam. Nothing else was ever good enough. I'm not going to sit here and deny that my life as a hunter was full of screwed up crap and pain. It was. It was hard most of the time. But me and Sam, doing the job, together on the road—that was my happy place. It was all I ever wanted."
"It's hard to let go of the only life you've ever known," says Max, looking at his feet braced against the edge of the coffee table. "Some part of you feels like you should try to be normal because it's supposed to be the best and maybe those normal people really do got it better. But when you're not, you're not."
"Right."
Max lifts his eyes to Dean's face, and Dean looks up at him.
"I'm glad I wasn't normal," Max says.
"Me too," Dean replies.
"You know how many normal people are fucking miserable?"
Dean gives a soft, throaty noise.
"For real. The ordinary civilian life was never a guaranteed ticket to peace and happiness. I think I knew that, even when I was a kid. Now that I'm dead, I can see everything for what it is. If I hadn't been born with powers to a witch mother and a hunter father, if I'd spent my life doing something other than hunting and working magic, I might've been happier, but I also could've had it worse. Even with the whole romance thing, it's like…. there's more failure and unhappiness out there than fairy-tale endings."
"You're right," Dean says. "When I was alive, I chose to only see the good in it that other people had…. I guess because I needed to believe I was fighting for their happiness, especially when my own life was totally fucked up. But going down the normal path definitely doesn't always lead to happily ever after."
"It's a crap shoot, man," Max says. "No matter what you choose. And now that's it over, I can look back on my life and confidently say I'm glad I was who I was and chose the weird path. I'm glad I had Alicia."
Dean nods. "If I had to do it all over again, exactly the way it happened, just to keep Sam, I would. And I don't care if that's crazy."
By the time Sam and Dean get back in the Impala to go home, it's dark enough for the woods and the highway to look utterly different than they did in daylight. They wave at Max and Alicia, who stand shoulder to shoulder on the porch and watch them leave.
"I'm glad they're together," Sam says after several minutes of silence on the road. His voice is full of emotion.
"Me too," Dean replies.
They're standing on their porch steps one afternoon, watching the sun set. The sky is a brilliant gold, the forest splashed with orange light, and the brothers are silent, as they often are now. Dean turns his head to look at Sam, and Sam meets his gaze, unsure what Dean's thinking or why. Dean's wearing the smile Sam sees every day, one of utter peace and happiness, his eyes softly lit. Suddenly, he moves in to wrap his arms around Sam's neck, pulling his brother into a hug. Sam snakes his arms around Dean without hesitation, closing his eyes, and they hold onto each other for who knows how long, dusk settling on their shoulders. All Sam can think and feel is, I love you. But the words wouldn't do it justice.
He knows with his heart how blissful Dean is in this moment, in every moment, and that would make Sam weep if he let himself do it. Sam knew in life how much Dean loved him, but in death, he understands that no one ever truly loved him as much or more than Dean. As unconditionally as Dean. It would've been unfair to expect love like this from anyone else. Loving Sam was knit into the fibers of Dean's soul before either one of them was born.
And Sam desperately wants to match Dean's love with his own. He's torn between knowing he loves his brother equally as much and worrying that he doesn't. Dean always deserved to be loved the way he loves Sam, and he spent way too much time in life doubting Sam's love and loyalty. Sam can't stand the idea of Dean thinking for a single second, here in the afterlife, that Sam loves him less.
So Sam tightens his arms around Dean, holding him as if he wants their souls to melt into each other. He tries to feel his love for Dean strongly enough to allow Dean to feel it too. He has no idea if he's succeeding, but Dean presses his fingers into Sam's shoulders. He slackens in Sam's arms a little, and Sam takes more of his weight, pulling him even closer despite that not seeming possible.
When Sam opens his eyes again and slowly steps back out of the hug, there's hardly any light left in the sky. The first few stars shyly peer out of the darkening blue above them. Sam and Dean look at each other with the soft openness they so often share here, the same expressions they wore on the bridge when they reunited. Dean reaches up and brushes Sam's cheek with his thumb. Sam cups Dean's cheek and just stares at his face with unrestrained adoration, until Dean's eyes begin to glisten.
Dean clears his throat and breaks away from Sam, heading for the front door. "Guess we better start thinking about what to have for dinner," he says.
Sam smiles after him and lingers outside alone for a moment.
Sam wakes slowly from a nap he never meant to take, lying on the long sofa in the sitting room. There's only one lamp switched on, somewhere behind the sofa, casting low light around him. Outside, night has almost finished falling, heaven's sky a dim greenish blue. The TV is still on, but the volume has been turned down to virtual silence. The book Sam was reading remains open, pages down, on his chest. He notices how quiet the house is and wonders about Dean.
Then, the smell hits him, right before he hears his brother moving in the kitchen. It's a delicious smell. His brother cooks more of their meals than Sam does, but Sam doesn't recognize this aroma.
Dean comes into the sitting room, treading carefully to avoid making noise. Sam can't see him yet but hears him.
"What did you make?" Sam says.
"Oh, you're up," Dean replies, keeping his voice pitched a little lower than usual. He appears in Sam's view, standing just behind the sofa. "I baked a pie."
Sam smiles softly, looking at his brother's eyes and face and the softness of his flannel and the way he's got his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. There's still flour on his t-shirt and maybe a little bit of it on the tip of his nose. "Since when do you bake?"
"Since now, I guess. I figured I'd try my luck, in case it's impossible for me to fail here."
"What flavor?"
"What do you think? Apple."
"It smells amazing." Sam shuts his eyes, taking in the scent that continues to waft out of the kitchen.
"Well, I hope it tastes right," says Dean. "I thought to myself it'd be great to have vanilla ice cream with it, and what do you know? A pint of it appeared in our freezer. Man, I love this place."
