Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“What the f—”

Dean snarled as he jerked up his head and promptly hit something solid. Pain shot through the back of his skull, making his eyes sting, but he forced himself to grow still. After having regained his sense of orientation after a handful of heartbeats, he dared move his head again. Slowly. 

He was under a shelf. Apparently. At least he guessed the wooden panel above him was part of a shelf because he could see there were whole rows of them filling the room he found himself in. A storage facility of some kind?

A few of the shelves nearby were tipped over. Dean squinted, taking in the direction they had fallen and compared it to how his own body was positioned. 

Okay, so something had exploded in this room and thrown him backward. His prone body had slid under one of the many shelves. Alright. Nice to have an overview of the situation. It made sense, except it didn’t, because Dean didn’t recognize this room and last he remembered, he’d been stumbling toward a dingy motel after a long evening of getting drunk and hustling pool.

Had someone knocked him out? Only to then, what, stash him in an unknown room with evidence of an explosion?

Alright, so whatever had hit him had clearly caused some memory loss. Or someone was messing with his head and wanted him to think that. Either way, not good. He was in danger.

Dean slowly crawled out from beneath the shelf, mindful not to make any noise and listening hard for signs of life around him. But all he could hear was his own frantic heartbeat booming in his ears, drowning out the quiet sounds of his breathing.

Dean had a sense for when he was being watched—years of hunting honed a guy’s instincts like that—and his gut feeling told him he was alone. But then, his gut could sometimes be real stupid, much like Dean’s brain. But there was no sense in driving himself crazy over it. Someone would have heard the explosion anyway, so he was probably in the clear if no one had come running already. He’d be stealthy, but not that stealthy. If he was being spied on, they already knew he was here.

Dean grinned when his fingers found what they were looking for and curled around the handle of his gun. And it was his gun, his trusty ol’ Colt, so nobody had bothered to disarm him. He checked on the bullets just to be sure and—yeah, armed and dangerous. If this was a kidnapping, his kidnappers were either incompetent or trying to lull him into a false sense of security.

He frowned down at the shirt he was wearing, tugging on the plaid. It wasn’t one of the handful of shirts he owned and it was the wrong size. Too big, though not overly so. In fact, now that he was paying attention, his jeans felt a little loose, too, though not so much that the belt wouldn’t hold them in place.

Filing that information away for later, he started surveying his surroundings rather than himself. Which it turned out he should have done to begin with because the answer to this puzzle was staring him right in the face.

“Of course,” he muttered, taking in the magical artifacts lining the shelves. Because yeah, Dean didn’t recognize all of it or even most, but he knew witch bullshit when he saw it. And how he fucking hated it.

Okay, so he was in a witch’s lair and had probably been hunting the bitch. He touched something he shouldn’t have and that had gone and knocked some memories loose. Great. Dad would never let him hear the end of this.

God, hopefully Dad was nearby. If this was a solo hunt, Dean’s odds of dying just went up dramatically. Confused and disoriented he’d be easy prey.

Well fuck that, Dean was no prey. He was a hunter, even if today he’d apparently been a stupid one. He’d try to escape and, if cornered, would shoot first, ask questions later, and hopefully make it out of here alive.

With that thought in mind, he let his gaze roam until it found the exit. He tried to push the door open as quietly as he could, but the damn thing squeaked on him. Dean froze, tightened his grip on his gun, and eased himself out of the room.

He found himself in a long hallway. A mercifully empty one.

Damn, but he’d never seen a witch’s layer like this before. Big enough to be a mansion, but strangely utilitarian in design. And the hallway went on forever, doors he didn’t dare open lining the walls, with no windows to let in some sunlight. 

Eventually, Dean found himself in front of a set of stairs leading upward. Was this whole thing an underground lair? Bizarre, even for his line of work.

He’d been trying to be stealthy before, but now he really made himself as invisible as possible. Pressed to the wall and taking the stairs one at a time, Dean kept pausing to listen for whoever might be lurking upstairs.

When he made it to the very top of the stairs, he froze.

A cough. Someone had just coughed up ahead. It didn’t seem to be a pointed cough, faked to draw his attention, but more of a lazy throat clearing. Sounded vaguely male, but it was hard to tell. And it was coming from up ahead, the only path forward.

Shit. Okay. Possibly male witch blocking the way to the exit.

This place just kept getting more bizarre. As he crept forward, Dean found himself in something like a library and – yeah, there was the witch. Male indeed. You wouldn’t know it by the girly hair, but the dude was fucking huge to make up for it. Jesus. 

He had his back toward Dean, sitting at a table, and his nose was buried in a book. Not that Dean could see the book, exactly, but it seemed like a good guess considering the freakish library they were in.

Dean had not been spotted yet. He had a clear shot at the witch’s back. But for all that he’d resolved to shoot first and ask questions later, he now found himself asking questions, specifically: what if that dude’s not a witch? If I shoot him now, am I gunning down an innocent? But what kind of innocent sits around reading in a witch’s freaky lair?  

Flying blind without his memories, Dean still had no idea what led him here. Witches as a whole were more of a morally gray area than most other monsters, which was why Dean hated dealing with them. He liked his monsters unambiguously evil so he didn’t have to feel bad about shooting them. But witches were human. Humans with a shitty moral compass, but not all of them were completely monstrous and in need of killing.

Indecision kept him in place as precious seconds passed, each one increasing the likelihood of discovery. Maybe… maybe there was a way to sneak around the guy…?

“Dean, quit screwing around, I know you’re there,” the witch said, not moving or taking his eyes off the book in front of him.

And Dean… Dean froze in complete shock because he knew that bitchy tone. 

The voice was wrong, way too deep, but the way he’d said it… Okay, no, clearly the explosion had scrambled Dean’s brain worse than he thought. Sam was gone, and Dean had apparently sunk so low he was starting to project his voice on random strangers.

Still. The witch knew he was there and he didn’t sound hostile. He also didn’t perceive Dean as a threat. So maybe they were on friendly terms…? Seemed ridiculous, but maybe that was the play here. Kidnap Dean, scramble his brains, make him think he’s best buds with a witch and then use him for nefarious purposes. The very fact that Dean had just been reminded of Sam there was extremely suspicious and probably designed to lower his guard.

Finally, the world was starting to make some sense.

“Yeah, I’m not buying what you’re selling,” Dean said and took aim.

The witch’s back stiffened and he raised his head.

“No sudden movements, pal, I’m a bit trigger happy at the moment.”

Obediently, the witch froze. Cooperation was a good sign. Maybe Dean would make it out of here alive. Then again, it could be part of the trap. 

“So I’ve got some questions,” he drawled, moving sideways while keeping his gun trained at the target, walking in a lazy circle around his prey that would hopefully allow him a better look at the guy’s face. “And I suggest you answer honestly.”

“Dean…?” Fuck, there it was again, all wrong and yet so right.

“Cause if you lie to me,” Dean said, opting to ignore the voice entirely. “I’m gonna make you regret it.”

That was when the witch huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “I think you’ll regret shooting me more, man. But sure. Ask away.”

Gritting his teeth, Dean kept talking, though he knew he was losing control of the situation. Or never had it to begin with. The guy wasn’t afraid of him when he damn well should be.

“Well, you seem to know my name. Seems only fair that I know y—” 

Dean’s voice died in his throat when the man’s face came into view.

“Have you forgotten my name, Dean?” Sam asked mildly, feigning indifference, but his eyes told a different story. Jesus, those were—those were his brother’s eyes, alright, Dean would know them anywhere, but everything about his appearance was wrong, even the eyes. They were looking at Dean with such concern and—and—Sam didn’t look at him like this anymore, not since he hit puberty and the screaming matches with Dad started.

“Sammy?” Dean rasped and he was so stupid to do it, but he lowered his gun a little. This was a shapeshifter and a terrible one at that, to have gotten so much of Sam’s appearance wrong and yet Dean could not look into those eyes and keep his gun steady.

Fuck. He was so weak.

The shapeshifter brightened at once—of course it did, the dick, its plan was working—and it kept his voice low and gentle, speaking to Dean as if he was a spooked horse. “Yeah, Dean it’s me. Do you want me to do some tests?”

“Tests,” Dean repeated, dazed and not quite following the conversation.

“Yeah, you know. Silver. Holy water. The standard stuff.”

Holy water wasn’t part of their standard stuff because neither Sam nor Dean had ever been suicidal enough to tangle with demons, though Dad and Bobby had. Dean nodded anyway. “Yeah. Silver.” He cleared his throat, trying to regain his equilibrium as he reached into his pocket for the silver knife he carried. Which wasn’t there. Fuck’s sake.

The shapeshifter, however, was a proper boy scout, and fished a small blade out of his pocket. It belatedly occured to Dean that he should not have allowed the shifter to draw a knife and that he was now at imminent risk of getting stabbed.

But the shifter made no aggressive moves toward him, just rolled up his sleeve to reveal a scarred arm. He placed the blade at the edge of one of the scars and then traced its shape. Blood welled up but he showed no reaction, not to the silver nor to the pain, as if having to prove his identity this way was quite routine. Looking at all the scars, it probably was.

