Rating/Pairing: Slash, NC-17, Sam/Dean
Warnings: Explicit incest, violence, horror, cursing, angst, melodrama, possessed pitch-forks, and handy plot-devices.
Summary: A string of ritualistic deaths have the boys heading deep into swampland in search of answers. With Dean restless and eager for a hunt, and Sam already sensing trouble, they make a tempting target for anything dark that’s looking to step between them. Before they know it, offers are made and deals are done – and contracts written in blood are hard to break.
Notes: Written for the spn_j2_bigbang challenge. Many many thanks rei_c, unamaga, and scarlett_o, milenaa and rayrayfaulks for handholding. Smishes to rayray for beta’ing this monstrosity (all remaining errors are mine), and milenaa who not only created perfectly evocative art for this fic but has graciously agreed to host it on her web space. 3!
Music: This fic comes with a song: Death Letter - Johnny Farmer & Organized Noise.

§

Sam makes some kind of internal shift.

He’s not aware of it on a conscious level, can’t point at it or draw a square box around it. It’s interspersed among layers of other more chaotic things like Dad, Evil and FBI. The meaning, therefore, of his subconscious awareness is just that; subconscious. Most of it is lost in translation, but Sam can interpret just about anything given the time so he’s okay with letting it sit for a while before he figures it out.

Thinking about the first two, Dad and Evil, is still like a shock to the system, an ice water plunge of constriction until Dean unknowingly breaks him free. A word, a familiar smirk -- it doesn’t take much, just something to jostle Sam loose and make it easier to breathe.

The third is what’s been leading them nowhere, what has them threading their way through a vein of back roads and shanty towns to stay out of sight and away from keen eyes. Dean drives and Sam lets him, and neither of them mentions the bank in Milwaukee because really there’s not much to say they that wasn’t already covered by we are so screwed.

If Sam were to admit it, the only reason he thinks Dean’s lasted this long out of sight is for the sake of his car. It’s not practical to keep it, it’s too distinct and too conspicuous with the kind of people they’ve got tailing them, and that goes for both feds and rogue hunters alike; driving the back roads is Dean’s admittance of that fact. Admittance is as far as he’ll go. Even Sam is reluctant to ditch the Impala, all common sense to the contrary. It’s the last piece of home he has left apart from his brother, though he’d be hard pressed to tell Dean that and instead settles for not mentioning the obvious.

They’re kept surprisingly busy -- another woman in white, the tenacious spirit of a farm dog and a barn house ghost. Sam supposes that maybe it’s not that unusual after all. The places that they pass, the farming lands and mining towns, they’re all steeped in history and life, more preserved than the cities. The people they meet are few and far between, but they’re not as skeptical or suspicious here, with their roots going deep in the earth. Goodwill doesn’t give them much, won’t get the feds off their back and won’t solve any their problems, but Sam sees a little more of it than he’s gotten used to lately and it helps ease some of the never-ending tension that always around these days.

Dean’s laughter helps with the rest.

The barn house is a decrepit structure, a big open shell of wood weathered from sun and rain. They stumble on it by accident and decide to put it to good use, drag out the thermal blankets from the trunk of the Impala, grateful for a night spent outside the confines of the car. The weather’s been getting warmer and more humid with each passing day, so they use the blankets to sleep on, instead of under, clearing out a space in the corner of the barn.

The barn house spirit isn’t vengeful as much as it is annoying, and Sam wakes up the next morning to a face full of dry grass trying to suffocate him.

He lets Dean read the Latin.

The roof has almost completely caved in over the years and sunlight streams in from the bright blue sky, flooding the barn with a brightness that almost hurts Sam’s eyes. He stands there in the middle of the floor, his foot on the now spirit-possessed pitchfork, holding it down, and listens to his brother’s voice. Dean mostly lets Sam do the recitations and at first he’d thought it was because Dean wasn’t as good with words as he was with his hands. He’s long since realized that’s bullshit. When Dean talks, he gives meaning to what he says, and every word holds weight and power -- it’s just one more thing that Sam’s learning how to interpret.

Standing there and listening to the rise and fall of Dean’s tone, the comforting and easy cadence of the familiar words, it unhinges something in Sam. The pitchfork shudders under his foot, the whole situation ridiculous, and Dean’s having a hard time keeping a straight face. He turns the pages of the journal with trembling fingers, laughter just barely held in check, and standing there beside him Sam takes what seems like his first proper breath in ages.

It’s not until they cross the Louisiana state border that Sam realizes they’ve been vaguely but steadily following the river south. Dean’s got the windows rolled down constantly now, and they’ve both stripped down to just their t-shirts and even so, the leather seat sticks to Sam’s back, damp and clinging with perspiration. It’s a stifling heat, thick and heavy in the air and he’s not sure if Dean’s even aware of where they are, if he’d planned it this way or if it’s subconscious. Either way, the view outside Sam’s window has been making a steady change from open plains to thick swampland, and if they keep going this way, they’re heading straight for Mississippi.

The urge to see civilization hits Sam strong, irrational in its urgency.

“Let’s go into town,” Sam says. He can feel Dean look over at him, sees him out of the corner of his eye. He tilts his head towards Dean but keeps his gaze fixed ahead, focused somewhere in the distance. “It’s been weeks now, right? No sign we’re being followed. So.” He shrugs, leaving the rest for Dean to finish on assumption.

If Dean picks anything up in his tone, he doesn’t mention it.

§

“Scared to death,” Sam tells him, and he doesn’t need to look up to feel Dean’s interest pique.

It’s not a huge town they’re in, just big enough to have a couple of blocks that constituted ‘downtown’. And a Starbucks, complete with godsend of wireless internet, which Sam is putting to good use.

The air conditioning had leeched away the clinging humidity when he’d first stepped in, giving him a brief respite from the heat. Now that they’re here, Sam’s somewhat at a loss as to why he’d insisted they come in the first place, and is falling back on what’s familiar and normal; looking for the next job. Something that could maybe give Dean an excuse to use one of their bigger guns. Preferably on something solid that splattered when they killed it. Surrounded by the copies of the local paper, and articles pulled up on his laptop, it hadn’t taken long for Sam to find one.

“You’re kidding me,” Dean says, but his tone isn’t disbelieving and he readily takes the newspaper when Sam hands it over.

“Just reading what it says,” Sam says, nodding at the article. “Michael Perkins, twenty three, found dead in his apartment. The landlady found him. See what she said.” He keeps his hands busy with adding sugar to his coffee -- he’d add some that caramel-syrupy stuff but it’s not worth giving Dean the ammo -- and watches him scan the article, knowing it’ll probably take him about half a minute to pick up on all the words that had jumped out at Sam, and come to the same ‘this doesn’t sound quite right’ conclusion.

“Suspected heart attack,” Dean reads, still scanning the article.

“Yeah, in a young kid like that. There were no signs of struggle, no history of illness.”

“Twenty three is a ‘young kid’ now, huh?” Dean says, smirking, and Sam has to quell the urge to kick his chair.

They’re surrounded by people drinking cinnamon lattes and talking about normal non-supernatural things. It should be easier to relax but instead, Sam finds himself looking at the whole diorama like he’s in third-person, in it but not a part of it. It’s not possible that all these people are part of an evil plan. Common sense tells him they can’t all be in secret negotiations to bring him and Dean down; it’s not possible, and there’s no reason or evidence for him to think so.

The old woman a couple of tables over from theirs, sitting alone, is murmuring softly into her coffee. It’s complete chance and coincidence that she looks up the same time Sam risks a glance at her. He catches a glimpse of dark skin and darker eyes before he looks away, not shaken but slightly taken aback, and with no idea why. It’s easier to shake off the surrealism than question it. He’s just spent too much time with Dean is all, too many weeks in shared isolation. Dean’s wariness is rubbing off.

“You have to let go,” Dean says, looking right at him, and Sam blinks.

“What?”

“That’s what your problem is,” Dean says, chucking the newspaper onto the table.

Sam knows better than to ask. “I have an ass-wipe for a brother, that’s what my problem is,” he says, dropping his eyes back to the laptop.

“You have no concept of fun, Sam,” Dean continues, clearly feeling like he’s partial to some kind of wisdom Sam doesn’t have access to. “Look at you, all hunched up with your wrinkly thinking face. Sometimes, you just have to learn to let go.”

When the ensuing silence drags on for too long, Sam finally gives in first and looks up to see Dean still watching him. All the things that immediately run through his mind never make it past the that will make Dean clam up filter, so he just looks back instead.

Dean grins. “And stop staring at poor crazy ladies.”

Their barista walks by for the fourth time in as many minutes and the mood breaks as Dean’s gaze automatically trails her over Sam’s shoulder.

“Uh huh,” Sam says, smirking. “Go see if you can work her for more pie, Dean, and let me do this in peace.”

“Aw, fuck you too,” Dean says easily, clearly enjoying the prospect of getting back into the swing of things after long weeks of doing almost nothing. He snatches the last piece of the pecan pie from Sam’s plate before tipping his chair back to watch the girl turn the corner. “Okay, so she reckons he was scared to death,” he says around a mouth full of pie.

“No,” Sam says, going with the subject change. “She said he’d looked like he was scared to death.”

Dean lets his chair thud back down and gives Sam a pained look. “Vengeful spirit?” He says it tonelessly, like he’s already reconciled himself with having to deal with yet another haunting.

“Maybe,” Sam says, not sure if that would be better. “But this one might give us some trouble.” He opens up three browser windows and tiles them on top of each other, turning the laptop around so Dean can see. “Three deaths, all men, all of which happened in roughly the same area-”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “They’re three different towns, Sam.”

“They’re all right next to each other,” Sam says, gesturing with his coffee for Dean to keep reading. “And not a whole lot else in common, except for one thing.”

“The dates.”

“One a month, three months in a row. All on the night of the full moon. If that’s not ritualistic.” Sam shrugs.

“Well, all right then,” Dean says. He’s broken out into a slow grin a mile wide, and every inch of it is trouble. “Good work, poindexter. Where to first?”

Sam tries not to grit his teeth. When Dean’s not pushing him away, he’s pushing he’s buttons instead. Sam’s learnt to appreciate the trade-off.

“That kid, Michael, is the closest to where we are right now.”

“Okay.” Dean downs the last dregs of his coffee, which is probably mimicking the taste and consistency of tar by now. “Let’s go mess up some voodoo vibes.”

Sam looks at him for a moment longer before he shuts the laptop, rising to his feet and unconsciously moving in sync. “You don’t know it’s voodoo.”

“Dude, it’s Louisiana,” Dean calls over his shoulder, already heading for the door. “It’s always voodoo around here. I have to remind you about the hellhounds?”

Dean’s facing the wrong way to see the expression that crosses Sam’s face, or they way he pauses, midway through bagging the laptop. The old woman falls abruptly silent and Sam determinedly doesn’t look at her. It’s easier to ignore her when he turns to see Dean holding the door open, waiting for him to catch up.

Thick humidity blankets him when he steps outside the door, smothering any chance for proper breath.

§

The apartment block is nothing special to look at, grey and nondescript. Low rent housing in a low rent district, it’s not the slums, but it comes close.

The landlady is a plump woman about half Sam’s height, and has a glare tough enough to make Dean back down.

“I’ve sent his things onto his parents,” Cynthia says in a husky drawl, neither suspicious nor friendly when they introduce themselves as Michael’s cousins.

“Cynthia,” Sam says, respectful and earnest despite the clinging sweat gathering between his shoulders. “The thing is, I just wanted to walk around his place. See where he spent his last days. Seems silly but it makes me, both of us-” he adds, gesturing to Dean and himself, “-feel connected. You know?”

He doesn’t know Michael, had never met the kid, but Sam does want to help and is genuine in his intention to do so. He lets some of that honesty carry through his tone, knowing it’s useless to cajole a woman like this, and moments later they’re standing in a small and mostly empty apartment on the third floor.

“He was a nice boy,” Cynthia says from the doorway, watching them slowly make their way around the rooms. “Kept to himself mostly, didn’t have many friends. Never made much noise, but then those are the type. You know.”

“Type?” Dean says, voice pitched low to soften his curiosity.

“Drugs,” she says, knowing and regretful. “I know it’s nothing you boys want to hear, being family and all, but drugs can do awful things to a person.”

Sam looks to where Dean’s standing half shadowed in the small kitchenette.

“What kind of things?” Dean says, looking back at him. He steps out of the dimness, lighting up like a halogen lamp in the bright sunlit room, and Sam sees his outline flash in photo-negative sepia.

It’s gone almost before he registers it, the vague impression of two images, superimposed on one another. Then Sam blinks, and the room shifts back into focus, everything going either dimmer or brighter, all at the same time, until Dean’s back into his proper hue.

Dean pauses, looks at him in silent question and Sam shakes his head.

“Can’t help thinking I should have maybe said something,” Cynthia says softly, oblivious to the silent language between brothers. “He’s fine one day, and then next I found him looking like he’d died seeing the devil himself. And the night before he died, he was-” Cynthia pauses, uncomfortable. “Well he just wasn’t himself. Looked at me,” she adds, confident in her assumption. “I’ve been widowed going on twenty years now, but I still know when a man’s entertaining inappropriate thoughts.”

Dean gets a look on his face that says he’s about to say something fairly inappropriate himself, and Sam steps in, murmuring. “Cynthia, you reckon we could spend a minute or two alone in here?”

They sweep the entire place, starting in the living room and working their way around the edges. The EMF starts up with a low pitched whine that zones out into white noise, but there’s not much left for it to pick up in the room. If there was something here, it was almost a month ago now. There’s not much to tell from looking at the apartment either. It looks like Cynthia was being literal about Michael’s things -- the rooms are bare, devoid of all personal items and missing of anything that could have given them insight into the kind of things a person like Michael Perkins was into. The only things left are a ratty couch and rattier bed, both of which are probably third or fourth hand, and most likely came with the apartment.

When they find a taped up cardboard box sitting in an abandoned corner of the small bathroom, Dean picks it up immediately.

“Looks like Cynthia forgot one,” he says, raising the box and giving Sam sly grin. “Do that choir-boy dimple thing you do so well, would ya’? Distract the nice old lady for me, Sammy.”

The drive into the next town takes a good couple of hours.

Sam stows Michael’s box in the backseat, and spend most of the ride shifting, peeling alternate areas of himself off the Impala’s leather seats to let the perspiration dry a little. Dean’s enthusiasm isn’t dampened any, though; he’s found himself a hunt, nice and juicy, and Sam half expects to turn and see him sniffing the air like a bloodhound. Dean’s likes tracking something down, almost more than the final fight – it gives him an oddly logical vindication from so often being the ones chased. There’s really no way for them to ever stand still.

§

Brock Meche was previously a resident of the aptly named ‘Green Living’ units.

“Died a month before Michael,” Sam provides.

“Assisted living,” Dean announces as they drive round the block and take stock of the neighborhood. “Might as well name it Greener Pastures and been done with it.”

It’s a quiet afternoon and the air has a feeling of uneventful finality. They pull up to the curb, and park about a half a block away from the residences. “Jesus,” Deans says, reaching for the EMF in the glove compartment. “If this is the end of the road, then I don’t ever want to get there.”

“I don’t think the EMF is gonna be much help here” Sam says, pointedly ignoring Dean’s comment as he gets out of the car. Green Living certainly has enough greenery in and around it, overgrown with low green bushes and lush plants thriving in the heat and humidity, and although the units themselves look well maintained, there’s no doubting the place has been around for a while. Probably a couple of decades at least, enough to see several waves of human souls come and go. “I mean, can you imagine how many spirits must be floating around in there.”

Dean pointedly ignores him back, tucking the EMF into his pocket as they start walking

“I mean it, man,” Dean says, continuing like Sam hadn’t spoken at all. “You ever let me end up in a place like this, I will haunt your ass, I swear.”

The statement first pisses Sam off before fading to leave a lingering sense of something like sorrow. Sam has no idea what to make of that, so he does the smart thing and keeps his mouth shut.

Brock Meche was apparently uncharacteristically active the day before he’d died. Enough to go out of the complex by himself. Which is not so much unlikely as it is impossible, considering Meche had been undergoing hospice care for the preceding three months. At any rate, he’d gone missing the night before he died and turned up back in bed the next morning, face frozen in horror. Not unheard of in stroke victims, his nurse tells them.

She lives on-site, a hospice worker for those who need it. She’s both kind and efficient, and has Meche’s personal effects packed in a taped box and still waiting to be picked up.

“Don’t you usually get rid this stuff after a while?” Sam asks, and it’s a valid question. Meche had passed almost two months ago now.

She shrugs. “I just couldn’t bring myself to dump it. His family didn’t seem interested, and no one should die alone like that. But I’m glad you boys came. I’m sure your uncle would have appreciated it.”

She smiles when Dean takes the box from her, laughs when Dean flirts in the crass way he has, and then sends them both packing.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Dean says as soon as they’re left alone. “Get me a nurse like her and I’d check myself in tomorrow. They give those sponge baths, right? You know, where you’re naked?”

