Work Text:
//**//**//
Sam:
Sam’s spiraling, and he knows it.
It’s not the first time, of course. The first time was over a year ago, when Dean died on a Wednesday.
Just like that time, Sam’s followed every lead, summoned every demon. Also, like that time, nobody will help him. No amount of threatening and torturing makes any difference.
It’s like the entire supernatural world has slammed its door in Sam Winchester’s face. Deliberately.
Sam’s running out of options. He’s got one idea left, as reckless and desperate as any he’s ever come up with, but it’s so crazy it just might work.
He’s cleaning his gun and finishing yet another bottle of whisky when somebody bangs on the door.
Damn.
How dare anyone interrupt his plan? He’d rented this room in this flea trap hotel because he planned to die here. He knows he’ll go to Hell when he dies, so he figures he’s got a shot at finding his brother there. Maybe together they can fight their way out. Maybe at the very least they’ll see each other again.
Maybe.
Cleaning his gun is necessary, of course. No giving himself an out if the gun misfires or he ends up in the hospital instead of the morgue.
He knows he should’ve let Bobby know, but he figures Bobby will find out anyway. No sense being more morbid than necessary.
Somebody pounds on the door again, and this time Sam yells back.
“All right! Hold on a minute!”
He puts the gun and the bottle down carefully. In his inebriated state, it would be just his luck if the gun went off and shot the hotel manager, or whoever it is at the door.
“What?”
Flinging the door open, Sam’s so shocked to see his brother standing there that at first he just stares.
The thing wearing his brother’s handsome face grins.
“Hey, Sammy.”
Because, of course, this isn’t his brother. Sam knows that. He watched the hellhounds rip Dean apart. He buried Dean’s shredded body in a pine box in the woods just outside Peoria.
Sam whips out his demon knife and attacks, filled with rage that anything would dare to taunt him like this, especially in his final hour on earth. He doesn’t give a shit whether the thing is a demon, a shapeshifter, a ghoul, or a revenant. It needs to die.
“Not a demon, Sam,” the thing hisses as it ducks away, then grabs his wrist with both hands.
It uses its weight to knock Sam off balance, kicking Sam’s legs out from under him as it plows into him, twisting his wrist painfully so that Sam lets go of the knife and falls backwards, crashing through the coffee table with the thing on top of him.
Stupid, getting so drunk. Stupid.
“Not a shifter, neither,” the thing growls, breathing hard with the effort to hold Sam down. “I can prove it.”
Sam’s back and head hurt from the fall. Part of the table jammed into his leg, and he’s pretty sure it’s bleeding. He can feel blood dripping down his face, blinding him.
“The fuck!”
Sam yells as he struggles, but the thing fights dirty. It’s got him pinned to the floor like a bug. When Sam tries to headbutt the monster, it ducks out of the way every time.
It knows Sam’s moves. Of course it does. It’s got Dean’s memories.
“So you’re possessing my dead brother,” Sam hisses. “You know how he thinks.”
The thing rolls its eyes.
“We don’t have time for this,” it mutters, releasing Sam’s wrist just long enough to land a well-placed blow to the side of his head.
“Sorry, Sammy,” he hears as everything goes dark.
//**//**//
When Sam comes to, the thing with his brother’s face has Sam’s duffel open on the floor where it’s squatting, holding Sam’s silver blade. When it sees Sam looking, it slides the blade across its forearm, barely wincing from the pain.
Sam blinks and stares as blood wells around the wound.
“See? Right?” the monster says when it can see that Sam understands. “Not a shifter.”
It grabs Sam’s flask of holy water from his duffel, sprinkles itself with it, and takes a quick swallow.
“Not a demon, neither. Satisfied?”
“Then you’re a ghoul,” Sam spits out. “Or a revenant.”
The monster shakes its head. “No. But I’m not your brother, either.”
Sam struggles to sit up, planning to make a flying leap for his gun, but his wrist is handcuffed to the chair leg.
“I’m not your brother, but my name’s Dean Winchester,” the thing goes on, putting the knife down carefully, so that Sam can watch. It wraps its bleeding forearm in the bandana from Sam’s duffel. “I had a brother, but he’s gone. And you know that doesn’t sit well with us.”
“Us?” Sam spits out, but something’s starting to click. This monster’s too old to be his brother, for one thing. It’s got wrinkles around its eyes. Its lips aren’t as soft and full.
The thing nods. “Where I come from, the year is 2019,” it says, “and my brother and me have been through more than you can even begin to imagine. Including me getting out of Hell when I got dragged there back in oh-eight.”
Sam’s curious despite himself.
“How?” he demands. “How did you get out of Hell?”
The Dean-thing chuckles, looking away for a moment, and it’s so much like the way Dean behaves when he’s thinking up a good lie that it brings tears to Sam’s eyes.
“What the hell,” the Dean-thing mutters, clearing its throat and shifting on its heels before bringing its gaze back to Sam. “An angel got me out.”
“Angel!” Sam scoffs. “There’s no such thing.”
The Dean-thing shrugs, another familiar gesture, and says, “Afraid so. Most angels are dicks, but the one that got me out wasn’t so bad.”
Sam’s heart soars with hope. Then blood trickles into his eye, and he shakes his head to clear it.
“That’s impossible,” he says, sounding petulant even to his own ears. “You’re lying.”
“You sure about that?” the Dean-thing says. “I can read you like a book, Sammy, and I can tell you’re hoping it’s true. Cuz if it is, then maybe you can use an angel to get your brother out of Hell, too. Am I right?”
Sam sucks his bottom lip and changes the subject, rattling the handcuff.
“You can let me go,” he tells not-Dean. “I believe you.”
Not-Dean hesitates for a moment, and Sam can see him calculate his chances of being attacked again before he shakes his head and reaches for the cuffs. He uses a lock pick from his pocket, which he probably took from Sam’s duffel.
Sam rubs his wrist when it’s free, gazing warily at not-Dean.
“So you’re from the future,” he says carefully.
Not-Dean chuckles mirthlessly. “Well, a future, anyway. Maybe not your future.”
Sam frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Where I come from, there are all sorts of alternative worlds, so there’s no guarantee this is even my past. It’s just a possible past.” Future!Dean shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m here to change things, if I can.” He hands Sam the bandana, gesturing at his head. “You’re still bleeding.”
Sam touches the bandana to the cut over his eye and holds it there. He’s embarrassed by how easily he succumbed to Future!Dean’s ministrations. He feels guilty for being so desperate. He misses his brother too much, and this future-dude is taking advantage of that. It should make him angry.
Instead, Sam accepts Future!Dean’s caretaking as if he were really Sam’s brother, the man whose death makes Sam want to kill someone, or something, and, if not, then himself.
“If you’re from the future, then you must know what happens,” Sam suggests as Future!Dean helps him up, sits him down, and tends the wound on his leg.