Dean didn’t know which would be worse—if this was a shifter fucking with him or if that truly was Sam and his arms bore evidence of so much suffering. Dean swallowed thickly and allowed himself to acknowledge what he’d been steadfastly ignoring up to this point.

Sam looked old. Really old. Well, okay, not that old but… definitely older than Dean. There were lines on his face and his jaw had filled out and there were the first hints of gray streaking through the familiar dark brown.

“Why did you let your hair get this stupid,” Dean blurted out because it did look ridiculous, and it was making Dean’s fingers itch with the strange urge to run them through those girly locks.

Dean was aware that he was having inappropriate thoughts about his brother’s hair but he let them run wild in his head anyway because his brain was refusing to process the rest of Sam’s appearance in general. Could this really be what Sam might look like someday?

A sudden lump rose in his throat as that thought finally pierced through the mental block. Dean would never get to see his little brother grow this old, he’d be dead long before then. So his gaze finally started roaming, cataloguing every last detail with great interest. Jesus, Sam had to be—6'4" maybe? But honestly, it wasn't even the added height that was tripping him up. Last he'd seen Sam, he'd been a lanky beanpole, all gangly limbs, but now—

Well, not now. This wasn't real, and he would most likely never get to see his little brother truly grown up. And yeah, he would never get to see Sammy grin this broadly at him ever again, either, so warm and affectionate even as his words turned bitchy. “Because I like my hair long, Dean.”

“It’s stupid,” Dean repeated for emphasis. “And don’t think for a second I believe your little act. That knife is yours, not mine, it could be made of anything but silver.”

Not-Sam’s grin slipped away and he sighed in exasperation. Dean bit his lower lip. God, the appearance might be off but this thing had Sam’s mannerisms down. Well, not quite, not really, there was a lot off there as well, but it was just similar enough to punch straight through Dean’s chest.

“I’d let you go find your own silver knife,” the shifter told him. “But I don’t think I can leave you traipsing around here without supervision.”

“Afraid I’ll break your witchy crap in the basement? Cause, uh, too late for that.”

“Yeah,” the thing said, resigned. “I figured it had to be something like that. What did you touch?”

“Dunno,” Dean said because, well, so far honesty seemed like the best policy. This thing was cooperative enough for now, and clearly held some answers. 

And it was… nice. To get to talk to someone so much like Sam. To have pseudo-Sam looking at him so warmly. Even if it wasn’t really Sam and it was probably plotting Dean’s horrible murder. Jesus, when did he get this pathetic?

“Alright,” Dean said, clearing his suddenly constricted throat. “Give me your best sales pitch. What’s the story I’m supposed to be buying here?”

“Not sure,” Not-Sam said, letting his gaze rake over Dean only to return to his face. There was that… thing… in his eyes again, something affectionate and warm, except there was also… What was that? Longing? No, probably hunger. Which made sense if the shifter was planning to eat him. Humans generally weren’t part of the shifter diet, but they tended to be sick fucks, so the possibility was definitely on the table. 

It interrupted Dean’s thoughts to say, “I think it’s either time travel or a de-aging spell.”

Dean barked out a laugh. “Time travel, dude?”

“Yeah.” Not-Sam smiled a little, tentative and hopeful. “With all the crap I know you’ve already seen so far in your life, are you really doubting the existence of time travel?”

“Well, call me Marty McFly, I guess.” Dean shook his head and couldn’t help returning the smile because he was an idiot and a sap, even as he tightened the hold on his gun. “Except don’t, because none of this holds up. You can’t be Sam’s future because Sam’s out there fulfilling his dream of—” he sneered the word ”—a normal life and this place? All that crap in the basement? You being here? This ain’t normal.”

“I tried being normal for a while, yeah,” Not-Sam agreed, wistful. “It didn’t work out. So, 2004?”

Dean frowned. “2003. As you well know, asshole. Come on, drop the act so I can shoot you already.”

“This isn’t an act,” the thing said, like the liar it was. And it was so fucking frustrating that Dean knew it was lying and he still couldn’t bring himself to shoot it because it was looking up at him with Sam’s puppy dog eyes on an aged face. 

“Look,” it said. “I’m going to reach into my pockets again, okay? And I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t shoot me over it because I’m not going for a weapon, I already have the knife, I just want to show you some proof.”

“What kind of proof?”

“My phone. The kind of phone that didn’t exist back in 2003.”

“Oh, what, did they manage to make ‘em even smaller?” Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s gonna convince me. Like I keep up with the latest phone models, if you were really Sam you’d know I only buy the cheap shit that’s a billion years out of date.”

Not-Sam had the audacity to chuckle. “Yeah, I know that, but they’re not aiming to make them small anymore. That trend reversed completely when they invented the iPhone. Uh, 2007, I think?”

“The fuck’s an eye-phone?”

The shifter raised an expectant eyebrow and let his hand hover over one of the pockets of his jeans, the silent plea unspoken. I’ll show you if you let me.

“Fine,” Dean growled. “Any sudden movement and I pull the trigger, that clear?”

Not-Sam nodded and pulled something large and rectangular from his pocket with exaggerated slowness. It really didn’t look like any phone Dean was familiar with, and he frowned as Not-Sam tapped on what was obviously the touchscreen of a mini-computer. 

Except when it lit up and Sam started swiping his fingers over it, it responded instantly and not with the sluggishness that Dean was used to from the handful of touchscreens he’d interacted with in his life. And those were pretty big computers found in museums and public libraries, not something that would fit into the palm of a hand. 

Not even one as big as Not-Sam’s, and Dean’s brain took that moment to admire the fact that Not-Sam’s hands were really big and kind of nice and was this really how big Sammy would get once he’d grown into his gangliness?

Hopefully not. Little brothers weren’t meant to grow up bigger than big brothers, it was against the natural order of things. Dean was already seething over the extra two inches of height Sam had on him back when he’d left, he didn’t need or want that gap to widen. It was impossible to tell how tall Sam really was these days, at least not with the covert surveillance from a distance that was the only contact Sammy allowed.

Well, ‘allowed’ was a generous term. More like ‘didn’t know about.’

“Here, look,” Not-Sam interrupted Dean’s spiraling thoughts by holding out his giant freaking paw and the mini-computer with it.

Dean’s brain short-circuited.

That. That wasn’t—

There was a picture. On the screen. Two men. In front of Baby. One of them was the older version of Sam. And the other…

“No,” Dean said, because he was suddenly dizzy and disoriented and this couldn’t be because he was going to die before he hit thirty and it was impossible for him to have ever gotten as old as he was in that picture. Impossible for his face to be so changed, impossible for him to have laugh lines around the eyes, impossible for him to even be laughing and most of all, impossible for him to be leaning into Sammy, who was laughing, too.

Because Sammy had left and wanted nothing to do with Dean. Nothing about this was possible or anything more than a dream dangled in front of him to get him on the hook.

“This isn’t real,” he said hoarsely. “I know what you’re doing and I’m not going to fall for it.”

“Dean,” Not-Sam (Sam? Sammy?) said softly. “This is real. It’s 2021.”

Dean shook his head violently, but his gun was slipping from his fingers and he knew he needed to hold on to it if he wanted to survive, but it suddenly seemed so impossibly heavy. “Witchy bullshit,” he whispered. “This is all—not real. None of it.”

“It’s witchy bullshit, alright,” the thing that might be Sam said with a soft huff. “But not the way you’re thinking. Dean, it’s me. I’m real. I promise I’m real.”

“No. You’re not, you’re a witch or a shapeshifter.” Dean laughed, and it had a hysterical edge to it. “Maybe both.”

“Again, you’re half-right. You call me Samwitch sometimes.”

“What?!” Dean yelled, snapped out of his daze by how appalled he was. “Why would you—you want to be normal, why would you ever become a witch?!”

“Because sometimes witchy bullshit is useful for hunting,” Maybe-Sam said, all calm and serene in a way that was extremely unlike the real Sam, because last Dean checked, Sammy was a tightly coiled ball of explosive anger on this topic. “And yes, I wanted to be normal when I was 20, but then I grew up and realized life isn’t fair and I am not normal, so I might as well do something good with it.”

“...you’re a hunter?” Dean asked, forlorn. A hunter-witch? 

“Yeah, man.” 

And Maybe-Sam was moving now, inch by careful inch, turning in his seat to lean closer the more Dean lowered his gun. If Dean dropped the gun entirely, then maybe… maybe… 

“Family business, remember?” Not-Sam murmured softly, thinking his prey caught and starting to reel it in.

“You hate the family business.”

“No, I just hated dad.”

“Just dad,” Dean repeated tonelessly. Not me?

“Yeah, and I know you’re lining up a defense of him in your head right now—” Dean wasn’t, his head was too empty and filled with white noise to do anything of the sort. “—but you don’t have to. I, uh, I made my peace with dad. Mostly. And, y’know, I really ended up coming to regret how I took my anger with him out on you. I get you’re from 2003 and don’t have much reason to trust me, but Dean, I am your brother and I am real and I’m not going to hurt you.”

Dean blinked slowly. “You’re a hunter. We’ve been hunting together for years,” he said, just for clarification’s sake. “And you have pictures of us hanging out together on your star trek phone.”

“…yeah?”