Despite Sam being convinced it wouldn’t help any, they take a turn around Meche’s room with the EMF anyway, and register nothing. Not in his room and not when they walk the maze of paths connecting the units.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Sam says. “Why would it register nothing? People have died here, there’s got be someone still wandering the halls, even if they’re completely harmless. Or maybe-”

They’re nearing the exit to the compound when Sam sees it, a flash of something in the corner of his eye that’s just enough to make him look back. Turning as fast as he does, the sun flashes in and out of view, leaving white flares on the inside of his lids and making it harder to see.

The figure is gone almost before he sees it, a black and white flash of an old man standing near the closest building.

Dean’s stopped with him, first looking at Sam then following his gaze into the distance. “What, is your spidey-sense tingling?”

The words are lightly said and Dean hasn’t seen what he’s seen. But something’s got Sam’s attention, and that’s good enough for Dean to take seriously. He’s standing up straighter, and Sam can bet he’s feeling the weight of the gun tucked in his belt with heightened awareness, the box ready to drop from his hands.

“Don’t call it that,” Sam murmurs absently, holding out a hand in Dean’s direction. “Give me the EMF.”

Sam approaches the corner of the building with it turned on and held out in front of him, Dean standing slightly behind. He focuses his attention fully on the wall, knowing Dean’s got one eye on his back and another on the environment around them. He sweeps the wall where he saw it standing, traces the pattern of brick work before reaching up to scale the top ledge and then going all the way around the corner.

It doesn’t make a sound.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” Sam says again, mostly to himself. He turns to Dean. “Are you cold?”

Dean flicks his eyes over to him briefly before looking away, watching for any tenants that might come walking by. “You’re standing in a shadow, dude.”

Sam steps out of the shadow and into the sun and feels the warmth on his skin instantly -- the cold lingers on the inside, completely out of place. He opens his mouth, about to say that something’s going on here and maybe mention Michael’s apartment. But he doesn’t know what to say, and he doesn’t expect what comes out instead.

“You won’t die alone, Dean.”

Dean turns to look at him, caught off guard and not quick enough to hide it. “Why? You planning on going with me?”

“Don’t do that,” Sam says quietly, not sure what it is he’s trying to achieve but knowing that he’s going about it the wrong way. “It’s not funny.”

“Sure it is,” Dean says, unsmiling.

They stare at each other for a moment, just this side of glaring, before Sam looks away first, frustrated.

“Come on,” Dean says finally, allowing the tension to break and siphon off. “It’s an hour into the next town.”

§

The third place gives them nothing. They walk away from the victim’s house with no more knowledge then what the article in the newspaper had told them. Another man, middle aged and the first to die almost three months ago.

Sam could swear he gets colder, even though the heat is still sticking his shirt to his skin, but keeps it to himself. Neither of them states the obvious urgency. If the pattern is right, then the next full moon is the following night, and so is the next death.

“Bodies,” Dean says, and Sam shakes his head.

“Michael was cremated and Carly said-”

“Who’s Carly?” Dean says, tone absent, as they get into the Impala.

“The nurse, Dean. You’re unbelievable. Carly said Brock Meche was buried back where his family lives, in Iowa.”

“So, no bodies then,” Dean says.

“No bodies,” Sam confirms. He probably shouldn’t be relieved about the lack of possible evidence, but he can’t help it. Autopsy photos aren’t pleasant to look at, but they’re a hell of a lot better than having to look at the gruesome mess of the real thing. “Looks like we’re gonna have to book this one.”

§

They drive to the outskirts of town and check into a room on the ground floor of a motel. It’s easier to get to the car from the ground floor, and having to climb stairs in a hurry is a fast way to breaking your neck. San says that it just makes it easier for things to get to them, and Dean points out that the kinds of things chasing them rarely use the stairs in the first place.

The motel sits on a block of other motels, and the whole complex is surrounded by not much else. They’d passed a golf course that’d seen better days on the way here, and down the road was a bar with a couple of slot machines and a couple of pool tables, sitting across the road from an all night diner. It’s like the border post for this town, but even so there’s enough traffic on the main road they’re next to, people traveling in and out of town on a Friday night. Busy, but in the bustling way that’s designed to keep busy from fear of standing still and finding out they have no where to go.

“Sudden changes in behavior, almost overnight,” Sam says, once they’ve fueled up on burritos from the diner. “Dying men leaping out of bed. Sounds like possession.”

“Sounds like, but it’s not,” Dean says.

They’re sitting back in their motel room and Dean’s settled on his bed with both Michael’s and Brock’s papers scattered around him. Sam watches him from the motel table, the journal open flat in front of him. They each have a beer in hand, and another sitting empty by their sides. The air conditioning in the tacky room doesn’t work, naturally, and condensation drips off the beer bottle, watermarking the label.

“Why do you say that?”

“I’m not. But it’s where you’re heading,” Dean says. He’s sorting out the papers into different piles, forming a pattern and a string of behavior that Sam knows makes perfect sense to no one but Dean.

There it is, two dead men’s lives laid out in at a series of bookstore receipts, grocery lists and medicine prescriptions.

Jesus. He sounds maudlin even in his own head.

“Spill it,” Dean says, not looking up.

“Okay. So, we didn’t find anything in Michael’s apartment, but I think-”

“Not that,” Dean says, finally looking up to meet Sam’s gaze head on. “And not this case. I meant whatever’s up with you. Apart from the obvious.”

He’s referring to Milwaukee, and before that, to a brother’s confession of a father’s dying wish. But as far as Sam’s concerned, Dean could be talking about their whole lives because that’s how heavy it feels. He doesn’t say anything about it, but he doesn’t have to. An absence of denial is as close as they ever get to acquiescence.

“You don’t know what I’m thinking,” he mutters anyway, picking at the peeling label on his bottle.

“No, I don’t,” Dean says, putting the papers down. It’s a familiar action, visibly shifting his all his focus onto Sam and Sam alone. It’s what Dean does when he’s not sure what else to do and says more than the words that follow. “I never do, not unless you tell me. It’s the one thing I never learnt how to do, and usually you can’t help but tell me. So I’m asking you. What’s up?”

Sam blinks, taken back at the turn in conversation. Jokes and a blasé attitude cover a multitude of things, and for Dean to openly admit to anything is rare.

“I don’t know,” he says finally, shrugging.

“Sam -”

“No, I mean I actually don’t know,” Sam says, frustrated and allowing it to show. “It’s just everything, man. It all seems kind of out of place lately. Just a little bit off, you know? Like right now it’s not too bad but if I don’t fix things between us soon, it’s gonna get bad.”

Dean sits carefully still and Sam shuts up. This is exactly why he needs the filter.

“Is there something that needs to be fixed here?” Dean says calmly, and Sam hates himself a little for the wariness he hears. “If you’re pissed at me about something, then just say so, Sam. Quit moping about it and let’s have it out already.”

“I’m not pissed,” Sam says truthfully. “I’m scared. I know it’s hard for you to understand, but to most people they’re two different things.”

Dean opens his mouth to continue, but Sam stands up before he has the chance. “Just. Lay off for a bit, okay?” he says, heading for the bathroom. “Let me figure it out first.”

He’s doubled over the sink that sits somewhere down near his hips, splashing water on his face, when it happens again. ‘Again’ because it’s not until now that Sam realizes it had happened several times already that day.

He can feel Dean moving around in the room behind him, but at some point Dean’s presence is shadowed by something else. It’s close, maybe standing right behind him and all the fine hairs on Sam’s neck and arms prickle with tension. He blinks the water out of his eyes then straightens up slowly. There’s nothing in the mirror reflected behind him, just the open yellow arc of the doorway leading into the bedroom and a glimpse of Dean as he walks past. It’s not until Sam turns around that he sees them.

Three men stand just inside the doorway, watching him silently, grinning. Their features are both too sharp yet indistinct at the same time, and only the basic impressions stands out; skin a phosphorescent white, eyes hollowed out. They smile at him with teeth and gums dripping like black tar.

Sam’s skin crawls. His first instinct is to shoot, but he doesn’t have anything on him. Adrenalin slams its way through his veins, pounding just under his skin, but he holds still -- it’s better to not make a move rather than make a move and fumble it. He can see his gun where he left it on the table, not even three feet from bathroom. But to get to it, he’d have to go through the doorway. Besides which, he’s not sure the things standing in front of him are corporeal which means he’d need to find Dean’s shot gun filled with rock salt and –

“Sam, get down!”

It’s instinct that makes Sam react, responding more to Dean’s tone of voice than the actual words. He drops to the floor and throws himself to the side, but there’s not much space for him to go in the tiny bathroom and he ends up slamming his shoulder into the toilet bowl. He hears something crack and vaguely hopes it’s the ceramic and not his bone, but the concern just barely registers. A blast of rock salt flares hot and loud just inches from his face, and embeds itself into the cabinet under the sink.

He looks up as Dean appears in the doorway, gun still in hand.

“Come on,” Dean says gruffly, and reaches down to help him up. “You all right?”

Sam nods, pats Dean’s shoulder in quick thanks and heads straight for his own gun in the bedroom. The environment around him, all the things in the room, Sam scans it all with senses that are hyperaware, but nothing registers as unusual. The figures are nowhere to be seen, and there aren’t any raised edges or subtle changes in the atmosphere to suggest they’re still hanging around.

“They’re gone,” Dean says, coming out from his inspection of the bathroom. He looks at Sam. “Are they gone?”

Sam shakes his head and rolls his shoulder gingerly. Bruised, but not broken. “I don’t think they were ever here.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Dean says, and then holds up a hand. “Wait. Save it for the car.”

“Where are we going?” Sam says. His heart’s still pounding and the adrenalin’s starting to wear off, leaving his hands clammy and shaking. It’s the same trembling that wracked his muscles when he used to run too fast and too far, trying to outrun so many things including the disassociation of being back on the road again. Though he’d always ended up heading back to the motel in the end, knowing Dean was waiting for him.

He covers by packing his things into his duffel, throwing clothes and books in haphazardly, and knows Dean isn’t fooled.

“I think I found something,” Dean says quietly, watching him for a moment before he leans in and takes Sam’s duffel from him, throwing it over his shoulder with his own. He nods at the bathroom and the pitted sink cabinet within. “Let’s move it before someone starts asking awkward questions. A friend of mine gave me an address.”

There’s something to be said for being on the ground floor. Sam has to admit that it’s fucking reassuring to open the door and see the Impala parked not four feet away.

§

John Broussard lives out in the marshes, surrounded by acres of swampland; land which is bordered by miles of what once used to be thriving plantation fields. The best people can guess is that he’s somewhere near sixty years of age, old or young depending on how you look at things, lives alone and talks to almost no one. The closest human soul is the guy who runs the dusty gas station about twenty miles down the road.

John Broussard is a conjurer.

“And how is it that you know all this?” Sam says, looking over at Dean shadowed in the driver’s seat.

They’re driving down a road that’s too winding for the speed Dean’s going at, lit up by the Impala’s lights and the almost full moon above. It’s somewhere past midnight and to Sam, that means the weather should have the decency to cool down, at least a little. If anything, the darkness seems to thicken the air threefold, eating up any sounds of the living.

“He’s well known in these parts, Sam, but only if you know who to talk to,” Dean says, slowing down minutely to turn into a dirt side road. He looks away from the road long enough to throw Sam a smug look. “And I, little brother, know exactly who to talk to. I worked a job down here a while ago, and let’s just say I’m a hard man to forget.”

Sam snorts. “Well, I’m sure the poor girl tried.” The cold has all but left him, and he hasn’t had any inkling that they have guests that shouldn’t be hanging around. It’s still not back to normal, but it’s the closest he’ll probably get until this thing is over, so he’ll take it while it lasts. “So why are we going to see him?”

“We’re not going to see him. Jesus, you make it sound like a tea party. Here, I found these in the boxes. One in each.”

Dean fishes two out scraps of paper and hands them over. One looks like it’s been torn out of a notebook, standard blue lines across white paper. The other is a pharmacy receipt and Sam guesses it belonged to Meche.

“Turn them over,” Dean says, gesturing.

Sam flips the papers over – there’s a symbol on the back, the same one on both. It’s mostly smudged around into a blur, looks like black charcoal that’s been wiped away with a sweaty hand but Sam can just make it out if he holds it up to the dashboard, where the moonlight is strongest. It’s a pretty simple design.

“It’s a triangle,” Sam says lamely.

Dean shakes his head. “No. It’s a triangle with a circle in the middle. See?”

Sam peers closer at the glyph. “Oh yeah, I see it now. Well that makes perfect sense then.”

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three . . .

“Dean.”

Dean grins. “I phoned Rose -- I remember some of their names, shut up -- while you were playing hide and seek with your ghosties, back at the motel. She told me she’d only ever heard of this kind of symbol once, a long time ago. And it had something to do with this Broussard dude.”

“You hook up with all your sources now?” Sam says, ignoring Dean’s choice of hand gesture in response. He takes another look at the glyph. “Is it a Veve?”

“I don’t think so,” Dean says, slowing the car slightly as the dirt road gets narrower. “Or at least, Rose doesn’t think so and she knows something about this kind of stuff. Don’t ask.”

“Wasn’t gonna,” Sam says, hands held up in protest.

“All I know,” Dean continues, “is that two out of three of the victims have his calling card mixed in with their things. Now I’m no scholar like you, but I’m pretty sure that two and two equal bingo. This guy’s known for messing around with stuff that shouldn’t be messed around with. Dark spells, black magic, that kind of thing. I reckon it’s as good a place as any to start.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam says. He’s silent for a second, and then adds cautiously, “I think I picked them up. When we went around to all the places today. I think I brought them back to motel with me.”

“Picked them up,” Dean echoes, toneless. “Like hitchhikers? Christ, Sam. It’s like you roll around in paranormal musk or something when I’m not looking. Can’t turn my back on you for a minute.”

Sam returns a choice hand gesture of his own, and then looks ahead out the windshield. The moonlight is strong, but it fades to nothing next to the Impala’s headlights, yellow beams cutting a miniscule path in front of them. Two tiny slices of light surrounded by endless darkness.

“Like gaping maws of nothing,” Sam mutters, then shifts when Dean looks at him. “They weren’t spirits,” he says. “Spirits are a presence that disturb the natural order of things -”

“Those things were plenty disturbing.”

“No argument here. But they weren’t like normal spirits, didn’t feel like it. I don’t know why, but when they were behind me it felt like . . . like there was nothing. Just a vacuum. Like a sort of rip in the word, three man-shaped spaces where souls used to be and it can’t be filled up again. Not ever, not with anything. It’s not right,” he finishes softly.

“Since when is any of what we do right,” Dean mutters, but he doesn’t ask how Sam knows. Sam’s not sure how himself, and he’d rather not dwell on it. This is freaky on a whole new, never-before-encountered level.

“It would explain why we didn’t pick up anything at Green Living,” Sam says, after thinking about it for a moment. “If they’re like a vacuum, maybe they act like a negative, suck in any signs of the paranormal that shouldn’t be there. Like a black hole for ghosts. Spiders do the same things to keep the insect population down, so in a way-”

“They’re not good,” Dean says, tone sharp. “Stop looking to make everything good. There’s almost no good in the world and what little is left is in people like you, so quit looking for it everywhere else.”

It’s Dean saying exactly what he means, giving weight and power to the words, and as always, it doesn’t fail to throw Sam off balance. He doesn’t bother disputing the statement because frankly he doesn’t know where to start. He only knows that it matters to Dean, and that’s enough of a reason for him to keep from outright staring.

“They’re not good or bad,” he says finally when Dean starts to roll his shoulders, giving him his out. “They’re not anything. I just don’t know what could create something like them. That’s all.”

They drive the rest of the way in silence.

They turn the headlights off as the road starts to become more of a dirt path, taking the risk that no one else would be out here this late at night. Another half mile down the road and Dean turns the engine off and lets the car coast to a stop. If Broussard is the bad guy, it wouldn’t do to announce their arrival with a parade of light and noise. If Broussard isn’t the bad guy -- well, it wouldn’t hurt to have the upper hand anyway.

From where they stop the car a small building can be seen in the distance with not much in the way to obstruct the view. The house is gently muted in the moon light and they foot it the rest of the way, ready and alert.

It’s not so much a house as it is a shack – crumbling walls, roof a mismatch of numerous patch jobs over the years, wooden doors and shuttered windows. It has two, maybe three rooms at the most, from what can be seen from the outside. There’s the dim glow of a light from somewhere inside, but no noise to accompany it and no other signs to indicate a wakeful person within. Dean gestures to down the length of the side wall, let’s do a run around the perimeter, and Sam follows.

They venture behind to find a cabin out back, sitting squat and low to the ground. This one looks like just a single room, simple and standing free from the shack. It takes Sam all of five seconds to jimmy the old lock, Dean standing watch at his shoulder.

“Find an urn,” Dean says softly as he steps inside. “These guys, they keep they’re power base in a physical container. An urn, or pot, or-”

“Yeah, I get it. We find it, we break it.” Sam lingers a moment at the threshold, while Dean wanders inside freely. “How do we know Broussard’s even the one responsible?”