Sam opens his eyes again and checks his watch. "We gonna eat pie before dinner?"
"Yeah, why not? It'll be cool enough in about thirty minutes, forty-five tops. I'm gonna go out back and call Mom while we wait."
There are phones in heaven, but Sam and Dean have also discovered they can speak to other souls telepathically. All they have to do is address the person in their minds or out loud, and they'll be able to hear the person's response. Dean isn't going to call Mary on a phone.
The older Winchester starts to step away from the sofa, then pivots back and returns only long enough to lean down and kiss the top of Sam's forehead, just below the hairline. It takes Sam by surprise, just a little, then immediately warms him.
Dean disappears down the main corridor splitting the cabin and leaves through the back door. Sam lies on the sofa smiling, grateful for the sense of boldness or maybe the stripping away of inhibitions that heaven has gifted them.
He and Dean sit at their kitchen table an hour later, eating the apple pie a la mode. It tastes as good as it smelled.
Eventually, winter settles into Sam and Dean's corner of heaven. Whether this was inevitable or a result of their mutual desire for the season, they don't know. The days gradually grow colder and colder until one morning, they wake up to a pristine blanket of snow outside. They have no idea what month it is—are months and years and days of the week even a thing here?—but that morning of the first snow, when they're having breakfast in the kitchen, Dean says,
"We should get a Christmas tree."
Sam glances up at him from across the table. "Really?"
"Yeah. We never had a real one in life. I always thought it'd be nice, you know."
"You want to celebrate Christmas? In heaven?"
"Not necessarily. But I want a Christmas tree. We don't have to do anything else."
A smile tugs at the corners of Sam's lips. "Where do you suggest we go to find this tree? We gonna just start driving and hope we manifest a tree lot on the side of the road?"
"Let's go cut one down," Dean says, as he finishes the last of his food.
Sam raises his eyebrows. "Seriously? You want to go looking for a Christmas tree in the woods and then chop it down yourself? You've never done that before."
"First time for everything. It'll be an adventure. Unless you had something else planned for the day."
Of course, Sam doesn't have any plans. And he'll follow his brother anywhere.
They pack the Impala's trunk—now empty of all the weapons and tools she carried for the brothers in life—with a couple of axes and a hand saw and tarp and rope. Sam makes them sandwiches and fills a pair of thermoses with soup for lunch. Dean puts some beer on ice in the green cooler. And they're off.
They don't have to go too far into the forest surrounding their property. The dirt roads are clear, despite the snow around them, because heaven doesn't inconvenience anybody. They park the car and start hiking east a little, scanning the trees around them for something suitable. They can see their breath in the air, and their faces turn pink. The only sound is the snow crunching beneath their boots. Something about it—the two brothers out here in the woods together, alone, surrounded by pristine white powder gleaming in the sun—is so peaceful that Sam pauses as Dean examines a tree and just savors the feeling.
Their search takes almost an hour, and it's over the minute Dean says, "This one."
Sam circles the tree that has caught his brother's eye, looking it up and down. It's a pretty good-looking tree. Six feet tall, filled out, springy needles, evenly shaped. Sam runs his thumb and forefinger down one of the tree's branches and sucks in a deep breath, trying to smell the scent.
They take turns with the axes, relishing the workout. It feels good to do physical labor again, after so many weeks of lounging around the house and riding in the car. It takes them almost an hour to cut the tree down, at least twenty more minutes to haul it up on the roof of the Impala and strap it down. Once they're finished, they eat the lunch they packed, sitting on the car's front end, shoulder to shoulder.
"It's kinda weird," Sam says, when he's finished his food. "Celebrating a man-made holiday in heaven."
"I never said we had to actually celebrate," Dean replies. "I just wanted the tree. We don't have to do anything else Christmasey."
"You're not gonna bake and decorate a million Christmas cookies, then hand them out at the Roadhouse?"
Dean shoots Sam a look.
Sam grins. "What? You bake now. Why limit yourself to pie? Go all in. Embrace your inner housewife. Call Jack and ask him to send you back in time, give little Dean an Easy-Bake Oven."
Dean shakes his head, smiling despite himself. "You're such a dick."
Sam chuckles in the back of his throat.
Dean is not surprised to find a tree stand in their tool shed when they get home. They put the tree in the corner of the sitting room, and the pine smell quickly fills the air.
"We can make ornaments show up tomorrow," Dean says, a twinkle in his eye.
Days later, the tree is bejeweled with multi-colored string lights and ornaments both brothers imagined into being, including the Santa that John bought for Dean in a Walgreens when the older Winchester was seven years old and the handmade construction paper/popsicle stick/glitter glue thing that five-year-old Sam had made for Dean in kindergarten.
It's the prettiest Christmas tree they've ever had. They leave the string lights on overnight, every day, and keep the tree up for a month.
Despite all of their survival skills and living out of the car for most of their lives, Dean never liked camping on earth. He had no problem spending days in the wilderness on a hunt, but the idea of camping for fun made no sense to him. He spent enough time roughing it, getting dirty, and sleeping on something other than a bed in his daily life that he would never elect to camp for its own sake.
Sam, on the other hand, would get an itch to camp every once in a while—a desire to spend time in nature, away from both people and the supernatural. He liked the peace of camping, the chance to think and to quiet his mind without any distractions. As an adult, he realized he liked camping as a boy because it provided temporary relief from his sense of alienation in civilian society. He didn't have to worry about fitting in or connecting with other kids his age when it was just him, Dean, and their dad in the middle of nowhere. He felt less lonely in the wilderness than he did in school.
