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It feels like every little thing in the world—all the worlds—slots into its right place. This deep, satisfying snap of a shape fitting shape, like that game with circles, squares, and triangles, evoking the same childish joy. A strong sense of justice, wonderful in its finality, a full stop that marks the end of suffering.
Yes, Dean thinks, looking at Sam’s profile, beautiful in the glow of the Heaven’s sun, that’s what perfection feels like.
He turns to look at the scenery, mirroring his brother, his hand wrapped securely around Sam’s shoulders. This is it, this is what Dean’s been waiting for, what Dean’s been dying for, as ironic as it sounds in literal afterlife.
Questions swirl on Dean’s tongue—he needs to know everything about Sam’s life, everything that he’s missed, wants to admire his brother, to be proud of him, because he knows he will. It can wait, though; they have forever in front of them, they’ll have time to talk.
They’ll have time for everything.
For now, Dean’s content to feel his brother again, have him close, just be with him, here in the moment that stretches endlessly, perfect, so, so perfect.
The air smells like clear water, the sun shines mild and merciful, the forest before them whispers green and welcoming.
Dean claps Sam’s shoulder and turns to look at him again, when he hears a horrible scratchy sound, an electric crackle, like a short-circuit. Sam’s body flickers, and he disappears, Dean’s arm dropping through thin air, his heart slamming mad against his chest.
“What the fuck?” he mutters, mind drawing a complete and terrifying blank.
This shouldn’t be happening. Dean’s in Heaven; this isn’t Hell with its tricks and treachery. It’s a happy place where your brother doesn’t blink out of existence after just getting here.
“Sam?” he tries, in case Sam’s just relocated. “Sammy?”
No answer.
Dean checks the car, runs up and down the bridge, contemplates climbing over the railing to check the underside. He yells Sam’s name again, the silence he gets in response even worse than that sound before Sam disappeared.
Maybe this is what Dean deserves—a glimpse of perfection, yanked away from him the moment he lets himself believe in it.
“Dean?” Sam’s voice sounds from behind him, tugging him out of the nascent spiral.
“Sammy?” Dean whirls around to see his brother standing next to the car, staring into the side-view mirror and patting his face. When he straightens up, he looks as confused as Dean feels.
He rushes to Sam and pats him down, feeling him solid under his hands, real.
“What the hell happened?” Dean grips onto Sam’s shoulders, as if that can help keep him in place.
“No idea,” Sam says with a shake of his head.
Dean looks him over, paying more attention now.
“And why d’you still look like when I—” He notices the way Sam flinches and rephrases. ”When I last saw you?” His insides fill with a mix of fear and anger. “You didn’t do anything stupid?”
“No, Dean.” Sam sounds insulted. “I don’t know why I look like this. I just—”
He looks around, like he’s trying to find an answer spelled out with clouds somewhere in the air. Dean wouldn’t even be surprised if that happened.
“All right,” he says, when no divine explanation presents itself. “Let’s start with the basics. Did you die?”
“Yes.” Sam doesn’t sound too broken up about it.
“How?”
“Old age.”
That, at least, is good to hear.
“How are you feeling now?”
Sam frowns.
“Lacking,” he says, slow and unhappy. “Restless. Like something’s missing.”
That’s less good to hear.
“Is it about your soul again?“ Dean asks, wondering what exactly he’s seeing right now if it isn’t Sam’s soul.
Sam’s frown deepens.
“It’s like there’s too much of it.” He looks at Dean, eyes pleading. “Like I’ve got nothing else, just this deep, sucking longing for—”
The scratchy sound returns, and Sam disappears again, Dean stumbling forward as his hands drop through the space where his brother was just standing.
Great.
Just when he thought he was done with cases, fucking Heaven throws one his way.
At least, he’s gotta treat this as a case, or he’ll drive himself insane. He tries to go into the clear focus of a hunt, sharp, undistracted, feelings put on hold.
Sam. Dead. Coming to Heaven and disappearing from it in the span of a few goddamn minutes.
Think, Dean, just fucking think.
He paces the bridge up and down, moving in circles, trying to jolt himself into at least some semblance of a brainstorm as he waits—hopes—for Sam to show up again.
Sam isn’t showing up.
Dean has no idea how much time passes, but he’s confident that it’s way too long. He can’t handle being this long without Sam, not again. His brain goes on the fritz, refusing to put anything together, just rattling in his head, repeating Sam’s name in a panicked stutter.
“Fuck it,” he mutters, striding to the car and getting into it, slamming the door furiously.