Dean waves a hand vaguely but doesn’t turn around. “Suspicious deaths,” he says. “A priest well known for conjuring evil spirits and his watermark stamped all over the place. What else do you need?”

It’s an open space inside for the most part, wooden floorboards and shelves lining the walls. A window runs the length of the far wall, overlooking marshes and grass and the tree line, gilt-edged in moonlight.

Sam makes his way to the low table that sits underneath the window, littered with feathers and herbs, small animal bones and anointing oils, all lined up in glass bottles and jars, some dusty and some not. He picks up one of the jars that reflects light better, one that’s been used recently, and holds it up to the moonlight coming in through the window. Dean moves to stand behind his shoulder, runs a quick glance over the contents on the table and holds his flashlight up to filter through the murky liquid in the bottle.

“Fish guts,” Dean says the same time Sam figures it out.

“Animal sacrifices,” Sam says, putting the jar down. “It’s a pretty big jump, from killing fish to killing people. Why do you think he’s doing it?”

Putting the jar back shifts a bundle of something white and square that was sitting behind it. Dean’s leans past him and picks it up – photos of three men, all dead now.

“I don’t know, and I can’t say I care,” Dean says, dropping the photos. “But I think we’ve got all the proof we need.”

He steps past Sam to an iron basin sitting high on a stand. Inside it are what looks like coals, hard black and unlit, and Dean picks up the iron rod sitting propped on the rim.

“Look familiar?” he says, turning it around for Sam to see. On the end of the rod is a glyph, a triangle with a circle in the middle.

“It’s a brand,” Sam says, staring, and Dean shrugs before tossing it back into the basin.

“I don’t know what the hell he’s doing,” Dean mutters, moving away to check over the rest of the room. “Dumb ass bastards, conjuring up spirits they have no idea about. You can’t walk these things around on a leash. It’s like trying to collar Cerberus.”

The flashlight beam sweeps in wide arcs over dusty shelving, lingering on all the particularly gruesome keepsakes. It’s silent in here, Dean’s footsteps echoing loudly like knocking on a door, and Sam stamps down the urge to tell him to stop, to stand still.

“Hey, dude. I think it’s made of skin,” Dean crows from across the room, poking at a brown leather pouch, his foul mood from just a moment ago all but forgotten as he satisfies his macabre curiosity.

It’s nothing really, just restless energy the Dean builds up when action is running low and is usually siphoned off by action, hunting or otherwise. But right now, in the quiet of this dark space they’re in, he’s making too much noise, being too obvious. And not all of it is by speaking.

And just like that, Sam’s focus shifts from Dean to the thing in the room with them. It’s pulsing in the air around him, thick and insistent and growing exponentially more urgent now that Sam’s become aware of it. He idly wonders how long it’s been waiting here, thinks maybe it was here all along, just waiting. He has to find it. He needs to find it and then there won’t be this open-ended yearning . . .

In hindsight, he’ll realize that they didn’t see it straight away because it didn’t want them too. There’s an altar, set up against one of the side walls. It looks for all intents and purposes to be just another item in the collection that the cabin houses, has the same unused, sedentary look about it. There’s nothing about it that sets it apart but Sam knows without knowing how, that it doesn’t belong.

“It’s different,” he murmurs, moving closer.

It’s not much more than a black stone slab sitting on a solid podium, cracked and worn around the edges, carved out of what seems to be plain granite, although saying it’s been ‘carved’ is overstating it’s sophistication. It could just as easily have slid accidentally off the edge of a rock face, the granite flaking in layered sheets around the edges of the slab and lending it a misleadingly delicate air. It’s plain and somber in the way of old churches, the ancient ones that don’t have pews or stained glass windows but instead are rock-hewn and sacred, ages older than the cross. No etching, no engravings, nothing to indicate what time it’s from or what its purpose could possibly be.

They should leave. Right now.

“Dean,” he says, and the sound of his own voice is a little startling.

He starts to turn away, ready to manhandle Dean out of there if necessary, but stops as he catches a shimmer of something just out of visual range.

Fire roars to life somewhere nearby, singing his brows with heat and Sam takes a reflexive step back. The sudden light gleams off skin glistening with sweat, and highlights straining tendons. A body, a person, tied to the stone, chest rising and falling in panting breath. There’s the sharp battery acid smell of blood . . . and a sense of two images, superimposed on one another but just out of alignment like someone couldn’t quite get them to fit, couldn’t get them to slot into one another.

It’s like the very air around them is unlocked, irritating in a low-grade unconscious way that has Sam breathing harder. Things have their places, should fall into their own outline and stay within their own boundaries. Once you start to let them slip past, it rents a rip into the world and that misalignment can attract a multitude of things looking to take advantage, looking to tear into it just a little further.

He has to fix it. This kind of thing leads to trouble and wrenching separation and being alone.

Sam has no idea that he’s said any of that out loud. Behind him, he hears Dean step closer.

“Sam?” Dean says cautiously, tone rising as Sam moves. “Hey, I don’t think that’s such a good-”

Sam doesn’t even feel anything at first and by the time he comes back to himself enough to realize something’s wrong, it’s too late.

Like a tuning fork held to a tank of water, discordant vibrations resonate from the stone and he can feel himself trying to separate, in a way that he’d never be able to put himself back together again. Nothing changes and there’s no sound, but Sam’s going both deaf and blind. All he has left is his physical body and right now, it’s betraying him.

What started as just a tingling in his fingers where he’s touching the altar is now racing up his arms and tunneling into his chest, deep into his gut. It leaves his skin itchy and numb, prickling with pins and needles but a million times worse because it’s not as definable but it still demands obedience, and Sam has no choice. He’s starting to thin out from the inside, become the same consistency as the thickly muggy air that blankets him, and he can’t breathe . . .

“Sam, let go!”

When Dean reaches for him, Sam half expects to see his hand just pass right through his arm. Dean’s dropped both the EMF meter and the flashlight to wrap his hands around Sam’s wrists, trying to pry him loose. Sam wants to let go. He really does want to, but it won’t let him. It wants him, yearns for all the parts of him that should never be exposed, not even to himself . . . it’s after the tender, soft-belly underside, all the parts of a person that maybe make up a soul.

Dean’s right there by his side, pulling him back in more ways than one and none of them understandable. He dimly registers that Dean at least has enough sense to not touch the altar himself, and is vaguely grateful for that.

There’s a moment of being stuck in some sort of stasis, like the frozen moment in time when a glass wavers, standing on edge and deciding which way to fall. Sam doesn’t want to shatter, doesn’t hear himself sob Dean’s name because Dean won’t let him fall, Dean would never drop him. But a decision’s been made, an inevitable one, and he gets the feeling that it’s not up to either of them to choose anymore.

When he’s let go, it’s like a vacuum backdraft of space and air screaming past his ears and the relief of it almost blacks Sam out. He’s snapped back too fast and too sudden, almost with as much force as he was pulled out with. The fire, the sacrifice, all of it is gone in a heartbeat and there’s nothing but the dark room and dim moonlight as Sam sinks to his knees on the dusty wooden floor. Not the copper of blood in the air, but just the dank mustiness of age.

Dean’s crouched down, hovering over him, face grim and fierce with worry. “Sammy? Come on, man.”

It takes a couple of tries, but Sam finally gets his bearings. It’s like having vertigo while sitting down, but internalized, like the room is standing still around him and Sam’s spinning away somewhere inside himself. It’s painful, just not in a way that can be related to muscles and blood and nerve endings. It brushes against him on the inside, a restless and frantic thrashing, horrific only because Sam can’t reach to protect himself there; he just barely stops himself from clawing at his skin to make it stop, but looking at Dean helps. It calms down with each breath, but the few moments that it goes on are almost enough to drive Sam insane.

“Whoa,” he eventually says, voice sounding smaller than he can ever remember. Everything seems smaller, dimmer somehow, like it can’t compare to the blindness that just tried to eat him. He stares at Dean, eyes big and wide as smooth lines of disturbance run under his skin before fading out to nothing.

Dean jostles him lightly, mouth a thin line of tension. “Sam-”

“I’m okay,” Sam finally manages to say, sounding more than a little drunk. “I think I’m okay.” And for the most part, it’s true. Or at least, he thinks he’ll be okay once he settles back into his skin. “I just. Dude. That was weird.” His voice is hoarse, throat rasping like he’s scraped it raw with sandpaper.

“You’re telling me,” Dean says, settling back on his heels with a sigh. He’s got a fistful of Sam’s jacket, making sure they’re both leaning away from the raised ledge of the altar. “Why the fuck do you have to go fucking touch everything, Sam,” he snaps, concern sharpening his tone and Sam notices Dean sounds just as big and loud as he always has.

§

Not surprisingly, Dean wants to take the thing apart right there and then.

“We have no idea what it is,” Sam says, knowing Dean’s well aware of that. He’s using his reasonable voice, the one that only works fifty percent of the time and even then, only because Dean’s in the mood for allowing it.

They’re standing side by side, the trunk of the Impala open in front of them. Dean’s straightens up from where he’s been rummaging for the sledgehammer to look Sam in the eye.

“It’s nothing good, I can tell you that much,” Dean says, deadpan, and Sam can’t argue because he gets it. He’s got an arm braced on the edge of the raised trunk-hood, trying to make it look like he’s just holding it up and not leaning on it for support. He misses the way Dean’s gaze flicks over him.

Distance from the cabin hasn’t achieved anything save not being surrounded by all the other creepy assed stuff in there. The air outside is still humid and thick even this late at night, like a warm blanket smothering any chance for a proper breath and Sam needs one desperately. His heart’s still beating a just a little too fast and there are thick waves of something pulsing at his back. Sam’s no coward, but he can’t even bring himself to turn around and look -- not so much afraid of what he might see, as much as what might see him.

No. Of what might see Dean.

“If you smash it,” he says, watching Dean dig under the spare tire, “if you break that thing open, you could let out whatever’s in it. It could be set free. We don’t know, Dean.”

Dean straightens again to look at him and Sam knows he’s being assessed, but all he wants is to get out of there and he lets it show. The longer they stay, the more they’re giving up of themselves and something here doesn’t want to play nice. It strokes the bare skin on Sam’s arms, the back of his neck, trails along him like cobwebs that he can’t see and can’t sweep away. He keeps Dean in his line of sight.

Dean gives him a last once-over then looks away, glaring at the trunk as he eases down, tension unwinding just a little. He shakes his head, mutters, “Trust you to adopt a malevolent pet rock,” and Sam takes it for the concession it is.

“Fine,” Dean says loudly, making sure all and sundry hear him and Sam wonders who else he’s talking to. He closes the trunk with a solid thud before pointing an accusing finger at the cabin over Sam’s shoulder. “But we’re coming back.”

Sam nods readily, promising. “We’ll come back.”

Dean steps past him for the driver’s side door and Sam gets his first unobstructed view of the cabin in the distance. Even before his mind catches up with what he’s seeing, he knows something’s different. The front door of the house is open and there’s a small amount of light coming from inside, just a pinprick of brightness. In the open clearing in front of the house stands a man in robes, barely visible in the grey moonlight and fiercely dark in ways other than his skin.

He’s got to be at least fifty yards away, but Sam knows he’s facing their direction, that he’s watching them and seeing things about them they can’t see themselves. John Broussard knew they were here the whole time, Sam realizes, and hadn’t stopped them.

Sam thinks of spiders and flies, and that maybe they’ve just walked into one big fucking web.

“Dean,” he says, knowing his voice couldn’t possibly carry over such a distance but speaking quietly anyway. “Man, we’ve got company.”

From behind him, Dean chuckles low and quiet, and Sam knows without looking, knows with every bone in his body.

God, no, he thinks before it all goes to hell.

§

When Sam comes to, the sky over the eastern tree line is just a shade lighter than the rest and he quickly figures he’s lost two hours, maybe three.

One eye is swollen and bruised and his jaw aches when he moves it, sends pain flaring along his temples. Nothing broken, though. And by itself, not enough to keep him unconscious for that long.

When he clambers to his feet, he knows the wave of dizziness that swamps him comes from more than just a couple of good blows to the head. Maybe he smells herbs, sharp and acrid in the air, but it’s like an after-scent, gone before he knows it. He knows Dean’s not with him, even before he looks. The Impala’s parked to his right, the dirt road to his left and when Sam turns around, Broussard’s house is still there in the distance.

Dean’s taken a swing at him before, out of anger, out of fear, and Sam’s returned the favor more than once. This is different though, and that wasn’t Dean. That was something else entirely.

There’s no blood on the ground, no sign of disturbance in the dirt – just their footsteps, Sam and Dean’s, leading to and from the cabin.

Sam’s running before he even thinks of weapons, but he doesn’t stop. He’d tucked a gun into his jeans earlier and he checks that it’s still there now, pulling it out one-handed while his feet fly over uneven ground and he sends a quiet prayer that he doesn’t sprain an ankle on the loose stones. Something trivial like that could fuck things up and he doesn’t have time to breathe, let alone hobble his way down a country lane. There can’t be a Dean shaped hole in the world.

He passes right by the main house, not even giving it a second glance and heads straight for the cabin behind it, hurdling over the rocks and wood piles they’d so carefully walked around the first time. He rounds the corner and sees the cabin door wide open and gaping . . . and Sam is still alive and functioning. Either Broussard doesn’t think Sam’s a problem worth being concerned over, or Sam’s too late and nothing he does now can make a difference -- which is not an option, so he’s going to go with Broussard being an underestimating bastard.

When he goes crashing through the doorway, he doesn’t even try for quiet. Let them know he’s coming. Let Dean know.

It’s dim inside the cabin, the only light coming from an old oil lamp set up in a corner, but it’s better than outside, and Sam sees everything clearly. By the time he’s done gauging interior, Sam’s already lifted the gun in steady hands; aimed, cocked and ready.

“Step away,” Sam says, low and clear, not even close to panting from his frantic dash here.

John Broussard is in remarkable shape for man in his sixties. The robes are off, leaving him barefoot in worn linen pants and what Sam can see of his torso and arms show strong muscle lying under smooth brown skin. Broussard turns to look at him, but he doesn’t speak. If he’s surprised at Sam’s arrival, it doesn’t show. His face shows his age slightly better, but it’s in dark eyes that consider Sam thoughtfully that all the secrets lie. Sam doesn’t care about much beyond getting a clear view of Dean.

The room is sweltering in heat and humidity, the is sticky and pungent with heady scents that swim in almost visible tendrils in front of Sam’s eyes and he has to blink to clear his vision. The basin glows dull red with hot coals and smoking herbs, the iron brand perched on its ledge and ready. Sam’s doesn’t know what any of it is meant to achieve, but he thinks if he stays here much longer he’s going to find out and he’d really rather not.

He catches a glimmer of something red that might be Dean’s blood.

Broussard doesn’t move, but Sam doesn’t miss the way his eyes flick over to his gun. He forces himself to relax his grip, keep his fingers from cramping as he gestures slightly, never moving far off point.

“Back up. Now.”

Another quiet look sent his way and the man finally seems to understand that Sam’s not playing games and steps back from the altar, slowly crossing to the other side of the room.

“Don’t move,” Sam growls, then steps closer to where Dean’s lying on the stone slab. When he’s happy enough that Broussard is going to stay put for now and not whip out a vial of smoke and mirrors from thin air, he takes a hand off the gun the reaches out to Dean. It’s probably a stupid thing to do because he’s pretty sure Dean had been fish-hooked out of himself, or maybe squashed down, but either way it wasn’t his brother that had punched him and left him lying in the dirt. But his body is lying both still and silent and at the very least, Sam has to make sure he’s breathing.

It’s not until his fingers touch warm soft skin that Sam realizes with a jolt Dean’s shirtless. He’d seen it; it just hadn’t registered earlier, when he was preoccupied with keeping an eye on Broussard. He looks down now, gun still carefully trained on man across the room.

Sam’s seen Dean knocked around and knocked out before and it will never fail to bring about the gut churning fear that always comes with the sight. The idiot has a thick skull, but you can’t go battering bone into walls and not expect both to break. Dean’s lying flat on his back, his arms hanging over the sides of the altar, bare chest glistening with sweat and some of his tension eases when Sam sees him take a shallow breath. There also blood, a cut deep enough to perhaps need stitches on Dean’s inner forearm, but no other wounds. Nothing physical, anyway.

“Dean.” Sam squeezes his arm, shaking him lightly, and a frown tightens Dean’s expression, creasing his brows. Other than that, there’s no sign of consciousness. Sam’s careful not to touch the stone, but somehow he doesn’t think it would matter. He’s not the one it’s after anymore.

“Dean.”

Nothing for a long moment, then Dean lets out a sharp exhale, the muscles of his diaphragm contracting in abrupt spasm. The movement draws Sam’s eyes lower, down the length of Dean’s torso to where his legs are splayed wide, jeans unzipped and open. The white band of Dean’s boxer briefs shows stark in the dim light and Sam sees red.

Three hours. Jesus.

He looks back up at Broussard, says low and quiet, “What did you do.”