“Uh-huh,” Future!Dean agrees, distracted. Sam’s jeans leg is torn to hell. He should change, but somehow undressing in front of this not-brother feels wrong.
It’s probably the booze.
“You need to shower,” Future!Dean comments. “How long since you ate?”
Sam shakes his head, which makes his head ache worse than it already does. He lets out a pained whine and Future!Dean looks up quickly, frowning and concerned. He’s kneeling in front of Sam, and it’s way hotter than it should be. Sam’s sweating.
When Dean was alive, Sam rarely let himself get this drunk and vulnerable. It would’ve been disastrous if Dean ever found out how Sam felt about him. How unbrotherly.
Future!Dean finishes cleaning the wound on Sam’s leg, using the whisky as disinfectant. He grabs the bandana from Sam’s hand, finds a clean patch, and wraps it around Sam’s leg, moving in between his legs to get the right angle. When he looks up, hands on Sam’s knees, Sam thinks he’s about to get a kiss.
Or a blow job.
His dick responds to the thought, chubbing up in his jeans, and Future!Dean notices. Sam holds his breath as Future!Dean squeezes his knees, gaze lingering on Sam’s crotch before lifting his eyes to Sam’s.
“You do realize how dirty and wrong this is,” he drawls, as if he’s quoting someone. “Your brother would be a jealous wreck if we did what you’re thinking about doing right now.”
Sam flushes hot with embarrassment and looks away.
“I’m not – This isn’t –” he stammers.
Future!Dean chuckles darkly and pats Sam’s knee as he pushes himself up to standing.
“I know, I know. You would never. He would never. Believe me, I’ve been down that long and winding road with my brother. It’s a twisted path of lies and deceit and secrets, secrets, secrets. It’s every bit as fucked up as you can imagine.”
Sam looks up, helplessness and exhaustion making his eyes water.
Future!Dean’s looking around at the broken glass, smashed coffee table, whisky bottle, and open duffel. He glances at the gun Sam was cleaning just before he arrived. He flinches like he knows exactly what kind of dark thoughts Sam was indulging in.
“Let’s get out of here,” he suggests, clenching his jaw grimly. “This place is bad.”
//**//**//
They check into a motel on the edge of town. Future!Dean drives, of course, after confirming to Sam that yes, the Impala makes it into the future.
“It’s still my car, Sammy, in every timeline,” he tells Sam as he puts his hand out for the keys.
Sam’s been taking care of her, and Dean notices, as if that isn’t always the case.
“Dogs and iPods in my timeline,” Future!Dean explains when Sam gives him a questioning look.
“I thought she was mine,” Sam protests. “I watched you die.”
Future!Dean shakes his head. “Nobody stays dead, especially us.”
He leads the way into the motel room, which isn’t nice or fancy, but is a definite improvement on the last place Sam was staying in.
“Get your shower,” Future!Dean says. “I’ll go get you some coffee so you can sober up. You’re gonna need it.”
“So when are you gonna tell me your plan for getting my brother out of Hell?” Sam asks as he dumps his duffel on the bed.
Future!Dean brought Sam’s brother’s duffel into the room, of course, and Sam doesn’t protest. Thinking about his brother’s duffel, seeing it on the bed, makes his chest hurt.
“Clean up first,” Future!Dean says. “I’ll be back in twenty minutes.”
Sam tries not to think about how good it feels to take orders from this man who looks and acts like his brother. He knows there’s something wrong with him for being so easy, so willing to do whatever Future!Dean tells him to do, but he doesn’t care.
Watching your brother get torn apart by hellhounds will do that to a man.
He manages not to think about Future!Dean kneeling between his legs as he showers off several days of dirt, blood, and sweat, not to mention old, dried snot and tears.
Whatever’s happening right now, it definitely beats what Sam was doing before this guy showed up.
//**//**//
“So Ruby hasn’t found you yet,” Future!Dean confirms later.
Sam’s showered, changed, and sitting at the dinette table drinking coffee and eating his second burger like a starving man, which he is.
“Ruby?” Sam swallows, grateful to Future!Dean for getting him the extra burger. He really was starving. Can’t even remember when he last ate, which explains how he got so drunk so fast. “Ruby’s dead.”
Future!Dean shakes his head, looking down at his own half-eaten burger. Apparently, he’s not very hungry, which is unusual, at least it’s unusual for Sam’s brother. Maybe this guy ate just before he time-traveled. Maybe there’s rules about that.
“I wish,” Future!Dean says. “She’s working for Lucifer, so she’ll be back.”
Sam coughs. “What?”
He puts his burger down, raising his eyebrows in surprise. It hurts, pulls on the bandage above his eye, so he frowns instead.
“Yep,” Future!Dean confirms. “Ruby’s mega bad news, especially when she gets back all dressed up in a cute little brunette number. I know my brother couldn’t resist her, or her promise to help him get revenge for what happened to me, or whatever the hell he thought he was doing.”
“What are you talking about?”
But Sam can’t deny he wants revenge. He wants Lilith dead. He wants Lilith’s head on a plate. Bloody. If Ruby could help him accomplish that, he could see himself accepting her help.
Future!Dean makes his skeptical face, pursing his lips so the dimples around his mouth pop, and Sam flushes hot again. This guy really knows how to push his buttons.
”It’s the demon blood,” Future!Dean says. “The stuff Azazel gave you when you were a baby. You’re an addict, Sammy.”
”What?” Sam stares. He’s beyond shocked. How does this guy know about that? He never told Dean. He never would.
Future!Dean shakes his head. He knows.
“You can’t lie to me, Sam,” he says. “Ruby uses your addiction to demon blood to manipulate you. She gets you hooked on the stuff. It gives you power, makes you high. She makes you think you’re helping people, saving them from demon possession. She gets you so strung out you lose sight of the bigger picture, the way she’s manipulating you into doing the very thing she wants.”
“And what does she want again?” Sam knows, he just needs to hear Future!Dean say it.
“To raise Lucifer,” Future!Dean confirms.
“Right,” Sam nods. “And how does that happen?”
Future!Dean grabs his beer, downs a good, solid swallow before he answers.
“You kill Lilith, Lucifer’s Cage opens, Lucifer walks free.”
Future!Dean takes a deep breath, and Sam gets the distinct impression that he wasn’t going to tell Sam this second part, but just changed his mind.
“But that’s not all,” he says, not looking at Sam.
Sam blinks, tamping down on his dread.
“Go on,” he demands grimly.
“The whole thing depends on me,” Future!Dean says. “Well, your brother. It’s up to him to break the first seal. That’s why the demons won’t deal with you. That’s why they won’t let him go, no matter what you promise them in return. Dean has to start it.”
“What are you talking about? What’s a seal?” Sam’s starting to wish he hadn’t eaten so fast. His stomach is lurching dangerously.