He makes a sharp U-turn and drives back toward Bobby, reverting to their go-to strategy when stumped on a case. Bobby should know what the fuck is going on, or he should at least know where to start looking.
Dean gets momentarily overwhelmed with memories of Bobby, and the image of Bobby’s ghost floats up, sticking to his inner eye.
Bobby’s ghost. Flickering in and out from the Veil.
Dean hits the brakes. The tires screech against the road, but he doesn’t care. On his right, the landscape shimmers, the forest disappearing to be replaced with a nondescript motel, which looks just like every other motel in Dean’s life.
As good a place to set up a base as any.
Dean drives toward the motel, leaves the car in the parking lot, and tries a random door. It opens on a room, familiar in its total ordinariness. A wallpaper with bright flowers in clashing colors, two beds with threadbare sheets, a kitchenette with weird stains on every surface.
Whatever. It’s not like Dean’s here to admire the interior design.
He walks up to the emptiest wall and thinks that he really needs something to write on and with. Something pops behind him, startling him. He turns around to see a neat stack of note paper with a box of pins lying on the table. Two markers in different colors are there as well.
“Huh.” It’s one good piece of news, at least. “Heaven provides.”
The first note, ‘SAM’ in big red letters, goes up to the top.
Dean writes down ‘Bobby’s ghost’ in black and pins the note to the wall, staring at it.
Kevin’s ghost appears in his head, accompanied by a heap of guilt that never quite went away. Dean remembers the same flickering, the same temporary solidity, the uneven intervals between appearing and disappearing.
He doesn’t think about Eileen’s ghost.
Other ghosts—the spirits they hunted—come to mind, including Molly, the ghost who didn’t know she was a ghost.
Dean takes another note and writes down ‘The Veil.’ This one goes on the wall too.
It’s impossible, he knows. But impossible is kinda their deal, and he doesn’t see why being in Heaven would change that.
Wherever they go, danger and horror and heartbreak will find them, and it’s a little absurd that Dean ever thought he could find some actual peace.
“Dean.” Sam’s voice is hushed this time, when he appears at Dean’s side, head cocked as he studies the wall.
“Don’t panic,” Dean says, his hand instantly going to rest on Sam’s shoulder. “I think you ain’t a proper soul. I think you might be a ghost.”
Sam rolls his eyes at him.
“Yeah, I figured as much, Sherlock.”
At least they’re still on the same wavelength.
Dean turns to look at Sam, his hand sliding toward Sam’s neck, resting over the bump of his hoodie.
“Does it hurt?” he asks.
Sam blinks at him.
“What?”
“Disappearing.” If it does, Dean’s going to find whatever’s causing it and rip its lungs out.
If it doesn’t, Dean might limit himself to a little punch in the face. Maybe two. Or ten.
“No,” Sam assures him, possibly sensing Dean’s violent urges. “It’s just—empty.”
Dean still doesn’t like the sound of that.
“So, you’re stuck in the Veil,” he says, going back into the investigation mode and pointing at the note on the wall. They both stare at it for a moment. “Did you appear anywhere else?”
The thought of Sam finding himself somewhere alone, dead and disoriented, doesn’t sit well with Dean.
Sam shakes his head.
“Only with you.” He says it like it’s a good thing, and maybe it is, if anything about this situation can be considered a good thing.
“Okay.” Dean takes another note and thinks about what to write on it. “So, you’re what, tethered to me?”
“Guess I am,” Sam says, quiet and, if Dean’s reading him right, a little sad.
He decides to deal with that later, after he gets Sam here on a more permanent basis.
“I don’t have anything of yours,” he points out, a gaping hole in their already wobbling theory.
Sam looks at him with strange, shining eyes.
“It’s like you said,” he starts, something in his voice that makes Dean shut up and listen. “You said you weren’t leaving me.” He places his hand over Dean’s heart. It feels heavy, burning. “Goes both ways.”
Dean can’t breathe for a moment. He covers Sam’s hand with his and knows Sam’s right. That it’s the defining truth of their lives—they’re bound together, in ways that cannot be broken by any power in any of the worlds.
Which is why they’re going to solve this. They’re going to beat this, together, just like they always do.
“Listen,” Sam says, urgent, his hand going colder under Dean’s. “I need to tell you some—”
The scratchy sound sends Dean’s heart jumping, and Sam flickers out again.
“Fuck!” Dean punches the wall, his fist leaving an ugly hole.
This is all mad. He just wants to have his brother with him, is that so much to fucking ask?