The conjurer is swaying where he stands and Sam suddenly realizes the blank expression on his face isn’t Broussard frozen in fear or thought. It’s barely discernable in the dimness, but he sees him murmuring, a steady stream of silent invocations that weave themselves into the air, taking the shape and form of something menacing and unseen. It’s gathering in the room with them, building itself up into an almost tangible presence, something that wants. And Dean’s laid out like a buffet meal.

The gun shot rings out sudden and loud. Broussard goes to his knees with a sharp cry, legs folding under him. It’s a strategic shot, skimming the outer muscle of his thigh, not fatal but enough to stop him from chanting his invocation, disabling him for now. Enough to get Dean and get the hell out of there.

“You can’t stop it,” Broussard says from his place on the floor, speaking out loud for the first time. There’s an accent there, something Sam can’t quite place it. He spares him just a glance, enough to see the red soaking the material of his pants and the edge of fear in Broussard eyes, and somehow knows it’s not there because of Sam or his gun.

“The fuck I can’t,” Sam snarls, tucking his gun back into his jeans and getting ready to haul Dean bodily from the slab.

“He left you,” Broussard says, words clipped and precise, tone self-righteous, and Sam goes stock still. “He took your place,” Broussard continues, softer now, and strangely gentle. “It wasn’t asked of him, but he offered and the deal was done. You can’t stop it.”

Sam’s got one hand on Dean’s arm and another over his heart, feels the pounding beat under his palm. “What deal?”

Broussard looks away, shifts his stance on the floor just slightly. It’s not a movement made out of pain, Sam knows. He’s loath to leave Dean’s side, but he crosses the room in three long strides and stands towering over Broussard on the floor.

“What deal,” Sam demands softly.

The wind is sudden and comes out of nowhere, hurling the door back against the wall, and Sam looks up instinctively at the noise. Outside the doorway, the low hanging willow trees are standing still as a statue, but Sam’s hair whips into his eyes and dust and debris is whipped up into a miniature storm inside the cabin. For a moment, he’s almost overwhelmed under the onslaught, because it’s more than just wind and air -- it’s everything coming together, wanting resolution and climax. He ducks his head out of the head wind and looks away, knowing that’s not enough, knowing both him and Dean are now as deeply enmeshed as Broussard is.

In front him, the conjurers power slaps at Sam like an acid wash, making him flinch, bleeding out of Broussard like the blood from his wound and something is picking up the scent and working itself into a fury. But if it wasn’t for his heavy breathing, there would be no sign that Broussard is suffering from bullet wound, and he looks up at Sam, steady and unflinching.

“It gave me power,” Broussard says and Sam stiffens.

“You bargained with people’s lives,” Sam hisses, seething. “You murdered them. And for what? So your little magic tricks can be extra dazzling?”

Broussard’s smile is grim. “They’re not tricks, boy,” he says, each word wrapped in condescension. “You know what kinds of things live just out of sight. You know what gifts their benevolence can bring. Of all people, you know.”

The wind shrieks and Sam twists away, bringing up an arm to cover his eyes as the bottles lining the shelves shatter and burst, sending shards of glass hurtling everywhere.

“It demands sacrifice, Samuel!” Broussard shouts from the floor. “It demands and it will be sated.”

“Not by my benevolence, it won’t,” Sam says, straightening. “And not by my brother’s.” He’s way out of his depth, knows that just as well as he knows he’s running out time. He reaches back and pulls his gun out again, cocks it and aims steadily at Broussard’s thigh, at the dead centre meaty flesh. “Reverse it.”

“There is no reversal,” Broussard says, teeth bared.

From behind him, Sam hears Dean scream.

This time the gun shot is almost eaten up in the cacophony of noise in the room, the wind and breaking glass and the silent something screeching just out of hearing range but making itself felt with every nerve in Sam’s body. The close-range wound isn’t neat and the bullet rips it’s way into Broussard’s leg instead of just skimming past, tearing through sinew and muscle and bone.

“Reverse it! ” Sam roars, and Broussard curls up around the wound, frozen and useless in his pain.

It takes longer than it should, to understand that there’s a choice here to be made, and that maybe Sam does have some say in it after all; Dean broken open behind him and Broussard seeping away in front, and both shadowed by the starving thing, hungry with craving and thirst.

Sam turns away, makes his choice, and doesn’t apologize for it. If there’s one thing he’s willing to be damned for, it’s Dean’s eternal soul.

Dean’s fallen silent, lying pale and still on stone, but Sam tries not to think about it too much. He digs his feet in and takes hold of Dean’s arms and pulls, hauling him off the altar and free from its physical boundary. He goes stumbling under the dead weight and they crash to the floor, his hand automatically coming up to cup Dean’s skull.

It takes him a moment to register that the room has gone deathly silent, all wind dying down to a heavy stillness and thick quiet. The air throbs and rings with a decision unmade, as things lie waiting and expectant. There’s nothing Sam can do now except wrap arms and soul around his brother and hang on, hoping it’s enough to shield him from whatever it is that’s looking to eat.

Underneath him, Dean bucks and gasps, body shuddering as his fingers dig into Sam’s waist.

“Sammy,” Dean whispers, barely breath-loud and Sam has to strain to catch.

Elsewhere in the room, the dark shroud that’s been hanging over their heads swells and pulses, and the decision is made. Broussard dies without a noise, the silence deafening.

§

Sam takes a gamble and spares several precious minutes looking through the cabinets under the long table. They’re mostly empty but for one, the one closest to where Broussard had been sitting on the floor, where he had determinedly not said or done anything. His hunch pays off, and Sam pulls out a sheaf of worn papers, old and blotted with ink and god only knows what else. Scripts, or maybe scripture, Sam’s not sure what yet, but it’s something and he shoves it into his jeans pocket for now.

The conjurer lies twisted into a pile of awkward limbs and impossible angles, sucked into himself with nothing left to keep him filled. There’s no need to salt and burn; Broussard’s spirit simply doesn’t exist anymore, not here on earth or any other plane. He just stopped being. End of story. The space that he had occupied is now a concave imprint of a binary negative. It stands by the door and gives Sam a gruesome smile, black-tar teeth and gums.

Sam doesn’t spare it a second glance. He hasn’t got the time or energy to deal with left over vacuums in space.

Dean is barely even conscious let alone anywhere near coherent, but he’s with it enough to mange stumbling steps and Sam ends up only half carrying him to the Impala. He could have left Dean there and brought the car to him, but after the night they’ve had he’s not prepared to let him out of sight. Something tried to take his brother from him in the first place, whatever unseen force it was that compelled him to leave Sam’s side, both physically and other wise. Who knows if it’s still lingering around.

“Like a really bad smell,” Sam says shakily, easing Dean down to lie in the back seat.

It’s unnerving, to see Dean forcibly stripped of his smirk and clothes. He’s always worn both with same purpose in mind; to look meaner and tougher, to appear twice the size he really is. And without those things, he looks too much like when he was lying in a hospital bed, tubes and machines dwarfing him. Looks too small. The blanket Sam covers him with is probably less for Dean’s benefit than his own. He talks, and has no idea what he’s saying, but keeps up a steady stream of noise just in case Dean can hear his voice. As they drive, he keeps an eye on him in the rearview mirror, but at some point Dean’s eyes fall shut and he doesn’t open them again, and Sam trails off.

The nearest block of motels are the one they’d vacated earlier that night, so Sam drives back to the same place and rounds the block to a different motel, out of sight from the first one and away from motel owners that might be asking questions about gunshots and damaged sink cabinets. By the time he parks the car in the lot and gets a room key, the sky is that colorless grey that means the sun’s just out of sight behind the horizon. Dean’s passed out cold in the back seat and Sam swings him into a fireman’s hold and staggers into their room, grateful again that it’s on the ground floor and that no one’s around this early to see and question, and piles him onto the bed furthest from the door.

Holy water doesn’t have any effect, and neither do any of the standard exorcisms. Failing both, and feeling like the biggest asshole in world, Sam gets out the nylon rope from the trunk. If he still needs to save Dean from something, he’d rather do it face to face than end up being knocked out again and having to chase Dean’s ass all over town. They have police-issue handcuffs too, but Dean can pick out of those with not much more than a wish and a smile.

It hadn’t been possession though, or if it was, it was working in reverse. Going off what he felt when Sam had touched the altar, nothing had tried to invade Dean’s body but rather had tried to pull him out of it. Maybe it’s not pulling anymore, but Sam lays out new salt-lines at the door and windows, twice as thick as normal and hopes it keeps good things in as effectively as it keeps bad things out. Once Dean’s bound hand and foot, he settles himself at the small table with his gun by his side and Broussard’s scripts in front of him, and decides he’s going to wait it out.

It’s only now he realizes that his hands are shaking.

This time though, it has nothing to do with the paranormal and everything to do with Dean.

He left you.

Demons aren’t the only things that lie, and Broussard had been trying to save his own life, cornered and desperate . . . but Sam thinks he might have been telling the truth there.

He’s hoping it’s the herb-haze that just has to wear off, that maybe Dean’s just taking time fitting back into himself, finding all the familiar curves and hidden places that only he knows, and filling them out, becoming Dean again. He’s hoping that Dean wants to.

He’s not sure that Dean does.

It’s been a little while since Sam’s seen vampire blood on Dean’s face, but the blood had been the least disturbing of it all. That kind of self destructive behavior was so uncharacteristic of his brother, who never thought twice about jumping between family and danger but had never before gone jumping without good cause. Gordon jeering him on hadn’t helped any, and Dean’s blind ferocity at everything and anything had left Sam shaken enough that he hadn’t intervened until later.

In the end, he’d gotten what he’d always wanted and Dean had opened up and let him in, had offered up a piece of himself only to have Sam stumble with it. Dean with his blinds down had left Sam mute.

What could you possibly say, Dean had asked him and Sam’s answer had been silence.

Sam’s been quiet for far too long.

“Now would be good, Dean,” Sam whispers to the room. “You feel free to wake up anytime now.”

Dead silence is only ever an answer from Dean if he’s actually awake.

§

It’s sight that she has, even though she’s been blind for the better part of her six decades.

She wasn’t asleep, even this late at night -- or early in the day, depending -- but if she had been, the noise would have woken her up, no question. It’s deafening for the brief moment it lasts, gone so quickly that she’s left with nothing more than a vague memory of it, resonating and thinly stretched out like it hadn’t happened just seconds ago. Death has a distinct shade, though, one that carries.

It’s enough that she’s distracted, and doesn’t hear her daughter till the last.

“Mambo?”

The term is one of respect and love more than designation, and it makes her smile. It’s been years since she took on the role that came with it, almost since the last time she saw with human eyes.

Warm hands touch her face, and she takes them, holds them in her own; soft against worn, young versus aged. Her daughter’s hands don’t shake, but she senses the tension; the term is one also used when her daughter is scared for her. Her sight is a rare enough thing to be wary of.

“It’s nothing, Rosalina,” she murmurs, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “You go back to bed.”

She doesn’t move as easily as she used to, but she waits until she’s alone and then makes her way down the stairs to the shop beneath their apartments, one hand tight on the banister. There are some herbs that are common, and some that are rare, but they’ve always got a healthy stock of both.

Rose would likely find out about it later, but for now her hands at least, if not her eyes, know where to find the most potent herbs -- and a Winchester would likely need the strongest they have.

§

Broussard’s notes are haphazard at best, but San can get the gist of it.

A binding ritual. Not sacrifice.

It’s mostly written in English, scripture style, but interspersed with Latin and some French, and Sam’s sure Broussard knew all three fluently. It’s not the translation that’s hardest but trying to separate the ritual from the nonsense that surrounds it. It doesn’t take long to understand that most of it is the conjurer’s self-indulgent rambling. The man had thought he would become some kind of God, and had been fostering the ego of one on paper.

It’s nothing established. What ever deity Broussard had been pandering to isn’t covered, not in his notes or in their own journal. It simply doesn’t mention it. To Broussard at least, it hadn’t mattered what it was. He had found something, sensed the potential is pulsed with and decided to play monopoly with people’s souls as the pieces. Offer a sacrifice, get a lucky-dip prize in return.

His lack of knowledge is most likely the reason for all Broussard’s embellishments, grandiose and somber, but they’re simply embellishments nonetheless. Designed to add dead weight to what Sam’s fairly certain can be achieved with little more than intention and will.

There’s mention of herbs and a brand, of blood and lifeblood. The only things that look like they matter.

Getting that far has taken Sam long enough that sunlight now spills in through the gap between the curtains, filtering through the grimy poplin so easily that the curtains might as well be open. It’s a sign that more time has gone by and Dean still hasn’t woken, but it also shows Sam the steady rise and fall of his brother’s chest as he breathes, so he’s calling it even.

Sam’s been playing pinball with his own emotions, alternating wildly between being scared and being furious. He’d checked Dean over once, carefully. There had been no burn marks that he could see, and he’d felt himself unwinding a little with every inch of skin revealed, smooth and unmarked but for the scars Sam’s already familiar with.

The thought of Dean being branded is enough to drive away the blinding panic, if only temporarily. Seeing ‘lifeblood’ written in Broussard’s hand turns the anger into an uneasy helplessness, because Sam remembers Dean stripped down by both invocation and by a strangers hands, and can make an uneasy guess at what it refers to.

The deeper a demon can tunnel, the more appetizing the prey seems, Sam knows. Base instincts are irresistible to demons, but Sam, like Dean, had been taught early on not to let evil get that far in. Letting them get hold of your blood or hair -- or other things -- is one of the biggest mistakes you could make.

Sam has no idea how far Broussard had gotten, and he doesn’t have the courage to check for evidence. He remembers Dean shaking apart beneath him, and thinks probably it hadn’t been far enough. Thinking on it now makes Sam’s stomach flip, still uneasy but maybe not with either fear or anger.

He’s been staring at Dean’s still form for so long that when Dean does finally move, Sam’s convinced he’s imagining it.

“Sam.”

His name, first and last on Dean’s lips.

He’s halfway across the room before realizing it, and he stops there. Dean’s lying on his side, his back to Sam, shoulders first flexing as he tries to move, then stiffening when he realizes he can’t get free. Sam stands frozen to the spot with his heart in his mouth and the gun in his hand, torn and trying not to let it show when he says, tone as calm as possible, “Do I need this?”

Dean goes still for a moment then flips onto his back, taking stock of his surroundings and visibly trying to get his breathing under control. His eyes settle on Sam and the gun, now held up in plain sight and pointed at the ceiling, away from Dean. It’s not a threat. It’s a question of legitimacy.

It’s almost more than Sam can do not to rush forward when he recognizes all the signs that his brother is panicking, but he stays back, steady because one of them needs to be. He holds Dean’s gaze and hopes that it’s enough.

Dean eyes him openly, assessing where Sam’s coming from and who, or what, else might be the real threat in the room with him. He’s most likely including himself in that analysis. When he’s eventually satisfied enough, Dean eases back on the bed and stares at the ceiling, throat bobbing as he swallows.

When he talks, it’s in such a painfully dry rasp, it makes Sam wince.

“It depends,” Dean says hoarsely. “Did you have your way with me while I was knocked out?”

Crass humor, second on Dean’s lips.

Sam can’t help but shut his eyes in relief, just as he can’t explain how it is that he’s so certain it’s Dean, all of him and nothing but. Everything that makes him inherently Sam is telling him so and that’s something that, unlike holy water, can be relied on, always and again.

“Untie me, you moron,” Dean says wearily.

Sam takes a breath, and then another, and by the time he’s set the gun back on the table and is standing by Dean’s side, most of the fear he’s been steadily compounding for the last several hours has dissipated.

Dean’s just starting to build his.

Sam’s already starting on his anger.

“Turn over,” he says, and motioning with his hands. Dean half glares at him before tilting over on one hip, freeing his bound hands from underneath him. Sam works them free quickly and he’s bent over Dean’s feet, pulling the nylon loose as Dean sits up.

A hand on Sam’s shoulder, a foot hooked behind his leg, and Sam’s back hits the floor hard enough to wind him.

“You stupid little shit,” Dean growls above him, knee pressed to Sam’s chest, hand on his throat. “You make it so fuckin’ easy for something looking to kill you.”

Sam doesn’t struggle, doesn’t consider it even for a second. He’s not in danger, the pressure on his throat strong by not restrictive.

Besides which, Dean’s just put him flat on the floor, which means he has some strength at least.

It also pisses Sam off.

“You testing me now?” he says sharply. Dean doesn’t flinch because he stops himself from doing it, but Sam sees that, sees how wide Dean’s eyes are and he softens without meaning to. “I’m fine, Dean,” he adds, calm and sure.

Dean looks like he’s going to say something to that, but backs off and lets go. Sam doesn’t follow him although the urge is there. He stays on the floor and looks up, tensing enough when Dean weaves on his feet to push up onto his elbows.

“Sit down,” Sam suggests quietly.

“Fuck off,” Dean snaps and then does, setting down on the edge of the closest bed. He looks like he’s about to bolt for a moment, then closes his eyes and keeps them shut, chest still bare and moving in a purposefully steady rhythm. It’s not meditation but something close to it, something Dean does. Sam’s seen it only a handful of times, and never questioned it.

