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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Read the whole story at my site.
“I think I found another fairy,” Dean told him.
Sam swiveled his head, too fast, but Dean was focused on the computer screen.
It was another hamlet with a plague of weirdness, people’s possessions changing color and shape and size—an armchair the size of a small house, a widescreen TV the length of Sam’s thumb. Fairy tricks, Dean insisted, mischief that made people question their own senses.
Sam thought it was plausible. As always, he factored in the risk to his secret. Fairies didn’t have special mindreading powers or anything, and there was no reason this one would know what the dead one had done to Dean or what it had meant.
The temperature dropped suddenly, fall arriving like an executioner’s axe, and the sky was the color of frostbite as they drove into Popperville.
It took all of three chilly hours before Sam saw a familiar hatchet-faced figure slipping around a corner.
Sam slammed himself against the wall of the house he was casing, shuddering. He grabbed for his phone. The bricks were as cold against his back as if they’d been refrigerated, sucking the heat out of him, but he pressed himself as flat as possible anyway, his body reduced to the animal hope of remaining still and unseen.
“Dean,” he said as soon as the call went through, “we’ve got to get out of here.” Dean squawked a protest, which Sam ignored. “Meet me back at the room, now.” Maybe they hadn’t been noticed. Maybe turning tail would be enough to protect them.
Sam’s hands were shaking so hard he could barely drive.
Dean had taken Sam seriously enough that he was actually waiting for Sam at the motel, pacing in front of the yammering television. “What the fuck--?” he started as soon as Sam opened the door.
“It isn’t a fairy, it’s the Trickster,” Sam burst out.
Dean stopped, his eyes widening and his hands spreading out, his whole body asking what the fuck was going on.
Sam had forgotten that he’d never told Dean anything about the Trickster. It had been too painful even to include in his war stories.
“He’s a god. A for-real, unkillable, capricious and vicious god. We—my brother and I—we ran into him twice. The first time he just played with us, but the second time—”
Dean crossed the room to him in three quick strides. His hands were warm on Sam’s biceps, pulling Sam into his chest, holding on as if he were still the older brother, still believing himself capable of protecting Sam from anything outside. “Hey,” Dean said, distressed, patting him a little absently. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”
“Dean,” he moaned, pressing his forehead into the shoulder of Dean’s jacket, “he killed—Dean. He made me live one day over and over again, and each time my brother would die and the day would reset.”
Dean was rubbing Sam’s back now, easing him over to sit down on the nearest bed and kneeling in front of him. “Jesus. Groundhog Day in hell.”
Sam sniffed and raised a hand to push his hair out of his eyes, which also got Dean to back off a little. “Yeah.”
“How many times?” Dean asked, gentle, his hand now on Sam’s knee. His eyes were seaglass green, pure in their concern.
“I lost count,” Sam said, same as he always did when Dean asked that question.
But this time, Dean shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”
Sam closed his eyes and wondered if Dean had always known that. “One hundred and eighty-five. Plus one.” He shivered, wishing they’d turned the heat on before they’d left in the morning.
“Plus one?” Dean’s voice was careful, but it was his hunting tone. Sam was a witness now, which meant that Dean was still thinking that they could go after the Trickster, and there was no way Sam was allowing that to happen.
“I figured out it was him and confronted him. Threatened him with something that was supposed to kill him. The Trickster said he’d stop, and that day—my brother didn’t die. But the next morning he did. And he stayed dead. For six months. I hunted the Trickster full-time. Finally he let me catch up with him, said he was teaching me a lesson.”
Sam knew that he’d gone dead-eyed and blank, back as straight as rebar. Dean had never seen him like this, and Dean’s eyes had gone as wide and frightened as Sam had seen them since the fairy’s gift, his lips parted as if for once he had no idea what to say.
Before, Sam hadn’t told Dean about the plus one, the first Wednesday and all that followed it, because Dean hadn’t needed the extra pressure with his clock ticking down. The repeating Tuesdays had been enough of an explanation for Sam’s freaked-out behavior, at least enough that they’d stopped talking about the Mystery Spot and moved to the next case.
“What was the lesson?” Dean asked at last, still soft and unthreatening.
And this part needed heavy editing. The Trickster might have been right that Dean had been Sam’s weakness and that all they had done to each other was cause pain, but that was past now. “The lesson,” Sam said and smiled, allowing it to be just as bleak as he’d felt those six long, unreal months, “was not to fuck with the Trickster. So he sent me back half a year and my brother was alive—” with less than five months left until Hell for real, so it was still a nightmare, just another fucking reset with a longer fuse—“and we got our asses out of town. Exactly like we’re going to do now.”
Funny when he thought of it: with all the Tuesdays added on to the deal clock, and then Dean’s messed-up head after Hell, he’d been living with a dying man for years. But Dean was in remission now and Sam planned to keep him that way.
Sam looked over at the corner of the room, where their duffels sat half-empty. “Please, Dean, I need you trust me on this.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever said that to Dean, not in his life.
“Okay,” Dean said easily, like it was nothing to him, like Sam was the only thing that mattered, and Sam couldn’t stop himself from turning and grabbing Dean’s face with both hands, pulling him into a kiss. Dean only struggled to gentle it when Sam would have drawn blood.
They pulled apart when they heard the knock.
Sam nearly gagged with fear, but he stood, putting himself between Dean and the door. If it was the Trickster, not answering wasn’t going to help. He waved Dean to sit down, though he saw Dean reach behind himself for a reassuring grip on his gun, and went to the peephole.
It was just the housekeeper with a cart full of linens. She was wearing a crisp grey and white uniform, nicer than Sam would have expected given the quality of the motel. She even had a little peaked white cap on her neatly pinned-up brown hair.
Sam opened the door a crack and smiled at her, relief making him dizzy enough that he hung onto the doorframe for balance. “Sorry, we don’t need a cleanup, but we’d take some fresh towels.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I heard that there were two very dirty boys in here.”
“What?” Sam asked dumbly. “Listen—”
“Oh, Sam,” she said, false fondness dripping from her voice, “you just go from bad to worse, don’t you?”
“No,” he said, denial and plea and desperate, hopeless prayer all at once.
She melted into the Trickster with the speed he recognized from before.
“Little pig, little pig, let me in, let me in,” the Trickster cooed.
Sam backed up, because he didn’t want to see the Trickster’s version of the Big, Bad Wolf. He nearly stumbled into Dean, who caught him by the elbows, then stood shoulder to shoulder with him as the Trickster entered.
The motel door slammed behind the god, untouched.
“Please,” Sam begged. “Just leave him alone.”
The Trickster shook his head. “Oh, Sammy, you have been such a bad boy. I think Dean here deserves to know just who he’s been living with all this time.”
“What is he talking about? Sam?” Dean was confused, all his wariness still focused on the Trickster.
Sam gulped air. “He’s the Trickster, Dean. He’s just trying to cause trouble.”
The Trickster grinned. “Yeah, Dean, whyever should you trust me and not Sam, the only friend you’ve ever known? See, your life, it’s pretty good. There’s only one problem. Or maybe it’s not a problem. But it is an interesting factoid: Sam here knows who you are. He’s known all along.”