“Lucifer’s Cage is locked with sixty-six seals,” Future!Dean explains. “Break them all, Satan goes free. I broke the first one in Hell. My brother broke the last one by killing Lilith.”
Sam shakes his head. “Who broke the other sixty-four?”
Future!Dean scowls.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says, then makes a face when Sam starts to interrupt. “No, it really doesn’t matter. The main thing is, you and your brother are the last and the first. The alpha and the omega. It’s all a big setup designed to bring on the apocalypse and end the world, and you and your brother are smack dab in the middle of it.”
Ice water floods Sam’s veins. He’s always known there was something wrong inside him. Azazel bled into his mouth when he was six months old, cursing him. He knows his mother had something to do with it. She knew Azazel.
But he never knew that Dean had anything to do with any of that. It’s a shock. He’s not sure how to take the information, although he doesn’t have any reason to doubt Future!Dean at this point. Nobody would just come up with something so crazy.
And horrible.
“You said you know a way to get Dean out of Hell,” Sam reminds the guy. “An angel.”
“Now, that’s not what I said,” Future!Dean says, wagging a finger for emphasis. “What I said was, an angel got me out. But that’s not going to work for you and your Dean.”
“Why not?”
Future!Dean chuckles darkly. “Just trust me. The less the angels know what we’ve got planned, the better.”
“Why?”
Future!Dean lifts his eyebrows. “If they find out what we’re doing, they’ll try to stop us.”
Sam’s still reeling from the revelation that angels exist. He’s not sure he’s following Future!Dean’s convoluted line of reasoning. At all.
“So, the angels are the bad guys?” he suggests tentatively. “We don’t want them busting Dean out?”
Future!Dean shakes his head. “Believe me. With your brother, we gotta do it ourselves. And soon.”
“Okay, what do we do?” Sam can’t help trusting this guy. It’s programmed into his DNA. But the idea of turning away from a perfectly good lead doesn’t sit well.
“I know a back door into Hell,” Future!Dean reveals. “Through Purgatory.”
“Purgatory? That’s a thing?” Sam’s unsure whether to be excited or horrified.
Future!Dean nods. “Oh, yeah. Spent a year there once. Monsters go there when they die. Nasty place.”
“So let’s go,” Sam says, pushing his chair back and dusting his hands off.
“Whoa there, Nellie,” Future!Dean says, putting up a hand. “I’m not finished.”
Sam puts his hands on his waist and waits, schooling his face so he doesn’t look too impatient.
“To get your brother out of Hell, we need someone who’s been there before,” Future!Dean says. “Which is why you need me.”
“Okay,” Sam says, wishing Future!Dean would get to the point. “Let’s go.”
“You can’t come with me,” Future!Dean says. “You’ve never been to Hell.”
“Okay,” Sam says, trying not to show his disappointment.
“One more thing,” Future!Dean says. “To spring your brother’s soul, we need a living body. One that his soul won’t reject. Which is the other reason it needs to be me.”
Sam nods. “Okay. My brother’s soul hitches a temporary ride in your body.”
“That’s how we get him out,” Future!Dean confirms, then pauses, taking a breath, and glances apprehensively at Sam.
“What?”
“One step at a time,” Future!Dean says. “First, we get your brother’s soul topside. Then we can return it to his body.”
Hope leaps in Sam’s chest, making his stomach lurch again.
“His body’s buried in a box just outside Peoria,” Sam says. “I didn’t burn it.”
“Right,” Future!Dean nods. “But to reunite his soul with his body, we need a resurrection spell that can only be performed by a very special witch’s apprentice, namely, one Sam Winchester. Which is where you come in.”
“I’m not a witch’s apprentice,” Sam protests hotly. The very idea makes him more nauseous than he already is.
“Maybe not now, but you will be,” Future!Dean says. “In the future, my Sam is as close to being an actual witch as a human can be without selling his soul.”
Sam’s shocked. “And you’re okay with that?”
Future!Dean shrugs, but he doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes.
“I don’t have to like it, but it is what it is. You’ve got the magic in you, Sammy. You were born with it. Only needed Azazel’s blood to activate it.”
Sam shakes his head, stomach sinking uncomfortably again.
“I don’t know how to do that kind of magic. That’s necromancy. Way beyond my pay grade.”
“It’s not, actually,” Future!Dean assures him. “You just need the right spell. You did it in the future.”
“I brought you back to life?” Sam stares. “I mean, your brother resurrected you?”
“Oh, he didn’t use the spell on me,” Future!Dean says. “But he could’ve, if he’d needed to. Which is why I know you can do it with your brother.”
“So what are we waiting for?” Sam asks, grabbing his jacket off the back of his chair. “Shovels are in the car.”
Future!Dean puts his hand up. “Hold your horses, cowboy. One step at a time. Before we do any resurrecting, we need to get your brother’s soul out of Hell.”
“I thought you said we needed his body,” Sam protests, confused.
“Yeah,” Future!Dean agrees.
“Okay.” Sam nods. “Let’s get started.”
Future!Dean takes a deep breath, doesn’t meet Sam’s eyes, and Sam gets the distinct feeling he’s stalling. Something’s not right.
“The resurrection spell isn’t just any old spell,” he says finally. “It comes from a very specific book. Very old, very powerful. It may take us some time to find it.”
Sam almost stamps his foot. “What are you saying?”
Future!Dean still won’t meet Sam’s eyes. “It means, your brother’s soul may need to squat in my body for a while.”
Sam blinks. “How long?”
Future!Dean looks up. His eyes are greener than Sam remembers. The way he looks at Sam makes Sam’s chest clench almost painfully.
“Until we find the book,” he says. “Until you can do the spell.”
Sam’s eyes hurt. He’s still not sober. His stomach roils with too much greasy food consumed too fast.
“How long do you reckon that’ll take?” he asks. His voice sounds hoarse and small.
“Could be a while,” Future!Dean admits.
Sam’s missed his brother too much. Future!Dean is making too much sense. His words are deeply comforting instead of discouraging. Sam’s glad he’s here.
He should hate what he’s hearing, but he’s still too full of hope.
“So my brother’s soul could be stuck in your body indefinitely,” Sam says with a nod. “Beats being in Hell.”
“Yes, it does,” Future!Dean agrees. He clears his throat. “I just wanted to be sure you understood.”
Sam nods. “Let’s do it.”
//**//**//
In the car, Sam asks more questions. He can’t get over the idea of this older, more hardened version of his brother helping out the younger version of himself.
“Why would you do this?”
Future!Dean frowns. “Damn it, Sammy, why waste time asking? Do you want your brother back or not?”
“Yes, of course, I do,” Sam says quickly. “But what’s in it for you?”
“What do you mean, what’s in it for me? You live, that’s what’s in it for me. You survive. You get to keep living. What’s so hard to understand about that?”
