Dean's cock filled Sam's mouth, hot and solid, head resting on his tongue where it dipped into his throat and precome running thin down it. He had one hand on one of Dean's thighs, digging appreciatively into the thick muscle, and the other spread flat on the small of his back, pulling him down so he could take him deeper. Nose at his balls. Even flick his tongue across the dusky pucker of his hole, if he felt like it.
On all fours above him, amulet resting warm on Sam's stomach, Dean had already taken him to the root. He was sucking and humming and bobbing with a gentleness that was damn near painful. Groaning around him, Sam tried to buck up a little, fuck his mouth, but he didn't move much, and a telekinetic touch instantly and firmly pinned him to the nest of pillows he was settled in. Dean wetly and messily pulled off Sam, lips giving a little porn star pop as they left his head.
"How many times I gotta tell you?" he growled, voice rough and cock-wrecked. "Stay put. Ass on the bed at all times."
Sam moved his hand from Dean's back to his stomach, pushed him up until he could talk. He grinned with swollen lips.
"I don't know, dude," he teased huskily, "I think you're gonna have to tie me down."
"What, and give you what you want? Freak."
"I'm not gonna be able to come like this," Sam warned.
"Came every time so far, haven't you?" Dean pointed out. "Make you a bet. You'll come before I do."
"All right." Playful, Sam swiped his tongue over the very tip of Dean's cock where it was dangling above him, and watched it twitch. "You're on."
He wound up winning, after a couple minutes of downright devouring Dean with two fingers up his ass to work his prostate. Dean burst down his throat, Sam practically milking him into his own mouth, and wound up getting some on Sam's face and chest because he started thrusting wildly enough Sam had to let him go to avoid teeth entering the equation.
He didn't last much longer himself, though. Dean got more aggressive as soon as he came, wringing a more than acceptable climax out of Sam by drooling down his shaft as a flurry of unexpected telekinesis played over his balls and prostate like a hundred tongues. Sam cried out, head arching back as he squeezed both of Dean's thighs, and felt Dean swallow nearly all of him in a few huge gulps.
He looked up at Dean when he straightened, a few drops of come running down his chin and landing on his chest, then followed his path as he laid down on the pillows next to Sam and looked over at him. His eyes had gone black, but he blinked them green again, smiled with beestung lips. He teased a wisp of hair away from Sam's temple where sweat had stuck it down.
"How you feeling?" he rumbled, close enough Sam felt his voice in his own chest.
"I," Sam declared, "am feeling awesome. I mean, I won. I told you."
"Yeah, but you still came, so I told you, too." Dean grinned into the kiss Sam pressed to his mouth. "Mm. You think I like the taste of my own come?"
"I do, actually." Dean shifted, and Sam let him adjust him with touches both physical and mental, place him how he wanted him against the sex-hot solidity of his own body. "Where's Vaughn?"
"Still outside, don't worry." Dean squinted, looking at nothing as he focused, then relaxed. "Feels like he's heading back now, actually. Great timing."
Buttery afternoon sunlight poured in through their open bedroom window, dust hanging incandescent in the shaft. Not much; Dean was downright anal about cleaning. The bed was soft and wonderful, even where the pillowcases had fused to Sam's sweaty skin, and the room smelled like sex and the pine-and-pollen scent of summer in the Rockies.
There was no bullet hole in the headboard.
The back door opened, screen bouncing shut. Sam heard Vaughn pause for a second, then dash down to his room so fast it sounded like he fell down the last half of the staircase. Sam groaned as he heard his door slam.
"Air filtration runes must need touching up," he mumbled. "He smelled us."
"Just tell me what to do, and I'll do it." Dean kissed the corner of Sam's jaw, right below his earlobe. "Later. Right now, knowing we just fucked ain't gonna kill him."
"Mmm." Sam's eyes drifted shut. The passive brightness of the room was a soft glow beneath his lids, ill-defined on the borders between purple and green and gold, as he groped across pillows and flesh until he found Dean's hand and hooked his fingers through it. "Yeah, I think I can - "
Their alarms went off.
Sam had set multiple systems in place over the years, helped by Ash, Bobby, and Bela, maintained them to the point of borderline DSM classification, updated them after every breach. Electrical (cameras, motion sensors, floodlights) and magical (runes, sigils, active spells) backing each other up, because power could be cut and witchcraft could be tricked. Whatever had just walked onto their property - and there were perimeter alarms going off, so Sam knew for sure it had walked, not landed or teleported - didn't care about avoiding detection, which was either really good or really bad.
"Okay - " Sam twisted, reaching for the nightstand on his side. The top drawer opened and the sturdy tablet that functioned as the systems' dashboard lifted out and into his hand.
