Work Text:
“Dean!” In a flurry of black hoodie - the one they both seem to wear when someone is hurt or worse, Sam wraps himself around Dean’s form where he stands frozen in place, heart racing. He’s pressed so tightly against his brother’s chest that for a split second he feels like his heart is in Sam’s rib cage, beating right up against Sam’s own heart. Dean is dizzy with gratitude, still a bit shellshocked himself over being alive and back in the bunker he called home.
Sam’s fingers dig into his back, grasping, holding on desperately and Dean hides his face in his brother’s shoulder. He squeezes his eyes shut against the pain and pure relief that’s coming off his little brother in waves and he wants to stay here, in this warm embrace, forever.
He thought he had said goodbye, thought he had made peace with it as he turned his body into the ultimate bomb in order to save the world, but mostly to save Sam.
“I’m here, I’m okay…” Dean whispers against Sam’s collarbone. “I’m—“
He feels Sam’s entire body flinch a fraction of a second before he stills and gasps in shock at what he must now have spotted behind Dean, and all Dean can think is no no no, not yet… but it’s too late. For a moment he had allowed himself to lose himself in Sam’s warm body and he had nearly forgotten the passenger he’d brought with him. Amara’s gift… 'what he needed most'.
He hears Jess behind him, whispering Sam’s name with so much love and reverence and he feels like a selfish asshole for having even hugged Sam first. He was selfish enough the day he came and took Sam with him so with his heart screaming in protest in his chest he slips out of Sam’s hold. Dean shudders at how easy it is, Sam having gone lax and shocked, no longer clinging to his big brother.
“Jess.”
Dean watches Sam take her in, his hands trembling and his chest heaving with stuttering, shocked breaths. Dean is suddenly cold with Sam’s gaze and full attention having left him and he subconsciously wraps his arms around himself, bracing for what’s to come, holding all the pieces of himself together.
“It… it can’t… how—“
Sam is clearly torn between disbelief and pure amazement. Dean watches the young blonde smile at Sam, her gaze warm and grateful and the sound of Sammy’s delighted laugh as he takes her in hits Dean like grenade shrapnel, like a million tiny cuts. They look good together, Sam and Jess… and Dean stands back, watching them float towards each other — the short distance quickly covered between them as they slot back together like two magnets.
Jessica is laughing too now, as she allows her own trembling hands to reach for Dean’s brother. He’s older, built in a way he wasn’t quite yet back when she last saw him but still him. Still dimpled and warm and the best person Dean knows. Jess caresses Sam’s stubbly cheek, face soft and open as she drinks him in.
“It’s you…” she whispers and Dean watches as pure happiness lights up Sam’s face and Sam nods, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers. She instinctively stands on her tip toes and Dean is hit with the ridiculous but urgent thought that she is everything Dean isn’t. Can’t be.
She’s all delicate, cute grace where he’s rough, big and brash. She’s innocent and pure where he’s tainted and damaged.
She’s everything he’s not, and everything Sam once sacrificed his family and the life he knew for. She is what he picked when he didn’t pick Dean, all those years ago.
She’s perfect and normal and everything Sam chose for himself, everything someone like Sam deserves. The raw and angry voice in the back of his mind that Dean has managed to keep quiet for a while pipes up now, screaming at him that Dean and hunting was what Sam was stuck with, not what he wanted and Dean slips away into the shadows of the bunker before he can witness the full reunion.
Doesn’t think he can do it. He’s not strong enough to watch Sam pick a different life again.
—-
He paces the small space of his room. The room he had picked and filled with his things. He’s a caged animal and floating, lost and unanchored on a stormy sea of change, of uncertainty.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, he thinks, his feet hitting the cool floor, before he turns and charges the few steps he has room for before he has to turn again. His room is dark, but light filters in through the bottom of the shut door and he tears his gaze away, can’t look. It’s the outside world pressing in, reminding him of what’s beyond the cramped space of his room; Sam and Jess. Catching up. Grateful and amazed at their second chance.
Dean is grateful too - for his brother. For Sam who is good and pure and deserves this. This and more.
Dean paces, feels his own heartbeat in his fingertips and in his tongue. Paces and forces himself to breathe and feels adrenaline claw at the inside of his veins.
The things he’s filled his room with are mocking him now, the familiar walls making him pull at the all of a sudden too restrictive neck of his t-shirt, his breath shortening with the sense of claustrophobia. He can’t breathe and he was so stupid to think they could settle down, him and Sam. He was a fool for not realising that staying put doesn’t mean safety, it means becoming an easy target.
Relaxing means losing control.
Dean Winchester doesn’t get to keep things. He doesn’t get to stay still.