He doesn’t question it now either, just pushes himself up to lean against the bed opposite and watches, waiting. Dean’s hands are on the knees of his jeans, the slight tensing of his fingers so minute that Sam would have missed it if he hadn’t been looking. He is looking though. He’s remembering too, in the musty cabin when Dean had first pulled him back, and knowing that external focus helps calm the internal chaos, he’s ready for it when Dean opens his eyes and stares at him like Sam’s some kind of anchor.

He takes the weight of that gaze in silence for as long as he can.

“I wanted to tear off my skin,” Sam says finally, still quiet. It’s a question and he watches the answer tell itself in the way Dean’s fingers tense again. “You made it better somehow,” he murmurs. “By talking. Gave me something else to think about until it faded.”

The message is there. It will fade and Dean will be back to normal. Aside from that, he’s fine physically, from what Sam can tell.

He leans back and holds his hands up, palms out, getting ready to move and telegraphing the intention loud and clear. “There’s water in the fridge,” he says, moving slow enough not to startle, but not so slow as to insult Dean and raise his hackles. The mini-fridge makes about the same amount of noise as a small jet-engine aircraft, but barely even works. It at least keeps the water out of the heat and humidity, chills it several degrees cooler than the room and Sam hands the bottle to Dean then settles himself on the opposite bed, mirroring Dean’s stance so that they’re knees almost touch.

“You okay?” he asks, voice too unsteady, suddenly feeling every minute of his solitary vigil.

Dean drops his gaze to stare at the carpet between their feet, sets the bottle aside untouched. “Yeah,” he says, and Sam believes him.

“Good. That’s good.” Sam’s jaw is clenched so tight that his teeth ache, and Dean looks back up. “I’m fine too. So we’re both fine.”

Dean’s eyes narrow.

“Isn’t it just wonderful when things work out like that,” Sam bites out. He has no idea where the bitterness comes from, because it’s unexpected but actually not. It’s been building, accumulating over a much longer period than just last night, and now it’s seeping from his pores like poison.

Expulsion of toxins will always leave a person shaky, but his mistake is in assuming Dean would understand it isn’t aimed at him.

Dean stares at him for a second and Sam watches his face go pale as his gaze fixes on Sam’s eye. The black eye. He’d completely forgotten about it and reaches up to touch it now, by instinct. The lines around Dean’s mouth tighten and he sweeps his gaze over Sam’s body, from head to toe, giving him a thorough once over. He’s searching for injuries.

“You think this is because of something you did, you’d be right,” Sam says, low and rough. “But not . . . not to me. You didn’t do anything to me. Apart from leave.”

Dean smirks, an ugly and uncertain twist of his mouth. “Possession, Sam. Nine tenths of the law.”

“You weren’t possessed,” Sam lets out, almost choking on the words and the emotion behind them. Dean looks shocked for a moment at the sound of it.

“Okay,” Dean says carefully. “Sam, you’re gonna have to explain things a bit here.”

When the damn breaks, Sam thinks and takes a heaving breath. When he speaks again, the words are clear, tone almost clinical. “You tell me. What happened?”

Something like the first brush of anger crosses with the worry on Dean’s face before his expression goes blank. “Does it look like I’m in the mood to play twenty questions,” he says quietly.

“Does it look like I care what mood you’re in,” Sam says, just as quiet.

They glare at each other silently before Dean finally unlocks his jaw. “The last thing I remember is standing with you by the car,” he says, words clipped and short. “You said something, and I turned around. And then I-”

Sam shakes his head. “Before that. What did you do in the cabin? When you pulled me away from the altar.” He’s staring at his hands, fingers of one hand tightly woven with the other because he thinks if he lets go, he’ll start shaking again. And that can’t happen until he gets this out.

He can feel the burn of Dean’s glare over his head.

“Say what is it is you want to say, Sam, and quit the theatrics.”

“You’re an asshole,” Sam says softly.

“So I’ve been told.” Dean’s still playing blasé. Preparing himself.

Sam looks up to see Dean watching him, expressionless. “Not only,” Sam says, leaning in, voice clear and deliberate, “did you let it in, you invited it. Pushed yourself into the way when I was halfway to gone and I don’t even know how you did it, but if anyone could, it’s you. Like a fucking engraved invitation.”

Dean blinks. “Huh.”

Sam’s anger is a surprise, if only because this time it’s aimed at Dean. He reaches out when Dean goes to stand, and doesn’t touch him, but the gesture is enough.

“I knew it.” Hand outstretched, and his fingers might be trembling, so he curls them in. “It’s not really a surprise, because I just knew something like this would happen.”

That’s a lie because Sam still feels the shock of it, but apparently Dean believes him, is starting to look offended and plenty pissed off himself.

“That some physic wonder-boy thing you got going?” Dean says, and that smirk is firmly back in place. “You knew this was going to happen and you just let me walk into it?”

“Fuck you,” Sam says softly, not looking away from Dean’s eyes. “What ever made you think the best way to save me is to leave me alone in the world?”

God help me, but I think it might be my fault.

Dean huffs out air, something that might have been a laugh, but too sharp. “Oh, Jesus. Stop with the melodrama, Sam. Not everything’s always about you. You’re not that important.” It’s said mockingly, and Dean stands up, ready to end it there.

He’s not prepared to have Sam hard on his heels and stumbles when Sam shoves his shoulder, hard. Sam sees the muscle in his jaw jump when Dean turns around, and knows it means he’s pushed too far.

He pushes further.

“No,” Sam says, shoving again and following when Dean backs up a step. “No, you’re not important. That’s what it is. That’s what you’re thinking, right? Every fucking day, every waking minute. Just can’t wait to through yourself in with Dad.” Sam is prepared for Dean to shove back, had been waiting and ready, but trips back under the unexpected force behind it. Dean shifts on his feet, a tell tale sign he’s getting ready to throw a punch, when Sam adds quietly, “I just didn’t think you’d ever go this far.”

Maybe it’s because Sam doesn’t move to step out of the way, but Dean drops his stance, and drops the act.

His smile is wry and painful, self depreciating. “Can’t help myself, kid. I kinda like having you around.” He shrugs. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it,”

“You’re always doing it!” Sam shouts, frustrated beyond belief, and Dean flinches at the sudden volume. “You’re always doing it and I never asked you to, Dean. No one asked you to.”

“Dad did.” Quiet and immediate. So goddamn immediate. “And you know what, Sam, it doesn’t matter if he hadn’t. It’s my job.”

“This isn’t about Dad,” Sam says, sorrow layered on anger. “It can’t be about Dad because he’s not around anymore, Dean.”

It’s not meant as an accusation. Sam didn’t mean to allocate blame. But Dean’s eyes glint dangerously and it’s clear he interprets it as such. Because Dean’s gathers guilt to himself easily, and Sam thinks maybe he’s been taught how by Sam and their father both; by them doing nothing more than allow it.

Sam leaving years ago had only frayed their bond -- it was in his continued absence, and left to the damage of Dean’s solitude, that the rift had gown a mile wide. He feels it now, wide and gaping between them. That Dean still loves him is something Sam never once doubted, and that he trusts Sam with his life is something never once questioned. But all the other parts of Dean, the sacred and precious pieces that make up who he is, they’re hidden away now in a way they never were growing up, locked up and made off-limits not out of cruelty or spite, but out of necessity. Because that’s the only way Dean knows how to survive.

Only three feet of carpet separate him from his brother, but Sam’s never felt the loss more so than now, never been affected by it as much. It gives him the freedom to say exactly what he means for once.

Dean, apparently, is feeling much the same.

“You think,” Dean hisses, low and deadly, “that for even one second, I can forget that? That I can forget why?”

Sam softens his tone because he’s admitting to Dean’s truth. “I know you don’t. That’s kind of the problem.”

He’d been expecting more anger. He’s stepped into territory that terrifies the shit out of Dean, and he did so prepared to let Dean throw the first punch. And Sam had been willing to let it connect because then he could feel fully justified in taking a swing himself, if that’s what it takes. Anything to get Dean to hear him, and violence speaks best with his brother at times.

What he gets instead is weariness, and it hurts all the more for it being unexpected.

“Why do you have to bring this shit up now, Sam?” Dean says, body going slack, tension replaced with something else that goes bone-deep. “We’ve got more important things to worry about.”

He’s talking about the same things that had clamored for space in Sam’s mind only days ago, all that noise that had fallen away at the sound of Dean’s laughter.

Right now, Dean’s not even looking at him, and the gap has split open into something as wide as the Grand Canyon.

“No,” Sam says. “No, there really isn’t anything more important.”

Sam doesn’t know what his tone carries but Dean looks at him now, quiet and weary, like he’s readying himself for a barrage and that just hurts. It’s their own Winchester dynamics, the irrefutable truth of how they work; Dean had made them work. It had all been built around him, and more often than not, by him. And he has no idea. Sam had made the decision once, a long time ago, that it wasn’t right to depend on someone so completely, to feed off one person so much. It was merciless, he’d told himself, and ignored the fact that the reasons for him thinking so might have been selfish ones. It had made it easier to leave, in the end, but not enough to stay away.

What hadn’t occurred to him was what Dean depended on.

Sam’ had dropped the ball on that one. More than once.

He knows it now, but he’s slipped up before, never ready for something as full and all-encompassing as a Dean split wide open. And true to form, the failures are the lessons Dean’s learnt. Truth as it’s written in Dean-cement.

Sam shakes his head. “What are you thinking when you go jumping in front of me like that? I’m staying, Dean. Maybe I should have told you that a long time ago, or maybe it wouldn’t have made a difference if I had, but I’m not leaving. Not this-” he sweeps a hand at the room around them, encompassing their life in general, “- not any of this. Not if it means leaving you. So if you think you need to keep almost dying on me to get me to hang around and keep saving you, I’m telling you now. Quit it.”

Dean’s face goes that much paler, and Sam feels guilt settle heavy and solid in his stomach. He really hadn’t meant to say that. He hadn’t known he was going to until the words were out and now it’s too late to take them back. Where the thought had come from, he has no idea, but it’s not lost on him that he’s accusing Dean of being infinitely more selfish than he’d ever been accused of being himself.

Sam feels more a monster in that moment than all his inferred wrongness could have ever managed.

“That’s really what you think,” Dean says, voice shaking with what Sam assumes is anger. “So what, then -- you want me sit by the side of the road and just watch them have at you? Not gonna happen, I -”

“I know you’ve thought about the crossroads,” Sam interrupts bluntly, and watches Dean stiffen. “We’re kind of close to them here. You probably haven’t stopped thinking about it, and right from when we first got here, all I could think of was getting you away. Because that’s what you do. You jump to the front of the line, screaming for attention so that I won’t get any. And this is what happens – something hears you. Half the time we’re on a hunt, it’s all I can do to keep you safe.”

“Well, no one asked you to do that either!” Dean snaps, hands curling into fists. He sways on his feet, and Sam sees the sweat that’s broken out over his lip and brow.

“No, but that’s my job,” Sam says, and Dean just crumples.

It takes longer than it should for Sam to realize that something’s wrong. By the time he does, Dean’s halfway to his knees and Sam has to lunge to break his fall. He makes it just in time to slow him down, and they stumble to the carpet in an awkward pile of arms and legs.

All his anger gone, and Sam’s heart is back in his throat again. “Dean? Hey, man, come on -”

“Can’t you just knock me out like a man,” Dean says roughly, clutching at Sam’s shirt. “You have to go putting mind-freak mojo on me instead.”

“I’m not doing anything!” Sam’s too confused to hear the mocking tone to Dean’s voice, too busy trying not to panic because Dean’s broken out into a cold sweat and is shaking and there’s no physical reason why. Which is never a good thing because it means that no med-kit or hospital can fix it, and any hope of a cure sits on the other side of a sometimes hazy line.

“It still wants me.”

“What still wants you?” Sam says, voice rising an octave. “The thing? But I stopped it.”

Dean barks out a laugh, harsh and colorless. “Sorry, Sammy. Looks like you didn’t.”

Sam stares.

“You said it yourself; engraved invitation, remember?” Dean says.

Sam sits heavily on the floor, still gripping Dean’s arms, suddenly petrified of letting go. He remembers the cabin, the rippling air and the touch of stone, the terror of falling and wanting nothing more in the world than for Dean to pull him back. Remembers how small he’d sounded and how loud Dean had been, and realizes that Dean’s the one who’s quiet now, although he’s still making a lot of annoying noise.

He wants to let himself be horrified, but instead just sets his jaw. “I’ll stop it.”

§

When Sam next checks the time, it’s noon. He hasn’t slept since the night before last but going off previous hunts, he figures he could keep up focus for another two days before starting to slow down.

“I need to get some stuff,” he says, pulling on his jacket. “Take a break. Just until I get back.”

Dean hasn’t said much since Sam had hauled his ass to bed. With any luck, he’s busy simmering up some serious rage at the situation; Dean’s anger could pretty much carry him through anything, the only reliable left after everything else falls by the wayside.

“I’ll come with you,” Dean says, getting ready to stand.

Dean hasn’t stopped shaking, and won’t look Sam in the eye. Sam knows how he feels; last time he’d let that much emotion out they’d been burning their father at a pyre, and the time before that Dean had been silent and still in a hospital bed, unconscious to Sam’s shakily whispered words.

It’s easy enough to get over the awkwardness when Sam considers what’s at stake.

He walks over to the bed, digs into jeans Dean’s and fishes out the Impala’s keys in one smooth move. It only takes a hand on his shoulder and alarmingly little force to keep Dean from getting up.

“It’s trying,” Sam says clear and slow, “to tear you apart. Stay put. I’ll be an hour, tops. I swear.”

There’s a frightening moment where he thinks Dean’s just going to let him walk out, not even try and mouth off.

“You scratch her, you die,” Dean says deadpan, and Sam holds in a sigh of relief.

“And I’m the control freak,” he says, turning away. “Keep your cell close.”

“You’ve got a heavy foot, Sam,” Dean yells after him. “Be gentle in second! Sam, I said-”

Sam pulls the door closed behind him and Dean’s still going.

It’s kind of reassuring.

§

He’d lifted Rose’s number from Dean’s cell.

Despite all circumstance, Sam’s curious.

He knows Rose was not a one night stand because Dean still has her number and apparently still uses it. Whether she was more or less than that, Sam has no idea. He pulls the Impala off the road a mile down from the motel to phone her. Rose sounds friendly, concerned and frighteningly efficient, all in that order. She doesn’t doubt his legitimacy when Sam tells her who he is, listens while Sam talks and questions him no more than necessary. Sam could put her age anywhere between twenty and fifty, and knowing Dean, it really could be anywhere in that range.

Most of the herbs and spices mentioned in Broussard’s scripts are specialist stuff and Sam needs them concentrated and in their pure form. The dried herbs they’ve got stored in the Impala’s trunk don’t come close, so Rose gives him an address of a place close by, but she doesn’t give him any advice. No take care of your brother or be careful, although she’s undoubtedly got to hear the gravity in his tone. It leads Sam to think that Rose probably understands Dean -- and by extension, Winchesters -- better than most; it’s redundant to tell them to take care of each other, and inane to suggest they only do so after considering their own safety.

When Sam thanks her, he does so with the distinct feeling he should probably be grateful for whatever role she had played in Dean’s life.

The store is discreet and tucked into the back of a second hand book shop on the ground floor of an ageing building. It’s run by a woman with dark skin and darker eyes, and Sam almost walks right out when he recognizes her as the murmuring woman from the coffee shop. He’s halfway to stepping back when she takes his arm and pulls him further into the shop, and Sam stops resisting then because she might have the same quiet air of knowledge the Broussard did, but has none of the dark intent. Up this close, he’s surprised to see that she’s even older than he’d initially thought, but it takes him a few beats to realize her eyes don’t focus on his face, to recognize the wavering gaze of someone blind.

He’s not surprised when she holds out a drawstring pouch of herbs, but he looks at it closer and doesn’t see anything off Broussard’s scripts.

“For binding,” she says, voice sheared and refined, and Sam shakes his head.

“I need one to break a bind. This isn’t what I need. I need these things-” he pulls out the scripts, and gestures, helpless. “I . . . I have a list.” He’s nothing but horrified to hear his voice crack. In the face of this woman’s silence and her unseeing eyes, Sam’s suddenly left alone with his fear, and no Dean to get angry at for it.

The woman takes Sam’s hand and puts the pouch in his palm, curling her fingers over his. When Sam doesn’t say anything, she pulls away and steps back. “And we have the rest, the others on your list.”

Sam gets back to the motel within the hour, both sets of herbs in a paper bag with a bottle of oil, and finds Dean asleep. There’s a slight shift and resettling of limbs, but apart from that Dean doesn’t so much as grunt when Sam closes the door and that says enough right there.

It doesn’t make much sense that Broussard had used a binding ritual. Sam thinks it might have something to do with creating an open pathway from the deity to Dean. Whatever, if that’s what Broussard used, then he’d also described the incantation to break the bind, and Sam’s going to use it himself.

It’s not complicated to prepare the anointing oil, but it’s some of the most inane and arcane directions Sam’s seen. Stir clockwise, hold your breath for three counts, add more, and stir again.

But Sam’s in no way prepared to take liberties. He does it all to the letter.