“This is stupid. You’re terrible at this.” Dean laughed, and it was hollow. “Like, the Samwitch thing was a good touch, I’ll give you that, but man—you can’t. This isn’t convincing at all. If you wanted this to be realistic for me, you can’t make the scenario this perfect.”

“Dean,” Not-Sam said, and it sounded pained and pleading.

“And I mean, what even is this place? Like, our very own hunter batcave? Dude, how did you expect me to buy any of this?”

He raised his gun, but it was slow and shaky, and that was when Not-Sam suddenly moved so damn fast. Dean didn’t even see the knock-out punch coming. 

When he woke up chained to a bed and with his gun nowhere in sight, Dean laughed. 

He’d always known he was going to end up monster chow before age thirty.

Chapter Text

Not-Sam came into the room around half an hour after Dean woke up. He held a plate with a burger on it and sighed deeply when he saw Dean’s innocent expression.

“Dean, please tell me you didn’t hurt yourself trying to get out of the restraints.”

“I didn’t.” Not yet. Breaking his thumb so he could slip his hand through the cuffs was a last resort he’d rather not, well, resort to. It’d make it impossible for him to hold a gun.

“Okay, good.” 

Not-Sam shifted his weight, seeming almost nervous as he approached, hunching in on himself like that’d help with being less intimidating when he was ten feet tall. Not that he looked intimidating to Dean’s eyes. That was the problem. There was a freakishly tall monster who looked at least ten years older than him and Dean still saw his baby brother in it. 

“Look,” it said. “I didn’t want to put the cuffs on you, but I don’t want to get shot, either.”

“That’s fair.” Dean nodded because it was. “I mean, I don’t believe you, but fair enough.”

“I brought food,” Not-Sam said with another beleaguered sigh and held out the burger.

“Oh, I’m not eating anything you give me.”

“I thought you might say that, and that’s why this is a veggie burger.”

Dean snorted. “I’m sorry, is that supposed to persuade me to eat it?”

“Yeah,” Not-Sam said, and its face contorted into a spot-on imitation of Sammy’s bitch face #3, the one that meant stop being an idiot, Dean. “Apparently everything here is just too perfect to be real, and that’s why you’ll be getting vegetarian fare from me.”

“That’s disgusting, you can’t torture your own brother like this.”

Not-Sam’s expression faltered for a moment before it forced Sam’s features into a perfectly blank mask. “Yes, well, you already think I am a monster, so I might as well unclog your arteries a little.”

Dean looked away, exhaling sharply. “Look. You caught me. You fucked with my mind. You win. Can you get to the killing already?”

“No,” it said and set down the plate with the burger. The bed dipped down as it sat down next to Dean and looked at him with terribly sad eyes. 

“Stop looking at me like that,” Dean snapped.

“Like what?”

“Like you give a single shit about me! I know you don’t!”

“You don’t know anything, Dean,” Not-Sam said and it sighed like it had the fucking weight of the world on its shoulders. “This isn’t as perfect as you think.”

“U-huh.”

“No, listen. We paid a price for all this, and it was terrible. I know it seems like a dream come true to you, but it’s real and was bought with blood and pain. More than you can possibly imagine.”

“Dude, I’m a hunter. I have a pretty good imagination when it comes to blood and pain. Which is why I find you drawing this out so tedious. I get it, I get it, you like to play with your food but the food won’t play. Just… get it over with, okay?”

“I hate your death wish,” the thing snarled. “I really do, Dean, can you stow this self-pity crap for one minute and listen to me?”

“Nah,” Dean said and grinned.

Not-Sam stared at him for a long moment, and then said softly, “When I was twelve, I ran away. In Flagstaff.”

Dean’s grin faltered.

“I found a dog and I named him Bones and I loved him because I’d always wanted a dog. I got to eat what I wanted and ended up puking because I ate too much candy. I only got caught because the money I’d stolen from you ran out.” The thing wearing Sam’s aged skin looked him in the eye and said, “For a long time, this was one of the happiest memories of my life.”

Dean swallowed thickly, and then sneered, “Finally showing your true colors, huh?”

“Make up your mind, Dean. Am I supposed to be nice or not?”

“You can go to hell, that’s what you’re supposed to do!”

“Already did,” Not-Sam (?) said, voice wavering and a dangerous glint in its (his) eyes. “Can’t recommend it, personally, kind of a dreary place. The current queen of hell is alright, though. Her name’s Rowena.”

It was rare for Dean to end up speechless these days, but he could do nothing but stare at that.

“Anyway. Flagstaff.” Maybe-Sam titled his head up and stared at the ceiling. “I hate that memory now.”

“...why?” Dean asked, and he hated himself for asking, for the stupid hope blossoming in his chest that this had something to do with him, that maybe Sam really had learned to give a shit about Dean.

“Because when you found out how I felt about Flagstaff, you threw away the amulet.”

“I what?” Dean repeated in disbelief, yanking on the chain tying him to the bed to reach for–

It wasn’t there.

How could he not have noticed that it wasn’t there?

“Where is it,” he rasped. “Where did you put it, you son of a bitch, I’ll kill you for this–”

“I fished it out of the trash can you threw it in,” Definitely-Not-Sam said with a horrible smile, so sad and nostalgic it made Dean want to wrap the thing in a hug which was insane . “And then I carried it around with me. For years. And. You ended up being happy that I did that. I think. I don’t know for certain because you just kind of gave me that look I interpreted as good. Actually getting you to talk about your feelings is like pulling teeth. Jerk.”

Dean pressed his lips together to keep his part of that call-and-response from escaping. This made no sense anyway, he couldn’t imagine ever wanting to throw the amulet away. He hadn’t even thrown it away over Stanford, so why would he throw it away over Flagstaff? Yeah, that had sucked a lot, but it was also water under the bridge.

But Jesus, this thing’s eyes when it talked…

“So you know,” it continued after a brief pause, having obviously waited for the unspoken bitch and looking crestfallen that it wasn’t going to get it. “We really did have some terrible times on our way here. I hurt you and you hurt me and we just kept going in circles. We lost so many people, you have no idea. Dad’s dead, by the way.”

Dean inhaled sharply but Sam just kept talking. 

“But. Eventually, yeah, we made it here. And you’re right, it is good, so good that I do understand why it seems too good to be true to you, but Dean. That’s only because you can’t remember the pain it took to get here. You earned this the hard way. We earned this. I earned this and I need you to stop looking at me like I’m a monster for it.”

“Okay,” Dean said in a small voice because there was pain in what Sammy was saying, terrible pain, and it was in his eyes, too. Dean’s every instinct was screaming to make his little brother stop hurting and he could only take so much before he broke. “Okay. Sam. Fuck. I’m sorry, I just—how can this be real?”

“It just is.” The edges of his lips curled into a sad little half-smile, like there was a private joke he was recalling that Dean wasn’t in on. “Good things do happen.”

“Not to me, man,” Dean said. Sammy mumbled something under his breath that sounded a lot like oh for fuck’s sake and then Dean found himself enveloped in his brother’s ridiculously buff arms. 

Dean promptly leaned into it and started crying like a little bitch.

Oh god, he would never live this one down. Dean could only pray this older, evidently wiser version of his little brother was going to show him mercy and keep the teasing to a minimum.

