Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dean had no idea how it happened, but he was 100 percent sure it was all his fault.

The case this time sucked ass. He and Sam had to dig up three graves in a row, be thrown across the air like ragdolls by three sorority spirits which came as a whole pack because they had bound their souls together with black magic, struggle as they tried to burn three bodies all at once, all on the same night. When they finally put an end to those three-in-one evil bitches, Dean, of course, was drained. While driving the Impala on their way to the motel, he felt his consciousness drifting away. The two of them could even make it to the motel in one piece, all thanks to Dean’s muscle memories and his determination that even if he should be in a coma, his obsessive clinging to his Baby coming out from all of this unscathed remains unshakable. They had to give Dean that. Apparently, Sam was bone-tired, too, since he hadn’t even mouthed a syllable in this dangerous drive. Dean collapsed on his bed the moment he walked into the room, and he couldn’t even begin to care about all that dirt, gun oil, gunpowder, and bloodstains smudged on him. When Sam complained, “Dude, I can’t even get my arms up,” he grumbled something that barely meant anything as a response before drowning in the tranquil darkness.

This was almost the soundest sleep he had gotten in the past two years. He let out a few disgruntled noises when the sunlight shone through the cheap motel curtain onto his face, then felt himself being held closer to someone’s chest by an arm, cushioning himself on a new warm and bouncy pillow. Oh God, it was so comfy. He complied happily.

Thirty seconds later, Dean sprung up from the bed, flustering to aim the gun placed under his pillow to the uninvited guest on his bed.

“Jess?” The man in question rubbed his eyes in confusion. His eyes gradually widened as he refocused on the guy before him. “Hold on, Dean?”

Dean was totally lost, “Sam? Why are you in my bed?”

“I’m not in your bed.” A dry voice came from behind.

Dean snapped his head backward in horror: the brother with whom he was familiar was sitting on the edge of his own bed with a bedhead, obviously jolting up from the bed just now but completely awake and acuminous. And he was staring at the man on Dean’s bed with his expression half alert, half horrified.

Dean spun his eyes back to his bed again, finding that Sam was dumbfounded, the apparent aftermath of seeing another him across the room. Dean started to eyeball this extra “little brother” up and down; he was plainly different from Sam: clearly undertrained and meretricious muscle with which served only aesthetic purposes, skin that was too clean, to begin with (Not even a single scar!), and that completely panic-stricken face so abundant with ignorance that made Dean secondhand embarrassed.

Um, that expression had never appeared on his little brother’s face, but he was sure that he had seen it somewhere very recently.

A terrifying thought morphed into being at the bottom of his heart.

“Hey, Sam.” Dean had taken on his most agreeable voice and tone, which his real brother took the cue immediately that Dean wasn’t speaking to him, “Just gotta ask — you don’t happen to be preparing for the bar exam and just got engaged with Jessica, do you?”

“What?” Sam’s eyes kept wandering on both of their faces with alarm, “How do you know? No, who are you? Both… both of you? How did I get here?”

“Jesus Christ.” Dean lowered his gun slowly and flopped himself onto Sam’s bed.

Twenty minutes later, Sam put on Sam’s clothes, and Dean washed away the grime on him in a daze, contemplating how all of this happened.

It didn’t make any sense. That Djinn was absolutely dead; he killed it himself, and there was no evidence to prove that Djinns can manifest humans’ fantasies into reality. Dean was more than aware that this Sam didn’t exist at all: he was nothing but a projection in Dean’s wish, having not even been genuinely alive in Dean’s mind.

How could that be? Was he really that regretful to leave that world to drag the only imperfection in that meaningless fantasy world to his side?

Dean didn’t know what to think. Even if he did fix things up with Sam, what would be the point when he knew that that world was nothing but a mirage?

Sam, however, insisted that Sam’s appearance was the consequence of some witchcraft and all that shebang. Although Sam couldn’t figure out what kind of purpose whoever cast this spell on them had in mind, he persuaded Dean to rummage through the motel room with him, trying to find any trace of hex bags all morning long. Meanwhile, our elite, soon-to-be lawyer and the winner-who-has-it-all Sam Winchester was sitting in the corner of the room, jaw-slacked and completely out-of-it, introspecting what kind of Whackotown he had driven himself into.

‌For starters, he hadn’t heard any reasonable explanations so far. Another Sam seemed pretty hostile against him, greeting him with splashing water onto him, even trying to skin him on the arm with a knife. And the weirdo version of his older brother only gave him a plausible coverstory—which was so full of shit—that he was “traveling to a paranormal world,” where spirits, monsters, devils, and witches actually exist, and all the things that don’t make any sense at all are possible here. But hey, don’t you worry. You’re lucky that Sam and I happen to be the experts in this field. We’ll find a way to send you back.

Just because Sam didn’t get pissed listening to this bullshit didn’t mean that he actually bought into this steaming pile of bullshit.

He observed the brothers before him and found out, surprisingly, that they were very close. There was a unique dynamic twirling between them, encompassing an astounding well-coordination. When they moved, they moved together with such ease and smoothness, walking back and forth in the rather small room but never hindering each other; as if they were waltzing meticulously, one only needed to raise his hand for the other to lob the things required in one’s direction.

Sam was a bit confused. It didn’t make any sense that he and Dean would be so close because Dean was… being Dean. Dean’s a chaotic mess; Dean’s an embarrassment. They were worlds apart. But self-conflictly, he liked the wordless intimacy these two had. Christ, he wouldn’t admit it even if there had been a gun pointed at his head, but he was a bit envious.

He used to dream of having an older brother like this.

The brothers’ work was done; honestly, they almost tore the whole room down. Dean sighed, straightening his back, “This place seems clean to me.”

Sam also straightened up, his brows furrowed, “It doesn’t make any sense!”

“Tell me about it,” Dean shrugged, “And we can’t get our deposit back again.”

Sam raised his brow and snorted, but he didn’t know why he still could do so in this situation, “So you guys just smash up the whole place and hit-and-run all the time?”

Dean’s attention pivoted to his newcomer brother, and he winked at him, “Well, it’s a tough time for us now after all, pal.”

Sam glimpsed at his other self sitting on the other side of the room and then grabbed Dean’s arm. “A word. Outside.”

Dean apologetically nodded to Sam, “We’ll be back in a minute.”

Sam glanced at his brother disapprovingly, dragging him out of the room.

Okay, the newcomer Sam thought, this is not very nice.

“What are you doing?” Sam blurted out his question before the door was even fully shut.

Dean shot him a baffled look.

“This,” Sam gestured in the air, “What’s all this about, Dean? Why are you acting like he was some eight-year-old me?”

That amused Dean, “He does give an eight-year-old you.”

“Dean!” Sam pulled a long face, “I’m being serious! Clearly, he’s not ’the brother who walked out from your wish.’ Don’t you think you’re taking him in a little too quickly?”

“Come on, he’s just a regular dude.” Dean raised an eyebrow, “Haven’t you tested him already?”

Sam glared at Dean with Dad’s how-can-you-be-so-slack-on-this rebuking face, “But how can we be so sure? Perhaps he’s some monster we have never encountered before, and perhaps all of the testing methods we know wouldn’t work on him!”

Some senses were knocked back into Dean until now, his green eyes rolling, “But how does he know what you look like in my dreamscape? Look at all those details! I am the only one who has seen that — well, that Djinn counts, too. But it’s dead already.”

“I don’t know.” Sam sighed, “Look, none of us can be sure whether he’s dangerous. I just want to give you a heads-up and try to keep your head in the game.”

“Fine, fine.” Dean raised his hand, “I’m going to call Bobby, alright? Let’s see if Bobby knows how to zap this Mr. Non-Existent back.”

Sam looked like he had more to say, but he sagged his shoulders without another word.

“I’m gonna pack up our stuff.” Sam strode back into the room.

Unsurprisingly, Bobby had never been in anything similar to this before, but he promised he would dig through some books for them. Dean was mentally prepared for this answer; it wasn’t something so everyday like going to the grocery store, after all, but the disappointment still lurked inside him. He was still hoping this whole thing had nothing to do with him, nothing more than some evil sons of bitches deliberately caused to mess with their heads — evil bitches, that he was good at dealing with; the tangled-up stranded mess called his subconsciousness? Not so much. As usual, he thanked the older hunter. Bobby grumpily yeah-yeahed him back as a response. Then Bobby suggested that Dean stop hunting for a while and find a place to hole up before he got rid of this spatiotemporal paradox of Sam — as if dragging this arrogant-and-worth-half-a-shit brother with him could do him any good when they hit the road. Of course, Dean had agreed with Bobby. He hung up and decided to move both of his troublemakers’ asses onto the car before the motel staff could check their room.

When Dean returned to the room, Sam had finished packing their bags, expressionlessly rearranging their last few weapons. While Sam sat across from Sam, staring at their bulging bag full of firearms with cautiousness and suspicion halving his face. Dean could almost hear his worth-half-a-shit little brother’s gears turning: Me and my brother in the alternate universe are certifiable murderers!

Ain’t that just peachy.

“Now we’ve got two Sams!” Dean craned his neck from behind Sam’s shoulder, looking overly enthusiastic, “Don’t you think we should find a way to tell you two apart, huh?”

Both of his brothers had the same subtle look on their faces.

“Wow.” Dean huffed, “And they say clones aren’t real. Just look at you two, Sammy.”

The newer Sam crunched his nose with another level of subtlety.

“I guess our Monsieur Lawyer here doesn’t like being called Sammy, huh?” Dean blinked at him, then wrapped an arm around his real brother, “Then my little Sammy would be Sammy, and you get to keep your name.”