Gritting his teeth, he jots down ‘tethered to Dean’ and puts the note up, as if it’s going to make anything clearer. He knows it’s just something for him to stare at, but there’s nothing else he can do, stuck here in this Heaven that goes further and further from perfect with every passing second.
The sun goes down, and Sam still doesn’t come back. Dean tries to convince himself that it’s temporary, that Sam will appear again, that this isn’t the end, but cold dread makes a home in the pit of his stomach anyway.
He collapses on the bed, watching the ceiling go darker as the sky outside turns inky-black. Maybe Jack could help them, but Dean has no idea how to contact him. He sends out a little prayer, just in case.
It goes unanswered.
Dean doesn’t notice when his mind slips away, throwing him into an agitated sleep, all his dreams, good and bad, circling around Sam.
Sam staying with him here for all eternity. Sam disappearing on him forever. Sam hugging him. Sam pushing him away. Sam flying. Sam falling.
Sam cradling his face in his hands and pressing their foreheads together.
“Dean,” Sam’s voice says, and Dean wakes up instantly, shooting up and zeroing in on Sam, perched on his bed next to him.
He puts his hand on Sam’s thigh, and Sam covers it with his.
They’re real. They’re here. They can do this.
“Unfinished business,” Dean jumps straight to the point, not wanting to waste any of the seconds they’re allowed this time. “Go.”
Sam’s eyes glimmer in the dark.
“Go what?”
Dean knows Sam understood him, knows it like he knows Sam’s not telling him something, something incredibly important, and there they go dancing around each other again, as if they’re still alive and terrified.
“Your life,” Dean says, gesturing for Sam to hurry up. “Tell me about it.”
Sam looks down, fingers brushing over the back of Dean’s hand.
“‘twas way too long.”
Dean doesn’t get it, not right away, but when it hits him, it almost knocks him over.
If he was the one left to live on without his brother, he’d wither away long before he reached anything that could be defined as old age.
He grips Sam’s thigh a little tighter and doesn’t know what else he can do, except make sure Sam gets his place in Heaven after all. God knows, the kid deserves it.
“What did you do?” he asks, hoping they’ll find the answer before Sam goes back to the Veil again.
Sam shrugs without lifting his head.
“Got a PhD,” he says in a monotone. “Ancient History.”
“Sounds fun.” Dean can’t help himself. This is his brother; he missed him—missed them. “Like, nerdy, uncool kind of fun.”
That makes Sam look at him, and Dean squints, trying to understand whether he’s imagining Sam’s lips curling for a second in a little smile or not.
“Wrote my thesis on resurrection rituals,” Sam says, and it hurts like a bitch.
Dean shouldn’t ask. He really, really shouldn’t.
“Were any—legit?” He’s never been good at avoiding doing what he shouldn’t.
Sam doesn’t say anything for a long, long moment, and Dean fears he’ll lose Sam again before they come any closer to figuring this out.
“Dean, I—” Sam grips Dean’s hand tight. “I’ve had to live decades with the worst regret of my life.”
That seems like a step in the right direction, even if it wrings Dean’s heart out.
“What’s that?” he prompts, when Sam just looks at him, eyes too bright.
Sam lifts his other hand to Dean’s chin, thumb brushing over the dip under Dean’s bottom lip.
“Not doing this,” he says, and leans forward, pressing his mouth to Dean’s.
This—isn’t what Dean expected.
He freezes, buried underneath the collapsing boundaries between them. Sure, it’s not like they had many of those, scoffing at the idea of privacy between them, but this is different.
This is crashing. This is destroying the last shreds of distance between them, merging together into a thing that shouldn’t be allowed to exist—at the very least because the world isn’t equipped to handle it.
“Sam,” he croaks, conscious of how his lips move against his brother’s. “What are you doing?”
It’s a small relief when Sam pulls away, and it doesn’t last long, because Sam leans his face against Dean’s, nose to cheek, and when he speaks, his breath warms Dean’s skin.
“What I should’ve done the moment I hit the age of consent.” There it is, the sadness that Dean had caught in Sam’s eyes, and it shatters him.
“What are you saying?” he asks, because he refuses to understand, needs another solution, is desperate for it.
Sam straightens, but as soon as he opens his mouth, the damn scratchy sound rips through the air, and Sam isn’t there anymore.
Dean buries his fist in the mattress, and he doesn’t like how hard his arm is shaking.
He rips the notes off the wall, throws them into the trash. This isn’t a case anymore.
This is a curse, and he doesn’t know how to break it.
It’s a special brand, too, the Winchester curse—doomed to do everything for each other, while not telling each other jack shit.
