Chapter 2 Six Weeks

Sam had hung around the motel for half a day, then had pulled on a pair of desert boots and had clomped out the door, waving cheerfully and saying he'd be back in five days.

Dean stared at the beer in his hand morosely. Need time to think about life, his brother had said. And you need to have some fun.

He looked around the club, splashy red and blue and gold lights falling over smooth curves and sparkling outfits, the music a little bit too loud, the lights a little bit too bright and the girls gyrating and twisting on the raised stage as uninspiring as the sight of the Strip in the merciless, hard light of the day. Oh, yeah. Fun.

They were all beautiful. Vegas only did knockouts, at least for public performances. Endlessly long legs, toned and smooth because they all had dancing jobs on one chorus or another in the casino shows. Full, perfectly-shaped breasts that bounced and jiggled and swayed with each turn and dip. Flat stomachs and slender waists and curving hips, mostly oiled and glittered and on display.

"You want another?"

He looked at the waitress standing beside the table and nodded, tossing back the last half-inch in the bottle and handing it to her. Why not?

Starting in the MGM, he'd played for a couple of hours, his heart not in it. The last time they'd been here, it'd been a high, all the people, the dreams and excitement that permeated the air along with the blue clouds of cigarette smoke, it had all filled him with a reckless feeling of being young, being…someone else. Free drinks, great food, pretty girls and so much din that thinking was near impossible. This time, it was too much. He didn't see excitement, he saw desperation, people who wanted more than they'd ever get, people who were looking for something they could never have. Like him.

"You wanna talk about it?"

The waitress was back, setting the fresh drink onto the table at his elbow. She was tall, platinum-blonde, straight hair cut just above her shoulders. Big, blue eyes and pale, pink lips. She wore a white tank top cut low and cropped and jeans that clung to her hips in defiance of the law of gravity.

"Talk about what?" he asked, picking up the beer to hide the fact that he really wished she'd put it down and left without a word.

"Whatever it is that has you in a strip club at six o'clock on a weekday, not looking at the girls and staring into space instead," she said, leaning on the table. "I hear talking about it helps."

You need to have fun, Sam said in his head. He agreed. He did. Just…this wasn't the kind of fun he could deal with right now.

"Some other time," he said, reaching with relief into his coat pocket as his phone beeped insistently. He looked at the message, peripherally aware of her leaving, chin lifted to an angle that left him in no doubt that she thought he was an ungrateful asshole.

10:23pm

From: Sammy

348 Twain Ave

WEAR FED SUIT!

What the hell…?

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Dean stared at the bright neon sign, brow creased up perplexedly. Surrounded by glowing red love-hearts, it read, 'A Little White Chapel'. Under that there was something about Joan Collins and Michael Jordan but he couldn't take that in. Under that was a curling banner announcing a twenty-four hour drive-up wedding window.

The hell was Sammy doing here, he wondered as he walked past the sign toward the doors. Demons? Haunting? Shapeshifter? Vampire? None of them seemed to fit the gaudiness of the Vegas quickie wedding establishment.

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. The hall was tiled in black and white squares and he walked along it cautiously, checking for shadows, for movement, for flickering lights. At the other end, a pair of cream and gilt double doors were closed and he drew the automatic from his suit coat, pulling back the slide and hearing the reassuring click as a round loaded.

The entire building seemed completely silent and even the soft scrape of his shoes sounded inordinately loud in that waiting quiet. He was no closer to figuring out what Sam had found here, and the plethora of possibilities was making his nerves crawl. Reaching out to the handles, his fingers had scarcely touched the metal when both flew open and he found himself staring at his brother, the muscles of his trigger finger thrumming with tension as he stopped himself from firing, Sam's expression a strange mix of astonishment and impatience.

"Good, you're here." Sam reached out and pushed the barrel of the automatic down, shaking his head. "It's okay, you won't need that. Come on."

More than slightly mystified, Dean uncocked the gun and thumbed on the safety, returning it to his inside pocket as he followed Sam through the chapel. By the organ, a man and woman sat side by side, both reading. Sam stopped by a small table and picked up a pink carnation.

