Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

This was a living nightmare. Ever since he had met Sam, every worst scenario was manifesting themselves into reality little by little — a ruthless fable: a brief dreams-come-true came gift-wrapped with the price tag of an enormous cost and pain plotted underneath. Dean tried very hard to breathe, so much so that his vision started to blur, with phosphenes skittering around the periphery.

Sam shot forward with a long stride and Velcro-ed his hands into Dean’s armpits, his palms folded against Dean’s inner arms to get a hold of him. He flushed himself against Dean, shielded in front of his older brother. “No,” Boomed Sam.

“Don’t try to mess his head with that — He ain’t responsible for any of that. If he had stayed there, he would’ve been killed!” He hissed threateningly.

Sam tilted his head. “You mean staying next to Mom for the rest of his life? It wasn’t that bad, was it.”

“If you did have done some digging, you would know it’s nothing like that!” Glowered Sam. “That Djinn would’ve sucked him dry within a few days!”

Sam sighed softly. “There’s going to be a dead body left behind somewhere anyway; am I wrong? Somewhere being either your world or mine. He has to make a choice — and he already had.”

Sam had never thought about it that way and was defeated by this logic temporarily. He nearly blurted out, “But your world isn’t real.” Albeit Sam per se, was living proof that his world was real from an existential point of view.

Sam stood up and stepped closer to them. Sam immediately took half a defensive step forward, blocking Sam from Dean with his build. Sam stopped inching closer.

He looked at Dean, whose breath was still ragged, whose eyes were still red-rimmed wetness. Samspoke gently as if he was afraid of further disturbing Dean, “Dean, I don’t blame you for what you chose. I remembered that night when you told me that people were dying, and you said that was on you, and there would be nobody to save them but you.”

“I didn’t understand back then… and to be honest, I still don’t. But I do understand that is just the way you are, aren’t you? Putting everyone else’s needs before yours. You’re just always like that.”

Dean puffed out a broken chuckle.

Sam glared at Sam. “Alright, cut the crap. What do you want?”

“What do I want?” He frowned. “I don’t want anything. I’m just curious.”

Sam snorted. “We know how this thing works. Wielding any power has a price to pay. The spell you scrounged out is very powerful, and you’re gonna tell me that you’re just curious?”

“Worth my while if my curiosity’s urgent enough.”

Dean shut his eyes. “Stop lying.”

“I’m not!” Sam raised his voice. “I might haven’t told you the whole story, but I’ve never lied to you.”

He paused and softened his tone again. “I am not going to lie to you. Except in the very beginning. Since then, my reactions to everything here have been real. No offense, but how could you assume I have ever led this kind of, uh, life? I did nothing more but read a few books, dug some news, inferred a few rituals, and that was it.”

…That is another level of downplay, to put it like that! Dean had never thought that his little brother was so talented in making understatements, which made him all the more uncomfortable.

“Do you have any idea what the hell are you doing?” He found his voice almost feeble.

“I just want to see what it’s like here. No one would get hurt from this.” Sam lowered his eyes, his long lashes resting on his eyelids, painting him full of grievance and sorrow. “I promise I will leave when the time is up, okay? I will cast the spell again when the next full moon comes, and then you two can move on, get back to your life, and wipe me out of your system. I’m nothing more than a discord in your life.”

Dean tried to wrap his head around the chaos: This was not Sam’s fault. He had whirled his little brother, who had been leading a normal and happy life in another dimension, into this mess. That night, he could’ve said something else plausible to muddle him through, could’ve kicked him out of the Impala, could’ve bared more teeth to scare him off. He was too soft, too weak. It only took him the deprivation of intimacy and the proximity of his little brother to make him lose his mind. And even tried to drive his little brother, who was oblivious to all of this hunting stuff, to the abyss just because bits and pieces of the embodiment of family bond were shown to him by Sam. If Sam could get rid of this mess they called life, Dean would give up everything to pay the price. So, if there had been anyone responsible for this mess, it would be no one but himself.