John never took the boys on camping trips for fun; he took them on extended training sessions, teaching them everything they needed to know about surviving mundane, natural threats when cut off from civilization. Instead of making s'mores around a campfire and telling stories, Sam and Dean spent their childhood camping trips learning how to track and shoot and use a compass and ration food. Neither of them can look back on camping with John as happy, father-son bonding memories, but they do have to hand it to the man: everything he taught them in the wilds of continental America ended up serving them well in adulthood.
Heaven is different. It's Dean who said, as he and Sam lay next to each other in bed one morning, "Why don't we go camping?"
"Camping?" Sam said, giving Dean a skeptical look. "You want to go camping? That's the equivalent of me suggesting we go to a strip club."
Dean had snorted and grinned at that.
But he was serious. Something about Heaven being full of beauty and them needing to see it sooner or later. Sam suspected for a moment that Dean was only suggesting the camping because he remembered Sam liked it in life.
So here they are, on the never-ending road again, the trunk packed with whatever they thought they might need. Dean drives for hours, until well after sundown, insisting he'll know the right place to stop when he sees it and if he doesn't, they'll conjure a motel. Sam reads, naps, watches the land roll past, listens to his brother talk, enjoys the silence they share for several minutes at a time.
Sam can sense when Dean recognizes their campsite destination, feeling his older brother's smile before he sees it in the dark. They're in the middle of more nowhere, the forest and the plains far behind them. Now, they're in a stretch of desert, and pretty soon, Sam sees the shapes of rock formations rising in the near distance, silhouetted against the night sky. It takes him a few minutes but eventually he realizes they're in one of Utah's national parks. He can't tell if it's Zion or Bryce Canyon or some amalgamation of the five total, but he's sure now that Heaven's version of Utah is where Dean's imagination has led them.
They drive as far into the park as the Impala can comfortably go, then park her and take their stuff out of the trunk and hike a ways further. The moon hangs full, fat and bright above them, casting enough light that they can see each other's faces clearly and the general layout of the land. Most of the rock around them is red, just as Sam remembers, and in the daylight, the canyon's beauty will leave him quiet and awed.
Sam and Dean find a smooth, solid hunk of stone to camp on and set their stuff down, unrolling their sleeping mats and pushing them together. They lie down side by side and tuck the big blanket Dean picked out of the linen closet over themselves. For who knows how long, they look at the stars without speaking. The sky is so crowded with them, it looks powdered.
"I used to do this on my own sometimes when you were at Stanford," Dean says, his voice soft. "I'd wonder if you were looking at them too."
Sam half-smiles, his heart aching at the idea of his brother—so painfully young and lonesome—star gazing by himself. The stars were always something they shared with each other as kids, one of the few constants they could rely on and take comfort in. Sam always liked that no matter where in America they were, he could find the same constellations. Dean used to tell him stories about the constellations when they were really young.
"When you were in Purgatory for that year," Sam says, "there were so many nights where I would sit outside on the Impala and stargaze and remember how we used to do that together on the road. It made me cry every time."
"Sap," Dean replies, his voice and his energy full of fondness.
In life, there would've been a lingering sense of misplaced guilt between them now for causing each other the pain of loss, however unintentionally—but here, they can mention their earthly separations, their sins and wounds, without any need for forgiveness. Sam has no idea how long he's been dead now, but all of those bad times from his life with Dean seem a million years behind them, despite how vividly he can still remember.
"You know, all I thought about….," Dean says, "The only thing that kept me going when I was in Purgatory…. was seeing you again. Getting back to you."
"I know," Sam says softly, feeling emotion swell in his chest.
"I worried about you every day. I was terrified I would claw my way back to earth and find out that you'd died while I was gone…. Because I wasn't around to protect you."
Sam's eyes water. Trust Dean to spend his year in monster land worrying about Sam's well-being.
"I know I was pissed you didn't turn over every stone to find me," Dean says. "But looking back on it now, I'm glad you quit hunting while I was gone. It probably kept you alive."
"I thought about eating a bullet," Sam blurts out, his voice ragged and his heart suddenly raw. "So many times, especially before I met Amelia. I was so alone…. I didn't know what to do."
Dean turns his head to look at Sam.
Sam confesses what he can tell Dean's waiting for: "I thought about it after you died in that barn too."
"What stopped you?" Dean says, exuding gentleness.
"You told me to keep fighting. One of the last things you said to me."
Dean's quiet for a long time, and so is Sam, the heaviness of their love and longing for each other, the deep, soul-rending pain of each other's absence weighing on them.
"I was never any better at it than you were," says Sam, voice thick and eyes brimming with tears. "Being alone. Being—being without you."
Dean rolls onto his side and throws his arm and leg around his brother, tucking his chin onto Sam's shoulder and resting his forehead against Sam's face. Sam grasps Dean's arm in his hand and takes a shuddering breath.
"You don't have to do it ever again," Dean says, his voice low and warm and gravelly. "Neither of us does."
Sam finds Dean's hand clasping his shoulder and takes it in his own hand, pressing Dean's palm to his lips. Dean smiles and takes his hand back from Sam to caress Sam's hair away from his face as he kisses Sam's cheek. Sam loses a couple tears, his eyes shut as emotion overwhelms him. Dean slides his hand down Sam's neck to his heart, and Sam finds it again, covering it with his hand.
The staggering relief of never having to lose Dean again could bring Sam to his knees, and he could lie here under the stars and cry about it for a long time if he let himself. Instead, he does his best to calm down, focusing on Dean's hand over his heart.
When they wake in the morning, it's cold but warmer than last night, and the canyon's beauty shines in the sun. Baby blue sky and rusty red rocks unspooled around them in every direction, postcard-perfect. There's snow capping some of the tall rock formations in the distance, the whiteness of it adding to the loveliness of the landscape. Sam and Dean build a small fire and heat their breakfast over it. After they eat, they start to wander the canyon, barely speaking for hours, shedding more of their life's sorrow into the clear air as memories flash through them.