Dean isn’t sure what rattles him more: that Sam kissed him or that Sam has, apparently, been hiding this their entire fucking lives, took it to his literal grave.
They’ve kept secrets from each other. Big, terrible ones, ones with world-ending consequences. But this is something else—this is the foundation of everything between them, the very core of their relationship.
It changes everything, except one thing: Dean still needs to get his brother out of the Veil.
They can deal with this mess after that, or so Dean tries to convince himself. He just needs to figure out what unfinished business is holding Sam hostage and everything will be just peachy.
It’s getting light outside, and Dean can’t look at the bed, not without having overly vivid flashbacks to the press of Sam’s lips against his. He goes outside, gets into the car, and switches on the radio, turning the volume up until he can’t hear Sam’s voice in his head anymore.
The Impala glides over the endless road, and Dean’s waiting again, except now he’s waiting for a miracle, something that doesn’t usually happen to the Winchesters.
Out of the speakers, David Gilmour starts asking questions that Dean doesn’t have answers to, never really had.
So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell? Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?
He slams the radio off, grips the steering wheel tight, and tries to pull up a smile, like Frank, that mad son of a bitch, taught him all those years ago.
“I’m sorry,” is the first thing Sam says when he pops up in the passenger’s seat.
Dean almost jumps in his own.
This thing is gonna give him a heart attack, if those are possible in Heaven. If they aren’t, Dean’s bad luck will find a way regardless.
“I—” Sam starts again, small, dejected, and Dean’s had enough of this already.
“‘s fine,” he says, despite it being nowhere in the vicinity of fine. “The important question is, how are you being projected into Heaven?”
He can feel Sam’s eyes on him, that ‘you’re-avoiding-me’ kind of look, all hurt and no mercy.
If Dean looks back at him, he’ll break, so he doesn’t.
“This is where my unfinished business is,” Sam says, surrendering.
Dean hoped for a different answer, but it’s the only one that makes sense.
“Guess it takes more juice,” he muses aloud, trying to stay on the subject without actually talking about it, “‘s why it sounds like you’re tearing the world a new one.”
Sam makes a noise that was probably supposed to be a chuckle but sounds like sort of a miserable hiccup.
“I think I got stuck at the age when I had my last chance to—” He swallows, and Dean wants to put a hand on his shoulder, big-brother reassuring, but he refrains. “To finish that business.”
This isn’t working. They're circling back to the same thing, and it can’t be that thing.
“Could be that vacation we never took,” Dean blurts out with sudden inspiration. “Sand between our toes, yeah?”
He turns to grin at Sam. Sam’s staring at him like this is the worst idea he’s ever heard, which is good, puts them on a familiar ground.
“Dean.” It’s a sort of chastising plea that Sam uses when Dean’s being ridiculous, and Dean hangs onto it.
“Let’s find ourselves an ocean, huh, Sammy?”
He winks at Sam, just as Sam winks out of existence again.
Dean drums his fingers over the steering wheel and thinks about an ocean very hard.
The road sprouts a turn to the right, and Dean takes it, watching as the forest gradually gives way to sand until he’s cruising along a beach. It’s empty, waves lapping at the edge of it, foaming white. The sun turns the sand golden, and the whole thing looks like a paradise from tourist ads and cheesy postcards.
Dean parks the car and thinks until there’s a popping sound and a beach towel appears on the seat next to him, bright pink and wide enough for two. He carries it out, stopping to shuck his boots and socks off. Palm trees whisper in the light, salty breeze over his head as he walks toward the water.
He spreads the towel a few feet away from where the waves leave the sand wet and drops onto it, stretching his legs before him, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Sam doesn’t say anything when he joins Dean on the towel, and Dean doesn’t expect him to. They gaze at the ocean, while tension builds between them until one of them bursts.
It’s Dean. Dean bursts first.
“When’s the last time you were on a beach?” He wonders if Sam went without him during that long life of his, and he doesn’t know what answer he wants.
It surprises him anyway.
“Stanford,” Sam says, just one word that has been making Dean’s ribs hurt ever since Sam left that terrible night.
“You said you never were,” Dean remembers. “Neither of us.”
Sam picks at the sand absently, and Dean stares at his hands, wants to touch them, doesn’t let himself.
“Didn’t count,” Sam says at last. “Not without you.”
Dean realizes abruptly that he doesn’t feel hurt, not anymore. Mostly, he feels sad that he couldn’t share this experience with his brother.
He wants to share everything with Sam, the bad, the good, the ugly, the bizarre. It’s not a particularly new thought—he’s always known that Sam is his entire world, that he’s what Dean is, what Dean consists of.