“Yeah, I get it,” Sam says with a nod. “But I’m not your brother. Your brother’s gone, you said. So why don’t you just make a deal to get him back?”
Future!Dean chuckles mirthlessly. “Because that’s what we did, isn’t it? You already tried dealing with a demon, and he told you they had me right where they wanted me, right?”
Sam clenches his jaw and glares. Bingo.
“It’s not that simple,” Future!Dean says. “In my world, everything’s gone to hell, and I don’t mean just literally. My brother isn’t just dead, he’s gone. Nowhere. His soul isn’t in Hell, or Heaven, or anywhere. So coming here, preventing all of it from happening, is my best shot of getting Sam back. My Sam.
“You can’t repeat our mistakes,” Future!Dean goes on. “You can’t kill Lilith, because that raises Lucifer, which is how Sam gets gone. You have to do it differently.”
Sam thinks about this for a moment. They’ve got a long drive ahead of them, all the way up to the Hundred Mile Wilderness in Maine, where Future!Dean says they’ll find the gate into Purgatory. They’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Might as well get some answers, since Future!Dean is obviously willing to talk.
“You’re not worried that you’re changing the future just by being here?” Sam asks. “Maybe your world won’t be the same when you get back.”
“That’s what I’m counting on,” Future!Dean says.
His jaw clenches. His hands flex on the steering wheel. Sam knows those gestures. He knows everything about his brother’s tells. He can’t quite believe what they’re telling him now, but he spits it out anyway.
“You’re not going back.”
Future!Dean glances at him, and Sam reads the warning in his expression before he returns his eyes to the road.
Sam takes a deep breath. “Wow.”
He stares out the windshield for another moment as Future!Dean doesn’t answer. It’s a lot to process.
“So you’re planning to stay,” Sam says finally. “Time-traveling into the past is a one-way trip for you.”
They drive in silence for several minutes as Sam thinks about Future!Dean’s predicament.
“You could’ve pretended you didn’t know how to get my brother out of Hell,” he says finally, almost afraid to voice the thought out loud. “You could’ve taken his place.”
Future!Dean shoots him a look Sam knows too well.
“Changing the future is the whole point,” he says. “You live, or at least don’t end up nowhere.”
“But I’m not your brother,” Sam reminds him.
“Maybe not, but you’re the next best thing.” Future!Dean shoots him another look, this one almost fond.
Sam realizes he was never in danger of not getting his brother back. Future!Dean was always going to do this, as crazy as it sounds. It was always Future!Dean’s intention to save his younger self from Hell. And it’s about more than ensuring that Sam stays alive. He’s got a score to settle.
“How did you learn the spell for walking into Hell?” Sam asks. “No hellhounds are involved, I take it.”
Future!Dean laughs, and it’s a good sound. Sam’s almost forgotten how good.
“Definitely not,” he agrees. “I’ve got a couple of allies in the future who are very familiar with the ins and outs of Hell. Heaven, too, for that matter. Getting in and out of those places used to be something only angels and demons could do. Now it’s angels and demons and Winchesters. And a certain red-headed queen of Hell who used to be a human witch.”
He’s boasting again. Sam rolls his eyes. Future!Dean talks about getting in and out of other dimensions the way Sam’s brother used to talk about his sexual conquests.
“So you’ve been to Heaven,” Sam suggests, more curious than he can admit.
Future!Dean glances at him again, this time with an expression that’s at once sympathetic and apprehensive.
“You’ve been there, too, Sammy,” he says. “You just don’t remember.”
Sam’s more surprised than he’ll admit. It never occurred to him that he might have gone to Heaven when he died in Cold Oak, but that must be the case, if Future!Dean says so.
Which raises another line of questioning.
“That’s a can of worms I never knew I wanted to open,” he says, shifting awkwardly in his seat. “What’s it like?”
“Heaven?” Future!Dean clenches his jaw again. “It’s not what you think, that’s for sure. Plus, it changes, depending on who’s in charge. It’s probably a completely different place altogether, in this universe.”
“But it’s real?”
Future!Dean’s head tilts. He glances at Sam again, this time with a sardonic grin.
“Oh, it’s real, all right.”
“And when I died that time, I went there?” Sam needs to hear it. He needs the confirmation more than he realized.
Future!Dean’s grin broadens into a full-blown smile.
“Oh yeah, Sammy. You definitely went there. No surprise to anybody but you.”
Once again, Future!Dean’s words fill Sam with hope. It’s almost like having the real Dean here at his side, providing the reassurance that only his big brother can give him.
“So the demon blood,” Sam begins, then stops because he never told his Dean about that.
But this Dean already knows.
“Doesn’t matter,” he assures Sam. “You’re not tainted, or whatever it is you think. You’re not evil. Even your brother knows that.”
“So my soul wasn’t burning in Hell when Dean made his deal,” Sam says, surprising himself. He never intended to tell anyone about that fear, especially not Dean.
This isn’t Dean, he reminds himself.
Future!Dean flinches, but he doesn’t chastise Sam for suggesting such a thing.
“Not gonna, either,” he says instead. “Not if I can help it.”
Chills run up Sam’s spine. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“My brother paid the ultimate price for letting the devil out of Hell,” Future!Dean says. “Not gonna let that happen to you.”
“Why do you care so much?”
Future!Dean sucks in his lower lip. “I already told you, Sammy. My brother’s gone. You’re all I have. Fixing things for you and your brother is kinda my only reason to live.”
Sam shakes his head. “You’ve got other things to live for,” he insists. “Your knowledge, for example. You must know way more than I do about so many things. Angels, for instance. Hell. Demons. I bet you know how to exorcise multiple demons at once so you can save the people they’re possessing. Stuff like that.”
Future!Dean shakes his head.
“Ruby tried to get you to trust her by teaching you something like that,” he tells Sam. “But using your mind powers, even for something good like saving possessed people, isn’t good. It can’t be good because you got that power from a demon.”
He takes a breath before continuing. “But Azazel picked you because you were born with a natural affinity for magic. That’s what Rowena thinks, anyway, and I believe her. You and your brother come from a magic bloodline that goes all the way back to Cain and Abel.”
Sam scoffs. “Seriously? How does
that work?”
Future!Dean shrugs. “Hell if I know. I just know it’s true.”
Sam thinks about that. As crazy as it sounds, there’s something obvious about being destined from long before birth. Finding out that their bloodline goes all the way back to some kind of weird biblical curse doesn’t sound that unbelievable, all things considered.
Sam huffs out a breath. “It’s like every kid’s dream, being descended from some ancient hero,” he says. “Being destined for greatness.”
Future!Dean glances at him. “Don’t let it go to your head,” he cautions, a smile in his voice that gives Sam comfort. Courage.
Sam could get used to this guy. It’s almost like hanging out with his brother. It’s not exactly the same, but close enough.