They spend two days and three nights in the Utah-inspired desert, and when they finally leave it behind them, turning the Impala back on the highway, they're lighter than when they arrived.
Sam emerges from the master suite one morning, feeling good after a hot shower and hollering for his brother. He was alone in bed when he woke up, and it's not like Dean to get up so early and start the day without him. Sam's expecting Dean to be hanging out over an empty breakfast plate at the kitchen table or watching TV in the sitting room, but once he gets to the front of the house, he realizes his brother isn't here. Sam checks his watch—quarter to ten—and looks back and forth from the kitchen to the sitting room, standing in the threshold between them. Anxiety begins to tingle through him before any terrible theories about Dean's whereabouts can even solidify in his mind, then temporarily subsides when Sam notices a note stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. He recognizes his brother's scrawl even from a distance.
Sammy,
Going to the Roadhouse. Be back soon. Mind-call me if you need me.
Love,
D.
Sam smiles at the signature, relieved but now curious. Why would Dean go to Harvelle's this early without him? He didn't mention it yesterday. It's not like either one of them has a problem with the other going off alone, though they rarely do it, so if Dean knew ahead of time that he wanted to go to Harvelle's on his own, he could've just told Sam. Unless he went there for something other than a friendly visit….
Sam cooks himself breakfast and chews on the possibilities. None of them are good. Maybe something's gone wrong in Heaven or on earth, something Jack needs help managing, and Dean's trying to get involved. Maybe Rowena's stepped out of line or lost control of Hell…. Maybe Amara's finally decided to break away from Jack and make a power grab in the cosmos.
The idea of getting sucked back into any kind of supernatural drama is enough to leave Sam feeling exhausted and depressed. He's not even done cooking yet, and he's losing his appetite. He has no desire, no willingness whatsoever, to leave Heaven to save anyone or anything. But if Dean goes…. Sam can't stay behind.
All right, he reasons with himself. How likely or plausible are any of those big-scale problems? How possible is it that there's a scenario Jack legitimately can't solve with a wave of his hand, a scenario he needs Sam and Dean to assist him with? Virtually impossible.
So, Dean going to the Roadhouse for something other than a routine, friendly visit is probably not about saving any part of the universe.
Sam starts to think about small-time, more innocuous explanations as he sits down to eat.
Then, it hits him. A woman? Did Dean go to Harvelle's to meet a woman?
If he did, Jo is the most obvious candidate, but maybe it's not her. Maybe it's any one of the hundreds of women Dean hooked up with, flirted with, saved, or met on the road when he was alive. Maybe he got wind of the woman in question being here, in Heaven, and got in touch with her. Sam has no idea how much time has passed on earth since he and Dean died, but in any case, maybe the woman is Lisa or even Cassie Robinson. Maybe it's Layla, the woman with the brain tumor from that phony faith healer's congregation Sam and Dean crashed their first year on the road together as adults.
Sam finishes his food without noticing, torn between worrying and finding his own worries ridiculous. So what if Dean wants to go on a date? His brother spent most of his life chasing women. It never changed the fact that Sam was his priority, his partner, back then. Why would it now?
Heaven's different. They're not nomads anymore. They're not hunters or heroes who live too dangerously for romance. There's no longer any practical or ethical barrier to sustained romantic relationships for Sam and Dean. They could go for it if they wanted. Maybe sex isn't necessary in heaven any more than eating and sleeping, but that doesn't mean it's impossible or inorgasmic. And as for romance, Mary and John Winchester are together, as a couple. Ellen and her husband Bill are together again too. Clearly, couplehood is a thing here, for whoever wants it. There's probably nothing stopping souls from coupling up even if they weren't romantically involved in life. Heaven gives you everything you want, right?
Sam's heart sinks. Has Dean changed his mind recently about how he wants to spend eternity and who he wants to spend it with? Sam hasn't sensed anything change in his brother or between the two of them lately. But maybe Dean can hide from him more than Sam believed. It's not like they can read each other's every thought.
Then, a more plausible possibility occurs to Sam: maybe it isn't a woman at all that Dean went to see but an old friend. Maybe Castiel finally decided to show his face. Maybe Dean asked Jack for Benny, or Jack simply pulled the vampire up from Purgatory without being asked because he can see into Dean's heart. Hell, maybe Dean gets to have both.
Sam rinses off his plate and fork in the sink, peering out the kitchen window at the empty carport where the Impala usually rests. His eyes suddenly prickle with tears, and for the first time in a long time, he feels genuine sorrow rise in his chest. He knows he shouldn't jump to such a tremendous conclusion so quickly, without any evidence, but he can't help but think for a minute about living in this cabin alone for the rest of time. He doesn't think he could do it. It would hurt too much. He would leave this place if Dean moved out. But go where? To Jess? Or would he get his own place and live there by himself? Is he supposed to try to forge some kind of companionship with a total stranger up here? Could he even do that?
Sam sniffs and wipes at his face with the back of his hand, composing himself. He hears the familiar rumble of the Impala's engine as she comes up the dirt path and turns away from the window before Dean pulls into the carport. He sits down at the kitchen table again and waits.
Dean comes into the house through the kitchen door, bright-eyed and grinning. Sam can sense he's excited and happy even more than he can see it.
"Dude," says Dean. "I just had the best morning. Wait 'til I tell you…. Oh, man, I don't know what you're going to say, you might be pissed, but I am so fucking pumped."
Sam gives his brother a half-smile, hardly trying to conceal his sadness.
Dean suddenly stops, his energy shifting. "Sam? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. I'm fine. Tell me about the Roadhouse."
"Bullshit. Obviously, you're not fine. What happened?"