Dean jerked his head around, eyes widening in shock. “Sam?” he breathed.
The Trickster’s smile disappeared, and now he was the grim monster Sam remembered from Florida. “But he’s not going to tell you, is he? It got a little late for honesty, so he went for happiness instead. Understandable, totally. Forgivable? Who knows?” He examined the room. “You’ve got a really comfy setup here. Just like always. Well, mostly. Sam here has less use for his free porn site bookmarks these days.” He went to where Sam’s laptop was open on the side table and waved his hand. The screen lit up, showing pictures of men writhing together. The pictures looked a lot like Sam and Dean.
Dean raised his gun. “Tell me what you know.”
Sam had never learned the trick of talking through his tears, so it took him a few tries to get the words out. “Don’t, I’ll do anything. Please.”
“Would you like to remember your life, the way it was before that fairy jumped you? So crude, fairies.” The Trickster’s grin was scalpel-sharp. “They don’t like to watch their tricks play out, the way I do.”
Dean looked like he’d been shot, shocked and pale. His mouth parted, and Sam could tell that he was about to ask.
“I’ll tell him!” Sam forced out. “Just don’t, don’t give his memories back—”
“Well,” the Trickster said, sitting down in front of Sam’s laptop and tipping the chair onto its back legs. He cupped his chin in one hand and blinked up at them. “This ought to be interesting. Hit him with your best shot, Sam-I-Am.”
Sam had to take a couple of breaths and wipe at his running nose, but the Trickster was shifting impatiently. “You’re my brother. Dean. You—some really bad stuff happened, things I’ve never told you, and you were messed up so bad. You were killing yourself. The fairy, it was a new start. You were, it was like night and day.” He felt his face collapse, every muscle screaming.
Dean shook his head, more in confusion than in denial. “I—” He took a step backwards, the gun wavering towards the floor. “Your brother?”
Sam forced himself to nod.
Dean’s face contorted. Sam couldn’t look away; he knew every expression on that face: rage, fear, grief, self-hatred. “So, what, you let me stay like this so we could fuck without feeling guilty about it?”
The Trickster giggled.
“No, I swear,” Sam put up his hands, and Dean retreated another step. “I never meant—that was never supposed to happen.”
The Trickster leaned forward so that the front legs of his chair hit the ground with a thump. “Okay, Dean-O, you’ve heard the basics from dearest Sam. The East German judge gives it a five.” He waited a second while they both gaped at him, then shook his head. “No appreciation for history. Fine. So, are you satisfied, Dean Winchester? Or do you want the hi-def version?”
Sam ached to grab on to Dean, but Dean wouldn’t let him get within a yard. “Please, Dean. Whatever you think, it’s not worth it. My—my brother, he wouldn’t want those memories back.”
Dean flinched. “Well,” he said slowly, “your brother isn’t here right now, is he.”
“How very recursive,” the Trickster said, and Sam wished for his powers back just so he could set the repulsive little demigod on fire, burn him up from the inside out. “So what’s it gonna be? Forgive and forget, or remember and revenge? Fair warning: I reboot you, you’re probably going to destroy yourself, maybe take little brother along with.”
“Dean, don’t. For you, not for me. Don’t.” Sam’s voice sounded shredded in his own ears. He turned and addressed the Trickster, even though it was hopeless. “Don’t let him remember Hell.”
“Yes,” Dean said, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes. He must think Sam was being metaphorical. How could he think otherwise, with all Sam had hidden from him? “Give it to me.”
The Trickster clapped his hands together. “I’m so glad you asked. Done.”
Sam’s “No!” felt ripped out of his guts. The world rippled, like an earthquake had struck.
Dean dropped to his knees and put his hands to his bowed head.
Then he screamed, fury and loss and despair mingling into a sound Sam had never heard him make, not even when he’d been stuck in nightmares. After that, the screams were replaced by sobs, brutal and tearing, and Sam didn’t notice when the Trickster disappeared.
The crying eventually stopped, but Dean didn’t get up from his crouch, curled in on himself like a caterpillar’s abandoned chrysalis, shaking a little, fine tremors almost invisible to the eye.
The first necessary thing was to protect Dean from himself. Sam had the keys so Dean couldn’t drive himself into a collision, and as for other methods he’d knock Dean out and tie him up if that’s what it took. That wouldn’t work long-term, but he’d figure something out. “Dean,” he tried, low and careful, “tell me what’s going on.”
Dean stilled entirely, as if he’d been exposed to a Gorgon. Then he laughed, one bark that told Sam exactly how bad matters were.
“We’ll work it out together,” Sam said, wishing he sounded like he believed himself.
“Together,” Dean said, making the word sound like a curse. “Sam and who?”
“You,” Sam said, and this at least was true. “It was always you.”
“You didn’t want me.” Dean’s voice was steady, empty as the sky after a great storm. “You wanted someone else in a Dean suit.” He stood up, slowly as a tomb door swinging closed, looking at his hands, his arms, as if they were new again.
“No,” Sam managed, through a throat that felt squeezed shut. “I hated not having you remember me.”
Dean snorted. “‘Harder, please, yes,’” he imitated, like three quick headshots. “You got a funny idea about hate.” He stalked over to the side of the room where their bags were piled and jerked his out from under Sam’s, throwing it roughly on the bed.
Sam closed his eyes, then forced them open so that he could at least look like less of a coward. “I know I—I fucked up bad, so bad, but I didn’t know how else to keep you alive.”
“So you erased me? How is that any—” He didn’t finish. Dean already had an idea of why Sam might like a brand new person in Dean’s body better, and it had very little to do with sex and everything to do with sloppy, messy, needy Dean. Dean snorted, rich with contempt, and the worst of it was that Sam knew most of it wasn’t aimed at him. “You must’ve loved teaching me all about hunting. You always were the smart one, right?”
Sam flinched, because there was too much truth in that. “It was still you,” he attempted, his voice like an unpaved road. “The person you are, saving people, you were the same. Just—happier.”
Dean swiveled and fixed him with a gaze like a throwing knife. “Thinking I was all alone in the world, no one cared enough to find me. And yeah, you know what? I was happier.” He turned his back on Sam and started throwing dirty clothes in his bag, weapons jumbled in carelessly. He held his hand up for silence when Sam said his name, and the words dessicated in Sam’s mouth.
But when he headed towards the door, Sam couldn’t let him go. “Just tell me one thing,” Sam managed. Dean stopped, his shoulders as rigid as a castle’s defensive wall. “How is what I did worse than what you did to me? You sold your soul. You went to Hell and I begged a crossroads demon to swap places with you but I couldn’t, it wouldn’t take the deal.” Dean turned at that, shocked even through his anger; Sam had never admitted that failed attempt before. “I wanted to be dead and in Hell, Dean. You did that to me. You did it to us. So, yeah, I did a selfish, bad thing because it hurt too much not to do it. I’m not the only one.”
Dean’s mouth trembled, tears standing in his eyes. “I did it because I didn’t—I couldn’t—But you, you couldn’t live with me. Why didn’t you just leave?” He dropped his bag and covered his face with his hands, bending over as if he wanted to shrink into himself and disappear.