Sam smiles.
//**//**//
When they’ve still got a couple of hours to drive, Future!Dean pulls into a picturesque town on the Maine coast and stops for supplies. Sam’s so carsick and sleepy he doesn’t argue as Dean runs errands at a drugstore, a hardware store, and a liquor store, then stops at a gas station.
“Endless wilderness where we’re going,” he explains as he fills up the car. “You should grab us some food.”
He nods at the diner across the street, and Sam unfolds his legs from the seat well. He’s stiff and tired, but at least he’s not drunk anymore. He fell asleep sometime back, after Future!Dean put on some soft rock on the radio, and now he realizes he probably slept through the night while Future!Dean was driving.
He waits impatiently as the waitress takes his “to-go” order, glancing out the window at Future!Dean every few minutes, as if he’s afraid the old guy might leave without him.
He’s addicted to this future version of his brother, Sam realizes when he finally grabs the bags of take-out food and turns to leave. The guy knows things, and not just about angels and demons. He knows about Sam’s feelings, the ones he’s kept hidden from his brother pretty much all his life.
Sam might be a little in love with this older, less inhibited version of his brother. Either that, or he’s missing his brother so much he’s ready to adopt his doppelgänger as if he’s the real thing.
Maybe both.
//**//**//
When Future!Dean pulls the car over on the side of the road two hours later, Sam’s still deep in thought. He feels guilty for letting Future!Dean take the lead on this, as if he shouldn’t allow some stranger to decide how to run this particular hunt. As if this is a hunt. As if Future!Dean isn’t an older version of Sam’s brother.
As if Sam isn’t deeply messed up about his brother’s deal and death and current situation in Hell. As if he doesn’t have messed-up feelings about Dean that he never confessed.
“How long is this gonna take?” he asks.
Future!Dean looks at him for a long moment.
“Time works differently in Hell,” he says finally. “It could take a while.”
Sam feels his face fall. He knows he’s turning on the disappointed little brother face he used to give his Dean, even after they were adults, because he knew Dean couldn’t resist it.
Future!Dean lets out a disgusted sigh and turns away, which is how Sam knows the face works on him just as well.
He waits impatiently while Future!Dean pulls the ingredients for the spell from the trunk and shoves them into a backpack. Then he watches as the old guy heads across the mountain road, looking both ways first, as if Sam were a little kid who needed a lesson in road safety.
Maybe, from Future!Dean’s point of view, Sam is a child. Maybe, when he looks at Sam, he sees the little boy he used to be. Sam always assumed his brother did that on the regular. Old habits die hard, and all that. But for Future!Dean, who’s spent a lot of time with a much older and more experienced version of his brother, Sam must seem very young. Twenty-five-year-old Sam is much younger than the current late-thirties version Future!Dean is used to, and experience-wise, that other Sam must’ve been ancient, so the age gap is even greater.
He follows Future!Dean up an almost invisible path that leads deep into the woods. Future!Dean mumbles under his breath, changes direction twice, and Sam wonders if they’re even going in the right direction. They follow a stream for a while, then Future!Dean turns off sharply into a rocky area, and they climb till they get to a ledge.
“This is it,” Future!Dean announces, gesturing at the rocks behind them.
Sam can see nothing resembling an opening between the rocks, but Dean takes his backpack off, kneels on the ground, and starts pulling spell ingredients out like he knows what he’s doing.
Sam stands helplessly as Dean starts mixing ingredients into a brass bowl with a wooden pestle. He sets the bowl down and draws a circle around it in the dirt and pine needles, then pats down his own pockets like he’s looking for something.
“Shit.” Future!Dean looks up at Sam. “You got a match?”
“Uh, yeah,” Sam says, pulling out a matchbook he just happened to pocket from the diner where he bought their lunch.
He tries not to think about how his Dean would’ve had his lighter on him in this situation. He tries not to think about how far they’ve come just to be stymied by the lack of a match.
Future!Dean pulls a crinkled paper out of his jacket pocket, mutters some broken and largely mispronounced Latin words over the spell bowl, then strikes a match and drops it into the bowl.
A high flame leaps up out of the bowl, followed by a cloud of purple smoke. Almost immediately, Sam sees the rocks behind them start to shimmer. For the first time, he notices a crevice between them, dark and creepy looking, but just big enough for a man to squeeze through.
Future!Dean sees it too. He stands up, grabs his backpack, and moves past the spent spell bowl, toward the opening. Sam thinks he’s going to go through without saying a word to Sam, but at the last moment, he stops and turns to look at his not-brother.
“If I’m not back in twenty-four hours, call Bobby,” he says in that gruff, commanding voice that Sam’s brother uses when he’s giving orders. “Tell him the truth. If anybody can help, he can.”
Sam nods, trying not to stick his bottom lip out. Trying not to cry.
Then Future!Dean steps through the opening and is gone.
//**//**//
While Sam waits, he climbs down the hill and goes for a walk on the empty mountain road. He sits in the car and tries to read. He tries to eat one of the cereal bars Future!Dean picked up at the drugstore. When it gets dark, he tries to sleep, curling himself up in the backseat as he’s done a million times before.
Nothing alleviates his anxiety.
Sometime late in the night, Sam startles awake. Someone is knocking on the window. He sits up, banging his head, heart in his throat.
Even in the dark, Sam recognizes the figure outside the car window. It’s Dean. Well, Future!Dean, without his backpack and jacket, hair sticking up, with one eye swollen shut, looking like he’s been in a helluva fight.
Sam’s first thought is that he failed. Of course. Their luck always gets them a big fat zilch when something really counts, like rescuing Sam’s brother’s soul from Hell. There’s no way it was ever going to work in the first place.
“Sam!” Future!Dean pounds on the glass again.
Sam opens the door, unfolds his legs, and pulls himself up and out of the car.
Future!Dean grabs him, pulling him into a crushing hug. He’s shaking, up on his tiptoes, his face pressed into Sam’s neck like he wants to climb inside him. Sam’s confused, overwhelmed by the feel and smell of his not-brother.
Then it hits him.
“Dean?”
“Yeah,” the man in his arms gasps, his breathing hitched like he’s been crying.
Or screaming.
“Yeah, Sammy. It’s me.”
Sam sucks in a breath, struggling to tamp down on his own emotions.
“Oh my god, Dean. Oh my god.”
Dean’s hands flex in Sam’s jacket, clutching him even closer, and Sam returns the hug in kind, letting himself give in to his relief and pent-up grief.
He lets Dean be the first to pull away. The relief is just too overwhelming, and Sam knows he’d keep on hugging his brother for an unreasonably long time if Dean would let him.
“What happened to you?” Sam asks as they stand facing each other, still clasping each other’s arms because neither of them wants to let go completely.
“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” Dean assures him. “Purgatory, man. Place is swarming with things that wanna eat you. Nasty place.”