"Nothing happened, Dean. Really. I was just thinking. Will you get to your good news, please?"
"Thinking about what?" Dean sits at the table across from Sam. "You haven't been this low since you got here."
Sam sighs. "It's stupid. I was bumming myself out over nothing."
"Were you remembering again? You gotta stop doing that. Whatever happened on earth doesn't matter anymore, man. It really doesn't."
"Yeah, okay," Sam says. "I hear you. Tell me about your morning."
Dean hesitates, some of his glee returning to his face and his lovely green eyes. He scrubs a hand over his mouth and leans back in his chair, glances away from Sam, then back. "This is gonna sound crazy, but…. I think I got us a hunt."
Sam just sits there and stares at Dean blankly. "What?"
"Yeah! A hunt! I mean, I guess it wouldn't be a real one, technically. It's more like a simulation, but…. It would feel real. Ash said if we can conjure whatever the thing is, hunting it will work pretty much the way it did in life."
Sam shakes his head and lifts his hands a little. "Wait, wait, wait, hold on. You want to go on a hunt? That's why you went to the Roadhouse?"
Dean looks a little apologetic but no less pleased. "I've just been thinking about some of our best hunts lately, you know, reminiscing…. I miss it, man. I know it's screwed up, but I do. And I just thought, hey, if Heaven is supposed to be a place where all your wildest dreams can come true, why not find out if I can have this one?"
Sam doesn't know what to say—or what to feel. He's relieved Dean isn't sneaking around with a secret girlfriend or his old supernatural buddies, but he can't begin to understand his brother yearning for a hunt. They've been dead long enough, safe and relaxed and genuinely happy in this heaven that provides for all their needs and desires, that Sam never thinks about hunting. He remembers all the little moments of bonding and fun and intimacy with Dean in between hunts, but he doesn't thinking about the job itself.
And here Dean is, privately missing it for who knows how long and looking for a way to relive it.
"Sam? You with me?"
Sam blinks and comes back to the room. "Yeah. Yeah, sorry, I just…. I wasn't expecting this. At all. Why didn't you tell me before?"
Dean shifts in his chair a little. They've been so open with each other in Heaven, more than they ever were in life, that keeping a secret from Sam does make Dean feel bad. "I didn't know if it was actually possible, hunting up here. I figured why mention it before I was sure I could do it."
Sam sighs and runs his hand back through his hair. He doesn't even know where to start. "Dean—"
"Wait," says Dean. "Did you think something else was going on? At the Roadhouse?"
Sam pauses for a split second, but it's enough for Dean to know he's lying when he says, "No. I didn't think anything, I was just curious why you ran off."
"Sam." Dean says his name with a gentle, almost paternal tone. There's no anger in it. It's a simple warning to his brother that he doesn't buy Sam's story and insists on hearing the truth.
They hold each other's gaze for a silent moment, across their kitchen table.
Sam gives in. "Fine. I was worried you were going on some kind of date you didn't want me to know about. Or meeting up with an old friend of yours who you might want to run off with."
Dean's face furrows. "Seriously?"
"Well, I sure as hell didn't think you were scheming up a fake hunt with Ash."
"Wow. Do you know me at all?"
Sam looks away, feeling foolish but also annoyed with his brother for not being honest with him in the first place.
"Is that why you were so down in the dumps when I first walked in here?" Dean says.
Sam just half-heartedly glances at him, keeping his head turned away.
Dean stands up, comes around the table, and hugs Sam to his chest. Sam's surprise disappears quickly, and he wraps his arms around Dean, closing his eyes and taking comfort in the smell and warmth and solidity of him.
"Sam. You are way too smart to be this dumb."
Sam doesn't answer, the corner of his mouth flickering.
Dean runs his hand over Sam's head. "After all that, everything we lived through, you think I'm going to walk out on you for some chick? Here? Come on."
It does sound pretty stupid when Dean says it out loud. Sam can admit he let himself get carried away. But in his defense, it was the most believable scenario he could imagine.
"I don't even care about sex anymore," Dean says.
Sam snorts against Dean's chest but doesn't let go of his brother. "Yeah, right."
"I don't. Do you?"
Sam realizes he hasn't thought about sex at all since he got here. "I guess not, but I'm not you. Dean Winchester losing interest in sex is like a dog losing its appetite."
"Well. Call it a side effect of being dead, I guess. But even if I still wanted to get laid, that wouldn't change anything. I was never really into romance when I was alive. Why would I be now?"
Sam doesn't try to answer, though he could say they're not beyond changing just because they're dead. He remembers the mermaid in the Vegas tiki bar, how Dean didn't even remotely try to meet up with her. Didn't flirt with any of the female patrons there either.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you what was up," Dean says, rubbing Sam's back. "But I really can't believe you thought I was going on a date. Or that any part of me has any interest in spending eternity with someone other than you."
Sam doesn't even remotely try to hide or suppress his pleasure at hearing those words, from himself or his brother. He squeezes Dean in his arms and turns his face into Dean's body.
Dean sighs and caresses the back of Sam's head. "Can we talk about this hunt now?"
Sam takes his time answering. He slowly loosens his grip on Dean as he feels his brother's arms slacken around him and slide back just a little. "Sounds like you've already decided you're doing it, whether I go along or not," Sam says.
"I want us to do it together. It won't be the same if I go alone."
They finally let go of each other, and Dean sits down again.
"How would it work?" says Sam.
Dean smiles.
The way Ash explains it, the hunting simulation will be—for Sam and Dean—almost like one of those relived memories from Chuck's version of heaven. They get to choose their evil thing together, along with the story behind the hunt, and somehow, they'll be able to step right into it as soon as they decide they're ready. How much of the hunt will be original and how much of it will get pulled from their mutual memories is anybody's guess. The hunt should feel real, as real as a vivid dream or memory, but it will only exist in Sam and Dean's experience. Whatever they hunt won't actually run loose through Heaven.