He rubbed his forehead, sat on the bed, and buried his head in his hands.

“Dean…” Sam called him worriedly.

“I’m fine.” His voice came out of his palms muffled. “Just… give me a second.”

Sam looked like he would like to step closer to him yet tentative, letting out a sigh instead. He turned to Sam and warned, “We’ll keep our eyes on you.”

Sam plastered a smile. “That’s what I want from you.”

Then there was silence. The air, suddenly stuffy and precarious, weighed down on them in this cramming motel room. Sam tugged his collar with discomfort.

“Dean, are you hungry?” Sam finally found a reason to approach his brother, gently nudging Dean’s shoulders. “Should I order a takeout?”

Sam pursed his lips, and asked the same panderingly. “Or should I make a run for lunch? What kind of pizzas do you like?”

Sam just snorted in response as if they would give him any chance to bail. Dean, however, threw a credit card Sam’s way, who tried to catch it in fluster but failed and watched it fall to the ground like a six-foot-five, gigantic teddy bear with butter paws. He picked it up, lips a flattened line.

Sam looked at his brother with disbelief.

“Double pepperonis and double cheese for me. Get Sam a… veggie one.” Dean scrunched his face while he gave the orders.

“The hell are you doing?!” Asked Sam.

“Relax, Sammy.” Dean looked up behind his lashes listlessly, “He will be back.”

“Yeah, Sammy.” Sam pulled the room door open, smiling over his shoulder, “I’ll be back.”

As soon as Sam had left the room, Sam sat across Dean. “What were you thinking?”

Dean rubbed his face wearily, “I’m thinking of ways to shut you up.”

“How can you still trust him?” Shouted Sam, “He lied to us!”

“If you were him, would you tell the truth right away to the strangers’ version of your brother and yourself? Never showing his hand, making full use of the information gap,” Dean shook his head with a wry smile, “a textbook Winchester to me.”

Anyone, if anyone, who dared to fuck with Dean Winchester like this, would suffer profusely. Except for one person.

Sam was dumbfounded. “You are unbelievable.”

“Thanks.” Said Dean.

“No, I’m being serious. Jesus, Dean. How many more times do I have to tell you that he’s not me?”

“I know he ain’t you.” Dean averted Sam’s eyes and sighed. “It’s just… I owe him that.”

“You don’t owe him anything!” Sam was going mad.

Sam wouldn’t understand. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen Mom so gentle, so vivid in her white nightgown, standing on the porch with her hair fragrant like gardenia, who would make him the best sandwich in the world. He hadn’t witnessed how nice his life could be, even with the ridiculous Toyota he could’ve driven, the stupid Puma tracksuit he could’ve been in, the mean-girl look he could’ve worn, and such delight and joy he could’ve laughed. Dean would rather die to ruin that, he thought. They had sacrificed so much that at least one of the Sams should deserve such a happy life somewhere in this universe.

One of the Sams once had had that happiness.

That was the one thing he would always owe to Sam, a debt he could never pay off forevermore.

After lunch, Sam coerced Sam into writing down the incantations he had cast to come here, then dived straight into his laptop, typing with a grim look. Meanwhile, Dean was stretching with a pout, grabbing the remote, flopping onto the bed, then turning on the TV.

Sam looked between them, back and forth. “Is this what you two usually do?”

“When on vacation.” Dean flipped through the channels.

“If ‘on vacation’ means I am doing the research while you are doing nothing.” Sam didn’t even bother to look up.

“I should have snacks piling by my hands then.”

“You have snacks within a one-inch radius around you all the time. There isn’t any now, yet, it’s because you just ate a whole 15-inch pizza on your own.”

“I still have the place reserved for a poutine or a whole Swiss roll. I’m just pulling at the reins of my appetite for ya.”

“Yeah, yeah. My hero.”

“All… right?” Sam cut in pussyfootingly, feeling very L’Étranger interrupting these two. “Is there anything I can help with?”