“We. Right.” Sam takes a step back, letting his hand drop away from Dean’s shoulder. “You’re possessing that other Dean. The one from the future.”
Dean gestures at himself. “He’s letting me steer, now that we’re out. So I could let you know I’m okay. He didn’t think you’d believe him otherwise.”
Sam nods. “Right. I probably wouldn’t have. It’s been hours, man. I thought you – I figured he must’ve got stuck somewhere.”
Dean looks at him strangely. “It was a week for us.”
Sam blinks, shifts his feet awkwardly. “Wow. I guess you got to know each other pretty well.”
“You could say that,” Dean shrugs. “He knows how to fight those things in Purgatory, that’s for damn sure. He fights even dirtier than I do. I don’t know if I could’ve done it, but he knew what to do.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees. “He’s old. Older, anyway.”
“Not so old, really,” Dean protests. He rolls his shoulders, winces. “We could use some sleep. And a shower. Maybe an ice pack.”
“Yeah, of course,” Sam says, jumping into action. “I should drive.”
Dean turns his attention to the Impala, stepping away from Sam, and Sam tries not to feel bereft. Jealous.
“Oh hell, no. This is my car.” Dean slides a hand along the roof. “Hey, Baby. Didja miss me?”
He opens the door, gets into the driver’s seat, and puts his hands on the wheel, caressing, making those satisfied noises that sound vaguely sexual, at least to Sam.
“Dean, you don’t even know how we got here,” Sam reminds him. “I know where we are. I can get us back down the mountain. I can get us to a town with a diner and a motel.”
He pauses for a moment, then says, “Or you could let that other Dean take over for a while. He’s the one who drove us here.”
Dean hesitates, frowning. He slides his hands over the wheel again, then reluctantly gives in.
“Just this once,” he says, getting back out. He tosses the keys to Sam as he rounds the front of the car to the passenger seat. He runs his hand along the roof again, pats it as he pauses by the door before opening it, and lifts his eyes to Sam. “Okay, you’re in charge for now, but it’s only temporary.”
Sam thinks that’s what Future!Dean probably said to Dean before they charged across the road to knock on his window, so he nods respectfully.
Both Deans have been through a lot. Sam’s grateful, and more than a little chastened. He’s been possessed, but never by a benevolent entity. And he knows that Future!Dean is benevolent because he’s just done what he’s done, saved his younger self from Hell, and fought alongside him in Purgatory. It blows Sam’s mind a little.
In the car, as they drive down the mountain road in the dark, Sam dares to glance over at the man in the passenger seat. He’s passed out, curled against the window as if it’s his only salvation.
Sam can’t help thinking about how vulnerable Dean looks, how small and helpless. After what Dean’s been through in Hell, Sam can’t help wishing there was something he could do to help. Maybe he could figure out a way to travel back in time, like Future!Dean did. Maybe he could prevent all of this from happening in the first place.
Sam would do anything to stop his brother from being torn apart by hellhounds or from having to suffer in Hell for even one day, especially since he did it all for Sam.
And Sam knows what Dean would say to that: “I couldn’t live with you dead. Couldn’t do it.”
Sam knows how that feels. When Dean died in Florida, Sam didn’t stop trying to get him back until he did. If Future!Dean hadn’t shown up with a plan, Sam would’ve found something else, some other way to get Dean back, or he would’ve died trying.
Even if it meant working with Ruby. Even if it meant bringing on the end of the world.
Future!Dean knows that. It’s just how they’re made.
//**//**//
After they check into the motel, which is a little upscale compared to their usual digs, Dean heads straight into the bathroom for a shower while Sam heads out to the diner for food. He has a feeling Dean will be starving, just as he was the day Future!Dean found him and gave him back the hope he had almost abandoned.
He’s itching to get started on the research to return Dean’s soul to his own body, but he’ll need Other!Dean’s help, and he has mixed feelings about that. He just got his brother out of Hell, and although he doubts Dean will want to talk about his experience there, he needs Dean’s presence just to feel whole again. Dean being torn apart and dragged off to Hell had left a ragged hole in Sam’s chest that felt as physically wrenching as it was emotionally. It would take time for Sam to heal, just as it would for Dean.
When he gets back to the motel, Dean’s cleaned himself up as well as he can, but he needs Sam’s help sewing up the wound on his leg.
“I’d do it myself, but I can’t reach,” Dean tells him, bending over the table and shoving his sweatpants down and out of the way.
Dean’s been clawed in the ass, there’s just no other way to say it. Three ragged claw marks mar the pale flesh of his left glute and upper thigh, the lowest two just scratches, fortunately. But the top one is gaping open, seeping blood, and could probably use a couple of stitches.
“Uh, yeah. Okay. I’ll grab the first-aid kit. Just -- wait right there.”
Sam scolds himself for his own embarrassment, forcing himself to focus on the job at hand. This is no different from all the times they’ve patched each other up, he tells himself. Sometimes wounds happen in awkward places, like the time a chupacabra took a bite out of Sam’s inner thigh, dangerously close to his junk. Dean patched him up without so much as a glance at Sam’s jewels, of course, and Sam can do the same with Dean’s ass.
Besides, this isn’t even Dean’s ass. Technically, it belongs to that other guy, and Sam has never had an issue with being attracted to a stranger’s ass before. Particularly one that looks like his brother. Not that he’s been up close and personal with his brother’s ass, of course.
Until now.
“This is not my brother’s body,” he reminds himself silently as he gets to work disinfecting the wound.
Dean hisses because he’s always a baby about pain, and Sam’s always ignored him.
Sam tries not to think about the kind of pain Dean’s recently endured in Hell. He’s just grateful that his brother still acts like a baby when he’s getting an ordinary wound stitched.
Sam tries not to think about how Dean might be deliberately behaving the way he thinks Sam expects him to as a way to help Sam feel better about causing the pain, just as he probably always does.
Two can play this game, Sam tells himself as he prepares to push the sterilized needle into Dean’s skin.
“Ready?”
“You got any booze?”
It’s such a Dean thing to say that it makes Sam smile.
“One, two,” Sam warns before piercing the soft skin on the count of three, just like Dean knew he would.
Dean tenses and grunts, but manages to hold still as Sam makes three neat stitches, just enough to hold the wound closed as it heals. Sam keeps his hands steady, breathing against his own guilt about hurting the man who has so recently suffered too much. He tries not to think about the fact that he’s adding to Dean’s pain. There’s no way Sam would willingly make it worse.
“Done,” Sam announces when he bites off the thread, refusing to notice how close he has to be to do it.
Dean smells like soap and antiseptic and something distinctly Dean that floods Sam with memories of childhood, of huddling with his brother under blankets in freezing squat houses, his face pressed almost into Dean’s armpit, so tangled up in each other Sam didn’t know where he ended and Dean began.