They tell their parents about it over drinks and appetizers at Harvelle's. John gives his sons a look of utter disbelief, and Mary laughs at it.
"You've gotta be kidding," John says to Dean, then pops another fry in his mouth.
"What?" says Dean, giving him an adolescent who, me? expression. "You've never wanted to go back and relive some of your glory days?"
"I got no itch to scratch whatsoever. Especially not the hunting kind."
"You two aren't curious about what it would be like to hunt together?" Sam says to his parents, looking from one to the other.
John and Mary make eye contact and share a mischievous twitch of the lips and twinkle in their eyes. Oh, they've probably thought about it. And they'd probably have fun if they went through with it.
"We got better ways to spend our time now," John tells Sam.
"I'm not saying I don't," says Dean, then glances at his brother. "I'm not trying to launch an eternal fake career here. This is just a one-time thing, for kicks."
John and Mary trade a different kind of look now. Sure, it is.
It makes Sam crack a deep grin.
It's been weird, in a good way, to hang around John and Mary in this new-and-improved Heaven. They look younger than Sam and Dean usually do, about the ages they were when Sam was born. They're different people than the parents Sam and Dean knew in life. Without any of their baggage, everything good about them shines through in ways Sam and Dean have never experienced before. It almost seems like the boys don't know John and Mary at all, like their parents are strangers they're now getting to know for the first time. The memories Sam and Dean have of their parents seem so distant and irrelevant now. The longer they're in Heaven, the less they remember John and Mary as they were in life. They realize they have the rest of eternity to build relationships with their parents as they are here and now, with their best and freest and happiest selves, which is something young Sam and Dean on earth never could've dreamed of or hoped for. Here, at last, John and Mary's love for them is pure and uncomplicated, untainted by circumstance and the past. Sam and Dean have only barely begun to process it.
"So," Mary says, blue eyes resting on Dean before sliding over to Sam. "What's it gonna be, boys?"
Sam and Dean set out on the road late one morning, the Impala's trunk packed with their duffel bags and a small collection of their old hunting tools. Dean's the most excited he's been since he died, and Sam is anxious for the first time since he showed up on their bridge. Dean cranks up the volume on the radio and sings along to all the classic rock songs that play just for him. Sam sips coffee out of his thermos and tries to breathe away his jitters, unsuccessfully. They drive for four hours, stopping about halfway through the trip to relieve themselves and stretch their legs. It's perfectly cool outside, jacket weather, and the sun casts a golden light on their shoulders. While Dean admires the landscape, standing by the side of the road, Sam discovers a pack of cigarettes in the breast pocket of his jacket. He's got his lighter on him, the way he always did when they hunted in life, so he lights up one of the sticks, takes a long draw on it, and immediately feels better.
Dean turns around, sees him, and says, "Dude. Since when do you smoke?"
"Heaven provides whatever we need in the moment," Sam replies. "I guess right now what I need is some nicotine."
"Why?" Dean takes a few steps toward his brother before realization dawns on his face. "Are you worried about this hunt?"
Sam looks away as he blows out a plume of smoke.
"Sam?"
Sam sighs.
Dean comes up to him and takes him by the shoulders. "Seriously?"
Sam slides his eyes onto Dean's face for a moment, then bows his head. "I'm fine. It's stupid. I know it's fake. Nothing can actually go wrong."
"Sammy, if you hate the idea of it this much, you should've just told me…. I can do it alone. It's not a big deal."
"No, I don't—I don't want you to. I'm okay, Dean, really."
Dean drops his hands from Sam's shoulders and appraises him. "What are you even worried about?"
Sam shrugs and sucks on his cigarette, pointedly not looking at his brother. "It's been a long time. And the last couple hunts I went on aren't exactly good memories."
He feels the ripple in Dean's energy immediately, the comprehension snapping into place.
Dean turns away from Sam but doesn't put any more distance between them. After a minute, he says, "It wasn't all bad."
Sam hears everything that lies beneath the surface of that statement without thinking. "I don't regret the life I lived with you, Dean. I would've lived any kind of life, done anything, to be with you. The good parts were you and I. But the job? The job was messy and dangerous. It cost us both. Cost us each other, more than once. I just don't miss it the way you do. If I was going to miss anything about my life, our life, I'd miss the time I spent with you. But I don't have to because you're here."
Dean is quiet and still until he turns to face Sam again. "I understand. And believe me, there's plenty of shit about hunting I'm happy to be done with forever. But…. I do miss the way it felt to work the job with you. The way it felt to fight monsters and ghosts with you. We were…. It felt…."
Sam nods because he knows exactly what Dean means. His gut and his throat tighten with recognition and emotion.
"It felt like we were born to do it together," Dean continues, looking right into Sam's eyes. "Whenever we were in the middle of the action, that—more than anything else—that was when I felt like we were in perfect harmony. Like we really were two halves of a whole and when we fit together…. Man. It was really something."
The corner of Sam's lips curls up, his cigarette butt almost forgotten in his fingers. "Yeah. It was. And I felt that too."
"Hunting with you, killing with you…. It was exhilarating. No matter how screwed up everything else was at any given time, you and me putting down some nasty thing—that was pure."
"It was intimate," Sam says, finding the word Dean either couldn't grasp or couldn't speak.
Dean's gaze lingers on Sam for a couple seconds before falling away. He looks as vulnerable as he feels to Sam, so much like the twenty-six year old who saved him from the fire at Stanford and who dared to tell him their family was all he had in the world.
Sam steps up to his brother and cradles Dean's face with his free hand, forcing Dean to look at him again. "I'm glad we had that too, Dee," he says. "I wouldn't take it back. I just don't want to be reminded of losing you. That's all."