“Dean…” His real brother shot him a disapproving look.

“Only when us three are together will I call you that!” Dean supplemented immediately.

Sam sighed but did not protest more.

So Sam knew that Sam wasn’t really upset about that. If he had to pull up an example, that would be the same way as Sam sighed whenever Jess came up with an annoying quip.

Sam felt like an interloper, observing some syrupy secrets between these two. He decided to poke the bear just for the hell of it.

He smiled, and his eyes were curved as sweet and unclouded whenever he smiled at those senior ladies in his neighborhood, “Alright, I guess I should thank you for that?”

Dean apparently wasn’t getting it. He blinked, bemused. On the other hand, Sam seemed irritated by that, throwing a cold and harsh glare against them, pushing off his brother’s arm still wrapped around his shoulders, and carrying all those bags while he stormed out of the room.

“Sammy!” Dean shouted, then turned his head to shrug at Sam, “Sorry. He’s a bit on edge… It’s taking a toll on us lately, not because of you, though.”

A smile crept back onto Sam’s face again, and he shrugged as if it had been a reciprocation, “None taken. I wouldn’t be too happy if I woke up one day finding another me in the room, either.”

Dean blinked with a tinge of surprise, sizing Sam up and down. Sam raised his brow towards Dean’s roaming, and that was when Dean snapped out of his eyeballing like he was in a trance, “No, I’m alright. We should hit the road.”

The atmosphere in the car was stagnant.

Dean couldn’t help but peek at Sam through the rearview mirror. Sam was… different from whom he had met. He couldn’t quite put his finger on different how, but his little brother in the dreamscape wasn’t as inquisitive about everything as the one sitting in the backseat.

And besides, how could he not be losing his shit right now? He was just some dude waking up only to find himself thrown into a supernatural world where monsters were real, plus facing a bizarre version of his older brother and himself. How could he not go nuts right now? Dean could recall that it had only taken a small jar of lamb blood to freak Sam out back then.

Perhaps Sam was right about this. This Sam… did feel off. But Dean’s instinct told him it wasn’t exactly that kind of off.

Dean was bewildered.

That was when Sam took notice that Dean had been staring at him. He blinked and smiled sweetly towards Dean. His smile was so syrupy that it was as if honey had been in his dimples.

Okay, here’s another thing — why is he always giving the bedroom eyes to his own brother (albeit from another dimension)?

Damn it, but he was so cute. Although he always made fun of Sam’s so-called “boy-next-door smile” (Oh God Sam you can win the hearts of all ladies over fifties in our country good for you that smile is so sexy), if the smile were coming for him, that would be another story then. Dean even felt dizzy from that dazzling smile — after all, his Sammy would probably never use this kind of charm on him, like ever. Great. Sam wasn’t going nuts, but Dean was driving himself to the Disnutland.

“If you want to drive us into a tree and kill us all, just give us a heads-up, Dean.” His real brother spoke with a tight voice.

Dean retracted his eyes instantly, squirming in his seat like he still had anything left to hide after where his eyes had been fixed, feeling an unnamed unease rolling in him. He roughened his voice, “I’m driving perfectly fine!”

Sam snorted but didn’t add any follow-up commentary on this.

Okay, another headache — who the hell set his baby brother off?

Dean simply couldn’t multitask so many problems all at once. There was only so much capacity in his brain.

So he decided to deal with the easier stuff, “Who’s hungry?”

Two identical pair of gazes fell on him.

Dean suffered from the usual pressure twice its intensity, forcing himself to continue, “Because I am! I don’t care whatever is inside of your little brains right now, but I’m going to find myself a diner, then stuff an extra large sandwich and a large spicy fries down my stomach.”

“Dean —” Started Sam.

“That’s a good idea.” Said Sam and Sam simultaneously.

Now that Sam’s and Dean’s eyes were all on Sam, who fidgeted in his seat in this sudden heat of unsettling gazes, tilting his head in puzzlement, “What? We’ve missed breakfast, and I’m a bit hungry, too.”

“It’s ten in the morning.” Sam spat like Sam had said something so unforgivable.

“Yes, and? Do you need to stick to a regular eating schedule?” Sam replied, his voice perplexed.

“You don’t???” Dean sounded one unit of decibel away from squealing.

“I’m okay with not sticking with it.” Sam seemed amused by their overreactions, “It’s not like we’re messing up with the schedule on a daily basis. Besides, Dean’s hungry. Do you really think that he can make it till noon?”

Of course Dean could make it till noon! Believe it or not, he was actually pretty good at putting up with hunger — he just thought starving himself would be totally unnecessary! Plus, he’d like to annoy Sam with it. What he couldn’t hold back was clearly about Sam — “How come I don’t remember you know me so well?”

Sam put on a wounded look as he heard that, his shoulders hunching slightly, mesmerizing eyes with a smile in them going downcast, too, as if he had been a kicked puppy. Damn it, thought Dean, I should’ve bottled that up!

“I didn’t mean that…” He tried to put it right.

“It’s okay.” Sam gave a detached smile, “You’re right. We weren’t that close, indeed. I just haven’t seen you in a long time — uh, the other you. I guess I’m just projecting him on you.”

“What? Why? I thought you guys would meet for Mom’s sake; ’tis the season and all that.” Dean furrowed his brows.

Sam sighed and rubbed his forehead, “You — my brother’s dead. Suicide. He’d probably had a psychotic breakdown or something, and I hadn’t noticed that sooner. Like you said, we weren’t close — but there’s no use wringing my hands on who’s gone, right?” He sounded heartbroken, his long eyelashes half-curtained, and so did Dean’s heart crumpled at the sight.

But, this, this he did know. A lump climbed up to Dean’s throat.

“I was with him for a long ride to this ramshackle warehouse that day. He wasn’t acting normal then already, but I didn’t know things were that bad. When we entered the building, he started talking gibberish like I wasn’t real or something like that. Then he gutted himself right in front of my face with a knife. I don’t know how he could do that to… He used to be so afraid of pain when he was little.”

Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck. — That was Dean. It was Dean who had killed Sam’s brother right in front of Sam. Jesus Christ.

He fucked it up all the same. He was like some walking jinx, sabotaging everyone’s life around him. It only took 48 hours of his stay for him to ruin Mom successfully, to ruin Carmen, and to ruin Sam. Having had to witness that kind of thing would undoubtedly decimate a certain part of Sam’s life. And there he was, running his mouth with such faith in himself that he believed he could make things right with Sam. And yet, look at what he had done.

Suddenly, Dean felt his wrist was held, realizing that he was trembling in hindsight. Sam’s palm was steady and warm, with those absurdly long and lean fingers—gently yet firmly—comforting on his pulse, circling his wrist. He tilted his head, being greeted with his brother’s concerned gaze, then readjusting his breath, a gentle squeeze on his wrist. Sam let go right after Dean had nodded to him.

“We’re very sorry to hear that.” Sam’s voice was steady, compassionate, and unassailable, “Dean has seen the life you had been living. It was… really beautiful. I’m really sorry.”

Sam’s eyes were reddened. He exhaled a self-mocking snort, “He probably has only seen the tip of the iceberg.”

Even if it were the façade, it would’ve been the best he could ever have.

Before Dean conceitedly decided to ruin everything.

Dean cut himself off from spiraling in that direction and steadied himself quickly, exchanging a knowing look with Sam with feigned composure. Thank God he didn’t tell Sam that “I was lucky to be your brother for two days,” instead he told Sam that it was only by chance they could run into a crack and peek into Sam’s life from the other side of the dimension on a hunt. Dean thought that Sam wouldn’t be too happy to know that he only existed because his life was Dean’s Djinn-induced dreamscape, so he casually lied to Sam — such providence! Dean decided to take the truth to rot with him in the grave.

There was something more nuanced and complicated in Sam’s eyes, a residue of concern and worry, which Dean didn’t favor much. There was also an obvious cocky glint of “Look, I grilled intel out of his mouth!” This bitch had done zilch!

Dean scowled at Sam.

Taking two identical brothers into the diner was always tons of fun. Dean quickly enjoyed pulling off the brand new gimmick called “Introducing Your Twin Little Brothers to the Waitresses.” It was the first time Dean hadn’t needed to flirt with that black-haired, voluptuous waitress to make her turn around with a shocked look. His smugness was yanked up to eleven, even worse than the usual Dean, which made Sam’s eyes roll back into his skull. Dean couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Sam right now; he’s having the time of his life! The usual Sam was eye-catching enough; no matter how hard he tried to hide his ridiculous six-foot-five yea high, the cheap sets of vinyl tables and chairs would still look comically microscopic next to him. But now, he’d got two Sams! Double the fun, he might say. They were bathed in everyone’s gawking as they entered the diner, which satiated Dean’s weird sense of humor more than enough. During the whole meal, he kept slapping dad jokes that were not funny at all about twins on their faces until Sam couldn’t take it anymore, threatening that one more joke and Dean could kiss his porno magazines stashed under the seats of the Impala goodbye because Sam swore to God he would cremate them all.

Dean wouldn’t back down that easily, of course. He announced his aggressive discontentment by kicking Sam’s ankles under the table, calling him a party pooper, and saying that’s why he could never get laid. Sam was brainstorming one hundred ways of manifesting a fratricide.

As usual, Bobby came to Sam’s rescue. The old hunter called Dean back and told him that a psychic in Williamston was pretty sensitive to this kind of thing and might’ve known something to help with Sam’s situation. So they paid the bill and hopped on the Impala, diverting their way to Michigan.