Sam approached, barely daring to reach out, but Dean was in no condition to pull a weapon. He let his fingers brush Dean’s shoulders, and Dean whimpered. Deciding, he crushed Dean to his chest, wrapping his arms around Dean’s back so there’d have to be a struggle to get them apart. Dean crumpled like tin foil, all sharp edges and no strength behind them; his knees gave out and Sam bore them both down until they were kneeling, Dean’s face hot and wet against Sam’s throat.
“I couldn’t save you,” Sam managed through his own tears. “I tried so hard, and then you were back, but you were—and I couldn’t do anything to help. When you lost your memories, it was like—I could save a part of you, at least. I’m sorry, Dean.”
Dean jerked and clutched his fingers in Sam’s shirt, digging in hard. “Sorry you lied, or sorry you got caught?” He waited a moment. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He shoved at Sam, but Sam wouldn’t let him go, and Dean lacked leverage.
“It wouldn’t have done any good, telling you things you didn’t remember. It would just have hurt you,” Sam insisted.
“I’m in love with you,” Dean ground out, like each word was a mortal wound. “Your smile, your stupid hair, the way you eat, and I can’t, I can’t—”
Sam ran his hand up Dean’s shuddering back, cupping the nape of Dean’s neck in his palm, his skin prickling with the edges of Dean’s hair. “Then it’s all right,” he said, relief rising in him like a tide. “I don’t care how fucked-up it is, we can work it out, I love—”
Dean pulled away so fast Sam’s hands stung. “Don’t you say it,” he warned, voice thick with rage, his lips curled in the defensive sneer Sam had tried to forget. “You’re not in love with me, and you know how I know that? ‘Cause you’re in love with him. The guy who doesn’t need three drinks before he can make himself go outside, the one who lets you pick the hunts and the diners and, oh yeah, whether you want me on my knees or on my back.” He chuckled, like an engine throwing a rod. “I thought I was so fucking lucky you found me. You were—I thought we were perfect.”
“I only wanted—I wanted you to be safe,” Sam said, helpless. He reached out and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder, the bone too fragile for all that it had endured but still there. “Dean,” he whispered. “Let me help you.”
Dean folded in on himself, hiding his face against his forearms, bowed down to the floor like he was reliving how he’d bowed in Hell.
If Dean still remembered what it had been like after the fairy whammied him, then he could be reminded what it felt like to be happy, to desire life and all its small victories. If Sam could call that back, he could keep Dean from falling down into his self-made pit.
Sam shuffled over so that he could curl around Dean, his chest against Dean’s back, soaking in the fever-heat of him and feeling every trembling breath of Dean’s transmitted directly to him. “I just want you to be okay,” Sam said into the back of his neck, and they stayed like that, crouched over on the hard cheap carpet, until Dean’s shudders slowed into exhausted sleep. Sam carried him to the bed, praying automatically and without faith in anything but Dean, and wrapped himself around his brother.
****
Sam flickered in and out of sleep, adrenaline stabbing him fully awake every half hour as he checked to make sure Dean was still there.
He’d told himself over and over that this was still Dean, that Dean’s continued Dean-ness was obvious. Even when he’d let Dean seduce him, he’d counted it as sin on his side. But that hadn’t been all the way true.
Before Sam had left for college, during that last fight with Dad, Dad had yelled that Sam was a hunter, not a civilian. Not a coward who hid from reality. Sam had screamed right back: “Don’t tell me who I am!”
How’d the song go, cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon? For all his rebellion, Sam had ended up just like Dad in every way that mattered.
Dean didn’t start awake from nightmares, which was something. Sam woke for good as soon as the light started to creep around the curtains. He saw no reason to move, not even to lift his hand from Dean’s shoulder. There was a foul taste in his mouth and his throat ached like he’d been crying, but Dean was warm through his shirt and the sound of him breathing was like a lullaby. Dean’s face was turned away from Sam, pressed into the pillow, and Sam could see a scattering of freckles where Dean’s T-shirt had pulled away from his neck.
He needs a haircut, Sam thought. Dean had never kept his hair this long, before.
Sam watched Dean’s back move, his exhalations loud and open-mouthed and so familiar that Sam thought maybe that sound, that basic noise of Dean living, was what had kept Sam from going completely crazy during the war of Heaven and Hell. He half expected Dean to sense the observation and wake, snappish and self-conscious, but Dean didn’t react. If this was the last morning Sam was allowed with Dean, he was going to draw it out as long as possible.
The late-morning sun finally brought Dean to consciousness. Dean snuggled himself deeper into the sheets, wriggling his ass in a way that Sam couldn’t help but find amusing, but that was just a prelude to Dean’s reluctant groan. “Jesus, Sam, whyn’t you get me up? It’s gotta be—”
And like that, Sam saw him remember. Dean froze, every muscle tensing. Sam hesitantly moved his hand down Dean’s arm, trying for reassurance.
Dean flinched, and Sam let go. They were both fully dressed, of course, and seeing Dean stretched out on the bedspread, still in his boots, his face creased with unease, was too much like all those mornings after Castiel dragged him out of Hell, back when Dean only slept when he was falling down with fatigue. Back when Sam had to wonder each morning whether Dean cared enough to try to make it through to the next day, when Sam’s concern only infuriated him further.
“What I don’t get,” Dean began, “is why you didn’t dump me somewhere. Was it so important for you to be the big man that you’d stick with hunting just to be one up on me? Or was it ever really hunting you hated at all?” The words came out scraped thin, like they had blood on them.
If Dean was still talking to him, there had to be hope. “I was trying—” Sam had to stop, because his voice was all screwed up. “I wanted to do the right thing for you. I hated what hunting did to us. But you were—without all the crap we never deserved, you were—” If he said “just right,” it would break whatever pieces of Dean were left unshattered. “You weren’t killing yourself any more.”
A muscle twitched in Dean’s cheek, his jaw tight. “You don’t just get to pick the good stuff about me,” he said.
“Okay,” Sam acknowledged. Dean jerked in surprise, as if he’d expected Sam to fight back. “The thing is, Dean, you don’t just get to pick the bad.” Sam turned over and pushed himself up until he was leaning back against the headboard, not threatening but not about to let Dean get away, either. “If it’s you in love with me, then it’s you I love right back.”
Dean’s eyebrows raised and his mouth pursed as he tried to work through Sam’s words. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said automatically, and yeah, that was his brother talking.
Sam shook his head. “It makes perfect sense. You just don’t want to admit that I’m right.”
Sam reached out until his fingers nearly brushed Dean’s cheek, though he wasn’t courageous enough to bridge the last inch.
Dean was stone, but he didn’t rear away from Sam’s near-touch, and that was something. He just turned his head and studied his pillow as if it had dirty pictures printed on it.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said at last.
Sam almost smiled, because that was the easiest thing Dean could possibly have asked from him. Sam knew how to be greedy, especially when it came to Dean. “I want my brother and my partner, for as long as I can have him. I want to see you smile for real, and I want to know where in God’s name you learned to play chess. And when it gets hard, I want to be there for you and I want to know you’re going to be okay.”