Dean understands. That's clear in his eyes. Clear, too, is his gratitude and relief that Sam valued the intimacy they shared in hunting.
And because Sam can see or feel or hear or read Dean's thoughts now, because he sheds more and more of his inhibitions with each passing day in Heaven, Sam speaks exactly what comes to him in this moment: "You should know…. Hunting wasn't the thing that kept us together. It wasn't the reason for what we had. We could've done anything with our lives, and we still would've loved each other just as much as we did. I believe that, Dean."
Dean stares at his brother, silent and glassy-eyed.
Sam just gives him a reassuring smile. "I stayed with you because I wanted to. Because I loved you. We could've retired from the job at any point, and I would've stayed with you. You never needed hunting to keep me."
Dean shuts his eyes and flinches a little, like he's been slapped.
Sam pulls him into a hug, and they stand there on the side of the road for a long while, holding onto each other.
Eventually, they get back into the Impala and finish the rest of the drive to their mirage of a small American town.
Hunting is just the way it was in life but better. Their motel is nicer than any of the dozens Sam and Dean stayed in all over America, while still being very much a motel. They walk into their room and find two twin beds, which on sight are jarring, but they end up sleeping just fine apart. They do their research on the ghost, and Sam comments how weird it is that they're fake-hunting a ghost, of all things, in heaven. None of the people they encounter in this town seem like fellow dead souls but like living people, oblivious to the supernatural and afraid of death. Both the Winchesters find that a little bit disorienting, but they play along. They split a slice of blueberry pie in a diner that's so good, Dean rolls his eyes back in his head. They dig up a grave to salt and burn the bones, which doesn't solve the case but feels good anyway, the two of them chatting in the dead of night as they work.
After about three days, Sam realizes he's enjoying himself. This hunt is comfortable. Fun, even. It reminds him of the early hunts he and Dean went on the year after Jessica's death, when they were searching for John and had nothing bigger than ghosts and monsters to worry about. He's not sure what he was so anxious about on the drive over here.
When they finally fight the ghost—an angry woman with just the right amount of resistance for Dean—they're perfectly in sync, communicating wordlessly, playing off of each other in all the right ways. Dean handles the ghost, switching between his rock salt-filled shotgun and his iron rod, while Sam locates and burns the lock of blonde hair keeping her around. They watch her go up in flames, shrieking until she evaporates into nothingness.
Sam and Dean's eyes meet across the room of the house she haunted. Dean smiles first. Sam quickly reflects him, even huffing a little laugh. Dean collapses the rest of the way to the floor, lying flat on his back and laughing.
"God, that felt good," he says.
"Yeah," Sam replies, nodding even though Dean isn't watching him. "It did."
The hours they spend sleeping each night provide a time and structure for cuddling. They don't need to sleep, though they end up doing it anyway simply for pleasure. It might be more accurate to call their sleep a meditative state: they drift in and out of consciousness, deeply relaxed but fully aware. They don't dream anymore, but they can remember if they wish. Usually, when they're in bed together, they don't think at all. They only feel each other and their mutual love.
It's been raining for hours by the time they get into their bed on this particular night. Sometimes, Sam sits up and reads before turning out his light, but tonight, he slides right under the covers and into Dean's arms. The room is dark except for a thin shaft of moonlight creeping through one of the windows. They lie on their sides, Dean's face in Sam's chest and Sam's chin grazing the top of Dean's head. Sam cups the back of Dean's skull with one hand, and Dean keeps his top arm hooked around Sam's waist.
"Dean," Sam says.
"Mmm," Dean replies.
Sam pauses before speaking again, unsure how to broach the subject. "You think there's a way for us to be closer here? A way we couldn't access in life?"
"We're not having sex, Sammy." Dean sounds drowsy and utterly unbothered. "I don't even have a libido anymore."
Sam scoffs into Dean's hair. "That's not what I mean."
"I don't know what you mean."
Sam's not sure he knows what he's getting at either. "We don't have bodies anymore, right? It seems like we do, but we actually don't. We're disembodied souls."
"Not really concerned with the fine print of heavenly existence, Sam."
Sam almost huffs in exasperation, fidgeting around his brother only to adjust his hold on him. "We're dead. This place we're in isn't actually physical. It's spiritual. We experience it as if we were in our bodies, but all of our perceptions are really just illusion. We're not going to age or get sick. We can't die again. Because these aren't the bodies we left behind on earth. We're souls."
Dean keeps his eyes shut, his knee wedged between Sam's legs. "What's your point?"
Sam goes quiet again, feeling the softness of Dean's hair under his left hand, the softness of Dean's t-shirt under his right. Whenever they cuddle like this, he feels especially close to his brother, not just physically or emotionally but spiritually and psychologically. They bristle in constant response to each other's feelings. They can read each other's thoughts more readily, without even trying, as if they're two radio receivers tuned to each other's frequency. It both unnerves and pleases Sam. A part of him has always wanted to shrink away from the vulnerability, the connection with Dean, but he's never allowed himself to do it. Now, he wonders if there's some way he and Dean can amplify their connection….
Sam closes his eyes and tries to focus himself entirely on Dean, not just the brother he can feel in his arms but the essence of Dean's spirit, the part of Dean he still can't see with his eyes even here. At first, he doesn't get anything different than what he's already felt: the steady, gentle current of love running between them in an infinite circuit; the sensation of his brother's purest self like something just beneath Sam's own skin, the two of them together the body of water in which the current exists. Sam tries to feel past Dean's physical weight and warmth, to leave the two of them cuddling in the king bed behind altogether, to reach deeper into his consciousness and his ability to perceive. He doesn't know what he's doing or if he's doing it right, but he keeps trying, breathing slowly and letting go over and over of his awareness of this room. It's almost like trying to fall asleep, but instead he's looking for some specific feeling, a clicking into place he's never experienced before.
