Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sam wakes from a dream of hunting.

It's vivid in his mind, and he lies there in his bed for a long minute, remembering the weight of the shotgun in his hand, the warmth of Dean at his back, the tang of lighter fluid on the air, and the wind whipping his hair as the angry spirit exploded in front of them in a sea of sparks. There was music, a little thrill of it, beguiling and enchanting, but the tune's gone from his head. He wishes he could remember it. His heart is still beating faster, like he's run a distance and only now come to a stop.

He pulls the sheets up to his neck and watches the sun dapple the sloping ceiling, and remembers what it felt like, to fight like that, together. He supposes it wasn't all exciting, there was wet feet and long bouts of waiting, and days spent in dusty council archives, and injuries and bad food and danger. It's left him altered, broken in ways he doesn't really understand. But still. He misses it, sometimes. Their old life.

They've been settled here for nearly a year now, longer than he's lived in any one place at a stretch since Stanford. Ten months, anyway, they've lived in this ramshackle old house in Cottonwood, Ohio, long enough for Dean to have fixed the most of the leaks in the roof, and to have started digging a vegetable patch under the apple tree in the backyard.

It's pretty nice, coming home every evening to the same walls, the same place. Planting things in the yard and seeing them grow. Getting to know the people you see when you walk down the street.

He wishes he could ask Dean if he feels the same way. Sam doesn't know how to phrase a lot of things, anymore. Words don't come easy to him, not the way they used to.

They're like strangers to each other, anyway. Maybe it's just going to take some time getting accustomed to. They're used to driving, and moving on, navigating the country by the numbers on highway road maps. Sam knows where to buy illegal ammunition in every state of the nation (including Alaska, excluding Hawaii); how to forge documents that say he's anything from FBI to FDA to DEA to CIA; the words to 14 different exorcisms off by heart (including three in Aramaic, which is one motherfucker of a difficult language to get your mouth around). On the other hand, he'd forgotten how to open a bank account; how to pay bills on time; what it's like to wake up in the morning to the same view, the same fields, the same curve of river. He's forgotten more than that, but those are the things that still surprise him.

He's good at moving on. Standing still is proving to be a lot more difficult.

Sam's nearly thirty years old, and this is the first time in his life that he's ever had his own bedroom.

It's tucked under the eaves, one of a set of three. Dean's is next to his. If Sam's very quiet and still he can sometimes lie there at night and hear Dean moving around next door.

Sam turns on his side, and touches the wall, with its strips of peeling wallpaper in faded damask roses. Dean's as close as he ever was, really, in terms of the physics of it, in terms of space and distance. Sam misses being able to reach out to him, though, misses waking up in the night and being able to turn over, and remind himself that Dean's there. It's something he didn't even know that he needed until it was gone.

The war's over: there's no reason for them to share a room any more. Sam's just going to have to learn to sleep alone again. He's wanted a room of his own his whole life. When he's used to it, he'll decorate it, probably. He can't imagine what color to choose though, what color he'll want to see every morning for the rest of ever.

The sun shines in through the curtain-less window, and casts a square of light across the bare board. The room's empty except for his bed, and a pile of clothes folded neatly on top of the old chipped dresser in the opposite corner. He could move out and be gone in five minutes, if he wanted.

He hears the familiar creaking of Dean moving in bed, and he knows what's happening as well as if he could see it. Dean's stretching, kicking the sheets off his feet, rolling onto his back and looking at the ceiling. There's a sigh, but Sam can't tell if it's of exhaustion or contentment, and that bugs him. He wonders if, just maybe, at this exact minute, Dean's turning towards the wall, and thinking of Sam on the other side of it.

A moment passes, and he's full of wonderment at it, the idea of them, together like this, both still and listening in the quiet house, so close they could almost touch. Then he hears the shift of Dean's bed as he swings his legs over the edge of it and stands up, hears him stretch with an audible click of vertebrae, and listens as Dean walks across the squeaking floor and pads his way downstairs.

Dean's turning eggs in a pan on the stove, and Sam pauses in the threshold to watch him. Dean's wearing his oldest pair of jeans, the hems worn to threads around his bare feet, a tear at the back of the left calf where the black dog took a swipe at him in the cemetery near Memphis. Sam knows that if he could look, he'd find a matching scar Dean's leg beneath it.

Or maybe he doesn't know that. He can't remember if that was one of their hunts before Dean went to hell, or after – if that scar is one that was wiped clean by Castiel, or one of Dean's newer ones.

It bothers him that he can't pin it down. He remembers Dean's face, pale in the thin moonlight, remembers his own hands scrabbling at Dean's laces to try and get his boot off, he remembers rolling up Dean's jeans leg - these same jeans, and Dean soaked them for a week to get the stains out - and the black mess of blood beneath it. He remembers pouring holy water in the wound to take out the evil, and whiskey to take out the germs, and all the while, Dean staring up at him with dark eyes, saying "It's okay, Sammy, it's going to be all right," like Sam was the one needed reassuring. He held the flesh of Dean's calf together with his hands and sewed it up, and it didn't get infected, and after a few weeks, Dean didn't even limp on it any more, except in cold weather.

"That black dog in Memphis," Sam says."When was that?"

Dean turns, and squints at him through the morning sunlight spilling in the kitchen window. It's been a glorious summer, with no rain to speak of for a month or more. The farmers aren't happy, but Sam can't help enjoying the warmth of it, the slow pace of everything that the heat insists on.

"Well, good morning to you, too, Princess," Dean says, pushing Sam's chair out from the table with his foot, and sliding a mess of bacon and eggs and fried potatoes and tomatoes onto a couple of plates.

Sam sits down, and Dean takes the coffee pot off the stove and sits across from him.

"I can't remember," Sam says. He doesn't know why it's so important. There are just so many things that he can't get straight in his head. If the small details - the look in Dean's eyes, the way he bit his lip nearly through as Sam worked on him - weren't so vividly clear, he'd think that he dreamed the whole thing.

Dean pushes his bacon around with his fork.

"Late oh-seven?" he suggests. “We were in Springfield, Illinois at the same time as the release of the Simpsons movie that week, I think. The teeth on that son-of-a-bitch were fucking epic.”

It's so exactly the right tone, distracted and indulgent, that it seems completely irrational for Sam to think, so clearly, so precisely, a cold hard little voice in his head - liar.

Sam tastes the potatoes. They're crispy round the edges and soft in the middle, just the way he likes. He eats in silence, for a while, and when he looks up, Dean looks down, suddenly, pretending he wasn't watching. Dean hasn't eaten anything, just moved the food around his plate to disguise his lack of appetite.

Sam studies him. Dean's the picture of relaxation, except for that little crease he gets between his eyes when he's concentrating on a problem, or cleaning his guns, or thinking something through.

He knows everything that there is to know about Dean. But then,that's not entirely true, is it?

He used to know Dean, inside out. Lots has happened, since then, things he can't quite sort in his head. He doesn't know Dean, not really, not what drives him, not what he desires or wants or dreams about. He doesn't know if Dean regrets coming to live in this little town with him, leaving everything behind.

It hurts to realize it, and he stands, and looks down at Dean, who still hasn't eaten anything. His courage dissolves.

“I just need to get some water,” he says, and goes into the kitchen.

He grabs a bottle out of the fridge, and reaches for a glass out of the top cupboard.

There's a movement, suddenly, a jagged little flurry of it, unexpected and alarming.

Sam gives a startled yelp, in spite of himself.

The rat's on the shelf with the jars of coffee and cooking oil and peanut butter and the salt and pepper shakers that they found at the back of the kitchen cupboard when they moved in.

It's almost exactly at his eye height, resting on the battered blue tin canister they keep the sugar in, standing on its back legs, front paws wavering in the air, black eyes intent on him, thin licorice strap tail hanging down a good three inches below the shelf. The sight of it sends a shudder right through him.

"What the hell?" Dean says behind him, and Sam makes an abortive silencing gesture with his hands.

"Gross," Dean whispers.

It's a stand-off.

The rat stares at them, beady little eyes and quivering flour-dusted nose, black from head to the end of the thin, curled tail.

Sam supposes it's kinda funny: the two of them, after everything they've seen, paralyzed by the appearance of a rodent in their kitchen. Regular people would know what to do. Who to call. Whatever.

"Get it," Dean whispers, close to his ear.

"You get it," Sam replies. He doesn't want to touch it. He doesn't want to move.

"Oh, for..." Dean says, and he's gone, and Sam has a moment of outrage that Dean 's left him to deal with this, but then Dean's back, pushing Sam out of the way.

The movement startles the rat, and it makes a leap past them to the kitchen floor, where it turns and hisses at them, baring sharp little razor teeth, and then there's the familiar crack of Dean's Beretta, and there's no longer a rat on the floor, there's the remains of the rat spread across the kitchen floor and about five inches up the wall behind it.

"Dude, talk about overkill," Sam says.

Dean pats his shoulder, companionably, but his eyes are still on the dead thing on the floor.

"Creepy," Dean says, and looks out the window at the sweeping wheat-fields outside, where the McIlrick's farm land comes right to the edge of their yard. "It must have come in from the fields."

Sam takes the brush and shovel out of the cupboard, and scoops up the remains.

"Where there's one, there's more," he comments. He looks out at the ocean of wheat. It's yellow-gold in the morning sun - later, in the afternoon, it will seem almost white. He loves the way it looks, and loves the soft sweeping sigh of it. "We should get some traps."

"Welcome to farm life, John-Boy," Dean says, and Sam laughs. There was something he meant to ask Dean about, but he's can't remember what it was.

The main street in Cottonwood looks tired and old. The asphalt has been patched at different times, so the road is lumpy. The place has its appeal, though. There's the little public library, where Sam works on weekday afternoons, the general store, the bar, the Methodist church, and the Odeon, a little cinema on the corner of Main and Dupont. There's the local high-school, overlooking the river, one fashion boutique, a post office, and a police station. Sam likes it. There's neither too many people, nor too few. It's the kind of place he used to dream of living.

Sam likes the store, too: it’s like a museum of hardware items right next to baking supplies and random canned foodstuffs. After nearly a year as a local, he’s just beginning to get a sense of where to find things, a slightly random alphabetized system, so the coffee lives next to the cereal and the Doritos are next to the eggs.

Dean leaves him to it, leaning on the counter as Martin Atherton makes his way out from the rear of the store. He's a slender man with greying hair slicked back from his forehead, and round glasses like shining disks reflecting the fluorescent lighting from above.

“We’ve got a bit of a rat problem,” Dean says. He's trying to be neighborly, but Sam can read through it. Dean doesn't like Atherton. He doesn't like his insinuating ways, or the way he treats his wife and kids in public, like they shame him, somehow, by their very existence.

Atherton stays silent.

“Had one right in the kitchen,” Dean says. “Long as your arm. Nasty little bastard.”

“Just the one?” Atherton asks, laconic, and Sam, looking over the shelves, sees him take his thin-rimmed glasses off and wipe them on the edge of his apron.

Sam didn’t know people still wore aprons. He gives a brief wave to Mrs. Atherton where she's standing in the doorway that leads to the storeroom. She doesn't return it, but smiles a little, almost despite herself.

“Where there’s one, there’s a dozen,” Sam says, and Dean gives him a tiny grin.

“Ayuh,” Atherton says. “And where there’s a dozen, there’s a hundred.”

Sam doesn’t like to think what a hundred rats would look like.

“We’re all out of poison,” Atheron says, and he draws it out - Py-sin, like some bad husband in a Hitchcock film. “I’ve ordered more but it won’t come soon enough.”

He gives Dean a dry little smile.

“Doesn’t work, anyway,” he says. “Rats are cunning. They just take a little of any new taste, and wait a little bit to see. A little bit of rat bait will kill the mother, though. A horrid thirst comes over her, and she'll find any water source - any river, or puddle, or your dog’s water bowl. Then she'll drink and drink until she busts inside. But the babies are left. Seventeen days is all it takes before they have their own."

Sam can imagine the thirst.

His throat dries to sandpaper, then to glass shards. He'll do anything not to swallow. The fire around him is inside him, now, and he's suspended, he's burning, and there is no moisture anywhere, not in his mouth, not in his belly, not in the gasps of air he takes in, against his will. They're watching him, again, both of them, watching his pain, calculating just how much he can take, how much they can do to him.

He blinks, looks down at his hands, where his knuckles are white as he grips a bag of sugar. He's in the general store. In Cottonwood, Ohio. He's Sam Winchester and he is perfectly safe.

Dean hasn't noticed. Small mercies.

"Traps, then," Dean's saying.

"All out," Atherton answers succinctly. "We've got an order coming in, soon enough. I'll put you on the list.”

He takes an old notebook from beneath the counter. Apparently a lot of people are after rat traps: Atherton has to flip over several pages of his notebook in order to find the next blank line.

Sam's hot all over, shaking, and it takes all his willpower to release the sugar from his grip and place it down next to the salt and canned sweetcorn.

He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

“Is your brother all right?” he hears Atherton asking Dean, and Sam watches as Dean's head whips around to focus on him.

“M'fine,” Sam rasps. “Just need some fresh air.”

He watches Atherton look down at the notepad. “How many do you think you'll want?” he asks Dean, and Dean turns back to look at him.

Sam finds his way out of the store, minding his way down the aisle, through the entrance way and out into the blinding sun.

It's hot, outside, but the air is fresh, not dusty, and he turns his eyes up to the paintbox blue of the sky. There's not enough air in the world to cool his lungs down.

He slumps down on the bench that stretches the length of the storefront, and puts his head in his hands. He breathes deeply, once, twice, and shuts his eyes tight.

There's a clatter next to him, and he watches as wheels come to stop on the asphalt next to him.

“Hey, Dylan,” he says, because it's a small town, and there's only one wheelchair-user in it: and even if by chance someone stopped by on the way through from nowhere to nowhere, it's unlikely that they, too, would have decorated the rims of their wheels with neon spray-paint.

“Hey, Mr Winchester,” Dylan says. “You okay?”

Sam looks up and manages half a smile. It feels fake and pasted on, but it's a start.

“Not so great,” he says, because Dylan may be what, all of fifteen years old, but he's one of the few people in town who doesn't regard Sam with suspicion on account of his turns.

Dylan maneuvers himself so they're side by side, looking out across the street. Sam sees Dominic Green, the guy who runs the cinema, and raises a shaky hand in greeting. He's fine. He's really fine. Dominic waves, and unlocks the front door of the cinema and disappears inside.

Dylan sits, quietly, beside him.

“My brother was in Iraq,” he says. “When he came home he seemed just like he was when he went away, but in the night he used to scream out. My mom would get up and I'd hear her race down to his room to wake him up. And then I'd hear him crying. Really bad crying, so bad it sounded like he was going to throw up. But in the morning, he'd be the same as always.”

“What happened to him?” Sam asks, breathing through his nose, calming himself down, curious despite himself.

“He went back,” Dylan says, and that's all. Sam doesn't know what to say. He wants to know, fiercely, but there's no way to ask.

“I read all the books about war that I could find,” Dylan says. “So I could get it, you know? So I'd know what he was talking about. But they were all about the Germans, or the Russians. Or Vietnam. They're all our friends, now. Do you think in thirty years the Arabs will be our friends?”

Sam hopes so, he really does.

“I don't know,” he answers. “I don't know if we're wired that way. It's like someone has to be the enemy. But I hope so. I really do.”

Dylan looks at him, bright eyes under a dark fringe, thin pale face hunched forward in his chair.

“That kind of sucks,” Dylan says, and Sam shrugs. It does and it doesn't. It just is.

“You look like you feel better,” Dylan says.

Sam nods.

“Tommy, my brother. He said sometimes he remembered being there so vividly, his brain couldn't tell the difference.” He wheels himself forward, out of the shade and into the sun. “You think that's what's happening to you? You must have been some bad places.”

Sam feels reality lurching sideways, and closes his eyes again. There are creatures hiding in the dark behind his eyelids, and he opens his eyes and stares at the place where the sun's hitting an oil leak on the road, and turning its surface rainbow colored, a dirty sheen of color.

The inside of his mouth is dry and sticky.

Dylan is watching him, cola-bottle glasses sliding down his nose, and the heat sticking his bangs in wet spikes against his forehead. He looks eager, and lonely, and Sam wishes he felt more like talking.

“I don't really remember,” Sam confesses. That's true, at least to a degree - he doesn't even know for sure what he's forgotten, he just carries a sense of dread with him in his gut wherever he goes. He knows he's going to find out. He's pretty certain he's not going to enjoy filling in the holes in the lacework of his memory, either.

“You probably do, underneath,” Dylan says, sagely, and Sam can't help a small smile at his serious tone. “You probably can't help it.”

“I just wish that was all I couldn't remember,” Sam says. “There's lots of stuff. People. Things that happened even back when I was a kid that I can't get straight. Not even things I think were bad. Just... my life, I guess.”

“Tony says the mind's like one of those old video players. You can tape over the film, but the original image is still there, underneath.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Sam says, and Dylan cocks his head to one side.

“I think it's better to know,” he says definitely. “Lots of times my parents don't tell me things, because I'm a kid. Or because of my CP. But I usually find out, anyway. And at least they would have been honest, you know?”

Sam takes a deep breath, and lets it out, then stands up. The world tilts a little bit, and then rights itself.

Dean emerges from the store behind him, two cans of Sprite in his hands.

“Man, that guy is a creeper,” he says to Sam, holding one out, and then notices that Dylan is there, and flushes.

Dylan doesn't say anything else, just navigates a three-point turn and wheels off down the street.

Sam takes the icy can from Dean and holds it against his forehead.

“Atherton's got a list of people needing rat traps seven pages long. He's way too happy about it for my liking,” Dean says. “The rat problem's pretty serious.”

He watches Dylan heading away. “I didn't mean to say that in front of his kid.”

“I don't think they get on that well anyway,” Sam says.

Dean takes his eyes off Dylan, and looks at Sam.

“You look pale,” he says. “I don't know. Like an angry spirit or something. All white in the face and dark under the eyes. You only have to spit some blood out and it'd be perfect.”

Sam grins, despite himself. Dean means to sound sympathetic, but it's kind of a good insult. He cracks open his Sprite, and drinks it down. It's almost too cold and fizzy in his dry mouth. He belches, loudly.

“And yet you burp like a healthy man,” Dean says, reluctantly admiring. “That's classy, Sammy. You're a class act.”

“I learned from the best,” Sam says, bumping his shoulder against Dean's. “Quit worrying. I'm fine.”

He almost believes it.

He starts early at the library. There's an estate-lot of books donated from the family of a deceased couple from the edge of town: everything from leather-bound classics to a set of old paperback Westerns by Louis L'Amour and Zane Grey.

Sam's written a database program for the computer, and he's slowly but surely moving the catalogue over from the ancient hard copy card file. He's not so sure it's a good thing - he's always liked the dusty smell of the card files, the worn veneer of the wooden file boxes.

There's a group of kids in the Natural History section working on some kind of project, wearing the red and yellow colors of the Abraham Lincoln High School team, arguing amongst themselves.

There's no one else there: they can shout if they want, for all Sam cares.
The sunbeams cut through the dusty air, visible pillars of light in the gloom.

He's looking through the new acquisitions, and it takes him a moment to realize that he's being addressed. It's one of the girls from the study group.

“We're studying the natural phenomenon of infestations,” she says. “Animal plagues and so on.”

He thinks about it a moment. “Like the rats,” he says.

“Yeah,” she agrees, toss of blonde hair. “My dad says there are more around than he's seen, ever in his life. He says they might wreck the harvest. I hate them. There was a nest of them in our attic, maybe ten or twelve of them, and some of them were attached by the tails. So gross.”

“That's called a rat king,” Sam offers. “It's actually kind of rare. They get stuck together by blood or dirt or whatever when they're babies, and they grow up still stuck.”

She looks both fascinated and appalled. “That's so gross,” she says again, and, “how did you know that?”

Sam shrugs. He saw one once, he thinks, but he can't remember where, or in what context. In a museum, or in life, or in a film. “I read,” he says and she grins.

“Duh, you're a librarian.” He is. That's what he is now.

“Kind of,” he admits. She looks sober, all of a sudden, and he can't think what she's seen in his face to make her look that way or what she's heard about him in the small-town mythology. He's said he's not a returned serviceman, but no one seems to believe it. It makes him feel like a fraud, even though Dean thinks it's the closest thing to the truth that anyone's going to get.

“You probably want Natural Sciences, 540-599,” Sam says. “The Campbell and Reese biology textbook has a chapter on populations, I think. And there's Hastings, Concepts and Models. There are some interesting literary sources. There's some pretty epic biblical plagues, frogs, and flies, and so on.”

There's a river, red with blood, and he's standing near it, watching bloated fish float to the surface. Dean's there, standing next to him. They hold a man down and cut off his ring finger; Sam can feel the flinch of the hand under his, the crunch of the knife through the bone, the spatter of blood. He's in a cemetery in a meadow, the same ring in his hand with three others, and he smashes the world open.

And then he's in the library again. He doesn't think he zoned out. But he's not sure.

His heart is beating fast, insistent in his chest.

The girl is looking at him, concern written all over her face.

“My brother thinks you're a war vet, like Tommy,” she says, and something clicks.

“I'm not,” he says, automatically, and, “you're Dylan's sister.”

She's got the same dark eyebrows, but she's tall and tanned. She's the female version of Dylan, but without his frailty, and without his sharpsnap eyes, and a couple of years older at a time when two years makes all the difference in the world.

“Yeah,” she offers a little bit of a smile, then shuts it down and tidies it away. Sam's wonders who taught her to be so mindful. “Dylan doesn't have a lot of friends.” She recites it like it's something she's heard before, voice suddenly adult-like. Then she blinks, and the adult voice is gone. “He said you talked to him like he was a real person.”

“He is a real person,” Sam says.

She shrugs.

“The kids at school call him names,” she says, like that's a normal thing, something she's so used to that it doesn't make her angry any more.

“Kids can suck,” Sam says, and her shy smile pops out again.

“I don't think you're supposed to say that,” she says. “I'm a kid.”

Sam smiles back.

“Adults can suck as well,” he offers. “People. I think they try their best, though.”

She purses her lips, like she's seen enough of the world to be a bit unsure if that's true.

“I'm Shya,” she says, and he nods.

“Good luck with your project,” he replies. “Let me know if you need any more help tracking things down.”

She turns back to the other kids, and Sam goes back to recording the ISBN numbers into the computer. After a while, he looks up, and they're poring over open books, quietly working, and he smiles, and gets back to it.

He locks the library at a little after seven pm. It's still a strange kind of halfway light outside, so instead of going home, he walks past the garage, to see if Dean's finished.

It's almost dark by the time he gets there. Dean's under a late model Ford Ranger with a deep groove dented along its side. Sam doesn't have to ask who it belongs to: Sheriff Hanley is sitting on the bench along the far wall, leaning back and sipping at a Bud Light.

The workshop is tidy, everything in its place. There's a lamp hanging from the doorway, and it's buzzing with insects that are distracted by its light and plinking against the glass.

“Dave,” Sam acknowledges, and Sheriff Hanley nods to him, and indicates towards the chiller.

“Dean's fixing my oil leak in exchange for a dozen Buds,” Dave says. It doesn't surprise Sam. Of all the things that have surprised him about this new life, Dean's friendship – and by extension, his own friendship – with the county sheriff is one of the better ones. Dave's a good guy, a family man nearing retirement with a sly sense of humor.

“You'll notice Dave's making his way through them quite nicely,” Dean says, rolling himself out from the undercarriage of the car and sitting up. He's got a smear of black across his nose, like he's scratched at it absent-mindedly with an oily hand, and he has a spatter of grease down one cheek. Dean reaches for his own beer, and gestures at Sam before swigging at it.

Sam leans down and cracks one open, and stays standing, leaning against the worktable. He looks at the scratch on the side of the car, touches it with one finger. It's half as deep as his fingernail is long.

He raises an eyebrow.

The sheriff shrugs. “I'd love to say I got that serving and protecting the people of Cottonwood, but the fact is Joseph is hoping to get his license next month. That's us backing out of the garage.”

“That one's gonna cost you more than a couple of six-packs,” Dean comments.

“No, that's gonna cost Joe more than a couple of six-packs,” Dave says, a little grimly. “The kid's got his head in the clouds. He's gotta learn responsibility. Grace is too easy on him.”

“When Sammy was learning to drive,” Dean starts, and Sam rolls his eyes when he sees the mischievous little quirk of a smile around Dean's mouth.. “He drove the Impala right into a ditch.”

Sam doesn't say anything, just gives Dean a withering look. He was fourteen years old at the time and Dean was in the back of the car trying to stop their father from bleeding to death at the time, and Dean knows quite well Sam can't say anything in his defense.

Dave whistles.

“That same car you've got now?” he asks, and Sam nods.

“Lost the headlight, the indicator, ripped off the mudflap and dented hell out of the bumper,” Dean says, proudly. “First repair job I ever did on her.”

“Maybe Joe's distracted by school,” Sam offers, trying to change the subject. “He's a runner, isn't he?”

“He's looking at a scholarship to Ohio State if he can keep his head in the game,” Dave says. “But it's sometimes as if he doesn't even care. I can't sit by and let him piss his life away. It's a good school. We'll get him there no matter what, but if he gets his fees paid, it's going to ease our way. A lot.”

Dean finishes his beer, and clinks the empty bottle back into the cooler.

“He seems pretty dedicated to his schoolwork,” Sam says. “He hangs out in the library a lot.”

Dave grimaces. “Hangs out with that Shya Atherton, no doubt.”

“Shya seems a good kid,” Sam says. “He could do worse.”