He paces and he hides and he keeps the light out.
—-
He doesn’t know how much later it is that he drives towards Lebanon, fingers drumming restlessly against the wheel of the Impala but it’s dark outside now. He had practiced his excuse to leave in his head, for when Sam would have stopped him and asked him where he’s going. Again and again until he was sure he could make himself sound normal and casual about going out to get groceries for dinner - he’d even practiced a little teasing joke, something along the lines of ‘can’t let you cook, little brother, don’t want to poison the poor girl on her first day back’ but Sam had been nowhere to be found by the time Dean had hyped himself up enough to leave his room and he’s not called to ask where Dean went so it doesn’t matter now.
Sam’s obviously preoccupied, Dean gets that. He’s probably not thinking about dinner— it’s a pretty insignificant detail. He’s not thinking about Dean either. Sam had obviously been relieved to see him alive, too, but Dean has died and come back enough times to not really make it sensational. Too many times, Dean thinks darkly. Dean coming back from the dead is as sure as the sun rising or Friday coming after Thursday.
Jess however is… pure miracle. She was innocently ripped from Sam and the life they had planned together. She was Sam’s hope for a better future.
The cruel voice, the one that usually sounds like himself, sometimes like Dad, is back and it’s loud and Dean feels his temples throb with a headache as he tries to push it back, tries to ignore it. But Dean was what Sam was left with when the universe cruelly crushed the hope that Jessica represented. Dean knows that, can’t ignore it now.
The guilt that he’s carried all his life in some form (for years it was shaped like his mother, the beautiful warm woman he remembers from his short childhood that he couldn’t save or give Sam), has always been about all the ways in which he couldn’t hold his family together. When they found the bunker he managed to make it a home for himself and Sam and the soul crushing guilt over not having a stable, safe home for Sammy had been tamed a bit but Jess is back now and it’s all creeping back in.
The family that had shrunk down to just him and Sam was now once again under attack, and Dean can’t even try to fight it because Sam deserves an out. Dean knows there is nothing out there for him, but this gift from Amara is Sam’s shot at living long and well and Dean wants that for Sam. He desperately does, no matter how much his chest tightens at the thought of where that leaves him and no matter how much his stomach twists with panic.
Jess represents what Sam can have outside of the bunker, in a real neighbourhood, with a real job and a family of his own. Dean knows deep down that he’s just played house with Sam in the bunker and his time has run out.
He winces against the throbbing pain in his head, clings to the steering wheel as he feels the car’s grip slip when he pushes Baby too tight around the next corner. The street lights are gone, the gravel road he’s now traveling on abandoned and dark, the light from the headlights eaten up by the pressing darkness. Fuck.
He tries to regain focus, tries to pull himself back to where he is and where he’s going but Dean feels the pure panic he’s tried to keep under wraps curl and coil deep inside his gut. It grows in the pit of his stomach like a hard knot of self hatred. The way he’s allowed himself to relax and settle into their strange routine… The guilt over the relief he’s felt over Sam staying when Dean’s given him so many reasons to leave over the years is suddenly sharp and vicious, all consuming.
So many mistakes, so many times he’s hurt Sam. All the times he’s found twisted and selfish comfort in Sam being there, with him. But did he give Sam the chance to leave? Did Sam stay out of obligation? Did he ever want to or did he just think he had some sort of responsibility towards his fuck up of a big brother?
Dean suddenly sees every eye roll, hears every resigned sigh and has to will away the bile that rises in the back of his throat. Was Sam ever happy, or… Dean grimaces, was he content? Or did he just feel trapped with Dean?
He’s lost track of where he’s driving to, can’t seem to bring himself to stop or park anywhere. Dean grips the steering wheel tighter, feels the gas pedal give under his foot as he accelerates. If he stops he’s going to explode. He’s going to shake apart. He… Dean draws in a shaky breath, staring ahead into the darkness of the road he’s speeding down.
He knows he can’t outrun the truth that this new development represents. He will eventually have to face the fact that Sam’s life has just begun again with the arrival of the love of his life, and Dean’s world has ended.
He keeps driving until the night sky turns grey and then pink with fragile morning light and Dean can’t breathe.
—-
When he sneaks back into the bunker that morning he bumps into an apologetic looking Jessica in the library. She hesitates as she takes a small step towards him and Dean finds himself backing up on instinct before he catches himself and silently curses his awkwardness.
It’s just Jess. It’s the woman Sam was going to marry.
He clears his throat, doesn’t know what to do with his hands so shoves them into his pockets.
“You… you have everything you need?”
She shoots him a wobbly smile, nodding. She’s wearing a pair of Dean’s old sweatpants, rolled up at the ankles, and one of his old flannels.