The sky was deep into the dark when they arrived. Sam was complaining that he was hungry about a hundred miles ago. Dean mocked him for not buying snacks at the last gas station as he salvaged a protein bar in the car and threw it to Sam. Meanwhile, Sam craned his neck and watched them curiously while those two bickered for absolutely nothing.

The three boys pulled up at the only family restaurant they had come across that was still open this late. Sam hunched and huddled himself against the vertical, hard upholstery of the backseats all day long. His back was too coddled for this kind of torment of discomfort, and he made a theatric exit from the car with an overdramatic hiss of pain. The hunter brothers watched as Sam dragged himself out of the car so slowly as if he were at the age of 95: Dean found it entertaining, while Sam found it uncomfortable to watch — his expression could only be described as constipated, which made Dean find more fun in watching this. He wriggled his brows towards his brother exaggeratingly and earned himself an elbowing from Sam. That spoiled the amusement and fun in Dean’s eyes, transmuting them into disgruntlement and irritation. He didn’t hesitate to take his vengeance on Sam.

Sam seemed to be unaware of their childish squabble, muttering to himself, “I knew I hate this car for a reason.”

“You what?” Dean shouted his disbelief almost immediately after Sam’s remark.

Sam flinched from that, then lifted his chin self-defensively, “Come on! Dad gave you the Impala when you were sixteen, and you never even let me touch it — and you expect me to bond with it now?”

Okay, Dean couldn’t find a retort this time. Apparently, that dick version of himself didn’t even let his little brother get in his wheel. He just occupied everything nice and was not a big fan of sharing. Did they grow up like that? No wonder Sam hated his guts.

“The backseat isn’t too ideal, that’s true.” Dean touched his nose, “Maybe we can find a better motel tonight, the one that comes with the soft beds. You can give your back a break then.”

The way Sam looked at him could only be described as incredulous, so disbelieving Sam was that Dean could hear his little brother screaming silently: SERIOUSLY? DEAN?

“Thank you.” Sam kept mumbling, “Hope it’s better than the one from last night.”

“Stop being so picky.” Sam rolled his eyes, “Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but we are living hand-to-mouth. So don’t try to meet with your life standards back there. Wherever we stray, you follow. Are we clear?”

“Sure, but I didn’t mean that.” Sam’s shoulders sagged, flashing his puppy eyes that made him look almost docile, “I understand all that, and I’m not complaining. Anyway, thanks for not ditching me.”

An epiphany knocked into Dean’s mind: Sam was scared of them leaving him behind. That was all those fawning smiles and that meek attitude that could nearly be called tameness all about. Dean tasted some bitterness in his throat. Sam had been such a proud and domineering little brat in his own world who was one step away from wearing an “I am the Winchesters’ Golden Boy” T-shirt.

“Hey.” He stepped closer to Sam, raising his hand and trying to pet his hair, but instead put his hand hesitantly on Sam’s shoulder, “Don’t worry about that, alright? You’re my brother too — I mean, you’re not my brother, but you’re still my brother.” Dean made a funny face at that.

Sam smiled at him again, the same treacly smile that was so full of honey. Dean felt the same small burst of dizziness hit him again. What the hell, thought Dean. Whether this smile was a telltale sign of detachment or not, he decided to like it anyway.

Chapter Text

An hour later, Sam wished he could take back that lecture on Sam about how financially strained they had been getting by: Sam insisted that it was unnecessary to pay for two rooms.

“One room will do. I can’t let you blow more money on me. I can sleep on the couch—”

“But isn’t your back in pain? It’s okay, we can at least afford that—”

“No, no, no. It’s totally fine. I can crash on the—”

“Stop brushing me off!” Dean growled at Sam, “There’s no way in hell I will allow my brother to sleep on a couch. Get another room and enjoy your damn room with only one of you in it!”

Permeated with stagnant embarrassment was the air. Sam seemed like he didn’t expect to get shouted at, downcasting his eyes and touching the tip of his nose.

“…Maybe that’s because I don’t want to sleep alone at all.” Sam hung his head, soft fringes fell in front of his eyes, helpless and frustrated, his ears rosy as he confessed, “Today’s the first day I am here, and also the very first day that I am told monsters are real. It’s so normal that I don’t want to sleep alone in a shabby motel of which security is basically the punchline of a joke.”

God… They should prohibit God from making his brother this adorable.

Dean’s ass was mopping the floor in this tug of war, triumphantly shredding off his armor until there was barely anything on him. He turned to declare his glorious defeat to the receptionist, “A room with two queens, please.”

What the hell? Sam glowered at his brother, who had been compromising and rewriting his principles all day just to humor Sam, determined that this had to come to a stop, now. He hooked Dean’s collar, picking him up like he weighed nothing but a tiny birdie, hauling him down the hallway toward the fire escape. Sam even had the leisure and decency to flash a toothy grin—which way too many teeth were bared—to Sam and the poor receptionist who was forced to be in the middle of this family drama, “Excuse us, I just need a few words with him.”

“Sammy!” Dean’s protest went ignored straight into the voicemail of a dead phone.

Sam didn’t stop, let go of his brother’s collar, or position his brother upright, not until they were on the fire escape. He crossed his arms with a grim look, “Alright. What’s the matter with you?”

“What’s the matter with m… What’s the matter with you! You’re the one who dragged me here!”

Sam spread out his arms, “You’ve been acting like a fucking Santa Claus the whole damn day, Dean! Since when you’re his exclusive genie in the lamp? Or do you think it’s your job to give him whatever he wants?”

“No, I’m not!” Dean looked like he had taken offense to this. “I was just trying to be nice, wasn’t even half as gentle and gooey with him as how you usually talk to the vics!”

Sometimes, Dean’s way of sidetracking was no different than provocations. Sam forced his eyes shut, willing the fury in him to go away to keep this conversation civil but escalate into something else less so, “Yeah, because every vic I’ve reassured and talked to is actually my secretive brother from another universe—and by the way, this is crazy, even for us.”

“Oh, shut up. You didn’t come up with anything better to solve this, either.” Grumbled Dean.

“I just want to know why, Dean.” Sam flashed his puppy eyes. “Why are you people-pleasing him? That won’t change a thing, you know?”

“I ain’t people-pleasing no one!” Dean gave half his back to Sam, fidgeting. “This is not about him anyway…”

“How is this not about him?” Sam went around Dean to look him in the face, “He’s not even real! You know that!”

“This is a second chance!” Dean snapped desperately as he threw in the towel.

“I’ve told you what was going on back there. You and I… He and I weren’t exactly on good terms. I didn’t fix things back there. Hell, I even made it worse. I killed his brother, Sam. How could I? And now that he’s here, I can make it up to him. Don’t you think it’s a second chance for me to make amends?” Dean’s eyes glistened with almost transparent emerald green, refracting luster of liquid gold. Sam rarely saw this look on his brother’s face—such naïveté—that made his inside curl and wrench.

“You didn’t kill his brother. You just woke up.” He whispered, hating himself for popping Dean’s bubble of the apple pie life that he secretly craved. “None of it was real.”

Dean held silent for a few seconds, “But he is.”

“Dean…” Sam sighed.

“Just look at him, Sam.” The look Dean sent his way was nearly pleading, “He is so real. Maybe to us, none of those things mean anything. Them’s the fake, pipe dreams, but to him, that’s his life back there. He could’ve been… You could’ve been him. Sam, you could’ve been a lawyer, could’ve got married, could’ve lived a whole life like that.”

There he went again of the speech when he had just gotten out from Djinn’s dreamscape, and Sam didn’t even have a clue where to start to point out the flaws in Dean’s logic. Dean was full of regrets: Sam’s appearance made that dream root deeply inside Dean, blurring the lines between illusion and reality. He sighed eventually, leaned closer to his brother—who rarely let anyone see this vulnerable side of him so nakedly—and looked him in the eye intently, “But that’s not me, Dean, and will never be. If it makes you feel better, you can indulge him, even pamper him all you want—and still, that would never be me and who I am. No matter how hard you try to compensate him, you and he will never be us. I need you to be on the same page with me on this, please?”

Dean could never handle Sam in this light. He shifted his eyes somewhere else and barely grunted in response.

“Dean.” Sam pressed.

“I heard you!” Dean raised his voice impatiently.

“Uh, are you guys doing okay?” Sam poked his head around the fire escape entrance, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but the receptionist was urging us… We haven’t paid for the room yet.” When Sam finished the last sentence, he blushed. He was penniless and couldn’t live without Sam and Dean in this reality, and what it looked like was destiny depriving him of all the blood, sweat, and tears he had been investing in what he had established for all these years. God knows what he had given to earn his own living—he hadn’t had his hands tied behind his back like this financially ever since he was eighteen.

Dean walked up to him straight away, as if Sam had been a giant magnet too irresistible for him to defy the law of nature. Sam glared at his brother, who wrapped his arm around Sam’s shoulders affectionately and nudged Sam backward to where the front desk was. Great, all that speech for nothing, he thought.

The problem with booking only one room was they had to face the million-dollar question of who was sharing a bed with whom.

Sam was beating himself over why he hadn’t insisted on two rooms so that even if Sam didn’t want to sleep alone, Sam could! Or Dean could, even though Sam disliked the very idea of sharing a room with a person who might be his other self. But it still beat the idea of sleeping underneath the same duvet with his own brother and then burning his whole life down because of some inevitable physiological phenomenon somewhere between his legs.

And then, he thought, Dean would hand him the keys to another room over his dead body even if they had booked two.

The appalling double standards of his older brother.

Sam sighed heavily, and his brother—already slipping halfway into the bed—cocked his brow when he saw the look on Sam’s face.