He laid back down, nodding gratefully to Dean before studying the display. It was a homemade piece of equipment, digital-magical hybrid, and complex as it was, he could read it at a glance after years of working with and refining it himself. But he always wanted to make sure.
"C'mon, Sammy, I gotta know what we're dealing with," Dean said tensely.
"One." Sam tapped the camera display, set the feed to follow movement, blew it up to full-screen and handed the tablet off to Dean. "Human, or close enough to it we can't tell the difference."
Dean squinted. "Hiker?" Sam knew what he was seeing: a guy in a light hoodie, baseball cap, and boots, carrying a backpack, facing away from the camera.
"Could be," Sam replied.
But they didn't get that many. Their place was intentionally as difficult to get to as possible, even the garage where Dean kept and lovingly tended to the car a good eight hours away on foot. And that was only if you really knew what you were doing.
"He doesn't look like a hunter," Sam told Dean after a second. "After the last one who came out here, he wouldn't wanna get close enough for us to see him, and he's not carrying a sniper rifle."
"I don't like it," Dean replied grimly, and honestly? Sam didn't, either.
His legs hurt, anxiety in the bones.
Dean climbed off the bed, sweat and come vanishing instantly from him as he pulled his clothes on in quick jerks. He grabbed his angel blade, his Taurus, checked it was loaded before stuffing both into easy-access positions. Sam pushed himself up on his elbows.
"Cas still here?" he asked Dean.
"He's sacked out after last night," Dean answered, tense. Sam winced. "Not your fault. Cut it out." Dean dragged an agitated hand through his hair. "Keep the kid in his room. I got this."
"Dean - " Sam started, and Dean turned to him, grabbing both his hands, making eye contact. His were black, but Sam oddly found that more reassuring than if they hadn't been.
"I'll be fine," he assured. "Milk run."
Sam studied him for a long second before relenting. "Okay. But I'm gonna give you backup." Just because he couldn't come with Dean didn't mean he was useless. Hopefully.
Dean nodded. Leaning down, he kissed Sam, letting it last a second longer than it strictly needed to. Then he straightened up and disappeared.
Sam remained on the bed for a moment, looking down at the tablet. Then he set it aside for a second and twisted, grabbing his clothes off the floor.
His mind was racing as he yanked his jeans up past the scars on his legs and hips. The possibility of another assassination attempt after he'd been so careful recently, the concept of a tattoo for Dean that would link him into at least the arcane parts of the security system, the simmering frustration he couldn't help feeling at his own complete inability to help out physically. He tried to shut the thoughts down with movement, leaning out again and snagging the arm of his wheelchair, left within range of the bed.
Sam dragged himself to the edge of the mattress, shoving pillows out of the way and feeling like a fucking Fabergé egg, then paused. He thought his way around his body. Feet, legs, hips, stomach, chest, back, shoulders, arms, neck, head. Fine. No imminent danger of literally tearing himself apart. Movements so familiar he could have done them blindfolded, Sam locked the chair, braced his hands, and heaved himself very gingerly into it, positioning his legs one by one. He grabbed the tablet, shoved it into the pocket on the back, snapped his hair up into a messy bun with an elastic. Rolling to the closet, he got a shotgun down from its hooks, thumbed in cartridges, flicked the safety on, and laid it across his lap before gliding out of the room.
Vaugh was waiting for him in the kitchen, spikes out and with his gun in one hand. Distantly, Sam noticed with approval the barrel pointing at the ground and his finger laying against the outside of the trigger guard.
"What's going on?" Vaughn demanded.
"Don't know yet," Sam responded tensely as he made to roll past him. "Go back to your room and lock the door. Bars on, too. I'll come get you in a second."
"No." Vaughn grabbed the back of Sam's chair as he passed. When Sam looked up at him, he hastily let go. "Sorry. But no."
"No?" Sam echoed.
"No, 'cause last time you sidelined me, Cas and Dean practically had to bring you home in a bucket." Vaughn's chin jutted out in an unpleasantly familiar way. "I'm gonna help."
Sam exhaled explosively through his nose. "Fine. Grab some holy oil and a lighter and come out onto the porch."
He rolled out himself, locked his wheels again. Vaughn joined him a second later. Picking up the tablet, Sam swiped through a few cameras, but didn't see Dean or their intruder.
Vaughn tensed. Sam dropped the tablet, picked up his gun, looked to see Dean and the guy who'd tripped their alarms coming out of the woods. Sam aimed but didn't thumb the hammer back yet, wanting to be prepared as possibilities bounced around inside his head, and Vaughn followed his lead.
The guy immediately stopped dead and put his hands up. Dean kept walking, calling, "Cool it, Ironsides. Nothing to be afraid of here."