He doesn’t question if it’ll work or not. It’s all he’s got. He’ll make it work.

“Gonna give me a massage?” Dean’s pushed himself up to lean against the headboard, bleary and yawning. “Cause you know, I have this pain in the neck brother-”

Sam flicks him just a quick look, focused on the task at hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Dean says immediately. “Never been better.”

Ask a stupid question.

“It’s anointing oil, dickhead,” Sam mutters, putting the stopper on the finished product and trying to be pissed. He sees the empty water bottle on the night stand, and grabs his own bottle, throwing it at the bed. Dean catches it easily and Sam looks a little closer.

Dean notices him looking and shrugs. “Beauty sleep can do wonders. You should try it, you’re looking a little peaked around the eyes.”

Sam’s keeps looking at him steadily, and Dean sighs.

“It’s not doing anything,” Dean says. “Not anymore. Not like before.”

“Good,” Sam says cautiously. “And it won’t get the chance to, either. We gotta go back.” He holds up the oil. “This isn’t for you. It’s for the altar.”

Dean chugs down half the bottle in one go, swiping a hand over his mouth to catch the drops. “The altar’s possessed?”

Sam honestly can’t tell if he’s being serious. “No, Dean. There’s no possession going on anywhere here. It was compulsion. It only worked because-”

“Because I let it,” Dean interrupts sharply. “Second verse, Sam. I don’t have the energy to go through that with you again. Can we skip to the part where you tell me how to get out of this in one piece?”

Dean’s obviously worked through his fear.

“It’s not voodoo,” Sam snaps, hurt and wanting the irrational satisfaction of saying I told you so. “It’s got no name. It has no history. There’s nothing on it. Far as I can tell, it’s old, really freaking a lot. We’re talking angels and demons old-” he pauses when Dean huffs, then continues, “- fine, just demons old then. But I don’t think it’s one of them.”

“What isn’t? The altar?”

“What are you, stuck on repeat?” Sam says, staring. “No, Dean. Or at least, I don’t think so.” Actually, now that he thinks about . . . . “I don’t know.”

Dean snorts, unconcerned. “That’s helpful.”

“It has something to do with the altar, but it’s an altar right? There’s something behind it, there has to be. The point is, Broussard? Man, he had nothing on it. Maybe he knew how to flick the switch on the thing but he had no idea what kind of power he was summoning. Not that he cared much, as long as he kept getting what he wanted. And to do so, he had to keep giving sacrifices.”

Dean’s face darkens. “The men, they were bait.”

“Yeah. They were feeding it somehow. Their souls, I mean. It ate them. They didn’t just die, Dean. The were ended. Like, forever.”

“Nasty. Every full moon, huh?” Dean says, chucking the bottle back at him in an easy underhand. “Tonight’s a full moon.”

He slips it in there so easily, tone so casual that Sam barely would have noticed if the thought hadn’t been screaming at him all morning.

“I don’t know how long he was planning on keeping it up,” Sam says, ignoring the elephant in the room. “I don’t think that he’d have made it if he ever stopped. But from what I can make of it, he picks a target, focuses on them and kind of points the way. Like a signpost. So the sentient can find them. Find them, bring them back under compulsion, and lay them out so he can finish it and then -”

“You weren’t just a job, Sam.”

It takes some time for Sam to meet Dean’s eyes.

“Looking after you was never a job,” Dean says, serious and somber. “Just so you know.”

Sam blinks then looks back down to the scripts he’s holding. “I think you think I don’t realize that. But I do. More than you know.”

Dean snorts. “Dude. That was not an invitation to start sharing. Just-” he flaps a hand in Sam’s general direction “Shut up. But keep going. About the case.”

The case. Right. Just like any other case.

“Um. Okay. There were the first three victims and then you were meant to be the fourth, but . . .”

Dean focuses on the hesitation. “What?” He prompts.

“He died,” Sam says bluntly. Maybe he’d expected to feel something like remorse, or guilt, but there’s nothing. “I stopped the ritual before Broussard could finish it. And I’m guessing that the sentient turned back on him instead. Which is why I thought it was finished -- he ended up being his own sacrifice.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You’ve said that twice now.”

“Sentient?” Sam shrugs. “It’s just what I’m calling it.”

“Well. It’s not finished,” Dean says, sounding all business and more like himself by the minute. “That much I can tell you for sure. What are you cooking up,” he says, nodding at the table.

Sam gestures at the scripts. “There’s a ritual in here, designed to break whatever link it’s got on you. I can do it myself, Dean. Just an incantation, some herbs.” He says it mildly with an easy shrug; Dean’s way out if he needs to skip this one. You’re not useless, it’s just a small job is all.

The scornful look Dean sends his way is completely expected, and not completely unwelcome.

“I’m driving this time,” Dean says.

§

They’re a couple of minutes down the road from the cabin when Dean just kind of locks up. Sam shoots out a hand to grip the steering wheel just in time to stop them from tail-spinning into the ditch that runs along the dirt road as Dean manages to slam on the brakes and the car comes screaming to a stop.

“Dean?”

Sam reaches a tentative hand towards Dean’s shoulder, not sure if the contact is going to make things worse. Dean lets out a quiet huff of laughter, head bowed like it’s too much effort to lift it, fine tremors running along his shoulders.

“Bitch is saying hello,” Dean says, voice rough. “It must know we’re close.”

“Okay,” Sam says stupidly, patting Dean’s shoulder and feeling completely useless. “Okay,” he says again, shoving his door open to get out. “I’ll go. Stay here.”

“The hell I will,” Dean growls, following suit but only making it to the front of the car. He sits down heavily on the hood, face sickly pale and gleaming with sweat and glares at Sam with all the fury of someone cheated out of their ultimate dream.

Sam tucks Broussard’s scripts into his jacket pocket and leans in through the passenger window to scoop up the bottle of anointing oil. “Stay here,” he repeats firmly, holding a hand up and backing away slowly. “Please, Dean.”

Dean gives him a withering look, but he doesn’t move as Sam turns away.

“Don’t touch anything this time, you careless fucker!” Dean yells from behind him and Sam waves an absent hand over his shoulder in acknowledgment. As long as Dean’s insulting him, things are never unfixable, and he’s grinning just a little as he steps into the cabin, but it fades fast.

The maelstrom that had swept the place last night has left everything strewn about and Sam has to step over broken glass and loose shelving on his way to the altar. Broussard’s body is still lying where he had fallen last night. They should probably do something about that, but Sam doesn’t spare him a glance.

The scripts say to start in the eastern most corner of the altar, so Sam begins there and makes his way around to all four, putting three drops exactly in each, and reciting under his breath.

He’s just finishing up, when it speaks.

“What do you think that’s going to achieve?”

It was in the room with him right from when he first walked in. It was just waiting to be seen.

Sam turns, tilts the bottle back up and steps around the table to the other side, eyeing it over the stone surface.

What’s facing him is both expected and not, a flash of surprise where he’s thrown for the loop before he orients himself into the familiar features of a human’s form. If you’d asked him later what color hair or eyes, male or female, he wouldn’t be able to tell you but right now it’s just mundane enough to keep him sane. It looks at him, and he gets the sense that it’s stringing together all the parts of himself he’s left along the trail from childhood to adult, all the spots in his timeline where he’s paused and spread a little of himself on the world around him.

“I was promised a sacrifice,” the sentient finally says.

“You’ve been given one,” Sam says, voice steady.

There’s amusement, perhaps the suggestion of a raised eyebrow. “Have I? By whom, you?” It doesn’t move from it’s place in the centre of the floor but it settles itself, reaching out to the walls on either side and floating up towards the ceiling until it’s just about filling the room. Like it’s sitting down for a nice long chat and it makes Sam skin itch. “Tell me what you think you’ve given me.”

Sam’s quickly flicks his eyes over to the conjurer’s corpse, just a glance before he looks back up at its impression. Something like this, something this old, can’t be watched exactly, not by eyes alone but right now it’s all he’s got so he’s going to use it. And if it hasn’t made a move towards him then maybe what he’s holding in his hands, the chanting, the anointing oil, maybe it does have power enough to –

“It does nothing,” it says and Sam stops himself from sucking in a startled breath.

“That,” it says, gesturing at the oil held in Sam’s hand, “is like an irritating buzz. You know, static on a radio. Or rather, what would you hear these days . . . you know traffic, right? Roadside motels, highway noise at three in the morning.” It shrugs, masculine for a moment. “Annoying. But harmless.”

“Dig in enough?” Sam says. “Next you’ll be recapping my childhood for me.” He doesn’t let go of the bottle. This thing may not be a demon exactly, but like everything else, it’s still capable of lying.

“You’re still a child, son,” it says, loading the word with scorn. “You always will be, lost as you may be. You and your brother. Speaking of which.”

“You have your sacrifice,” Sam says, speaking from between his teeth.

“Of blood and flesh. I’m not a meat-eater. And that man-” it pauses, gesturing at Broussard’s body, “- he barely had a soul left in him, Sam.”

Well, fuck. What it doesn’t know about them probably wouldn’t fill a thimble at this point.

It knows he’s startled and smiles. “You’re quite tempting,” it says, “and you know it. You like it, buzzing away so busily. But your brother . . . Sam, there are things, shiny things that make me happy. Your brother,” the smile gets feral and Sam’s stomach turns, “he’s oh so very shiny. Does he blind you, Sammy? Is that why you look away?”

“Fuck you,” Sam says, toneless.

Nothing changes but it swells, throbbing in muffled rhythm against whatever pane it is that separates it from Sam. It licks it’s lips where there were no lips before and there’s a vague impression of pointed teeth crowded into a mouth too small for what Sam’s sure it sucks in. “I had a taste of him Sam, when he was underneath you. Trying so hard to keep you safe. Poor Dean-”

“You don’t get to say his name,” Sam snarls, low and menacing. “His name isn’t binding, it gives no ownership to you.”

“But it does to you?”

Sam doesn’t hesitate. “I share his blood.”

“So do I, now.” It’s talking about the table lying between them, and Sam quickly flicks his gaze down to see the sheen of Dean’s blood, dried and painting black light onto rough stone. “Did you know Sam, that blood tastes just like semen. I’ve had both. Same pain in both.”

It stays on the other side of room and leans to whisper in Sam’s ear. “Has Dean tasted your blood, Sammy?”

Sam knows it won’t do any good to shoot it, not least because he can’t even see it unless he looks away -- but it makes him feel better to fire off two rounds, takes the edge off the panic. Just enough so he can think.

It doesn’t flinch, and the bullets shatter their way through the flimsy boards of the far wall.

“He offered himself to me,” it says, pulling itself together in what looks like a withdrawal. It’s anything but. “He’s marked as mine. You might have stopped the deal from being made, but it was started. You can’t reverse it, Sam.”

Sam knows that. Whatever else it might be lying about, he knows that in the way that makes his bones ache, knows Broussard wasn’t lying about it. He doesn’t think about it. He’s come here armed with a theory and not much else but he’s been listening closely and he thinks he’s got enough to go by.

“I don’t need to,” Sam says slowly, half-bluffing. “You need me to finish it, don’t you? You can’t break free. This altar binds you.”

The sentient pauses, and so does everything else in the room, as things that don’t have lungs stop mid-breath.

Bingo.

Sam smirks, unable to hide his satisfaction. “It’s must be like torture, right? Listening to all of us humans, scuttling around on the earth. And you can’t touch us because of a rock. Can’t lay a finger, not unless-”

“Not unless I’m offered,” it snaps, patience gone. “He’s bound to the altar just like I am.”

“We’re leaving,” Sam snaps back, knowing that it can’t be that easy. “Neither of us will touch your altar and you can’t finish it.”

“Sam!”

All attention in the room turns to the door as Dean slams his way through, looking deathly pale but ready. Great. The idiot hears gun shots and comes running and Sam is going to kill Dean himself when this is all-

“I can rip him apart trying,” it hisses.

Sam watches in horror as Dean’s gun clatters to the floor and he goes down with a choked whimper.

There’s nothing he can do, but Sam’s kneeling at his side in a second, reaching out to help. Dean’s body is fine but right now it’s a cage and Dean is frantically trying to beat his way out, a bird killing itself in its efforts to break free. Sam tries to hold him in with shaking hands, but he doesn’t know where to press, where the gaps might be.

He doesn’t notice the sentient come closer. It leans over his shoulder and watches Dean’s face with him.

“If you don’t give him to me by the moon tonight,” it murmurs in Sam’s ear, “I’ll drive him insane. Do you know what they do to the mad, Sam? They’ll strap him down. Drug him and gag him. Imagine.”

On the floor, Dean goes rigid and starts screaming.

§

Dean falls silent almost as soon as the sentient disappears, body wracked with fine tremors that won’t stop no matter how long Sam rubs his limbs. When his voice starts breaking over Dean’s name, Sam decides he’s not helping. Figuring he’s got nothing else to lose, he covers Dean with his jacket and leaves him on the floor of the cabin to head out to the Impala.

As far as Sam can tell, the sentient had taken off, withdrawing to the limbo that it came from. At least for now. It has nothing left to lose either, but it can afford to take its time and that’s a luxury Sam doesn’t have.

There’s not much that matters now and it’s pointless to try and understand what kind of game Broussard had been playing with his pit bull. The thing wanted to eat and Broussard had been given up, maybe not voluntarily, but irrevocably. But not before he’d gone waving Dean under the sentient’s nose and like a bloodhound, it’s not going to give up the chase until the hunt is over and it has Dean’s soul hanging from between it’s jaws.

When Sam gets back to the cabin with the sledgehammer, Dean’s not only come to, but he’s pushed himself up to sit leaning against a wall. He eyes Sam silently, a wealth of acknowledgment and assurance sent his way without a word spoken. Sam would say it’s gratitude that swamps him and makes him dizzy, except he’s not sure there’s anyone to be grateful to.

“Okay,” he says, raising the sledgehammer above his head. “Let’s try this your way.” It comes slamming down so hard that the impact of it almost makes him loose his grip. He knows after the first hit, hell even before, that there’s no point. An overgrown hammer isn’t going to do shit to something so old that it doesn’t have a name.

He doesn’t stop until his hands start shaking so bad that the handle slips out his nerveless fingers.

“You done yet,” Dean says, voice hoarse but tone casual. “Ready for a healing hug?”

He may look like death, but Dean sounds as cocksure as ever. Sam turns, poisoned words ready to drip off his tongue. He freezes when he sees Dean’s face, pale and colorless, mouth a thin line of tension.

“Fuck,” Sam hisses under his breath before spinning on his heel and marching out to the car again.

“Shit, Sammy,” Dean says, eyes widening when Sam walks back in with the small roll of bulky material.

Sam gives him a quick look, says nothing, and gets to work.

“Sam,” Dean says in a tone that’s clearly says he thinks Sam is being a complete idiot.

Sam doesn’t look up. “I’m setting the timer for five minutes so you better start heading outside.”

He’d forgotten a few things in the years he’d been gone, but only at surface-level. The knowledge had still been there, it had just needed to be oiled up and worked through its kinks. Some of it had been easy to re-learn, things that only need to be known to become useful tools; silver knives, holy water and the standard Latin recitations, all purpose weaponry that works on ninety percent of the terror that they hunt. The rest worked off instinct and muscle memory.

He’s only ever had one reaction to Dean in trouble and it’s an instinct that goes bone-deep, no less fierce for being quietly tempered.

One small stick of explosive on the top of the altar at dead centre – if it’s granite like he suspects, the force will be enough to rip through the layers, shearing the stone into dust and leaving it pulverized. Red wire, green wire, yellow wire, blue. Like riding a bike. Thank god Dean keeps the trunk well stocked. Even though right now he’s being an asshole about it.

“Sam, I’m not in the mood to argue,” Dean says, tense and irritated. “You need to stop for a second. Think this through.”

It says more than Sam wants to think on, the fact that Dean’s only telling him to stop and not trying to manhandle him into obedience.

“What I need,” Sam says from between clenched teeth, hands steady and eyes focused on the task at hand, “is to never hear you-” scream like that again. Ever.

Dean pushes off from the floor and makes his way over, unsteady on his feet and trying to cover it. Sam flicks the timer on before Dean gets close enough to stop him, then turns to duck under Dean’s arm and hold him up.

They watch the explosion from a safe distance, Dean sitting on the damp grass and Sam standing by his shoulder. They start making their way back before the dust has time to settle.

It takes out the side wall, the one that the altar is closest to. The lines of shelving that run all around the room are blown apart, glass and liquid and fetid smelling fluids smothered over the rubble and mixing with the wreckage from last night. Almost nothing in the cabin remains whole.

The altar stays untouched.

Sam blinks, eyes and throat burning from the dust and fine particles of debris floating in the demolished room.

“Huh,” Dean says beside him, face blank.

Sam sinks down to sit on the floor, and Dean stays standing for a moment before doing likewise.

Amber-honey light pours into the room through the wall that’s been torn down, the setting sun touching the skin of Sam’s hands and face, glinting off the gold in Dean’s hair. It makes him look healthy and whole.

It’s getting late.