“Come on, dude!” Dean barked, “Is it really that unbearable for you to share a bed with your brother?!”

“Oh, shut up,” Sam grumbled, pulling up the duvet and turning around to offer his brother a cold shoulder to get him through the night. “If you dare to snatch away my side of the duvet, you can make friends with the floor tonight. I’d guarantee to kick you to the party down there.”

Sam drawled on the other bed, “Dean wouldn’t do that. He behaves when he sleeps. I didn’t even notice that he wasn’t Jess until I woke up.”

Dean blushed at that and kept himself away from contemplating exactly how long he had stayed in Sam’s arms last night (don’t even start on how he enjoyed it so). That was definitely one of the memories that needed to be sealed in a safe around which chains were wrapped and dumped into the ocean, among which was the memory from the last time he had slept next to Sam on the same bed ever since he was eighteen—he had had a boner because of the sweet scent of Sam’s silky hair. He could always save himself the trouble from sailing and just salted these memories and lit them on fire in the old-school way. Then, he would put out the fire with kerosene.

Now ain’t that just perfect, Dean thought, another mortifying past going for the jugular.

The subtlety went from hovering over the room to blanketing the room. Dean came to a painful realization that he should’ve never agreed to share a bed with Sam—hell, he shouldn’t have gotten strung along by Sam’s puppy eyes from the beginning!

He slung himself up from the bed and croaked out, “For the love of God… I’ll take the couch!”

Sam mimicked him, getting up, “Nah, take the bed. You’ve been driving all day. I’ll take the couch.”

Sam blinked, then offered, “Or Dean can sleep here. We slept pretty well last night.”

Sam and Dean hollered at the same time, “No!”

“O…kay?” Sam recoiled his craned neck, “But that’s just stupid. I thought you two were pretty close.”

Dean pricked up his ears with alarm instantly. He couldn’t let Sam think that their closeness was just an act. He locked Sam’s neck in a whoosh, “Of course we’re close!”

Sam’s brows were almost acquainted with his hairline. He was so goddamn alike to Sam in some aspects, especially their infuriating expressions that drove Dean nuts.

“We were just messing around,” Dean bit out his words through his gritted teeth, freefalling back onto the mattress with Sam in his arm, “We have zero, zilch, nada problem with sharing a bed.”

Sam was brought down by his brother, facing the ceiling without having a word in any decision as usual on Dean’s menu. His brother’s warm arm encircling him falling back onto the bed was too misleading, too innuendous. His brain was screeching like tires with “No, no, no, that’s not gonna end well,” while his body was as elated as it could get.

Sam slammed his eyes shut in despair.

Dean was climbing flights of a long, long stair. A pretty girl was suddenly there, next to him, then tugged him down the stairs. He didn’t fall but floated in the air like a fish swimming in the water. He pawed forward; behind the curtain made from red velvet was a table set for him. He sat down at the table. A fish, carrying a tray—a slice of pie on a plate within—on its head, swam toward him. Dean was very pleased with that. And just when he was about to lift the fork, it turned out there was no fork in the plate at all. He frowned—That’s when he woke up.

He groaned in exasperation, yanked up the pillow, and buried his face in it, his legs pedaling the mattress with all his strength. It was more than the mattress involved in Dean’s catharsis of disillusionment. He also indiscriminately kicked someone’s leg, whose owner complained in half-asleep befuddlement. But that was not it: The one who got kicked swung an arm across the whole universe just to land on Dean’s waist to hold him close.

Dean’s brain wasn’t fully functioning, but at least there was still some residue in him, walking him through a summary of the chaos of what happened yesterday. He didn’t reach for his gun under his pillow right away but tried to recall who was cuddling him on the bed and why it felt like a déjà vu.

He strenuously weeded his head out of the pillow, turned his head backward more strenuously, and ended up a close call skulling into his brother’s forehead.

His baby brother. Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Sam. He slept in the same bed with his brother last night, fuck yeah. Not any John Doe, but Sam.

…IT’S SAM!

Dean was fully awake in an instant. That’s no good. That’s not good at all! He was teddy-beared by his brother, his whole back flush against his brother’s front, including somewhere he tried not to think too hard about. Another embarrassment on the burning list, and what’s with it had to be about him and his brother on a bed every single time? It was getting old already. Soon enough, he realized that things could get even worse: if forced to feel his brother’s morning wood poking him while being confined in his brother’s arms wasn’t the worst that could happen, try adding Sam—who was sitting on the edge of his bed, all dressed up meticulously with his eyes narrowed on the two them—interloping this scene to the list.

Definitely a catastrophic morning going for the records.

Dean broke loose from his brother’s armlock like he had caught fire—probably underestimated how hard he was floundering—and Sam got flung out, who grumbled his discontentment. Soon, Sam realized what was happening and rolled off the bed as if it had caught fire.

Sam gesticulated a few times in the air in vain, his mouth swinging between hanging open and shutting close, just like the fish in Dean’s dream.

“I’ll hit the shower first.” He eventually managed, fleeing into the bathroom with fumes on his rear, leaving Dean and Sam in some staring contest.

Cowards! Both of his brothers had an identical genetic share of cowardice!

In the pretense of feigned casualness, Dean greeted Sam, “You got up pretty early.”

Sam shrugged, “Healthy lifestyle kinda just sticks, I guess. I always wake at half past five back home, too.”

Dean’s lips twitched at that, “Yeah. Because anyone named Sam Winchester are all filed under the same category of psychopaths.”

Sam shot him a furrowed gaze, which made Dean recall the same offended and baffled look on his face after Dean had called him a “bitch” in the car the other day.

Sam and Sam were much alike, not just in their looks but also in those little idiosyncracies that went unnoticed even by themselves: How they always curved their eyes before smiling, rubbing their fingers together unconsciously when they were thinking, always watching where they landed when getting into a seat very carefully, weary of scaring others. To Dean, it had to be these habitual details that put the brother he was familiar with together and had him drunk the Kool-Aid that Sam was exactly his brother.

How Sam was different from Sam became more distinct while Dean was at it: Sam was more revealed and perceptible, which made him all the more mysterious; maybe that was because Dean wasn’t exactly a part of his life. Sam carried an estrangement too thick to be dissolved, deactivating all Dean’s empirical measures to deal with Sam. As if it only took one look at Sam to shatter and deflate Dean’s self-assurance of “There’s nothing I don’t know about this kid.”

Dean wanted to know him more.

He straightened out his clothes and sat up, gently bumping Sam’s wrist, “Can I grill you something about you?”

Sam raised an eyebrow, “About?”

“Like, uh, you and me—I mean, things about another me.”

“I’m afraid there wouldn’t be anything you’d like to hear.” Sam blinked at him with a smile, “My brother and I were nothing like you two. If I forgot to grab something to eat, he wouldn’t even notice—even if he did, he wouldn’t care, and don’t even expect him to stash some protein bars in the car just in case I’m hungry.”

Dean was very uncomfortable; he didn’t think Sam would notice this. Damn it, whined inside Dean. Why were his brothers always so observant and sharp with things?

“That was nothing.” Dean averted his eyes and diverged the topic lamely, “See? I know your brother is an asshole, and there’s a reason you hate him.”

“The past is in the past. I guess I don’t really hate him. I’m just jealous of him.”

“You what?” Dean thought he had misheard that.

Sam lowered his eyes. The curve of his lips spelled out something reminiscent, “Mom always loves him more. Even though he had broken her heart, she still cared about him. It was the same case scenario with Dad; they always get along better, which I think is because he catered to Dad’s hobbies intentionally. Me, on the other hand… I was the weird kid.”

What was he talking about? Dean felt some annoyance creep up on him, “Come on, you went to Stanford with a full scholarship! I wouldn’t call that a ‘weird kid.’”

Sam was a bit surprised—no one had ever defended him like that, let alone against himself. Dean’s protectiveness was so exaggeratingly adorable. He laughed, “Thank you, I’m not complaining, though. It’s just… I had to compete on everything with him, from small things like Mom and Dad’s attention to big things like the girl I had a crush on. He could steal everyone’s eyes by simply showing up like he was born to be like this. I could tell myself that those were superficial and obnoxious, but I could never tell myself that I wasn’t jealous. When I was a kid, I was his biggest follower. I just forgot about that.”

He seemed to be talking to Dean or talking through Dean to dedicate the speech to someone else who would never be there to listen to him again. Sam was filled with remorse that he hadn’t forgiven his brother sooner, and now he wouldn’t get a second chance to do so. His words were weighed down and drenched in contrition, pressing heavily on Dean’s tongue. But this isn’t right. Even though the way Sam grew up was a stark dichotomy to theirs, he was still Sam. His Sam was so sensitive, always doubtful, always so aggressively inquisitive, even if those wouldn’t fit him in the ordinaries. When they were both so young, Dean was begging Sam to stop asking him so many questions and was exploiting two perfunctory answers of either I-don’t-know or You-don’t-want-to-know. Sam would ask nonetheless; he always did. When he grew older, he stopped asking suddenly—he observed in silence instead, his forever wordless observing. Since then, give or take, Dean could no longer understand what was going on in Sam’s grapefruit. Sometimes, when his eyes met Sam’s marmoreal ones, he found a sudden surge of chill vining up from his spine—a flash of a vague prey-running-away-from-predator kind of survival instinct sense of danger that glanced his mind. Not until that still second had passed would Sam’s face recover its vibrance again, morphing into his headache-inducing little brother again, as if that very moment had been nothing but a distortion of space and time. Dean didn’t think this would be some kind of omen. The kid’s upbringing was all Dean’s devotion: Dean knew Sam maybe even better than Dean knew himself. Even though Sam was ridiculously intelligent and basically an indecipherable mental puzzle, he was still Dean’s little brother, his responsibility, and his one and only. He was such a kind and tenderhearted kid with such fear of loneliness, with nothing to lose except Dean, who was there by his side.