It runs deep inside Dean, this need for Sam, for all of him, intertwined with the very strands of Dean’s soul.
He turns to look at Sam, and finds Sam looking at him. There are questions hanging between them, unspoken, unspeakable; questions that demand answers Dean has never been ready for.
If he isn’t ready now, in Heaven, then when the hell will he be?
He reaches out, every inch a challenge, until he catches Sam’s hand, holds it in his.
“Sammy,” he says, the first part of the answer coalescing inside his overheating heart.
He watches Sam’s eyes, sees the way hope glimmers in them, finds it burning inside himself, too.
“Oh,” he thinks just as Sam flickers out again. “Oh.”
It’s not that he never noticed this. He just never put it into words, didn’t even let it take a definite shape in his mind, but it’s always been there: when he stole food for his little brother, when he sold his soul for him, when he couldn’t let him go again and again and again.
Sam’s all Dean’s ever had; he’s all Dean wants to have.
And God, does Dean want him.
It thrums at his fingertips as he looks out on the ocean, breathing in time with the waves, counting seconds until Sam’s here again.
This time, he’s not losing him, and he doesn’t care who or what he has to fight for it.
The moment Sam materializes at Dean’s side, Dean grabs the front of his hoodie and pulls him in until their noses almost touch.
Sam’s eyes are huge and a little frightened, like he doesn’t know what to expect from Dean, expects anything.
“I know,” Dean says in a rush. “I know what you were saying.”
He crashes his lips into Sam’s without giving Sam a chance to say anything. Words don’t matter anymore anyway—Sam responds with his mouth, his tongue and teeth, his little panting breaths.
Dean’s kissed many people over the time he had on Earth; maybe too many. Girls, guys, persons of indeterminate gender. Some of them even meant something, just a little, as much as Dean could allow himself in a life on the road that pulled him away from everyone and anyone.
The road he’s on now leads him straight to his brother, who holds the meaning of Dean’s entire life in his hands.
There’s no straying now, no distractions, no excuses.
Just Dean, just Sam, and the unfinished business between them.
Sam’s hands fly up to Dean’s shoulders as he licks at Dean’s lips, and Dean tugs him down until they’re lying on the towel, making out like this is the only way either of them can breathe.
It’s like they’re catching up on the years they let pass in silence, keeping their hearts obstinately hidden from each other, for reasons that never really made any sense.
Sam’s pressing quick, wet kisses to Dean’s mouth, when his body ripples, and Dean clutches at him with a growl, determined to keep his brother with him, all supernatural forces be damned.
“I love you so much,” Sam says hurriedly as he cups Dean’s face and touches their foreheads together, “my big brother.”
He must have been carrying these words inside him for decades.
Something crackles in the air, a different sound, more like a sparkler, cheerful and celebratory. Sam’s body glows, a bright, golden light, and when it dissipates, Sam looks fuller, whole.
“Hey, Dean,” he says, solid, smiling, still here.
Dean’s heart jumps from his chest to his throat and back.
“Sammy.” He lifts his hands to brush his fingers over Sam’s cheeks over and over, re-confirming that his brother isn’t going away again.
They breathe together for a few long moments, stunned by each other’s presence, their newfound immutability. This is how it’s going to be, how it was always going to be, no matter how long it took Dean to get on with the program.
Sam kisses him again, and Dean goes with it, lets Sam roll them over until he’s on top of Dean, long and heavy and so very real.
Dean needs him close, closer, needs him everywhere, needs him to blot out everything else. He nips at Sam’s bottom lip, fists his hands into Sam’s jacket, starts nudging it off.
“C’mon,” he says, slotting his leg between Sam’s and bending it to rub against him. “We don’t got all day.”
“We actually do,” Sam corrects him, the smartass. “We got forever, Dean.”
“Whatever.” Dean sucks on Sam’s tongue, high-fiving himself mentally when Sam moans into his mouth. “‘m not waiting forever. Think we’ve waited long enough already.”
“Understatement of the century,” Sam says with a huff and dives in to kiss Dean harder, greedier, hand skating down to settle over the front of Dean’s jeans.
Dean lets himself drift into a warm, glimmering haze, where all he feels is his body responding to Sam’s touch, where nothing hurts, not anymore. No old wounds, no once-broken bones, no lies or secrets or disagreements.
There’s nothing between them but them, the all-consuming sureness of everything they mean, everything they’re becoming.