“I– Sam said…” she looks down at herself and then nervously at Dean again. “I told Sam we should have asked…”
“Nah,” Dean smiles and he means it. “It’s okay. If you think you are swimming in my stuff, you would have drowned in his stuff. It’s fine.”
“Thank you.”
She smiles at him, looking relieved and Dean gets it. He sees what Sam saw in her– sees in her, he supposes, and he swallows past the lump of sadness still lodged in his throat.
“Sam’s out for a run,” she adds and Dean rolls his eyes.
“Of course he is. I don’t know where the hell he finds the energy…”
“I know right?!” Jess grimaces along with him. “He used to ask me every morning if I wanted to come along, like another hour in bed wasn’t the alternative? Insane.”
Dean laughs, can almost feel his panic give away in his chest - almost, because it’s still strange and painful to stand in front of someone who also knows his brother… like only he’s supposed to know him. Dean also feels a pang of jealousy over all the ways Jess knows Sam, that Dean never will. He feels numb and a bit hazy suddenly, but whatever is showing on his face makes Jess’ shoulders curl in a bit in nervous defeat and Dean feels bad as she excuses herself and disappears back towards Sam’s room.
Dean is screwing this up for Sam and he knows it. Why can’t he just snap the fuck out of it?!
He silently apologises to both Sam and Jess by making them sandwiches and a side salad for lunch, even makes Sam’s favourite vinaigrette dressing and leaves it all on the counter in the kitchen like a peace offering.
When Sam walks in, Jessica on his heels, and when he spots the food he stops in his tracks, searching for his brother in the dim light of the abandoned kitchen.
“Sam, what’s wrong?”
He nearly startles at the sound of her voice, part of his brain still not caught up to the fact that he gets to hear her voice again at all, and the other part so focused on Dean and the lack of Dean in the room that he had momentarily forgotten she was there.
“Nothing I just…” he motions to the food Dean has so obviously prepared for them, because it’s too much for just Sam and it’s too many vegetables for Dean.
“That looks great,” Jess smiles, her eyes bright with true gratitude and Sam smiles back. "Your brother likes to cook?"
“He’s surprisingly good at making salads, for someone who thinks ketchup is a vegetable.”
“And here I assumed the salad obsession just ran in the family,” Jess laughs.
“No,” Sam chuckles, “definitely not.”
Sam doesn’t see Dean for the rest of the day either. He knows he’s close by, can sense when his brother isn’t in the bunker somewhere - a physical habit his body has somehow developed after a lifetime of being hyper aware of each other’s whereabouts at all times. When Sam first learned about what the Family Business truly was, and Dean started getting to go on hunts more often, he’d obsessively keep Dean in his line of sight at all times he could in between hunts.
His nervous system knows his brother is close by, but they don’t cross paths and by the time evening comes he figures Jessica needs a break from their strange underground home so suggests they go out for dinner. He knocks on Dean’s closed door - the door that is normally never closed, not fully, and when he receives no reply, he calls out for his brother.
“Dean? You awake? Going to take Jess into town for some pizza if you want to come?”
There is no reply and Sam reluctantly pulls away from the door before heading back to Jess.
“He’s not coming?” Jess asks, concerned when she sees Sam’s troubled expression as he walks back towards her where she’s waiting at the bottom of the stairs.
“No… I’ll bring him something back.”
“But he’s okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s always okay,” Sam shoots her what he hopes is a reassuring smile and ushers her up the stairs.
Dean sits cross legged on his bed, nervously tugging at the old, pilling blanket. It’s not on purpose, he thinks, angry and disappointed in himself. He’s not trying to be an ass and ignoring Sam. He’s not… it’s just that the words lock themselves up in his throat. He goes to speak and he just can’t. He wills himself to just leave his room and he can’t.
Jess and Sam should have this time to themselves. Dean thinks he should get used to evenings on his own again. It’ll soon be like back then, when Sam was at school and dad– dad was teaching Dean that you can’t cling to your family all the time. Sometimes you just have to learn to be on your own… and Dean knows what it’s like to have no one left but himself so he stays quiet in the dark and listens to Sam’s footsteps as he walks away.
—-
“SAAAM!”
Sam throws Dean’s bedroom door open, rushing to his side in the dark. He doesn’t know what woke him up at first, just knows that Dean’s distressed shout cuts into his very core, driving him to his feet before he can fully even process where he’s going. He doesn’t hesitate, just pushes Dean’s bedroom door open and rushes into the room. He blinks against the pressing darkness and grasps Dean’s trembling form by his tense shoulders.