Dean didn’t say anything for a minute, just took shuddering gulps of air. Sam could almost feel Dean’s heartbeat, pounding unevenly, as if they were skin to skin. “I don’t know if I can do that,” Dean told the headboard, just as Sam had decided he needed to say more.
Sam held himself still. It was physically painful not to grab Dean, but he couldn’t risk sending Dean into fight or flight mode; either one of those meant he’d lose. “Can you try?” he asked.
Dean breathed out like he’d been shot, wet and ragged. “Yeah. But--”
“What is it?” Sam prompted.
“I am so fucking mad at you right now.” The admission itself seemed to help Dean center himself a little, steadying his shoulders and bringing his head up, though he wouldn’t look at Sam. “I want to beat your face in and then I want to break every fucking mirror in this state. I don’t—I didn’t want what you did, but I don’t know how—” His voice broke and he swallowed, loud.
“Yeah.” Sam remembered, from when Dean had made his deal and from when Sam had been left alone. So furious that the self-hate had merged with the hatred of the world until it had seemed like there was nothing left of him but that vicious molten core, where hurting himself seemed like a fine idea because at least then he’d be sure that he was inflicting some pain. “It gets better.”
“You really—” Dean stopped, groaned, and pushed himself upright at last, but Sam was no longer feeling the need to tackle him. He sat with his back to Sam, rolling his shoulders and knuckling his eyes. “You really think that’s the same thing, my deal and you building yourself a better—guy?” Sam really, really didn’t want to know what word Dean had substituted away from at the last second.
“Not the same thing,” Sam said, wishing for a toothbrush and a cup of coffee and, why not, a couple of years of therapy before this conversation. “But it seemed like the best option at the time, and then—” And then, well, his initial falsehood had turned into a Ponzi scheme that needed to be fed with new lies to keep it going. Moving forward on momentum, harder to stop than to continue, even when—yeah, not thinking about that right now.
The back of Dean’s head bobbed up and down, not in agreement but at least in partial understanding.
Eventually, his shoulders straightened. “I need food to do this. Fuck, I need bacon. Like, a pound of bacon and a cinnamon bun the size of Princess Leia’s hair.”
Sam knew he shouldn’t, but the grin was uncontrollable. This was his Dean, hungry for everything. He’d given Dean enough time for Hell to fade some, and that was a triumph.
But Dean kept talking: “You know, if you wanted my ass that bad, you could’ve just used the goddamn love spell.”
“Love spell?” Sam repeated automatically, his smile falling apart. Naturally Dean was going to pick the most awkward possible way to deal with the situation.
“The one in the journal,” Dean said. “Ever heard anyone say, ‘works like a fucking charm’? Like that.” The back of his neck was flushed pink, anger or embarrassment or both.
Sam bit his lip and drew deep juddering breaths, his glee dispelled like a salt-shot ghost. “You never told me about that,” he got out.
“You never asked.” Dean’s back was as stiff as the handle of a knife.
He cleared his throat. “I’m asking now.”
“Peachy,” Dean said, not moving. Sam got it: Dean didn’t want Sam listening out of guilt. He wanted Sam cringing away from Dean’s crassness, sticking his fingers in his ears at appropriate points to emphasize just how much he didn’t want to hear. Maybe Dean didn’t know that Sam had always been listening anyway, through the show; until he’d lost Dean’s memories, Sam hadn’t fully known himself.
Sam had to be the one to get them through this. Dean had enough work to do just remembering why life was better than death.
“Whatever you want to tell me, I want to hear.” Dean didn’t react, which Sam was willing to consider a good sign, since it wasn’t a punch. “Wanna take some time off, go to Montana and play cowboys?” he suggested.
Dean half-turned. His face was still pink with sleep, his hair standing up in little spikes, and Sam’s heart squeezed hard in his chest. Dean’s lips closed, then parted again as he searched Sam’s face. “You think I still—you think I want that?” It wasn’t particularly hostile, more honestly curious. His shoulders were solid curves of muscle under his shirt, and Sam wanted to crawl over and touch him.
Sam shrugged. This was the key, the thing he’d been working out while he watched Dean sleep. “I think I spent way too much time deciding what you wanted, and now I want to be with you while you figure that out for yourself.” There was always the chance that what Dean wanted was not to be with Sam, but Sam was pretty sure he could argue Dean out of that particular bit of insanity. As for the rest of it, well, that was the point after all: to find out.
Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Okay,” he said, and Sam felt the future open up again, maybe better this time. “Okay, Sammy.”
End
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Read the whole story at my site.
“I think I found another fairy,” Dean told him.
Sam swiveled his head, too fast, but Dean was focused on the computer screen.
It was another hamlet with a plague of weirdness, people’s possessions changing color and shape and size—an armchair the size of a small house, a widescreen TV the length of Sam’s thumb. Fairy tricks, Dean insisted, mischief that made people question their own senses.
Sam thought it was plausible. As always, he factored in the risk to his secret. Fairies didn’t have special mindreading powers or anything, and there was no reason this one would know what the dead one had done to Dean or what it had meant.
The temperature dropped suddenly, fall arriving like an executioner’s axe, and the sky was the color of frostbite as they drove into Popperville.
It took all of three chilly hours before Sam saw a familiar hatchet-faced figure slipping around a corner.
Sam slammed himself against the wall of the house he was casing, shuddering. He grabbed for his phone. The bricks were as cold against his back as if they’d been refrigerated, sucking the heat out of him, but he pressed himself as flat as possible anyway, his body reduced to the animal hope of remaining still and unseen.
“Dean,” he said as soon as the call went through, “we’ve got to get out of here.” Dean squawked a protest, which Sam ignored. “Meet me back at the room, now.” Maybe they hadn’t been noticed. Maybe turning tail would be enough to protect them.
Sam’s hands were shaking so hard he could barely drive.
Dean had taken Sam seriously enough that he was actually waiting for Sam at the motel, pacing in front of the yammering television. “What the fuck--?” he started as soon as Sam opened the door.
“It isn’t a fairy, it’s the Trickster,” Sam burst out.
Dean stopped, his eyes widening and his hands spreading out, his whole body asking what the fuck was going on.
Sam had forgotten that he’d never told Dean anything about the Trickster. It had been too painful even to include in his war stories.
“He’s a god. A for-real, unkillable, capricious and vicious god. We—my brother and I—we ran into him twice. The first time he just played with us, but the second time—”
Dean crossed the room to him in three quick strides. His hands were warm on Sam’s biceps, pulling Sam into his chest, holding on as if he were still the older brother, still believing himself capable of protecting Sam from anything outside. “Hey,” Dean said, distressed, patting him a little absently. “Whatever it is, it’s okay.”
“Dean,” he moaned, pressing his forehead into the shoulder of Dean’s jacket, “he killed—Dean. He made me live one day over and over again, and each time my brother would die and the day would reset.”
Dean was rubbing Sam’s back now, easing him over to sit down on the nearest bed and kneeling in front of him. “Jesus. Groundhog Day in hell.”
Sam sniffed and raised a hand to push his hair out of his eyes, which also got Dean to back off a little. “Yeah.”