"I thought you were, uh, out, you know," Dean said, looking around the room. "Becoming one with the land and that crap?"

"Come here."

He looked down as Sam reached out and grabbed the lapel of his coat, pinning the flower to it.

"What's this?"

"Um…apparently pink is for loyalty," Sam said distractedly as he took a step back and looked at the effect. "There."

"What's going on?" Dean asked, glancing down at the froth of pink petals on his chest and back at his brother. "Siren? What is it?"

"No," Sam said. "No, no, nothing like that." He raised his gaze and met Dean's eyes. "All right…so it's a little sudden, but life is short. And I'll keep this shorter," he added, looking at his watch.

Dean frowned as Sam pulled in a breath.

"I'm in love. And I'm getting married."

"Lauren's here?" Dean asked, looking around again.

"No," Sam said, tucking his chin down to his chest. "Uh, it's not Lauren."

"What?"

"Aren't you going to say anything better than that?" Sam asked. "Like, uh, 'congratulations' for starters?"

"What?!" Dean repeated, staring at him. "Sam, what about –"

The woman got up from her chair and went to sit at the organ, cracking her knuckles. Sam turned away and looked at the doors as the opening bars of Wagner's Bridal Chorus filled the room.

"Sam!"

"Not now," Sam said, his attention locked on the open doors and the hallway beyond them. Turning, Dean saw a woman walking down the hall, most of her wedding dress, bouquet and face hidden beneath a thick veil of tulle.

"Who the hell is that?" Dean whispered to his brother. As she came closer he realised it wasn't just the perspective of the hallway. She was short. Really quite short.

She stopped in front of Sam and he leaned forward, lifting the layers of veil over her head.

Dean felt his mouth drop open as the woman turned to look at him with a wide smile.

"Becky?"

"Dean, I'm so glad you're here," Becky Rosen gushed as she slipped her arm through Sam's, both turning to face the celebrant.

"Sam!" he hissed.

"In a minute," Sam said, looking down adoringly into Becky's upturned face. "This is forever."

Dean flinched back involuntarily. What the hell was going on? What the HELL was he going to tell Lauren…and Bobby? HOW THE HELL had his brother gotten conned when he'd only left him alone for five days?

The service was short and to the point and Dean missed most of it, his brain feverishly trying to come up with some rational reason for what he was unwillingly witnessing. He'd wanted Sam to find someone, fall in love, get married, have a family…and up till one minute ago, he'd thought his brother had. The intelligent, beautiful and willowy nephilim had seemed to him to be Sam's ideal partner, and he would have sworn on a stack of Bibles that his brother had been going deep.

"You may now kiss the bride," the celebrant said loudly, the organ bursting in on top of the last word in a joyous flourish of notes. Dean watched as Sam bent nearly double to kiss Becky, turning away at the sight.

When they broke apart, he struggled for something to say that would get him any kind of answer at all. "Shouldn't she ask for my permission or something?"

Sam frowned. "Y-you want her to ask for my hand?"

"How in the-how did this happen?" Dean asked, trying to flush that image down deep.

"Short version?" Sam said, his arm curling around Becky. Dean could see that to most it would look more like a head-lock than an embrace. "We-we-we met. We ate and – and talked and fell in love. And, you know, here we are."

Shaking his head slightly, Dean said, "Yeah, I-I guess I'm all caught up."

"Dean, look, it's simple. If- if something good's happening, I-I got to jump on it – now, today, uh, period," Sam told him, the faint stutter coming and going as excitement filled his face and voice.

Dean resisted the impulse to roll his eyes. "Okay. Fine." He looked at Becky. "No offence, but did you make sure she's even really –"

"Salt, holy water, everything. See?" she said firmly, pushing aside the tulle veil to hold her arm up. A thin cut had scabbed over. "Not a monster. Just the right girl for your brother."

The wince was harder to hide. "Ah."

Becky nodded enthusiastically. "That's it."