“He's distracted,” Dave says. “He's not the same kid I knew. And I hate hearing myself say that, because I sound like everything about my own father that I vowed never to become. And now I'm that. But Joe's got so many opportunities going for him. More than I had. I'd hate for him to waste them.”

Dean cocks his head. “You know what,” he says. “It's probably a phase. Everyone goes through one. Sam's lasted for about twelve years.”

Sam leans over and punches him in the shoulder, and Dean grins.

“Seriously, though,” Dean turns back to Dave. “Get him to come see me, I'll give him some jobs to do around the place. He can sweep up, do the inventory, help me out with the messy stuff.”

“You want me to reward him for fucking up the car,” Dave says.

“Sure,” Dean says. “Tell him he's working off bill for the repairs. It'll keep him out of trouble. Give him something to focus on. I like Joe. And I could use an extra set of hands around the place.”

“Huh,” Dave says. “I'll think about it.”

Sam's pretty sure that means yes, and by the glint in Dean's eye, he guesses that Dean thinks so, too. Dean stands, and stretches until his back cracks, and comes to stand next to Sam.

Sam can feel the warmth of Dean's shoulder against his, and leans in a little, chasing it. Dean lets him, and they stay there awhile, chewing the fat with Dave the sheriff, as insects rattle against the glass of the lamp, and the warm evening stretches into night.

It's dark, and they're driving, some back-country dirt track, no center line, a half-moon glimpsed through tall pines casting long shadows across the road. There's dark things out there, and Sam doesn't care, because everything he needs is inside the car.

Dean's at the wheel, one hand casually steering, his other arm draped along the back of the seat, profile dimly lit by the faint reflected glow of the headlights.

He turns to Sam, that quick, familiar, checking look, and Dean grins, quicksilver flash of teeth in the dark and looks back out at the road, making quick adjustments of the steering wheel to avoid the bumps and pot holes.

Sam doesn't know where they're going, and he doesn't care, can't care, not with the feeling of sweet relief, the warmth of happiness that sits in his chest.

He winds the window down a touch, and feels the shock of the chill night air on his face, thin line of ice cutting through the warm mugginess of the car. He leans back, stretches his legs out as straight as they'll go, and shuts his eyes.

Dean's hand slips an inch or two down the seat behind him, to rest on the back of Sam's neck, a sweet light tickle-touch that teases and then settles there, warm and firm. There's the hum of the car beneath them, the fresh mountain air.

Things shift, then, and that's really the only thing that reminds Sam it's a dream, because he's there, in the car, and then they're parked, under a ridiculous swathe of stars, sitting outside on the ice-cold metal of the trunk, and looking out across the night sky. Dean's warm against him, and Sam leans in as Dean's hand, still on his neck, strays around to his shoulder.

Sam turns his face towards Dean's and they're kissing, almost chastely, press of cold lip, smooth rasp of stubble and Dean's wide mouth stretching under his. Dean doesn't taste of anything much, it's a dream, it's a goddamn dream, but somewhere inside his head, Sam rejects that, sends the thought deliberately away, and opens his mouth against Dean's.

Dean's breath puffs against Sam's cheek, and the beat of his heart steady and rapid beneath Sam's searching fingers. He traces the neckline of Dean's t-shirt, pushing it aside to feel the pulse in Dean's neck under his lips, the proof of life. Dean makes a noise, little more than a ragged breath seeping from him, and it hits Sam right in the heart, ratchets everything up, and Sam finds Dean's mouth again, bites at him, and puts his arms around him to draw him in closer. God. Dean. It's so cold, and Dean's so warm, and there's nothing Sam wants more than this, nothing in any life he's lived that is so vivid and essential. There's nothing else that he can't live without.

He wakes, a slow surfacing, suffused with a glow of contentment, the lingering after-effects of the dream still with him. He's hard, but not urgently so, and he reaches down to touch himself more out of habit than need. And then he wakes up, properly, all the way, and freezes.

No. That didn't just happen. He's all sorts of messed up, but he didn't just have a dream about making out with his brother. Not a nightmare, either, but a dream that set his heart humming and made him wake up happier than he can remember doing in months. Maybe years.

There's probably some kind of twisted Freudian explanation. There's probably some kind of psychological rationale behind it, like when you dream your teeth fall out, only it's actually about anxiety. Sam's probably just missing hunting. It's a natural response to giving up their shared life work, and retiring to this little town, a mechanic and a librarian with the weight of the world no longer on their shoulders.

He can hear Dean moving around downstairs, clank of pots on the stove, and the thin tuneless hum of Dean singing softly to himself. Sam thinks it's meant to be ACDC.

It's early, so there's still a pink glow in the light of the air. The morning's still new.

He can't face Dean. Not after that.

Sam pulls on his jeans and wanders downstairs, slipping out the back door and walking barefoot across the dewy grass. There's a bird singing in the old apple tree, small and brown with a white stripe above its eyes. It trills a sweet liquid melody, and Sam just stands there feeling the dew soak the hems of his jeans legs, and watches the sun pink the tips of the wheat.

He feels the shame and urgent despair in his heart ease for a moment.

Dean comes up behind him, footsteps easily audible, even though they're dampened by the wet grass.

Sam looks around, and Dean's watching him, with that slightly inscrutable look that Sam's coming to expect.

Dean's holding two mugs of coffee in his hands.

"You weren't in your bed," Dean says, and Sam feels his peace desert him.

"I got up early," he says, defensive. He's a grown man, he can come and go as he pleases. Surely it's not too much to ask that he can get up in the morning without having to check in on Dean, like he's some factory worker punching in his time-card.

"I came out to see the dawn," he says, and he hates that tone in his voice, that teenage fucking passive-aggressive tone, and Dean hasn't done anything but bring him out a cup of coffee. Whatever's wrong with Sam isn't Dean's fault.

He wants to reach over. He wonders what would happen if he just put his arms around Dean and held him. Let himself do what he wanted to do in his dream, and kiss Dean. Kiss him or hit him, anything other than this goddamn uneasy and ambivalent peace agreement they're living with, where they don't talk about the future and they definitely don't talk about the past.

"I made coffee," Dean says, and Sam smiles, and it feels creaky and rusty, like an old gate that hasn't been opened for years.

"Thanks," he says, simply. He takes the mug, careful that their fingers don't touch on the ceramic handle. He sees Dean notice.

Dean doesn't look hurt. He doesn't look like he feels anything about anything.

The bird sings on, overhead, and Sam's feet feel cold in the wet grass.

The coffee is perfect, one sugar and a touch of cream, and Dean stands next to him and they watch the sun come up together.

It's not the worst morning of his life, but it's not the best. Not by a long shot.

Chapter Text

There's a town meeting the following Monday night. The school hall's packed: families are clustered together with younger children held on their parents' laps, and towards the back of the hall there's standing room only. Sam's never seen some of the people before: it's clearly most of the town, even those who live in the outlying areas and only come in a couple of times a month for supplies.

There's a line of chairs on the stage, with the town council, Dave Hanley and his deputy and the principal of the school all seated.

Dave stands first, and speaks into the microphone, awkwardly, bent at an odd angle to get it close to his mouth.

“Hi everyone. Let's cut to the chase. Mayor Jansen, would you like to start?”

He sits, and the mayor, a short grey-haired woman in a fuchsia suit, walks to the podium. She leans into the microphone, and there's silence except for the thin wail of a toddler at the back and the soft hushing of its mother.

“Thanks for coming, everyone,” she says, briskly. “Let's begin.” There's an expectant pause, a murmur of discontent, and the mayor shifts a little on her feet.

“The council has heard your concerns and we'd like you to be reassured that we're taking these concerns seriously,” she says. “You know we're under budget constraints, but we'll do whatever we can to sort this out.”

A man stands up in the front row.

“If we can't get rid of these rats, I'm going to lose my farm,” he says, and there's a rumble from the audience that can only be agreement. “Prices are the worst they've been for years, and the rains just aint coming. It was always going to be touch-and-go. If the rats finish off my corn crop then the bank's going to foreclose.” He wipes a hand round the back of his shirt collar.

Another man stands up. “I've never seen anything like it,” he says. “There's hundreds of them. They've eaten most of my grain store. I had a cat, Daisy, best mouser you've ever seen, and they killed her dead. There's just so many of them.”

There's more agreement, and an old guy sitting next to Dean leans forward and yells “hear, hear.”

“One at a time, please,” the mayor says. “I'm sorry, you'll have to stay calm.”

The man at the front sits down, and Sam can see him shaking his head and whispering something to his wife. “You're not sorry,” she calls out. “If you were sorry you would have already taken some action, before it came to this.”

“We pay our taxes,” a woman yells. “What are you doing to stop this?”

There's a disintegration into yelling, and the mayor reaches out and taps the microphone, causing a screech of feedback that cuts through the noise.

Sam wipes his face. It's hot in here, and there's not enough room to breathe, somehow. He wheezes a little, but he can't regain his breath. Dean puts a hand over his, then takes it away, quickly, and Sam turns to look at him. He can't do this. He just.... can't.

“They bit my son Daniel, his hand got infected and he almost lost a finger,” a woman calls out.

“They came into my pantry and cleared out everything, they even gnawed through the Tupperware,” says another. “I had to throw everything out, the filthy things.”

“Forget the crops, we're going to get the plague,” an elderly man calls. “You ever seen someone with the plague? Boils the size of plums!”

Sam shuts his eyes, against the heat, against the swell of emotion around him.

He stands, and is aware of his height, standing well above the heads of the sitting crowd around him. Dean stands too, and Sam shakes his head at him. “Stay here,” he says. “I'll wait outside.”

Dean makes a move to follow, and Sam holds him back with his hand in the middle of Dean's chest.

“It's okay,” he says. He shuffles down the row and into the aisle, and walks quickly out into the evening air.

The sun's red in the west, and it's still uncomfortably warm. Sam sits down on the concrete steps leading down to the athletic field and lays his head in his hands. It's better outside, much easier to breathe where the walls can't close in on him, where no one's looking.

He looks up at the floodlights, and they burn into his retina, ghosting rings of light around everything.

There's a white light so bright he can't look at it, and Dean's hands are pulling him back and away. There's a woman in the trunk of his car, screaming in fear, and he closes it with a firm click, hiding her terrified face from view. He's falling forever. He's burning alive. Dean's looking at him, and so's the angel – Castiel, his name is Castiel – and Sam's at their feet and looking up at them looking down on him, and Dean's face is so white it's almost transparent, and Castiel places his hand on Sam's forehead and there's nothing, after that, no pain, no joy, no fear, everything whited out to nothing.

Sam opens his eyes and he's lying flat on the ground, alone. There's a tickle under his nose and when he wipes at it, his hand comes away smeared with a thin line of watery blood. He doesn't know how much time has passed. He sits, shakily, and wishes that he'd let Dean come outside with him. Dean would know what to do. Dean always knows what to do.

There's the sound of shouting still coming from inside.

The town clearly doesn't have enough funds to pay for the help it needs. The rats are just the last in a series of disasters: two years of drought and many of the farmers with their savings wrapped up in finance companies gone bust. If they can't think of a solution, the town's going to die. Sam's surprised by how much he minds that. He and Dean haven't even lived here a year, but it feels like home, somehow.

The heat keeps pressing down on him and he feels the beads of sweat running down his back. He shakes his head a little, to clear it, but it stays buzzing. He stares up at the sky as it turns from turquoise to deepening black, and tries to concentrate on breathing.

The screams from inside come as a sudden shock.

He stands, swaying a little, and makes a couple of steps towards the glass doors, before people begin streaming out in the other direction, preventing his progress. A woman is crying, and the people coming out are grim and unsmiling.

He spots Shya Atherton, for once not flanked by her posse of girlfriends, and makes his way through the crowd toward her.

“What happened?” he asks. He's relieved when she giggles, high-pitched but amused, not hysterical.

“Mayor Jansen was just trying to explain again what happened to the cash reserves, I didn't really get that bit, but they're a lot smaller than anyone thought, and suddenly this rat, this huge freaking rat, the biggest one I've ever seen, runs across the stage, right under her feet, and she screams, and everyone's, like, standing there, just staring at it, and then Sheriff Hanley steps forward and kicks at it with his boot and it flies and hits the wall just beneath the honor list, and kind of slides down it and leaves this smear of rat guts or something, and Major Jansen just leans in and says 'Meeting closed,' but it was too late because everyone was just...” She makes a gesture to the people milling around, gathering themselves up and moving towards their cars. “Freaked out, I guess, screaming and running out of here. Everyone wants to get home, check their houses are clear. They were scared to come out in the first place, because they don't know what they'll find when they get back.”

Sam looks around over the thinning crowd.

“Where's my brother?” he asks her, and she shrugs.

“Are you okay, Mr Winchester?” she asks, and touches him on the arm, gently. He flinches, despite himself, and she pulls her hand back like he burned her.

“I'm fine, Shya,” he manages. “Thank you.”

“Your brother was talking to your neighbor, the old lady,” Shya says, and looks round. “I suppose I better find my folks.”

“I didn't see Dylan in there,” Sam says, trying to make a normal conversation.

“He stayed home.” She pauses for a long time. Sam senses there's more, but he doesn't like to press it.

“Dylan used to keep a couple of rats,” she says, as if it's difficult to confess it. “Pets, you know? In a glass aquarium, with tunnels and a wheel and everything. He's that kind of kid.”

“He says they're as intelligent as dogs, but less emotionally dependent. And cleaner. I don't know, they certainly smell like something. Kinda musty.” She half-smiles, and pushes her hair out of her eyes.

“Pa drowned them in a bucket of water,” she says. “Last night. He said they were a filthy pest and he wasn't going to have them under his roof. He and Dylan argued pretty hard about it, and Dylan had this choking fit and...” She pauses. “You know.” She makes a gesture with her hand, something that Sam can't really read, but it looks bad, contorted and twisted and generally fucked-up.

“Is he okay?” Sam asks, picturing the argument in his head.

“They're both not talking to each other,” she says. “Momma took Pa's side.” Her eyes are sad, and Sam wonders if all the prom queen girls at his own high schools had secret stories like hers, and families as fucked up. He guesses so: if his life has taught him anything, it's that everyone has secrets.

“I'm sorry,” Sam says. “Can you tell Dylan I said that? That I'm sorry about his rats?”

“Sybil and Vimes,” Shya says. “They were called Sybil and Vimes. I don't know why.”

Sam has a suspicion about it, and gives a little half-smile.

“I hope you feel better soon,” Shya says, suddenly polite, like she's remembered who they both are.

Sam feels awkward. “You too,” he manages and she gives him a quick smile, and turns away into the night.

He dreams again.

It's a day in early summer, when the leaves on the trees are still bright yellow-green, and the sun gentle. The breeze lilts a melody in his ears. He's in the deep part of a river, icy cold water that's only just touched with the warmth of the sun. Dean's treading water a few feet from him, face turned up to the sky, eyes closed, lashes spiked wet against his sun-browned face. As Sam watches, Dean's eyes open, and he grins at Sam and dives under the water, tugging at Sam's legs and dragging him under.

Sam surfaces, spluttering, and Dean swims away, laughing, and Sam follows, intent on revenge.

Afterwards. they lie on the bank and let the sun dry them. The sky is so blue it's nearly indigo, with feathered smudges of white high above them.

Dean rolls onto his stomach, and inspects his fingertips, holding them up for Sam to see- they're pruney and pale, but there's still engine oil under his bitten nails.

"I think that's there for good," Dean says, and gives a one-shouldered shrug.

His shoulders are lean and brown and his hair has lightened with the sun. Sam loves him, suddenly and urgently, loves the bones of him, his humor, his patience and his stoicism and the light that, despite everything, still shines in his eyes when he looks at Sam. It's so far beyond anything that he's felt for anyone else, the simple easily compartmentalized and labeled emotions. He thinks it's love. He's pretty sure it can't be anything else.

"What are you thinking about?" Dean whispers.

A bird calls, and flaps overhead, a whir of wings above them, then it's gone.

Sam leans in, suddenly, just leans in and kisses him, and it's both sudden and a long time coming. It's just a little closer, letting the space between them dwindle to nothing, and then the press of lip against lip, nothing simpler, nothing ever simpler than this.

Dean's mouth is cold still, and tastes of river-water, and then he leans slightly closer, and the inside of his mouth is warm. He pauses a moment as another bird startles near them, and then they're laughing into each other's mouths, and lying together, and kissing until they can't breathe.

Waking is surfacing slowly, in close, suffocating warmth, and Sam pushes the covers off his face and takes a deep breath of air. He hears the shower turn off, and the familiar pattern of sounds that is Dean moving around the bathroom. His brother hums as he brushes his teeth, an unrecognizable tune punctuated by spitting, and then his door slides open, and Sam’s just sitting there.

Dean’s got an early morning look about him, eyes slightly unfocused, hair drying into a weird kind of faux-hawk, bare feet and jeans, and t-shirt wet around the neckband. Sam suspects his quick visual once-over of Sam is as much a habit as Right Guard and Colgate, and this morning, something that Dean sees in him wipes that lazy look right off his face. Dean takes two quick steps and drops down on the edge of the bed, a hand going immediately to Sam’s forehead.

“Sammy?” he asks, voice sharp and clear, eyes intent. “Bad dream?”

Sam tries to find the words to reply, but the echo of poignance, of beauty, makes his tongue slow.

Dean’s hand falters, and Sam sits still as Dean smooths the tears that Sam didn’t even notice from under his eyes. The pads of Dean’s thumbs are roughened, but the touch could not be more gentle.
Dean’s eyes are inquiring, worried, and Sam finds a smile and shakes his head.

“Not a nightmare,” he manages, catching Dean’s wrist and pushing it from him. “Just a dream, you know?”

“Sad?” Dean asks, still with that watchful look.

“No, not sad,” Sam answers, truthfully. “Just… beautiful, I guess.”

The worry slips from Dean’s face as if it had never been there, replaced by irony. It’s familiar and reassuring. Dean rescues his hand from Sam’s grip, in time to ruffle through his hair and give him a short sharp slap on the cheek.

“Get your beautiful ass out of bed, and I’ll get you some waffles, princess,” he mocks.“Maybe with some beautiful coffee.”

Sam sighs, and the last residue of the dream filters away. As he swings his legs out of bed and grimaces, he reflects that he probably hasn’t heard the end of it. He’s about two minutes into his shower, trying to recall the traces of the dream, the icy-cold silk of the water, the warmth of the sun, Dean's mouth, when Dean knocks loud on the door, and yells through, “You should see the sky out, dude… it’s…. beautiful.” There's a snort of something between disdain and mirth, and Sam finishes his shower as quickly as he can.

Dean forgets about the dream mid-morning, and in a couple of days, Sam’s gotten over the need to keep remembering, keep pulling himself back to that place, that moment. He forgets about it.

Until the next time.

Sam likes the Odeon, the little art-house cinema on Main Street. It's always quiet in the afternoons, hell, most times, but he likes it that way. The kids go, and a couple of retired folks, and Sam, in the afternoons when his shift finishes early at the library.

He pushes a ten-dollar bill over the counter, and Dominic gives him a smile of greeting, pushing black hair out of his eyes, stooping slightly to pass Sam his change. He's nearly as tall as Sam, but not quite. He's got a pencil tucked behind his ear: Sam wonders if he's forgotten that it's there.

“What's the matinee?” Sam asks, and returns the smile a little awkwardly, though, because they both know that Sam comes to watch the afternoon sessions no matter what's showing.

They've kind of got this thing going on. Dominic flirts (at least, Sam assumes he's flirting, he figures he's kind of out-of-touch in reading the signals). Sam doesn't flirt back. He's pretty sure Dominic's amused by that - Dominic seems pretty much amused by everything - but it doesn't stop the other guy from switching on the charm whenever Sam comes to see a movie.

“The third Larssen film,” Dominic answers, with twist of his mouth. “I'm having to move it on next week in favor of the new Pixar. Art doesn't pay, not in this town.”

He hands over a carton of popcorn, and the buttery smell of it is so evocative that Sam can't help his mouth watering.

“On the house,” Dominic says, and over Sam's protest, “you're my best customer over the age of eighteen years. And you don't make out in the back row and spill soda on the carpets.”

Sam takes it, and walks into the darkness inside.

He chooses an the aisle seat, five rows from the back. He's chosen aisle seats since the summer he was seventeen, when he grew four inches in four months, the summer he watched the entire works of Fellini over six weeks in Portland, Oregon, and wanted to grow up to be like Marcello Mastroianni.

The screen's smaller than in the multiplexes he got used to, back when they were traveling around, but it's familiar and reassuring, a meditation of a kind, and he shuts his eyes and breathes in the the dusty dry smell of the cinema. If he listens really carefully, he can hear Dominic up in the booth, tinkering with the projector, humming to himself.

Sam eats the popcorn, kernel by kernel, almost by rote, and he's half-way through the box, knuckles scraping the inside of the cardboard, as the first flicking frames of the movie resolve themselves into a smooth, moving image.

He sets the box carefully on the seat next to him.

He's not quite sure what Dominic suspects about him, with his lone pilgrimages to an empty cinema for screenings nearly no one else attends. There are just so very few places in town where he can get time to himself. He'd go to church, maybe, if he was that kind of guy. But he's not, not anymore.

He's not that into the film itself. He's seen the first of this trilogy but not the middle one, and the subtitles are just a fraction out of focus, which makes them hard on the eyes, but the punk girl has a cool motorcycle, and it's a story about justice, which he appreciates even if the legal system of the film bears no resemblance to anything he's even remotely familiar with.

More importantly, it's quiet, and dark, and restful. He dozes through the second half and wakes, with a start, to the closing credits, and wonders what happened to the girl.

Outside there's a line awaiting the evening show – the usual Tuesday night crowd of teenagers jonesing for something to do, and he ducks through them.

He sees Dylan Atherton and his sister, and the crowd from the library, and gives a small wave.

He takes his time walking home: the moon is a broken plate in the sky, and the shadows across the fields are long and spidery. The night air is warm and the breeze moves through the wheat, a gentle touch of an invisible hand.

It's strange, somehow, strange and disorienting. It reminds him of a dream he had, but he can't remember the details of it.

The front gate creaks as he pushes it open, and the sound echoes for him. He fiddles with his key by the front door, but his fingers seem too big to grasp onto it. He's tired, that's all.

Dean's sitting on the couch, watching TV. He looks up as soon as Sam walks in, switches it off with remote and places the remote on the coffee table with a click.

“You didn't check your phone?” he says, voice smooth, and Sam reaches into his pocket. He switched it off for the movie, and didn't switch it on again. He flicks it on, and notices four missed calls. He knows who they're from
.
“I saw a film,” Sam says, “I meant to call.”

He can see Dean's angry, probably because he's worried, and Sam gets it. They've got an unspoken rule to keep in touch, but Sam's not so late. He looks at his watch, and it's later than he thought, but that just irritates him. Dean's his brother, not his mother. There's nothing wrong with him. He's just fine. He's just a little bit tired, a bit nauseated.

“I'm sorry,” he says, and then things blur a little, swirl around him, the shadows throbbing with his heartbeat, and everything darkens.

The next thing he knows, he's looking up at Dean, and he's lying flat on the floor and he's got no idea how he got there.

“Sam. Sam. Sammy, come on, wake up, Sam,” he hears, and he shakes his head a little to clear it.

“Am I sick?” he asks, and watches Dean's face crumble a little.

“You're getting better,” Dean says, and Sam wonders about that.

He remembers Lucifer angry inside him, more powerful than Sam could possibly have imagined.

He remembers Dean watching him, beaten, from beside the Impala, the sting of his own knuckles bright in his fist. He remembers Dean telling him he'd never leave him.

“Your poor face,” he says, and touches Dean's cheekbone. Dean tenses, and pulls back a fraction.
Sam leans his head back against the rug, feels a swirl of dizziness, and grips Dean's hand firmly to ground himself back in reality.

“What happened to me?” he asks. “Why am I like this?”

“You're fine, Sammy,” Dean says, and that's another lie, Sam thinks, but Dean's voice is stretched so thin that Sam can't find it in him to make an accusation.

“I fell into hell,” Sam says, to the blackness behind his eyelids.

“But we got you out,” Dean replies. “We got you out, and fixed you up, and you're going to be fine again, it's just going to take some time.” His voice is confident and assured. Sam doesn't know which of them Dean is trying to convince.

They don't talk about it the next day, or the day after that. On Saturday, they work on some repairs for Mrs Bainbridge, their next door neighbor. It's a hot day, and the sun reflects off the roof tiles as they hammer them back into place. Sam's sweating like mad, and Dean's wearing a trucker cap that Sam's never seen before.

“Gimme the pry bar, Grizzly Adams,” he says, and enjoys the look of irritation on Dean's face as he takes the cap off and wipes the sweat off his face.

“What-the fuck-ever,” Dean bitches, getting it out of his tool-belt and handing it over.

Sam reaches for it, takes a step towards the edge, and the damaged shingle cracks under his foot.

There's a moment when he flails for balance and then, horribly, a moment when he fails to get it.

And he's falling, only he's not falling, not really, he can feel Dean's hand catching in the waistband of his jeans and holding him on the roof, but his mind's conjuring a bitter memory of falling into darkness.

He remembers, suddenly, hot iron drawn across his ribcage, the bump of each raised bone underneath the peeling skin audible because he refused to scream. He remembers standing in some city, somewhere, the stench of trash in his nostrils, and Dean, blood pouring from a wound in his neck, and Sam's own sense of satisfaction so strong that it makes him shudder in remembrance. He remembers killing a woman with his teeth.