“It wants you,” Sam says, meaning I’d do it, I’d do it in a heartbeat and give myself up if it would save you.

Dean nods. “I know.”

“We can get out of here,” Sam says, voice hoarse. “We’ve got at least six good hours of driving time before zenith moon. Maybe if we cross the state border-”

“What if it’s horizon moon,” Dean says, not looking at him.

“That’s still a couple of hours, and if we floor it-”

“Sam,” Dean says, reasonable, rational, and Sam’s just pissed because it’s a whole lot easier then being anything else right now.

“Fine,” he snaps, jerking his chin at the altar. “Just get on it then, and I’ll finish it now.”

“You’re a fucking brat,” Dean says irritably, leaning his head back against the wall to look at Sam, assessing. “Do you know how to?”

“How to what.”

Dean flicks his eyes over Sam’s shoulder, to where the stone slab is sitting silently, waiting. “The ritual,” Dean says calmly, speaking like Sam’s five years old. “Do you know how to finish it?”

“Do I know how to finish it,” Sam echoes, staring. “Do I know how to finish it? Are you kidding me? No, Dean. No way.”

“Oh for the love of -” Dean groans, closing his eyes and tilting his head back to thunk against the wall. “Dude. Come on, man, focus here.”

Dean’s shadow in photo-flash negative back in Michael’s apartment; Sam still hasn’t mentioned it, and he’s not about to now. The memory is enough to turn his stomach. Not a vision. It couldn’t have been a vision and even if it was, it doesn’t matter. He’s seen Dean die in a vision before and he’d stopped it then. He’ll just stop it again.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Dean says. “Just tell me what you know. What did it say to you? You were in here long enough to chat up a storm. God knows you can never keep your mouth shut for long.”

Sam takes a deep breath and thinks back. They can work through this, just like any other case. All problems have a solution, it’s only logical that they do. Action, reaction, opposing forces, forces of attraction – once you got over the whole ghosts aren’t real issue, a lot of what they dealt with actually follows it’s own science, it’s own set of rules. You just have to learn what they are.

“It said it can’t be reversed,” Sam says slowly, thinking out loud. “The ritual was started, even if it wasn’t finished. So it can’t-” finish you “-finish it but it’s got enough claim, just enough, to try.” Sam looks up, looking to Dean for confirmation. “Can you tell if it’s around?”

“It’s not doing anything right now, but yeah,” Dean says, shrugging. “It’s still around. Like a really bad smell.”

If Sam weren’t near losing his mind, he’d smile at that.

“What else?” Dean says.

“Um, something. Something about it being bound to the altar, and-” Sam pauses, exhales shakily. “You’re kind of semi bound to it, I suppose”

They just have to find a hole, anything that’s big enough to slip a finger through to tear the whole thing apart. Contracts aren’t binding until they’ve been signed - whether in ink or blood, the same rules still stand.

“Okay. It’s bound to the altar,” Dean says, repeating after him. He points over Sam’s shoulder. “Know how?”

Sam turns, looking for whatever it is that Dean sees.

Sam had gone over the thing a dozen times before strapping on the explosives, over every inch of it’s surface, inspected every bit of it’s border and hadn’t found anything. He’d never thought to look under it before. From his vantage point from the floor, he’s got a clear view of the rough hewn stone on the underside and sees for the first time the now familiar glyph of triangles, carved into it’s centre.

Did you know that blood tastes like semen.

Blood and lifeblood.

Sam knows how to finish it.

He looks back to see Dean watching him, waiting for Sam to catch up.

Sam wonders a little hysterically what the FedEx man would say if people started signing for their packages in blood.

§

Sam knows there’s a difference between evil, malevolent and hungry, and power in its pure form, the kind entwined with rites and rituals born ages and millennia ago. Easy thing to get the two mixed up but there is a difference, and a lot of it has to do with the purpose intended.

Or so Sam hopes.

The basin lays under the splintered flats of broken shelving, tipped on its side with the coal scattered over the floor, the brand lying nearby. Sam sweeps the whole mess back into the basin with his hands, gets sooty and grimy with it.

Dean watches him from the doorway, arms crossed in front of him to hide fine tremors that still haven’t stopped.

“Need anything else?” Dean says tightly, face carefully blank.

Sam shakes his head, and avoids looking him in the eye. “No. It’s not that complicated. It’s got more to do with intention than procedure, kind of like -”

He tries not to take it personally when Dean turns on his heel and walks away.

It’s not fair but it stopped being about fair a long time ago. Now it’s just about staying alive and whole, surviving on the same plane of existence. And Dean’s entitled to be as pissed as he wants, at anything he wants, and that includes Sam.

There’s nowhere they can go where it can’t follow. There’s no point in going far, just like there’s no point in running, but that doesn’t mean they have to give it a front row seat to the show.

Sam follows Dean outside and by unspoken agreement they both head for Broussard’s house. It’s easy getting in, the doors and windows are open and unlocked, have been since yesterday. The house in the middle of the nowhere, surrounded by nothing, and from the sound of it Broussard didn’t have many visitors. Chances are that it would be a while before someone hears of his death. Probably the next time someone’s stupid enough to come looking for help to get things that they really shouldn’t be having.

A kitchen at one end, a bedroom at the other and not much else in between.

The basin gets set up on the kitchen counter, with a little gasoline over the coals before Sam sets them on fire. He balances the iron rod on the rim, burying the glyph into the coals and ignores Dean’s heavy presence behind him. He reaches for his back pocket and pulls out a pouch of herbs that a blind woman gave him, this one is for binding, and he sprinkles them over the coals and the brand both.

“Did the old guy feel me up,” Dean says eventually.

It’s said like a challenge, not a question, quiet words that tell Sam that Dean already knows the answer. Sam just concentrates on adjusting the brand, speaking without turning around. “It’s stuck, right? Shackled to its own altar by the glyph. So we know it can’t break its own weave and-”

“Sam.”

There’s more said in that single word than just his name, but Sam can’t think on it just now. He’s also not the the one about to be handed over from one owner to another, and the least he can do is look Dean in the eye. He owes him that much, at least.

“It’ll work,” he says, turning around to meet Dean head on. “I’ll make sure it works.”

“Okay,” Dean says slowly, looking calm enough on the exterior, though Sam knows better than to believe it.

The unfamiliar scents that rise from the basin making the air hazy and muted, and Sam’s vision swims for just a moment. He blinks it away, and says “I think you should lie down.”

Dean’s mouth turns bitter. “Where, on the bed? Fuck that.”

“You can barely stand,” Sam says, keeping his tone low, keeping it from becoming an accusation of weakness.

Dean glares. “I’ll stand,” he says, then weaves on his feet, stepping away when Sam reaches to steady him. Sam watches him blink, sees the realization cross his face of how exhausted he actually is, but he doesn’t move.

“Fine,” Sam says, then reaches down to pull the knife from his boot, handing it to Dean handle-first. “Here.” He waits until Dean has the knife hovering ready over his forearm, then reaches down for the hem of his own t-shirt.

“What are you doing?” Dean says as Sam strips off with unsteady hands.

“I think you need to get it on me,” Sam says quietly and watches Dean’s mouth thin. “I think you need to get it on my skin.”

“It,” Dean says, and Sam grits his jaw, refusing to look away. He finally gets his fingers to let go of the shirt and it pools silently on the wooden floor.

“You know that stuff holds significance,” he says, reverting to theory and exposition. “Bodily fluids hold power, blood and . . . urine. And stuff.”

“You want me to piss on you?” Dean says, and his tone deadly.

It’s not right that the room should be so damn quiet. It magnifies the weight of every word spoken, every breath taken. It magnifies them. Sam’s reminded again of the Impala’s headlights cutting a path through the dark and that’s exactly what they’re doing just by standing here, just by being who they are. Too bright, and too tempting as prey, it’s a miracle they haven’t been cut down already, that the sentient hasn’t ploughed Dean through.

The air hangs heavy and humid, waiting, and Sam would rather make the decision while it’s still his to make.

Last night seems like so long ago, but the memory still brings about a twisting knot in his gut that’s enough to make him sick. What was done to Dean mirrors what he’s about to do to Dean, and Sam’s under no illusions that they’re playing with things they really have no business touching. He’s not scared about himself getting tainted so much as what effect the fallout could have on Dean; the possibility that in trying to save him, Sam may end up breaking him.

It’s a risk, but the other road leads to definitive destruction. It’s not even a choice.

“No, Dean. That’s not what I want,” Sam says, hands clenching at the expression that crosses Dean’s face; solemn understanding, of the situation and of the tone to Sam’s words. “This was your idea, remember?” he adds, with the purpose of antagonizing, just so he can get that god awful resignation off Dean’s face. It works.

“You think I wanted to turn it into this?” Dean hisses, furious and hurting. “I didn’t know how any of this was being done. You found that out all on your own while I was-”

If Sam had thought they were too lucky to be let off the hook, he’s proved right. Almost instantaneously, the air goes still and thickens so much that he has trouble drawing breath. Sam’s not even the one the sentient is after, but even he can feel it circling the house, prowling. Dean looks at him, visibly startled, face bled of all color and Sam can only imagine how hard it must be battering at him, seeing as Dean is what it’s actually after. Seeing as Dean half belongs to it already.

“Sam,” Dean says, the warning clear in his tone.

They shouldn’t have spent so much time arguing about the damn thing.

Sam steps up to him and takes the knife from Dean’s hand, flipping it around to nick the soft skin on the inside of Dean’s arm, sharp and quick. A thin line of blood wells up almost immediately and Sam holds Dean’s arm to himself, smearing the blood onto his chest. Dean doesn’t flinch, but he doesn’t react in any other way either so Sam puts a hand flat to Dean’s chest and pushes, until his back hits the wall. It jars him, but Dean still doesn’t react. “Dean,” he says sharply, letting enough urgency to slip through but none of the panic, enough that Dean’s focus shifts back to onto him and away from things they can’t see. He drives the knife down into the soft-wood countertop beside them, and steps closer. Dean doesn’t stop him when Sam fingers his shirt, but stares at him for about an eternity.

“This is bullshit,” Dean says softly, and Sam just waits until Dean finally gives in and lifts his arms, moving slowly, letting Sam strip the shirt off.

When Sam reaches for his jeans, Dean glares, seething. It should be familiar, but there’s betrayal there also and Sam’s sick of being the one to cause it. “You can hate me later,” he says and hangs on to that because it means there will be a later, complete with a Dean to make it up to. It’s with that thought in mind that he thumbs open Dean’s jeans, stopping almost straight after when Dean grabs his wrist.

“This is bullshit, Sam,” Dean says again, and the words are strong and Dean-like but with a break in his voice at the very end of it. Over Sam’s name, like it’s a plea or an entreaty, and Sam can’t treat it as either because despite all his firm resolve, he’s quickly realized he just can’t go on without Dean’s permission, no matter what the circumstance.

Dean doesn’t have to say please to convince Sam of anything, so Sam says it instead.

“Please,” he whispers, standing too close and looking down somewhere near Dean’s neck, watching him swallow. His single word is a plea and entreaty both, and Sam doesn’t try to hit that because he would rather be the one begging first for Dean to just let him, rather than hear Dean beg the opposite.

Dean should never have to beg anything.

Sam makes himself meet Dean’s gaze.

It’s ridiculous how loaded that action is. In this, a thing so far out of the realm of possibility, they’re forced to step past years of shared bullshit and betrayal, step right past it and keep on going until their options are a very clear cut choice; it doesn’t happen, or it happens all the way. There never have been many halves with them, it’s always been all or nothing when it comes to each other, in everything they do, because that’s the only way they know how to live.

Stanford had been too many years of nothing, and since coming back, Sam’s only ever been allowed in halfway. One foot in the door. Held away at arm’s length, but held there nonetheless, not free to move away completely but not allowed to get any closer either. That’s what makes them so tempting, that complicated and charged delta between them that looks like an invite for evil to slip in and tear it all apart. They should really stop helping it along.

Sam wants in all the way. He’s wanted it for longer than he even knew himself, but the first brush of conscious realization had touched him while standing in an empty barn, Dean laughing beside him.

It was subliminal then, but it’s flared into blinding clarity now.

Dean doesn’t move, apart from tearing his gaze away from Sam’s to stare over his shoulder before finally letting his wrist go. Sam’s not hurt at the loss of eye contact because he saw what was there right before Dean looked away. The most important things between them are rarely spoken out loud, and it’s no different in this; it’s an allowance of closeness that has nothing to do with him putting hands on his brother.

If he lets himself think about it too much, Sam thinks he could cry.

He looks away then because the urge to reach out and cradle Dean’s jaw comes hard and sudden, out of nowhere.

“You tell me if you need to sit,” he says hoarsely, leaning in, then slips his hand into Dean’s boxers.

He finds Dean soft, but that’s not surprising. It saddens him though, because he’s never liked actively manipulating Dean into anything because he knows Dean would give in and follow -- because Sam has that power and it makes him sick to use it. Being given permission to do so only makes him feel worse.

Sam decides to deal with the guilt of it later.

He pushes the boxers away with one hand and pulls Dean out with the other.

“It’s okay,” he says softly, leaning in close enough to brush his mouth over Dean’s ear, and feels him shiver. Sam pulls, gently, eyes closing at the sharp hitch in Dean’s breath. “Just let me, Dean. Just breathe.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s saying. Velvet warm skin is shifting under his fingers as he drags up Dean’s cock, and he feels him swell just slightly from the friction. He listens to Dean’s breath get ragged and presses closer involuntarily, pushing Dean’s back into the wall. It brings them into almost full-body contact.

To help keep him upright, Sam tells himself, wrapping an arm around Dean’s waist, hand pressed flat against his back and feeling warm smooth skin everywhere. He pulls a bit harder, and Dean jerks with a strangled gasp, hand flying up to grip at Sam’s bicep. Close enough to get it on my skin.

For a while there, it had been the last thought on Sam’s mind -- what they’re daring to achieve in the higher scheme. Invocation of ties ages old and the sheer audacity of Sam re-writing bonds lain. It only matters in that it’ll keep Dean whole. Whatever the associated consequences for Sam himself might be, he really can’t give a shit. He’ll deal with that if and when it comes.

It all pales in importance anyway, to the thickening length in his hand, the heavy weight of Dean’s cock . . . and the unlikely possibility of what that might mean.

Dean’s arousal is what they’re both working for, so Sam has no right to read into it.

Sam’s is unexpected and gut churning.

He’s made aware of it from the outside in, because its source is Dean, and the heavy warmth settling low in his belly is secondary to that. The realization itself is one that’s slow to surface, so slow that it couldn’t possibly have been born just as of this moment -- which suggests of things buried so deep that even Sam hadn’t been aware of. It’s startling, but slotted in amongst everything else, it’s not terrifying.

Sam has no idea anymore what he should be feeling, but it’s not his right to examine it while making Dean stand in the doorway between worlds.

Dean, who still hasn’t made a sound, who’s barely moved but for the fingers digging into Sam’s bicep.

Sam drags the pad of this thumb over the tip of Dean’s dick, slurring through the gathering fluid there. Dean’s shocked cry fairly makes Sam’s head reel and suddenly his own breathing is just as ragged as his brother’s.

“You-” Sam says roughly, then stops, taken back at how raw he sounds. He swallows hard and softens his voice, says gently, “What do you . . . how should I -”

Dean’s still trying to get his breath back from the sudden intensity, and Sam feels like he should apologize but his fingers are curled around the evidence that Dean liked it, so he stays silent and waits. In the meantime, he runs his thumb along the underside, tracing a vein and when he touches the swollen head again, it elicits a full body shudder from Dean.

He freezes when Dean lifts his free hand to grab at Sam’s shifting wrist, stilling his movements.

“It’s not -” Dean rasps, not looking at Sam. His grip tightens painfully, and he tilts his head back against the wall, eyes tightly closed. “Fuck. Harder. I . . . it’s better harder.”

Sam stares, transfixed, at the long line of Dean’s throat, exposed and vulnerable. He swallows down on the irrational urge to lean and bite, opting instead to follow directions given.

He curls his fingers tighter, and strokes rough.

Dean jerks and bucks in Sam’s arms, cock instantly swelling thick and hot in Sam’s hand, and Sam has absolutely no right to feel so gratified at it.

Dean’s breathing through clenched teeth and the rough sound just about undoes Sam. He wants desperately to soothe, wants to touch Dean’s cheek and tell him to relax. He doesn’t, because he’s fairly sure he knows how badly that would go. The greatest mercy he can show right now is to finish this thing.

He does the thing with his thumb again, rolling over the swollen head of Dean’s cock, using the wetness he finds there to make it easier. Then he does it again, and again, until Dean gives up and curls in on himself, helpless, dropping his head to Sam’s bare shoulder. And still no sound.

Neither of them has shaved in days now, both stale from sweat and fear, but traces of what’s left of Dean’s aftershave rises from his heated skin. Spicy and clean and as familiar to Sam as everything about his brother has always been, he turns his face into Dean’s neck, breathing deep to try and capture the scent. He’s burying himself in so much Dean after being deprived for so long, Sam’s reacting off pure instinct now. Warmth spreads in a slow burn through his veins, and his next stroke is unintentionally rough.