“Hey… hey, man. Dean. Wake up.”
He strokes soothingly over his clammy collarbone, feels Dean’s cold sweat though the fabric of his drenched t-shirt that’s clinging to him. Dean squirms in Sam’s grip, his pale face screwed up in a grimace of pain, eyes stubbornly closed. Sam sits on the bed, reaching for his brother with both hands now, shaking him.
“Dean, it’s just a dream. Wake up!”
The cry of terror that escapes his brother as he’s ripped from sleep slams into Sam like a punch to the chest and he finds himself breathless with it, running his hands down Dean’s trembling arms. Sam places a warm hand over Dean’s breastbone, feeling his brother’s heart beat erratically against his hand.
“S-Sam?” Dean blinks at him, half sitting in bed now, chest heaving and eyes flicking around the room like he can’t quite recognise where he is or how he got there.
“I’m here,” Sam soothes. “You’re okay. Just a bad dream.”
Dean nods, looking awfully young in the darkness of the bedroom, the sheets tangled in his legs.
“Oh. Y-yeah…”
“What was it about?” Sam asks and he frowns at his brother as he hears him whisper ‘hell’ under his breath.
Dean hasn’t spoken about or dreamed about his time in the pit in many years as far as Sam’s aware, and he strokes his thumb over Dean’s collarbone.
“You’re not there,” Sam insists, seeking out Dean’s glassy eyes. “Hey, you hear me? You’re right here with me.”
Dean blinks rapidly, curling in on himself and Sam watches, brow furrowed with worry as his brother’s eyes shutter again before him, fear and vulnerability shut away just as quickly as it had appeared. Dean turns on his side, away from Sam, shoulders pulled up protectively and Sam sits on the edge of his bed, watching his brother in silence feeling like he’s missing something. Something big.
“Want me to stay?” Sam asks as Dean curls up on his side, his back turned towards him.
“No, go back to Jess.”
Sam wants to say that Jess is staying in one of the many other rooms but thinks he should leave Dean to get some more sleep. He sits quiet for a moment longer, watching Dean’s back before he quietly slips back to his own room.
—-
Dean is nowhere to be seen the next day, the car gone when Sam goes to check the garage and he misses his brother. He had come so close to losing him forever, had returned back to the bunker earlier in the week thinking he would be on his own for the rest of his life. Dean had agreed to die so that the rest of them could live, but It had still felt like his own death to Sam. A white noise of pain and loss, just eating away at his senses and he knows Cas hesitated to leave him that day, scared of what he would do without Dean.
Truthfully, he wasn’t sure himself.
When Dean had called from the road and said he was on his way home, that Chuck and Amara had “worked their shit out” Sam’s knees had given out from under him in pure relief the second they'd ended their call. He’d just sunk down to the floor, holding the phone to his chest trying to process that Dean wasn’t gone and he was on his way home. Dean had mentioned that there was something else, that he would explain when he got back, but Sam didn’t care. Not then. All he knew was that his big brother was still alive.
The something else had turned out to be Jess, and Sam can see how hard she’s fighting to not let the insanity of what happened to her - to them, and the world she has been resurrected to, break her mind completely. He’s impressed, can’t imagine what she’s going through or how lonely she must feel and still she seems to mostly keep it together. They go for a walk and Sam remembers what it was like when they’d hold hands when they did this. He remembers how proud he was when she first agreed to go out with him.
He remembers how much he wanted to introduce Jess to Dean.
Now they’re all under the same roof, but Dean doesn’t come back for the rest of the day and Sam calls a couple of times.
Sam and Jess use his laptop to do some research, start to look at setting her up with a new identity and Jess nods and looks at him with big round, trusting eyes. Like she trusts him to somehow make this okay. They put together a plan, somewhere for Jess to start rebuilding her life and Sam calls Dean again, leaving a voicemail when he doesn't pick up.
They take a break, watch a movie and make popcorn and Sam apologises because he can’t make it as good as Dean can and Jess squeezes his arm like he’s the one that needs reassurance, like she can see how just a couple of days without his brother has him feeling lost and anxious.
It gets late and Sam sits perched on the side of the bed in the room he had turned guest room, blinks back tears as he watches long, soft curls spread on the white pillow on the bed. He has pulled the top sheet and scratchy Men of Letters blanket up high over Jess’ body, tucked them around her shoulders and his mind can’t quite understand. He can’t wrap his brain and his heart around what is happening, but he’s once again acutely aware of the fact that whatever confusion he’s feeling, her shock must be a thousand times worse.
The light is dim, the corridor behind him quiet and he watches guiltily as Jessica studies the ceiling, eyes glassy.