Sam shot him an askance glimpse, tone cold and hard. “Nope.”

Was he getting the message wrong, or was Sam actually taking it out on him?

He had already gone through the whole confession process! This self from this world is unbelievably petty.

Sam puckered and returned to his bed, picking up that unbelievably stupid brochure again.

It wasn’t after Sam had switched through three different brochures and had napped for a bit in between when Sam finally poked his head out from his laptop. But he didn’t seem anywhere near taking a break, just picking the bag from the floor, putting the laptop back in, and then heading toward Dean’s bed.

Dean fell asleep God knows when. The light from the television was cast on his face, where his long and curly lashes and soft lips—which opened a little—flickered and flashed between shadows and illuminations.

Sam seemed a bit dithered. He looked back at Sam, then turned back to his brother, and bent to get closer to Dean, creating a tiny space just between the two of them, just for the two of them. The affection and longing flowing in his eyes, secluded yet adhesive, aligned the stars freckled across Dean’s bridge.

He gently shook Dean coming to, whose vigilance was deactivated entirely in front of Sam. Half-opening his eyes, Dean mumbled his protests softly. Even though they were so close that their foreheads almost touched, Dean wasn’t even slightly uncomfortable with that.

“I gotta head to the library,” Whispered Sam to his brother. “Are you gonna be okay on your own?”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Samantha.” Dean was a bit grumpy, lashes fluttering shut again.

Sam patiently explained and reiterated his question: “You are staying here in the same room with him on your own. Are you gonna be alright?”

That was way too loud for a private conversation! Sam was still sitting there!

“Mmmph,” Muttered Dean in response.

“I’m taking the Impala.” Said Sam, “Call me when something’s up.”

“Yeah yeah just bounce already!” Dean turned over and waved impatiently.

Sam sighed in that affectionately resigned way, straightened up, and shook his head with a smile. His eyes couldn’t get softer on Dean, pupils glistening like someone speckled a lake with stardusts from grinding up thousands of stars.

Even with Sam backlit from where Sam’s sitting, he had seen, clear as day, that the way Sam looked at his brother was nothing fraternal.

What a shocker.

When Sam pocketed the keys and was ready to head out, Dean suddenly snapped awake, springing up from the bed, shouting, “Sam!” which made both Sams jump.

“Take good care of my Baby, ya hear?” He continued.

Sam puffed, rolling his eyes as hard as he could and slamming the door shut.

“That’s exactly why I don’t want him to drive my car around.” Grumbled Dean.

Sam and Dean watched the TV for about an hour after Sam left, which was basically nothing to watch but daytime soap operas. Dean got gradually worked up with women arguing in the background. His legs started to fidget, eyeballs rolling back and forth in agitation, and teeth rutting over his plump bottom lip. Sam wasn’t sure if this had anything to do with him, and as he was still hesitating to ask Dean what was wrong, Dean suddenly bolted out from his bed, “I need a drink.”

Sam blinked and looked at Dean expectantly, trying to figure out whether this was an invitation or an announcement.

Dean moved like lightning as he prepared. He tucked his feet into his shoes and put on his coat briskly. Standing at the doorway, he asked over his shoulder at Sam, “You coming with?”

An invitation it is. Sam’s face lit up like a puppy, and he stood up immediately, smiling with his lips curling inward, still looking like a college kid. “With.”

They had walked for a kilometer before they found an open bar. Dean caved in pronto and called for three tumblers of whiskey to down them in one go.

Sam was anything but never seeing how his brother drinks; if anything, he was very familiar with it, too familiar, even — he knew that Dean, who wasn’t an alcoholic (probably), wasn’t his Dean from a logical point of view. Yet, he still felt the usual frustration and irritation started to stir and meander, ready to tick him off.

He oppressed it with annoyance and waved the bartender over to fill his glass. It seemed like he and Dean would be having extra rounds today.