The celebrant came up behind them, clearing his throat discreetly. "The bill."

Becky reached for it. "I got it. You two do your brother thing."

Dean watched her walk out of earshot and rounded back on Sam. "Really?! Superfan ninety-nine?!" He rubbed a hand over his face. "Christ, Sam, what about Lauren?"

"Dean, look," Sam said earnestly. "Honest to God, I-I had the exact same opinion of her as you do. But when we got past the whole book thing, I found out t-that she's great and I was the dick." He looked at Becky. "We have more in common than I do with Lauren…I don't know…I just look at her and I don't want to be apart from her for even a minute. And she's all human."

Dumbfounded, Dean stared at him. He tried to regroup his thoughts. "Yeah, you know, speaking of the whole, uh, book thing...Becky randomly shows up during Vegas week?"

"Yeah," Sam sighed, his expression dreamily fatuous. "Amazing, huh?"

"Oh, yeah," Dean agreed sardonically.

"Okay, um, what are you trying to say?" Sam looked at him, his forehead beginning to wrinkle up.

"I'm saying maybe she knew you were gonna be here. Maybe, uh…um…Chuck wrote about it," Dean pointed out reasonably. They hadn't read all the books, the sense of living their lives twice too disorienting. But Chuck had seen pretty much everything there was to see, including the one-time, regular-as-clockwork annual vacation.

"Dean, you're paranoid," Sam said flatly.

"And you're in love?!" Dean retorted. "With her, having somehow forgotten that you were in love with Lauren. Sam, it's been five days, man!"

Sam's attention sharpened on him. "You know what, Dean? You know what? Um, how about this? Becky and I are gonna go up to her place in Delaware," he said, annoyance leaking out as he looked at his brother. "Um, why don't you try and wrap your dome around this, get a little supportive, then give us a call?"

He slapped him on the shoulder and walked over to Becky, offering her his arm and not looking back as they walked out of the chapel.

This-this-this whatever it was, was not happening, he thought, following more slowly. He pulled out his phone as he exited the building and walked back to the car, hitting the speed dial button then cancelling the call before it could ring. Bobby was hunting a nest in Oregon. What if Lauren found out? What the fuck was he going to tell her about this?

Nothing, he decided. What she didn't know wouldn't hurt her, and he'd figure this out and get his brother back to normal ASAP.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Vegas to Delaware was a three day drive. Of course, Sam and Becky had just taken her rental to the airport and gotten on a plane. He'd watched the goddamned thing take off and turned sourly for the parking lot.

And Lauren called when he just crossing into Utah.

"Hey."

"Hi Dean, is Sam with you?" Lauren asked, her voice robbed of its usual warmth over the staticky line. "He said you guys were going to be together after Lily Dale? I can't get through on his phone."

"Ah," he hedged, looking at the empty passenger seat of the Impala as if it might give him an answer. "Uh, yeah, he's here, but we had…um…we had a big night and he's sleeping it off. I'll get him to call you when he's up, okay?"

"Dean, I just –"

"Whoa, gotta go, Lauren, big fender-bender ahead – cops, ambulance," Dean said, his face screwing up with the effort of the lie. "Uh, I'll call you later."

"But –"

He hit the end call button and tossed the phone on the console, eyes narrowed as he stared at the empty road ahead of him. Goddammit, how'd he up end up in this position?

Throwing a fast glance back at the phone, he picked it up and turned it off. It would buy him a bit of time, he thought. Time to come up with a decent lie that he could hold together until he worked out what the hell was going on.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

By the time he reached Hays, he admitted to himself he was done. A blue and gold neon sign blinked invitingly against the darkness at him and he hit the off ramp without a second thought, turning into the motel's drive and stopping at the office all by rote.

The room was a large single, with a glaring brown, orange and lime-green colour scheme and he turned off the overhead light hastily as the colours were seared into his brain.