“How many times?” Dean asked, gentle, his hand now on Sam’s knee. His eyes were seaglass green, pure in their concern.
“I lost count,” Sam said, same as he always did when Dean asked that question.
But this time, Dean shook his head. “No, you didn’t.”
Sam closed his eyes and wondered if Dean had always known that. “One hundred and eighty-five. Plus one.” He shivered, wishing they’d turned the heat on before they’d left in the morning.
“Plus one?” Dean’s voice was careful, but it was his hunting tone. Sam was a witness now, which meant that Dean was still thinking that they could go after the Trickster, and there was no way Sam was allowing that to happen.
“I figured out it was him and confronted him. Threatened him with something that was supposed to kill him. The Trickster said he’d stop, and that day—my brother didn’t die. But the next morning he did. And he stayed dead. For six months. I hunted the Trickster full-time. Finally he let me catch up with him, said he was teaching me a lesson.”
Sam knew that he’d gone dead-eyed and blank, back as straight as rebar. Dean had never seen him like this, and Dean’s eyes had gone as wide and frightened as Sam had seen them since the fairy’s gift, his lips parted as if for once he had no idea what to say.
Before, Sam hadn’t told Dean about the plus one, the first Wednesday and all that followed it, because Dean hadn’t needed the extra pressure with his clock ticking down. The repeating Tuesdays had been enough of an explanation for Sam’s freaked-out behavior, at least enough that they’d stopped talking about the Mystery Spot and moved to the next case.
“What was the lesson?” Dean asked at last, still soft and unthreatening.
And this part needed heavy editing. The Trickster might have been right that Dean had been Sam’s weakness and that all they had done to each other was cause pain, but that was past now. “The lesson,” Sam said and smiled, allowing it to be just as bleak as he’d felt those six long, unreal months, “was not to fuck with the Trickster. So he sent me back half a year and my brother was alive—” with less than five months left until Hell for real, so it was still a nightmare, just another fucking reset with a longer fuse—“and we got our asses out of town. Exactly like we’re going to do now.”
Funny when he thought of it: with all the Tuesdays added on to the deal clock, and then Dean’s messed-up head after Hell, he’d been living with a dying man for years. But Dean was in remission now and Sam planned to keep him that way.
Sam looked over at the corner of the room, where their duffels sat half-empty. “Please, Dean, I need you trust me on this.” He wasn’t sure he’d ever said that to Dean, not in his life.
“Okay,” Dean said easily, like it was nothing to him, like Sam was the only thing that mattered, and Sam couldn’t stop himself from turning and grabbing Dean’s face with both hands, pulling him into a kiss. Dean only struggled to gentle it when Sam would have drawn blood.
They pulled apart when they heard the knock.
Sam nearly gagged with fear, but he stood, putting himself between Dean and the door. If it was the Trickster, not answering wasn’t going to help. He waved Dean to sit down, though he saw Dean reach behind himself for a reassuring grip on his gun, and went to the peephole.
It was just the housekeeper with a cart full of linens. She was wearing a crisp grey and white uniform, nicer than Sam would have expected given the quality of the motel. She even had a little peaked white cap on her neatly pinned-up brown hair.
Sam opened the door a crack and smiled at her, relief making him dizzy enough that he hung onto the doorframe for balance. “Sorry, we don’t need a cleanup, but we’d take some fresh towels.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “Because I heard that there were two very dirty boys in here.”
“What?” Sam asked dumbly. “Listen—”
“Oh, Sam,” she said, false fondness dripping from her voice, “you just go from bad to worse, don’t you?”
“No,” he said, denial and plea and desperate, hopeless prayer all at once.
She melted into the Trickster with the speed he recognized from before.
“Little pig, little pig, let me in, let me in,” the Trickster cooed.
Sam backed up, because he didn’t want to see the Trickster’s version of the Big, Bad Wolf. He nearly stumbled into Dean, who caught him by the elbows, then stood shoulder to shoulder with him as the Trickster entered.
The motel door slammed behind the god, untouched.
“Please,” Sam begged. “Just leave him alone.”
The Trickster shook his head. “Oh, Sammy, you have been such a bad boy. I think Dean here deserves to know just who he’s been living with all this time.”
“What is he talking about? Sam?” Dean was confused, all his wariness still focused on the Trickster.
Sam gulped air. “He’s the Trickster, Dean. He’s just trying to cause trouble.”
The Trickster grinned. “Yeah, Dean, whyever should you trust me and not Sam, the only friend you’ve ever known? See, your life, it’s pretty good. There’s only one problem. Or maybe it’s not a problem. But it is an interesting factoid: Sam here knows who you are. He’s known all along.”
Dean jerked his head around, eyes widening in shock. “Sam?” he breathed.
The Trickster’s smile disappeared, and now he was the grim monster Sam remembered from Florida. “But he’s not going to tell you, is he? It got a little late for honesty, so he went for happiness instead. Understandable, totally. Forgivable? Who knows?” He examined the room. “You’ve got a really comfy setup here. Just like always. Well, mostly. Sam here has less use for his free porn site bookmarks these days.” He went to where Sam’s laptop was open on the side table and waved his hand. The screen lit up, showing pictures of men writhing together. The pictures looked a lot like Sam and Dean.
Dean raised his gun. “Tell me what you know.”
Sam had never learned the trick of talking through his tears, so it took him a few tries to get the words out. “Don’t, I’ll do anything. Please.”
“Would you like to remember your life, the way it was before that fairy jumped you? So crude, fairies.” The Trickster’s grin was scalpel-sharp. “They don’t like to watch their tricks play out, the way I do.”
Dean looked like he’d been shot, shocked and pale. His mouth parted, and Sam could tell that he was about to ask.
“I’ll tell him!” Sam forced out. “Just don’t, don’t give his memories back—”
“Well,” the Trickster said, sitting down in front of Sam’s laptop and tipping the chair onto its back legs. He cupped his chin in one hand and blinked up at them. “This ought to be interesting. Hit him with your best shot, Sam-I-Am.”
Sam had to take a couple of breaths and wipe at his running nose, but the Trickster was shifting impatiently. “You’re my brother. Dean. You—some really bad stuff happened, things I’ve never told you, and you were messed up so bad. You were killing yourself. The fairy, it was a new start. You were, it was like night and day.” He felt his face collapse, every muscle screaming.
Dean shook his head, more in confusion than in denial. “I—” He took a step backwards, the gun wavering towards the floor. “Your brother?”
Sam forced himself to nod.
Dean’s face contorted. Sam couldn’t look away; he knew every expression on that face: rage, fear, grief, self-hatred. “So, what, you let me stay like this so we could fuck without feeling guilty about it?”
The Trickster giggled.
“No, I swear,” Sam put up his hands, and Dean retreated another step. “I never meant—that was never supposed to happen.”
The Trickster leaned forward so that the front legs of his chair hit the ground with a thump. “Okay, Dean-O, you’ve heard the basics from dearest Sam. The East German judge gives it a five.” He waited a second while they both gaped at him, then shook his head. “No appreciation for history. Fine. So, are you satisfied, Dean Winchester? Or do you want the hi-def version?”