After another two glasses had been drained, Dean finally relaxed for a bit. He handled his liquor well, even drinking in such a rush, yet there was only a slight shade of pink transpired over his eyelids, being his telltale. The rosiness made his already outstanding face even more stunning.

“I just can’t put my fingers on this one.” Muttered Dean after some time, “What do you want from me? You don’t even know me! You and me… even that me, ain’t the best brothers of the year for all I know anyway.”

The alcohol incited Sam’s grudge hoarded inside: How dare he say that! The one constantly pushing his brother away wasn’t Sam — at least it wasn’t Sam who started it.

This isn’t right. He reminded himself again, Dean is not his Dean.

But what blurted out of his mouth was, “Maybe I don’t know you. Maybe I still do. Regardless of whether we were on good terms or not, you’re still my big brother, and we grew up together.”

“Name three things you know about me.” Dean’s tone was sour.

Sam snorted. “Try thirty. Exotic girls with dark hair are at the top of your list. You think lettuce is an abomination in cheeseburgers, but pickles are fine. You stuffed insoles in your shoes for two months after I outgrew you.”

“I’ve never done the last one!!” Dean’s shouting did not hide his guilty-as-charged well.

Sam sized him up scornfully. “Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

Dean shook his head and started to chuckle. When he progressed into bursting into laughter, Samstared at him, bewildered.

“That… that is hilarious.” Dean wiped his tears, “Dude, ever since you’re here, you have been so histrionic — don’t round on me yet! Hear me out. That was the realest you’d been these few days, just like the asshole I had first met back then.”

Sam blinked and then blinked again. His ears reddened.

“Shut up.” He grumbled.

Dean laughed again, clinking his glass against Sam’s.

Getting drunk together is indeed the get-along-quick scheme. Only an hour had passed, and they were already deep into reminiscence and had exchanged a few of their childhood anecdotes. They burst into laughter from time to time, eyes glistening, blushes levitating above their cheekbones, the closeness between them resembling something only between true brothers would have. Even though they were true brothers. And even though they weren’t. Alright, he wasn’t exactly in his best shape for a philosophical question like this right now, and before he realized what he was doing from his tipsy haze, Sam had gone autopilot on giving a piece of his mind about his coworkers. Dean would nudge Sam’s elbow playfully for his mean remarks from time to time, but most of the time, he was snickering along conspiratorially. He knew what his brother quintessentially was: a jerk.

Under the light amusement lay some strands of warmth radiating from beneath, making his limbs go weak from the coziness while floating in the dopamine rush induced by the chain reaction the alcohol brought. He hadn’t been this happy for a long time, where undissolvable bitterness still lurked underneath.

He had never gotten the chance to do this with Dean.

He didn’t know if he could still live and laugh carefree like this for the rest of his life.

Dean seemed to sense the mood shifted, too. He settled down, and the dimmed pub lights dragged out a ridiculously long shadow of his lashes on his face.

“Don’t you… don’t you hate me?” Dean’s eyes were downcast, treading cautiously, “I killed your brother.”

Sam stared at a stain on the edge of the table that looked like the shape of South America and eventually answered after a moment of silence, “I don’t know.”

“But you’re the victim, too.” He continued, “That kind of creature… they can dig up your deepest wish and make it come true. Nobody knows how they are able to do that; it’s like they’re born with it. Whoever gets caught by them ends up dead. I guess the moment you were captured, my brother was gone, too. I can’t just blame it all on you.”

Dean didn’t say anything, just staring at the amber liquid in his glass, from which he took another sip.

“Do you wanna know?” Sam, on the other hand, seemed like the talking switch in him was flicked on abruptly. “Do you want to know how did I come here?”

Dean didn’t want to know.

But not really.

He lifted his eyes — whose irises of hazel and of a frail plea were almost transparent — to Sam. Not even he could figure out whether he wanted Sam to keep talking or stop right there.

“I’ve been looking up a lot of things, but these things were a bitch to scavenge. And… picking up these lores and knowledge was pretty time-consuming, so I quit my job at the law firm.”