He opens his eyes and the sun hits him like a blow, and Dean's holding him, holding his face, checking him, and it's almost worth it, to feel Dean so close, to feel Dean's care, his concern.
Sam lurches a little, and Dean pulls him even closer, wraps an arm around his shoulder.

“Steady,” Dean whispers. “I got you.”

“What did I do?” Sam whispers back, urgently. “Dean, what did I do?”

Dean doesn't answer, just takes a step back, and lets his hands fall away. Sam's cold suddenly, despite the heat, cold all the way through him.

He sways, but doesn't fall.

“It's just sunstroke,” Dean says, in a tone that denies any argument. “That's probably enough for today.”

Sam's steady enough down the ladder, but the shade of the verandah is welcome. He leans his head against the wall, and lets himself breathe. He hears Dean putting the ladder away, feels a light touch on his shoulder, and raises his head to see Dean knocking on the door.

Mrs Bainbridge must be eighty if she's a day, most likely ninety by Sam's calculation, but she's tall and thin and always elegantly dressed. Today is no exception: despite the heat she looks cool in a light green dress and a straw sunhat. Her eyes are keen in her dark face, and her hair is completely white, tucked back into some kind of coiled up thing at the back of her head.

“Oh my,” she says, when she sees them. “You should have come down an hour ago.”

She looks from Dean to Sam, and back again.

“I've got some lemonade for you boys,” she says, “Lemonade and pie.”

Dean smiles, but Sam can see it's half-hearted. He's not sure what he looks like himself, there's a shiver deep in the heart of him and it's all he can do to keep his hands still.

“May I use your bathroom?” he asks, and then he's walking through the shady hallway, all the way to the back of the house, and the door shuts behind him, and the tile is cool against his hot face. He thinks for a moment that he might throw up, but he stares at his pale face in the mirror, hair stuck to his forehead in sweaty strands, and dares himself not to.

It takes a long moment to get a hold of himself. He splashes water on his face, and washes his hands, and stares at himself, refusing to think about it, about any of it.

When he's in charge of himself, he walks back. He can hear them talking in the kitchen, Mrs Bainbridge and Dean.

Sam pauses in the darker hallway, and watches the old lady cut Dean a slice of strawberry pie. Sam can only watch as Dean takes a bite, the whiteness of his teeth against the red fruit, the way his throat works as he swallows, and for a moment, he thinks he's going to pass out, again. It's a familiar sight, from the past, and from the present, and it dizzies him, somehow, the way those times blur. He rests his head against the white-painted panelling.

“That's good pie, ma'am,” Dean says. “That's really good.” Mrs Bainbridge smiles, and goes to fuss with the dishes by the sink.

Dean eats quietly, without his usual enthusiasm. Sam doesn't want to interrupt them, there's something about the way they're waiting that makes him press himself against the doorway, hidden in the hall, and just watch.

Mrs Bainbridge stands at the kitchen counter and watches out the window.

“My boy Marty was in the army,” she says, “He fought in Korea. He wasn’t injured, not in his body, but he was never the same. He’d been in a collapsed dug-out with a dead friend for nearly two days before they dug him out. He couldn’t sleep in a room with closed windows, not after that, not in the deepest winter, not for the rest of his life. I couldn’t imagine what hell he’d been through.”

“I recognize the look, see, in Sam's eyes. He wants to leave it behind him, but his brain won’t let it go. He can’t let it go.”

Dean looks up from eating, but doesn't reply. Sam waits for Dean to say that he wasn't in the war, but Dean doesn't.

“What happened to him?” Dean asks. “What happened to Marty?”

Her eyes are very bright. “He got through it,” she says. “He died in a car crash when he was forty-seven. But that was twenty five more years with him than I might have had. He had the chance to get married, had my two grandkids. I always felt very lucky. When he first came back, I thought that I’d lost him forever, that he'd never be himself again. But it just took him longer to get himself back again than I was expecting.”

“Sam’s coming back,” she says. “I see him at the library, sometimes, or in the street. Sometimes his face is so grey, so lonely, so lost. But then I see him when you walk in, see his face, and how he looks at you. He loves you very much. You’ll bring him home, you just need to be patient.”

Dean looks at his hands, and Sam wants to clear his throat, but he's afraid to see the expression on Dean's face. He doesn't like to think of himself like that, his emotions so easy to read.

“It hasn't been easy for you, either,” she says, and Dean shakes his head.

“I just want to do the right thing. I'm...” his voice fades. “I'm kind of responsible for what happened to him. Part of the reason he... went to the war.”

She reaches over and pats his hand.

“I argued with Marty the day before he shipped out,” she says. “I told him, if he went, not to come back.” Sam starts, despite himself, and wonders how they don't hear the pounding of his heart in his chest, the breath squeaking out of him. But they don't.

“He knew I didn't mean it, not really, but I never forgave myself. I wasn't the best mother to him, I didn't understand that he needed to follow his own path.”

Dean replies, so quietly Sam has to strain to hear him.

“I don't know if I did the right thing.”

Mrs Bainbridge reaches over and cuts another slice from the pie, and places it carefully onto Dean's plate.

He pokes at it with his fork, and begins to eat, slowly, methodically.

“Maybe there is no 'right thing'” she suggests. “You do what you do, and you live with the consequences.”

“I miss him,” Dean says, “the way he was, before,” and Sam has to swipe his hand over his eyes. It's not that he's not trying to be the way he was before. It's that he can't even remember what that was: he has no idea how he's different, which bits of him have slipped through the gaps of his memory.

“But you love him still, the way he is now,” Mrs. Bainbridge offers.

Dean's reply is too quiet to be heard, and Sam wants to yell out, give away his hiding place, and demand Dean repeat himself, demand Dean says his reply again so Sam can hear, but he can't. He watches Mrs Bainbridge lean over and touch Dean's head, gently and sadly, and then he can't watch any more.

He walks backwards, stealthy as he can, and then strides in, letting his feet fall loudly on the wooden floorboards.

Dean's face, when he looks up to see Sam coming in, is as blank and cheerful as ever.
“Best pie you ever tasted,” he says, and Sam slips into the seat across from him to try it for himself.

There's a message on the phone: Martin Atherton's dry voice and the message that the rat traps have arrived. Dean makes the trip into town on his own, and comes back with a dozen for them, and a dozen for Mrs. Bainbridge.

“I saw your friend Dominic,” he says. “He was getting a set for the Odeon. He says he'll have to be careful where he puts them, so people don't end up dropping their wallets under the seats and getting a nasty surprise.”

Sam doesn't laugh.

“He's an odd one,” Dean says, and Sam doesn't know what to make of that.

“He asked after you,” Dean says, like Sam should have something to tell him, but Sam doesn't.

That night, Dean lays the traps, all around the house.

In the morning, they're all full, the contorted fat bodies of the rats stretched out, tails long twists behind the corpses.

Sam digs a hole, and they bury them deep.

They're in a bed, some motel-size super-king, ridiculously, sumptuously large. He doesn't know where, but a bed like this, it's gotta be Vegas or Atlantic City or some place people go to gamble or get laid.

He's lying on his back, and Dean's straddling him. They're naked. There are cowboys on the wallpaper and the comforter beneath them is cactus-green.

Dean's moving on him, chest bare, eyes glinting in the shadows cast by the lamp. Sam's hands grasp his hips, feels the elegant line of bone and muscle, slick skin.

They're fucking, or rather, he's fucking Dean, or rather, Dean's fucking himself, setting the pace, taking his pleasure slowly, luxuriantly, one hand braced on Sam's chest and the other on his own dick. It's almost unbearable, the feel of Dean's body around him, tight hot clench of muscle, Dean's slow movements.

The air's thick with the smell of sex, and Sam stretches, impatient, sets his feet against the bed and takes back the lead, watching Dean's throat work, swallow, gasp, as Sam changes the angle, as he digs his fingers into Dean's sides and forces him to take it.

Suddenly it's hard, and fast, and Sam's confused as to who's taking whom, where his body ceases and Dean's begins, all borders between them blurred in a rush to pleasure.

Dean reaches down and runs his hand through Sam's hair, and yanks on it, hard. Sam swears and sits up, gathers Dean to him, and buries his face in the crook of Dean's neck, tastes him.They're chest to chest, now, slip-slide of sweat and skin, Dean sitting in Sam's lap, and it's nearly enough, nearly but not quite. Sam tumbles him back, and holds him there against the bed, fucking into him, biting his neck as Dean draws him in closer with arms and legs and refuses to let him go. They stay like that, just like that, even as Dean comes, as Sam comes, as the whole thing spirals down and away.

Sam wakes up, and sits up, and it's the middle of the night and he's alone. He touches the wall between his bed and Dean's, and closes his eyes against his own erratic heartbeat, against the press of his dick against dampened sheets, against the dream memory of Dean's face, what he looked like when he came.

Sam doesn't sleep again.

“What's up?” Sam asks the next day, when they're driving into town. Dean hasn't said a word the whole trip. Sam needs him to, in order to break the strange dreamy quality of the day, the feeling that his dream life lingers in the mood of the day. Dean's no use, he's distracted in his own thoughts.

Dean doesn't even reply, just makes a dismissive kind of shrug.

“Seriously,” Sam says. “You're all quiet.”

Dean glances at him. “Thanks for that analysis, Mr Psych-one-oh-one,” he says. “I didn't sleep last night. I got up and watched the Bogart marathon.”

Sam turns and watches him. “Which films?” he asks, and Dean doesn't answer for a long moment.

“The usual,” he says, after a bit.

“Casablanca?” Sam suggests. “The Maltese Falcon.”

“Yeah,” Dean answers. The liar. The goddamn liar.

“Look,” Sam begins, and what he's about to say is interrupted as Dean swears, suddenly, and swerves the Impala right to the other side of the road, the car fishtailing a little and coming to a screeching halt. Sam braces himself with one hand against the windshield.

“What the hell?” he begins, but Dean's out of the car already, and halfway across the road, halfway to where a woman is half-lying, half-seated, in the dust.

They didn't hit her. Sam's almost a hundred percent sure they didn't hit her.

“Ma'am,” Dean's saying, and Sam's out of the car, and following him.

“Ma'am, are you okay?” Dean's voice has a break in it, and Sam's not even sure why until Dean speaks again. “Your baby. Is your baby okay?”

The woman is young, and dressed in slacks and a bright t-shirt, and the baby that's clutched against her chest is wrapped in what looks like a bathroom towel. She shakes her hair out of her face, and Sam breathes in, a sharp inhalation that's almost an inverted scream. She's bleeding from scratches that spread from her nose across her cheek. Her eyes are round, whites showing, and Sam steps forward, puts his hand on Dean's elbow.

“What's your name?” he hears himself say, and surely that voice isn't his, so calm, so reassuring.

“Josie,” she whispers. “Josie Blakey.”

“Josie, can you show us your baby,” he says. “We just want to check you're both okay.”

He kneels down.

“It's okay,” he says. “It's going to be okay.”

“They were right in the stroller,” she says. “I drove all the way but we ran out of gas. And I carried Kynan, but then I couldn't go on any further. And then you came.” She looks up, dazed, and a bead of blood runs down her neck.

“And then you came,” Josie whispers. “I thought you were going to hit us.”

“My brother's a pretty good driver,” Sam whispers back. “We're here to help you. We'll get the sheriff. An ambulance. We'll get you some help.”

She looks at him, and she's so young, younger than he is, so desperately young to be a parent looking after her baby on her own. Her hair is dirty blonde, and the dust on her face is streaked with tears, streaked with scratches.

She holds out the baby, in a gesture of defeat, and Sam takes him.

Kynan's swaddled up, and Sam unwraps him as carefully as he can. Despite his best efforts, he can't hold back a cry.

The baby's face is bleeding from nasty vicious red welts that start on his pudgy cheeks and continue down his neck, all over his arms. It's like the worst case of chicken pox or measles Sam's ever seen: the marks everywhere, and bleeding badly. Kynan isn't crying, though, he's just breathing harsh little panting breaths, mouth open. His mouth's got sores on it, as well, and Sam can see that the tip of his tongue is raw.

“I only left him alone for a minute,” Josie says. “In his stroller, out in the yard. I was hanging the washing on the line, and I heard him crying, I heard him crying so loud, not just the usual diaper crying or bottle, but you know, crying and I thought maybe he'd been stung by a bee, or something, or someone had come into the yard. I turned back and they were everywhere. All over him. Everywhere.”

“Who were?” Dean asks, reaching out with a corner of his t-shirt to wipe the blood from Kynan's face.

Josie's face is pale and she wraps her arms around herself, as if she's trying to physically hold herself in one piece. Sam knows the feeling.

“The rats,” she says, and dissolves into hopeless, silent tears. “They were eating him alive.”

Sam feels himself flinch, a reflexive shudder jittering through his whole body.

Dean's rock solid next to him.

“Must have been a few of them,” Dean's saying, angling his cell phone out of his jacket pocket and thrusting it at Sam.

Josie starts really crying, then, long dragging sobs that sound like they're ripping something inside her. “God, so many,” she answers. “So, so many.”

Sam shoves the cell back at Dean. “We don't have time,” he says, and reaches for the baby, tucking it back into the blanket and standing.

“We'll take you to a doctor,” he tells her, and Dean's on the way, opening up the back door of the Impala, and helping Josie inside.

Dean drives to the hospital, and Sam holds the baby close, one hand on the side of his little face. Sam can't take his eyes off him, not for a second, because of that faint, dreadful chance that Kynan will stop breathing.

Dean drives slowly, and Sam gets it, he really does: there's no point them crashing and burning, with the baby in the car and no car-seat. But Kynan is warm in his arms, like he's starting one hell of a fever, and Sam can only think of the number of diseases that this baby might have, the kind of anaphylactic shock that seems inevitable, infection, blood poisoning.

Three quarters of the way there, Kynan starts making strangled little noises, and Josie leans forward over the seat-back.

“He's going to be okay,” Sam says, and that's a lie, because he doesn't think that Kynan is going to be. Nothing's going to be okay. Nothing.

He sees Dean sneak a sideways glance at him, and he knows Dean can read his ambivalence. Dean doesn't say anything, just accelerates, and then they're speeding towards the hospital, as fast as they can go.

Dean hits the horn as they speed down Main Street, and Sam gets a fleeting impression of people jumping out of the way, of heads turning, and then finally, finally, they're pulling into the parking lot of the medical center.

The center is pretty small, one emergency room and two small wards, and on a Tuesday morning it's quiet. They park in the ambulance bay and Sam's out of the car before Dean's even had a chance to fully brake, and almost trips, holding Kynan close to him. Josie is close behind him, and when they stop running, at the reception desk, she takes Kynan from him. Sam's arms feel empty, and he hits the buzzer, once, then twice and three times in a row.

Dr Botur and her receptionist erupt into the room, and then Josie and Kynan are rushed away, and Sam's left hanging in a waiting room that suddenly feels too small for his height.

There's an old man a chair by the window.

“I hope they see me soon,” he says, querulously. “A rat bit me on the ankle.” He pulls his trouser leg up, and shows a deep bite, purple around the edges.

“I'm sorry,” Sam manages. “I'm sure they'll see you as soon as they can.”

Outside in the carpark, Dean's talking to Dave, who's there in his truck, still with the scratch down the side.

“You boys could have hit someone,” Sam hears. “I appreciate your good deed, you know I do. But I can't have you just speeding through town. You could end up with twice the casualties. And you've got no car-seat. If you'd have hit something, that little boy would have ended up through the windshield and on the road.”

“I'm really sorry,” Dean replies, although Sam doesn't think that means he wouldn't do the same thing again given the same circumstances.

They both turn towards Sam, and he shakes his head.

“They're treating him now,” he says.

“I've never heard of anything like it,” Dave says, and runs a hand through his greying hair. “We've had problems with rodents before, back in '98 was a bad year, but never any injuries. I think last time we had Rhonda Parker fall off a ladder and break her arm, because there was a rat in her attic, but this...”

“Did they say if Kynan's going to be alright?” Dean asks, and Sam's got no answer.

Dave looks stern.

“I better go and have a word with Josie,” he says. “See if her story holds up. I never heard of rats attacking a child before. Not all in a group like that.”

“There's no doubt he was bitten,” Sam says.

“But all of a sudden?” Dave asks, and Sam falls silent.

“Maybe she left him for longer than she said,” Dave says. “Maybe not. I have to talk to her, anyways.” He nods farewell, and disappears into the sliding doors of the center.

Sam shivers.

“I don't like it,” Dean says. “I just don't like it.”

It's not like their usual kind of hunt, but it's not that different.

Dean's sharp-eyed in the driver's seat, and it's hot and airless, in the Impala, leather seats baking in the sun.

“Josie's place is out on Wester Road,” Sam says, and Dean takes a right, off the main road. Dean changes down a gear, but doesn't slow. He's keen to get there, keen to see for himself – Sam knows this because he is, too: he can feel his heart faster in his chest, not out of fear, but from excitement.

He's expecting silence, and the sound of wind – a deserted house. But from at least a couple of hundred feet up the road, he can hear it. He winds down the window, and the sound is clearer. It's a chittering, a clattering, the sound of a thousand shrill squeaks, the white-noise of a thousand scuffling feet.

“Jesus,” Dean says, and, finally, slows.

Josie's place is typical of the out-of-town houses: due a lick of paint a few years back, and the tile roof patched with tin in at least a couple of places. There's a grass-less front yard, with the wreck of an old truck up to its axles in weeds.

It looks deserted, at first, but as they pull in the gate, Sam realizes that it isn't. Not at all.

There are no people, but there are rats.

Hundreds of them.

They line the edge of the verandah, and across the guttering of the roof. There are a hundred, maybe, on the wreck of the old truck, sunning themselves. There's what looks like the remnants of an old vegetable garden dug in the ground on the right of the house, and they're eating there, digging into the dirt – all that remain of any plants are bare sticks in the ground.

There are rats on the branches of the old peach tree.

Dean brakes, and cuts the engine, and the swell of noise outside the car grows louder.

They're watching, Sam thinks. They're all watching.

There are a thousand pairs of eyes watching them. He feels sick, suddenly, and dizzy, and he winds the window up, just to put glass between them. It doesn't make him feel any safer, it's worse, if anything, because the air inside the car is not enough to fill his aching lungs.

“Sam,” Dean says, and something he sees in Sam's face makes his eyes darken, makes him shake his head, slightly, side-to-side.

Sam's going to be sick. He's going to be sick.

They're biting him, gnawing on him, the ribbing between his fingers, the back of his knees, the soft flesh of his inner thigh. He's trapped and they're eating him alive, and the others are laughing at his desperation, laughing at his agony.

“Sam,” Dean says again, and he blinks, and that's not happening.

Dean's hand on his arm steadies him. “What the hell, dude?” Dean asks, and Sam shakes his head.

“Rats,” he mutters. “I just... there are so many.”

Dean's eyes brush over his face, and Sam smiles, a little shakily.

“I thought you were going to heave,” Dean says.

“Nah,” Sam answers. He looks down at his knees, the threadbare patch where soon there will be a hole. Anywhere so he doesn't have to face Dean's scrutiny, so he doesn't have to look out of the car and see the rats there.

Dean swears. “We're getting out of here,” he says, and Sam reaches out, touches his arm.

“C'mon, I'm fine,” he says, and twists to take the shotgun from the backseat.

“Salt?” Dean asks, and Sam shakes his head.

“Buckshot,” he answers. There's some salt in there, as well – it can't hurt.

Dean looks like he's going to need some convincing, but Sam knows how to distract him. He deliberately looks out the front windshield, and nods.

“You think we can clear 'em?” Dean asks.

Sam's not sure.

“We can try,” he decides, and the decision cools his brain and lets him know who he is again.

The metal of the barrel of the shotgun burns cold against his thighs. He knows later it will warm, and then be hot. He knows this life.

It unfolds like music, like he and Dean are dancing a routine that they could execute blindfolded.
It's not so different from the time they cleared the poltergeists out of the abandoned convent in Maine, not really. Or the imps in Wisconsin.

Dean takes the safety of his Beretta, shares a glance with Sam. He still looks uneasy, and Sam gives him a firm nod. C'mon, man.

Dean mouths a countdown - three, two, one - and then they move like they're one person.

Outside of the car, the rats are louder, chirrupping like a tree-full of birds at sunset. For a moment, they seem completely harmless, and Sam stands by Dean and stares.

It's impossible to know where to begin.

They're surrounded, and the rats sit there in the sun, and look at them.

One takes a staggering little step towards Dean's foot, and Dean blasts it.

And then it's a descent into war. The rats run in all directions. Sam and Dean stay close, to allow none between them, facing outwards and scattering them with buckshot. They reload in turns, and it's like a surreal dance of death.

On the fifth reload, Sam's shotgun jams, and he takes his Taurus out from the back of his belt, and starts shooting them, one by one. He keeps firing until its empty, and the gun clicks a few more times before Sam's trigger finger finally gets the message.

He stops, and stands there, and looks at what they've done.

The rats have retreated, out into the cornfields behind the house.

There's carnage everywhere, strewn corpses. The sun beats down on his head, and he's dizzy with the smell of blood.

Dean keeps firing, and then he stops too, and they stand there in the exaggerated silence that always seems to follow in the aftermath of shooting.

There are bodies everywhere.

Sam hears a rasping squeal in the silence, and walks over dead rats to where one is lying on its side, looking at him through a glazed eye, its sides heaving with its last rattling breaths. He puts his boot over it, and crushes it out of its misery.

He looks at Dean.

“We cleared the place out,” he says. He can feel the sweat running down his back, and wipes his forehead.

“We gonna clean up?” Dean asks and Sam grips the guns in his hands to quell their shaking and waits for the nausea to pass.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, we've got to.”

They find a shovel and a rake in the shed beside the house, along with some nests of naked pink rat babies which they destroy.

When, finally, the rats are piled into a heap by the fence, Dean sprays them with lighter fluid from the trunk of the Impala, and lights it up. It's the worst smell Sam can remember: he puts his sleeve up against his nose and turns away. He waits, resting against the car, as Dean watches the fire burn.

“We didn't get most of them,” Sam says, when Dean comes to stand silently beside him. “They're still out there.”

“There's so many,” Dean says, quietly. “I never saw anything like it.”

They stand with the warmth of the Impala at their backs, and wait until the fire burns itself out.

They rake dirt over the pile, and hose it with water. It's the hottest summer on record, after all. Sam hates to think how fast a fire could spread.

They drive back to town.

At the medical center, Kynan Blakey has been stabilized, but he's unconscious. Josie sits by his bed, holding his hand, her eyes closed. She's praying, Sam thinks, her lips moving silently.

“I need a drink,” Dean says, when they get outside again. Sam does, too.

It's not their first drink, or even their second or third. They sit together and Sam thinks that tonight, at least, they're utterly on the same page. They're drinking to put some distance between themselves and the picture of the bitten baby, the rats at the house, the bloodshed, and the smell of burning flesh.

Dean's got something on his mind, though, and after the fourth round, Sam's past waiting for Dean to make his mind up to talk to him.

“Spit it out,” he says.

Dean doesn't protest innocence. He just looks at Sam.

“At the farm,” he starts, and stops. Sam feels his face heat and he turns away, watches a couple of girls moving on the dance-floor, short-shorts and high heels.

Dean tries again.

“Before we...”

“It was the rats,” Sam says, watching them. Stepstep swivel. He thinks maybe they know he's watching.

“You zoned on me,” Dean says. “For a good couple of minutes. I shouted at you. I smacked you in the face. You were just...gone.”

Sam looks at him. Oh.

“You have to take care of yourself. If things are getting too much, you have to tell me. Going after the rats. That was stupid. I could have gone myself. I could have taken Dave, or some guys from town.”

“I'm fine,” Sam says. “The only thing wrong with me is that you won't tell me the things I've forgotten.”

Dean stays silent, his eyes wide and dark, his mouth clamped shut.

“I'm going to remember,” Sam says. “Sooner or later, it's all going to come back. You know that, right? Because there's all these gaps, all these things I can't remember, but I know they're there. I know I can't remember things. I know you're holding out on me.”

“Nothing that's important,” Dean says, and his eyes slide sideways, and his tells are so easy. It's always scissors with him.

Sam sighs.

One of the girls slides over to him. She's got straight brown hair pulled into a high pony-tail, and a shy smile that appeals, somehow, because it contrasts with her shorts and the low-cut top, and the butterfly tattooed on her shoulder.

“You want to dance?” she asks him. “I saw you looking, and I thought...”

She's pretty, but Sam can't remember ever being that young. He stares at her and watches her confidence crumple at the edges. It makes him feel bad, so he gives her a smile, the kind he remembers giving a long time ago. Shy. Flattered. Innocent.

He glances over at Dean.

Dean's watching him, face a curtained window, and Sam wishes for once, just once, Dean would tell him the truth.

He leans over, and Dean moves closer.

“You don't get to decide what's important to me,” Sam says, voice quiet.

He holds out his hand and lets the girl drag him up onto the dance-floor. The band is playing some country cover song, and Sam lets the music take him, a slow resignation to the beat that's thumping through the floorboards.

Dean's still sitting there, glass half-empty in front of him, an hour later. Sam slides into the booth across from him, and Dean just watches, impassive. Sam's hot, his shirt clinging uncomfortably to his back. He's got not one but two phone numbers in his pocket, and his heart is thumping.

Dean looks at him, solemnly, and tips the rest of the whiskey straight down.

“Pretty,” he comments, and Sam can hear the slur in the word.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“You should get her number,” Dean says, leaning close and gripping Sam's forearm.

Sam shrugs.