Taking care of Sam ought to be Dean’s responsibility.

“That’s such bullshit.” Dean’s brows were woven together, anger glinting in his eyes, “He’s just a spoiled asshole—don’t answer me back. I know what I am. What exactly did he do for your family? ‘Cause from what I saw, he has done nothing other than break his family’s hearts and let them down, keep ignoring you, and neglect your needs. That’s what selfishness sounds like.”

“But I think he was busy catering to his own needs.” Another voice interrupted promptly. Sam came out from the shower, leaning on the doorframe with his arms crossed, the end of his hair still wet, leaving little spots on his shirt; his eyes locked on Dean, “Guess what, Dean? That’s what normal people would do.”

Dean snapped his head to Sam, furious, “Oh yeah? Do you expect me to be like that?”

Sam snorted as if he had heard something absurd and sensationalist coming out of Dean’s mouth, shaking his head, “I expect you to put yourself first more!”

“I don’t need this crap from you—” Dean hissed threateningly.

Sam tugged his sleeves, and Dean jerked his hands out reflexively before realizing. He turned his head and saw Sam’s wounded look, and then he softened visibly.

The room was smothered with silence, like a smoldering match that went out before being lit, stenching the room with an unpleasant fume.

“Don’t we have things to do today?” Sam tried to mediate, apparently not very good at it, “Didn’t you have a witch to meet? Can’t believe I am going to see some witch.”

“Psychic. There’s a big gap between a psychic and a witch.” Sam moved to the luggage, getting a towel to dry his hair. “Witches, most of the time, we need to get rid of, but rarely the mediums.”

What is he talking about! Sam wasn’t handling this very well. What the hell happened to my alter ego for him to downplay murders like going to the grocery store?

Chapter Text

The psychic in question lived in a middle-class community, in which every house here looked like it had been freshly plucked from the monotonous real estate ads—uniform, orderly, almost eerily perfect. Even the lawns were trimmed to the exact same height, which was more of a lifelessness than orderliness.

“Wow, this looks so supernatural.” Commented Dean.

“Maybe the best way to blend in is to hide in plain sight.” Mimicked Sam.

Sam remained silent until he spoke again, “This looks like my house.”

The hunter brothers looked at him with a semi-surprised (actually not at all) face, Sam returning a bitch face. On their way to the porch, Dean couldn’t help but prod Sam on his arm, teasing, “I thought your taste could at least do better than this.”

Sam returned a bitch face, too.

They rang the bell. God, even the doorbell ring has a soothing light music set! Dean stared at the doorbell button as if considering gouging it from the wall and salt-and-burn-ing it.

The intercom speaker was on. “Who am I speaking to?”

“I’m Dean Winchester, and they are both my brothers: Sam. Bobby Singer sent us here.”

The intercom speaker was cut off with a pow. Ten seconds later, the front door was yanked open. Behind it stood a tall brunette.

Her looks matched the style of the house: forty-something, beautiful but solemn to the extent of rigidness, hair held up loosely behind her head, a silk nightgown draped over her shoulders—the look of a white collar who got woken unreasonably early on a Sunday morning by her unreasonably rude neighbors instead of a supernatural psychic who was specialized in dealing with spatiotemporal occurrences.

She sized up three Winchesters sharply, stepped back half a step to let them in, “Come in.”

Three boys clenched their tails and hung their heads in.

There was nothing even remotely supernatural in the house, either. The decor and how the furniture was placed were both dully exquisite. She didn’t even keep any plants. The decorations were shortlisted for nothing else but peculiar modern artifacts in her house. The mysterious Ms. Psychic/White-Collar motioned her chin toward the expensive leather couch in the living room; three boys took the cue and quickly sat there and looked pretty.

“Randi.” She pointed to herself, then spun her heels to another room to gather her stuff, leaving three Winchesters gawking at one another.

“Was that supposed to be common in this line of work?” Sam prodded carefully.

“Definitely not.” Dean’s tone was decisive.

“Um, to be honest? We don’t know either.” Sam cautiously looked around as if something would actually pounce on him from underneath the marble coffee table, “The real-deal psychics are rare out there. We’ve only met one of them before… All I’ve got to say is that the one we met was nothing like this—she practically lived up to the literal meaning of the word ‘psychic.’”

“Because I do have a day job. Not everyone can build their livelihood on subterfuges to swindle those mothers who lost their sons and wives who got cheated on by their husbands.” Randi returned with a huge box in her arms, which didn’t look mysterious at all but an ordinary chest. She didn’t seem to need to ask them anything, opening the box on the coffee table without a word. The box contained uncanny dried flowers and herbs and various stones glistened with metallic sheens.

Sam puffed out a sigh; the whole shebang wasn’t too off the radar from what he imagined.

Randi glimpsed at Sam, and grabbed the nearest mug with which she filled a few kinds of herbs and water, xylophoning the mug’s brim with a silver spoon while chanting a strange litany of spells. She passed the mug to Sam’s face when she finished. “Drink.”

Sam took the mug hesitantly, “Only me? What about them?”

“No.” Ms. Psychic/White-Collar must have charged her clients per word.

Sam looked at Dean pleadingly. The cheaper version of his older brother had only two words written all over his face: Drink it.

Weren’t they supposed to be the professionals? Drinking this kind of unidentified crap without asking and doubting anything else beforehand?

Sam’s attention wasn’t even on Sam. He looked at Randi, intrigued, “How do you know it’s him?”

Randi snorted impatiently, “What would be the point of you coming here if I couldn’t tell?”

Sam un-craned his neck, “Sorry, just curious.”

Ms. Psychic/White-Collar, the Intimidating, turned back to Sam, “What are you waiting for?”

Sam had nothing left in his sleeves, so he downed the whole mug martyr-like, praying silently that whatever it was should not be poisonous.

Once he had finished the drink, Randi snatched the mug back, double-checking to see if there was any drop left in the mug.

Oh. Momma-bear kind of psychic. When Sam just started to slack in relief, Ms. Intimidating shot him a look that made his heart jump to his throat.

It was hard to believe Randi’s grim look could get grimmer than the reaper—the three boys were sitting on pins and needles. The way the woman locked her eyes on Sam with a distressing concentration gave him chills, and he had no idea why he dared not utter a single word under her scrutiny. After a while, she threw the mug on the table, leaning back in her armchair, “I don’t think there’s anything you’d need me to help with.”

“What? How?” Dean was so fretting that he almost jumped up from the chair.

Randi waved him off, “You heard me.”

Dean pointed at Sam, “But he’s here! That’s the biggest problem!”

“I can’t send him back. It’s up to all three of you to figure it out.”

“Is it me?” Dean asked anxiously, “Is it because of me? What should I do?”

“If you really want to go back,” there was a pregnant look when she raised her eyes, “whatever you had done to come here, rinse and repeat under the full moon.”

Dean flipped out. “What is that supposed to mean? We did nothing! It was like, ‘poof,’ then the next thing we know, he’s here!”

Randi raised her eyebrow, “That’s none of my business.”

Dean lost it and stood up abruptly, readying himself to snarl some disrespectful flourishes at her when Sam pulled him back.

“We really appreciate your time.” He nodded toward Randi, “Excuse us for bothering you. We’re leaving.”

Dean floundered, “What? We can’t—”

Sam shot his brother a warning look, “We’ve got our answer already.”

Dean was both agitated and bewildered. He looked at Sam, trying to seek some support, only to find his worth-half-a-shit brother standing up obediently, ready to go.

Randi didn’t see them out. She lolled back in her chair, eyes fleeting over the three boys, “What you are seeking may not be found. Whether you would have it in your palms or not, the gate would not be opened again if you missed the shot.”

“The hell does that supposed to mean, either?” Dean choked out, “I ain’t here for any goddamn riddles—“

“Just a little nosy advice.” She interrupted Dean, smiling for the first time throughout their whole session. Yet the smile was unsettling—a sharky grin, “By the way, tell Bobby Singer I don’t owe him anything. Stop sending people here.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dean was still pumped with anger when he ducked into his car, “Does she even understand what’s going on? I think she was just half-assing us! I just knew it!: People who live in this kind of bourgeois neighborhood are all selfish and egotistical bitches.”

Sam almost tried to remind Dean that he also lived in this kind of neighborhood, but he sucked it up.

“Maybe she already knows what’s happening, and she has her reasons for not telling us right away,” Sam replied calmly.

Dean scrunched his face, “But it doesn’t make any sense. What other reasons could there be?”

“I don’t know. What do you think, Sam?” Sam called his other self by his name for the first time. He gazed at Sam in the rearview mirror, his eyes dimmed and dark.

Sam blinked and flashed an innocent smile, “Probably, yeah? Honestly, I’m still mulling over the scientificity of so-called witchcraft for getting me to drink a cup of tea.”

Sam’s gaze through the rearview mirror didn’t relent, “At least it’s clear that if we can’t teleport you back to the other side the next full moon, you’re probably stuck here forever. By the way, the Sam Winchester of this world is on APB, so the life around here isn’t exactly rainbows and sunshine.”

Dean wheeled his head toward Sam in shock, trying to communicate with his eyes: What are you doing? You’re going to scare him away!

Sam scrunched his nose in unsureness, “Well, I want to be surprised about that, but I really don’t. From what I’ve seen and heard over the past two days, you two have violated, like, what, twenty federal laws? I would probably be surprised if nobody noticed what you two had done and not put you two on the most wanted list, though.”