It takes them a few tries before they manage to break apart long enough to get rid of their jackets and shirts. When they crash into a kiss again, they’re both starved for each other, like it’s been another lifetime.
Sam moves on to Dean’s neck with quick licks and gentle bites, and Dean glides his hands over the bumps of Sam’s spine. He gets to the waistband of his jeans, slipping his fingers under it, pressing them into the small of Sam’s back. Sam sinks his teeth into Dean’s shoulder with a sharp growl, a sound Dean has never heard from him and wants to hear from him every day.
They feel each other grow hard as they buck into each other, both at the end of their patience. Dean tries to get his hands on Sam’s fly, but they’re pressed too close together, and he hooks his fingers through his belt loops instead, yanking on them.
“Off,” he demands, but it doesn’t look like Sam hears him, too busy sucking a mark into the side of Dean’s neck.
It takes a tremendous amount of effort, and yet Dean manages to push Sam off, missing him immediately but determined to get out of his clothes before proceeding.
“Wha—” Sam whines, looking disoriented, and Dean leans over to press a soothing kiss to his lips.
“C’mon, Sammy.” He pulls on Sam’s belt buckle, which seems to get the message across. “‘m not creaming my pants, not even for you, kiddo.”
Sam grumbles something that sounds suspiciously like ‘we’ll see about that,’ but he gets out of his remaining clothes obediently, while Dean does away with his.
He has to take a moment to just stare at his brother’s body, tanned and lithe and plain fucking impossible. No one should be allowed to be this beautiful, but Sam is, and he’s all Dean’s, and Dean can’t believe any of it.
Maybe he’s still stuck on that rebar and all of this is a hallucination created by his dying brain to ease him into oblivion.
Sam kneels between his legs, pushing them apart, hands gliding over Dean’s thighs, and it doesn’t matter.
Hallucination or not, Dean’s making the most out of it.
He focuses and a bottle of lube pops up on the towel, which, he thinks, is a pretty straightforward invitation. Sam takes it and rolls it in his palm, expression thoughtful.
“You can manifest stuff here?”
“Neat, huh?” Dean winks at him, happy to share heaven secrets with his brother. ”Just think about something real hard.”
Sam’s eyes glide past Dean as he considers something.
“Dean.” It’s the tone Sam uses when he needs to ask Dean something and knows he’s not going to like the answer. “Why’s the towel pink?”
Dean’s been waiting for this question.
“Anything for my favorite girl,” he says with his brightest grin.
Sam uncaps the bottle and douses his fingers in lube.
“Jerk.” He slides his hand past Dean’s balls.
“Bitch.” Dean shifts his hips up, eager and thrilled and a little anxious.
Sam puts his clean hand on Dean’s knee, petting it lightly, while he presses one finger inside, just the first knuckle, testing, wondering. Dean’s experience with gay sex is pretty limited, something he experimented with when regular hook-ups lost their allure, but this is his brother. Whatever Sam has to give him, Dean wants to take it, and he hopes Sam has to give him everything.
“You ever—?” Sam starts asking, wiggling his finger inside Dean a little.
“Coupla times.” He bumps his knee against Sam’s side. “You?”
Sam pushes his finger deeper, and Dean takes in a long breath, willing himself to relax.
“Couldn’t,” Sam says, sounding, of all things, guilty. “Kept thinking about you.”
Dean wants to hug him, scold him, fuck him, save him.
“You got me,” he says, reaching up to take Sam’s hand that’s resting over his knee. “You got me, little brother.”
It shouldn’t be news to Sam, but he looks surprised, like he’s only now realizing this.
“Yeah,” he says, sliding his finger into Dean to the last knuckle. “Good.”
Dean drops his hand from Sam’s and fists it into the towel, body slowly adjusting, while Sam probes inside him, a little unsure, as if he still can’t believe he’s allowed.
How long has he been dreaming about this? How much does Dean have to make up to him?
It may take eternity, but that’s exactly what they have.
Dean reaches down to stroke himself, while Sam presses another fingertip against his rim, his eyes somehow shy and burning at the same time.
“Yeah?” he asks, and Dean shifts under him, trying to get closer, to make Sam understand he wants all of him.
“Yeah.”
Sam adds the second finger, and Dean sighs, wriggling a little to get comfortable. He keeps his fist loose around himself, just to keep himself going. If the sight also makes Sam move faster, opening Dean up in brisk, frantic thrusts, then well, so be it.
People have been ogling Dean for most of his life, and he’s used to being an object of a kind of unattached desire that centers around his pretty face, not much interested in anything else. He’s always been cool with it, reciprocating when he felt like it, ignoring it when he didn’t.