“Take her home,” Dean says and tries to stand. He staggers a little, and grips the edge of the table, and Sam stands and steadies him, noticing the roll in Dean's step as he shuffles his way out of the booth.

“Give me the keys,” he says, and Dean looks at him, sighs, and hands them over, dropping them on the floor between them.

“Shit,” Dean slurs, and Sam bends to collect them and tries to support Dean at the same time. He hasn't seen Dean this drunk for years, maybe ever: so far gone he can't speak, and can only walk with Sam's assistance.

“You're toasted,” he says, and Dean laughs, off-key and clumsy.

“You're trying to remember. I'm trying to forget,” Dean says morosely.

Sam rolls his eyes.

“Let's get you home,” he says.

Dean raises his hands above his head, like an obedient child, and Sam slides his shirts over his head. Dean sways into him, and Sam steadies the both of them. Dean's hot, against him, hot and lean and shivering slightly, and Sam holds him close with one hand flattened against Dean's back.

The lamp casts crazy shadows across Dean's bedroom, and it feels like one of his crazy dreams. It feels like a memory, an imprint of muscle memory, as familiar as the way to load a gun in the dark. If he shuts his eyes, he can still see Dean sitting astride him, taking his pleasure, taking his time, riding him. He can remember what that felt like, to see Dean like that.

It would be so easy to give into it, to believe it could be like that. But it isn't. It never has been. If it had been that way between them, how could he ever have forgotten it?

Sam pushes Dean gently to sit on the edge of the bed. He kneels in front of Dean to untie his boots, one by one. Dean's hand touches his shoulder, and moves to his hair, and Sam flashes to an old hotel, a bottle of tequila, freezing-cold over-chlorinated water, a drowned child in his arms.

“Sam,” Dean exhales, nearly just a sigh, and Sam gives up worrying at the knots in his bootlace to look Dean in the face.

“I saw you fall.”

Sam thinks that maybe Dean doesn't just mean into the cage. He means the slow descent, rudderless, in the six months Dean was gone. The demon blood, and all it led to. Ruby. The blood. Lucifer.

Dean still loves him. Dean wouldn't know who he was, if he didn't. He doesn't know how not to, although Sam thinks he's tried. He must have.

He touches Dean, because he can't not, rubs his thumb over the line of Dean's cheekbone, and watches as Dean's eyes fall shut, just one long instant, before he pulls back, twisting his face away.

“'Night, Sammy,” Dean mutters, laying back and turning his face into the pillow.

Sam stands, awkward, so awkward, and pauses by the door. Dean's asleep already, or pretending to be.

“'Night, Dean,” Sam says. “Sleep well.”

He stands underneath the water of the shower, willing it to wash the day away, letting it flatten his hair against his skull, letting it run clean over his face.

His mind is busy, the girl in the bar, the baby in the roadway, the rats lying dead in Josie's yard. Dean's face, shuttered with drink, turning away from him. He scrubs at his face, his chest, his arms, and leans against the damp tiles.

The thing about the last time you do something is that you don't know it's the last time. The last time you walk down a certain street, the last time you see a person, the last time you kiss them or hold them. You just don't know – it's only afterwards, when it's all over, when the street has fallen down or the person has left you. If you knew, it would ruin it. You'd be mourning the past even as it slipped away out of your fingers. Instead, you find out too late, and you don't savor the smell of fall in the air, and you don't savor the feeling of a touch, it's just gone, and you have the perfect memory of that perfect last time, only it's always only a memory, it's always out of reach.

Sam doesn't know if it's better not to remember. He's lost parts of his life, he knows that. Memory's so elusive and mysterious a thing: he doesn't know what he doesn't know. There are just flurries of sense memories, impressions of things, flavors of emotion that flower in his mind, as if they had always been there.

He remembers the hot surge of blood in his mouth, the iron-rich taste of it, the warmth, simultaneously disgusting and compelling. He doesn't remember the first time. He doesn't remember the feeling of conviction it gave him, only that it did.

He remembers Dean's face, distraught. He remembers Dean crying. He remembers punching Dean in the face so he didn't have to see Dean mourn him while he was still alive. He remembers that it cracked the skin of his knuckle, and the sharp little sting of that was what he focused on, and then there was a shift and he was choking Dean, choking him hard.

Monster. He remembers Dean called him Monster. He remembers that was the only time in his life where he thought that Dean looked like Dad.

He can think of no possible situation existing in this world or any other where he could have forgotten that of his own accord.

He also remembers Dean walking out of a hospital, leaving Lisa and Ben behind him, strangers, their minds wiped clean of all memories of him, because Dean made Castiel make them forget. He wonders what else Castiel might have done, if Dean asked him. What things Dean might have wanted Sam to forget.

“Dean, what have you done,” he whispers, and turns off the faucet. “What have you done to me?”

Chapter Text

He doesn't see Dean the next morning, and he stays late at the library, unwilling to go home, his mind turning over his new suspicions. He eats at the diner and stays for the late show at the Odeon, a movie he hasn't seen before about Alan Ginsberg.

He's the only one there, again. There's no way that Dominic can be making a good living out of this.

He watches right until the end of the credits. He knows he's stalling. He knows that he doesn't want to go home. When he finally walks out, Dominic's there, bringing in the sidewalk signs, and turning off lights.

Dominic looks at him with heavy-lidded eyes that Sam thinks make him look deceptively sleepy. Dominic isn't sleepy. Not at all.

“C'mon out back,” he says, and Sam finds himself following behind, through a corridor so narrow he almost has to turn sideways to squeeze his shoulders through it. It comes out into a room which is clearly Dominic's office.

Sam likes it. There's an old oak desk, and shelves filled higgledy-piggledy with old books and DVDs. Lots of clutter: a black china figurine of a bull, piles of papers, Empire magazines with post-it notes in them. The walls aren't even visible behind old movie posters, layered one on top of the other.

Sam stays standing to look at them. Some he doesn't recognize, but many of his favorites are there. Vertigo. For Whom the Bell Tolls. Monkey Business.

Dominic pulls a couple of glass tumblers off a shelf, and digs around in a desk drawer until he emerges, triumphant, with a bottle of Jack. He hands Sam a glass, and Sam takes it, and turns to look at the posters again. Casablanca. Weekend at Bernie's. Eat Drink Man Woman. The Empire Strikes Back.

“Luke or Han?” Dominic asks, watching, and Sam thinks about it, sipping his drink and feeling the heat of the alcohol against the back of his throat.

“I don't know,” he answers.

Dominic looks at him, drains his glass and pours himself another.

“Everyone's one or the other,” he says. “It's been proven.”

“I think I'm maybe Anakin,” Sam says, and that seems right to him. He's pretty sure he's not Luke, and that there's only room for one Han Solo in any family unit.

Dominic throws his head back and laughs, sitting on the couch and putting his feet up on a stack of film reel cases. He looks at Sam, and laughs again.

Sam doesn't smile: he wasn't joking. It takes a moment for Dominic to realize that.

“Interesting,” Dominic says, as though he's discovered something profound. “The mild-mannered librarian has a dark side.”

Sam drains his drink, and puts the empty glass down on the desk.

“I've gotta go,” he says.

“Oh. Sam. Sam, I'm sorry,” Dominic doesn't look all that contrite, though, as usual, there's that faint glint of laughter behind the solemnity of his gaze. He stands again, comes over to the desk and leans against it with one hand.

“Why don't you stay?” he asks. “Have another drink?”

Sam's not oblivious to what Dominic's asking him. There's an appeal in those dark eyes, alongside the humor, and it's tempting, somehow. To find out what that would be like, to chase away the confusion of his dreaming with something real and immediate.

Partly, he'd just like to touch another person, make himself real again through touching and fucking and just get himself right again. It doesn't have to mean anything. He's almost definitely sure that it wouldn't.

Dominic solves his indecision: he leans in, reaches up and kisses Sam, lightly, on the mouth. He tastes of mint and the whiskey they just drank, and Sam hesitates a moment, and then chases the flavor with his tongue, nipping at his lower lip, pushing him back against the hard edge of the desk, and thrusting his thigh in between Dominic's.

It's good to feel a body against his, it's nice to kiss, nice to feel wanted, to have a hand tug on his hair and move his head aside, to bite at his neck, but it's not right. It's not the right body. It's not the right mouth.

And just like that, he's a million miles away from it all. He can't do it.

He pushes a hand to Dominic's chest and pushes him back. Dominic's lips are reddened, and his eyes are brighter than usual.

“I'm sorry,” Sam says, but he isn't, not really. He just needs to get out of there. He needs some headspace to think things through.

“I just.” He doesn't have words to describe it.

“The word in town is that you've been in Iraq, maybe Afghanistan,” Dominic says, quietly. “But it's not that at all, is it? You've been somewhere quite different.”

Sam can't speak. He doesn't know what he'd say, anyway. The past is pasted together of fragments, some enticing and some so horrifying he's glad he doesn't know what those memories signify. He knows he's never been in the army, though. He's a hunter, or he was.

“It'll come,” Dominic says. “The things you can't remember. You may wish that they didn't, but they'll come. My two cents is that you need to stop being so rational about it. Stop worrying.”

Sam shakes his head. He feels inclined to be truthful.

“It's not just that,” he says. “I just. I just can't.”

Dominic smiles, and Sam wishes for a moment it was simpler, that he was simpler. That he could sit here and drink and talk about movies and music and let the evening lead where it might.

“The other rumor is that your brother isn't your brother,” Dominic says, pointedly, and Sam feels himself blushing. Dominic nods, as if he's given something away, and Sam's awkward again, stuttering a little and trying to find the right words.

“He's my brother,” Sam says.

“I'm not judging,” Dominic says, lightly, turning away. He clinks his glass down on the desk and pours himself another. “It's not my place to judge you. I'm the last person to judge you.” He doesn't believe that, and Sam's irritated, suddenly. Dean's his brother. That's maybe the most important thing to know about him. It's not like he'd lie about it, no matter that he's got a sneaking suspicion that the right body, the right mouth might be Dean's.

“I should go,” Sam says, again.

Dominic toasts him as he pushes the door open.

“I can see myself out,” Sam says.

He pauses at the threshold.

“Thanks,” he offers, awkwardly. “For your hospitality. I really... I appreciate it. I'm sorry.”

“Thanks for your friendship, Sam,” Dominic says, formally, and Sam nods. Yeah. They're friends. Or something like it.

When he gets home, Dean's already gone to bed. Sam stands in the upstairs hallway in the dark, and watches the thin line of light under Dean's door. Dean's awake, he knows it, but he's pretending to be asleep, pretending not to be up waiting to see that Sam's home safe.

Sam wants to break down his door, to confront him, to demand answers, but he just heads into his own room and flops down on the bed. He lies on his back and hides his eyes.

It's still not too late, he could get up and go and ask Dean, but he has no idea how he'd even begin to phrase that conversation. I dreamed we were fucking, and when I woke up, I wasn't ashamed, I wasn't shocked, I was just sad that it wasn't true.

I think I'm actually legitimately going crazy. And not in the good way.

I think I'm in love with you.

He rolls onto his stomach and buries his face in the pillow.

No, and no, and no, and no.

There are two helicopters overhead as they drive into town, flying over the fields. It's an unusual occurrence. Dean's cheerful again, and hums the theme from Apocalypse Now as they park outside the library.

“Joe left his phone at the garage last night,” Dean says. “I'll drop it into Dave. Kid doesn't go anywhere without that thing.”

Sam heads to the general store, and gets a couple of bags of groceries, but even by the time he's finished and Martin Atherton's slowly totted up the total, Dean hasn't joined him.

Sam heads to the Sheriff's office. It's quiet. Sheila's left her desk, and so Sam walks through to Dave's office. The door is open, and Dean's sitting in one of the chairs.

Dave’s cheeks are pale beneath the sun-tan, and he moves more slowly than usual as he looks up and motions Sam in.

“It’s the worst thing I ever saw,” he says, after a long moment and Dean shakes his head.

Sam stands in the doorway, unsure what's going on. Dean's pale, too. It's bad news. It's clearly bad news.

“Sit down, Sam,” Dave says, and Sam does, tucking his legs under the leather chair opposite the desk. The carpet is some hand-knotted seventies monstrosity in swirls of turquoise and white. He looks away from it.

“They were dead,” Dave says, and Sam waits, because Dave’s been sheriff here almost as long as anyone can remember – he’s seen dead people before. Dead people aren't news, not for him.

“The doors were boarded up, from the inside. They’d locked all the doors, and nailed all the shutters closed. And then they’d put the furniture in front of all the doors, as well. We had to hammer our way in, and even so, it took the neighbors and both my deputies to shift the old piano by the back door.”

“I couldn’t work out why they’d stayed, why they hadn’t tried to get away.”

“I wondered, maybe, if they’d changed their minds, after it was too late.”

He puts his hands to his face, and Sam notices they're trembling.

“They were in the upstairs bathroom, all of them, crowded into the tub together, Wilkes, and Susannah, and the two little ones. They’d pulled a bookcase over themselves, must have dragged it all the way upstairs out of the lounge. They thought that would protect them, you know. Like from a tornado, or a real bad storm.”

“I don’t understand,” Sam says gently, and watches Dave flinch from the words.

“They got in, anyway. Ate their way through the floorboards, through the cellar. They do that, you know? If they’re starving enough. They can chew their way through solid concrete, when the mood gets on them.”

“Must have been a thousand, more, probably. Not a stick of food left in the house. The carpets gone. Shit everywhere.”

It's impossible.

“The rats, Sam. A whole swarm of them, it looked like. Gnawing their way through the wood doors. And those folk. Those poor folk, hiding their children beneath their own bodies, in that bathtub. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I wish I never had. I wish I’d taken retirement last year, like Grace wanted. I wish I’d died in my bed before I ever saw them. Not a strip of flesh left on the adults.

And the kids, both with their necks broke.”

He starts crying, unsentimental, the tears just running down his face and staining the notes on the desk in front of him. He doesn’t wipe them away, doesn’t try to hide them, and Sam’s seen broken men before, and he knows what it looks like.

“Don’t you see, they killed the children. Pete and Jena held them close and killed them so they’d be spared it. And then they lay there and held each other, held the bodies of their little ones, and waited for the rats to make their way through that bathroom door, across the tiles and on them.”

Sam doesn’t know what to say. He can't imagine it, the Blairs and their two kids. He can't imagine the love it would take to kill your own child rather than let it face an inevitable and terrible death. He just can't.

“And then what?” Dean asks.

Dave looks at him like he’s never seen him before.

Dean persists.

“The rats,” he says. “You say they ate everything in the house, the carpet, the food, those people who lived there. Then where? Where are they now?”

He’d thought that Dave couldn’t look any worse, but he was wrong. Dave looks up at him and shakes his head, gently to and fro. He doesn’t know.

“We're going to evacuate people from the farms,” Dave says. “Sheila's gone to collect Irma Bainbridge, and the McIlrick's are bringing their kids in. The deputies are out doing a door-to-door.”

“We saw the choppers,” Dean says.

“We're trying to track down where they've got to,” Dave says. “They're hidden in the wheat and cornfields. The population's exploded, but we're concerned that there's a kind of horde of them on the move. That's what got the Blairs.”

“We can't just run away,” Dean says, and Dean slams his fist against his desk, startling both of them, and causing his framed photo of Grace and the kids to fall over.

“You didn't see them,” Dave insists. “The Blairs and their kids.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” Sam says, thinking of Josie Blakey's house, Kynan, Mrs. Bainbridge's garden, the wheat.

Dave looks over at him.

“You can't,” he says, baldly, and Dean looks over at Sam and gives a microscopic shake of his head.

“You're right,” Dean concedes. “We'll just pick up a few things and crash at the motel for the night.”

Dave gives him a narrow glare, and then nods.

“I know what you two are like,” he says. “But do me a favor, and stay in town tonight. This is more than just a few rats, boys. It's a force of nature, and sometimes you just have to get out of the way.”

Sam knows they're not going back to town tonight.

Dean parks the Impala out front and they work together to protect the house.

Dean's grim-faced and serious as they nail shutters over the windows. Sam fills up some five-galllon plastic bottles from the pump and stows them in the basement. There's a moment at the bottom of the stairs, weighed down with a bottle in each hand, that he swears there's already some down there. He turns, quickly, but whatever-it-is, the shadow at the corner of his vision, is gone. He knows the cellar is clear, that there's no way that any rats could have made it down here, but he checks, anyway, checking the corners with flashlight in one hand, and his Taurus, the safety off, in the other.

When he's as certain as he can be that there's no new holes, he goes upstairs again.

Dean's out at edge of the cornfields, digging.

Sam watches him a moment.

Dean's taken his shirt off, and tied it around his waist; his white undershirt is already greyed with sweat beneath his arms and in a half-moon down his back.

"I don't think a ditch is going to stop them," Sam comments, and Dean turns to him, wiping sweat from his face with the inside of his arm, and leaving a dark smear.

"No shit, Sherlock," Dean says. He's got that look in his eyes that Sam's come to both appreciate and dread, that gleam of excitement that says Dean's planning something epic and dangerous.

"The ditch won't stop them... but the fire might."

"The fire," Sam echoes.

"The fire in the ditch," Dean says. And grins, so crazily unafraid that Sam almost can't bear the heat ithat surges in his chest. He loves Dean, like this, he really does, so filled with delight at his own cunning that he looks like he's going to burst with pride.

It's heart-stopping.

And it's Sam's role to rain on Dean's parade.

"It's not going to work," Sam says, and watches that brightness flicker a little, Dean's grin settle into a firm, stubborn line. He looks resigned.

“Maybe not,” he says. “But the way I see it, most things are afraid of fire. They're not going to jump in it. They'll get scared back into the fields.”

“We'll burn down the house,” Sam says. He can imagine it, the tinder-dry grass of the yard, the old wood-frame of the house. He can imagine them trapped in a ring of fire of their own making, imagine them burning. He looks down and sees the skin on his hand crisping, the meat of it peeling back, the fingernails melting like glass.

And then he blinks, and it's his own hand.

Dean's looking at him, that narrow-eyed look, and Sam forces a smile onto his face.

“At least let's take some precautions,” he says, and Dean's grin becomes brighter than ever.

“That's my boy,” Dean says.

They hear them first, at approximately a quarter past eight in the evening.

They're still digging, side by side. It sounds like the wind, at first, and Dean pauses beside him, stills like a dog pointing at game, and together they turn toward it, the scratching, chittering, creeping sound of them.

Dean watches the movement of the wheat in the distance, a wave coming closer every second.

“Dean,” Sam says, urgent, and Dean looks at him, and twists his mouth. It's not even a smile.

“Guess we get to see if this thing works,” Dean says, and takes his lighter from his back pocket.

Sam curls his hands around Dean's, without even thinking, providing a shelter for the flame. The lighter goes on the first click, and Dean lights a crumpled piece of newspaper, and throws it into the ditch.

The gasoline ignites with a soft boom, and fire licks along the length of the ditch, black smoke billowing upwards, the flames reaching as high as Sam's shoulders. He closes his eyes against the glare of it, and takes a couple of steps back.

There's a wall of fire between them and the wheat-fields. Sam can see the grass at the edge of the moat beginning to darken and curl. The smoke is thick and dark: he's reminded of the footage of the Gulf oil spill, black spires tumbling skywards, blotting out the sky.

It looks like the end of the world. It looks like hell. Sam covers his face, blocks out the sight of it, shelters his eyes from the heat of it.

Dean touches him, a press of hand to his back, so quick that it's gone before Sam fully notices it was there at all. It comforts him, nonetheless, and he looks up, squinting against the brightness, in time to see the rat hoard arrive.

There's just one, at first, glimpsed through the flames at the edge of the field. And then Sam blinks and there are a hundred, a thousand, more than that, line upon line of them, eyes reflecting the fire back gold in the night.

They're quiet, all chittering silenced, and the flames roar. There's more than Sam could possibly have imagined, lined up facing the fire, blocked from Sam and Dean and their house by an impassable wall of heat.

One rat steps forward, a fat brown lump, and then shies away, its whiskers sizzled, runs back to the horde. Another scurries forward and tries to stop too late skidding into the fire with a high-pitched scream. Another follows, and then another, to die with a squeal and an obscene popping noise in the pit of flames.

Sam feels his gorge rising, and feels himself grin, fiercely, willing it down.

It's a nightmare of flames and acrid smoke and a few feet away with just a ditch of gasoline between them, death on a thousand legs.

“Yeah, you fuckers,” Dean whispers. “Come on.”

They want to get through. Sam can see it. He can sense it in the way they move, uneasy and defeated, right to the edge of safety, the tide of them, a couple of handfuls spilling over, pushed inexorably by the weight of the others, into the fire.

So many. There are so many of them, too many to comprehend. He thinks again of the Blairs, what they had seen that sent them into their house, barricading themselves in and trapping themselves to certain death. He wonders why Pete and Jena didn't flee, and why he and Dean didn't, for that matter. It's because no one could ever imagine this, no matter how they thought they knew the danger facing them.
It's impossible, illogical. He shuts his eyes, but the flames are red against his closed eyes, and the smell is inescapable, smoke and gasoline and the musky odor of a disused barn magnified by a million. Shit. Blood.

He gags, despite himself, wanting to run but frozen to the spot.

And then they're on the move again, an ocean of them, retreating into the wheat, a thousand tiny faces turning and then disappearing beneath the shelter of the plants. He can see the waves of the rats retreating. He doesn't know where they're going to next, hopes only that the McIlricks have taken the advice to evacuate. Because nothing less than a firestorm will stop them, Sam's sure of it.

Dean lets out a whoop, a strangled feral cry of victory, and runs to the edge of the fire-pit and Sam's heart leaps, and for a moment, a long moment, he knows that everything is going to be alright.

And then, between one moment and the rest, the wind picks up and takes the fire away from them, into the wheat.

The flames curl over the edge of the pit, the fire growing greedy with its new fuel: the grasses, the wire fencing, and the wheat itself. It's a monster now itself, out-of-control and vicious, and Sam runs for the garden hose, as Dean runs forward with wet blankets and beats futilely at the flames.

The wheat crackles, the heads turning black under the white moonlight in a contagion of destruction.

It's out of hand. It's completely out of hand.

Sam yells at Dean to get back, but Dean moves forward, instead, slapping uselessly at the flames.

He's nearly cut off from the house, cut off from Sam, and before Sam even realizes that, he's made the decision. He leaps forward, singeing the leg of his jeans in the bite of the fire, and joins Dean in his clearing in the flames that's growing smaller by the second.

It's hard to breathe, the smoke thick and acrid, smarting in Sam's eyes, blinding him. He takes a blanket from Dean and they work together, trying to drive the fire back, but the wheat is too dry, and the fire is too hot, and they make no impact at all.

It's hopeless: Sam knows it, and by the resignation in his eyes, Dean knows it is too. It's so fucking stupid that it should come to this, with so much between them unsaid and unresolved, with so many years between them, so many perils, angels and demons and heaven and hell and now this.

They stand, back to back, and Sam shuts his eyes.

It's not such a bad way to go, all things considered. He's pretty sure they've both had worse.

It takes a long moment for him to realize that the moisture on his face is not his tears.

He touches the raindrop wonderingly, in the sea of fire, and then there's a distant rumble. The clouds open, and water sheets down.

It hasn't rained for nearly four months. It's as if it has been waiting all this time just to come now, deus ex fucking machina, drenching them, drenching the guts out of the fire. There's not enough to put it out, but it tamps it down, takes the edge off it, and they beat at it with renewed energy, beat their way through it, all the way to the safety of their yard, and watch as the flames dwindle, beaten in to the burnt ground by the weight of the water.

Sam turns his parched face skywards, and sees Dean doing the same, the rainwater scoring white rivulets through the soot-dark of his face.

“You're one lucky son-of-a-bitch,” Sam says, and it comes out admiringly despite himself, because Dean has won - he's turned the rat tide, and only by the sheerest luck has avoided burning down the entire county in doing so.

And Dean's eyes are so bright in his blackened sooty face, and his shout of victory comes straight from the heart of him. Sam can't remember ever seeing him so happy.

There's nothing else to be done.

Sam's moved before he's even aware of the impulse, three quick strides across the scorched ground, and he takes Dean's face, holds him still, one hand each side, and leans in, kisses the breath out of him, burn of stubble and swipe of tongue, and there's a moment, a second when he's sure to the bottom of his soul that Dean's right there with him, not in the slow tide of a half-forgotten dream but right there with him, awake.

And then Dean's hands are caught in his shirt, and shoving him away, and in the second before Dean's fist connects solidly with his jaw, Sam sees the appalled look on Dean's face, rejection written on every square inch of him.

He takes the punch, goes with it, lets it take him with a shock to the ground, a stew of burnt grass and water mud and a mire of leaked gasoline. He kneels there, head down, but he has to look at Dean, he can't not, and he turns his head.

Dean's face is in shadow, but Sam knows the line of defeat in his shoulders, the clench of his fists against the stained dark of his jeans.

Sam stares up at him, lifting one hand to his jaw, to his mouth where he can still feel the press of Dean's lips underneath his.

“Don't,” Dean hisses, like Sam's hurt him to the quick. “You hear me, Sammy? Don't you ever do that again.”

I'm sorry, Sam wants to say. I think I'm going crazy , but that's not the truth. He doesn't understand much about himself, the fractured hall of mirrors inside his memories, but he knows this feeling, as much a part of him as his bones, his heart, the bits and pieces of his soul. If there's a part of him left that's intact, it's this.

“Dean,” he manages, but Dean's gone already, walking back to the house, bent a little, as if his responsibilities are weighing him down into the earth, as if Sam's stabbed him right through the heart. The door slams shut behind him, so hard that the pane of glass in it cracks, from left to right.