“Missed you, man,” he almost says, but he knows Dean won’t want him to say it, so he grits his teeth instead as he dabs the stitched wound with antiseptic again before applying a clean bandage.
“Probably oughta let me drive for a few days,” Sam says instead, fighting back the sting of tears in his eyes.
“No way,” Dean mutters as he pulls his sweatpants up. “I’ll be fine.”
Nevertheless, he favors his right hip as he sits down at the table, reaching for the take-out containers full of questionable Maine fish-and-chips, which were all Sam could find that was close, open, and quick.
“We should probably pump the other you for intel about getting the spell we need,” Sam says after they’ve both eaten their fill.
Instead of answering, Dean flips on the TV, an old habit that makes Sam’s chest ache. It feels like forever since they sat in a motel room, eating take-out and watching TV.
Dean drags his gaze away from the TV. His one good eye gives Sam a look that makes Sam flush. He can’t help wondering how much the two Deans have shared about what happened between Sam and Future!Dean.
“You need a shower,” Dean says, stuffing another French fry into his mouth. “Let me take a look at that wound on your leg.”
So Future!Dean had told him, at least about that.
As Sam showers, his mind wanders. He can’t help thinking about the night Future!Dean found him, drunk, dirty, and vulnerable, gun in one hand, whisky in the other. Future!Dean made Sam shower, too. He knows he reeks, sweats too much in general, but especially when he’s under stress. He’s often wondered how Dean can stand it, cooped up in the car for days at a time with Sam and his big, sweaty body and flatulence.
Sam had never considered the notion that Dean might like the way he smells. It might be comforting to him the way Dean’s smell comforts Sam.
Maybe Dean makes him shower not because he stinks, but because Dean likes his smell too much, the way Sam likes Dean’s.
He dips his head under the water and deliberately turns down the hot water until it’s almost cold, but his erection won’t go away. It’s like something’s been let out of the bag that just won’t go back in, no matter what he does. No matter how bad and wrong it is, like Future!Dean said that night when he knelt on the dirty floor between Sam’s legs, broken glass under his knees, Sam’s bloody leg in his hands.
Sam comes hard when he thinks about the way Future!Dean looked up at him, the knowing smirk on his full lips.
Sam can’t remember taking his dick in hand, but as he comes down from his orgasm, he almost cries. Why did it take a stranger from the future to make obvious the way he and his brother feel about each other?
No, they’ve both always known, Sam’s sure about that. They’ve just been in such severe denial that it’s like they’ve had a wild animal in a cage and they’ve gotten very good at keeping it there.
Well, the animal’s out now. No putting it back.
When Sam leaves the bathroom, his brother has left the room.
Future!Dean looks up at him with a smirking gaze that starts at his face but spreads down his body like a caress. He’s sitting up in bed, TV remote in his hand, obviously catching up on the news, or maybe Sam’s brother was doing that when Future!Dean took over.
Either way, Sam flushes and turns his back as he rifles through his duffel for a clean t-shirt and sweatpants. No sleeping in the nude again. Ever.
Behind him, he hears the TV go off. He takes a deep breath, then turns back to face Future!Dean, fully dressed, even if his feet are bare.
The guy’s just sitting there, looking at him with his one good eye.
“Your brother said you wanted to talk to me,” he says, then rolls his eye. “I think he’s being a bit of a coward, but whatever.”
“Yeah,” Sam says, shifting his feet awkwardly. “I wanted to thank you for getting him out. Frankly, I wasn’t sure you could.”
Future!Dean shrugs. “It wasn’t easy,” he says, gesturing at his bruised face and black eye. “We almost didn’t make it.”
Sam nods. “That’s what he said.”
“Let’s take a look at your leg.” Future!Dean winces as he shifts on the bed, but he manages to swing his legs over the side to get up. “Come on over to the table. Sit there.”
Sam almost protests, but he’s too weak. Getting Dean’s hands on him – even if they’re technically Future!Dean’s hands – is just too tempting.
He sits down on the kitchen table, sucks in a breath as he waits to see if Future!Dean will kneel in front of him again, but he doesn’t. He sits down in the other chair, arranges the antiseptic and bandages on the table next to him, and gestures at Sam’s leg.
“Roll your pant leg up,” he directs, keeping his eyes on Sam’s leg as Sam obeys. The bandage is still holding on, but barely, especially after his extra-long shower. Future!Dean takes Sam’s leg in both hands, props it up on his knee, and bends it outward so he can get at the wound.
Sam sits as still as he can, forcing himself to ignore how good Future!Dean’s hands feel – rough and confident. He ignores the strength in Future!Dean’s hand as he pins Sam’s ankle down on his knee and rips the old bandage off.
Sam suppresses the little gasp that almost escapes his lips. He focuses on slowing down his heart rate, afraid that Future!Dean can hear it.
Future!Dean keeps his eyes on Sam’s leg, turning it so that he can get a good look.
“Not infected,” he announces, reaching for the antiseptic with his free hand. He shifts on his chair, wincing a little, and suddenly Sam’s thinking about his ass, about the way his skin felt under Sam’s hands.
Sam’s dick responds, happier than Sam can control with Future!Dean’s hands on him. His dick doesn’t know the difference between his brother and this stranger. It’s all the same, and all Sam can hope for is that Future!Dean won’t notice.
Future!Dean notices.
“You know he’s me, right?” Future!Dean says as he dabs antiseptic on Sam’s wound. It should hurt, which should dampen the mood, but it only makes Sam’s dick harder. “He feels the same way about you. It’s in his genetic makeup, or the fact that you two are soulmates, or maybe some fucked-up combination.”
“Soulmates?” Sam isn’t even surprised, really. It just sounds so goofy. Romantic. Like nothing Dean would ever cop to.
Future!Dean looks up at him. “Don’t laugh. It’s a thing. What, you thought brothers couldn’t be soulmates?”
“I never thought about it,” Sam confesses.
Future!Dean finishes bandaging Sam’s leg. He gives it a pat as he releases it, and Sam’s messed up enough to miss his touch as he pulls his pant leg down.
“You should get some sleep,” Future!Dean says as he gets up from the chair.
“What about you? You must be exhausted.”
“I’m still too wired from Purgatory.” Future!Dean reaches into Sam’s duffel and pulls out his laptop. “I’m gonna do some research.”
Sam doesn’t mention the fact that Dean passed out in the car on the way here. Maybe the two Deans have different sleep habits. Maybe they reacted differently to being in Purgatory for a week.
Not to mention spending a month in Hell.
“He doesn’t wanna wake up screaming,” Future!Dean says, as if he can read Sam’s mind. “He’s as anxious to get his body back as you are.”
Sam nods. He’s not ready to admit how exhausted he is, after everything that’s happened.