The way Sam’s looking at him now is nothing like that. He knows Dean and he wants Dean, the exact combination of body, soul, and mind that makes him up, his entire history with all his sins, his flaws, his defeats.
It makes Dean dizzy. It makes him like himself.
“Sammy,” he says, finding himself in unfamiliar territory, needing the reassurance of his brother’s voice. “Sammy, Sam. Sam.”
“Dean?” Sam’s fingers stop moving, his face pinching in a frown. “Is this—”
“‘s great,” Dean hurries to placate Sam. “I just—”
Don’t know how to breathe without you, he thinks. Don’t know how I ever lived without you, he thinks. Don’t know how I could bear waiting for you, he thinks.
He says nothing, but Sam looks at him like he’s heard, and maybe he did. It’s Heaven, who the fuck knows how things work here.
Sam leans down to press a kiss to the side of Dean’s bent knee.
“I know,” he says, and he’s the only person who can. “Same.”
Dean shivers from head to toe, filled with all kinds of new things that grow from old things, like re-discovering the music you liked as a kid and finding out your taste was always damn good.
He loves Sam. Sam loves him.
It’s always been true. It’s just a little truer now.
Sam slips the third finger inside him, and Dean lets go of himself before he comes just like this.
He wants to tell Sam to get on with it, to hurry up and fuck him already, but all he manages is a long, needy moan that makes Sam try and fail to hide a smile.
His dimples, God. His fucking dimples.
“You good?” Sam asks, circling his fingers inside Dean once more.
“Peachy.” Dean jerks his hips toward Sam in what he considers to be a pretty damn clear hint.
Sam kisses Dean’s knee again and withdraws his hand, getting the lube to slick himself up. Dean watches him, every little move he makes, the grace of his fingers, the sublime reality of his body.
This, this is his brother, his soulmate, his everything.
Sam starts slipping into him, slow, a little wary, and Dean wraps his legs around him, digging his heels into Sam’s ass to hurry him up.
“Don’t wanna hurt you,” Sam says, stopping midway, like the giant sappy idiot he is.
“‘m already dead, man,” Dean reminds him. “Gimme your worst.”
Sam looks at him, fire and tears fighting at the corners of his eyes, but it’s the fire that wins, and he slides all the way into Dean, sighing gratefully when he’s fully seated inside.
Dean could listen to that sound on loop forever.
He raises his hand to the back of Sam’s neck, gripping at Sam’s hair, and pulls him down, nose to nose, the air between them hot with their breath.
“Move,” he says, all big-brother authority, and Sam laughs.
“So bossy,” he says, too cheerfully for it to be a genuine complaint.
Dean leans up to kiss him, and Sam drags his hips back, the slide of him burning Dean in the best possible way. They explore each other, learning new ways of loving each other, giving each other everything, just like they always did.
Sam tastes like everything nice and cozy, like summer and sunshine and sour candy, and Dean laps at his lips, can’t get enough, can’t stop, won’t stop. He bucks his hips up, up, up, his hands scrabbling over Sam’s shoulders, urging, desperate.
It’s like he’s never wanted anything in his life, not compared to the thing that blossoms in his chest now, this blinding, deafening need.
Figures, really, that it’d be his brother who’d make him feel like that, make him discover parts of himself he never knew he had.
“Dean,” Sam’s murmuring, even as Dean bites his lips raw. “Dean, fuck, all this time—” His next moan is mixed with a sob, and Dean raises a hand to cup his cheek, brush his thumb over the bone.
“You tell me,” he says, crooking his mouth into a smile. “I didn’t even know.”
Sam slides into him to the hilt, stays like this, searches Dean’s face for something Dean hopes he’ll find.
“Would you?” Sam asks, looking twenty years younger. “If you knew?”
Dean pulls him down and kisses him again, hard, a confession and an apology, because they both know the answer.
He wouldn’t, not when Sam still had a chance of making it work with someone else, someone nice and soft and good without a shred of doubt. Someone who could give Sam all the love without all the killing.
“Good thing we’re both dead,” Sam says against Dean’s mouth, and Dean can’t help but agree.
“Yeah.” He brushes Sam’s hair out of his face. “Good thing.”
Sam moves in tentative, shallow thrusts, canting his hips to find the angle that works for both of them until he hits the right spot and Dean arches off the towel with a breathy curse.
All the maybe’s and the what-if’s dissolve under the wave of pure, sacred pleasure. This is who Dean is, who Sam is, who they are, the original ones, not some fakes from all those alternate universes where they made different choices, wrong and sad.