If he wasn’t secretly a monster.

~~~

Sam didn’t tease him. 

Well, actually he did, about other things. But he magnanimously pretended that Dean hadn’t just grossly sobbed into his shoulder, and in return, Dean said nothing about the wet sheen he’d seen in Sam’s eyes, too.

After extracting a promise that nobody was getting shot today and squinting suspiciously at Dean’s face to search for evidence of lies, Sam unlocked the cuffs and shoved the burger at him again.

It tasted okay. It had gone cold, so that wasn’t great, but it was still so good that Dean was genuinely surprised when Sam told him that yes, it really was a veggie burger. Something called Beyond Meat. Apparently meat substitutes stopped tasting like ass in the future. Dean still wasn’t gonna touch tofu, though, not even for Sam, and Sammy laughed when he said that out loud.

“That’s okay. You know, I’m a full-time vegetarian these days but I never developed much of a taste for tofu either.”

“Sammy, no,” Dean moaned. This was worse than the witch stuff. “How do you even get enough protein? You’re a fucking giant, Sammy, you need to eat!”

“Do I look emaciated to you?” Sam said with a quirk of his eyebrow and Dean had to admit that, no, he didn’t. He looked the opposite. How the fuck did he sustain these muscles with rabbit food?

When he asked this question out loud, Dean regretted it immediately because Sam launched into an extended lecture about nutrition and common misconceptions about protein needs of the human body. Dean tuned him out once he started saying shit like well-balanced macronutrients and amino-acid profile. 

“Hey,” Dean interrupted Sam’s ramblings. “So why’d you go vegetarian? Like, any particular reason?”

“For the animals,” Sam said with a sort of duh expression on his face. “The industrial meat industry is a horror show, man, I don’t want to put that in my body.” 

Dean frowned. “Was the veggie burger a joke or are you going to give me shit for what I eat now?”

Sam shook his head with a wry smile. “Dude, I know better than to get between you and your love affair with meat.”

“Oh, okay.” Dean smiled. “I guess I get it. But you could eat, uh, you know. The ethically raised ones. Happy cows.” Even though that shit was expensive as hell and Dean would definitely have to step up the pool hustling to accommodate Sam’s food hang-ups.

Dude was always such a picky eater.

But Sam shook his head and launched into another lecture about there being no such thing as ethically raised meat. Dean mostly tuned it out again but he found it interesting that when he brought up venison as an alternative, Sam turned out to be a monster hunter who was real squeamish about regular kinds of hunters. 

“There’s a difference between shooting evil monsters and shooting Bambi’s mom,” Sam said, all fired up. “One’s innocent.”

And oh yeah, Dean vaguely recalled Sammy crying at that part of the movie when he was five or six.

“You’re such a sap,” was the conclusion Dean drew from that discussion because this really was just basic cycle of life shit. Top of the food chain ate the lower parts, that was just the way of the world. It was Dean’s job as a hunter to kill the shit that was threatening to push humanity’s position from apex predator to prey.

But he let Sam ramble on for a while longer anyway because he was kind of endearing when he got passionate about something. Even when that something was, ugh, vegetarianism. 

As much as he appreciated the changes in older Sam, it was nice to see not everything had changed. That was definitely still his little brother in there. Apparently Dean’s future involved not dying before age thirty and living happily ever after with his nerdy kid brother instead. Some real Disney shit, if Disney had a lot of blood and gore in it. 

So then Dean started asking about this weird-ass house they were in.

Turned out it was a bunker belonging to some secret society of extra-nerdy hunters who’d been wiped out by a demon back in the fifties. So now Sam and Dean were squatting in their abandoned headquarters. Sam was having a passionate love affair with its library and the magic stuff in the basement. That was what Dean had been doing there, helping to organize the inventory because most of it was dangerous and some artifacts needed to have their containment refreshed. Cool. Bizarre, of course, but so was most of Dean’s life and this was the kind of bizarre he could accept.

Dean had his own room, a room that was all his and decorated just to his taste. He’d almost started drooling when he saw the weapon collection on the wall, but then Sam had ushered him away from that, probably still a little worried that giving Dean access to weapons would end with Sam getting shot. Fair enough.

So then Dean was shown a second room that was also his, and it was called The Dean Cave. It had this obscenely big TV mounted on the wall and Dean’s older self apparently used this place to unwind after hunts. There was lots of other cool shit in the room, too, but Dean just kept staring at the TV. He didn’t really know how to take in this much luxury without starting to doubt reality again. 

It was just too good, all of it.

Well, not all of it. There was, after all, the matter of Dad. 

Dad was dead, and that was a point in favor of this whole thing being real. Because just like the Samwitch thing, this really wasn’t copacetic and Dean would probably freak out about this at some point soon-ish. 

But not yet, for now he was content with walking around in a happy daze next to Sam and trying to get the lay of the land.

Turned out there was a third occupant in the bunker. A dog named Miracle.

“Miracle,” Dean repeated as he stared down at the mutt.

Sam’s face went inscrutable. It did that sometimes, and Dean didn’t like not being able to read him. 

“Look, we found him at a bad time in our lives, alright? He gave us hope and so that’s what we named him.”

“Jesus, and I thought you naming your dog Bones was bad. I am officially revoking your naming privileges, Sammy. You don’t get to name things anymore.”

“You named him,” Sam shot back with bitch face #5: sassy triumph.

“No, I didn't,” Dean said serenely. “You’re taking advantage of my amnesia to mess with me. Low blow, Sammy, not cool and kind of unethical.”

Sam sputtered and Dean gloated with his own version of bitch face #5. Not that he ever made bitch faces, that was Sam’s department. Jerk face #5, that was it.

Fuck, but he was afraid to even properly look at Sammy, so he stole glances out of the corner of his eyes. And Sam… Sam kept glancing back.

It was so good and exhilarating and just plain weird.

Because in between the snark and the lectures and the inscrutableness, Sam kept looking at him like— 

Like…

Sammy kept looking at him like he fucking adored Dean, that was how, like he couldn’t believe he could be lucky enough to be in his big brother’s presence. No matter how much of an asshole Dean was at any given moment, Sam just kept watching him with this air of fond amusement. Like he’d missed him terribly.

In other words, Sam looked at Dean the way Dean looked at Sam. A mutual, unspoken holy shit, look at him. 

The strangest thing was that Dean kept waiting for the lecture about not calling him Sammy but it never came. 

Sam had been fighting his childhood nickname since his voice started cracking, and he got especially vicious about it whenever Dad said it. He was more mellow when Dean slipped up, but inevitably Dean ended up using it one too many times and got a little lecture about it.

I hate hunting, I hate dad, I hate you, I’m not a little kid anymore, stop calling me Sammy! That was Sam’s main contribution to the chorus in the Winchester household those last few years before he left.

The thing was, Dean genuinely tried not to say it during real fights or even day-to-day. He didn’t want to be an asshole to his little brother, after all—except, of course, for the times he was being an asshole on purpose. When Sam was annoying, Dean had a brotherly duty to be annoying right back, and then the playful weaponization of the hated nickname wasn’t off-limits. 

But mostly, Dean was just a motormouth and the name Sammy passed his lips almost entirely without his conscious input whenever he was feeling particularly warm and fuzzy toward Sam. 

Older Sam inspired a lot of warmth and fuzziness, now that Dean was allowing himself to believe that yes, this old man was his little brother. A hunter through and through, a partner who’d apparently fought by Dean’s side for over a decade. It was in the way he moved, deliberate and dangerous and yet downplaying the threat he truly was. 

He had wrinkles, and yeah, it was weird to see Sammy so old, but what really freaked Dean out was what those wrinkles were telling him about Sam’s character. 

The deep furrows in his brows meant he frowned a lot. That didn’t surprise Dean, and it wasn’t necessarily sad. He could picture that perfectly, his little brother bent over a book and frowning in deep concentration.

But what was sad was the lack of laugh lines around the eyes.

Except.

Sam was laughing. And smiling. He grinned constantly while talking to Dean, and he wasn’t faking his enthusiasm either.

Which meant that Sam was a person who didn’t normally laugh a lot but Dean could so easily coax it out of him. By merely existing in the general vicinity. Hence warmth and fuzziness in Dean’s chest, even as he grieved for his little brother’s happiness.

So Sammy, Sammy, Sammy just kept pouring out of his mouth, and Sam never called him out on it, even though he had every right to. I’m an adult, I’m older than you, look at me, I’m a buff giant and not a twelve-year-old. Stop calling me Sammy.

But this older Sam didn’t say any of that. Instead his lips curled up every single time Dean threw it out there. As the day went on, Dean started saying it on purpose and that just made Sammy preen harder. 

Weirdo.

How, Dean thought for the thousandth time, how did you turn out like this? How did we get here? What I did older me do to make you think I deserve to be looked at this way?

And how can I repeat the deed so this never goes away?

“It’s just,” Sam said at dinner because apparently they had meal times now and a kitchen to have dinner in. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but. You’re so young, man. I want to pinch your widdle cheeks.”

“Shut up, old man.” Dean glared as he defiantly shoved the mac’n’cheese he’d made into his mouth. It was the only vegetarian dish Dean had been confident he could pull off on short notice and that he was willing to eat himself. “I’m still your older brother, I don’t give a shit that you’re forty, the pinching of cheeks only goes one way.”

“Thirty-eight. And you’ve never pinched my cheeks in your entire life.”

“Don’t be stupid, Sammy, of course I pinched your cheeks. When you were a baby.”

Then, to prove his point, Dean reached out to grab his brother’s cheek. Of course, his hand was swatted away, and so he tried again, and then this whole thing escalated into a wrestling match. 

Sam won, despite his decrepit age. 