Slowly, Sam lowered the barrel, but didn't put the gun aside just yet. Not until they were close enough for him to recognize the guy Dean had brought to their house. With the hat and the several weeks' worth of growth along his jaw, it was tougher than it should have been.
"Presley," Sam said, shocked.
Presley smiled, although it dimmed a little as his eyes landed on Sam's wheelchair. "Father Unterweger."
"Is that the priest you said you were friends with?" Vaughn asked, leaning over so he could mumble it.
"Yeah, uh…"
"Vaughn," Dean said authoritatively. "You wanna go check on Feathers for me?"
Vaughn didn't look thrilled about it, but he must have trusted they'd fill him in later, because he went back inside. Sam made sure the safety was on, then laid the shotgun securely across the seat of the bench they had set up out here. He looked up at Presley as he and Dean mounted the porch.
"Well, hey. You look different," Sam commented.
"So do you." Presley sounded like he hadn't meant to indicate the wheelchair, but his eyes dropped to it again anyway.
"Yeah, sweet ride, ain't it?" Dean crossed the porch to stand next to the doorway, close to Sam. He had a hand on his chair and his back against the wall. The door itself, sturdy and very well-protected in terms of both locks and warding, swung shut behind the screen door. "We're hoping it's not permanent."
Presley nodded, raising his eyebrows. Considering the circumstances, Sam didn't see the need for any more small talk.
Maybe he ought to invite him into the cabin. There was a glyph carved into the wood of the doorway, a gift from someone who was more of helpful nuisance than a friend, that calmed down anybody who walked past it. It only worked if you didn't know about it though, and Presley was the only one here who didn't, and Sam wasn't sure it was him he was worried about.
"So, what...what're you doing here?" he asked with a frown.
"What he means," Dean clarified flatly, "is how the fuck'd you find us?"
The profanity didn't seem to bother Presley any. "If it makes you feel any better, you are definitely not easy guys to track down."
"We know," Sam agreed. "Kind of a reason for that."
"Well, it was really, really hard," Presley said, shrugging. "Took months. I had to call in a lot of favors, and really, I got lucky. Saw an APB a few years back, came across it again, and something about the first names jogged my memory, and from there…" He cleared his throat, looked at Dean and then Sam. "I'm not a priest."
"Yeah. I know." Sam tipped his head towards Dean. "He told me, after we got home."
"Right," Presley agreed. "Course he did."
Dean grinned, before remarking, "Really hope you didn't track us down just to try and get an apology outta me for possessing you. Desperate times."
"No, no." Presley shook his head, then asked Sam, "Did he tell you my real name?"
"It wasn't a long conversation." And they hadn't talked much about the whole thing since, too focused on other, calmer stuff.
"All right, then: Charles Shurley. Chuck." He went to offer a hand, looked at Dean, lowered it and stepped back.
The name knocked around for a second before it caught on something. "Y-you're a journalist."
"You wrote an article on the Center," Dean told Presley. "Like, two years ago. For the Washington Post."
"Yeah - yeah. I can't believe you read that thing, it was...jeez." Presley...Shurley reached up, rubbing at his beard. "I'm freelance. Mostly do investigative work, a lot of undercover stuff. Been told I have a forgettable face."
"I can see it," Dean agreed, mouthing What? in response to the look Sam threw his way.
"And you guys are…?" Shurley asked the question as someone who'd really like it answered, but didn't expect it to be.
"Dean Singer. Which you knew, so we're on even footing there." Dean blinked his eyes black and back. "I'm a demon. And before you ask, body I'm possessing's mine. No poor sap chained up in the basement here."
Shurley almost opened his mouth, almost asked a follow-up question. Or six, based on his expression. Sam saw him stop himself and turn to him instead.
"Sam Winchester," Sam told him. "Human. Just - " Dean had sucked his teeth. " - human. A hunter."
"So you hunt…" Shurley began.
"Monsters," Sam confirmed. "Yeah." When he'd come all this way, he didn't feel all that exposed telling him things he either already knew or could infer pretty easily.
"Sammy's a journalist himself," Dean told Shurley. "Researches all kinds of spooky stuff, writes books. Knows eight dozen spells that'd knock you dead and another nine dozen that'd just make you wish they did."
"You really don't need to threaten me," Shurley stated.
"Oh, was it that obvious?"
"Look. Guys." Shurley raised his hands. "Honest, you have nothing to worry about."
"So...you're not here 'cause we completely blew your story?" Sam asked, leaning forward to put his elbows on his knees.
"I got a look at all the work you put in when I was wearing you," Dean jumped in. "A whole year of prep. Six months of deep cover. Never broke character, and we swoop down at the very end and snake your Pulitzer."