Sam ached to grab on to Dean, but Dean wouldn’t let him get within a yard. “Please, Dean. Whatever you think, it’s not worth it. My—my brother, he wouldn’t want those memories back.”
Dean flinched. “Well,” he said slowly, “your brother isn’t here right now, is he.”
“How very recursive,” the Trickster said, and Sam wished for his powers back just so he could set the repulsive little demigod on fire, burn him up from the inside out. “So what’s it gonna be? Forgive and forget, or remember and revenge? Fair warning: I reboot you, you’re probably going to destroy yourself, maybe take little brother along with.”
“Dean, don’t. For you, not for me. Don’t.” Sam’s voice sounded shredded in his own ears. He turned and addressed the Trickster, even though it was hopeless. “Don’t let him remember Hell.”
“Yes,” Dean said, refusing to meet Sam’s eyes. He must think Sam was being metaphorical. How could he think otherwise, with all Sam had hidden from him? “Give it to me.”
The Trickster clapped his hands together. “I’m so glad you asked. Done.”
Sam’s “No!” felt ripped out of his guts. The world rippled, like an earthquake had struck.
Dean dropped to his knees and put his hands to his bowed head.
Then he screamed, fury and loss and despair mingling into a sound Sam had never heard him make, not even when he’d been stuck in nightmares. After that, the screams were replaced by sobs, brutal and tearing, and Sam didn’t notice when the Trickster disappeared.
The crying eventually stopped, but Dean didn’t get up from his crouch, curled in on himself like a caterpillar’s abandoned chrysalis, shaking a little, fine tremors almost invisible to the eye.
The first necessary thing was to protect Dean from himself. Sam had the keys so Dean couldn’t drive himself into a collision, and as for other methods he’d knock Dean out and tie him up if that’s what it took. That wouldn’t work long-term, but he’d figure something out. “Dean,” he tried, low and careful, “tell me what’s going on.”
Dean stilled entirely, as if he’d been exposed to a Gorgon. Then he laughed, one bark that told Sam exactly how bad matters were.
“We’ll work it out together,” Sam said, wishing he sounded like he believed himself.
“Together,” Dean said, making the word sound like a curse. “Sam and who?”
“You,” Sam said, and this at least was true. “It was always you.”
“You didn’t want me.” Dean’s voice was steady, empty as the sky after a great storm. “You wanted someone else in a Dean suit.” He stood up, slowly as a tomb door swinging closed, looking at his hands, his arms, as if they were new again.
“No,” Sam managed, through a throat that felt squeezed shut. “I hated not having you remember me.”
Dean snorted. “‘Harder, please, yes,’” he imitated, like three quick headshots. “You got a funny idea about hate.” He stalked over to the side of the room where their bags were piled and jerked his out from under Sam’s, throwing it roughly on the bed.
Sam closed his eyes, then forced them open so that he could at least look like less of a coward. “I know I—I fucked up bad, so bad, but I didn’t know how else to keep you alive.”
“So you erased me? How is that any—” He didn’t finish. Dean already had an idea of why Sam might like a brand new person in Dean’s body better, and it had very little to do with sex and everything to do with sloppy, messy, needy Dean. Dean snorted, rich with contempt, and the worst of it was that Sam knew most of it wasn’t aimed at him. “You must’ve loved teaching me all about hunting. You always were the smart one, right?”
Sam flinched, because there was too much truth in that. “It was still you,” he attempted, his voice like an unpaved road. “The person you are, saving people, you were the same. Just—happier.”
Dean swiveled and fixed him with a gaze like a throwing knife. “Thinking I was all alone in the world, no one cared enough to find me. And yeah, you know what? I was happier.” He turned his back on Sam and started throwing dirty clothes in his bag, weapons jumbled in carelessly. He held his hand up for silence when Sam said his name, and the words dessicated in Sam’s mouth.
But when he headed towards the door, Sam couldn’t let him go. “Just tell me one thing,” Sam managed. Dean stopped, his shoulders as rigid as a castle’s defensive wall. “How is what I did worse than what you did to me? You sold your soul. You went to Hell and I begged a crossroads demon to swap places with you but I couldn’t, it wouldn’t take the deal.” Dean turned at that, shocked even through his anger; Sam had never admitted that failed attempt before. “I wanted to be dead and in Hell, Dean. You did that to me. You did it to us. So, yeah, I did a selfish, bad thing because it hurt too much not to do it. I’m not the only one.”
Dean’s mouth trembled, tears standing in his eyes. “I did it because I didn’t—I couldn’t—But you, you couldn’t live with me. Why didn’t you just leave?” He dropped his bag and covered his face with his hands, bending over as if he wanted to shrink into himself and disappear.
Sam approached, barely daring to reach out, but Dean was in no condition to pull a weapon. He let his fingers brush Dean’s shoulders, and Dean whimpered. Deciding, he crushed Dean to his chest, wrapping his arms around Dean’s back so there’d have to be a struggle to get them apart. Dean crumpled like tin foil, all sharp edges and no strength behind them; his knees gave out and Sam bore them both down until they were kneeling, Dean’s face hot and wet against Sam’s throat.
“I couldn’t save you,” Sam managed through his own tears. “I tried so hard, and then you were back, but you were—and I couldn’t do anything to help. When you lost your memories, it was like—I could save a part of you, at least. I’m sorry, Dean.”
Dean jerked and clutched his fingers in Sam’s shirt, digging in hard. “Sorry you lied, or sorry you got caught?” He waited a moment. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” He shoved at Sam, but Sam wouldn’t let him go, and Dean lacked leverage.
“It wouldn’t have done any good, telling you things you didn’t remember. It would just have hurt you,” Sam insisted.
“I’m in love with you,” Dean ground out, like each word was a mortal wound. “Your smile, your stupid hair, the way you eat, and I can’t, I can’t—”
Sam ran his hand up Dean’s shuddering back, cupping the nape of Dean’s neck in his palm, his skin prickling with the edges of Dean’s hair. “Then it’s all right,” he said, relief rising in him like a tide. “I don’t care how fucked-up it is, we can work it out, I love—”
Dean pulled away so fast Sam’s hands stung. “Don’t you say it,” he warned, voice thick with rage, his lips curled in the defensive sneer Sam had tried to forget. “You’re not in love with me, and you know how I know that? ‘Cause you’re in love with him. The guy who doesn’t need three drinks before he can make himself go outside, the one who lets you pick the hunts and the diners and, oh yeah, whether you want me on my knees or on my back.” He chuckled, like an engine throwing a rod. “I thought I was so fucking lucky you found me. You were—I thought we were perfect.”
“I only wanted—I wanted you to be safe,” Sam said, helpless. He reached out and put his hand on Dean’s shoulder, the bone too fragile for all that it had endured but still there. “Dean,” he whispered. “Let me help you.”
Dean folded in on himself, hiding his face against his forearms, bowed down to the floor like he was reliving how he’d bowed in Hell.
If Dean still remembered what it had been like after the fairy whammied him, then he could be reminded what it felt like to be happy, to desire life and all its small victories. If Sam could call that back, he could keep Dean from falling down into his self-made pit.