He thinks he's not going to sleep, but he forces himself into it, lying still on his back and refusing to let himself move until his exhaustion finally kicks in.

He dreams, grateful for the escape from the horror of the day.

He’s standing on the old rail bridge over the river. Dean’s beside him, standing close, and Sam can smell him, faint aroma of sweat and coffee, but just faintly, because there’s smoke on the air, and he can see over the town and it’s burning.

He doesn’t move, can’t find the need inside himself to try. It’s a dream, and he’s watching, not acting. He doesn’t think anyone is hurt; the flames are beautiful, the smoke heady, like herbs thrown on a fire, or a ritual of summoning. He wonders who’s been invited, if maybe he’s been called here, him and Dean together.

The music is there, again, and that's not a surprise, but it curls around everything in eery bell-like tendrils, sweet and sharp, and bitter like lime juice, like old walnuts, thrumming in his head, in the bones of his ribcage, in the veins of his wrists.

Dean’s hand is on his, and Sam turns his hand palm up to bring it closer, and links their fingers.

“Look,” Dean says, and Sam turns his head, towards the music, towards the burning town, to the main street, and what is approaching.

It takes a minute for his eyes to adjust, and he’s not sure if they’re watering because of the smoke, or because of the awful beauty of the music. He blinks against both, but it still takes a while for what he’s seeing to become clear.

Even then, he can’t believe what he’s seeing.

The main street is filled with rats, hundreds of them, thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe even more. The roadway is black with them, a great heaving mass, more than he’s seen, even today, when they burned the wheat-field and almost died together in the flames.

But there’s something different, something strange and wrong that he can’t even conceive of.

The rats aren't tumbling on top of each other, scrabbling desperately towards the nearest source of food. They’re not an unruly swarm.

“Jesus,” he hears Dean whisper, and grips his hand tighter. “It’s like the Fourth of July.”

It’s not, but Sam gets what he means.

The rats are in formation.

They’re in neat lines, maybe fifty apiece stretching from one pavement to the other. They’re not running, or skittering, and even from the distance of the bridge, Sam can hear the percussion of their tiny footsteps, all in time. They’re walking, or marching… no, worse, they’re dancing, like some really fucked-up surreal cartoon sequence, and Sam really knows he’s dreaming now, and that’s a relief, because everything else is photo-realistic, the freckles on Dean’s cheekbones, the splintered old paint-chips under their clasped hands, the rush of the water beneath them. The river is high, he notes. That probably means something as well.

The music lilts, something familiar he's sure he's heard before but can't quite place, and the rats march forward, and Sam realizes that they’re dancing to the music, drawn forward by it. They move, together, a dark Disney nightmare, so precisely that Sam can’t work if they’re following the music, or making it.

In the middle of the street, there’s a figure, back turned to them: a man’s dark silhouette, lean-shouldered and tall. Sam feels Dean’s hand tighten on his, and he sneaks a sideways glance at him, but Dean’s leaning forward, transfixed.

The army of rats separate, perfectly symmetrically, and march onwards, past the man, down the main street.

They march that way, in step, some kind of Riefenstahl-inspired fascist rodent nightmare, beyond the Odeon, beyond the church, and down towards the river.

Sam wants to run, as the rat-army turns towards them, but his feet won't move. He clutches at Dean's arm, and feels Dean squeeze hard.

The rats don't make it to the bridge. They pause at the edge of the water, on the river bank. The music swells, louder and louder, until it's almost unbearable. Sam claps his hands over his ears and sees that Dean is doing the same. Dean's mouth is moving, but Sam can't hear what he's saying.

And then the music gets too loud, too bright and overwhelming, and Sam wakes up with a start, to his silent bedroom where the only sound is dawn birdsong, and the light patter of raindrops on the roof.

He's afraid to face Dean. He gets up early, though, as though the first to the kitchen will have the advantage of home territory. He burns the first two pieces of toast, but the smell of it only matches the damp smoke smell drifting in from outside. It's still raining, a solid rhythm on the iron of the roof.

He's just pouring his third cup of coffee when Dean comes down. Sam doesn't know what to say: he's untapped a whole new category of awkward.

But Dean just flops down at the table, and watches as Sam puts coffee in front of him. He looks tired, as if he's slept badly, and given the crazy dreams of the night, Sam's not sure that Dean's had the worse deal.

“It's a good rain,” Dean says. “Farmers'll be pleased something's gone right for a change.”

Sam recognizes it for what it is: an out. They're not going to talk about this. They're not going to talk about it at all, ever. Sam wonders if Dean thinks Sam'll forget about it. If Dean thinks Dean will. Sam's quite certain that neither of them will. There's some things that you just don't get over, and he's pretty sure that your brother sticking his tongue down your throat isn't one of them.

You kissed me back, he wants to say, but he's not sure enough to say it. Just for a moment, you kissed me back. Sam's not the best judge, though, of what happened or didn't happen. Maybe it's just another ghost from the graveyard of his memories.

He leans over and switches on the radio on the countertop to fill the silence.

“/... quite like this in the history of the town. Sheriff David Hanley interviewed by our reporter on the scene described himself as “unsure whether the town should be horrified or celebrate.” While the occurrence is on the town side of Smithson Bridge, and hence downstream from the town's water supply pipes, Sheriff Hanley said he couldn't rely on that fact to prevent what he called “an unprecedented public health problem.” In the meantime, those connected to the town water supply should use only bottled water for drinking, should boil all water used in food preparation for a minimum of three minutes, or use household bleach at a concentration of four drops per gallon. More on this breaking story after regional weather. Cheswick county: light showers clearing by midafternoon...”

“What the hell?” Dean asks, and Sam shakes his head.

“Smithson Bridge,” he says.

He remembers his dream of the previous night, the dancing rats, the music, and he's filled with a sense of dread. There's no way. No way at all... but that's not true is it? It wouldn't be the first time he's dreamed things that came true. And however much he doesn't want to think that that particular skill of his has come back to him, he knows too well what can happen if he ignores it.

He's grateful for the distraction though. Dean's tapping his fingers against the formica table-top, and when Sam meets his eye he stands, and drains his coffee.

“C'mon,” Dean says. “There's been one or two too many 'unprecedented events' round here lately.”

He pauses, obviously regretting his words as soon as he's spoken them, and for a moment they stare at each other in their narrow little kitchen, last night as clear between them as it was that awful moment after, not so much an elephant in the room as a three ring circus with acrobats and clowns.

Sam turns away, so he doesn't have to see Dean's rejection in his eyes again.

Dean clears his throat. Sam doesn't look at him, but he can hear Dean shifting awkwardly from foot to foot, can sense his indecision and discomfort in the air between them.

“Sammy...” Dean says, and Sam takes a step towards the door.

“Yeah,” he says, as if nothing just happened, as if he hasn't broken everything that was ever between them, maybe forever. “Let's go see what it is this time.”

The drive out to the old bridge is silent. Metallica blares out of the tape-deck as soon as Dean turns the ignition, and he leans over and switches it off with a firm click.

It's still raining, a solid, unrelenting sheet, the sky a white blanket of overcast over their heads. It takes the color out of things, somehow. Sam cracks open the window and lets the breeze cool his face and smells the wet-grass chemical asphalt smell of the rain.

There's a ton of cars by the river. They have to park nearly a block away in order to get a space.

Sam shivers, despite the heat – they're walking the same route as his dream took the previous night, and it gives him a strange feeling of deja vu as they pass under the shadow of the city hall, and join the crowd at the bridge. His dream was so vivid that it comes as a surprise that the town isn't burned.

It's like a party, somehow, the whole town gathered on the banks of the river, some of them milling about, but many standing on the bridge and just looking down at the water. He spots Shya and Joe with a group of the other kids. Carla Atherton and Dylan. The Mayor. Standing a little bit apart, quiet and unsmiling, Dominic, tall and dark, in a striped t-shirt.

When they get to the bridge, Dave Hanley's there, wearing his uniform and talking rapidly into his cellphone. He nods to Dean and Sam, and gestures with his shoulder towards the river.

Sam's got the benefit of height, so he can see over the heads of most of the people in front of him, but it still takes him a moment to take in what he's looking at.

“Sweet Jesus,” Dean breathes, and they push through the crowd to see more clearly.

It's though the river has been dammed by a rock fall or landslide, but it's worse than that. Sam's sure for a moment that he's dreaming, that in reality he's lying asleep in his bedroom with the pink roses, and he's going to wake up any minute now, because Dean will bang on his door and tell him to get his ass up.

But it's real. Sam thinks it is, anyway.

From bank to bank, the river is clogged with the drowned bodies of a million rats, bloated and swollen, brown and white and black and brindled, crammed together so tightly that they almost make another bridge, one that stretches a hundred yards downstream. Behind them, the river's gone over its banks, swelling out almost to the road as the water tries to make its way through.

“I dreamed this,” Sam whispers, choking on his own words.

Dean's not listening.

“Holy fuck,” he says, and leans over the railing to see more closely. “You think they just...?”

“It's probably a natural phenomenon, like lemmings.” Sam glances around, and sees Dominic. He tries to smile at him, but the sight of the rats draws his attention back again almost immediately. It's almost hypnotic: one of the strangest things he's seen.

“Lemmings don't actually jump off cliffs.” This time the voice is Dylan, wheeling up the ramp onto the bridge for a better view. Dean stands aside and Dylan wheels through next to Sam, looking through the wire netting on the edge of the bridge.

“That's just something people believe because of Disney,” he says. “They made a documentary about lemmings, and just threw them over the cliff and filmed from the other side. Now everyone believes that they run off cliffs. If you watch it, you can see that they're not jumping. They're being thrown.”

“Rats aren't like lemmings, anyway,” he goes on. “As a rule, they don't swarm.”

Sam gives him a half-smile. It's something Dylan would know.

“As a rule,” Dominic says, and they all stop, silent for a moment, and look down at the water again.

Sam thinks of his dream, the dark figure, the music, and the dancing rats. He thinks about the Blair family. He thinks of the swarm at their house, how they were only saved by Dean's fire. He thinks of Kynan and Josie.

He thinks about how it's all over now, that the rats are all dead and the town is safe again, but it doesn't feel better, not yet, not with the river despoiled with bodies. It's obscene and hellish in a way he can't get his head round. He doesn't want to look but he can't tear his eyes away.

“I don't care about your schedules,” Dave is saying into his cellphone. “We need to get this cleared and we need to get it cleared now.” He shuts it with a click, and looks down at the water.

“I guess this takes care of our rat problem,” he says. “Typical. Now we've got a water pollution problem and a public health problem. Some scientists are coming down from Ohio State. They've asked that we leave things as they are.”

Sam can't imagine what this will look like in a day's time or two day's time, or however long it takes college scientists to pack up all their equipment and cancel all their classes. There's a faint smell of putrefaction on the air already, like old drains. It catches at the back of his throat, and makes him want to cough.

“The town's water comes from upstream,” Dave says. “But if those things rot. There's no saying what other pests we're going to get.”

“Some people believe that the plagues of Egypt were all scientifically connected,” Dylan says, and Sam smiles to see the look that Dean gives him, half admiring and half confused. “The seas of blood were some kind of algal bloom, and which killed the fish and made the frogs escape onto the land and die, and when all the frogs died, the insect population increased, and then the food got infected and because the first born children were fed more food, they were the ones that died.”

Dean and Sam exchange glances.

“That's cool,” Dean says.

“Not for the Egyptians,” Dylan says, seriously, and they all look back at the water.

Sam can't get his head around it. There's just too many rats, too much death in one place.

He feels Dean's hand on his arm, and it grounds him, and for one moment he's just pathetically grateful that Dean doesn't hate him. It seems that no matter what Sam does wrong, Dean's still going to care if Sam's okay or not. It's kind of a frightening responsibility, really.

In the midst of the rats, the mild current of water lifts the paw of one, and for one grotesque instant, it looks as if it's waving. God. He feels sick, suddenly, and turns away, leaning on the railing and lifting his face up to the sky.

“We can organize a work party,” Dean says. “We gotta clear it.”

Dave nods. They're all in agreement, but Sam figures that what no one's willing to say is that there's something really wrong about it, something macabre and horrid. They want to get rid of it so they don't have to think about it, they don't have to remember it, they don't have to process it.

He's fine with that. He'd prefer not to think about it either.

Mayor Jansen walks through the crowd. She's wearing high-heeled boots that aren't helping her get through the river mud.

“Dan Hapforth is going to bring his digger,” she says. “Load them up on the back of hay trucks. If we get enough people with shovels, we could have it all clear by dark. Or mostly clear.”

“What about the scientists?” Sam asks. She looks at him, and he watches as she flips through some kind of mental register until she recognizes him.

“We'll take some footage,” she says. “But...” she motions at it with her hand. “We can't. We just can't...

Dave pats her elbow. “You're right, Amy,” he says. “We really can't.”

The rats are bloated with river-water, and the river is muddy. Sam's feet sink in half way up to his calves. He's glad of his boots: some of the high-school kids lose their sneakers to the sucking mud.

They all end up sunk to their thighs in water, shoveling the tiny corpses onto the blades of the digger. There are a lot of them, but it still takes a long time: til well past sundown.

Sam works next to Dean all day. It's almost as if for the purposes of the day, nothing happened last night except for a fire in the wheatfield. They all start out cheerful, trading insults and jokes, but as the long hours press on at the task, humor wears thin. They take turns standing out, wrapped in blankets and drinking hot tea from flasks provided by volunteers on the bank, then tag back into the task of digging in the pouring rain.

On Sam's break, he sits next to Dylan on the bank of the river, drinking hot black coffee.

“I think this might be one occasion where it's not the worst thing in the world being the kid in the chair,” Dylan says, wryly. Sam can see it's a front: Dylan would like nothing more than to be out there helping and sharing in the camaraderie of the day.

“You're helping,” Sam offers, handing back his coffee mug, and gesturing to the video camera in Dylan's hand.

“I just wish I was like Joe,” Dylan says, quietly.

“You don't,” Sam says. “Not really. You'd have to tutor yourself in calculus.”

Dylan doesn't say anything.

“And date Shya,” Sam says, and watches Dylan's face screw up.

“Thank you for that mental picture,” Dylan replies.

Sam laughs, and gets back to work.

He's increasingly aware as the day presses on of how close they must have come to disaster last night. There are so many rats, an enormous, ungraspable amount. They were stupid and lucky in equal measures. They should be dead right now. Or their house should be burned down, one or the other. He thinks Dean might be having similar thoughts – but Dean just keeps on digging, his face set in concentration.

The rain, as forecast, keeps on until mid-afternoon, and then the sun makes its way out from behind the clouds and the temperature ratchets up.

“Good thing we started when we did,” Joe Hanley says to Sam as it starts getting hotter. Sam agrees: the stink from the dead bodies intensifies with every degree the temperature rises.

“Good man, Joe,” Dean says, and Sam sees the boy's face crease with pleasure as he starts attacking the rat pile with renewed vigor.

“He's a good kid,” Dean says to Dave.

“He's not the worst,” Dave replies.

In the final count, six trucks are loaded with the bodies, and driven down to the garbage dump beyond the south edge of the town. The pile is soaked in kerosene and the mayor ceremoniously drops a lit lighter on the pile. The fire lights up the evening sky. From the river, it looks like the town is on fire. Fire trucks hose down the fire and the remains are buried in soil from the mayor's landscape gardening business.

The mayor shakes each of them by hand, and there's a cheer from the watching crowd, but Sam's too bone-tired to do anything else but focus on each step he takes back to the car. The muscles of his back are tight and hot. He spots Dominic and gives a half-wave, and then he's just sitting shotgun, and letting Dean drive them home.

That night, Sam showers until the water runs cold, but he still imagines that his skin smells of river water, of mud and death.

Downstairs, Dean's sitting on the couch with a bottle of whiskey cradled against his knee. The television isn't on, he's not reading. He's just sitting there, curtains open, staring out into the night.

“Dean,” Sam begins. It's awkward again, now they're home in their shared house. Sam wants to clear the air between them. He wants to make things right, if he can. He's not sorry he kissed Dean, the regret for that mistake isn't in him. But he hates to see Dean looking so lonely.

Dean looks up, and his eyes shutter, almost immediately.

“No,” Dean says, one flat empty syllable, and Sam doesn't know how to answer that. There's no hesitation, no maybe, no perhaps. Dean's closed to him, a bank vault locked tight against intruders.

As he watches, Dean lifts the bottle to his lips and sculls down a long draught, barely even wincing against the kick of it.

Sam goes upstairs.

It's hot, and he pushes all the covers off the bed, and opens the windows wide in the hope of a breeze. At least he doesn't have to worry about rats coming in, not tonight.

He's been lying there, staring at the ceiling, for maybe an hour before he realizes he's tensed every muscle in his body, straining to hear for Dean's movements around the house, the clink of the bottle, the creak of the couch springs, as though, if he listened hard enough he'd somehow hear Dean breathing, the beating of his heart.

When he closes his eyes, he sees Dean again, like in his dream, and what he remembers isn't the pleasure of it, it's the way he looked at Sam, no doubt, no reservations, just confident and open and pleased to be alive.

Sam takes a deep breath and pulls the pillow over his head, and doesn't listen any more. He recites the Dewey decimal system in his head until he sleeps.

Sam doesn't dream about Dean that night. It's the first time he's dreamed without Dean in as long as he can remember. The dreamscape is empty and colorless.

Something's wrong. Something's really wrong.

He's driving at night, but not the Impala, a red Toyota hatchback, and he's driving it through Cottonwood, from the south, over the old bridge and down through the town. Or where the town would be. There's a tune playing on the radio, a strange, unusual, haunting song.

The streetlights aren't lit. The town is silent. There aren't any people on the streets. The lights of the general store and the bar are dark. There's no one here, he knows it with the impeccable certainty of dream logic. It's empty.

As he drives, braking so he can search the pavements and side streets with his eyes, he can see that no one's been here for a long, long time. The glass in the storefronts is cracked and smeared with dirt. As he turns down Riverdale Street he can see that the upstairs windows have been broken, every one. The houses stare at him with blinded eyes. There's no one here.

He's suddenly desperate to be home, and he speeds through the empty streets, the well-known path out of town, down the roads toward their house.

The wheat-field is a burned wreck and the letterbox is still standing, leaning and blackened.

The house is gone.

Suddenly, he's outside the car, and running, but there's no house there, no yard where their yard used to be, no apple tree, just more burnt wheat, crackling and slipping under his feet.

“Dean?” he shouts, but there's no answer, and he keeps running and running, because he's not home, he doesn't even know where home is, and if he stops to think about it, he's going to realize that he doesn't know who he is, either. He's no one, a burnt out ghost in a ghost town, lost forever.

“Dean,” he calls, but there's no one there.

He's alone, all alone, and Dean's nowhere.

“Sam,” he hears and he looks around, and the light's on, and Dean's there, still in his jeans and t-shirt, shaking him hard.

“Sammy,” Dean says again, and Sam can't breathe, can't speak, can't move.

“They're all gone,” Sam croaks, urgently, and Dean shakes him.

“You're dreaming,” Dean says. “You're just dreaming.”

“No,” Sam says, because he's not, it's real, and then his surroundings come clear to him, he's home in his bedroom with the peeling wallpaper and Dean's there - Dean's there - and Sam's lying in his bed with his sheets kicked all over the place.

“It's just a dream,” Dean says, and Sam closes his eyes and lets his head flop back, presses his cheek against the cool of his pillow, because Dean's right.

“I couldn't find my way back,” Sam says, and feels Dean's hand patting his shoulder.

“You were yelling,” Dean says, and Sam has to look at him, because it's one thing to have a nightmare, another to wake up in the middle of the night and have someone yelling – screaming really, if he's honest – in the next room.

“I couldn't find you,” Sam says, and Dean just holds onto him.

“I'm here,” Dean says, and when Sam opens his eyes, Dean's eyes are serious. “I mean it, Sam. I'm not going anywhere. I'm here.”

Sam sits up on his elbows.

“I can't tell the difference,” he says.

Dean stiffens, and Sam realizes he's said the wrong thing, somehow.

“I mean, what's a dream,” he says. “The nightmares are so real. But there are good dreams as well. Things I wish were real.” Words slip away from him, and he just stares at Dean, willing him to understand.

“Don't look at me that way,” Dean says, and scratches at the back of his neck, avoiding Sam's gaze.

“What way?” Sam asks, quietly.

“The way that looks like you think I've got the answers,” Dean says, and when he meets Sam's eyes, there's a crease between his brows.

“Do you think I'll ever remember everything?” Sam asks.

“I don't know,” Dean says. He pauses, looks at where his hand is still pressed comfortingly against Sam's shoulder. “I hope so.”

“I thought you didn't want me to,” Sam says, and he didn't mean to say that, but there's a curious intimacy in the yellow pool of light and the two of them awake in the middle of the dark hours of the morning.

Dean shrugs a little. “Maybe I'm not sure I'll like what you think of me when you do,” he says.

Sam digests that, thinking through the implications, turning the possibilities over in his head like polished stones.

“The way I feel about you,” Sam says. “Did I feel like this before? Or is it a new thing?”

Dean stands, and walks to the door, and Sam thinks he's not going to answer.

“Don't you get it?” Dean says. “I can't tell you who you are. I can't tell you what to feel. I can't even tell you how you felt, before. I didn't know.”

Sam doesn't understand. He opens his mouth to reply, and Dean interrupts him.

“I thought I did, and then everything changed.”

He pauses, and Sam waits. He's not sure he wants to hear this, after all.

“You were right, that night in the bar. You have to choose for yourself what you want. Otherwise neither of us will know that it's real.”

“I can't take away your choice.”

Sam guesses that his confusion is written on his face. He sits up and curls his hands around his knees. He needs Dean to stay. He needs Dean to make things right again. He needs Dean to sit down on the bed and hold him, until he doesn't feel so confused, until he remembers who he is.

“I'm your brother,” Dean says, as if that explains everything instead of nothing and switches off the light, closing the door behind him.

Chapter Text

The next morning, Sam gets up early, and cooks the breakfast. It's strange looking out the window at the burned wheat, and he wonders how long it will take to regrow. If the soil will have to be turned over and the wheat resown, or if somehow the seeds and roots could have survived the inferno.

Dean gets up later, and Sam can see just by looking at him that he hasn't slept, again – there are dark circles under his eyes and his skin looks almost transparently pale. He drinks two cups of black coffee, and picks at his eggs.

They spend the day quietly. Dean tinkers in the front yard on the Impala's engine, and Sam reads on the porch. He's pretty sure that Dean's taking care to stay in sight after last night's dream, but Sam's too touched to challenge him about it. It's another hot, airless day, and it's hard to believe there was rain yesterday, let alone that a few months ago they were a foot deep in snow.

It's so peaceful. Sam gets caught up in his reading, and when he looks up, the sun's passed its peak, and his watch tells him it's nearly 3pm.

When his phone rings, the noise of it cuts through the quiet, and he's tempted not to answer it. He's here, Dean's here, for once they're not at odds, and he's pretty sure that there's no one in the world he really wants to hear from right now.

He answers it, anyway.

“Mr Winchester?”

It takes him a while to recognize the voice – whoever-it-is sounds breathy and panicked.

“They're all gone,” the voice says, and Sam's frozen for a moment in a sudden memory of last night's dream, the empty, staring houses. “They're all gone except for me and they think it's my fault or they think I must know where they are but I don't know, I just don't know.”

“Dylan?” Sam asks. “Slow down.”

“The rest of them,” Dylan says, and he sounds close to sobbing. “They're all gone. Shya. And Joe. And Maddie Duncan. And Maia Jansen... all of them. All the kids. And nobody knows where they are.”

“Where are you?” Sam asks. Dean throws down a rag onto the ground and walks over.

“I'm at the police station,” Dylan says. “They're all in there talking. But they keep looking at me, and asking me, and I don't know. I don't. Please. Mr Winchester. You've got to come. You're the only one that listens to me. Otherwise. I don't know what's going to happen.”

Sam puts his hand over the receiver, mouths “Dylan Atherton” at Dean, and speaks back into the phone.

“You hold on,” he says, as reassuringly as he knows how. “We'll be there as soon as we can.”

He hangs up and meets Dean's curious stare.

“He says they're all gone,” he says to Dean. “All the kids. They've all gone.”

The inside of the sheriff's office is bright with artificial light. One of the fluorescent bulbs is blinking, just a tiny quiver in the constancy of the light that casts odd shadows over the desks.

There's no one at reception.

They exchange glances, and Dean leans forward and presses the buzzer, long and loud.

Sheila appears, but she doesn't smile, even for Dean, just wipes under reddened eyes with a balled-up Kleenex.

“Dave's busy,” she says. “It's an emergency.”

Sam comes forward and stands next to Dean.

“Sheila,” he says. “We know. Dylan called us, but he wasn't making a lot of sense. He said...”

Her face creases, and she sniffs, loudly, and blows her nose. “They're all gone,” she says. “Maddie, Lissa, Shya Atherton, the mayor's daughter, David's Joe, the whole lot of them. Every child in this town between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. All over town this morning, parents calling them down to breakfast, and they're all gone.”

Sam just stands there.

“How many kids?” Dean asks, and Sheila and Sam answer together.

“Twenty two,” Sheila says.
“Maybe twenty-five,” Sam says.

They look at each other. “They're in the library a lot,” he says. “They come and study and hang out after school.”

He watches her look him up and down with an appraising glint in her eyes. He makes himself stand there, studies his feet in the stained old boots, still damp from the river, and forces himself to look her in the face.