He thought he was too tired to do anything but pull off his boots and fall onto the bed, turning off the lamp without looking, but after five minutes lying on the bed in the black and grey shadows of the room, he discovered that his brain wasn't going to turn off that easy, no matter how tired he felt, and the second he acknowledged that, his stomach started to grumble about the lack of food it'd had through the course of the day.

Turning the light back on, he looked at his watch. He'd left Vegas at two in the morning, a couple of hours behind Becky and Sam. It was seven now, earlier than he'd thought. Sitting up, he looked at the scattering of menus that covered the nightstand and grabbed the one for a local pizza place.

Phoning in the order took three minutes. Going back out to the car to retrieve the six-pack of warm beers from the back seat took another five. He put the beer into the fridge and looked at the bathroom. A shower might take long enough for both pizza to arrive and beverage to cool to a reasonable drinking temperature, he decided.

His clothes fell in a heap on the floor and he left the door open. For a change, the shower was hot and had plenty of water pressure, and he stood there under it, making an occasional swipe with the soap as the heat soaked into him and the hard spray gave a sort of a massage up and down his back. It was almost fifteen minutes later that the hot began to get less hot and he turned off the taps reluctantly, stepping out and grabbing both towels provided.

The pizza arrived as he pulled a clean tee shirt over his head, and the smells from it filled the room immediately, more stomach gurgles and rumbles reminding him needlessly that he was starving, felt more or less human again, and still had to figure out what had happened to Sam.

He ran through his memories of watching his brother with Lauren as he pulled off the slices and chewed and swallowed. There was no way that Sam wasn't head over heels, he thought. His brother didn't wear his heart on his sleeve by any means, but he wasn't careful about his expressions when he thought no one was watching and the two of them sat closer together than friends would…they listened to each other…they disappeared for hours at a time…

He'd noticed a lot but he knew he'd missed a lot as well. He'd been watching someone else, when she wasn't aware of it. He didn't know how she'd gone from being a pain-in-the-ass tag-along who knew too much about him to being…something else, but he knew the exact moment it'd happened. The back room of that bar in Oregon, listening to Eve's hybrid monsters searching for them. Pressed close together and he'd looked down at her when they'd gone and met her eyes, and she wasn't Dorothy any more.

Putting the slice down, he got up and went to the fridge, retrieving a now-tepid but at least not warm, beer and knocking the top off.

He'd done his best to convince himself that it'd been a physical attraction and that was it. Done his best to point out to himself all the things that had annoyed him about her, starting with the fact that despite giving them a blue print for the future, things went wrong and it wasn't the advantage that he'd thought it'd be. He'd reminded himself that Sam still had the feelings of being married to her and that she seemed to pretty comfortable with his brother and that even though he'd known, in that long, drawn-out moment, that what he'd felt had been reciprocated all the way, it was just a physical thing.

Tipping his head back, he swallowed another mouthful of beer and looked at the remains of the pizza on the table.

When he'd gone to get Lisa and Ben, he'd been sure that he was past it. Until he'd put his arms around her to get her aiming the damned gun properly, and it'd all come back, roaring back, with the smell and the feel of her hair and her skin filling his senses as he'd sighted along the gun barrel, his cheek against hers and her finger under his on the trigger. Lisa had seen it, straight away it seemed. The arguments they'd had while she and Ben had been in Bobby's house had all stemmed from that.

It took him longer to admit that Terry was easy to talk to. In some backward-assed kind of way, maybe because she already knew most of his past, he'd been able to trust that she wouldn't use what she'd seen against him, wouldn't throw what he said back at him. He wasn't sure about that but it'd felt…like a conviction at the time. A truth. He'd been just about comatose with whiskey the night after he and Sam had gotten back from making sure that Ben was going to live, at the hospital. He had the memory of her sitting there, beside him, listening to him. And he remembered that he'd wanted her there. That he hadn't wanted to be alone with all his guilt and his load of fucking misery.

The bottle was empty and he set it back on the table. None of that mattered now, did it? Gone was gone. The second wind from the food and shower was winding down, and a look at his watch showed it was past nine.