Sam shuffled over so that he could curl around Dean, his chest against Dean’s back, soaking in the fever-heat of him and feeling every trembling breath of Dean’s transmitted directly to him. “I just want you to be okay,” Sam said into the back of his neck, and they stayed like that, crouched over on the hard cheap carpet, until Dean’s shudders slowed into exhausted sleep. Sam carried him to the bed, praying automatically and without faith in anything but Dean, and wrapped himself around his brother.
****
Sam flickered in and out of sleep, adrenaline stabbing him fully awake every half hour as he checked to make sure Dean was still there.
He’d told himself over and over that this was still Dean, that Dean’s continued Dean-ness was obvious. Even when he’d let Dean seduce him, he’d counted it as sin on his side. But that hadn’t been all the way true.
Before Sam had left for college, during that last fight with Dad, Dad had yelled that Sam was a hunter, not a civilian. Not a coward who hid from reality. Sam had screamed right back: “Don’t tell me who I am!”
How’d the song go, cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon? For all his rebellion, Sam had ended up just like Dad in every way that mattered.
Dean didn’t start awake from nightmares, which was something. Sam woke for good as soon as the light started to creep around the curtains. He saw no reason to move, not even to lift his hand from Dean’s shoulder. There was a foul taste in his mouth and his throat ached like he’d been crying, but Dean was warm through his shirt and the sound of him breathing was like a lullaby. Dean’s face was turned away from Sam, pressed into the pillow, and Sam could see a scattering of freckles where Dean’s T-shirt had pulled away from his neck.
He needs a haircut, Sam thought. Dean had never kept his hair this long, before.
Sam watched Dean’s back move, his exhalations loud and open-mouthed and so familiar that Sam thought maybe that sound, that basic noise of Dean living, was what had kept Sam from going completely crazy during the war of Heaven and Hell. He half expected Dean to sense the observation and wake, snappish and self-conscious, but Dean didn’t react. If this was the last morning Sam was allowed with Dean, he was going to draw it out as long as possible.
The late-morning sun finally brought Dean to consciousness. Dean snuggled himself deeper into the sheets, wriggling his ass in a way that Sam couldn’t help but find amusing, but that was just a prelude to Dean’s reluctant groan. “Jesus, Sam, whyn’t you get me up? It’s gotta be—”
And like that, Sam saw him remember. Dean froze, every muscle tensing. Sam hesitantly moved his hand down Dean’s arm, trying for reassurance.
Dean flinched, and Sam let go. They were both fully dressed, of course, and seeing Dean stretched out on the bedspread, still in his boots, his face creased with unease, was too much like all those mornings after Castiel dragged him out of Hell, back when Dean only slept when he was falling down with fatigue. Back when Sam had to wonder each morning whether Dean cared enough to try to make it through to the next day, when Sam’s concern only infuriated him further.
“What I don’t get,” Dean began, “is why you didn’t dump me somewhere. Was it so important for you to be the big man that you’d stick with hunting just to be one up on me? Or was it ever really hunting you hated at all?” The words came out scraped thin, like they had blood on them.
If Dean was still talking to him, there had to be hope. “I was trying—” Sam had to stop, because his voice was all screwed up. “I wanted to do the right thing for you. I hated what hunting did to us. But you were—without all the crap we never deserved, you were—” If he said “just right,” it would break whatever pieces of Dean were left unshattered. “You weren’t killing yourself any more.”
A muscle twitched in Dean’s cheek, his jaw tight. “You don’t just get to pick the good stuff about me,” he said.
“Okay,” Sam acknowledged. Dean jerked in surprise, as if he’d expected Sam to fight back. “The thing is, Dean, you don’t just get to pick the bad.” Sam turned over and pushed himself up until he was leaning back against the headboard, not threatening but not about to let Dean get away, either. “If it’s you in love with me, then it’s you I love right back.”
Dean’s eyebrows raised and his mouth pursed as he tried to work through Sam’s words. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said automatically, and yeah, that was his brother talking.
Sam shook his head. “It makes perfect sense. You just don’t want to admit that I’m right.”
Sam reached out until his fingers nearly brushed Dean’s cheek, though he wasn’t courageous enough to bridge the last inch.
Dean was stone, but he didn’t rear away from Sam’s near-touch, and that was something. He just turned his head and studied his pillow as if it had dirty pictures printed on it.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said at last.
Sam almost smiled, because that was the easiest thing Dean could possibly have asked from him. Sam knew how to be greedy, especially when it came to Dean. “I want my brother and my partner, for as long as I can have him. I want to see you smile for real, and I want to know where in God’s name you learned to play chess. And when it gets hard, I want to be there for you and I want to know you’re going to be okay.”
Dean didn’t say anything for a minute, just took shuddering gulps of air. Sam could almost feel Dean’s heartbeat, pounding unevenly, as if they were skin to skin. “I don’t know if I can do that,” Dean told the headboard, just as Sam had decided he needed to say more.
Sam held himself still. It was physically painful not to grab Dean, but he couldn’t risk sending Dean into fight or flight mode; either one of those meant he’d lose. “Can you try?” he asked.
Dean breathed out like he’d been shot, wet and ragged. “Yeah. But--”
“What is it?” Sam prompted.
“I am so fucking mad at you right now.” The admission itself seemed to help Dean center himself a little, steadying his shoulders and bringing his head up, though he wouldn’t look at Sam. “I want to beat your face in and then I want to break every fucking mirror in this state. I don’t—I didn’t want what you did, but I don’t know how—” His voice broke and he swallowed, loud.
“Yeah.” Sam remembered, from when Dean had made his deal and from when Sam had been left alone. So furious that the self-hate had merged with the hatred of the world until it had seemed like there was nothing left of him but that vicious molten core, where hurting himself seemed like a fine idea because at least then he’d be sure that he was inflicting some pain. “It gets better.”
“You really—” Dean stopped, groaned, and pushed himself upright at last, but Sam was no longer feeling the need to tackle him. He sat with his back to Sam, rolling his shoulders and knuckling his eyes. “You really think that’s the same thing, my deal and you building yourself a better—guy?” Sam really, really didn’t want to know what word Dean had substituted away from at the last second.
“Not the same thing,” Sam said, wishing for a toothbrush and a cup of coffee and, why not, a couple of years of therapy before this conversation. “But it seemed like the best option at the time, and then—” And then, well, his initial falsehood had turned into a Ponzi scheme that needed to be fed with new lies to keep it going. Moving forward on momentum, harder to stop than to continue, even when—yeah, not thinking about that right now.
The back of Dean’s head bobbed up and down, not in agreement but at least in partial understanding.
Eventually, his shoulders straightened. “I need food to do this. Fuck, I need bacon. Like, a pound of bacon and a cinnamon bun the size of Princess Leia’s hair.”
Sam knew he shouldn’t, but the grin was uncontrollable. This was his Dean, hungry for everything. He’d given Dean enough time for Hell to fade some, and that was a triumph.
But Dean kept talking: “You know, if you wanted my ass that bad, you could’ve just used the goddamn love spell.”
“Love spell?” Sam repeated automatically, his smile falling apart. Naturally Dean was going to pick the most awkward possible way to deal with the situation.