“Dylan called us,” Dean says, and the friendliness is stripped right out of his voice, leaving it gruff and bare. It's at that moment that Sam realizes Sheila isn't looking at Sam as a guy who's here to help. She's looking at him like he's a suspect.

“Dave's going to want to see you two,” Sheila says, and leaves them standing there in the empty waiting room.

“What the hell?” Sam asks, softly, and Dean takes a step closer, so Sam can feel his warmth against his side.

“It's going to be okay,” Dean says, but Sam's not sure if either of them believe it.

“At first we thought they'd gone on some kind of an adventure,” Dave says. “That they were tricking us, somehow.” He's got a pile of paper on the desk in front of him, and he's looking worn-down and old. There's a fly circling the room, fat and lazy, and Sam stands, unasked, and pushes the window open. It's got a security lock on it and only opens an inch, and it's too hot outside for the air to make a lot of difference, but the fly traps itself in the corner of the window frame and finally makes its way outside.

“But they've left everything. Joe's left his computer and his wallet and all his cards. His phone. Carla Atherton says Shya's the same. She's left her phone, her sketchbooks. Joe's left all his clothes: his mother thinks he's taken just one pair of jeans and a t-shirt – what he was wearing last night. The other parents report the same thing.

“No notes, or anything,” Dean says, and it's not really a question.

Dave shakes his head.

“No sign of any break-ins at any of the houses. No disturbances. No one heard anything. It's like goddamn aliens came down and just beamed them out of their beds.”

“And their beds were slept in,” Sam says, and Dave nods.

Sam sits back down, and there's a long silence.

“Grace has taken the other parents back to our place,” Dave says. “She's good in a crisis.” Sam imagines Dave's wife, short and confident, and the impact of Joe's disappearance on their close-knit family. “She told me, find our son,” Dave says.

“I've called in the Feds,” Dave says. “They're bringing their crime scene unit, and more men. And I can't head this investigation, not properly, not when Joe's out there somewhere, lost.”

“Maybe they'll just turn up,” Dean suggests, but Sam can tell he doesn't believe it.

Dave doesn't answer, just stands and turns away from the two of them.

There's another silence, an uncomfortable one.

“Why did Dylan call us?” Sam asks, and Dave doesn't answer.

“You boys understand this isn't personal,” he says, instead.

“Like hell it isn't,” Dean says, and Sam looks between the two of them. Dave turns around, and his face is twisted and strange. Dean's eyes are shining in his face, and to Sam he looks dangerous, all of a sudden. It's more than that, though. He's hurt and refusing to admit it.

“No one in town believes you're brothers,” Dave says, and Sam can't follow this conversation, not at all.

“We're brothers,” they answer, both at the same time, and their eyes meet, for a fraction of a second, and Sam smiles, because he just can't help himself. It's the constant thing in his life, his whole fucked-up messed-up crazy life. He's Dean's brother. That's who he is.

“You let Joseph help out at the garage,” Dave says to Dean, and Sam watches all expression fall away from Dean's face, leaving it bare and cold.

“You let him,” Dean reminds him. “You didn't think he was at risk from me then.

“I didn't think so,” Dave says, and Sam notes the past tense, and sees Dean notice it as well.

“I thought we were friends,” Dean says, in a low voice. “What, some kids go missing, and suddenly you're questioning us?”

“You're new to town,” Dave says, and there's a hint of apology there, but Dean's not going to accept it.

“We've lived here a year,” Dean answers.

“We know Sam's had some problems,” Dave says, and this time he's really apologetic, spitting out each word like he hates it but has to say it.

Sam doesn't say anything. He feels the words fall outside him, like leaves off a tree. Dave's words don't hurt him, because he knows they're not true.

“We're talking about Sam,” Dean says, almost pleading, and Sam knows, clear as anything, no matter how this turns out, there will be no more cosy nights at the garage, no more poker games, no more family dinners. Dean will never forget this. Dean will never forgive Dave even one moment of doubt, not for Dean's own sake, but on Sam's behalf.

“For Christ's sake,” Dave says, and Sam leans forward.

“It's okay,” Sam says, and they both look at him as though they'd forgotten he was there, as if suddenly the table had spoken, or the chair gotten up and joined in the conversation.

“Sam...” Dean says, and Sam thinks of how many people Dean's lost, how much he's given up, and it lends him words to defend himself. To defend them both.

“We're brothers,” Sam says.

Dave tries to say something and Sam just keeps going. “We spent last night at our house, which doesn't help if you suspect both of us at once, for doing … whatever it is you think we've done. We went home after clearing the river and we were pretty tired so we went to bed. And I woke up in the night because I had a nightmare and Dean was definitely there.” He doesn't care what that sounds like. It's the truth.

“I know all the kids from the library. Dean knows Joe, through you. And Shya, through Joe, I guess. But he doesn't know Maddie or Maia or any of the others. I don't know where they've gone, and we'll do anything we can to help find them.”

Dean makes to interrupt and Sam shushes him with a gesture. “No, Dean. We've got nothing to hide. Dave just needs to take us off his list. He's probably talking to everyone.” He looks at Dave, takes in the shadows beneath his eyes, the dullness in his face. “We'll ask any questions you have,” he says. “We didn't hurt anyone.”

“We're your friends,” Dean hisses at Dave.

“He's my son,” Dave says, and his voice is thick with regret. “My little boy. He's almost a grown man now, a grown man I'm going to be proud of, and I remember his first step, the first time he smiled at me, his first day at school. I want to see him go to college, see him get married, see him have his own children. Wouldn't your own father want that for you two?”

Sam hates the way Dean pales, the way his mouth tries to make a comeback, and fails. He sits down, and Sam reaches over to touch his knee, to comfort him.

“So what do you want to know?” Dean asks, defeated, and Dave doesn't look triumphant. Sam figures they've all lost, when it comes down to it.

When they come out of the police station, maybe an hour and a half later, Dean's thin-lipped and silent. Sam wishes there was something he could do. They've answered all the questions he might have imagined, and some others. He let Dean field most of the ones before this year, recognizing the truth woven into the story, and the untruths. They spent last year trying to save the world. There's really no way to tell the truth about that, even if he remembered all the details.

“Where do you think they are?” he asks, and Dean shakes his head, scanning the empty street.

Sam's never seen it so quiet, except in his dreams.

“I don't know,” he says. “I don't know.”

That night, Sam gets his laptop out for what feels like the first time in ages. He feels rusty – his typing fingers blur words into each other, and he racks his brain for search terms that will help him get a handle on what's happened. Twenty two teenagers, gone from their beds in the middle of the night. No sign of break-ins. Every one of their precious possessions left behind.

Dean sits across the table from him, feet up on another chair, drinking a beer.

“You think it's our kind of gig,” he says, and Sam looks up from the keyboard which seems populated with a whole different set of letters from what he's expecting.

“I don't know,” he admits.

“We would have gone after it in the past,” Dean says, and Sam nods.

“We would have traveled half-way across the country for something like this,” he answers, hoping for that familiar glint of excitement in Dean's face.

“It's not the same when you live in a place,” Dean says, sourly, and Sam nods, because that's true, too.

“Dave was just doing what he had to do,” Sam says.

“We've eaten at his house,” Dean says. “I've rebuilt most of the engine of that piece of crap he calls a truck.”

“He was just doing his job,” Sam says.

“He says no one thinks we're brothers,” Dean says.

“I knew that already,” Sam says.

Dean bites his lip. Sam wonders what he's trying not to say.

“It's not that that bothers me,” Dean says.

“You don't mind the town thinks you're my domestic life-partner?” Sam asks.

Dean shrugs.

“I care that someone who I counted as our friend thinks that because of that, somehow we're a danger to the kids in town.”

Sam can't help but agree. It leaves a nasty taste in his mouth, as well.

“He thinks we're more important to each other than brothers,” he begins and Dean's eyes narrow.

“There's no one more important to me than you, ” Dean says. His voice is strained, and Sam can't work out what it is about this that's bothering Dean so much. Dean stands up and paces the circumference of the room.

“No one thinks you're a child molester,” Sam says, helplessly.

“You don't even remember who I am,” Dean yells. “I could be that, and you wouldn't know. I could be anyone. Maybe I'm not your brother. Maybe I'm just some stranger that you're using to try and fit into the holes in your head.”

Sam snorts. He knows that's not true. Dean's like his hands, or his feet, or the nose on his face: part of him, all the way.

“The only reason I don't remember is because you won't tell me,” Sam snaps back.

“I shouldn't have to tell you,” Dean replies. “Don't you get it? I want you to remember by yourself. I want you to decide for yourself.”

Sam puts his hands over his eyes, because it hurts to see. Behind his lids the world is black and twisty, a forest of brambles. He concentrates as hard as he can, until it feels like he's drowning in the black inside. He feels as if he just tries hard enough, everything will come back, but there's nothing, just the sharp needle of a headache starting behind his eyes.

He opens his eyes, and Dean' s looking at him, and he's got nothing to offer.

He sees the hope fade out of Dean's eyes.

Sam looks down at the worn patch in the rug, the hole that's there, the wood of the floorboards visible through it. He feels the moment slip away from him, and Dean turns and walks the circumference of the room, bay window to bookcase to hall door, and back. He looks like a prisoner.

“You heard what Dylan said on the phone. Dave had already talked to him. You think Dylan was involved? No one in their right mind would think that Dylan was involved. No one in their right mind would think you were involved.” Sam's not even sure Dean's listening.

He watches Dean try and calm himself down, take deep breaths. He stops by the window, draws the curtain aside, and looks out into the dark.

There's no one more important to me than you. Sam tastes the phrase in his mouth, turns it over and over in his head. He knows that it's true, but not what it means. Not fully.

He types “missing children Ohio” into a Google search, and shakes his head at the sheer number of results.

“I guess the thing is, why wasn't he?” Dean says, after a long while, and Sam stops typing, and just looks at him.

“Say that again,” he says.

“Sam?” Dean says, in his concerned tone, and Sam shakes his head.

“Say that again,” he says. He needs to think clearly, to work it out.

“Why wasn't Dylan involved?” Dean asks, like he's not sure that that's the question Sam even means.

“Exactly,” Sam says.

“Why all the other kids except for him?” Dean says, like he's finally on the same wavelength, and this is definitely something Sam remembers, the times when their brains leap along together, when any problem they're talking about gets dissolved between them.

He looks at Dean, who leaves the window and comes and crouches down in front of him, eyes alive with interest.

“You think something took them,” Dean says, and Sam nods. He doesn't know what, but he does know those kids. He knows Shya wouldn't go without Dylan, that Joe wouldn't go without Shya. They wouldn't leave their families behind to face the consequences.

“And that whatever it was – whoever it was – didn't want Dylan, because he's...”

“Because of his CP,” Sam fills in. “Maybe. It depends what it was. But maybe it wanted him but couldn't take him.”

“Because whatever it was didn't take the kids itself,” Dean says. “Because it made them come to it.”

The Atherton's house is down the back of the general store. It's white plaster-board, with a small verandah out front. There's no ramp up to the front door, which Sam guesses is typical of Martin Atherton. He doesn't want to admit his son's disabled, even if it means Dylan can only come and go from the back door.

Dean knocks.

There's a long wait, some sound inside, and then the door swings open.

Dylan looks up at them with red eyes.

“They're not here,” he says. “They're out with the other parents looking.”

Sam crouches down so they're at eye level with each other.

“We wanted to talk to you, actually,” he says, as gently as he can.

“Everyone does. I don't know. I don't know,” Dylan says, and his voice cracks a little.

“Everyone thinks that I know where they went to, that they would have told me before they left. But they're all just trying to cover up the fact that they're scared that someone took them.”

“If someone did, they didn't take you,” Dean points out, and Dylan scowls at him, wheeling backwards until he's back inside the front room.

“Who'd want me?” Dylan asks. His voice is so filled with pain that Sam winces in sympathy. He doesn't know which would be worse, to be suspected of being part of something terrible, or to be left behind without a word.

“Shya wouldn't have left without you,” Sam says, and steps over the threshold. “You know she wouldn't.”

“She did,” Dylan says, sullenly. “They all did.”

Sam sits down on the couch opposite. Dean stands behind him, a silent presence.

“Do you know where they went?” Sam asks.

Dylan doesn't answer, just stares down at his knees.

“Dylan, look at me.”

Dylan looks up, reluctantly. His dark eyes are wet, and his hands are trembling. As Sam watches, tears well up, and one spills, unchecked, down Dylan's cheek. He scrubs at it with a fist.

“You can tell me,” Sam says. “No matter how bad it seems.”

For a long minute, he thinks Dylan will stay silent, but then he sobs, a long indrawn breath of grief.

“I dreamed they left,” Dylan says. “I dreamed they left and when I woke up, they'd gone.”

Sam sits very still.

“Do you think.” Dylan stops. “Do you think I did it? Do you think I made them disappear?”

Sam lets out a breath that wants to be a laugh but doesn't quite make it.

“I'm almost definitely sure you didn't,” he says.

“I dreamed about the rats, too,” Dylan says, and Sam's humor vaporizes, just like that.

“What about the rats?” Dean asks, and Dylan doesn't look at him, just keeps his eyes on Sam's unsmiling face.

“I dreamed I saw them dance themselves into the river,” Dylan says, “and then it was true.”

Sam feels the world tilt a little. “Dance themselves?” he asks, and his voice sounds strange even to himself.

“Like little drum majorettes or something,” Dylan answers.

“Like can-can dancers,” Dean supplies.

“Like Triumph of the Will,” Sam says, and Dean cuffs him on the back of his head.

“It's a film about Hitler,” Sam explains, and Dylan nods.

“They had it at the Odeon,” he says. “We all went, but most of us didn't like it. But the rats danced down to the river, like soldiers, and they threw themselves in. They filled the river up, and more jumped on top, and they almost made a bridge. But the river was too wide, and they drowned. ”

Sam looks at Dean. “I dreamed about the rats, too,” he says. “The night after... after the fire.”

The night after I kissed you.

Dean swallows, with an audible click.

“What did you dream, last night?” he asks Dylan.

“I dreamed music,” Dylan says. “And we all danced. All the kids. I couldn't keep up. Shya went down the hallway and out onto the street. And Joe was there, and she held his hand. And Maddie. She waved at me as she went past. All of them.”

“Dancing?” Dean asks, and Dylan nods his head. His voice is dreamy, almost.

“And they went down the street, and I went after them, but I couldn't keep up, they went too quickly. And they didn't look back. Shya always looks back. But she didn't. And they reached the corner, into Main Street, and they went around it, and I followed. And when I got to the corner.”

He stops.

“They were gone,” Sam says.

“All gone,” Dylan says, and starts to cry, awkward, heaving sobs that shake his thin frame.

“And when you woke up, they had all gone,” Dean says, and Dylan just cries louder.

“It's worse than that,” he manages, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve.

Sam waits, quietly.

“I wanted to go too,” Dylan says. “It was like,” he stops, and thinks hard. “I can't describe it.”

“Why did you want to go?” Dean asks, his voice as careful and gentle as Sam's ever heard it.

“Because I knew, when we got there – wherever it was – I'd be able to walk,” Dylan says. “I'd be able to run on the track team. Or play basketball. I'd be happy. I wasn't fast enough. And so I'm stuck here, all by myself. I got left behind.”

“We'll find the others,” Dean says, and Sam flicks him a look. Dean doesn't promise things he can't be sure of. Mostly. “We'll bring them home.”

Dylan shakes his head.

“Don't you get it?” he says. “If the dream was true – like the rat dream was – they're happy now. They've got what they want. Shya and Joe are together, and no one's parents are minding. They don't have to go to school. They don't have to do chores. I don't know where they are, except that it's better than here. It's so much better than here.”

“I don't want you to bring them back,” Dylan says. “I want you to find out where they are, and how I can go, too.”

The drive home feels longer than usual. Dean's silent, he's not even humming under his breath like he does when he's concentrating.

Sam knows how he feels: his own head is whirling.

Suddenly, Dean hits the steering-wheel, hard, and lurches to brake at the side of the road.

“I dreamed that,” Dean says, like it's hard to confess.

“The kids leaving?” Sam asks.

Dean shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “Not that one. The one where the rats jumped in the river.”

Sam doesn't say anything. He just opens the door and gets out of the car, where the air is clearer. Where he can think.

“Sam?”

He hears Dean get out of the car, the rasp of his footsteps in the dirt.

His own voice, when it comes, is flinty-thin.

“How come you didn't tell me?” He chooses each word carefully. “At the river. You had a dream and it came true.”

He turns to look at Dean, whose hands are jammed into his pockets, who looks perhaps the most insecure that Sam's ever seen.

“I thought it was a fluke,” Dean says, and Sam can see that he's telling the truth. But it's not the whole truth. Not by a long stretch.

“I had that dream, too,” Sam says, and watches Dean's eyes widen. “The rats danced to the bridge and you were there. And then they leaped into the river, I guess, I woke up before that happened.”

He studies Dean's face, watches the shutters come down. No. He's not going to let Dean do this, not again.

“I've been dreaming a lot, lately,” Sam says. Dean looks away, but it's only a matter of a couple of strides before he's right there in Dean's space. Dean doesn't step back, just looks up at him.

The sun is setting behind them, and its reflection is blood-red in Dean's eyes.

He holds onto Dean's arms, and shakes him, a gentle little shake. Dean watches him, that same look that Sam's got used to, these last weeks. That appraising, careful look. Sam used to think that it was because Dean has been wary about what Sam might do. But it's more than that. Maybe Dean's been worried about himself, too.

“I dreamed about us,” Sam says, and he can hear the pleading in his voice. “I dreamed that we were swimming. A long time ago, before I left to go to college, I think. I dreamed you kissed me. It was so vivid, Dean. By the river.”

Dean doesn't say anything. He's biting his lip, like that will stop his own words coming out. Sam doesn't care. They're going to have this conversation.

“But that one didn't come true,” Sam says, swallowing around a lump in his throat. “Neither did the one when we were hunting, and we watched the meteor shower from the hood of the Impala. Nor did the one in the motel room.”

He searches Dean's empty face, looking for some trace of emotion there, but Dean won't look at him.

He doesn't know why that's so disappointing. He should know better by now.

He turns back to where the Impala sits, parked at angles to the edge of the road. He takes a breath, and holds it, and then another, calming himself down, somehow, somehow, and takes a step back to the car. It doesn't matter. They'll get past this. He'll stop feeling like this, sometime. He'll make himself normal, if not happy. It'll fade. He knows better than anyone that memory can be relied on to be unreliable.

“When I kissed you, there was a bird overhead,” Dean says, from behind him. “It sounded really close, and I flinched, and you laughed at me, and I knew it was going to be alright. We'd still be us. I hadn't broken it.”

Sam stills.

“The meteor shower was in Montana, after we put down that Rougarou. You said it was the closest we were going to get to a victory parade. You had a cracked rib, and I'd torn the ligament in my middle finger, but I still think that was. Probably the best time, between us. Because it wasn't about getting off, it wasn't that way it is, when it's desperate and hard and urgent, after a hunt, because there's all that energy left and you're exhausted but you know you'll never sleep.”

Sam feels the memory of that slot into place inside his mind.

“The next day you had to get a splint on your finger,” Sam says. “Big metal thing. Looked like you were permanently flipping the bird for about a month.”

He turns, and Dean's eyes are almost glowing in the last rays of daylight.

“You dreamed those ones, too,” Sam says, and Dean nods, then shakes his head.

“I dreamed about them,” he says. “They're memories, Sam.”

Sam holds a hand up to his forehead, tries to speak, fails.

“Sammy,” Dean says, and he's even closer then, touching Sam's face.

“You bastard,” Sam whispers, and Dean flinches back, drops his hands to his sides.

“You made me forget,” he says, suddenly certain. “Like you made Lisa and Ben forget.”

“It wasn't like that,” Dean answers. “You were...”

“You made me forget. You've been terrified of me remembering, all this time.”

“Sammy,” Dean says, voice tortured, and Sam shakes his head.

“I don't remember,” he says, and he's aware that he's shouting, now. The sense of betrayal is overwhelming, he feels like he's drowning in it.

“Congratulations, I still don't remember. You tried your hardest to make me into the brother you wanted and I'm still not that and I still don't remember and I still don't know who I am.”

Dean stands, hands by his sides, the setting sun casting strange shadows across his face. He looks like someone else, and Sam remembers his words from before: Dean might not be Dean at all, he might be someone else. Something else Sam's dreamed up out the pit of his imagination. It's an unnerving thought, even though he's pretty sure it's not true.

“You were all broken up,” Dean says, after a long, long time. “Inside.”

Sam looks away, the line of the sun setting on the horizon. It's always been one of his favorite times of the day here, the still quiet with the sunset painting the wheat gold then scarlet then purple.

“Death put a wall in your mind, and you broke it down. And all at once, you remembered everything, going down to the cage and all that happened there, the year after you made it out without your soul and the things you did, and everything else. And I thought I'd lost you again, but you were alive.”

Sam remembers a cinderblock room and a knife in his hand. The sharp snick of a blade through human flesh. He remembers Castiel.

“He looked at you, after you tried to kill him, and it was like... he was himself, but not himself. Worse than when we first met him. All the human rubbed away, like chalk off a pavement.”

“He wanted us to bow down to him,” Sam says, finding the memory, and fitting it into place.

“You wouldn't,” Dean says, and Sam thinks maybe Dean's proud of him for that. Sam remembers Dean kneeling at the angel's feet. He remembers Cas touching Dean's hair, almost fondly, like a man might pet a dog. He remembers a rage he had thought he'd left behind him. The memory of it tastes sweet in his mouth, like a kiss from an old friend.

He remembers Castiel's eyes, neither human nor angelic, completely other in their blue glow.

“He touched me on the forehead,” Sam says. “And then he disappeared.”

The sun's nearly gone. Dean's a shadowy figure on the side of the road.

“I didn't know, at first,” he says. “What he'd done. He said, earlier that day, he'd fix you when this was done. I think that might have been his way of keeping his promise.”

“My memory,” Sam says. “You think he took my memory and that fixed me?”

Dean shakes his head.

“I think he took away the parts that he thought were broken,” Dean says.

“My memories of the cage,” Sam says. “No, all the memories that hurt me.”

“Yeah,” Dean replies. He rubs a hand across his mouth, and gazes out at the lowering darkness.

“Jessica dying” Sam says, and remembers her face, smiling at him by candlelight. “And the things I did after I came back from the cage. And the things I did before that. The people I killed.”

Dean nods. “The things that were hurting you.”

Sam thinks it through.

“He took away my memories of us, together,” he realizes. “And you thought it was because that hurt me. That you'd hurt me. And the last months, I've been dreaming memories, because they were inside me all along.”

It makes sense, suddenly and clearly, the dreams he's had. The feelings and memories waking up inside him, like wheat beginning to grow in a field after a fire.

“And you dreamed them, too,” he says, and he thinks Dean's smiling, something about the set of his shoulders and the jaunt of his chin, but it's too dark to see. It's urgent, suddenly, and he walks closer, finds Dean's chin with his hand and raises it.

“They're my memories, too,” Dean says, defensively. His eyes are nearly black, but Sam knows him, maybe not everything, maybe not all the details, but the important things are written on the parts of his soul that even a fresh new God couldn't erase.

They've never been that great at words. Dean doesn't trust them: he's always been a man of action.

Sam leans down and kisses him, and this time, Dean kisses back.

He leans up, into it, and Sam doesn't let go of him, just slides his hand to cradle Dean's face, remembering with every touch of his hand the blade of Dean's cheekbone, the line of his jaw, the soft place under his ear where his stubble disappears into the clean stretch of his throat. Sam touches that place with his fingertips, and feels Dean gasp into his mouth, and Sam takes advantage of that, slides his tongue against Dean's, clean edge of teeth, rough stubble, soft, wide span of lip.
Dean tastes like new grass and old coffee; he tastes like brother.

They kiss in the darkness until they can't breathe, but Sam can't let Dean go. He holds him close, hard body tucked into his, meeting at chest and belly and groin and thigh, holds him and breathes into the hair at his temple.

“You thought Cas made me forget the bad things,” Sam whispers, and feels Dean draw away. Sam holds him tighter.

“I'm not sure he wasn't right, about that part,” Dean says, and Sam can hear how hard it is for him. “Dude's, like, a god, now.”

“We've met gods,” Sam says. “And most of them were douches.”

Dean huffs a laugh, and Sam chases it with his mouth. Dean pulls back.

“There was never a time when I didn't feel like this,” Sam says, not even sure how he can be so certain.

“Maybe I didn't give you a choice,” Dean replies. “I was older. I should have known better.”

Sam digests that.

“When did you ever get me to do anything I didn't want to?” he asks.

Dean is quiet. Sam strokes the line of his back, feels the stretch of his vertebrae, the strong muscle of Dean's shoulder. Dean gives a little shudder, and Sam smiles into the growing darkness.

“The night of the fire,” he says, and then stops. “You wanted me to remember,” he realizes, but Dean shakes his head.

“I didn't want you to think it was new,” Dean says. “I didn't want to have the advantage when you didn't know. I...”

“You didn't want me to remember later and blame you,” Sam says. He gets it, for a moment, why Dean was so hurt this evening by Dave's words.

Dean turns his head, and rests his face under the curve of Sam's chin, and Sam can feel him breathing there.

“What he said. I don't regret the way we are. But I don't... I don't fucking rejoice in the fact that when this all started you were a kid and I... I wasn't. It's something I have to deal with. I made my choice. But tonight, I thought... Dave's right to mistrust me. Cas was right to erase that part of me from your mind.”