He opened the laptop and stared at the search screen, then started typing. Had to be a spell, he thought. The numbers of hits that were returned were staggering and he started to refine the criteria, bit by bit, reading through the promising-looking results. Had to be something easy to slip his brother. Something powerful. Powerful enough to override Sam's existing feelings.

By midnight, the last dregs of his little remaining energy had gone. He closed the computer and walked to the bed, pulling off his jeans and dragging the covers back this time. There were some spells that could do what he thought had been done to Sam, he'd found. They were top-shelf magic and he couldn't begin to imagine Becky being able to access them, or pull them off. He wondered if she knew what was going on or if someone else was pulling the strings here.

Behind his closed eyelids, images whirled and spun and settled onto one. It'd been a moment that he'd saved and hoarded and it hurt to look at but he couldn't help it. Merciful sleep drew him down into its undertow in moments and he slept, the image vanishing back into his subconscious, too tired for any kind of dreams, for once.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Four messages flashed accusingly on Dean's phone as he pulled onto Becky's street and peered out the window at the building numbers. Rising in volume, invective and incredulity, Lauren's voice had cracked on the last one. He felt like a total douche not responding to any of them, but he liked the alternative even less. Trying to explain this was going to be a nightmare he'd just as soon leave for a future date.

The apartment block appeared to his left and he pulled into a vacant slot along the kerb, turning off the engine and sitting there for a minute. On the passenger side of the long bench seat, a large box was festively decorated with a bright, fire-engine red bow and ribbon. Beneath that finery, the box claimed to hold a waffle iron. If they didn't like waffles, Dean thought nervously, Sam could use it as a weapon. Thing weighed a ton.

He couldn't buy Becky being a witch. He'd met a few dumb ones in his time, but they'd had help. The memory of the little coven stopped him as he opened the door and reached back for the box. She might not be at the top of the pile, but he didn't think she was dumb enough to have made a deal for that power. She was, after all, Chuck's Number One fan. She'd read the books.

He walked up the path and followed the signs to apartment seven, pressing the buzzer.

Sam opened the door and looked at him warily.

"Me being supportive," he said, mustering all the sincerity he could. "Congratulations to you and the missus."

"Thanks," Sam said, letting go of the door as Dean held out the box to him. His forehead creased up at the weight of it.

"It's a waffle iron," Dean said, unnecessarily since the box was covered in pictures and descriptions of it. "Non-stick. Yeah, you just, uh..."

He frowned at the pictures on the side of the box he could see…two handles, a dial, a cable. He couldn't quite imagine how it made the waffles, but there'd be instructions in the damned box, surely?

"I actually don't know how to use it. Are we good?" he said, giving up on the idea of explaining it.

Sam smiled and shrugged, stepping back to let him past. The apartment was small and vibrantly painted, a different eye-searing shade for each small room, the ceilings and trim all painted white, giving the impression of children's blocks, Dean thought. Or a Rubik cube. He squinted unconsciously at the Jamaican lime walls of the living room.

"Good, 'cause I'm sniffing a case in this town. The score is...guy wins Powerball, gets squished by a truck. Second guy went from the bench to the majors. Oh, and one week later, his face was the catcher's mitt, huh?"

"Our first thought was crossroads demons, but there's that ten-year time frame on collecting souls," Becky called out from the bedroom.

Dean looked around. Sam walked past him, pushing a partly open framed glass door aside to reveal another room, this one painted in something that wasn't quite cranberry. On the far wall, a map, several photographs and news clippings had been stuck. In front of them, Becky stood, one hand on her hip, brows draw together.

"Then there's cursed object, like in 'Bad Day at Black Rock', but we haven't been able to connect the vics yet," she added, shaking her head slightly.

"You're working this case...together?" Dean asked, looking from her to his brother.

"Yeah. I know, right?" Sam turned and grinned. "I mean, I guess all those Chuck Shurley books paid off."

Enough was enough. The insanity had to stop somewhere. Dean looked at Becky. "All right, listen, cookie, I don't know what kind of mojo you're working, but, believe me, I will find out."