Every step they made, every big and little decision brought them here, and Dean wouldn’t change a thing. They did their best, and somehow, they got it right, no matter how much it hurt at times.
“Jesus fuck, Dean,” Sam chants as he thrusts harder, deeper, giving in, letting go. “This—this is—”
Dean’s pretty sure he knows what his brother means.
“The good dreams, huh?” He moves his hips in a circle, drawing a wonderfully wanton moan from Sam.
“The best,” Sam says, picking up his rhythm until they’re both a panting, shuddering mess.
Dean sneaks his hand between them, wrapping it around himself and trying to match Sam’s thrusts the best he can with his brain offline.
They fuck; they’re dead, they’re brothers, and they fuck rapturously, deliriously, and it’s glorious.
Maybe this is too much, they’re too much. They’ve always been too close, and it broke the world, multiple times; who knows what they might do when they’re one like this.
Dean knows one thing: he would trade the world, all the worlds, for just one more second with Sam, and it doesn’t scare him in the slightest.
He doesn’t wait for the sky to fall down on their heads, for the ocean to buck and swallow them into its depth.
It wouldn’t matter anyway.
There’s nothing that can separate them now; even death only managed to bring them closer.
“God, Dean, I—” Sam’s words jumble together as he tries to produce a coherent sentence while plunging into Dean with a power-tool intensity. “You’re—fuck—fuck—”
“Yeah,” Dean says, tightening his fist around himself. “You’re so right, little brother.”
Sam groans over him, Dean’s name turned into a hoarse plea, and he comes, spilling deep inside Dean, making Dean feel full, feel rescued.
He strokes himself once, twice more, and his own orgasm catches up with him, sharper than any he’s ever had, staggering and fierce.
It shifts something in his head, dislodges a thorn that’s been pricking his thoughts his entire life—this notion that he’s only good for one thing, and that thing’s violence.
Sam drops onto him, pinning him down to the towel, while nuzzling his neck and murmuring things that aren’t really words. There’s no violence here, not a whiff of it, and Dean raises his clean hand to pet Sam’s hair, content in a way he never thought he could be.
He doesn’t know if it feels so great because it’s Heaven or because it’s his brother, and he doesn’t care.
It’s good. This thing, all of it. It’s the best.
“Hey, Sammy?” He can feel a smile roaming over his face, and he likes it.
“Yeah?”
“You know the best thing about Heaven sand?”
Sam lifts himself on his elbows, looking down at Dean, dimples and all.
“‘s not coarse, rough, and irritating?”
Years don’t matter. Worlds don’t matter. Nothing matters, because they will always, always understand each other.
“And it doesn’t get everywhere,” he finishes the thought, tugging Sam into a soft, lazy kiss.
Time rolls languid and unimportant around them, the sun high, the sky a clean midday blue. There’s no hurry, nowhere else to be, no more monsters to fight. Just the two of them and whatever they want to do.
Sam rolls off him, stretching on his back, his shoulder pressed against Dean’s. It’s sweet, easy. No more desperation, no frenzy. For maybe the first time ever, Dean is positively, fully sure that Sam’s there with him, never disappearing on him again.
He turns his head to look at Sam, reaches out to drag one finger down the line of Sam’s jaw. To think they were this close to not having any of this.
“I almost kept you from Heaven,” he says, because he wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t try to take responsibility for everything.
Sam shifts to meet his eyes, and Dean presses his fingers to the line of Sam’s mouth, feeling his words under his fingertips.
“Dean,” Sam says, like it’s his turn to teach Dean basic arithmetic. “You gave Heaven to me.”
He may or may not be right, but if that’s what he thinks, then that’s what Dean will think, too.
Pacified, he pulls on Sam’s bottom lip, tugging it down, testing what he can do now before Sam bitch-faces him. Sam retaliates by closing his teeth around Dean’s fingertip, holding Dean’s gaze, eyes calm, practically serene.
Turns out, there are no big things or little things or even right places. There is an unknowable vastness, something larger than any shape, a limitless existence that goes far beyond circles or squares or triangles. It’s not final at all, a semicolon instead of a full stop, because it ushers in a new world with new excitement, new experiences, each of them happy.
Turns out, you don’t need to know what you’re doing, just follow the tug of your soul, and you will reach the place you were always supposed to reach. It will wait for you, for as long as it takes, and when you arrive, you will find yourself as you were meant to be.
Turns out, Dean can look at his brother and his brother will look back at him, and this, Dean decides, is what perfection really feels like.