“You what??” Dean’s eyes shot open like saucers, “How could you? Didn’t Jess veto this?”

Sam shifted his eyes somewhere else, “Uh. About that. I broke up with Jess.”

“What???” Dean couldn’t come up with another word.

“She didn’t understand!” Sam protested self-defensively, “She kept trying to talk me into seeing a shrink and even called Mom to do the same. It wasn’t something psy… she just won’t get it. Then she accused me of being so obsessed with your life that I ditched mine. And you know what’s more out of the line? She said, ‘If you don’t give a shit about your brother when he’s alive, then since when should his death interrupt our lives?’ How could she say that?”

Dean thought of something he had never said — You clearly know she’s not wrong about that. — but even he wasn’t that self-destructive.

“But… I get her. She has never witnessed those. So, I made a promise to her that I would stop once I found my answers. But she couldn’t wait anymore, saying that she couldn’t stand the fact that your ghost would stand between us and haunt us for the rest of our lives. And do you know the best part of all of this?” Sam giggled like a brat — He had probably had too much to drink. “There’s not gonna be what some ghost of yours because your soul came here.”

Dean’s heart was pierced. He pictured Sam: stubborn, disoriented, persona non grata, fumbling for an answer that might never be found in the dark, willingly pushing everyone around him away, willingly enduring the devastating isolation all by himself.

“You shouldn’t’ve done that.” Whispered Dean, “You should’ve just… let it go.”

“Yeah, I know.” Sam lowered his eyes and chuckled, “I ask myself every single day: why can’t I just let go? But I just can’t. I can’t, Dean. I don’t have that in me to do that.”

They lapsed into another wordlessness for a while, another round being asked, glasses clinked against each other speechlessly, drinks sliding down throats in taciturnity. Until Sam struck up a conversation again. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure if the spell would work. It’s a blood spell that could find your blood relatives. But I have to provide…” His volume dwindled, scrunching his face and flattening his lips as if something awful had come back to him. Dean heard what was unsaid: The spell needed Dean’s blood. Sam went to his dead body to steal some blood. Kiddo had gone unfathomably far for this.

The clarity must’ve been written on Dean’s face since Sam took the cue and muddled through, “Anyway, the spell needed you-know-what. So basically, I was scraping anything I could find together to learn how to do that. Although it wouldn’t have stripped my soul from my body like a phantom or whatever if I had failed, I do understand how dangerous this spell is. Besides, I wasn’t really sure how to go back once I had found you, so thanks a bunch for that worst-customer-service-of-the-year-psychic friend of yours.”

“Then why the hell did you still do it anyway?!” Dean couldn’t help but yell, “What if there’s no way back? Are you nuts? You knew that… I was dead! How could you let Mom lose both of her sons? God, how heartbroken would she be? You…”

“I guess I just wonder.” Sam interrupted him softly.

“I wanted to know what made you give up on me.” Sam slightly lowered his head, gazing into his drink, fringe tamely resting on both sides of his forehead, side profile gentle. He went on like this, tenderly, “In that damn warehouse that day, I tried so hard to beg you to stay with me — I had never tried so hard before and had never been so helpless. But you made me watch you kill yourself, just like that, right in front of me, like you didn’t even care how it would ruin me.” The grief was finally permitted to crawl all over his face; the anguish in his eyes was too heavy to defy gravity, ready to overflow from the brim, drop by drop, crashing into the whiskey in his palm, mixing up a glass of drunken heartbreaks drowned in pain. Yet he was still smiling, his sweet dimples embedded into his cheeks, the best honey and poison in the world being contained. Dean felt his breath deprived. Not a single word could he utter.