Dean was even more shell-shocked. He turned around, “You’re totally fine with riding alongside two desperadoes?”

Sam shrugged, “Didn’t sound like I had a lot of options here, right? Besides,” he smiled that sweet smile of his again, “Maybe I’m just covertly wild and adventurous on the inside.”

Sam chuckled, but his eyes were cold. “Yeah, I bet you are.”

It wasn’t even noon, so the boys had nothing to do but return to the motel. Sam got a hold of Dean in the parking lot, going straight in, “A word with you, in private?”

Dean raised his brow questioningly, but his body leaned across Sam’s way reflexively. He turned his head and tossed Sam the room key. “Go wait for us inside.”

Sam caught the key nice and clean and then nodded, his eyes narrowed a glance on both of them. Sam watched him the whole way through until Sam’s in the room.

“What?” Dean, of course, wasn’t that out of the game to not have sensed the hostility around Sam against Sam.

Sam didn’t answer him right away. “What do you think? What was Randi trying to tell us?”

“I fucking understood squat.” Upon the mention of Randi, Dean got worked up right on cue. “I have no idea what and why she can’t be frank with us. Even if she didn’t want to look closer into my question, she needed to tell me what to do, at least.”

Sam sighed. “Does it never occur to you that she wasn’t talking to you?”

Dean frowned and gave that a thought, then immediately got Sam’s message. He shook his head, “That’s impossible.”

“Think about it, Dean. We didn’t do anything, and it doesn’t add up. But it would add up if he did pull something off. Besides, don’t you think he’s getting cozy here too well, too fast for a regular dude?”

“But it’s still…” Dean bit his lips. “No matter what, that was my wishful thinking, my dream.”

“But you also mentioned that he felt very real. Maybe the Djinn we killed was kinda special, or maybe your dream did path its way through some fantasy realm. I don’t know. But I do know everything has an explanation for it. If this whole thing wasn’t his doing, then what did ‘Whatever you had done to come here’ refer to anyway?”

Dean got more worked up, walking in circles. “You can’t do this!”

Sam furrowed his brows in confusion.

Dean accused with agitation, “You can’t just… one second telling me he isn’t real, then next second telling me he’s real!”

Sam felt a tad frustrated. “Why can’t you understand these two possibilities aren’t conflicted? For us, the dreamscape is not real. Whether it’s a mirage made of dreams or some alternate universe that actually exists, that still doesn’t mean anything to us.”

Dean widened his eyes at what he had heard and found it hard to believe, “How can you say it doesn’t mean anything? That Mom’s still alive doesn’t mean anything? That those evil sons of bitches never disrupted our lives doesn’t mean anything?”

Jesus Christ! Sometimes, talking to Dean was like trying to teach a wall to shake his hands. Sam squeezed his eyes shut. “I don’t want to fight you over this. Just think about what I have said, alright? You know it makes sense, and we must get him to talk and be honest with us.”

Dean’s shoulders slumped, and he shook his head stubbornly. “I’d met him. He couldn’t have had anything to do with this witch crap. How the hell could he possibly pull that off? And why the hell would he do that?”

“People change. The last time you saw him, he was anything but willing to be around you. But now he has been acting like a sweetheart for two days straight.”

Dean’s eyes shot open, his lips curled. “Did you just say you are a…”

“Shut up!” Sam bit out a warning, but the rosiness got to his ears faster than his words. “Quit it. I’m trying to tell you something important here.”

Dean couldn’t suppress the teasing curls on his lips, yet he relented, “Fine, fine. He does seem a bit off, all right. But he has explained that to us already: I was dead, and he was projecting his urge to make amends to me. Uh, not me me, but in some sense still me.”

Sam was turning something over in his mind, his face slightly less puzzled. “He has done all this because he wants to see you.”

“What?” Dean was flabbergasted. He blinked and then laughed out incredulously, “That’s impossible! His bond with me would never go that deep, and he would never do that just because he wanted to see me. Jesus, Sammy, your imagination just earned you a ticket to cuckoo land.”

“We should ask him.” Insisted Sam, “He’s full of regrets, right? He regrets that he couldn’t stop you from dying and regrets how it was way too late to patch things up between you two. Regrets can drive people to do a lot of things. It’s not like that we haven’t run into cases like this before.”

“That’s next-level absurd, Sammy.” Dean seemed almost amused by what Sam was suggesting, “He didn’t want anything to do with me ever again, and if it hadn’t been for Mom’s sake, that would have been legitimately the end of me and him. He is feeling sorry for himself, but that’s because his own brother gut himself in front of him! It would be hard for anyone who witnessed that to handle it very well.”

“We should go ask him.” Repeated Sam, “Just so you know, there’s only less than a week left before the next full moon. Every possibility counts.”

Dean relented and shook his head, “Fine, genius. The things I have to do to shut your salad hole.”

Sam grabbed a couple of random brochures in the room, leaning up against the headboard to skim them lackadaisically. He had a good guess about what would happen when his brother and his other self from another dimension were going to step into the room. Too soon, he thought; he hadn’t come up with any answers yet.

Sam wasn’t sure he could get away with his prevarication this time.

Dean was nothing like his brother, and yet everything his brother was. There was always smugness worn on both of their grins, levity floating above their tones, and wits laced with their words. They both enjoyed being in the limelight from the heat of people’s attention. They both fiddled with the ring on their right ring finger when they were bored. The only thing that compartmentalized them was how Dean looked at his little brother—it had been as if the world reduced to nothing but Sam, the only thing that truly mattered and to be cherished his whole life—with the glint within so blindingly dazzling, radiant from those eyes of emerald contoured by the filaments of gold.

That to be beheld in that iridescence that congealed such profound weight made Sam shiver, feeling the chills shooting up from his spine even though he was merely a bystander, never the one who caught within it. He was curious if Dean himself ever knew what his gaze was capable of and if Sam ever knew: Sam acted like he was so used to the privilege of being cosseted like this—grown so accustomed to it that he took it all in for granted with such oblivious and leisurely ease that instead looked like obtuseness. He was so lucky—indignantly, enviably so, being basked in Dean’s eyes.

Sam was always observing them, trying to figure out what made them different from what he and Deanhad been, to wrap his head around what Dean would’ve looked like if he had been someone who wouldn’t push his little brother away. He often found himself wondering whether he had ever truly known his brother while watching them.

After Dean’s death, he looked back on many things. He remembered how Dean puffed his chest and said he was his little brother, and no one got to bully him under his watch when they were both little kids. Or how Dean sneaked into the house with girls’ fragrance still lingering all over him in his teenage years, pushing into his room and flashing him a bright-eyed grin full of white, regular teeth. Or how Deanabandoned himself into depravation after graduating from high school, shoving everyone away in irritation, yelling at him, “I’m a shitshow, and I’m perfectly fine with that, so why don’t you just stay away from me and leave me be.” Or how Dean was hammered one night, sprawling on the couch. He was ducking his head, passing Dean at a quick pace, hoping to go unnoticed, but instead getting gripped by Dean, who fixed his somber eyes on him, foggy behind the haze of alcohol, heavy silence hanging between what had left unsaid and what could’ve been said like a pendulum. Eventually, nothing but a drunk and clumsy pat on his shoulder. Or how Dean was making out with his prom date on his prom, chasing quickly after him when Sam bolted out of the door, running his mouth about how sorry he was and how Sam was way out of her league. Or how Dean was calling him, begging for his help to bail him out, but didn’t even meet his eyes when Sam arrived at the prison, deliberately shifting attention by grabbing his accomplice not smoothly at all, barking gibberish, face mortified.

Or how Dean was slipping into his apartment at Stanford one night, all slick and sly and fawning upon him, circling around him as if imploring something too embarrassing to say out loud. Sam could’ve asked him but didn’t. He had been pushed away way too many times. He let his guard up when it came to his brother yet secretly anticipated that intimacy he might never get to have again to reappear and a sneak peek of the true Dean underneath that façade. He let Dean crash on his couch, who gripped his arm suddenly when he was walking away from the couch and released it as quickly as he had started, as if he had been electrocuted from the touch and whose eyes reflected the moon gleamed with sorrow. That night, sleep didn’t find him. He lay awake in the bedroom. All he could think of was his brother, who was one turn of the doorknob away from him. And all the things his brother might say but wouldn’t say. And how much more fragile it had been, in that fragile second, when their skins reacquainted, as he freefell into a fuzzy slumber mist. Only to find that gone was any trace of Dean and his credit card when he woke up the next morning.

He thought even though Dean had never looked at him the way Dean did, he had had his share of something special like that that only belonged to him. It just never occurred to him that he had had it. He had missed it out.

He had never given a thought about saving Dean.

Regret wasn’t the word for him. He wasn’t in regrets but in the reluctance with what had happened. He didn’t understand why Dean had always surrendered so quickly, why Dean had never turned to him for help. Night and day, over and over, he couldn’t stop spiraling, thinking about would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. The pain of it reveled in drinking his marrow away, an ulcer bone-deep, munching its way through, eroding his soul.

He remembered everything that had happened that night. He tried to comprehend everything he had seen, to reconstruct his world in a new light. Fortunately, he was a quick learner.

The door was pushed open, with Dean and Sam walking in with the same stride but wearing different expressions: Dean was biting his lips like he didn’t know how to strike up what he wanted to say, while the way Sam looked his way was nothing but hostile.

Sam arched his brows and waited for them to start, but Dean was still tangled up within himself, still wearing that hesitant look. He sighed and spoke up as if trying to be considerate, “I’ll take a wild guess: you guys wanted to ask me something?”