“The one in the journal,” Dean said. “Ever heard anyone say, ‘works like a fucking charm’? Like that.” The back of his neck was flushed pink, anger or embarrassment or both.
Sam bit his lip and drew deep juddering breaths, his glee dispelled like a salt-shot ghost. “You never told me about that,” he got out.
“You never asked.” Dean’s back was as stiff as the handle of a knife.
He cleared his throat. “I’m asking now.”
“Peachy,” Dean said, not moving. Sam got it: Dean didn’t want Sam listening out of guilt. He wanted Sam cringing away from Dean’s crassness, sticking his fingers in his ears at appropriate points to emphasize just how much he didn’t want to hear. Maybe Dean didn’t know that Sam had always been listening anyway, through the show; until he’d lost Dean’s memories, Sam hadn’t fully known himself.
Sam had to be the one to get them through this. Dean had enough work to do just remembering why life was better than death.
“Whatever you want to tell me, I want to hear.” Dean didn’t react, which Sam was willing to consider a good sign, since it wasn’t a punch. “Wanna take some time off, go to Montana and play cowboys?” he suggested.
Dean half-turned. His face was still pink with sleep, his hair standing up in little spikes, and Sam’s heart squeezed hard in his chest. Dean’s lips closed, then parted again as he searched Sam’s face. “You think I still—you think I want that?” It wasn’t particularly hostile, more honestly curious. His shoulders were solid curves of muscle under his shirt, and Sam wanted to crawl over and touch him.
Sam shrugged. This was the key, the thing he’d been working out while he watched Dean sleep. “I think I spent way too much time deciding what you wanted, and now I want to be with you while you figure that out for yourself.” There was always the chance that what Dean wanted was not to be with Sam, but Sam was pretty sure he could argue Dean out of that particular bit of insanity. As for the rest of it, well, that was the point after all: to find out.
Dean rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Okay,” he said, and Sam felt the future open up again, maybe better this time. “Okay, Sammy.”
End
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I really like the emotional work you do with Dean here. And I really, really like desperate, begging Sammy.
If you don't mind me asking, did you time this story to end on a Sunday on purpose? Do you get a greater response that way?
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I didn't time it that way on purpose; I decided I had to post or I'd bust, and it just worked out that way. I'm not sure what gets the best response, but if you told me it was Sunday, I'd try harder to post then!
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And you did give me Sam in all his fucked-up glory. All his actions, thoughts, promises were very Sam like. What I found v. interesting, though, was that Sam kept hunting and he kept enjoying it, despite all his protestations about hating it. It was fascinating to see how, purged from some of the issues I think Sam balks against, he ended enjoying hunting.
Dean was... breathtaking. Yes, maybe Dean was the person that could have been if he weren't so burdened. Maybe he was happier, yes, but he was also not!Dean in fundamental ways and one *I* was missing. Only the knowledge that Sam was missing that Dean as well lessened the impact of what Sam did to him.
And then the ending! The setting and the dialogues were pure perfection. One of the things I've learned about Sam during the years is that he rationalizes to the point he ends believing in his rationalizations and I think you showed it beautifully here with Sam not being really sorry about taking Dean's memories, but sorry that he'd been caught. Thankfully the Trikster ended the charade, so now, maybe, Dean and Sam can go on, maybe they can start healing.
Thanks for the great read!
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I'm so glad you missed our Dean! I did too, and Sam needed to as well. And yet--he was never convinced that he did wrong, because he didn't see what else he could do. I do have hope they can have a future together, though, because Dean is pretty good at forgiving once he's had a few punching sessions.
Welcome!
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I really loved this!
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It wasn't difficult to sympathise with Sam's morally ambiguous actions, because the major motivation for him was to take Dean's pain away, even when it all got too far. Still, the saying about good intentions stays true and I was really torn between wanting Dean to be able to keep living without the horrible burden he'd been carrying and to have him back as he is, and I kept wondering what Sam would feel as the time passed with this new Dean - would he regret losing his brother and would he be able to forgive himself for what he had done, and would he have eventually told him the truth and then gone on to argue Dean out of that particular bit of insanity if he decided to leave him. Sam is one crazy son of a bitch. :)
There is a wonderful component of what I perceived as celebrating Dean in this story, how magnificent he truly is, and in the context of their circumstances it was truly heartbreaking in a way. His gratitude to Sam taking him in when he thought that nobody was looking for him was so painful when he got his memories back and went on to think that it had been true - that the only person who should have really hadn't been looking for him, and that Sam was happy with the replacement suited for what he wanted for himself.
Also, your style is so captivating and a joy to read, the flow of this story was incredible. I loved this. <3
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I wanted Sam to both love new!Dean and mourn the loss of Original Recipe Dean, more or less depending on the day. I don't think he ever would have confessed the truth, for reasons both selfish and un. And Dean's reaction when he gets his memories back proves that Sam was right to worry about confessing!
I really appreciate the feedback!
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I figured it couldn't hold through to the end, but the way you brought the whole thing to its completion was perfect. The time away from the memories, the little bit of distance, felt right.
Mostly though I loved the way you handled Sam trying to handle the situation, and still being perfectly Sam about the whole thing. The moment with the explosion where he thought there's no pleasing him, the way he catagorizes Dean's smile, the lies he tells Dean and the lies he tells himself.
I was rivited to the spot. Absolutely fantastic.
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Well done.
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Only Sweeter
I'm also having trouble putting into words what I'm trying to say. I've come to realize that amnesia is one of my favorite plot elements (time loops being just another version) exactly because it allows characters to explore new ways of interacting. But I don't think I've ever seen it used to such "good" effect as it is here, deconstructing not just Dean's character but Sam's. Thinking back to how he had planned Stanford all along while still telling himself he wasn't necessarily going to go, and watching his plans slowly change until what Dean accuses him of at the end becomes abundantly clear.
And really, I can't imagine the Trickster's glee when he discovered what Sam had gotten up to now. Great read.
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Re: Only Sweeter
And yeah, the Trickster was just thrilled to find this latest piece of misbehavior.
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My only wish would be to see how they come to terms with their new relationship -- basically, how Dean is able to integrate both sets of his memories, as the hellbound destructive Dean and the tabula rasa, clean and innocent Dean...
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I'm not always one for the deeply angsty fic because it makes me feel miserable, but this is so beautifully poised between happiness and despair (Sam taking pleasure in amnesiac Dean's unfettered joy, even as he grieves for the traits that have been lost, their shared past, their brotherness), each whetting the other, and I just relished every bit of it.
And this:
“Okay, Sammy.”
So affecting - always so affecting - but especially after amnesiac Dean's use of Samuel.
Gorgeous, gorgeous fic. I loved it.
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Thank you. Your Dean is beautifully broken and every bit of how we know him in canon and Sam is as well, just the other side of the same coin and way more reckless in his head and heart.
Brilliant and some lines really got to me to the point of tears.
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I can't wait to read this again!
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But Sam hadn’t known his brother well enough to understand that he was actually breathing for two.
I don't even know WHY, but that just got to me. :D
In conclusion: YOU ROCK. ♥
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