She’s back, but he feels like he’s given her another death sentence. There is no way she can return to her family or friends, can’t ever let them know she’s back and the world she last existed in was one not yet tainted by monsters and truths that Sam never intended to tell her. Now she’s lost all the innocence he loved her for and the safety of Heaven too and for all the things he’s told her these last couple of days, he can’t quite seem to find an adequate way to say sorry for it all. No matter how many internet searches he helps her with, or how many universities they research together Sam still wonders if he's doing enough...
She doesn’t quite look at him when she breaks the silence and speaks softly, just above a whisper.
“What is he like, your brother?”
The question surprises Sam, and his heart skips at the mention of the word. Brother. It’s such a small word for what is essentially Sam’s entire world. And that, Sam thinks, is part of the fate he’s sentenced Jessica to.
“You’ll get to know him,” Sam lies – not out of malice, but... he just knows it’s unlikely even as he says the words. Dean doesn’t allow many people to see past the facade he hides behind, and he’s stubbornly stayed away these past couple of days.
Sam’s not stupid, he knows Dean completely, knows that Dean is trying to offer them space. He’s not trying to be rude, he’s trying to not get in the way.
Maybe Jessica knows more than Sam gave her credit for though, because based on the pinched look on her face, delicate features just visible to Sam in the dim light, she doesn’t believe him.
“He’s the loudest and also the most quiet person I know,” Sam whispers back in the dark. “He’s smart. Funny... fucking annoying too. Like infuriatingly annoying,” he adds fondly, eyes twinkling with warmth in the dim light. “He is strong and loyal and he loves me. More than I know what to do with sometimes.”
“I think he’s avoiding me.”
“He’s... not,” Sam sighs. “He’s scared.”
“Of me?” Jess looks unconvinced where she lies and Sam grimaces a bit, doesn’t know how to explain and isn’t sure he really wants to either. Dean is his in a way nothing and no one else ever has been. He thinks he knew that even back then, when he left for Stanford, or he doesn’t think he ever would have found the courage to go at all. Deep down he knew Dean belonged to him no matter what he did or where he went, so even if he risked it all and ended up failing or losing, there would always still be Dean. To explain Dean to someone – to dissect him and show his vulnerability felt like betraying him.
“No, not of you... he’s scared of things he can't control.”
“I would like to get to know him,” Jessica tells him and Sam reaches out and squeezes her blanket covered knee. He would like that too.
When Sam crawls into his own bed he shoots Dean a quick text asking him where he is. He frowns at the short reply he receives a moment later, and Sam lies in the dark of his room for a long time, just studying the brightly lit screen, fighting the want and need to call his brother.
The words ‘Hunt. Will be back after.’ aren’t unfamiliar, but Sam doesn’t like the idea that Dean’s out there on his own.
Sam eventually falls asleep, his last conscious thought being of how he would have chased after his brother if it weren’t for Jess asleep down the hall.
—-
The next morning Sam feels Jessica’s eyes on his back as he makes them eggs in the kitchen. She’s perched on a stool by the table, nursing her cup of coffee with both hands, the way she always did with her tea in the evenings, when they sat curled up together on the couch in Palo Alto, studying together or watching TV. When he turns to present her with her plate she nods towards the open shelves on the wall behind him.
“Quite the collection of random stuff,” she smiles and Sam looks back over his shoulder at the row of oddly shaped bottles of maple syrup from 11 different states, the utensils holder that looks like a happy cow, one horn missing but smiling all the same, the framed picture of a fed up looking Sam with whipped cream on the tip of his nose, a baseball and a rock that Dean insists looks just like Elvis. “Especially for someone who used to be so adamant about not being weighed down by ‘things’”.
Sam feels a stab of guilt. She used to want to take him to flea markets when they lived together – what feels like several lifetimes ago. He always used to say clutter was just that, clutter.
“It’s Dean’s stuff really,” he says with a small shrug, sitting down opposite her. “It’s funny, we found this place and the first thing he decided to do was start nesting. Like he all of a sudden felt the need to unpack things. He never once mentioned wanting a home for himself when we grew up, seemed content with the nomadic life we lived... it was always me who spoke about a normal life, a home like everyone else had. I don’t know what came over him really but ever since then he’s kept it up, picked up homey things, or you know, what he thinks are homey things. You saw the Dean cave yesterday, he put that together and was all giddy when he first got to show me. I don’t know why it even matters to him, he never used to care.”
Jess looks at him funny then, something between amused and sad and Sam looks back, sheepish.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she sips her coffee and Sam squirms a bit on his stool, still feeling like he’s missing something. “It’s just that... from what you have told me about him he’s a protector, a nurturer. I don’t think he’s building a home for himself, he’s doing it for you. It’s the little bit of normal he thinks he can offer you… something for you to stick around for.”