“Well, I’ll take that as you already know what we’re going to ask you, then,” Sam replied immediately.

“Some of it, not much.” Sam put that stupid travel guide brochure away, slightly straightening himself into a he-is-all-ears pose.

“Well,” Sam pressed, “then you should tell us.”

Sam blinked, overlooking them from beneath his eyelids. The curves around his eyes made him look obedient and distant simultaneously, “Where should I start?”

It had gone way too far even for Dean to convince himself that Sam was naïve and uninvolved in all this. “You really did all that?” He was incredulous and heartbroken over this, “All those black magic and witch crap?”

Sam scrunched his face. “I wouldn’t call them that, but yeah, I did all of that.”

“Why?!” Dean cried, pacing back and forth in the room. “No, wait. So you’re just playing dumb for two days? Pretending that you know nothing about our line of work, pretending that you know nothing…” He came to an abrupt halt.

“Know nothing about what?” Sam picked up what he left off ever so curiously. “Know nothing about that we have actually met before?”

Panic bled across Dean’s face, which somehow incited some pleasure in Sam.

“I do know a lot of things. I know you would only see me as a wishful thinking of yours. I know you would think that my life was a lie, a lie that got handed to you by the Djinn. I know you would think that my world would vanish into thin air as you left. But guess what? You’re wrong. Everything there is still up and running.”

Tears pricked the redness out of Dean’s eyes; he wobbled a few steps backward with his hands planted reversedly on the dresser, supporting himself, his breath shaky. Sam sighed a little at the sight of him. “See, I didn’t tell you because I knew you would have this look on your face if I did. But I know a lot more than that.”

He propped his head up with his arms, his eyes slithering upward sluggishly, sluggishly, until they met Dean’s.

“Such as you didn’t really die. You were just abandoning Mom, abandoning me.”

He smiled at Dean with that smile he had recently picked up, the sweet smile that his own brother would’ve liked, too.

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.

Chapter Text

Something registered as comfort languidly emerged from the kiss, desperate and devastating, in Sam’s hindsight — it only hit him then because his brother’s fingers were entangled with the hair above his nape, slowly massaging his scalp. So gratifying, and so obedient of Dean, as if he would stay by Sam’s side forever, willingly, in such proximity and intimacy, meeting every need of his, soothing every wound of his.

As unsettlement leaving his body, Sam almost let out a contented sigh. That was when it struck him that Dean hadn’t been kissing him back the whole time.

Coming back to his senses, Sam took an abrupt step back, getting a clearer look at Dean: His big brother was tousled head to toe, already plump lips bitten to swollen and red, laced with a wet sheen. A ripe berry gleaming with morning dew. Sam flushed profusely within seconds, batting his eyes away from Dean, spluttering out an apology, “I’m… I’m sorry.”

Dean masked himself with feigned debauchery, “Come on, Sammy. Not many ladies out there can handle you going all in like that.”

His worth-half-a-shit little brother was even more flustered, shaking and nodding his head at the same time helplessly, as if he had been lectured, and wanting to dig a grave for himself to hide in, which amused Dean because he didn’t get to see that show on Sam’s face every Tuesday.

How amazing. Sam is nothing like his Sammy, but everything his Sammy is everywhere that matters.

“Hey,” Dean softened, “It’s okay.”

Sam laid his eyes back on Dean, puppy eyes glinting with hope. Perhaps it was his being under the influence, or maybe it was just because the look on Dean’s face was too gentle and cosseting, suddenly, at this very moment, Sam felt like he was finally allowed to have it all.

“Then can I kiss you again?” He asked, tentatively.

Dean smiled and closed their distance again, tenderly enveloping his thin lips with his swollen ones from the ruthless gnawing a moment before. The meager heat lingered on his big brother’s lips, followed his sensitive nerve, and slid down his chest, burning, inflating an enormous fluff of soft trepidations.

It was like a dream. Sam kissed back hesitantly, better than his last attempt. They sucked each other’s tip of the tongue delicately, sharing the same aftertaste of whiskey. Somehow, the taste of alcohol grounded Sam, like an innuendo of overindulgence, an entity of excuse.

He grew bolder, palms riding Dean’s waist and slightly pushing them closer to each other, knees brushing against Dean’s thighs.

Dean chuckled between kisses — Sam was like a smart puppy, inch by inch, he probed the bottom line cautiously. It’s okay to indulge him just for the heat of the moment, he thought, he is an injured, lonely, never-his-to-lose, and bound-to-leave-his-side kind of puppy.

Docilely, Dean leaned in, even parting his knees to grant access for him to annex the place between his legs, fingers looping and stroking the skin where Sam’s neck and shoulder met, like an inconspicuous encouragement for more.

Sam literally licked him like a puppy, leaving wet streaks all over the corner of his lips, his jaws, and rooting lower into Dean’s neck. His hands weren’t exactly behaving, caressing along the curves of Dean’s waist, waiting to sneak under his big brother’s t-shirt. But Dean locked his hands from the outside of the hem.

“Woah! Easy there, Tiger.” Dean kissed out of breath, panting and patting Sam’s nape, “You ain’t planning on putting on a show for the folks here, are you?”

Sam was snapped back to reality, his face burning. He retreated to an appropriate social distance, yet still clinging onto Dean’s fingers as if loosening them would have made Dean vanish.

Dean’s heart swelled ridiculously big. Sammy girl.

And it should’ve never made him dizzy-giddy.

They stumbled out of the bar, and Sam still wanted to push his supernatural brother onto any surface possible to rut on him. Dean kissed him back as consolation while leading themselves to where the motel sat. It’s really inappropriate, he thought distractingly. Fortunately, it’s already dark outside, otherwise they would be cuffed by the local sheriff and would end up to be the butt of the joke of the whole town and would be prohibited to step foot into this town ever again for the rest of their lives.

Sam spotted a pitch-black alley and instantly nudged and pushed Dean his way there, trapping Dean with his body flush against Dean’s. Sam’s kiss was passionate and clingy; his erection pressed against Dean’s inner thigh, thrusting half-heartedly. Dean was a bit overwhelmed, turning his head aside trying to take a breather, only to expose his earlobe to be sucked and nibbled right on unintentional cue. Dean hadn’t been this submissive his whole life, so he was annoyed by that. He reached lower and grabbed Sam’s cock vindictively through his jeans, but it only earned a strangled moan from the drunk who clutched Dean’s hand and fucked into his fist conveniently. 

What a mess. Overheated. Between his stupor, Dean concluded that things shouldn’t have headed this way. But he was all wobbly from his little brother’s dry-humping, half his face smudged with saliva, his mind too sluggish to gather any thoughts or anything constructive. He was confused about why he should fight this, so he let Sam kiss him while letting Sam take control of his hand to jack himself off over his jeans. Everything was fuzzy and hazy. Then his phone rang.

The sharp ringtone shredded the night like paper, cutting open the self-preserving cocoon in Dean’s head. He pushed Sam off him, panic-stricken, hands shaky as he fished his phone out, picking up before even checking who was calling.

“Dean? Where did you go? Why aren’t you two in the room?” Shit, it was Sam. His little brother sounded anxious and worked up, wholeheartedly concerned for him. 

Guilt flooded his throat like an afterthought. Dean opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“Dean?” Sam sounded even more troubled, “What happened? Where are you?”

I’m fucking the other you in a fucking alley.

Dean was still trying to find his voice when Sam clung onto him again. He drawled a nasal “Dean—” while kissing the corner of his eye, wanting his brother to pick up where they had left off.

Dean sidestepped abruptly, lifting his arm to block Sam away, elbows prodding into Sam’s chest harshly. Sam let out a wet, guttural sound of surprise and hurt.

Sam must have caught that. He paused for a few seconds and called for his name for the third time, “Dean?”

This time, he sounded skeptical yet cautious.

“We’re fine.” Dean finally got his voice back, and God, his voice cracked like there had been a cock, balls-deep, down his throat just now. But there hadn’t. Not yet. He wouldn’t. Probably.

“We got bored, so we went to a bar. Back in a sec, on our way.”

“You what?!” Sam detonated instantly. “For God’s sake, can’t you just for once—”

“Just a couple hundred yards away, we can almost see the motel sign. Talk later vis-à-vis, bye Sammy.” Dean hung up hastily.

Sam studied Dean’s face warily, then reached out again, trying to hook onto Dean’s fingers. “Dean…”

Dean dodged him.

Helplessly, Sam stood there with his dick still tented up in his jeans not at all unobtrusively. He looked hilarious and wronged at the same time.

Dean took off his jacket irritatedly, handing it over to let him cover it up, then darting back on the main road with his head hung in a sulk, not even bothering to double-check whether his hammered little brother was following him or not.

He didn’t want to go back to the motel. He freaked out, and the panic attack that rose later than hindsight devoured him. He just wanted to hop into the Impala and drive his way through five different states before racing down a random shore where he could plunge himself under the surface and never float back up. But he couldn’t just leave a drunk Sam on the street like this.

He made a fuming U-turn back to the alley.

Sam was still where he had stood, the jacket Dean having tossed him in his arms, eyes glistening. “I thought you left.”

Dean had no desire to answer the drunkard. He grabbed Sam’s arm and hauled him to leave.

“Dean, Dean.” Sam stumbled after Dean, his words stumbled out of his mouth, too. “Are you having second thoughts?”

Dean clenched his teeth.

“'Cause I… I don’t.” Sam was still giving his interminable one-man speech, “I love you. I want this. Forever and always. No more hesitation. I want—”

“Shut up!” Dean spat viciously, not sparing a look back.