“He wasn't. They weren't,” Sam says, holding Dean closer.

Dean kisses desperately, like Sam is the only redemption he'll ever be allowed. Sam moves his hands all the way down Dean's back, finds the curve of his ass, pulls him in still closer. He's still working out how this works: his mind's forgotten the details, but his hands know their own way, and it's new and utterly and entirely familiar.

An owl calls from somewhere in the night, a haunted, lonely sound.

Sam stops for a moment, and pulls back. Dean's a solid shadow in his arms, and Sam wants to see. He wants to remember this, properly. He wants to rediscover everything, in his own time.

“Home,” he says. “Let's get home.”

Chapter Text

Dean drives erratically through the darkness. Sam reaches across the space between them, touches the back of Dean's neck, strokes it. Dean looks over at him, grins, carefree and reckless for once, and Sam's dizzy again, for a moment, at the overlay of dream and reality.

“I dreamed about this,” Sam says, and Dean grins wider.

“No mystery there,” he answers. “The number of times we've...” his voice trails off.

“What?” Sam says.

“We're forgetting the most important thing,” Dean says, and brakes as they pull in to the driveway.
He's out of the car almost before he's parked, and up the front steps and into the living room. He opens up Sam's laptop and pushes it towards him.

“It's the same thing,” Dean says. “We dreamed the same things. We dreamed the same dreams. Not just everyday dreams, little dogs driving cars on the moon, or your teeth falling out, or being naked in front of your tenth grade chemistry class - our own dreams. Our own memories.”

He stops for a moment, and flushes a little.

“The dream of my heart,” he says. “The thing I wanted the most of all.” Sam wants to go over and hug him, right then. He wants to get this talking over with, take Dean upstairs, and sees if he needs his memory to be able to fuck all night. That's the dream of his own heart, in this moment.

“Sam,” Dean says, urgently. “Like the kids,” and Sam's drawn back into the moment.

“Dylan says he dreamed that when he got where they all were going, he'd be able to walk. He'd be able to be like the others. He'd be able to be with Shya and Joe and not be in pain anymore. But he dreamed the same dream that they all did.”

“They went after the dream of their hearts,” Sam says.

“A shared dream,” Dean says. “They dreamed the same things. Dylan dreamed the same thing as the others. Like we dreamed the same dreams as each other.”

Sam looks away first.

“Whatever it was – it made them dream the same dream. It got inside their head and led them away.”

“Exactly.”

Sam tries to imagine it: the kids stepping out of their bedrooms, climbing out windows and dancing through hallways, along the streets, onwards and away. He doesn't know where they could have gone. He wonders if they're actually somewhere good, but he doubts it, somehow.

“Why dancing?” he asks Dean, and Dean answers, immediately.

“Because there was music. In all the dreams, there was music.”

Sam thinks it through. Remembers waking, feeling as though he'd lost something, a hum of melody still on his lips, a ripple of chords still in his ears.

He remembers kissing Dean at the river. He remembers standing on the bridge together. He remembers Dean riding him in the half-light of some anonymous motel room.

He remembers the rats dancing.

He takes the laptop, and opens Google – and this time he knows exactly where to look.

Dean makes a pot of coffee at midnight, and one each hour after that.

By four am, Sam's completely wired, a little ticklish muscle jumping in his eye, a small tic in his hands. He feels good, though. He feels really fucking good.

He reads out to Dean from his monitor.

“Please your honors,” said he, “I'm able,
By means of a secret charm to draw
All creatures living beneath the sun,
That creep or swim or fly or run
After me so as you never saw
And I chiefly use my charm
On creatures that do people harm
The mole and toad and newt and viper
And people call me the Pied Piper.”

Dean looks blank.

Sam explains. “He comes into town, and there's a rat plague, and he plays music and they drown in the river. But the town officials won't pay him for it, so he steals the children, and sends them through a mountain to Eastern Europe.”

“It's just a children's story,' Dean says.

“Maybe, but wait a minute,” Sam answers. “Browning, the poet, was an atheist for much of his earlier life, but that changed later on, after he'd moved to Europe. His wife writes in a letter...” - he flips between windows, finds the other website - “my beloved Robert is much changed since we moved to Pisa. He is subject to dreams which leave him waking in terror and calling on the name of the Almighty. I fear these onslaughts are the direct result of his trip with our dear Percy to his cottage by the Weser.”

“The Weser?” Dean asks.

Sam smiles, aware he may be looking a little smug, but too pleased with himself to care.

“The river the Piper drowns the rats in,” he says. “Before he abducts the children.”

“So you're basing this theory on the fact that this English poet had a religious conversion in the same place as he set his rat story.”

“Maybe he saw something. Maybe it opened his eyes to the things in the darkness. Maybe he turned to Christianity because he thought it was the only thing that could protect him and his family.”

Dean looks skeptical.

“Any better ideas, genius?” Sam asks.

Dean reaches over, and reads through the poem. He grimaces and turns the laptop back towards Sam. “In the story they never come back,” he says.

“It's just a story,” Sam says. “Maybe Browning heard something. Maybe he saw something, and made the story up from there. But those sorts of powers.” He steeples his fingers, thinking through the implications.

“We're talking some kind of demon, or god,” Dean says. “Just what we need, some kind of Victorian demonic Justin Bieber, with all the kids following behind him. But where have they gone? Where the hell have they gone?”

Sam sits back. Dean's hands are clenched into fists, and it's the easiest thing that Sam's ever done in his life to reach across the kitchen table and uncurl Dean's fingers with his own, to hold his hand there. Dean looks for a moment like he's going to pull away, but then he turns his hand so they're palm to palm.

Dean gives Sam's fingers a breaking squeeze and then scrubs his eyes with his hands.

“I think we shouldn't sleep,” he says, and yawns enormously. “Whatever this is, we're vulnerable when we sleep.”

Sam shivers at the image of some supernatural creature sorting through his brain, turning things over to use against him, raking through the mess there with crooked grasping fingers.

“I need the library,” he says, and Dean takes his hands away from his face long enough to quirk a mocking grin.

“Nerd,” he says. “I thought people didn't need libraries any more, I thought that's what the internet was for.”

Sam rolls his eyes.

“Jerk” Sam replies, and Dean smiles, beatifically, and yawns again.

Even though it's before dawn, there's a light in Dave's window at the police station: neither of them suggest dropping in to see how he's doing.

Sam unlocks the library door, and keys in the code for the alarm.

Dean looks around.

“What do you need?” he asks, and Sam gives him a weak smile.

“More coffee,” he says. “I know my way around, it'll be quicker.”

Dean heads off to the kitchen and Sam gathers a pile of books from the shelves.

“You use the student computer,” Sam suggests. “Cross reference...”

“Disappearances and infestations,” Dean says, sitting down and switching the Mac on with a look of distaste as it rings out its start-up chord into the silence.

“Too many and not enough,” Sam agrees.

They work, solidly, side by side in companionable silence.

Sam's deep into reading The Golden Bough, when Dean leans back in the wheelie chair and cracks his knuckles loudly, like breaking twigs.

“Vermont, 1993,” Dean says, reading off the screen. “A group of school kids go on a camping trip to the Finger Lakes, and disappear. Two months previously, several acres of forest near Montpelier were burned because of a swarm of Asian Long-horned Beetles. Burning off was added to their infestation protocols: one county official said 'it was as though every single beetle had been vacuumed off the face of the planet.'”

“Go on,” Sam invites.

“Peru, 1974. Tree mice swarmed and destroyed the gathered harvest and ate the corn off the plants. Some college age students went missing from a suburb in Lima in October of that year, and weren't found. One of their friends left behind said he thought they'd been experimenting with LSD and other drugs.”

He clears his throat, clicks his mouse a couple of times.

“Sheringham, Norfolk, 2009, ladybug infestation, four separate and apparently unconnected disappearances reported– all teenagers.”

“Ladybug infestation?” Sam asks, and Dean shrugs.

“Apparently they're a real problem. How about this one? Missouri, 1998, the 13-year-cycle of cicada infestation disappears overnight. Four girls from Abraham Lincoln High School in Fremont disappear within a month.”

Sam just sits there. It's not like he thought they were chasing a dead end, but it's extraordinary, and creepy, to hear of other towns, just like theirs. He stands and goes over to look over Dean's shoulder. The pictures of Fremont look much like Cottonwood, same sleepy main street, same town hall, same general store, same little cinema.

He picks up his book off the table, and sits on the edge of it.

“Fraser writes about Meili,” he says. “Nordic demon, half-brother of the God Odin. Called “The music-bringer.” Associated with hoards of locusts, rats and other pests, Meili could call on an army of vermin at will to devour his enemies. In medieval times referred to in Scandinavian literature and later that of Northern Europe, came to be know as the collector of souls, associated with night terrors, dreams and insanity.”

He shows Dean a picture, a medieval etching of a handsome, jeering face, playing a pipe, and villagers dancing themselves to a state of utter exhaustion, expressions of rapture on their faces.

“I thought I was going mad, for a while,” Sam says. “I thought. I don't know. It's hard to reconcile dreams with reality. Memories with desires. I didn't.” He stops. He's tired, and the words are hard to come by.

Dean stands up, and leans in, resting himself against Sam. It's strange, somehow, but nice. He thinks maybe Dean's done this before, on other all-night research sessions, and he regrets that he doesn't remember.

“Tired,” Dean says, and Sam pushes him gently away, reading further through the book.

“What else does it say?” Dean asks, reaching for the pot of coffee and finding it empty.

“Meili can be summoned,” Sam says. “Demon worshippers in the middle ages used to call on Meili to help them with their harvests, by burning sweet herbs and sharing their blood at sunset.”

“Delightful,” Dean says.

“Sunset, you're telling me?” He yawns again.

“'Fraid so,” Sam answers.

The day passes slowly.

There's a kind of unspoken agreement between them: they'll face whatever they have to, tonight, find the kids and get them home, and then they'll talk, sort this thing out between them.

It's not that easy. Sam can feel Dean's presence as a constant thrum under his skin. The only comfort is that he's pretty sure that Dean feels the same way. They can't let themselves be distracted from this hunt, but Sam wonders if it's always been this hard to compartmentalize.

They go to the general store: Martin Atherton's not there, probably out searching, but his assistant helps them find all the things they need: rosemary, dill, chervil, and tarragon, in little square cardboard cartons. Outside, Dean opens one and sniffs carefully.

He raises a skeptical eyebrow at Sam.

“I don't know that this is going to cut it,” he says. The herbs are dried, and well past their use-by-date.

Their second port of call is at the bar.

“Cilantro?” the bartender says. “Uh. I guess.” She rustles around in the fridge under the bar. “I've got some mint, we had a Cuba night a couple of weeks back. I made, like, a thousand Mojitos. And some sweet basil. And...” she finds a sprig of something old at the back, “I don't even know what this is.”

Sam crushes a little between his thumb and his forefinger. It smells tart, like aniseed.

“Can't hurt,” he says to Dean.

“What are you making?” she asks, and Dean smiles at her.

“A great chef doesn't share his recipes,” he says, and she giggles like that's the funniest thing anyone ever said.

Sam rolls his eyes.

“Those planters outside the library,” she offers. “They're lavender.”

They sit, side by side on the couch, watching the clock as the day ticks slowly by. Dean's fidgety: Sam figures it's because he's been awake for nearly three days at this point.

Dean makes another pot of coffee, and puts it down in the middle of their dining table.

“I think if I drink another cup of this my kidneys are going to explode,” Dean says, reaching past Sam to pick up the remote control.

He flicks on the television, and skips through channels, settling on some old movie. It's got Charles Bronson playing an harmonica, and Henry Fonda in a black hat. Sam thinks he's seen it before, but he can't remember.

“Don't go to sleep,” he warns. They sit quietly, and watch the film unfold.

“I love this bit,” Dean says, later, as the flashback reveals the Charles Bronson character's back-story. Sam watches as the man in black puts a harmonica in the boy's mouth, as camera tracks back to show the kid supporting his brother's weight on his shoulders. There's a noose round the brother's neck, and he's going to be hanged if the kid can't support him. The brother feels the kid faltering, and knows what that means; he curses the man in black and kicks the kid away. He lets himself hang, so it's his fault, not his brother's. The man in black looks on, and the boy lies in the dirt.

“The kid could have supported him longer,” Sam argues. “The Sheriff might have come.”

Dean stretches. “You would say that,” he replies. “But the Sheriff never does.”

At sunset, they walk out the front of the house, and Sam paints a devil's trap in red paint on the wreck of the wheat-field. Dean puts the all the herbs into a small frying pan, and makes a fire underneath them.

Sam watches the fire takes the crumpled paper, and the kindling begins to light. It's smoky, and Sam thinks back to the other fire they had here, how close it came. How their story nearly ended right here.

He gets out his knife, and runs it across his palm, feels the stripe of cold turn to hot as the blood wells out. Dean holds out his own hand, palm up, and Sam lays the blade against it, and Dean grasps it, cutting himself, then tosses the knife to the side and grasps Sam's hand in his.

They hold their hands over the fire, and let their blood run down, combined, into the pan.

The dark is gathering. It's nearly too late. There's not a hint of wind, this evening, and the birdsong from the fields is magnified by the silence.

He looks at Dean, who's standing, looking at the sun bleeding into the earth. It's nearly gone.

“We summon you, Meili,” Sam says. “Music bringer. Soul-collector, we summon you in the name of Odin your brother, to tell us what you've done with those you have taken.”

And then the sun sets.

Suddenly, it's dark, and there's a beating of a thousand wings, a howl of wind that blinds him, and he holds onto Dean's hand, hard as he can, for fear of him slipping away. The fire blazes, tips the pan over into its own flames, and surges high into the sky.

And then there's silence, not even a twitter of a bird. He hears his own heartbeat heavy in his chest, and his own breath.

And there's nothing.

“Damn it...” Dean says, and then he's interrupted by a voice from behind them.

Sam whirls, certain that he will see a demon, but it's just Dominic, sauntering towards them up the driveway.

“Hey, Winchesters,” he says, blithely, and Sam blinks.

He doesn't know what this must look like.

“Oh, hey, Dominic,” he replies. He looks down at the fire, burning quietly and merrily, and smells the weird burned tang of the herbs. He realizes Dean's hand's still clasped in his, and he tries to let it go, but Dean just holds it tighter.

He glances at Dean, and is struck by the tension in Dean's face, lips a taut line in a stern face.

“Um, we...” he begins, and falters.

“You called me,” Dominic says.

“No, we didn't,” Sam says, and Dean interrupts him.

“Yes, we did,” he says. “We called you here.”

Sam doesn't get it, right up until the moment that Dominic stops, on the edge of the devil's trap. He looks down, and then when he looks up again, his eyes are brilliant blue, cold like ice.

He smiles, and his face changes, shifts and stretches, until the smile is wider and longer than any smile has the right to be, and Sam's not sure what's worse, how much he still looks like the guy Sam's known nearly a year, and how much he doesn't. His eyes are the eyes of a creature, something ancient and inhuman and infinitely amused. His teeth shine in the firelight, bright and just-a-little bit pointed.

“This won't hold me,” the thing that was Dominic says, with a small laugh. “Not for long.”

“We can still hurt you plenty now,” Dean replies, and his face, too, is almost unrecognizable, cold and implacable, all sharp angles.

“Where are the kids?” Sam asks, finding his voice. “Just give us the kids back, and we'll let you go.”

The thing shuts its eyes a moment, and Sam watches its mouth laugh again, with fascination and horror, remembering its lips against his. He wonders if Dominic is still in there, possessed and terrified, but he thinks not. The thing is not a stranger. He recognizes it.

It looks at him, with its weird blue gaze, and Sam takes an involuntary step backwards.

“No, Sam,” it says, answering his thought question, not the one he just spoke. “I haven't changed. I always was. How is it, you say? Was now and ever shall be. World without end, Amen, Amen. Etcetera.”

“Don't count on it,” Dean grits out between his teeth.

“Where are the kids?” Sam asks. “Just tell us.”

The demon reaches up, and grows taller, taller than Dean, taller than Sam, its shadow in the firelight stretching almost to the door of the house.

“I will not tell you,” it says, and this time when it laughs, the sound grates like machinery, and the echo of it resounds through the night.

“Why did you take them?” Sam asks. “They're good kids. They never hurt anyone.”

It looks down at him, and dusts its hands against its legs in a gesture that is almost human. Sam shakes his head. It's like a dream, and a bad one: Dominic, his friend, overlaid with something so old, so evil.

“I am the Piper,” it says. “And I must be paid.”

It returns to human size, and gazes pleadingly at Sam across the line of the trap.

“Please, Sam. It's my nature. You understand that better than anyone. All your confusion, all your crazy dreams and bad desires and ambition and want. The darkness in you. That's your nature, too. That's why we get on so well. We're two of a kind.”

It's true; Sam knows it's true. He remembers the night in the office at the Odeon. How easy it would have been.

But he remembers how that ended, too. Sam walked away.

Dean takes his sawn-off shotgun from their pile of supplies, and lifts it.

“You want to be paid?” he asks. “How about this?” He shoots rock-salt right into the Piper's chest, and it falls back, an inhuman screech cutting through the night.

It lies there, still, and Dean looks at Sam.

Sam shakes his head - there's no way that was so easy - and as he does so, he hears that laugh again, that insinuating, oily laugh, like a cold finger down his back.

Dominic gets up.

“I liked this shirt,” it says, quietly, poking his finger through the holes in the fabric. “I really liked it. Got it from some hippy chick up in Vermont, before I stole her sister and all her sister's friends.”

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Dean curses, and fires off another round. The piper doesn't even pretend to flinch, this time. It reaches out instead with the same finger and draws a line through the paint on the Devil's trap.

It reaches out one hand, and whistles, just a tiny little phrase of three or four notes, and Dean falls to the ground, lifeless.

“Dean,” Sam shouts, and the Piper turns to him.

“Enough with all your Judeo-Christian paraphernalia,” it says, but keeps its distance. “You've called me here, but I don't have to stay. I never stay. I move on. I take my payment and I move on. You humans think you're outside nature, think that your penicillin and your Monsanto resistant grasses and your water-filters and your Ambien and your vaccinations and your antibacterial hand-wipes and your fluoridation programs will keep the devil at bay.”

“I'm beyond you. I'm beyond all of you. And there's nothing you can do about it.”

“Where are the kids?” Sam asks, again.

“In the dark, in the quiet,” it singsongs, and its voice is melodious, and sweet. “To sleep, perchance to dream. You can't fight me, Sam. You don't really want to, do you?”

“I just want the kids back,” Sam says, and hears his own voice, gritty and unmusical.

“You want a lot more than that,” the thing says, and for a moment looks so much like Dominic that Sam could almost forget what it is. “You forget, I've seen inside your head. Inside both of your heads.” He looks down and kicks Dean right in the gut, and Dean makes an unhappy noise and turns away. Sam feels the relief of it like a physical blow: Dean's not dead, not even unconscious – he's asleep.

“Don't underestimate sleep,” the Piper says, and Sam flinches: there's something horrid about its ability to read his thoughts. “When you're asleep, your brain dances to its own music. Ever have a dream so real you would swear it's true? Perhaps it was. Perhaps they all are, on another plane of reality. Think of it, Sam. Every evil dream you ever had. Every nightmare. Everything you ever did in your dreams, all coming true.”

Sam shakes himself, and forces himself to stand tall, not to look away.

“But I'm forgetting,” it says. “I'm forgetting that you forgot. You forgot everything. You don't even know what a scary idea that is. You don't even know that your reality is more frightening than most people's worst nightmares.”

“Where are the children?” Sam says, doggedly, because he's refusing to debate this, and The Piper looks at him and shakes it head.

“You don't even know all the things to be scared of,” it says, and draws itself up tall. “Let's see what we can do about that, what do you think?”

It tilts its head, birdlike, and whistles, three notes, four notes, a melody so sweet and evocative that Sam shuts his eyes against its promise: his heart's desire, his body's peace, his soul's rest.

He feels Dominic's hand, warm and dry, against his forehead.

And then he's falling to his knees, and landing, with a crack, on his knees in the dirt.

And with a sudden, convulsive wrench, he knows who he is.

All of it.

He remembers the name of his second grade teacher, the one who smelled like a flower garden and called him a “poor motherless child.”

He remembers the time he fell over in the snow and Dean dried his pants off in the heat of the hand-dryer in the men's room at Walmart. He remembers the bite of the copper rivets against his skin when he put them on again, over-heated.

He remembers the time they broke into the school hall after hours, and played basketball and drank sodas, right through the night.

He remembers Dean coming to Sam's high school graduation in a suit he'd bought from the church charity shop – by chance it was the one that had belonged to Delaney Jacobs (the runner up valedictorian)'s dead grandfather.

He remembers Dean, scratched by the black dog in Missouri, and how Sam had stitched him up and left him for three days, terrified at the possibility of Dean dying in front of him, and Sam drove halfway across the country in a stolen Mazda before turning around and coming home.

He remembers Stanford, the warm sun on his face, the grass in the quad itchy under his bare legs as he sat there with Jessica, studying for the LSATs.

He remembers sitting outside their burning apartment, eyes streaming with smoke, numb with shock.

He remembers Dean lying in a hospital bed, once, twice, three times.

He remembers how he held Madison's hand as he closed her eyes with his lips and shot her in the head.

He remembers Dean driving the Impala, playing ACDC.

He remembers laughing until Coke came out his nostrils.

He remembers drinking blood. He remembers liking it.

He remembers a pillar of fire up to heaven. He remembers Lucifer inside him.

He remembers falling into darkness. He remembers pain. He remembers burning, fire licking his veins, and feels it anew, the terror of it, of seeing himself consumed. He remembers Lucifer and Michael competing to destroy him, over and over, amusing their mad eternity by stripping his flesh from his bones.

He remembers trying to kill Bobby. He remembers holding a girl down and drinking her blood. He remembers killing, lots of it.

He remembers being lost inside himself, meeting himself, killing each part of himself in the desperate yearning hope of finding his way out, finding his way back to Dean.

He remembers the sober look in Castiel's blue eyes, and the touch of his hand that wiped away everything that pained him: all the essential parts of himself.

When he opens his eyes, the world swirls around him like smoke. There's only Dominic, in the center of the circle, and Dean, lying at his feet.

Dean. Dean.

He remembers Dean gripping his hand under the table the day John sent Sam away. He remembers clutching Dean at the bus station, unable to let him go until Dean pushed him gently up the stairs onto the coach. He remembers Dean everywhere.

It's too much. It's his life, all of it, at once, and the grief of it, and the fear and the loss and the shock of it take him right down to the ground.

The Piper looks on: his face is impassive, but in the part of him that is Dominic, Sam recognizes a faint curiosity.

“You're very strong,” Dominic says. “That would have killed most people, all at once.”

“I am strong,” Sam says, and even as he says it, he knows that it's true. He knows who he is, now, all the gaps filled in, and he regrets some of it bitterly, but it's such an intense relief, to know everything, to face it.

He comes up onto his knees. There are other things he'd forgotten, lost in the cracks of himself.

“I rebuke you,” Sam says. “You have no power over us.”

Dominic grins, that wide, wide, grin, and laughs out loud.

“Oh, but I do,” it says. It gestures towards Dean, who begins to thrash in his sleep, turning from side to side.

Sam reaches over and places his palm on Dean's back, soothing him.

“I can wipe him clean,” the Piper says. “I can take his mind, take his soul, leave him a pretty vacant shell for ever. He won't age, he won't sicken, he'll just lie here until time stops.”

Sam shakes his head. He's filled to the brim with memories, but he knows who he is, now. He knows what he's capable of.

“No,” he answers. “You can't.”

The Piper reaches out a hand, long and finger-stretched, and Sam grabs it before it can reach Dean, grabs it with the hand still red with his blood and Dean's mixed together.

“I said no,” Sam says, and he's surprised to find that his hand is as strong as the creature's, and he holds it away from Dean's face easily.

Its eyes narrow, and it hisses at him.

“I rescued this town. I rescued it from its debt, its tired economy, its pestilence. And the children came of their own accord, do you hear me? They put down their ipods and their homework and their romances and their future ambitions and they came to me of their own accord. Did you see any signs of a struggle? Did you see that I laid a hand upon them?”

Sam doesn't answer.

“The adults of this town would have given their souls for financial security. That doesn't interest me. The children gave their souls because I promised them what they lacked. All those possessions, and all they wanted was to be loved.”

Sam shakes his head.

“You forget, Sam. I see. I see in your dreams. I know you. I know what you want, I know what you believe. All you want is for your brother to love you. You know how powerful that is.”

It looks down at Dean with covetousness in its eyes.

“Dreams are the songs of the soul. You two barely have one soul left between you.” Its voice turns silky, insidious. “But you make such brightness together. You could hardly blame a creature like me for wanting the souls of creatures like you. So broken, so... enmeshed. So beautiful.”

It clasps Sam's hand back and draws him in close, breathes him in and studies his face for a long time.

“I'll make a deal with you,” it says. “I'll let the children go. I'll release them from their prison. In return, you'll come with me. Leave your brother and come with me.”

Sam shakes his head.

“How do you think I was made, Sam Winchester? I sold my soul once, and I found myself back on this earth alone, without it. I reached out every way I knew how. With my music, with paintings, with plays on the stage, and I seduced mortals to me. And they came, in their hundreds, in their thousands, and I took their souls.”

“Haven't you got enough?” Sam asks.

“Souls don't last long in captivity,” the Piper sighs, almost wearily. “They lose their strength. The power ebbs from them. Finally, they crumble like wafer on the tongue.”