“Oh.”
“I mean I don’t know him--”
“No, no...” Sam peers down into his own coffee. “I. I guess you’re right. He’s not very good at giving himself things he wants, but my entire life he’s attempted to find ways to look after me.”
“He wants you to be happy,” Jess says softly, like it’s the most obvious fact and Sam hears himself before he has a moment to even think about it...
“I am happy. Here. With him.”
“Have you told him that?”
Sam frowns. No. Not in so many words, but Dean should know that. Should know that Sam will never pick anything else, not anymore.
“It’s complicated,” he mumbles, glancing up at her across the small table and she doesn’t say anything.
---
Hunting on your own is... freeing, Dean tells himself, peering down into the trunk of the car, guns and an array of homemade weapons staring back at him. No dad to tell him what to do, no yes sir, no sir, of course sir... No little brother to constantly be hyper aware of as you walk into that nest of fuglies. No one else’s back to be more concerned with than your own.
Sam hasn’t left the game yet, but he will and Dean needs to do something, anything, with the jittery restless energy that’s crawling through him. He can’t sleep, can’t make himself eat, can’t go back to the bunker. Not like this. His hands tremble slightly as he shoves his gun into the back of his jeans. He needs to burn right through his anxiety and past the ugly, needy feeling in his chest. He was only borrowing Sam anyway. His brother was always meant to do greater things than this, he was meant for better people than Dean.
Dean looks up at the seemingly abandoned house on the hill before him, only the moon showing him the path nestled into the overgrown terrain. Tall grass is swaying in the light breeze and he knows he has to be quiet as he sneaks up towards the house. He doesn’t mind, all his words and sounds have dried up anyway. Locked away.
“He’s quiet in his grief,” he’d overheard Bobby say once, to Sam, after their father died. Sam had said something about how he wished Dean wouldn’t be, that he wished he’d speak about it all. He’s never known what difference it would make or how to even start. Everything is loud in his head, all the reasons he's messed up, all the ways he's failed his family, but when he goes to talk about what hurts the most his throat closes up.
What has been lost has been lost and what he still has will eventually be snatched away.
Screw words. Screw it all. Dean grins cocky and bright, eyes dull and dark as he steps right into the nest a few minutes later. It’s like old times.
It’s like before.
“Well hello,” he greets the creatures hiding in the shadows.
He’s not 100% sure what he’s walking into here, but Dean doesn’t really care. All he can feel is adrenaline pumping and all he can see is too many inhuman eyes blinking back at him in the darkness and his heart sings. Bring it on, motherfuckers.
---
Dean hisses under his breath, stumbling and swaying on the last step as he drags himself down the stairs and into the war room. The warm light from the table guiding his way in the otherwise dark, now familiar space. He dumps his duffel at his feet, pulling his arm close over his middle, swallowing thickly past the wince of pain that’s threatening to spill past his lips.
He only jumps a little at the unexpected but heartbreakingly familiar form that appears in the doorway.
“Dean?”
Sam studies the tense lines of his brother’s shoulders, frowning at the state he’s in. The older hunter’s face is waxy pale, his eyes pinched with pain and his brow covered in cold sweat.
Dean blinks at him, eyes wide in surprise that he quickly hides away.
“You okay?” Sam looks him up and down with urgency, takes in the blood smeared across Dean’s pale jaw and his torn up knuckles.
“Y-yeah,” Dean nods, clearing his throat to get the word out. His voice sounds raspy with disuse and Sam cocks his head to the side, looking at him.
“You hurt?”
“No.”
Silence stretches between them as Sam studies him and Dean can’t look. He hides his own gaze away, studying his boots, covered in mud and vamp blood.
“Where have you been?” Sam asks, careful not to sound accusatory.
“Told you. Case. Where’s Jess?”
Dean still won’t look at him but Sam takes a couple of steps towards his brother before he responds. Dean is too pale, his body too tense and Sam doesn’t like the pattern of his breathing.
“Didn’t you get my voicemail? We found an apartment. Topeka. Easy move,” Sam jokes, trying to break through the weird suffocating energy that’s lingering in the room. “Nothing of significance to pack.”
“Oh. Right.” Dean nods, dazed, distant. Sam watches as his brother pulls his torn and dirty flannel closer across his body. Dean is listing to the side and Sam wants to reach out and steady him but hesitates at the weird, anxious energy coming off his brother.
“You sure you’re not hurt? Dean?”