That’s why he didn’t catch how Sam’s eyes were as bright as soberness and as intoxicated as if it were forlornness.

Once he entered the room, he flung Sam onto the bed and dashed out of the room smartly. Taken aback, Sam called after him, “Dean!”

Dean just hung his head in long strides, as if he couldn’t hear Sam’s calling.

“Dean!” Sam rushed out to chase behind him. Why the hell can’t he just leave me alone?

“Stop, Dean! Damn it!” Sam finally caught up with Dean and grabbed his arm. “Where are you going? I said: Stop!”

Dean extracted his arm from Sam’s hold impatiently, “And I didn’t answer, which means ‘No!’”

The movement exposed his face under the streetlight. Sam immediately stepped closer to get hold of his jaw, frowning. “What happened to your face?”

Dean flinched noticeably. Hickeys from the other you, and I just let him do that to me. And I even enjoyed it so much that if you didn’t call me back then I would probably consent to him fucking me like fucking a cheap whore right there in that filthy ass alleyway.

Sam watched his face closely, and then the confusion in his eyes slowly turned into an alarmed knowingness. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Didn’t what? Dean wanted to throw the question right back at him, didn’t kiss you, didn’t lure a hammered you to make out with your brother, didn’t take your cock into my hand to jerk you off all on my volition?

Whenever he thought things couldn’t get any worse, he could always find a new angle to fuck everything up all over again. Perhaps that was the real talent in Dean Winchester.

Sam must’ve found the answer written on Dean’s face. His face churned with fury, jaw tightened, masseter bulging, then stepped back from Dean swiftly.

Scold me, thought Dean, I deserve this. Yell at me, punch me, maybe walk away from me. Walk away from this incestuous slut.

Sam carded through his hair forcefully, walking in messy circles, all pent-up and inflated with rage, like a bristling lion. “I’m gonna kill him.”

“What?” Dean thought he had misheard. “Why?”

“Why?!” Sam lost his composure and yelled, “He took advantage of you! Manipulating this… unhealthy compensative mindset of yours or whatnot, and he made you think you wanted that! And you just keep babying all his needs non-stop without any boundaries, to the extent where you are even willing to hurt yourself, and you’re asking me why?! Do you really think that you’re compensating, Dean? So basically, you’re telling me you’re willing to let him fuck you so that you can make it up to him?”

Sam’s straightforwardness pierced through Dean, who cowered in on himself, mortified.

Sam was still enraged. “I don’t want to repeat myself, so why don’t you just be honest with me: How far will you go to feel like you don’t owe him anything anymore? How far will it take for you to stop? What do you think I’d feel — watching my brother fawn over an imposter so desperate that he’d dump all his dignity for him?”

Dean’s shoulders sagged. That’s not true, I did that voluntarily. When Sam kissed his neck with craving, his hot and hard dick humping into his palm through the fabric, his letting out desperate little whimpers, like his everything was in the palm of Dean’s hand, or like everything all he ever wanted had always been Dean. That made him so fulfilled that he even got giddy about it. But he didn’t dare to tell Sam that. He couldn’t face that right now: not only was he an incestuous whore, but also a chickenshit coward.

Sam sighed and softened his tone. “I’m not reprimanding you. It’s just… You shouldn’t have let him treat you like this.” He stepped closer to Dean, gently cupped his jaw, and tilted his head up, examining the red, swollen lips and hickies dappled across his chin and neck. And it was that kind of physical contact that had made Dean ashamed.

“I ain’t some unsophisticated virgin in distress. I don’t need you to protect my good name.” Dean slid his mask back on just ever so slightly. 

Sam snorted, “Yeah. Take a look at yourself in the mirror. Says the one who looks like he has just been raped.”

Dean flushed. Vibrant pink drifted from the tips of his ears to his cheekbones, his eyelids soft and steaming. His face was a freshly cooked peach; it only needed a push from the fingertips to be peeled for the sweet and ripe juice to overflow.

And this was his big brother, as if there had been any other option left for Sam other than hopelessly falling in love with him.

Sam thought he could already make his peace and live with the impulse, with which he had spent almost half of his life dealing. He was also ready to live like this for the rest of his life. It wasn’t like he hadn’t been furious with it, floundering within it, running away from it. But that very night, when he found the two of them entangled on the floor, scuffling with his big brother who had sneaked into his apartment, who was riding on his waist and pinning him to the floor, whose soul-siphoning green eyes drained the dimmed moonlight away, fracturing lights that dazzled him. His big brother, whom he hadn’t seen for two years, grinned at him so brightly, while he, on the other hand, was deafened by his own heartbeats, lying on the floor, surrendered; his tongue grew thick, and his palms went tingly.

He knew he was screwed at that precise moment. Dean was worse than any other substance in the world, afflicting him with an addiction that no rehab could help him get rid of. Eventually, Sam accepted that truth. He loved his brother in both ways, in one way he should and in the other way he shouldn’t. If one cannot beat it, make peace with it. And now, he could wipe the oil off Dean’s lips with tissues when Dean parted his mouth to show him his tongue without batting an eye; he could drop Dean off on different beds of different girls and pick up a debauched Dean, reeking of sex, without turning a hair. He knew what Dean felt for him was completely different, so if that had been the truth all along, he would never lay his hands on Dean. His brother was already twisted enough — Sam was afraid of getting rejected by Dean, but more afraid of getting a nod from Dean, just for the sake of “Sammy’s needs need to be met.” And it wasn’t really impossible when it came to Dean. Just the thought of it filled his throat with horror, nearly making him puke.

Throughout the past two years, Sam had worn the façade of normalcy, with only a dull spike of pain surging here and there that needed to be handled occasionally. He harbored the last tinge of optimism to daydream that if enough time had passed to turn it into a habit, then maybe the pain would be gone one day. But he had never thought he had to deal with scenarios like this.

A he who wasn’t he jumped out from Dean’s wish into their life, tricking his brother into giving him everything he wanted whenever he wanted, spinning his brother around and making Dean revolve all around him blindly, to the extent of willing to hold him, to kiss him, to let him touch him, perhaps to give him a head, too — would making out alone could’ve made such a mess of his brother’s lips? He couldn’t bear to imagine further, burning jealousy on the verge of escalating into hatred, scorching Sam’s bones till they creaked. That guy was like a thief, striding into Dean’s pants while wearing Sam’s meatsuit. Everything that Sam couldn’t obtain was like low-hanging fruit to that guy.

I am so jealous, he thought, that it’s nearly killing me. You have no idea. But I would never do that to you.

Because I love you so.

Sam shut his eyes, feeling sorrow. When he opened them again, he couldn’t find any evidence insinuating his previous inner wavering on this subject. Eventually, he let his fingers run through a red mark on the side of Dean’s neck that was too loud to his eyes, tone nonchalant. “Need me to get a separate room for you?”

Dean stared back at him. “I’m not some victim of rape!”

Sam held both his hands up. “Just for your consideration.” He paused, “Fine, I want to have a word alone with him anyway.”

Dean frowned.

“You don’t have to… Never mind, it won’t happen again.” Dean said in a low voice, “Promise.”

Sam, once again, felt the flame of fury and jealousy in a mix, surging and licking his heart. His brother was still defending that asshole who even though didn’t give a shit about him. Look at what he’s done to Dean. He treated him like a fool, used him, marked him all he wanted so recklessly as if whether Dean had wanted that or not didn’t matter at all.

But Sam didn’t want to fight anymore. He was so tired, and Dean wouldn’t listen to him anyway.

He turned around and headed straight towards the room, without checking whether Dean followed.

Dean did follow.

A part of him still wanted to run away from this, but he was also aware of how meaningless it would be.

Sam knew. Sam didn’t go deeper into this and wasn’t even pissed at him. He was so unbelievably lucky.

But where else could he run off to anyway. How could he run away from someone whom he never wanted to leave.

Dean forgot the fact that he had to share a bed with his brother, but he was too exhausted to spare any energy for panicking. Too much had happened in only two damn days, and the fatigue it brought him was soul deep.

Sam was already fast asleep. The kid had had too much to drink, octopusing his pillow with his limbs all spread out and snoring slightly. Had it been at other times, Dean would have thought this to be adorable and would have probably recorded it on his phone, waiting to show the video clip to him the next morning.

But now he wasn’t in the mood to do so. He hadn’t made up his mind on how to face Sam.

He took advantage of that kid’s vulnerabilities. He is not his brother, and couldn’t really replace his brother. But he gave Sam the wrong signal, making Sam feel that he could find anything previously lost to him in Dean. He watched and let that mistake happen.

Perhaps he just couldn’t stand to hear that he said that he loved him.

How pathetic.

Sam suddenly turned over, stretching his arm and placing it on Dean’s waist and dragging him towards himself. Dean’s body went taut nervously.

“What are you doing?” He protested lowly.

“The gears in your head are really loud.” Sam’s voice was muffled, painted with a boyish waywardness underneath.

Dean should’ve panicked, considering what he had done with Sam earlier today. He had gone way too far and should never have had body contact like this with Sam anymore — it was too much, too hot. He didn’t trust himself. It wasn’t safe. But his body thought otherwise.

He would never admit this, but he liked the heat of Sam’s body, liked the hand Sam placed on his belly, liked the tiny breath Sam puffed against his ears. So warm. So cozy. As if the whole world sailed away with only the two of them left snuggling against each other, with the power in them to fight against any worldly affair. Sleep swept across him, and Dean’s consciousness drifted away slowly.

“Don’t you think about him.” Before falling into dreams, Dean thought he heard Sam had said something like this.

“Think of me.”

He fell into oblivion and wasn’t sure whether he had got that right.