“You would be different, Sam,” it says. “You'd stay. You'd last. Think of the things you'd see. Think of what we could do, together.”

“No,” Sam says, and he's sure of it. He can sense the temptation of the Piper's words, in the lilt of its tone, the stare of ira blue-tinged eyes. But the dream doesn't reach him, this time. He knows who he is, now. And he knows that he already has everything he ever wanted.

“You have no power over me,” he says, and grips the hand of the Piper more strongly.

He can feel the strength in him now, knows where it lies in him, knows where the door is that will let it free.

He shuts his eyes, and concentrates hard, chasing the tickling feeling of certainty, for the click inside him.

“That's not possible,” the Piper says, and when Sam opens his eyes, he sees it's Dominic again.

Sam grips it tight, and feels the bright white of his power pulse through the connection of their clasped hand, feels himself fill up with the warmth of it, feels it spill over out of him, beyond his boundaries.

He feels power leak through their linked hands, and feels his soul burn, feels it scald through them both, brighter and whiter than he could imagine, burning, burning.

He knows what it feels like to hurt. This is the power of his own soul, burned clean in the cage. He's burning now, burning again, and memory becomes reality, and white fire overtakes him.

He feels the panic inside the creature's head, feels its craven shrinking terror, and finally, as his power crests, he feels the Piper's strange, unearthly surprise. And then it's gone.

There's a cataclysm of noise, every note in the universe jammed down at once, a howl so loud and painful the air itself shivers, a howl that fades to a sighing sob. There's the sound of a million wings taking flight, and then silence.

Sam opens his eyes, and his hand is empty, and he wipes it against the denim at his thigh. He looks down, and the fire is guttering, and Dean's lying on the ground and looking up at him, eyes wide.

“Are you okay?” Sam asks, and Dean sits up.

“Yeah,” he says, and shakes his head as if his ears are still ringing. “Are you?”

Sam reaches out his hand, and helps Dean get to his feet. Dean reaches out and stomps the last part of the fire into the dust. When Sam doesn't answer, Dean turns and looks at him.

“It put it all back,” he says, tapping his head, and trying for a smile that doesn't feel quite right. “It thought remembering would kill me.”

“But it didn't,” Dean says, cautiously, and Sam reaches out and punches him hard on the shoulder.

“Do I feel dead to you?” Sam asks, and Dean grins.

“It's sometimes hard to tell with us,” he replies, “but all signs point to 'no'.”

He looks around at the burned field, at the worthless red devil's trap, at where the cardboard boxes from the herbs lie flattened. He stoops to pick them up, and puts them in his back pocket, reaching to pick up his shotgun.

“You fried it,” Dean says, and Sam frowns.

“I don't know what I did,” he admits.

“You soul-fried it,” Dean says, and Sam winces. “Seriously, you were like Captain Planet. It wanted to take your soul and your soul burned it to nothing.”

“Not forever,” Sam says. “But... I think it won't come back here in a hurry.”

“You can't destroy a force of nature,” Dean says. They stand in silence.

Sam looks around the deserted field, across the fields to the hills in the North, to the Southeast where the lights from the town are just visible.

“I think I know where Shya and Joe and the others are,” he says. “It offered them dreams, their heart's desire. It makes sense, really. If you think about it.”

The Odeon looks completely harmless, from the outside, and Sam blinks a couple of times to try and refocus it in his mind, as if there's something there that will give it away as a demon's lair, but it's as average as it ever was.

The posters outside advertise the next week's offerings: The Road, Life is Beautiful, The Poseidon Adventure, and there's nothing there either than Sam can recognize as any kind of clue.

“Come on,” Dean says, urgently, and Sam puts his shoulder to the door that says “staff only,” and feels it give. Inside, there's just the old desk, and some old cases in reels, filing cabinets.

Sam opens the desk drawer, and there's a key ring, there, a little metal pipe with a ring and maybe ten keys attached.

Dean looks at him, and Sam shrugs. He's not going to explain how he knows his way around a demon's office right now. Let Dean think what he pleases. He's got a dry taste in his mouth: he wonders if there's something in him, something more wrong than he even imagined, some kind of demon magnet. He shoves the thought away from him, grabs Dominic's flashlight and pushes past Dean to the cinema door.

The projector is on, the beam of light from the booth catching the motes of dust in the air, and the cinema is lit by the images that dance on the screen.

“Holy fuck,” Dean breathes, and Sam stills, beside him.

It's not a movie, at least, not one that's been made by a film-maker for a studio and marketed by a distributer. For a moment, he thinks it's a home-movie, with its tilting camera and shifting focus.

And then he realizes that it isn't. It's something different entirely.

It's them, the children of the town. He sees a close-up on Shya, and she's smiling at Joe, face clear and serene like Sam's never seen her. They're sitting at a desk in some cafe in some imaginary college, and the sun is bright. Joe kisses her, sweetly, and she turns to smile at Dylan, arriving laid down with books, a Dylan who is not Dylan, remarkable not for the fact that he's walking but that his face is wiped clear of cynicism and full of happiness. The scene shifts, and it's another of the girls, Maia, Sam thinks, and she's dancing in front of a packed audience in some darkened auditorium, the music haunting, the faces watching her rapt with concentration and admiration. There's a blur of other images, Joe running, not in a race but in a city street, just for the joy of it. Another of the boys, just sitting down at a table, his parents holding hands across the table and smiling at each other, a Thanksgiving dinner piled up in front of them; the star of the school basketball team holding hands on a park bench in the sun with another boy; a girl driving a car across the country, her hair blowing in the breeze.

“Their hearts' dreams,” Dean whispers, and Sam feels his throat swell. Because they're simple dreams, most of them, peace and independence and fulfillment and happiness, things he'd wish for all of them.

It's awful to him that those things seemed so out of reach that they became the bait on a hook that stole the children away, but it makes a terrible kind of sense.

“You think they're here, somewhere?” Dean asks.

“They're either here or nowhere,” Sam answers, and walks towards the screen. When he touches it, it goes dark, and in the sudden stillness the silence is as deafening as a roar.

They walk behind it, down a narrow corridor of dust against the back wall of the cinema.

There's a door there, with a padlock, and Dean doesn't hesitate. He gets the gun holstered in the back of his pants and holds it to the lock, turning his face away and shooting it out.

It takes three shots, the metal jumping and twisting from the impact. Finally, it falls open. They scrabble together at the door and push through.

“Hello,” Dean yells into the dark beyond the door. “Is there anyone there?”

“Shya?” Sam yells. “Joe?”

There's no light-switch, but Sam's got the flashlight from Dominic's office, and he clicks it on.

The stairs wind down, and Sam can feel Dean at his back, and he's grateful for that.

They come down into some kind of cellar, filled with storage boxes and the same film reel cases from upstairs, wallpapered with the posters from a hundred old films, and there's no one there. Dean swears in frustration.

Sam looks at him, and Dean's face is twisted in despair.

“God-fucking-dammit,” he says, and kicks at the wall. “Where in hell are they?”

Sam shuts his eyes, but he's not falling, not now. It's just quieter that way, and he can concentrate.

“Sam?” he hears Dean say, and he makes a quick, impatient movement with his hand.

“In the dark,” he whispers to himself, focusing his mind, and it's easy, suddenly, easy and clear as the open road before them, and they can drive on and on until dawn, and not meet another car.

“They're in the dark.”

He can imagine it, suddenly, like the memory of someone else's nightmare, a story passed down, like those whispering games you play when you're a kid, and you can't quite hear. He walks forward, suddenly sure, and lays his palm against the wall, and there's nothing, for a moment, but the sound of his breath and Dean's breath, and he turns to Dean.

They're behind here,” he says, sure as anything he's ever felt in his life.

He kicks at the plywood, and kicks again, and the two of them are kicking right through Rita Hayworth's face, and there's a gap behind it, a hole in the wall, and Dean's leaping through it, pushing down the cobwebby path they find there, and then, at the end, there's another locked room, dark as the moment before the feature starts, and Sam's flashlight pierces the darkness.

They're all are huddled in the corner, and their faces turn, pale circles in the gloom, one by one, eyes squinting against the light, and Dean reaches over and puts his hand over the brightness of the bulb, so his fingers turn transparent pink in the glow of the flashlight and the light spills through the cracks between, but their eyes are protected by the sudden brightness after the days of dark.

“It's all right,” Sam says, shoving the flashlight over to Dean, and falling on his knees by the light so they can see his face. “We're not here to hurt you.”

“We're here to take you home,” he says, and holds out his arms.

The kids follow them up the stairwell. In the cinema, the screen is dark, and Sam's sure, at last, that the last traces of Dominic's power are gone. They walk through the dark, and emerge, onto the main street of Cottonwood, squinting and dizzy, their hands held over their eyes.

For a long minute, it seems like they're invisible, like the everyday traffic of town life is going to go on around them, like they're a little group of people inside a snow-globe, and then there's a scream, the loudest scream Sam's heard in his life, and Carla Atherton erupts out of the doorway of the general store, and stops dead still.

“Shya? Baby?” she says, and then she's running across the road and hugging Shya, and suddenly people are running, and yelling, and Sam sees Dave running down the street, and Maddie's mother, and so many people he doesn't know, but it doesn't freak him out, not this time. It's a pretty good feeling.

“What the hell happened?” Dave asks, when he manages to disentangle himself for Grace and Joe. Dean doesn't say anything.

“They were under the Odeon,” Sam says.

“Dominic Green,” Dave says, and it's not a question, and Sam doesn't feel inclined to answer it, if it was. “How did you know?”

Sam looks at Dean, and tries to explain. “He was a piper of dreams,” he says. “And that's what movies are, aren't they? They're what we have instead of myths. They tell us what we want. Only, they don't know, not really. Not what we really want.”

Dave's looking at him in a way he's only just begun to recognize, as though he thinks Sam is crazy but is too polite to say so. Sam wonders if that look was always there, but he just wasn't wise enough to see it.

“Dominic's gone,” he says. “He won't be back.”

He watches Shya pull away from her tearful mother, and scan the crowd, and Sam knows who she's looking for. Dylan comes down the street slowly, like he's not sure of his welcome in the celebration, and Shya runs to him. She falls on her knees in front of him and throws herself into his arms. Sam watches Joe follow her, and wait beside her. He wonders whose was the dream he and Dean saw in the cinema, hers or Joe's, and thinks perhaps it belonged to both of them.

Joe reaches out and holds Dylan's hand. Beside Sam, Amy Jansen is crying with happiness, and holding her daughter close, and another boy he doesn't know is shaking hands with his father, who shakes his head and pulls the boy into a fierce hug.

Chapter Text

In the midst of the celebrations, the crying and the laughing and all the inevitable questions, they slip away.

There's still the smell of smoke in the air as they pull into their driveway. Dean unlocks the door and Sam follows him inside. It closes with a click behind them, and Sam remembers that they have to replace the glass in it.

Dean stands in the living room, looking around him as if it's the first time, looks at the rug with the loose fringing, the bookshelves with the motley collection of old paperbacks and magazines.

Sam watches him, the way he traces the back of the couch with his finger, the way he stands, awkwardly, as if he's not sure what the next step is.

Sam's not confused any more. There's still things he doesn't remember – things he suspects he doesn't want to remember – but he guesses he will in time. He's got the important things back again. That's what counts.

He walks over to Dean, and stands in front of him.

“I'm sorry for the things I did that made you think I didn't want this,” he says, and Dean's eyes meet his. Sam's encouraged by what he sees there: Dean's guarded as always, but he's listening, and when Sam leans in, brushes his lips gently over Dean's, Dean doesn't move away.

Sam kisses him again, more deeply, and Dean sighs against him, and Sam's not sure if it's concession or defeat, and he's a second from pulling back, when Dean's hand comes to trace the line of his face, slips back to tangle in his hair and hold him there.

They kiss, just like that, on and on until there's no breath left between them, and Sam leans his forehead against Dean's and they stand there, close, leaning in, sharing each other's weight.

“You let me go,” Sam says, and his fingers clutch into the leather of Dean's jacket.

“You almost died,” Dean replies. “Again. How many times are you going to put me through that?”

“You let me forget,” Sam says, and there's the anger, bright burn of it going right through him, familiar and precious. He shakes Dean, shakes him hard, and Dean holds him and drags him into a kiss.

“You fucker,” Sam says, against Dean's lips, and Dean laughs, desperately.

“You don't get to decide for me,” Sam says. “You don't get to.”

Sam buries his face in Dean’s neck, hands greedy for contact as Dean’s arms wrap around him, strong and solid and limber as always. Sam's relief morphs seamlessly into harsh, desperate want.

“I won't, anymore,” Dean says, a promise, a prayer, as Sam clings to him, and Sam just shakes his head, fists his hand in Dean’s hair and drags him into a kiss. Dean makes a small sound in his throat, amusement, arousal, helpless concession, and Sam bites at his lips, eats at his mouth, because it isn’t funny, he’s desperate, and maybe Dean senses that because he lets Sam walk him backwards in a tangled embracing stumble, across their living room and towards the stairs.

"I missed you," Dean mutters into Sam's open mouth, fingers scrabbling at Sam's collar. Sam groans and bites at him, pushes him against the wall, pulls him closer. He tugs Dean's t-shirt out of his pants, finds the hot skin beneath, digs his nails in just to hear Dean gasp.

Sam drags his teeth over Dean's bottom lip. He can't stop kissing him, can't let him go. He feels the bumps of Dean's spine under his fingertips. Dean gives a full body shiver, and Sam pushes against him, taking every movement as confirmation of everything between them. He remembers this, but the memory is a pale shadow of the reality of this, the hot press of skin against skin, the taste of Dean's mouth, the certainty, at last, that he's not the only one who feels this.

He wants to be inside Dean, literally, figuratively; he wants to be inside Dean's skin; he wants to touch him everywhere; he wants to get so deep that they can't be separated, not ever. God, please, not ever again.

Dean makes a sound of approval and peels Sam's shirt back from his shoulders, sinking his teeth into the stretch of his shoulder.

"Missed you so damn much," Dean says again, almost inaudibly, hands brushing down Sam's naked chest as if he doesn't know where to settle them, as if he wants to touch all of Sam at once, and Sam knows how he feels.

He works at Dean's shirt until somehow it's off, and finds his mouth again. He can feel Dean's desperation, his need, and Sam can't get his head round how Dean's waited, all this time, for Sam to find his way home to himself, for Sam to remember all the things they've always been to each other, so this time round Dean could be sure that it's Sam's choice, nothing but Sam's choice.

"Sam," Dean whispers, and Sam pauses for a second, thinks maybe he's holding on too tight, looks at the necklace of marks on the thin skin at Dean's throat, but the moment that he slackens, Deans hands are on his jaw, pulling him back down to kiss again.

"I've been dreaming about this," Sam says against Dean's mouth, against his earlobe, against his neck. "I've been thinking about you all the damn time I was awake. I wanted to touch you so much."

Dean's eyes are heavy-lidded and glinting as he leans his head back against the wall, focused intently on Sam's face. "So touch me," he invites, and it's a plea and an order and permission all in one.

Sam falls to his knees, burring his stubble against the concave stretch of Dean's abdomen, and leans his face in to rub against the swell of Dean's crotch. He can feel the heat of Dean's erection, and touches the hard ridge of him through the straining denim.

Oh Dean. Oh yeah.

Dean's hands in his hair are gentle. Sam knows if he looks up he'll see Dean looking down on him, with that look on his eyes he gets sometimes, the look Sam can't believe he forgot - like Dean can't believe this is happening, like he can't believe that he gets to have this. Sam doesn't look up. He doesn't want to see that look on Dean's face, incredulous and infinitely loving. It makes him feel undeserving. It makes him feel small.

He reaches instead for the buttons of Dean's fly, undoing and unfolding and reaching in, feels Dean's hands tighten convulsively as Sam takes him in his mouth and sucks him, takes him in further. He wants this, wants all of Dean, wants the look on his face to be arrogance and confidence and certainty. He wants to be a sure thing for Dean, always.

"Jesus, Sam," Dean whispers. "Jesus Christ." His voice is strung out thin, and then the hands in Sam's hair tighten painfully, pulling him up and off, dragging him to his feet.

He kisses Sam, hard and deep, and Sam can feel Dean's smile in his mouth.

"Come to bed," Dean whispers.

Their journey up the stairs isn't without incident. Dean presses Sam hard against the wall two-thirds of the way up, and they slip-stumble against the banister and nearly fall. By the time Dean's pulling Sam by his belt-loops into the familiar confines of Sam's bedroom, Sam's almost beside himself with wanting. He tackles Dean down to the bed, tearing at what remains of his clothing, carried away with the sensation of Dean's warm body under his.

He straddles Dean's hips, and runs his fingertips over Dean's ribs until Dean throws his head back against the pillows, half arousal, half his age-old helpless reaction to being tickled.

Sam can see where Dean's been working outside this week, on the Impala, on Mrs Bainbridge's roof. There's a sharp line of burn where the sleeves of his t-shirt were and the vee of his neck is pink, and scattered with a new constellation of freckles. Sam wants to count each one, wants to taste them, wants to map Dean and know him again.

Dean reaches up a hand, and tucks a stray strand of hair behind Sam's ear.

"What is it?" Dean whispers, and Sam shakes his head, unable to speak. Dean gathers Sam in, holds him with wordless sounds of comfort, and Sam kisses him again, because he simply can't stop.

It's only later, when he's fucking Dean, wrapped tight in Dean's arms, that he can even begin to think of the words for what he's feeling. He pants into Dean's neck, tastes the sweat of him, the warmth of the sun still on him. Dean's chest heaves with little caught breaths. His eyes are squinted shut, and Sam flexes his fingers into Dean's shoulders.

Look at me. Look at me.

Dean looks, eyes unshuttered and open, wide with appeal, and Sam loses their rhythm and falters to a halt.

Dean bashes his head back against the pillow, "Oh you bastard, come on," and Sam doesn't start again, he just moves a slow circle of hips, once, twice, and Dean swears and flings an arm over his eyes, shuddering. Sam can feel the tension coiled through Dean's thighs, every sinew stretched tight. He knows Dean's on the edge, knows him well enough now to see the signs, to know what that means.

He remembers everything.

"I love you," Sam stutters, and Dean comes undone.

Afterwards, he curls round Dean, and their legs tangle together and Dean's head is thrown back on the pillow of Sam's bed, throat bared and bitten, eyes shut, breathing in shallow pants. Sam moves up the bed, holds Dean's face, and watches him come back to himself.

He catches the moment when Dean's eyes flicker open, and meet his.

“Sleep?” Dean asks, and Sam nods. Dean turns his face away, and Sam watches the last remains of tension slide out of him.

He settles in close. It's still too hot in the room, and he contemplates getting up to prop open the window, but he's too lazy to do it, and too comfortable.

Even though he's weary with a tiredness that beats through him with every breath, he just lies there wide-eyed and looks at the ceiling, and listens to Dean's slow breathing beside him. The memories inside him crowd out sleep, and even if he could put them away for a while, he's scared that if he shuts his eyes, this will all disappear, that he'll wake in another, lonelier life, that he'll wake back in the cage, that he'll wake and Dean will be living in suburbia, and Sam will be outside the window again, always separate, always looking in.

Dean murmurs, and drags him closer, and Sam shuts his eyes, just for a moment.

He dreams.

They're driving, down the main street and out of town, the curve of road ahead of them clear and infinitely inviting. Nothing much happens. They travel past Mount Rushmore, only the face of Lincoln has turned to Sam's first grade teacher, and then somehow they're out the back of Bobby's scrapyard, trying to find a lost cat. Bobby offers them sandwiches with green tomato chutney, and cans of Dr Pepper. They play dominoes. It's a bizarre, meaningless, entirely unremarkable dream.

This time, when he wakes, it's lying close to Dean, one arm over Dean's back, and their feet touching in a mess of sheets. He can feel Dean breathing, his heart beating under Sam's palm.

Dean's still sleeping, face mashed into his pillow, but with Sam's hand grasped in-between both of his, as though even in his sleep, he's not prepared to let Sam go again.

Sam wonders, for a moment, how lonely Dean has been, this long sweep of months here. He wonders about the months before that, too, after Dean came back from hell, before Sam went there on good intentions. The year Sam spent soulless. Sam's spent a long time away from himself. He's still not entirely sure he's the way he was. But this is the way he is now. He knows he's changed, and he's not sure what that means, yet.

Dean stirs, mutters something, and Sam holds him closer, tucks his head against Dean's neck. He closes his eyes and thinks about all he's missed.

He thinks of the things he still needs to do, to make amends, the things he needs to do, to put the world right again.

There are things he can't do, here, no matter how much he loves this house, the curious assortment of friends and neighbors they've collected, no matter how much he loves Dean.

He’s got no idea where they can go from here, how their story ends.

He feels Dean wake, slowly, and shifts still closer.

“What?” Dean says in a voice still half-slurred with sleep.

“I want this,” Sam says, in case there's any doubt left.

“Huh,” Dean says. He blinks a couple of times, like Sam’s actually and honestly surprised him. Sam watches Dean’s face closely, a slow coil of foreboding in his gut, and then Dean shrugs, and looks at him, eyes that peculiar muddy green that Sam’s never seen in anyone else.

“Me too,” Dean admits, almost too quietly to be heard.

“Oh.” Sam says. “Good.”

The feel of Dean’s lips on his own is new and achingly familiar. He opens his eyes, and Dean’s smirking at him, but there’s a look in his eyes that Sam hasn’t seen for a long time.

Sam wants him, all of the parts he remembers: Dean, who swears and tells off-color jokes, who fights and sings off-key, who belches and uses all the hot water and smacks Sam on the back, who pushes Sam at trashy girls, who drinks too much, who knows Latin grammar better than the English kind, who loves his car more than he likes most people. Dean, who’s stitched his wounds and signed his report cards, who found out how to make a papier-maché volcano, who kissed him on the night of his school prom, who kept him close and finally let Sam go.

Dean, who, ever since Sam can remember has never, ever, let Sam down.

Sam kisses him, again, now and forever, it's the only thing to do.

He shuts the trunk of the Impala, gives it an extra press down to make it click into place. They've collected a lot of stuff, this year, but everything they really need still fits into their car.

It's a warm morning, balmy breeze stirring the grass, sending little dust devils over the field where the wheat is growing back. He wishes they were going to be here to see it.

Dean's standing, looking back at the house, and Sam stays silent. Dean's saying goodbye in his own way. They may come back here, but Sam thinks maybe not. They're not anonymous, anymore. They're tied into the history of a crisis the town wants to forget. If they leave now, they'll be remembered kindly. If they stay, it will never stop being awkward. Sam thinks Dean will never forget the things Dave said when the kids all went missing, even if he forgives it. There will always be some suspicion about Sam and Dean, and how they came to know where the children were, and how Dominic Green disappeared.

In any case, they have things to do and places to go.

Somewhere out there, there's a new god who needs their help, or maybe needs them to stop him.

They've got friends to see and a job to do that, no matter how hard it becomes, they don't seem to be able to leave behind. He needs to talk to Bobby. Dean needs to check on Lisa and Ben, and make sure they're still safe, that their anonymity is giving them the protection he'd hoped for. Sam wonders how they'll do it, if Dean can really face visiting his old home, his other family, under one of their many disguises. He guesses they'll cross that bridge when they come to it.

Dean gets into the driver's seat, and Sam slams his door closed. They pull out of the driveway, and out down the road. Mrs Bainbridge is out checking her mailbox, and she raises a hand to them as they drive past.

They make just one stop before heading out of town: the library.

Dylan's sitting outside, with Shya and Joseph.

“We thought you'd come by here, before you went,” Shya says.

“I have to give my keys back,” Sam answers.

There's a long moment when they just look at each other. There are things that are hard to say, and Sam's finding it hard to say them. His throat aches.

“You kids take care of yourself,” Dean says, for him, and Sam nods. That's what he wanted to say, as well.

“We will,” Shya answers, and Sam just looks at Dylan, and it seems that neither of them are going to be able to properly say goodbye. And then Sam crouches down and Dylan hugs him, holds him close with his thin arms. His breath is coming raggedly, and Sam finds that his is too.

“You've got my email address,” he whispers and Dylan nods. “No matter what happens, if something goes wrong, we'll get here as soon as we can,” Sam says, quietly, and Dylan says, “yeah, okay,” and then he's pushing away, and wheeling his way down the street.

Dylan's shaking hands with Joe, and Shya looks after Dylan and looks back at Sam.

“Thank you,” she says, simply, and smiles, and then she's off down the road after Dylan.

After Sam's done at the library, they leave, quietly, the Impala purring down the main street, past the general store, past the boarded-up cinema. Sam wonders if someone will re-open it, in time. Maybe everyone will forget what's happened, or it will pass into the town's collective memory as a kind of bad dream. He knows how that works.

At the end of the street, they pass Shya, and Dylan and Joe, and Sam waves as they drive past them, keeps waving at the three of them in the wing-mirror, and watches as they diminish, smaller and smaller, and then he can't see them any more. They'll be alright, the three of them, he figures. They have each other.

Dean reaches over and squeezes his knee, and Sam links his fingers in Dean's, as they weave past the clean river, over the bridge and out of town.

The sun is bright in the morning, and the fields stretch out on either side. The hills are blue in the distance, and there's the slightest crisp autumn chill in the air.

He's sad, but his heart is lifted by the sunshine, by the breeze, by Dean's tuneless humming as the miles slip by, by the journey to be had, by the chance to see old friends, by the change to make amends and put things right, by the chance to do it together.

There's a long road ahead, a good long road.

 

THE END.