“Yes. ‘m fine. Gonna shower... You should--” Dean waves a trembling hand around, still not quite meeting Sam’s eyes before he suddenly stalks down the hall leaving Sam standing confused next to Dean’s abandoned duffel bag.
Dean stumbles into the shower room, groaning as he leans against the sink.
“F-fuck...”
His vision swims, the tiles moving oddly before his eyes as he tries to fix his gaze on something, anything, while he shrugs, stiff and cold, out of his flannel. Blood, hot and sticky, starts to bloom across his side, soaking the gray t-shirt he’s wearing underneath and he wills his hands to stop shaking like leaves, as he tries to pull the sopping fabric from the gash in his side.
He bites his lower lip to fight back his scream as he grabs onto the white porcelain sink, smearing it red, as he holds himself up. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Topeka. They’d found an apartment. Nothing for Sam to even pack or move with him, nothing of significance, Sam had said. Dean swallows down bile before he looks down at his battered flesh where he holds his ruined t-shirt up. The slash across his side had only been sluggishly bleeding on his drive back and the pain had felt almost comforting. A sign that he was still alive, something to finally cut through the numbness of feeling out of control and out of options.
He’s going to need stitches and Sam... Sam’s going to need furniture. Plates, pans... normal people things. Dean’s head swims and he blinks desperate and dizzy at his pale, blood smeared face in the mirror. Sam should take the stuff from the kitchen in the bunker, Dean thinks. Dean doesn’t need anything they have here, not without—He clamps his eyes shut against the thought and against the wave of nausea that rolls over him.
Dean doesn’t need this, all this space... not when Sam has left. He can look at his bloody and battered body in any dirty mirror, in any nameless motel across the country. He will be fine, just anywhere.
He will be fine and Sam will be good. He will be great and free and finally happy.
Dean draws in another shaky breath. And another one, too quick, but not enough. And another, fast and shallow and—his heart is slamming hard against his ribs, erratic beats urging on his nausea, making his knees weak and dark spots dance before his eyes.
The spots grow into moments of complete darkness as he struggles for breath and his fingers feel tacky and warm with his own blood as he uselessly paws at his side. What- what is he supposed to do--
“Dean!”
His knees give out, legs buckling under his weight and he feels himself fall until he’s suddenly pressed against the solid form of his brother.
“Shit, Dean! You said you weren’t hurt!”
“Lied,” Dean mumbles against Sam’s collarbone and Sam sinks to the floor with Dean in a heap of numb limbs on his lap.
“I can fucking see that,” Sam says as he throws his own flannel off, bunching it up against the gash in Dean’s side, pressing down hard. Dean hisses in pain and Sam glares at him. “What the hell, man?!”
“I can...” Dean draws another quick, shallow breath and Sam’s face softens, his eyes full of warm concern again and Dean’s not sure what’s worse, that or his brother’s anger. “I c-can fix it... you s-should go, Sammy.”
“Go?” Sam asks, distracted as he gingerly moves his shirt away from the wound, peering at it while prodding at Dean’s stomach with his other hand, looking for more injuries. “Where would I go?”
“Topeka.”
Sam stills and stares at his brother.
Oh. Oh, oh shit.
“Dean...”
Dean looks away, gaze muddy with blood loss and embarrassment and Sam wants to cry.
“Dean, I’m not going anywhere. The apartment is for Jessica. We figured she could start over, somewhere nearby but... a chance for her to figure out what she wants now.”
“A-and...” Dean looks so tragically confused and so awfully young, laying half in Sam’s lap and half sprawled out on their bathroom floor and Sam shakes his head in disbelief. “What do y-you want?”
“I have what I want. I have a home, here, with my idiot big brother. I’m staying where you are. You could be anywhere, I’d still follow.”
“But...” Dean licks at his pale lips and Sam really needs to get Dean patched up and into bed. “What about... Jess?”
“She’s going to need a sec or two to get settled, wrap her mind around the fact that she’s just been yanked out of heaven and planted back here, but she’s going to be okay. I know she is. She knows what I do, what we do, now and I love her, a part of me will always love her, but I’m not the same person she knew. The man she was with was hiding so much of himself, and I can’t be me without you. I need you, and you need me and that’s just the way it is.”
“Sam?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re also way, way too old for her now,” Dean mumbles and Sam rolls his eyes at him fondly.
“Alright, alright. Let's get you stitched up.”
“Soooo old.”
“That’s the blood loss talking,” Sam smiles down at his pale brother, secretly enjoying the way life is returning to Dean’s moss green eyes. He grabs Dean tighter and heaves them both up. “Up you go, big brother.”