Sam frowned at him. "Dean, that's...my wife you're talking to."

"You're not even acting like yourself, Sam!" Dean protested, knowing from the expression on Sam's face that it was a futile argument. Whatever the spell was, it had him all the way.

"How am I not?" Sam looked at him, his voice dropping as he crossed his arms defiantly over his chest.

"You married Becky Rosen!"

Becky looked at him, her mouth dropping open. "What are you saying? I'm a witch? Or maybe I'm a siren?" she asked him bitterly, taking a step closer to Sam. "Ever occur to you we're just – I don't know – happy?"

"Come on, Sam!" Dean turned back to Sam. "Guy wins the lotto, guy hits the bigs. All right, obviously, uh, people's dreams are coming true in this town. Don't you think this is a little bit of a coincidence?"

"You know what, Dean? What Becky and I have is real. And if you can't accept that, that's your problem, not ours," Sam said calmly, his eyes cold.

"Or maybe she's part of it. Because, for whatever reason, you're her dream," Dean said, trying to ignore the slight brain bulge of seeing them side by side. The top of her head didn't make it to his shoulder. "If you really do care about her, I'd be worried. Because people who do get their little fantasies or whatever seem to end up dead pretty quick."

Sam didn't seem to be hearing him.

"You know, I went after her, Dean. Maybe that's what's bugging you – that I'm moving on with my life. I mean, you took care of me, and that's great. But I don't need you anymore," his brother said, irrelevantly so far as Dean could see. "You lost Terry, Dean, and I'm sorry about that, but I'm not giving up on my chance of happiness to keep you company because you couldn't hold onto yours."

He hadn't expected that – at all. Becky's eyes had widened at Sam's words, he could see her curiosity practically jump out and the thought of her knowing, talking to Sam about it, made his stomach turn over.

"That's not what this is," he said, keeping his gaze on his brother. "And you know that."

"I told you, Dean," Sam said carefully. "And I don't care if you believe me or not, but I'm happy – right here, right now. That's not going to change."

"You even remember Lauren, Sam?" he asked. "Or did the spell she gave you wipe all that out too?"

He pulled out his phone, and played the first message. Sam's eyes narrowed at the sound of the nephilim's voice and he winced slightly, as if at a sudden headache.

Dean, come on, please call me back. I'm worried about Sam.

He looked at Becky. "That's who he's supposed to be with, not you. That's who he was in love with."

She kept her gaze on the floor and Sam rubbed unconsciously at his temple, as he glanced at her and back to the phone Dean held out.

"That was then, Dean," he said. "It all changed when I saw Becky again."

Dean shook his head and turned around. "Yeah, I bet."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Sam had always known where to hit to hurt the most. Maybe it was just the dynamic of siblings, he thought tiredly. He knew his brother's vulnerable places as well, but he couldn't bring himself to use that information, to create the kind of hurt that he'd spent most of his life trying to keep away from his little brother. Younger siblings didn't seem to have that same protective streak.

Cas said that Terry had asked to go home. He still couldn't quite make himself believe that. At the same time, he was telling himself that he was glad she'd gone. That she'd be safe in her magic-less world and Crowley would never find her there. It was harder to lie to himself than to anyone else.

He'd watched her take the dream root and slip into his brother's mind to keep Sam from imploding while he and Bobby had left to deal with Cas. He'd seen her go through every scrap of information she had about their world, about their lives, to try to give them an advantage. He'd felt the changes in his brother, had later found out that she'd somehow circumvented Sam falling into a pit of hallucinations by helping him talk out what he'd been through.

In the King of Hell's abandoned factory hideout, it'd taken pretty much every bit of self-control he'd had to not show how he'd felt when he'd seen her strung up from the ceiling like a side of beef, blood and bruising everywhere he'd looked. And he admitted to himself, when she'd tried to apologise for her mistake and had broken down in his arms, whatever hope he'd had of ignoring his feelings had died right there. He hadn't been sure that she wasn't in love with his brother. That'd been the only thing that had let him keep her at arm's length after that.