Shurley smirked. Leaning against the railing, he looked up, taking a deep breath. It was a few seconds before he started.
"Before the two of you showed up, I thought I was getting close," he said almost conversationally, shaking his head. "I'd gathered so much intel. Green liked me...bet you can imagine why, Sam, that went away once you were in the picture. The only thing I couldn't figure out was how they were faking the possession symptoms that so very obviously weren't just mental illness."
He laughed. "Guess I got my answer."
"How much d'you remember?" Sam asked quietly.
"A lot," Shurley answered, tone grim. He gestured to Dean. "With you, I blacked out. With...the other one, I never lost consciousness. I saw everything. It felt like - what're you doing?"
The tablet had a notes function. Sam had been in the process of opening it. Hastily, he shoved the tablet into the pocket on the back of his chair.
"Nothing." Dean was giving him a very "don't-make-me-get-the-squirt-bottle" look.
"Y'know, I can write something for you, if you want an account," Shurley volunteered. "I don't mind. I probably should anyway."
"I-if you could do that, that'd be awesome." Sam spread his hands.
"Then sure. Just need your email address later." Shurley changed the subject then, and Sam guessed he couldn't blame him. "Have you been following the case?"
"I've been kinda busy," Sam answered. "And they haven't been releasing a lot of details."
"Guess you missed the anonymous tip somebody called in to the FBI, then." Shurley took a deep breath. "Telling them to look in Green's safe. Giving them the combo. Sending them a whole bunch of cell phone pictures, just in case the contents had been tampered with."
Dean's hand moved from Sam's chair to his shoulder. Neither of them said anything.
"Green burned a lot of the files before they caught him," Shurley went on, "but there was more than enough left to bring him up on, let's see. A first-degree murder charge with a couple more waiting in the wings just in case, child abuse, reckless endangerment, coercion, false imprisonment, neglect resulting in death, and then obviously this isn't as a bad but a whole bunch of sexual harrassment and extortion allegations came flooding out of all his old parishes…"
"Wish they could've gotten him on everything," Sam commented, hearing the bitter tone in his own voice.
"It's something," Shurley pointed out. "It's a lot. His trial's set for next spring, and so far, his main defense is that he was battling the devil himself. Defending the souls of the innocents."
Dean snorted. "Oh, he thinks he can Exorcism of Emily Rose this whole thing?"
"His attorneys are leaning into it." Shurley grimaced. "See, all the explosions on the Center's campus provide very clear evidence that there were serious gas leaks in almost every building. One of the symptoms of long-term exposure to that's hallucinations, and since everybody thought they were seeing kids with black eyes and nine-foot-tall demons and some priest nobody's ever heard of getting back up after getting tossed fifty feet onto solid concrete, I guess you could maybe argue that somebody could really, truly believe that - "
"Are you kidding?" Sam broke in with a shocked, incredulous laugh. It felt like somebody had yanked his chair suddenly out from underneath him. "Oh my god. He's gonna walk." He looked up at Dean, whose jaw was visibly clenched.
"His trial's eight months away," Shurley said firmly, "and the prosecution's got a pile of evidence the size of Kilimanjaro to work with. Not to mention the massive public pressure to convict." He shrugged his backpack off.
"How 'bout the others?" Dean asked quietly.
"There was enough evidence, from the records and a bunch of confessions and statements, to charge a lot of the Center's staff," Shurley responded. He sounded like he was reading from notes. Maybe, mentally speaking, he was. "A few parents, too. I'll be completely honest with you: some have already been offered immunity in exchange for their cooperation. There's gonna be plea deals, 'cause the DA wants the big fish here, not the small fry. But - " Shurley raised a finger, very firm about it. "All of them have been formally excommunicated, and their pictures are all over every paper and channel in the country."
Sam lifted his hands to his face, rubbed, dragged them down before dropping them and exhaling. "Well." He looked up at Dean. "Yeah. That's something."
"Okay…" Shurley pushed off the railing, stepping forward. He stopped when Dean tensed. "I'm not sure you guys get it. The Center is gone. Fully. For good. There's a spotlight burning a hole through the practice of exorcisms on children. A bunch of these assholes are going to prison, and even the ones that aren't have had their entire lives ruined. This isn't a movie, it's not Law & Order, but I've covered this kind of thing before, right? And trust me. This many indictments, this big a punishment, this kind of - of net good? It doesn't happen." He shook his head. "Not often, at least. And not without a whole lot of work."
"Thanks." Dean nodded, flashed a tight smile. "Yeah, no, we know this is a good thing, trust us. Had a little celebration already." He shrugged. "Bloom's just kinda off the rose."
"D'they have a final body count?" Sam asked Shurley. "For the patients, and not just the ones who died because of...exorcisms. The ones who died because of the, uh, 'gas explosions,' too."