And then the fucker pinched Dean’s cheeks, and Dean had no choice but to try punching him again. Sammy dodged the blow and laughed at him, the bitch, and then Dean was laughing, too. It was all so ridiculously perfect that Dean didn’t even care anymore if this was a trap. If giving into this fantasy was going to get him killed, well, Dean had never expected to make it to thirty in the first place. 

He could think of so many worse ways to die and none better than this.

Chapter Text

Naturally, it couldn’t stay sunshine and rainbows forever. Life wasn’t like that and the happy daze got disrupted when they started discussing sleeping arrangements for the night. Sam really did not trust Dean with the wall of weapons in his own room.

They decided that Dean should stay the night in the empty guest room for Sam’s peace of mind. So Dean started wondering who else ever stayed in the bunker for them to even have a guest room.

His little brother looked so stricken when asked that question.

“Eileen,” he rasped, the inscrutable mask sliding back into place. “Jody and Donna. Claire sometimes.”

Obviously the names of those chicks meant nothing to Dean, and he noticed the rather glaring lack of Bobby there. So he asked if those were booty calls because hell, what else was he supposed to think when it was only female names?

And that was the first time Future Sam got truly angry with Dean. 

Not the playful huffing and puffing he’d been doing all day, no, this was the real deal. This was the fury that had broken their family apart when Sam had chosen to direct it at Dad, and when Dean suddenly found himself at the receiving end of that glare, he flinched and took a step back.

So evidently that temper was still there and Sam hadn’t actually reached enlightenment and become a Zen Master. Good to know.

Dean’s overreaction was embarrassing but at least it did the trick of preventing an eruption of Mount Sammy by defusing him instantly. The heat cooled seconds after it sparked to life and Sam visibly restrained himself as he bit out, “They are not, they’re all capable hunters, they’re our friends, and all four of them will kick your ass if they catch you talking like that about them.”

“Easy tiger,” Dean said and raised both his palms in a placating apology. “I didn’t mean it in a bad way, you know I respect all my booty calls.”

“The sad thing is that you actually believe that.”

“I’m getting the feeling someone took courses in women’s studies while he was off gallivanting at Stanford, huh?”

“I did,” Sam said, voice like ice. “And you know what, I’m glad I did, I learned some shit.”

Dean squinted at him. “Are you really?”

“Yes! Feminist texts have valuable insight into—”

“Not that, I mean, are you really glad you ran off to Stanford?”

Sam blinked, and then he pinched the bridge of his nose. Dean wondered if he’d just given his brother a tension headache. “I think it’d be a bad idea to open that particular can of worms right now. You already have a lot to process and Stanford… look, there’s a lot to get into there.”

“I can take it. Jesus, stop treating me like I’m some fragile little flower you have to protect from information about my own life.”

“Stanford isn’t your life, Dean, it’s mine.”

“That stupid stunt of yours made me fucking miserable, so yeah, it is my life, too, and I do deserve to know where you stand on it.”

Truth was, for all that Dean liked to think of himself as an easy-going guy, he’d inherited part of the Winchester temper too. Except while Sam and Dad seemed to get entirely lost in their own self-righteousness once they got going, Dean was aware he was being stupid and irrational the entire time and hated himself for it. So he knew, in that moment, that he was escalating for no reason when he should have been placating, and that he was ruining a perfectly good day by picking a fight about an ancient wound, but he did it anyway.

But then Sam surprised him by demonstrating that actually yes, he had acquired some enlightenment along the way. Because really, that should have ignited his temper but it didn’t. Dean could see the flicker of anger, but then Sam must have fought off the temptation to snarl back, because suddenly his face went soft and pleading.

“Dean, let’s not fight. Alright? I’m not trying to keep secrets, we can talk about this later, but not while you’re so riled up about—” He made a vague sweeping gesture. “—everything else. I’m trying to dole out upsetting information at a reasonable pace here.”

And damn if that didn’t instantly take the wind out of Dean’s sails.

“Wow, you really learned how to weaponize those puppy dog eyes against me, huh?”

Sam flashed him a smug grin, mouthed yes, and just like that, the tension between them broke.

“But seriously man, why are we only inviting chicks over, don’t we have any guy friends? I don’t mean that in a sexist way,” Dean hastened to add, “I’m sure they’re cool ladies and I’m pretty stoked to meet some women who are also hunters or, y’know, other hunters at all considering how rare we are, but—” 

He trailed off as Sam just kept staring at him, and so Dean finished rather lamely with, “It just seems weird. Statistically speaking.”

“...you’re not entirely wrong,” Sam conceded at length. “There’s a lot more hunters out there than we knew back in 2003, but they do tend to be men more than women. We beat the odds by having the friends we do now.”

“See! That’s all I meant.”

“No, that’s not all you meant, but it’s okay,” Sam said with a sigh. “You’ll grow out of it. Mostly.”

“Out of what, dude?” Dean asked. “Not trying to pick a fight, but I really don’t understand your attitude here.”

“I know you don’t—”

“Okay, now you’re picking a fight with that condescending tone. I’m not upset, I’m curious, and I just want to know what the issue here is exactly. Unless you think I’m too stupid to learn whatever you learned at Stanford?”

And Sam, the bitch, actually huffed out a laugh at that. “Jesus, and you accuse me of perfecting the art of the guilt trip. Who do you think I learned that particular trick from?”

“Is it working, though?”

“Yeah it is, jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“That right there,” Sam said, still grinning. “Bitch being your go-to insult for me, that’s the problem. The casual misogyny you don’t even notice you have.”

Oh for fuck’s sake, not this again. “Dude, what? I don’t hate women, don’t be ridiculous.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

Dean arched an eyebrow. “Miso, the prefix meaning ‘hatred of,’ gyno, ‘female.’ I learned some Latin for the job, same as you. You know this, you were there learning right alongside me. Just because you learned more doesn’t mean I learned nothing.”

Sam had the audacity to look surprised but then he smiled. “Yes, you did. Dean, you know I know you’re smart, right?”

“And yet you always seem so surprised when I know shit,” Dean said dryly.

“Yeah, bad habit. I don’t know, I’m working on it, okay?”

Dean nodded because Sam did look properly chastened and apologetic. “So. Misogyny?”

“Academic language is different sometimes,” Sam said. He was speaking slowly, but Dean got the distinct impression that this wasn’t meant as a slight to Dean’s intelligence but rather that Sam himself was thinking hard and being careful in choosing the arguments he was building up to. “It doesn’t always have the meaning you’d think it has at first glance. So yeah, you’re right about the root word, but—”

“Academics have an insufferable need to be pretentious and downright misleading with the language they use?”

Sam blinked and Dean grinned, relishing the blank stare that meant Dean had just derailed the intended argument.

“I wouldn’t phrase it like that, exactly, but—”

“Have you ever read Judith Butler?”

“Have I—what?” Sam’s eyes grew comically wide. “Dean, how do you know—have you read Judith Butler?”

“Yeah, I had a girlfriend while you were gone. Cassie.” Sam made a choked sound. “She called me a misogynist, too, and sorry, I was bullshitting about the Latin there, I learned the roots of the word from her. Then she gave me the book that was apparently the feminist holy bible or whatever, so I could improve myself. It was the most pretentious nonsense I have ever read in my life. Took five paragraphs and insanely complicated language to make the most basic of observations, and when the observations weren’t basic, they made me think the author was an alien who had never spoken to an actual human being before.”

“I—what. Dean. What?”

“Do you wanna know the funniest thing about me and Cassie and that book?”

Sam looked like a lost puppy whose entire understanding of the world had just come crashing down and it was glorious. “Sure,” he said and he already sounded so defeated that Dean knew that college boy was gonna lose this argument for once. Shock and awe, baby. 

It was nice that he still had the ability to surprise even this future version of Sam. Clearly, he didn’t know everything about Dean yet, and that was important because Dean always enjoyed the rare occasions he still got to teach Sam a lesson.

“Well, I really cared for that girl, okay, she was special. She was a college student, ridiculously smart just like you, and I knew I had to impress her and I couldn’t stand the idea that she thought I was a misogynist. So I sat down and I tried, I really tried getting into that book. I went through the first few chapters and actually took notes along the way. Condensed all that jargon into clear and simple language.”

“Oh god,” Sam muttered under his breath, which made Dean cock his head with curiosity, but Sam gestured for him to finish the story.

“Well, as I struggled to summarize what she was saying, I read back my notes on the first five chapters and nothing made sense,” Dean continued. “I felt like the biggest idiot in the world because this was supposed to be genius level insight in there, right? And I developed the sneaking suspicion that the book was purposefully written to make the reader feel stupid because it was actually trying to sell me philosophical snake oil.

“And that didn’t sit right with me but I knew that had to be a me problem. I was certain Cassie wouldn’t recommend such a book to me when she knew I—So anyway, I swallowed my pride and asked for her help in understanding this because I knew she was smarter than me.”

Sam closed his eyes, looking like he was in severe pain, so Dean interrupted his little tale to crow, “You have read that book too.”

“Yeah,” Sam said miserably. “Jess told me it was brilliant and a must-read and a cornerstone of feminism.”

Dean’s grin widened. “And you tried reading it for your girl, too.”

“Look, not all feminist texts are like Butler’s, okay, that’s a very reductive view of the field, if you’d just started with something like Bouvier’s—”

“You hated it!” Dean shouted in triumph. “Same as me, it was all bullshit, right!?”