Dean whimpers, and Sam aches.

He might have given Sam permission, but Dean’s giving into this in inches, holding firm to what shred of reserve he has left.

“Dean, please,” he murmurs, the hand on Dean’s back rubbing in soothing circles. “Come on. Just . . . you can enjoy it. You’re allowed to.”

It hadn’t occurred to him that Dean was waiting for permission too.

“Shut up,” Dean growls without lifting his head, but his fingers grip tighter, a little more desperate and urgent.

After that, it comes quickly.

After that, Dean starts making half-choked whimpers, formed low in his throat and fed desperately into the skin of Sam’s shoulder. Dean can’t pretend anymore, can’t help the way he jerks up into Sam’s hand, and his breathing is just wrecked. It’s enough to just drive Sam insane. It’s a terrifying position to be in, to invoke such helplessness in Dean, of all people.

Dean, who’s allowing it all.

It’s an invitation, engraved or not, and Sam understands with devastating clarity why the sentient had accepted; understands the immense power Dean has in his vulnerability. His comprehension of it only goes so far as to recognize that there’s inherent value in what Dean’s offering, but he doesn’t try to understand the rest. Dean’s giving him freely what the sentient had so desperately craved, and that holds weight enough on its own.

If it makes him a monster to accept, then so be it.

If it gives him his brother, Sam would break all the rules.

“You said my name,” Sam whispers rough in Dean’s ear, desperate for him to know. “Do you know that, Dean? Last night, you said my name.”

Whatever Sam thinks he should be feeling, it’s all replaced with total reverence when Dean makes the gentlest sound imaginable and bucks, shuddering apart in Sam’s arms, control finally gone. Sam feels every tremble imprint itself into his skin, they’re pressed so close together, and it carries him along with it, leaves him dazed. It takes him some time to register the sticky warmth clinging to his stomach and over his hand.

Lift off, Sam thinks grimly. His own arousal doesn’t even confuse him anymore and Sam doesn’t try to figure out why that is, just tightens both arms around Dean reflexively, trying to keep this close for a little longer.

“You okay?” he murmurs into Dean’s hair.

“Please, Sam,” Dean says, voice hoarse, “Just shut up.”

He doesn’t push Sam away exactly, but just lets him go, unwrapping his hands from where they’ve been tattooing him with bruises, and pulling himself back. He looks Sam in the eye, at least. That’s something to be grateful for.

Sam waits to makes sure Dean’s legs won’t buckle under him, and then reaches for the brand. The iron glyph glows just the dimmest shade of red, barely discernable from the rest of it, but it’s enough. It doesn’t have to scar the skin, just imprint the idea of itself into human flesh. Intention, Sam thinks and then turns back to Dean, who’s eyeing him through heavy eyes, expression weary and exhausted. He doesn’t say anything when Sam reaches for his arm, but gives a small smirk when he sees Sam hesitate.

“Too late to back out now,” Dean says, sounding as tired as he looks. “Just do it.”

It happens the second the iron touches Dean’s skin, so immediate that it almost seems pre-emptive.

It’s a frozen moment; a still-life tableau like the world just inhaled and is holding its breath. Dean’s looking him right in the eye when he just walks right out of himself, and Sam sees the light go out. The windows shattering barely even registers, Sam’s just preoccupied with following the empty shell of his brother to floor, feeling like he’s been physically gutted, because it’s all gone to devastatingly wrong.

It was meant to bind Dean to a new altar, one the sentient had no connection with. It was supposed to override the half-claim the sentient had. It was supposed to bind him to Sam.

Instead, it’s left Dean free for the taking.

He crouches over Dean’s body and makes himself look at the blankness there. The wind screams through the windows and into the room, elated at the passage it’s gained, the one that Sam himself unknowingly gave to it. The sentient was just waiting for Sam to open the lock on its own weave and Sam can’t even panic, can’t even begin to process the notion of it being over. The detachment leaves him strangely calm and clear headed, enough to keep breathing and think their way out of this. It doesn’t take long for his mind to fix on the image of the altar, it’s underside with its carved glyph.

“Okay,” he says loudly to the room, sitting up to straddle Dean’s legs, never once looking away from his brother’s face. “Okay, fine. We’ll do this your way.”

He leans out and reaches for the brand.

“For once in your life, Dean, listen to me,” Sam says, this time only meant for Dean to hear. “I won’t let you go. Not alone.”

The hot iron barely registers its touch on his skin, a point of irritating focus on the inside of Sam’s forearm. Irritating, but necessary Sam soon realizes. It quickly becomes the only thing holding him together, the only anchor for his body and soul tying him to this world. For a moment, it’s a gateway and it’s wide open. Sam’s an altar made of flesh and blood, not stone – and he has a spirit of his own so he hadn’t expected it to work the same way on him. It doesn’t matter how it works, as long as it works.

Dean’s around him somewhere, interlaced with the air and a more intangible material, the kind of stuff that would feel like silk and water running through your fingers if it could be touched. All he needs is one thread that tells him it’s Dean and Sam can reel in the rest. It’s too confusing looking with his eyes, so he closes them, settles back on his haunches to sit on Dean’s legs. The physical connection is an alien feeling, but strangely grounding because Sam thinks if he’s not careful, he might end up spreading thin and wafting loose, and you can’t catch smoke once it’s loose no matter how hard you try. Not even if you’re a Winchester.

At the edges of his awareness is a darker thing circling, prowling the shadows and corners of his mind and waiting to pounce. Sam’s not sure what it’s waiting for but he thinks it might be looking for the same thing he is.

Fucking hell, Dean, now is not the time to play hide and seek.

When his skin starts to burn, it spreads from his stomach and chest, from Dean’s blood and Dean’s semen. Shining bright enough so that things without eyes can see, Dean’s plastered all over him and burning like a flare, here I am, lighting Sam up like a buoy in the sea. Except it’s made the sentient perk its ears and turn its face into the wind, and now it’s become a race to see which one of them will find Dean first.

It’s a precarious decision to lean out, but Sam does anyway, reaching until he’s stretched over an abyss. Opened out like that, he realizes the sentient isn’t circling him from around or behind but rather from underneath. Just waiting for the bottom to fall out from under Sam’s feet, from Sam’s world, hoping to catch something through the fallout, be it Dean or himself. Anything it can get because it’s hungry.

Sam looks up the same time the sentient does.

He’s drifted too far already, not sure if he can find his way back into himself but he hadn’t been lying when he’d told Dean not alone, so he lets go and his feet leave the ground. He lunges upwards without ever moving his body, urgent and feral because he’s caught a glint of something achingly, painfully familiar. But it’s way too high, too far out of reach. Trust Dean to fly too close to the sun.

When the bottom falls out from underneath him, Sam realizes he’s never going to make it in time. Emptiness is eating him from the feet up, from the inside out, rubbing him out from existence. He should never have let go, never should have jumped because it’s left him with out a tether, flailing. Easy prey.

His fingers dip into something soft and warm, Dean, just as teeth sink into his feet and drag him down. For a moment, Sam’s suspended between two points of anchor, wanting desperately to go in one direction and being pulled in the other. There’s nothing more he can do from here, like this, brittle and thin and transparent. It was never really up to him anyway.

Almost too late, he’s made aware of the sentient crawling up through his spine, tunneling alone inside him and bursting, yearning, for the Dean it senses at the other end. If he can’t save both of them, then Sam can at least save Dean. Like hell he’s going to be the bridge that lets that thing get to him.

He lets Dean go.

It throws all three parties off their game.

Spinning off into an endless chasm can’t be a fun thing under any circumstances, but Sam prepares himself as best he can. When the impact comes, it hits him like a wall of solid cement and leaves him reeling. It takes half an eternity of horror before he realizes it’s Dean that’s just barreled into him, and not the darker thing that’s now shrieking and screaming down at his feet. It’s a bit dizzying to have his brother smothered all over him like that, but he could swear that Dean takes a moment to flip it off. On pure principle. That’s always been important to Dean.

When things find their way back into the spaces they belong, it brings about a finality that can’t be unmade or broken. Together, Sam and Dean solder into a solidity that’s iron-heavy and they plummet back to the ground.

§

Whatever’s underneath his back is too soft to be the floor.

“You’re such a fucking martyr,” Dean says. “Asshole.”

It’s sometime near midday, judging from the light spilling in through the windows. Sam eases himself up in Broussard’s small bed. He can see the kitchen from where he sits, all the windows and doors broken wide open. This room might be unguarded enough to let things wander around freely but Sam isn’t, not anymore.

And neither is Dean, apparently. He’s sitting in a chair tipped back on its hind legs to lean against the far wall, watching Sam with his shotgun lying across his lap.

“How are you feeling, kiddo?”

It’s not like he’d expected Dean to disown him or anything, but Sam’s eyes burn at the endearment.

“Is it over?” he says, surprised at how strong his voice is. He thinks he knows the answer, with Dean looking like he’s just had the best night’s sleep ever. And they’ve both got their shirts back on, and he sure as hell didn’t do that himself.

“It’s over,” Dean says, letting his chair tip down with a thud. “For good. I think I’d feel it if it was still sniffing around. It’s done, Sammy.”

Okay, now he feels right. He sits for a moment, trying to see if anything feels out of place, any strings left untied anywhere.

Nothing. Normal, like always. Like before two days ago.

Sam doesn’t know what to expect when his feet hit the floor, but he’s completely stable. Solid. He looks up to see Dean watching him.

“You’re okay?” Sam says.

He can’t quite read the look Dean gives him, but he knows it’s not a bad one.

“Yeah,” Dean says, and it means more to Sam than anything that Dean holds his gaze steady and doesn’t look away. “You?”

“Fine,” Sam says, and then pauses. “One more thing.”

He makes the trip to the Impala on his own, but Dean’s waiting for him outside Broussard’s house when he gets back and follows him to the cabin behind. He eyes the salt and gasoline Sam’s carrying and doesn’t say anything, just leans in the doorway with his shotgun slung over one shoulder, and watches Sam work.

The gasoline runs in an acid wash over the altar, eating up Dean’s blood and salt and Sam sets the surface on fire, burning it all until there’s no trace of his brother left on it anywhere. Just in case.

“Okay,” Sam says, turning to the doorway. “Now we’re done.”

When Dean lifts the shotgun and aims, Sam doesn’t flinch. He turns just in time to see the gruesome black-and-white negative of the conjurer fade in the blast of rock salt.

“You know what, Sam?” Dean says as he lowers the gun. “I want some pie. With fuckin’ whipped cream. I think I deserve whipped cream.”

§

Dean pulls out his cell and has a private conversation with Rose at the first gas station they stop at. Sam goes inside to pay and watches him through the window, trying to see Dean like anyone else might see him.

It’s next to impossible. Always has been.

Sam gets somewhat fixed in that moment, immersed in the sight of the one person in the world who means anything to him.

He loves his brother so damn much.

“She said she’ll take care of it,” Dean says when Sam goes back outside. “Bury it, sink it in the swamps. Whatever, I don’t know, but no one will be touching that piece of shit rock any time soon.”

Sam nods and throws him the Mountain Dew, not trusting himself to speak.

Dean wasn’t joking about the pie, and their next stop is at an old fashioned diner that home-bakes and stocks real whipped cream.

§

They get back on the road straight away and neither of them complains. It’s not like they have injuries to recover from, and neither do they have any pent up energy, so they just drive. It takes a couple of days and several state borders before Sam finally brings it up.

“What do you think I did?” he says, looking out the window at his side of the scenery. Nothing but corn fields for about fifty miles in all directions.

There’s a pause and then without a word Dean pulls the car over, easing it to a stop on the dirt shoulder of the endless road they’re on. They sit in silence and listen to the engine cool down in ticking increments.

“Okay,” Dean says decidedly, pushing his door open.

Sam looks over in question but Dean’s legs are already moving out of view.

It’s glaringly bright outside, the midday sun full and burning a path down the back of Sam’s neck almost the instant he steps out. He stands where he his, beside his door and watches as Dean rounds the front of the car.

“Now?” Dean says easily, coming to lean next to him so that they’re standing shoulder to shoulder and looking out over the crops. “You want to do this now in the middle of nowhere?”

“I don’t wanna do anything,” Sam says.

“Didn’t even have the decency to buy me a beer first,” Dean says and Sam’s head whips around to stare at him.

“What are you -”

“I mean first base maybe, but hand down the pants action? That’s dinner and a movie. I ain’t no cheap date.”

“I’m glad you’re taking it so well,” Sam says lightly.

“You gonna make a thing of this?” Dean says, leaning back and squinting at the sky.

Sam huffs a laugh, sharp and colorless. “Dean, I wouldn’t where to start.”

“Neither of us is dead. How’s that for a start.”

“You can’t tell me you’re okay with this,” Sam says, tugging his shirtsleeve down and not even realizing it. The brands are already fading into nothing. The burns hadn’t been serious, had barely even shown up on their skin and are healing like any normal burn. Just because you can’t see them though, doesn’t mean squat.

“I’m okay with it,” Dean says, shrugging.

“That’s bullshit,” Sam says, eyes narrowed and looking straight ahead. “This is binding. As in, for all eternity, and-”

“Yeah, I get it,” Dean says, sharp enough that Sam shuts up. “You own me. Whatever. Sam, you don’t need a brand and my blood to prove shit. You never have. So the way I see it, nothing’s changed. Don’t go making it into a thing.”

“I’m not,” Sam snaps, tagging onto the end of it, and not even trying to touch the rest. “I never wanted it like this, okay? So don’t go thinking I did it on purpose.”

Now Dean’s staring at him. “Did what on purpose?”

I was scared I’d lose you and now you’re bound to me, and I don’t have a problem with that in the way that I probably should.

“I dunno,” Sam says, shuffling his feet. “I was so focused on what might happen, maybe I made it happen. Thinking about us getting in trouble and all.”

“Are you kidding me?” Dean says, tone and expression patronizing. “That’s what’s been bothering you? Not only can you see the future, but you control it now? Come on, Sam. You’re not that important.”

This time, it’s condescension designed to reassure and maybe it works.

So far nothing’s changed, not as far as Sam can tell. Nothing’s been sniffing at them more now than before, they’re not running into more or less trouble. It’s like it never even happened. And it may as well not have, for all the difference it’s made. But there’s the undeniable knowledge of what runs through them, ignorable until you touched it, pressed at it like a bruise you forgot was there until the pressure flares it into being again. It doesn’t necessarily feel dark or unnatural. It just seems like solidification of a bond that’s always existed. Like an acknowledgment.

If Sam had been worried that Dean’s stride was falling out of pattern with his own, then this thing has gone and slapped them both right on top of each other.

“I’m not asking you to do nothing, you know,” Sam says softly, going back to a discussion never finished “I’m not saying sit by the side of the road and do nothing. I’m just saying don’t go jumping in full body when there might be another way across.”

“Reckon they have rowboats across the Styx, Sam,” Dean says.

Sam finally turns to look at him. He doesn’t know what expression he’s wearing, but it’s enough to make Dean look away.

“Don’t mix your metaphors, dude,” Dean says, clearing his throat, then adds when Sam still doesn’t say anything, “And you know, the same appli “Well neither of us has a choice now,” Sam says, pulling at his shirtsleeve again. “We don’t know jack about what this thing does. So for now, it’s like they say . . . if you jump, I jump.”

Clichéd whatevers; it’s not exactly a threat so much as it is a statement of the situation. Whatever this is, it hasn’t fixed everything, but maybe it’s given them some leeway, some more time bought by restrictions. Limits to the risks that Dean willing to take. Sam’s starting to think that actually getting through to Dean would take his entire life, but maybe he’s been given the opportunity to at least try.

For now though, he’d just expected to make Dean uncomfortable enough to be honest, but he surprisingly doesn’t have to work for it.

“Nothing’s changed,” Dean says like he’s answering a question, and then looks at Sam with such unguarded affection that it throws him.

Maybe not his entire life, then.

“You’ve called me selfish before,” Sam says finally. “Said it a couple of times.”

Dean blinks. “I didn’t mean-”

“Yes, you did,” Sam interrupts carefully, tone light but sincere. “And you’re right, I am. But I can be selfish about a lot of things.”

Dean shifts, finally uncomfortable. “Now you just sound like a jealous ex,” he mutters, attempting for grouchy.

Sam smiles, surprising himself, and sees Dean fighting hard not to do likewise.

It’s totally inappropriate to laugh about this.

“Whatever, man,” Dean says easily, clapping him on the arm and stepping past. He shrugs and heads for the driver’s side, calling back over his shoulder, “I’ve dealt with it. Already forgotten.”

Dean’s always been a shitty liar when it comes to lying to Sam.

Sam wants to point out that this isn’t over, that this is far from over, and that things aren’t always as simple Dean likes to make them out to be. This allowance of non-dealing is partly how they got into this mess, and Sam tries to be pissed, but thinks maybe they’ve stumbled across a rare stroke of good luck. He doesn’t have it in him to bring up things Dean would rather not deal with, at least for now. He’s finally fallen back into step with his brother, at Dean’s side where he belongs. And sometimes things really are that simple.

§

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