Moloch couldn't have healed all of the damage caused by himself. By Dean in Sam. Why would he have wasted the energy on it, especially once he had five empty chambers? Why not just patch it over and keep them moving?
Look on the bright side, Sam thought to himself, almost savagely. At least he saved Green.
"I could tell you that," Shurley started, "but I get the feeling you already know. And that you've spent a lot of time over the past months looking at it. So you'll also know most of them survived. Including the youngest victim, Wyatt Petersen."
"Well, in our line of work…" Dean looked down at Sam. "'Most' is a decent day. But." He leaned down to mutter in Sam's ear: "Martyr complex. Not as cute as you think it is."
Sam rolled his eyes. He focused on Shurley. "So...you just came out here to, what? Fill us in? Make sure we're, uh, patting ourselves on the back enough for what happened?"
Shurley shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "I just thought you should know. See the fruits of your labors, so to speak. My job's spreading information, making sure it gets to the right people...and I got a really nice hike out of it."
"I guess we appreciate it," Sam told him. "Thanks."
"Yeah." Shurley didn't say anything for a while, staring off at nothing, then he chuckled to himself and shook his head. "Y'know. I wanted to write a story about a cult. I knew it'd play well, I sure wanted it to crack the Center wide open, even though I knew it might not. I mean...Spotlight didn't kill the Catholic church." He looked at Sam and Dean, only for a second, maybe even unconsciously. "But. A story about a cult everyone's now heard about accidentally worshiping a Bronze Age god? And that god being killed by a demon-monster-hunter power cou - "
"Oh, buddy, that is a bad idea," Dean warned, at the same time Sam flatly asked, "What?"
Shurley put his hands up. Nobody said anything, then he observed, "I'm guessing you don't want me to write it."
"One word gets printed and I will force-feed you your own bone marrow," Dean said matter-of-factly.
"Well, you guys really do owe me a story," Shurley pointed out after a second, a little nervously. Sam tipped his chin up, hands on the armrests of his chair. "And that is a very creative and...bizarrely-specific threat. But I'm not gonna publish anything about what actually happened at the center. Or try to publish it, more accurately."
He took a deep breath. "Look, I'll come clean: originally, that was why I wanted to track you down. But you being buried so deep gave me time to actually think about everything, and I realized that the only news outlets that would buy that particular story have the kind of audience that...well. Might've taken their kids to the Center for sneaking cigarettes. Or who think speaking Elvish is a personality trait. Not to mention that it would completely destroy my professional reputation, and I like being able to actually buy food."
"Plus, a lot of the people who'd know you were actually telling the truth would want to kill you for it," Sam told Shurley bluntly. "The same people who want to kill us, probably."
Shurley halfway smirked. "I do think people deserve to know that this kinda stuff is real…"
"You don't think that particular anthill oughta go un-kicked?" Dean asked, and Sam understood the edge in his voice. In their shared and solitary experiences both, people didn't tend to throw parades for those who told them what was really out there, and people who were in the know didn't tend to go on to live long, happy lives.
"People deserve to know," Shurley repeated firmly. "But right now, I can't figure out a way, no matter how much evidence I gather, to even win over an editor. Much less the whole world."
"Too bad," Sam said, and saw Dean smile out of the corner of his eye.
"Agree to disagree," Shurley stated. "Not publishing the story anytime soon, so it doesn't matter. But I do still have questions, a lot of questions. There's so much I need to know, and that's why I kept on looking for you, like. Okay. Oh, my god." He turned to Dean. "How is that 'your' body, and how is your name Dean, you are literally a fallen angel, and with you - "
He looked at Sam, and Dean's hand on Sam's shoulder tightened as he leaned forward. Sam heard his eyes shift. Shurley stared at him for a full heartbeat. Two, three, all the way up to five. Then he swallowed and reached for his backpack, groping a little for it because he wasn't looking away from Dean.
"B-but I didn't know you'd be." He gestured to Sam's chair. "Which is stupid, I know, considering what happened, but I didn't know you were human, and. Yeah." He dug in his backpack. "I can wait 'til...whenever, I'll just give you…"
He'd pulled out a card, looked like he was about to hand it to Sam, looked at Dean again and opted to put it on the railing.
"Just gonna leave that there, and then I think maybe I should be on my way." Shurley shrugged his pack jerkily onto his shoulders. "Really looking forward to talking to you. Later, I mean. Eventually. Really wanna know how you two met, sure there's a story there, and a whole bunch of other stuff." He turned, went down the stairs, then paused and glanced over his shoulder. "So, the red-haired guy. What was - ?"
"Same as everything else here." Dean cut him off. "None of your damn business. Get lost before I start pulling things outta you."