“Dean,” Sam said, desperate now. “I see the point you’re trying to make, and yeah, almost nobody actually gets Judith Butler. People in certain circles—college students especially—pretend to be a fan of her work because they’ve been told they need to do that to be a good person. Then they skim her book without understanding a thing but pretend to have understood it because they don’t want to seem stupid and out of place in their social circle and they don’t have the time to really read it thoroughly because college keeps you busy, and then they go around talking about how insightful Judith Butler is—”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what Cassie did.” Dean said smugly, and then went in for the killing blow. “And the way you’re talking, so did you.”

A little while later they were both nursing a beer, Dean toasting to sweet victory while Sam was busy being a bitter loser who moaned something about academia being poison that ruined the very causes it cared about by caring about them. 

But when Sam started rambling about how academia was much like Sam himself that way, well, that level of self-pity started to sound downright alarming. Dean decided to cheer him up and asked, “Do you want me to stop calling you a bitch?”

This was a very generous offer that Dean wasn’t sure he could actually follow through on but he’d try if it really bothered Sam so much.

Sam looked at him like he was crazy. “That’s—No, man, that’s our thing. You know, I call you a jerk and then you, uh.”

“But you just told me it made me a misogynist.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Look, it’s our thing, okay, it gets a pass because it’s affectionate, not derogatory.”

“Is that the great wisdom you’ve gleaned from all the feminist literature?”

“I deeply regret ever bringing this up, can we stop talking about it?” 

“I will if you strike misogyny from your vocabulary when it comes to me.”

“Fine,” Sam mumbled and went back to nursing his beer. “But sexist stays on the table.”

“That’s fine, men and women are different and I ain’t gonna pretend they aren’t.”

Sam started chugging his beer faster.

Yeah, Dean was all for women’s rights but he was clearly never going to understand feminism. That shit was Calvinball and Dean wasn’t touching it with a ten foot pole. But damn, it really rankled to get called a woman hater and hopefully Sam would knock that shit off now. He got enough of that accusation from Cassie and being reminded of that whole shitshow hurt.

Oh wow, she’d said, her voice tinged with hysteria on the day she broke up with him because he’d made the mistake of trying to tell her monsters were real. All this time I spent trying to figure out what your deal is, Dean Winchester… I mean how can you be so sweet and caring and a good man one minute and then such a horrible misogynist the next? All this time, and it turns out there was no sense to it because you’re unwell. I say this as someone who cares about you very much, please go see a therapist. I’ll help you find one.

Ugh, Dean really did not want to think about Cassie ever again.

A few minutes after both of them had opened a new bottle of beer each, Sam broke the silence between them to say, “Look, I freaked out because you said that about Claire.”

Dean tilted his head up, listening expectantly.

“She’s 24.”

“Okay? So we’re the same age. And…?”

“But you’re not really 24, man, you’re 42, and you’re kind of a mentor-slash-father figure to her.”

“Oh. Oh fuck, that’s gross. I’m sorry, man, Jesus.”

Sam quirked a small smile. “It’s fine, you couldn’t have known. Just, uh. Think twice about how you speak about the women in our lives now, okay? I know this situation is weird, but—”

“No, no, I get it. Absolutely no innuendo about Claire, ever.” Dean took a deep gulp of his beer, trying to wash away the taste of horror. God, he needed a shower now. Hopefully this weird bunker had showers. “See, isn’t this easy when you use plain language that tells me where the problem is? You know I ain’t that smart, I just need some pointers sometimes.”

“Fuck off, Dean, you just told me you decyphered five chapters of Judith Butler when I threw the towel after the third. You’re plenty smart.” Sam huffed. “And you weren’t entirely wrong either when you asked that question. Eileen… she and I have a friends with benefits thing going on.”

“Nice , Sammy. Not gonna lie, I was getting worried that we live like celibate hermits here.”

“No,” Sam said, eyes twinkling with amusement. “That’s just you.”

“Ha! I’m not falling for that. I can tell when you’re lying to mess with me.”

“Sure you can,” Sam said, trying hard to hold back laughter. “We do have male friends, too, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“But they’re mostly dead.”

“Oh.”

“There’s Garth, though. He’s mostly retired now and focused on raising his kids. That’s why he doesn’t visit, the bunker’s no place for small children, so we usually drive out to visit him.”

Wow, so some hunters really did make it to the apple pie life, huh?

“That’s awesome, good for him. Hey,” Dean said, perking up. “Speaking of driving, where’s Baby?”

Sam made a show of reaching into his pocket and pulling out the star trek phone. “Seven hours and 42 minutes.”

“Dude, were you timing how long it would take me to ask after her?”

“Yeah, and it took you way longer than I thought it would.”

“Oh, shut up, I got de-aged or thrown into the future or something. A man’s allowed to be a little rattled. Besides, I saw her in that picture you showed me at the start, so I knew she was okay. Where is she?”

“In the garage, Dean. I’ll show you tomorrow. Think you can make it through the night without giving the car a goodnight kiss first?”

“Screw you, bitch.”

“Right back at you, jerk.”

Silence settled around them like a warm blanket.

“Hey, I know you’re tired, but can I ask you something and I promise I’ll go to bed after this?” Dean eventually piped up.

“Sure.”

“Why’d you make that weird sound when I said Cassie’s name?” 

“Oh.” Sam huffed out an almost-laugh. “It’s—lots of small reasons added up, really. Irony, I guess? Not sure if that is the right word. Um. I knew about her, you told me about your relationship, but that was—man, that was so many years ago I’d kind of forgotten she existed. So just the reminder itself was jarring. But mostly it was the name.” He laughed again, then tried to stifle it. “I’m sorry, this really isn’t funny, I shouldn’t be laughing.”

“Okay, spill, what’s so funny about Cassie’s name?”

“Nothing. Nothing about this is funny, it’s just so horrible that it’s funny, you know?”

“Okay,” Dean said and softened his voice because he was clearly treading on thin ice here. “So are you going to tell me or save the horrible revelations for later?”

“Yeah, I can tell you, it won’t be horrible for you. It’s just going to be a sad story that happened to someone else, involving faceless strangers you’ve never met. And that makes it more horrible for me.” 

Sam wandered off to fetch himself another beer and Dean let him, figuring silence was golden right now. There was no point in pushing, either Sam was comfortable telling that story or he wasn’t.

“So I mentioned Garth, right?” Sam said when he returned to the table and Dean nodded. “One of his kids is named after me.”

“Really? Holy shit, Sammy, that’s awesome! You got a kid named after you?”

“Yeah,” Sam said with a wan smile. “The kid’s a twin and little Sam’s twin is named after your best friend. I don’t know. Garth’s mind works in mysterious ways, I think he tried to honor all three of us in that arrangement, because while Cas and I were on good terms, you were the glue keeping us together.”

“Cass,” Dean repeated slowly. “Really? My best friend is named Cass?”

Just the very concept of having a best friend was alien to Dean when his best friend had always been Sam. But maybe Sam hadn’t minded relinquishing the title. They were still brothers without it. But Cass? He was going to be best friends with a girl sharing the name of the ex who’d taken his heart and stomped on it?

“Was,” Sam said softly. “Your best friend was named Cas and now he’s dead.”

Oh. “Cass is a weird name for a guy. Is it short for something? Cause if that’s short for Casper the friendly ghost, that’d be real ironic for our line of work.”

“See, this is what I mean. You don’t even care that he's dead.”

“Of course I care. You just told me I have a best friend and then you yanked that away again. But it’s like you said. I never met the guy. You know I specialize in gallow’s humor. And the name is a funny coincidence.”

“Yeah, I’m not blaming you, Dean,” Sam said with a sigh. “It’s just. Sad. For Cas. Which is short for Castiel, by the way, not Casper.”

“That’s a weird name.”

“He was a weird guy. It’s the name of the Angel of Thursday. He came from a very religious family. You became friends when they kicked him out for being in love with a man, and that man was you.”

Dean blinked, needing a moment to process this, but Sam just kept talking, a weird smile on his face. 

“Cas’s dad is an abusive monster, truly the worst father in existence, so much worse than ours. We helped with trying to kill him because the guy liked to torture people for his own amusement, especially us. Except we decided to spare him at the last second but left him crippled and now that guy is out there somewhere, hopefully living a truly miserable existence.” 

And then Sam started laughing hysterically like he’d just told the funniest joke in the world.

“You okay there, Sammy?” Dean asked, because he really did not get the joke and the idea of hurting humans always made him queasy, even when they were evil pieces of shit.

“Fine. I’m fine. Did I mention that we ended up helping raise Lucifer’s kid for a while?”

“Uh.”

“Lucifer was Cas’s brother. Like I said, that whole family was religious and had a biblical naming convention going on.”

“Seems kind of cruel to saddle a kid with a name like Lucifer,” Dean pointed out.

“It’s okay, he fully lived up to that name. The guy was a megalomaniac who took after his father. Though he was pretty pathetic by the end. I hate him, I really do, it’s a miracle his kid turned out as well as he did. I like to think I helped with that and that gives me comfort, you know?”

Dean nodded because at least that part made sense to him. “Please tell me that poor child of his got a normal name.”

“Jack.”

“Oh thank god.”

“Thank God,” Sam echoed, and started laughing again. “Exactly.”

Chapter Text

After finding the de-aging spell's cure, Sam will broach the topic of Judith Butler with his 42-year-old brother only once. A few weeks after this interlude, he will find Dean on the hood of the Impala, gazing at the stars. His older brother will be in a strangely chatty mood that Sam will blame on alcohol and then take advantage of, causing the following conversation to unfold:

“Yeah, that version of me was from back when Cassie broke up with me. As far as Young Me’s recollection went, that break-up happened eight days before he woke up in that bunker. It’s very trippy, I know it’s 2021, but it also feels like 2003 was last month. The fact that we have Netflix on our giant TV is kind of mindblowing when you step back, man, you ever think about that? No internet anywhere but some town’s public library. Youtube wasn’t even a thing.”