He looked around the cheap motel room, this one thankfully plain and neutral, and hauled in a deep breath, then another, forcing his memories and everything that came with them back down in the vault again.

Dumping his bags on the floor, he pulled out his phone and called Bobby. He needed some backup on this.

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

Three days later.

"My first demon case," Garth Fitzgerald III said proudly. "Man, I can't believe it!"

Dean looked at Sam. "Hopefully, your last." He looked back at the skinny man. "Well, buddy, I got to say, man – you, uh... you don't suck."

"Thank you. That's the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me," Garth said seriously. "Well..."

He stepped forward before Dean could move and wrapped his arms around him. Ignoring his brother's snort, Dean patted him awkwardly on the back, trying not to gag at the sickly-sweet aftershave the man used lavishly.

"Oh. Yeah. All right, that's – uh – yeah, thank you."

Letting go, Garth waved at them and about-faced to return to his car.

"Yeah, you, uh, take care," Dean said, sighing with relief as the car started up and reversed away. He looked at his brother. "Wow."

"Aww, you made a fwiend." Sam grinned at him and Dean rolled his eyes.

"Uh-uh," he told him warningly. The guy was okay. Weird. But okay. It hadn't mattered that much in the end. He'd asked Bobby for help because he'd wanted someone around to talk to and he hadn't been able to do it with Garth any more than he could've with the old hunter or his brother. He wasn't sure if that was a trust issue or if, down deep, he thought that talking about it would make everything feel worse.

"Look, man, uh... When I was all dosed up, I-I said some crap," Sam said, sobering as he turned to face him.

Another can of worms he didn't especially want to open. Forcing a smile, he said. "Oh, you mean, she – she wasn't your soulmate?"

"Shut up," Sam said with a grimace. "I mean, I do need you watching my back. Obviously."

"Yeah, when, uh, crazy groupies attack," Dean quipped, straight-faced.

"You know what I mean." He drew in a breath. "And I'm sorry what I said about Terry. You have to know I didn't mean that."

Looking away, Dean said, "Maybe you were right."

"No," Sam disagreed immediately, as if he'd expecting that response. "No, I really wasn't."

"You think Crowley's gunna ice that sonofabitch?" Dean asked him, leaning back against the trunk as he crossed his arms over his chest.

Sam recognised the diversion. "I hope so."

"You know, Lauren left about ten messages over the last week and a half –"

"What did you tell her?" Sam interrupted, his face suddenly paling.

"Didn't answer them," Dean said with a shrug.

"What?!"

Snorting, Dean said, "What was I supposed to tell her? You got married…to Becky?"

"Dude…crap…"

"And I'm thinking that you were right about a few things, Sammy," Dean continued, walking around the car. "It's stupid to think that you need me around all the time. You're a grown-up. You can deal with your own messes."

"Right," Sam said distractedly.

"You're a hike-in-the-desert, hippie-douche grown-up," Dean added, making a face at him.

"Dude, I was camping," Sam said, focussing on him again. "You camp," he pointed out.

"Yeah, whatever. Hippie."

He opened the driver's door as Sam opened the passenger door.

"You know what, though? Seriously?" Sam said to him over the roof of the Impala. "It might be nice."

"What?"

"I mean, you basically have been looking out for me your whole life," Sam explained, leaning on the car. "Now you finally get to take care of yourself. About time, huh?"

His brother's words bit down into a part of him he'd been trying not to look at. Six weeks ago, it would've been different. All of it different. He'd been trying to disentangle the threads of responsibility and memory and guilt, trying to figure who the hell he was under the layers of his father and his years of taking care of his brother, through the cracks of forty years in Hell and everything he hadn't faced up to in the last six years.

Six weeks ago, he'd wanted to free of the past. Now…that didn't matter.

"Yeah."

~o-o-o-0-o-o-o~

AN: I will uploading this story quite fast. Crossing Wires is underway but I hope you're enjoying this little 'companion piece' as well.