Sam put a hand over Dean's, squeezing. "Sorry," he called to Shurley. "He is right, though. And you should leave."
"I'm going. See?" Shurley took a few steps away from the cabin. Once he reached the treeline, he stopped, yelled, "You were very hard to find! And I'm not going to write that story, I promise!"
He went then, quick. Sam wondered if they shouldn't have at least offered him water, but he'd seemed well-prepared. And he'd asked about Vaughn.
"I oughta teleport him out," Dean said after a minute.
"No point," Sam replied. "He already found the place."
Dean looked down at him, studying him for a second, then his eyes cleared back to green as he smirked. "You don't trust me not to kill him."
Sam just raised his eyebrows.
"I could do it now. Pop his skull just like - knch. A grape, even from here." Sam didn't even reply. Dean looked out into the forest again. "Whatever. I was in his head, I know where he lives if this winds up biting us in the ass." He paused. "Whole lot locked away up there, though. Weird dude."
"You'd mentioned that." Something Shurley had said, about thinking Sam wasn't human, had gotten stuck, the current of his thoughts failing to drag it loose. Especially because Dean sucking his teeth when he introduced himself had glommed on, too. "Speaking of weird stuff in people's heads. When you were in mine, did you...feel anything?"
Dean looked down at him again, and his eyes were back to black. "Like what?"
"I don't know. Just anything." Sam shook his head with forced nonchalance, even as he wondered to himself why the hell he even bothered when he'd known for the better part of a decade that Dean felt what he did. "Anything weird."
"What happened?" It was more of a statement than a question.
"Okay, first - " Sam twisted in his chair. "I know I should've told you already. I know. But this is one slip-up after months and months and years of me telling you everything and us trusting each other, so keep that in mind, but. At the Center, they were about to...to fucking kill a kid right in front of me, and I might've. I-I think I did it with my mind, I felt it and I can't imagine Moloch would've done it, but I knocked everybody back and broke some glass and gave myself a nosebleed, and." He paused for breath. "I don't know. It was just like it used to be, and. It scared me."
Dean just stared, first of all. Then he took a deep breath he didn't need and started, "Well, first of all, glad you know you should've fucking told me, Sam, 'cause at least we can get that lecture outta the way."
"So did you feel anything?" Sam pressed.
"No!" Dean threw a hand up. "I didn't even see the memory when I was in there! If I had actually felt something, you think I would've just kept it to myself these past few months and watched you sweat and wonder if the plates were gonna start rattling in the cabinet? Christ, we're pretty much married and it's like you don't know me at all."
"I'm sorry." Sam winced. "It's stupid, it's so stupid, but I just...first I got distracted by, y'know, everything, then I was kind of just working on getting better, and then I did remember it, but I guess I thought if I didn't bring it up, or think about it, maybe it'd just…"
"Go away?" Dean guessed. "You know I absolutely hate it when you make me be the guy who pushes to talk about stuff, Sam, but when, in the whole history of your life, has that ever actually worked for you?" Sam weakly raised a hand, let it flop back down. "Yeah, I thought so."
Sam sighed. "I'll make it up to you, I promise."
"Oh, no you won't," Dean said immediately, shaking his head. "That's how this whole thing got started in the first place. Tell you what: you've had a stressful few months, I'm just gonna write you a pass."
Smiling, Sam rested his head affectionately against Dean's arm. "At least it makes me feel better knowing you didn't feel anything." Dean went a second too long without responding. Sam looked up at him. "What?"
"I'm just saying, I didn't really feel anything the first time I was in you, either," Dean pointed out, shaking his head. "Y'know, before we got started on the Trials and you 'awakened.'"
Sam scowled at the air quotes Dean threw around the last word. "What, you really think that means anything?"
"Some of the stuff Moloch said, kinda made it sound like - "
"Moloch said all kinds of shit," Sam interrupted. It felt odd to be the one resisting, to have Dean pushing at something. "Do you want this?"
"No. God, no. Jeez." Dean dropped into the nearest chair, a low-slung rocker, and took hold of Sam's hand. He held it and his gaze as he talked. "But knowing that happened…"
"It was a hiccup," Sam said quietly. "One-time fluke. Years, and that's the first time anything like that's happened."
"And you're probably right," Dean agreed. "I hope you're right. But if you're not…"
The burning implication of it hung between them, weighing more than the sun. Sam swallowed with difficulty.
"If I'm not, we've got a while before it's an issue," he pointed out. "Moloch said lifetimes. I can't feel it, my god-power or whatever, not like I could back then, and you can't, so for all intents and purposes, I'm human. Aren't I?"
It came out sounding so much more desperate than he'd thought it would be. He hadn't known it would get at him like this, when he could go months without talking face-to-face with another human being.