Dean will grow quiet and Sam will not do anything to interrupt the silence, letting his big brother gather his thoughts.

“And yeah, the way it went originally,” Dean will then say, “I immediately started repressing everything painful about that whole Cassie disaster as much as I could, and that included that stupid book. It was so bad, man. Younger me remembered shit that I’ve long since forgotten because hell and public wifi destroyed my attention span. I’m pretty sure that by the time I showed up at your doorstep at Stanford the name Judith Butler meant nothing to me, and I was happier that way. Now I gotta start repressing this all over again.”

Then Sam will ask, “Do you ever think about developing some healthier coping mechanisms, Dean?”

“Never.”

Silence will linger for a few heartbeats before Dean starts speaking again.

“But you were so right, Sammy. Cas’s name being so similar to Cassie’s is funny as shit. That poor guy died pouring his little gay heart out to me and I could do nothing but stand there awkwardly because I’m straight. And this whole time, the most significant romantic relationship of my life apart from Lisa was with a girl sharing his name. It’s like life for Cas is just one continuous kick in the balls, man, and half the blows are self-inflicted. Like he’s playing that Japanese game show Gabriel once trapped us in, remember that?”

Sam will nod. “Yes, I remember that. It was very memorable to me and my ability to father children.”

“You’re fine, Cas patched you up a thousand times since then.”

After a long pause, Dean will say:

“Fuck, I miss him.”

Sam will reach to rest a palm on Dean’s shoulder and after an endless silent moment, Dean will say:

“That summary of Cas’s family you gave me was divine comedy, by the way, I lost my shit when I looked back on that. They had a biblical naming convention going on. Sammy, did I ever tell you how much I appreciate your twisted sense of humor?”

“Yeah, I was already more than tipsy at that point, I shouldn’t have misled you like that,” Sam will say, his stomach squirming with guilt. “And I should have explained the whole mess with Chuck and the angels later, but then your younger self would definitely never have believed any of this was real.”

“Oh no, yeah, it would have obliterated any sense of realism.”

Sam will laugh at that. “Just imagine me trying to explain about that time I shot God and also how an angel rebelled against heaven for you because he fell in love with your beautiful, righteous soul. And then you put him in a cowboy hat and made him watch Tombstone with you in your little man cave. I wasn’t trying to keep secrets, I just… you know. Our lives, man. How do you explain any of this shit to someone who wasn’t there?”

“You can’t,” Dean will say with a sage nod.

“But still, I’m sorry for bullshitting you so much.”

“What are you apologizing for? I just said it was hilarious.”

“I took advantage of your amnesia for my own amusement. That’s not okay and I wish I hadn’t done that.”

“That’s not okay,” Dean will mimic in a sing-song voice. “Says who? Apology not accepted because I enjoyed that you did that, it was great, do it more.”

Sam will snort without humor. “Yeah, because lies between us always work out so well.”

“There’s a difference between you lying to me and you having some fun. It’s like, y’know… wrestling, for example. Wrestling’s fake, and that’s what makes it fun. It’s nothing like an actual bar fight. You can punch me and lie to me as much as you want as long as you don’t mean it.”

“Do you know how messed up that last sentence sounds to normal, well-adjusted people?”

“I do, and I don’t give a shit because I’m not one of those people and never will be. Lots of perfectly reasonable things sound messed up when you take them out of context, and in context, I know you know exactly what I mean.”

Dean will sigh then, and close his eyes.

“Sammy, one of these days you really need to own up to being a petty bitch and stop trying to pretend that you’re well-adjusted. You are literally the funniest person on the planet who, for some godforsaken reason, insists on full time LARPing as a boring stick-in-the-mud because you think that’s what normal people are like. I mean, I try to be supportive of your hobbies, but come on.”

“Dean,” Sam will say with a frown. “How much did you have to drink?”

“Oh, I’m not drunk, I’m high as a kite. I found the Men Of Letters’ magic weed stash.”

“Dean! That shit is seventy years old, it could kill you!”

“Live a little, Sammy, we’re finally free. God is dead.”

“No, he isn’t!”

“Dude, that was Nietzsche.” Dean will make a little noise of irritation. “Stop making that face every time I make a literary reference. Yeah, I had a phase of reading pretentious books while you left me for Stanford, when is that going to sink in for you? We were just talking about how I read Gender Trouble, do you have the memory of a goldfish?”

“It’s a bad habit, give me a break,” Sam will snarl. “I’m working on it, which is more than I can say about your bad habits. Like picking up random shit you find in the bunker’s basement. Tell me you took at least some precautions with that weed before you smoked it.”

“First of all, I didn’t roll a joint, I made brownies and followed the Men Of Letters recipe. I figured they knew what they were doing. They even added an expiration date and it was the year 2154, so suck it. And I don’t have bad habits, Sammy.” Dean will flash Sam a grin, the kind of easy grin that was once common before hell broke him. The fresh memories of his younger self will help Dean reclaim pieces of himself thought lost forever. Sam will see his older brother more carefree than he has been in years and years. “I have habits that work . Lived this long, didn’t I?”

Sam will roll his eyes in exasperation and then say, “...wait,” as something finally clicks. “Are you saying—you only used to read pretentious books? It was a phase and you’ve stopped since?”

“Eh, mostly stopped. Most of the books were boring, but I liked a few and sometimes I re-read them.”

“Okay. That makes sense.” Sam will smile ruefully. “Dean, I know you’re smart, I really do. Your literary references trip me up everytime because I almost never see you read. I mean, when I go into your little den, you’re always watching Dr. Sexy reruns or something. And if you were reading pretentious books, well, we live in each other’s pockets. I should have seen you doing that.”

“Ah.” Dean will nod. “Yeah, my literary phase was when you were at Stanford. Had a lot of time on my hands back then because crappy motel TV didn’t always have shows I was interested in and there was no Netflix.”

Something about that will set off a dawning realization in Sam’s mind.

“What’s with the frowny face, sasquatch?”

“Dean, did you—never mind.”

“Spit it out, the weed is making me spill my feelings and you know this opportunity ain’t ever gonna come back ‘round because I’m never touching this shit again after I come down from this trip. I’m going to be so embarrassed. I’m actually starting to think this wasn’t weed at all but some sort of truth spell disguised as weed. Fuck the Men Of Letters for not labeling this right, it just said that this was gonna make the subject feel calm and content.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m not going to ask. It’d be unethical to take advantage of you in this state. You’re going to hate me for asking.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. I just told you that I love it when you break character and violate your quote-unquote normal morals for me, it makes me feel loved.”

“Wow, the L-word. Never thought I’d hear that from you.”

“Shut up and ask your embarrassing question, bitch.”

“Fine. Fine, you jerk, just remember later that you made me do this,” Sam will say with a huff. “So, uh. Did you. Those books. Did you read those to—you know. Connect with me?”

“Obviously yes. Most of what I do is for you. So I read a lot of bullshit that I figured pretentious college students would enjoy discussing because you were off at Stanford making friends with pretentious college students. I didn’t want to embarass you in front of your new friends. Okay, I was totally planning on embarrassing you in front of your new friends but, y’know. On purpose, not by being visibly stupid. You know. If you’d ever given me a call and invited me to come visit you at Stanford, which is what I desperately wanted at the time.”

Sam will feel horrible guilt squirming in his gut, but only say, “Oh.” 

Dean will keep talking unprompted. “How do you think I met Cassie in the first place? I started picking up college chicks to practice talking to them in a way that wouldn’t get me slapped. I also asked them for reading recommendations. I only realized my mistake in hindsight, after my literary collection turned out to be written to appeal mostly to straight women and gay guys.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just figure I might have been less bored during that whole ordeal if I’d been the actual target audience. I really enjoyed On The Road, though. There was a dude who kind of reminded me of myself, just, y’know, gay. Even had my first name.”

“Dean,” Sam will say, helpless in the face of this barrage of information about his older brother that he will not know what to do with.

“That’s the one. There was no Sam though, just a Sal. Anyway, don’t look so sad, Sammy. ‘s all water on the bridge now. I had a great time with those college girls. Mostly. Apart from Cassie, I mean. And Cassie and me, we had good times, too. Before I decided to do the normal and healthy thing of having open and honest communication with my girlfriend. That’s when it went wrong. This is why you can’t trust normal people, Sammy, their advice always turns out to be shit when applied to our lives.”

“Yeah, I know,” Sam will say with a sigh. “You’d think I’d get over my desire to be normal someday and I mean, I mostly have. But since you’re in a sharing mood and I feel bad for embarrassing you, I’m going to confess something you can weaponize against me later.”

“Aw, that’s so sweet of you, Sammy. I will definitely use whatever you’re about to say against you to cope with my own mortification that we’ve ever had this conversation.”

“Okay. So. You realize I learned most of what I know about being normal from watching TV and reading books? And I mean. I’m aware that, yeah, that’s idealized and fictionalized and not really how normal people act. But. I guess on some level I’m still that ten-year-old kid watching TV in a shitty motel room that you and Dad left me alone in to go hunt something. And you know, that kid would daydream a lot about being one of those happy people on TV.”

“Samm—”

“I’m not done. Chuck being what he is, that messed me up so bad not only because I was once—I mean, I prayed to this monster for salvation. So much and for so long. And all this time I was a fucking TV show to him and all I can think is, why couldn’t it have been a happy one? Just—fucking anything but the horror genre. Or Gabriel’s game show. Do you ever think he was trying to warn us about his dad with that TV land crap? If so, fuck him and his lessons, I still hate Tuesday because he’s bad at communicating his point.