---
The Dean Cave is dark apart from the warm flickering glow of the TV and the old western movie playing, the sound turned down low. Sam watches Dean’s eyes crinkle with amusement as someone falls off their horse in a wild chase they’ve watched a million times before. Normally Sam would roll his eyes fondly, but now he’s just silently taking his brother in; the loose and relaxed hold he has on the beer in his hand, the way his feet are crossed at the ankles where they’re propped up on the lounger he’s in. The popcorn in the shared bowl smells just as divine as they always do and Sam will never understand why they’re just so much better when Dean has made them.
Sam knows his brother is going to protest, but he suddenly just has to make sure... He needs there to be no more misunderstandings between them.
“Hey Dean?”
“Mm?”
“I’m happy, with you. You believe me when I say that, right?”
“Dude, not the chic flick shit now...” Dean groans, like he’s not the one that’s just spent three days agonising over whether or not Sam loves him enough to stay. He glances at Sam, ready to shoot him the most indignant glare if he so much as dares to point this exact thing out. Dean would like to not speak about his neediness for another 10 to 20 years now please.
“Dean.”
Dean turns towards Sam at his pleading tone.
“Sammy… you don’t want a family?”
“You’re my family.”
“Yeah but— you just... you used to want more than this, more than... me.”
Sam stays silent for a moment and Dean fights the urge to hide away, take his vulnerable words back and never say anything again. Sam looks deep in thought though, and Dean instead allows himself to study the warmth in his eyes, the familiar features of the face he’s spent his entire life looking at with such fierce love. He thinks he deserves it after the emotional rollercoaster he's been on for the last few days.
“What could possibly be ‘more’ to me than you, Dean? You’ve been my entire universe since the moment I was born.”
Dean blushes adorably at that, gets that glassy look in his eyes that tells Sam that he’s getting emotional but can’t allow himself to show it. Sam wishes Dean would have just talked to him that first day, that he would have hung around to see for himself that Sam and Jessica never plotted to run away together for some life Sam knows he outgrew a long time ago… He had borrowed it, that life and those dreams, temporarily, but Dean was his forever.
Dean suddenly studies his beer bottle so close he might as well have never seen one before and Sam wants to reach out and touch him but stops himself. He has more to say and doesn’t want Dean to bolt.
“I didn’t quite get it at first,” Sam muses and Dean peers at him again, curious at Sam’s soft tone. “You said Amara wanted to give you something, a gift… what you had given her; what you needed most.”
Dean nods.
“It didn’t make sense to me that it would be Jessica, I didn’t understand at first why it wouldn’t be dad or…” he trails off, hazel eyes meeting Dean’s and Dean nearly shivers with the intensity of what he finds there, the pouring of gratitude. “But it wasn’t about Jess.”
“It wasn’t?” Dean asks carefully, his voice barely above a whisper and Sam smiles.
“No, I think it was about this; you finally knowing that I’m not going to walk out on you, not for anyone. What you needed most was proof of my dedication to you. She gave you the gift of family, the way you did for her.”
“Or she knew what it’s like living with you when you never get laid and she wanted to help me finally get you some action.”
“Dean.”
His big brother glances at him again, green eyes warm and deep in the light from the muted TV.
“I’m… I’m grateful, for…” Dean waves his hand around, brows furrowed as he searches for what he can say without exposing too much of the big, soft heart he hides away so much of the time - the part of him that only Sam gets to see. “I’m where I want to be, with you, so if you… if you want to be here too then, good.”
“I want to be where you are, I don’t care where that is.”
“Okay, Sammy.”
Dean shoots him a smile, nudges the bowl of popcorn towards Sam, and Sam smiles back at him, watching him turn his attention back to the familiar movie. Sam grabs a handful and washes them down with his own beer. Sam can see the cheeky little smirk on Dean’s face before he’s even spoken again and when the words follow he feels warmth bloom in his chest.
“I didn’t even hit on her, you know. In the car, when I drove us back.”
“Yeah? Very good of you.” Sam plays along, rolling his eyes dutifully.
“Figured she was into the freakishly tall, shaggy haired, emotional types anyway.”
“She’ll find some new college kid now,” Sam says and he sees the way Dean steals a glance at him, full protective big brother mode switched on, ready to jump in with his own brand of comfort if Sam’s upset but he’s not. He smiles at Dean, tries to silently convey that he’s okay with that. He’s okay with all of it.
He’s grateful for Jessica’s second chance and even more grateful for his little family, made up of him and his big brother. He will always carry some guilt for the impact he had on Jess’ life - the pain her death caused her family, but Jessica had made it clear to him this past week that she doesn’t blame him and in a sense he has a closure now he didn’t before.
Sam is good. He’s great, and exactly where he’s supposed to be.