"Yeah," Dean agreed, "you are. Which actually reminds me of something I've been wanting to talk to you about for a while now." He looked Sam briefly up and down. "Think you're up to it now. You remember what I told you, the first time we talked? After we blitzed Moloch?"
"Dean, I don't even remember the first time I woke up," Sam said honestly. Apparently, he'd been really, really desperate for banana pudding, despite hating both pudding and banana flavoring, and then he'd passed out again before anybody could actually get him any.
"Okay, then, the first actual conversation we had that wasn't just me talking at your hundred and one concussions."
Sam nodded. "I remember what you said," he agreed softly.
Staying, fighting, when you offered to leave and come back? That was the toughest thing I've ever done my whole life. Even tougher than letting you finish the Trials.
"I wanna explain it." Dean swung one leg over the other, cleared his throat. "The Trials. Man, you were dying from the inside out, one mouthful of blood at a time, and I was watching. You didn't look like you were gonna make it through the night, much less closing the Gates of Hell. I'd accepted I was gonna lose you one way or another. But...even though you burnt yourself halfway dead just saving me, you were still a Messiah, and Cas had said you might make it through. There was a chance."
Dean swallowed. Sam didn't say anything.
"But this time," Dean continued raggedly, "nothing like that. No safety net. Just you, smashed all to hell, and me, scotch-taping pieces back on when they fell off, and I knew, I knew it the whole time and I knew it so hard it almost hurt, that if things went south. If I couldn't carry you. If we didn't win." A snapping noise, and Sam realized Dean had just clenched his jaw so hard he broke a tooth. "It was gonna be you on the chopping block. Not your magic Jesus-powers. And honestly, Sam, I-I don't know how I knew all that and I still made the choice I did. If I had to - if I could do it over again, the Trials and that, I'd make the same choice for the Trials, but Moloch? Oh, fuck Moloch, I would've took you and ran."
"Really?" It slipped out of Sam before he could stop it, and Dean laughed, a noise that sounded like it took some skin with it on the way out.
"When Cas got there, he couldn't hardly do much more than plug the biggest holes, and of course I was dead weight by that point," he started. "It was a scoop-and-run, nearest hospital, I stayed in you 'til they got you on life support 'cause I thought maybe you were running off me still at that point, and then I dripped out on all your wires and tubes, crawled back to where Cas had grabbed my meat for me. And then we waited. Through nine-fucking-teen hours of surgery, and they said you were like a crunched-up jigsaw puzzle in there."
Sam had heard all this before, but just in bits and pieces, and a lot of it from doctors. Not all laid out at once in front of him in all its raw and bleeding glory.
"I almost threw every nurse who came to update us through the nearest wall, would've ripped somebody wide open if Cas hadn't been there for me, and then everybody else came eventually, and then we found out you were okay, you were stable, we could see you, and then you were in a goddamn coma, and then you woke up but you still weren't you, and me and Cas both could start healing you a little at a time at that point, and you came back, we got you outta the hospital and brought you home but it's still been just...all...epsom baths and physical therapy and the chair and yeah, you're healing nice and fast again for having been fucking pulped but Cas is also swinging through once a week and laying himself out cold pumping you full of as much Grace as he can possibly spare and then I can't even touch you for a few hours after, and - and - " Dean stopped, took a breath. "Christ, Sammy, I just. I can't do this again. Okay? None of us can."
Sam put his other hand on Dean's, squeezing with both of them.
"My dad's in his eighties, and your mom looked like she was gonna stroke out in the waiting room, and Cas doesn't have a pipeline to Heaven anymore so he can only do so much and I-I, god, Sam, I came this close to snapping, to killing - " Dean dragged his other hand up through his hair, and his eyes were black but so much shinier than usual, and as Sam realized he was crying, his own eyes burned.
There had been a sick ache right in the middle of his chest as Dean spoke, getting bigger and bigger, throbbing like an infection steadily hollowing him out. He hadn't known. It hadn't even occurred to him, the hurt he would have caused just lying unconscious in a hospital bed.
It made Shurley's "net good" seem so weak and pale in comparison. To have had to pay the price for it in his family's pain. In Dean's.
"Okay," he agreed softly, and pressed Dean's knuckles to his mouth, closing his eyes. "Okay."
"No more gods," Dean was saying. "No more saving the world. Let somebody else do it, okay?" Shaky telekinesis, teasing the elastic free and letting his hair tumble down around his ears. "Least for a little while."
"No. No. It looks like something big…" Sam took a deep breath. "We turn tail, run the other direction. We won't do this again. I promise, no matter what's on the line. Not again. Not when we're right down to the wire on sacrifices we can make." He halfway smiled at Dean, painful. "I don't wanna save the world if I hurt you again doing it. And that seems to be the only way I can make it happen."