“Anyway, my point is that I really wanted to be those happy people. And that’s kind of what Stanford was to me. At Stanford, I’m sure I looked happy to outside observers, and I was definitely happier there than back when I was stuck in constant screaming matches with dad, but… but I felt like an actor on a TV show and the part I was playing was that of Sam Winchester, smart plucky kid from the wrong side of the tracks who left his abusive father behind to be the first in his family to go to college. And it was supposed to be a heartwarming Disney story and sometimes it even was. 

“But mostly I felt empty. Yet I just kept going anyway because hey, fake it ‘til you make it.”

“Sa—”

“Still not done, Dean. I don’t know. Seeing you so young brought a lot of this to the surface again, I guess. We always talk around Stanford but I don’t think I’ve ever fully laid my cards on the table with this for you. And we do that with pretty much every major fight we’ve ever had. Ruby. Gadreel. Flagstaff and the amulet. I still don’t understand how you could throw away the amulet within an hour of being told we are literal, actual soulmates just because you got pissy about what I considered happy memories.”

“Dude, it was about way more than that, that whole—oh yeah, Ash did say something about soulmates back then, didn’t he?”

“How could you not remember that?! Dean!”

“I don’t know, man, my memory is basically swiss cheese. Holes everywhere. It’s all the repression.”

“I hate you. Soulmate or not, I hate you. Okay. So let’s clear up Stanford once and for all and I’m crossing my fingers that you’ll actually remember this.”

Dean will nod, wide-eyed.

“I don’t feel empty around you. That’s why I stay with you and don’t actually want to go back to Stanford. I haven’t wanted that in a very long time. When you look at me, you always see me as younger than I really am. I’m 38, I haven’t been 18 in a long time now, and I think my 18-year-old self was an idiot in too many ways to count. I don’t want the same things he did, why would I? When you made that wish with the Baizou pearl, remember that? Where we saw that alternate reality where I never left Stanford and became the lawyer I wanted to be.”

Dean will have to clear his throat to get rid of the lump in it. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember. Steve Jobs-wannabe with a hard-on for kale.”

Sam will laugh, a little hysterical. “Exactly! That guy was a douchebag! I’m so fucking glad you stopped me from turning into him! Did you hear what he said in that TEDtalk or whatever that was? ‘cause his words are burned into my mind, and it always makes me feel better when I think about what he said. My life sucked pretty hard, but at least I’m not him.”

“Okay, you gotta remind me what he said because all I remember is the kale and the sweater. In defense of me and my poor memory, I had Michael banging against my skull at the time.”

“Invest in a treadmill desk," Sam will recite in the bitchiest voice he is capable of. "Don’t drink coffee, and stick to a raw food diet. I mean, God bless kale—am I right? Truth is—and this is hard to hear—performing at your best requires all of your mental energy. Every last drop. You see, it’s just not compatible with something like hobbies or even having a family."

Dean will howl with laughter, and then gasp out, “Jesus, you really memorized the whole thing? After seeing it once? I love your brain, Sammy.”

“Well, I mean, it was pretty relevant to me on a personal level, so yeah, I paid attention like a hawk.” Sam’s lips will quirk into a smile. “Unlike certain people who just casually forget they have a soulmate. Jesus. Did you notice what he said at the end?”

“No time for family or hobbies.”

Sam will nod, and his smile will fade. “With the trajectory I was on, Jess would have divorced me. Or never said yes in the first place. And I would have deserved it.” His gaze will grow distant. “Then I think about what was waiting for this guy in the afterlife. Assuming he even gets into heaven, what would have been waiting there for him? He can’t possibly have that many happy memories to build his heaven with. And he’d have been stuck there with only one other person, and it would have been the brother he cut out of his life. Who, knowing how you get without family around you, probably doesn’t have that many happy memories either and is deeply bitter and angry about it. Man, we would have spent a miserable eternity fighting like cats and dogs.”

Silence will fall and then Dean will guffaw.

“Oh, you poor sap, that’s too sad for me to tease you with. But thank you for trying. So here’s another embarrassing tidbit about myself regarding Disney.”

“Dean, you don’t have to—”

“But I want to. You know how I’ve been bugging you to come watch Lilo and Stitch with me and you keep refusing because you think normal, well-adjusted adults aren’t supposed to watch Disney movies in their late 30s?”

“Yeah. And you’re in your 40s now, Dean, you’re really way too old to be watching as much Disney as you do.”

“Shut up and let me cope. The reason I want you to watch that movie with me is because I have never related to a fictional character more than that movie’s big sister character. There’s a scene where CPS comes to inspect her home and she has to pretend she has everything under control, except she doesn’t, and if she fails this inspection CPS is gonna take her little sister away. That scene gave me ‘nam flashbacks, and I cried like a baby pretty much nonstop until the end of the movie. And then I watched it again and again and now I can get through it without crying. Did you know ohana means family?”

“Jesus, Dean, please stop talking, you will hate yourself for telling me this.”

“Yeah, probably, but it’ll be worth it if this convinces you to watch Lilo and Stitch with me. I think you’ll relate, too. The character of Stitch works really well as a metaphor for your unholy powers. You know. Starts out scary, ends up a nice Samwitch. Maybe we really are headed for a Disney ending here, Sammy, horror genre in the rearview mirror.”

“I promise I’ll watch the cartoon with you if you stop talking now.”

“Awesome.”

There will be silence filled by Dean humming Metallica.

“I mean, you really did turn out well in the end, didn’t you?” Dean will then say and Sam will brace himself for the next dose of oversharing. “Younger Me couldn’t believe just how well you turned out, literally. It was a nice reminder to appreciate what I have. Took a lot of pain to get us here, didn’t think we’d ever survive all the bullshit Chuck threw at us. And we really fucked up a few times along the way, you and me both, but Sam. Sammy.”

Dean will smile brightly.

“We really made it, little brother. I’m so proud of the man you are now.”

And this will be the moment that Sam will look to in retrospect and identify as the moment it all went wrong. Because in this moment, Sam will feel happy and loved and he will be at peace with how his life turned out. He will let himself believe that there truly is a Disney ending around the corner.

A week after this, Dean will be dead, impaled on a rebar by a vampire, choking out an I love you, baby brother with bloodied lips and wasting his last breaths on praising the poison that killed him.

I should have seen this coming, Sam will think. The lesson should have sunk in before this. I could have prevented this if I hadn’t let my guard down. My fault, all my fault, just like Jess. Fuck. Can’t die, can’t give up, Dean would kick my ass in heaven if I did. What do I do? What the fuck am I supposed to do now?

Sam will not find peace again for the rest of his long life. 

When his future wife asks him if he believes in heaven, he will say he knows it’s real and his soulmate is there waiting for him. His future wife, a kind Christian woman whom he will meet in a support group for people who have lost a loved one, will be relieved to have found a fellow believer and start telling him about the husband she lost. She will use the word soulmate to describe him, and that will be the moment that catches Sam's attention. They will bond over the permanent feeling of emptiness inside their chest. Later, once she knows Sam more, she will assume that when Sam talked of his soulmate that day, he meant a girl named Jessica. How sad and tragic, she will think, for his fiancée to die so young and leave Sam broken for so long.

Sam will not correct her. He will not want to give her the wrong impression that his bond with Dean was romantic in nature. Whenever he will try to put into words what Dean was and still is and always will be to him, he will find it impossible to do so. The attempt will only make him cry and he hates crying. So he will stop making the attempt, even though he will mostly try to aim for transparency in his marriage. Mostly.

His wife will find out the truth about monsters in the world but not about her God being one of them. Every Sunday Sam will accompany her to her church but never pray alongside her. He will pray in the Impala instead. His prayers will be addressed to Jack and Castiel, and it will mostly happen on Thursdays. It will be his own private religion he will share with no one else. 

Sam and his wife will settle into a companionable marriage, both knowing they are each other’s second choice. Sometimes he will think wistfully of Eileen and how much fun they had together, but he will feel certain that not marrying her was the right choice, for her sake. Eileen's response to this decision will have been to flip Sam off and to tell him that this should have been her choice, not his.

When Sam's wife presents him with a positive pregnancy test, he will find that his heart is still capable of fully loving someone after all.

The closest he will ever come to knowing peace while alive will be when he holds his son in his arms. He will name the boy after his uncle and quietly vow to himself that anyone and anything that ever threatens Dean Jr. will die a painful death. The day DJ leaves for college will feel like one of the worst days of Sam’s life while actually being one of the best and he will laugh at the irony of it all.

Sam will watch Lilo and Stitch for the first time in heaven 2.0, courtesy of Jack, while sharing a celestial beer with his older brother. He will indeed relate to the movie way too much and end up crying. Dean will call him a pussy, laugh, and lecture him about how he should listen to his big brother more.

Dean will do this while also crying because he has a hard time not crying at that fucking Disney movie. He will have made it pretty far into it, whiteknuckling his way through the CPS scene, and will have been confident that he was making it through without waterworks. But he will break minutes before the movie ends when Stitch, the monstrous character whom he likes to think of as a metaphor for Sam's demon blood and secretly also for Cas, delivers the following line about two sisters:

This is my family. I found it, all on my own. Is little, and broken, but still good. Yeah. Still good.