The alcohol messed with Sam’s brain in the end, morphing his two indistinguishable brothers into one. “I should’ve resented you… for all that fucked-up shit you’ve pulled on me. But when you were standing in front of me, gutting yourself with a ridiculous silver knife dipped in fucking lamb blood, you know what’s my first thought? I wanted to jump on you and hold you in my arms. I wanted to grill you for why you are doing this to me. Like the knife was actually piercing through my body by your hand, but I’m still living and breathing, and I’m abandoned by you. God, Dean, what have you done to me? It shouldn’t have hurt that much… I should’ve hated you.

“That agony… I can’t deal with it. Dean. I couldn’t go to your funeral, couldn’t get back to work, couldn’t face Jessica. You were all I reeled in my head every single day. I kept turning things over again and again in my head — things from when we were just kids, things from when we were a bit older, things that make me happy, and things that are less so. What’s on rerun the most was how the last few days I’d spent with you panned out, the things after you had come. You calling me in the middle of the night talking nonsense, the way you looking at me at Mom’s birthday party, you pulling me into the kitchen and telling me we should hang out more, and you stabbing yourself in the stomach. Again and again and again. You could’ve saved me before then. You could’ve saved us. I just can’t take it. I have to find you.”

He lifted his head to Dean; brownish green eyes with heterochromia were incandescent with a wet glow, making Dean dare not to look into his eyes nor avert his eyes. The smile still persevered on his face, visceral honesty vivisecting his bleeding words open, laying his heart bare. “Why does it have to be your death to make me realize how much I love you? Why didn’t you tell me we could’ve been us? Why didn’t you stay the night with me when you came to Stanford? Why did you kiss Rachel instead of me on my prom? But now… now I understand. I’m just not that important, am I? He’s your real brother. I’m just someone who looks exactly like him.”

Sam was still smiling. The moonlit sea was the desolation glimmering in his eyes. He was crying for himself, for Dean, and for Dean. He was the kid abandoned, with nobody he could even blame for. Things just happened the way they were. No one cares how shattered his trampled heart was, bleeding out where no one can see. He never had anything, and nobody could hear his wailing.

But Dean did. And Dean cared.

Dean’s heart imploded, the maroon aftermath gushing to the floor. He reached out to touch Sam in vain, fingers following along his sleeve to his cuff, resting on his wrist, only to find the white-knuckled grip of his little brother on the tumbler.

When he replaced that glass with his own hand, Sam clutched him promptly with such intense tightness and inflicted pain. It was like Dean was offering a spider thread drooping straight into hell. Sam clung onto him with an iron grip and choked out whimpers so loud that crushed through Dean’s residue of heart at that very second.

Dean twisted his hand to grip Sam and haul him toward himself, nearly tipping Sam out of his stool. Sam was taken by surprise, letting out a small guttural yelp. And then — Dean kissed him.

It was a horrible kiss. Their lips crashed into each other mindlessly, teeth ringing with pain from the collision. But Sam let out another noise that sounded like a drowned man getting pulled out from the water, his huge hands seizing Dean’s jaw, tongue snaking through Dean’s teeth ferociously, desperately.

Sam’s attack was eager — rummaging would be an understatement of the way he mopped up Dean’s mouth. He searched for Dean’s tongue to intertwine, to tussle, and then moved on to biting Dean’s bottom lip as if he was attempting to interject all the loneliness, all the sorrow, and all the pain into Dean’s body. And as if he was hungrily devouring, engulfing Dean whole, to keep Dean inside of him. There was so much grievance, so much needs in him in an indiscernible fierceness, smoldering inside of him, burning every organ.

Sam was being clingy to his big brother with this kiss.

Dean indulged his biting and nibbling on his lips and tongue, his fingers stroking gently across Sam’s cheekbones, threading through his satiny hair. This is my little brother, he thought, I’m making out with my little brother.

It should’ve panicked him, but there was none. He didn’t know whether the transpiring alcohol was the culprit to thank. Compared to the look on his little brother’s face, anything ethical was as light as a feather, minor as a drop in the bucket. He couldn’t care less.

Perhaps that was indicative of his destiny ending up in hell.

Dean shut his eyes.