They sat there for a long, long time, long enough for a sunset to just start to happen. Sam felt his promise settle into place, lock strong and sturdy in around them, and it felt a lot less like chains than like armor.
"D'you regret it?" Dean asked eventually, voice quiet.
"What happened with Moloch?" Sam turned to him, the reflexive "of course" crawling up his tongue.
"No." Dean pushed himself up, looking at him. "Closing the Gates."
Sam blinked. "W-why would I regret that?"
"'Cause when Upton Sinclair swung by earlier, reminded us of what's happening to all those priests and nuns right now," Dean told him, "you were disappointed."
Sam didn't say anything right away. Dean went on, "If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure Green was actually devout, so he probably would've gotten into Heaven anyway. Fucked-up system."
"No. No, it's…" Sam grimaced. "It's not just him. Or them. It's everybody like them, everybody who's really, genuinely, humanly evil. Hell was a…" Abomination seemed too gentle a word. "But it was - "
"The only thing that felt even a little bit like justice," Dean finished for Sam. "The only chance any of these people ever had of getting what they deserved."
"Exactly." Sam nodded.
"So. You regret closing the Gates."
Sam hesitated before he answered, spread his feelings out and looked very long and hard at them, and imagined he surprised both himself and Dean when he admitted, "No."
"Really?" Dean cocked his head.
"No - " Sam tried to explain himself. His own thoughts were wispy, half-formed, he could barely grab them. It was something he felt more than knew. "You. Kevin. Everybody who was ever damned because they did something minor-league, because they made a stupid deal or a selfless one, none of them deserved it." And honestly, having gotten a first-hand look not only at Hell but at the cosmic makeup of a demon, Sam wasn't sure that anybody deserved it. For anything. "Hell didn't function as a punishment for the bad stuff people do. It wasn't ever meant to. It amplified. It needed to be sealed away, and I don't think the fact terrible people aren't going to suffer for what they did means I shouldn't have made that happen. I don't…" He looked at Dean. "I don't wanna live my life not doing good things 'cause people that don't deserve it might benefit. That's not. I don't think that's the kinda person I wanna be.
"I mean - " Sam swallowed.. "Hunting, being a hunter. A good hunter. It's like that. It's not about punishing monsters, you can't think that way or you'll wind up dead or crazy. It's not about killing. You spend too much time cutting up one vampire, the rest of the nest eats the missing kids." He took a breath. "It's about saving, about preventing. About...about making things better for everybody. Not getting even."
Dean had put an elbow on the arm of his chair, chin in his hand, watching Sam as he spoke. He was quiet a few seconds, like he was making sure he was done, then stretched a slow smile across his face. "Gotta whole lotta nerve, Sammy. Talking like that when you know I can feel just how tip-some-tables, slit-some-throats mad you are about no punishments for bad people."
"I'm...human." It was all Sam could think to say, helplessly.
"You sure are." Dean straightened, making eye contact. Very seriously, he said, "You know. Green, all of them. Could find out real easy where they're being kept. Short out cameras, knock out guards. Bring our entire closet along." He tipped his head. "Just 'cause Hell ain't gonna hurt 'em for what they did doesn't mean no one can."
Sam looked back at him for a long, long time. There was more regret than he would've wanted to admit in the sigh he finally gave. "No."
"Yeah." Dean leaned forward, kissing Sam. "And that's you being human, too."
He stayed close, even after they broke, and Sam kept his eyes closed, head resting against Dean's. He spent a few minutes just breathing in the scent of him, searching for the sulfur that got harder to find by the day, before softly asking, "Where's Vaughn?"
"He went in to check on Clarence, sat down to wait us out, and relaxed soon as he realized there wasn't gonna be a fight," Dean answered promptly. "He's almost asleep. Don't blame him, Mr. Comatose in there's got a real tranquilizer effect. Just looks so comfy." Dean pulled back. "You wanna wake him up?"
"Nah, let him sleep." Sam exhaled. "He's partially nocturnal anyway. Missing out on a great sunset won't ruin his life."
"Yeah," Dean agreed, "shaping up to be a real nice one tonight. Must be a fire somewhere."
He rested his head on Sam's shoulder. They held each other's hands. They looked out at the sky and the trees and the mountains, until Dean asked, "Wanna go for a walk?"
Sam smiled. "You know I do."
He closed his eyes again, waiting for the feathery feeling of Dean smoking gently into him. He let him situate himself, smoke settling like steel lace along tender bones and brittle flesh, then opened his eyes, seeing all the dazzling layers of the world that Dean did. He rose, pushing himself out of the chair, and they stepped off the porch. Together.