Dean inhales audibly against him, the sound an indication of something happening to the older Winchester. He presses his forehead into Sam's chest just a little, drags his hand down Sam's back only to slip it under Sam's t-shirt. Sam shivers physically at the coolness of Dean's palm against his warm skin, but mentally, he almost ignores the gesture completely. He's somewhere between awake and asleep, and he can't feel most of his body. What he feels instead is the immaterial substance of Dean, of their bond.
He doesn't realize he's in the dark until he starts to see sparks of golden light leading him through the pitch black. He follows them and vaguely hears Dean gasp softly against him, clutching at him as if afraid. His body reacts, holding Dean a little more snugly, while Sam only feels the rush of his soul gliding against Dean's, the sparks in his vision corresponding with bursts of tingling through him.
Sam suddenly feels like he's standing in an actual water current, his and Dean's love flooding through him and around him. Dean's with him here, Sam can sense him, and they have no clear borders separating them, distinguishing one from another. Whatever thin vessels they usually occupy in heaven, affording them each a little emotional and psychic privacy, have been stripped away. Now, they're like black and white sand in a single hourglass. He can barely tell which energy is his and which is Dean's, what feelings belong to him and what belong to Dean.
Finally, they feel as disembodied and eternal as they really are. It's not clear if they are the sources of this love or love itself. Love that has brought them to their knees over and over again, killed them and brought them back to life. Love that supersedes all other emotion and motivation and need they had on earth and now has nothing to compete with. They're completely submerged in it, consumed by it, and the intensity of their love leaves them raw, electrified, desperate—for what, they can't even articulate.
They stay in the flow, in the dimension of pure spirit, for an unknown amount of time. The longer they linger, the more they're able to make sense of their feelings, the light changing from blinding to just bright enough. Every needy and traumatized piece of them is healed over once and for all, their love like saltwater washing out those wounds. They are whole. They are woven together for eternity, threads of a tapestry that cannot be separated. This—this love, this cosmic power, this union—is older than any plan god and angels and demons had for them. Before they had names, they knew each other. They are as ageless as the universe itself, and they have always been together. They always will be.
This love they feel now, holy and indescribable, bound them before they had bodies to contain it. It was always going to unite them again in this place. That is the only true destiny they ever had. In life, their love usurped the supernatural forces of creation, but the way it felt to them then was nothing compared to how it feels in its fullness here. The tenderness, the sweetness, the profundity of their love would make them weep if they could feel it this fully in their bodies. They thought they knew it and understood it before, but their physical minds never could've comprehended it the way their souls now remember and experience it. Grief and sacrifice were only the small, human expressions of this love.
Finally, Sam and Dean return to the truest form of their love for each other: bliss.
When they finally come back into their soul-bodies, open their eyes and see each other in the master bedroom again, they're breathless and disoriented. They could be drunk or waking from a coma. They have no idea how much time has passed on this plane—it's still night, still dark outside their windows—but it feels like they might've been in the current for years.
They're wrapped tightly around each other, clinging to each other as closely as they can. Sam's still holding Dean's head to his chest, and Dean's pulled Sam flush against his body, fingers pressing into the warm flesh of Sam's back.
Sam swallows and takes a breath before speaking. He feels shaky, and he's not entirely sure but thinks maybe Dean is vibrating a little too.
"Dean?" he says.
"Holy crap," says Dean.
Sam breaks into an open-mouthed grin, not quite laughing. He pets his brother's hair a bit. "You okay?"
Dean pauses, taking his own deep breath. "Yeah. I think so. Are you?"
He's still trembling, but a deep sense of satisfaction and peace is already spreading through Sam. "I'm good."
They make no effort to disentangle themselves from each other. They just lie there, holding each other, waiting to settle down.
"I'm sorry if that caught you off guard," Sam says. "I would've warned you, but I didn't actually know what was going to happen."
Dean swallows, closes his eyes, and takes a breath. He's got his fingers curled into Sam's t-shirt at Sam's side now. "Jesus. That was—I don't even know what that was."
Sam moves his hand down to the back of Dean's neck, wanting to comfort him and reassure him. They couldn't hold each other any closer if they tried, so all Sam's left with in the realm of touch is moving his hands. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pull you into anything you didn't want. If I crossed a line, I—"
"It's okay," Dean says, nuzzling his brow into Sam's chest a little. "It's okay. It wasn't bad, I just…. I don't know what to say. I feel like I just got electrocuted."
"Yeah, me too. Me too."
They go silent again, their eyes shut. Sam tries to ground himself in his soul-body, in his senses, but it isn't going to work the same way it did on earth. He can't completely separate himself from those emotions and sensations he felt in the greater part of his soul. He also can't shut out Dean's feelings, though he doesn't have as much access to them here as he did in the current. Instead of compartmentalizing or repressing it all, he has to learn how to allow his emotions to be.
"That's what you wanted?" Dean says, his voice still ragged.
"I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted," Sam replies. "What was possible. But yeah, I guess that was pretty much it."
"Sam. Don't take this the wrong way, okay? I love you. But I can't do that again for a really, really long time."
Sam smiles. "We don't have to do it again. But if we practice, I think we'll get better at handling it."
Dean doesn't answer, feeling a little more relaxed but still highly vulnerable and swimming in excess energy. He snakes his arm around Sam and focuses on his breathing. Sam strokes Dean's back as best he can in their current position, hoping that Dean catches on to his unspoken thought about them matching each other breath for breath.
"I love you too," Sam says softly. He is never again going to let his brother speak the words to him without echoing them.