“We’ll take turns with the research,” Future!Dean assures him. “I’ll go first while you sleep. Go on. He wants you to. You’re no good to us, all beat up and burned out.”
Sam recalls the bruise on the side of his face, caused by Future!Dean’s fist. His back still aches from his fall through the coffee table two days ago. The wound on his leg and the one above his eye still throb.
“Okay,” he agrees, yawning out of nowhere. He didn’t realize how tired he was until this moment.
“Just keep your hand off your dick,” Future!Dean reminds him.
Sam scoffs and rolls his eyes.
//**//**//
Sleeping isn’t as easy as he thought, and Sam’s awake again after only about four hours. His brain won’t stop working over the secret that Future!Dean has revealed about Sam and his Dean.
Sam can’t help being curious.
“How did it start?” he asks after getting himself a cup of coffee and joining Future!Dean at the kitchen table, a bag of breakfast burritos on the table between them.
He can tell by the way Future!Dean glances up from his laptop he knows exactly what Sam’s talking about.
“You came back from Hell without your soul,” Future!Dean explains. “And zero filter.”
Sam’s shocked. He can’t imagine blurting out something so private, so devastating, even if he didn’t have a soul.
“I just told you?”
Future!Dean shrugs.
“It wasn’t all roses and lollipops,” he says. “You didn’t have your soul, so you couldn’t care less about hurting my feelings or whatever. You just told me how you felt. How you always felt.”
Sam stares at him, horrified and fascinated.
“And you agreed?”
Future!Dean shrugs. “Didn’t really have a choice, when you laid it out all clear as a bell. I always thought I was the sick one, corrupting my innocent little brother and all that. But it turned out we were both perverts, as I should’ve guessed in the first place.”
“Oh my god, Dean,” Sam gasps. “I was never going to tell you.”
“Yeah, well, you did a bang-up job keeping it a secret for twenty years or so, I’ll give you that.”
“So it took losing my soul to confess that to you.” Sam shakes his head. “Jesus.”
Future!Dean chuckles. “The look on your face.”
“And you didn’t have a clue before that?”
Future!Dean shakes his head. “Like I said. You kept it locked down tight. Sometimes I wondered, though. When I came to get you at Stanford, you seemed almost happy to see me. And sometimes I thought I caught you looking at me, that first year or so after we got back together.”
“I was looking at you,” Sam breathes. “You were so – real.” He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘beautiful,’ but they both know that’s what he means. He flushes and lowers his eyes. “I spent a lot of time dreaming about you, or daydreaming about you, during those years before you came to get me.”
“I know,” Future!Dean says with a smirk.
Sam almost hits him. “Fuck you.”
“Soon enough, Sammy, soon enough,” Future!Dean purrs, and now Sam does punch him in the arm, hard enough to hurt.
“Ow!” he complains, rubbing his shoulder. “Monster bit me there.”
It’s gonna be a long, complicated day.
Future!Dean:
Sam huffs out a breath. His cheeks and the tip of his nose are adorably pink. Dean had almost forgotten what that looked like.
“So I lost my soul and we had sex?”
Dean shakes his head. “Oh no. God no. The sex happened later, after you got your soul back. Your secret was out, so you couldn’t exactly pretend it wasn’t what you wanted anymore.”
Dean chuckles at the memory as much as at the shock on Sam’s face.
“You looked a lot like you do now when I reminded you of exactly what you said when you were soulless,” he says. “So, now you know. And so does he. Cat’s out of the bag, Sammy. No reason for secrets now. You know he knows, and he knows you know.”
Deep inside, Dean can feel Other!Dean squirm. He’s listening in on the whole conversation, as Dean wanted him to. Let him find out what an idiot he was being. Let him see how much time he wasted, never figuring out how Sam felt. Never revealing his own feelings. Letting himself take his dirty little secret to the grave.
Taking it to Hell.
Dean knows very well how repressed he was about his unbrotherly feelings. He thought he was protecting Sam by keeping his desire hidden. It never would’ve occurred to him that Sam felt the same way.
“And you always wanted it, too?” Sam asks hesitantly, like he can’t quite believe what Dean’s telling him.
“Since way before I should’ve wanted it,” Dean confirms. “You were so cute back then. All long, coltish limbs and your hair in your eyes so half the time you couldn’t see me looking at you, which I thought was a good thing at the time.” He frowns. “I still do. No way would I have made the moves on a fourteen-year-old. Gross.”
“So that’s why you went out all the time,” Sam suggests, still tentative. “All those girls.”
“A man has needs, Sammy,” Dean reminds him with as much cocky bravado as he can muster. “And with you and your long, tan body, your pretty eyes and lips, I had temptation. So much temptation.”
Sam flushes darker. “You think my eyes are pretty?”
“You know I do,” Dean says, making a face. “I tell you that enough to give you a complex.”
Then he remembers.
“Oh.”
Maybe it’s time for the kid’s brother to take over, now that Dean’s so thoughtfully set the stage for them.
“Time to let your brother drive for a while,” he says to Sam, closing his eyes. He reaches deep into his mind, where he can feel Other!Dean pacing and muttering furiously to himself. “Time to face the music, pal.”
Dean:
Dean’s eyes fly open as he hauls in a deep lungful of air. He feels like he’s been closed up in an airtight room or held underwater with no way out. He hates this.
Sam’s staring back at him, big soft puppy eyes in full pleading little brother mode, like he can’t wait to tell Dean what he’s just heard.
“Shut up!” Dean growls, throwing his hands up and getting up from the table.
He whirls away from Sam toward the bed.
The bed. Damn.
He whirls back to Sam, hands up defensively.
“We are not talking about this!”
“But you just said–”
“I don’t care what he said.” Dean practically shouts. “He’s wrong, okay? It’s none of his fucking business. Asshole.” He mutters the last word under his breath, so it’s clear he intends it for Future!Dean.
Sam’s face falls. Confusion replaces his earlier hopeful expression.
Sam gets up from the table. “But you said–”
“Shut up! He’s not me, get it? I mean, he’s me but he’s not me, you get me? You’re my brother, not his. He’s got no right to say that stuff. Whatever happened between him and his brother, that’s not us, you hear me? They had their own thing, and from what I can tell, it was pretty fucked up.”
Sam takes a breath, and Dean watches as he deflates, shoulders sinking until he looks like a disappointed little boy again.
Dean makes an effort to tamp down on his temper. He knows what Sam’s been through, watching him get torn to pieces, burying his body, trying to figure out some way to survive without him.
Failing miserably.
At least he didn’t sell his soul. And if Dean’s current situation is a little sticky, it’s better than he deserves.
He’s just not ready to have any kind of conversation about his feelings right now. Sam will have to accept that. Hell is still too fresh.
He clears his throat and rubs his hands together awkwardly. He knows he should put his hand on Sam’s shoulder, but he’s just not ready to touch the kid, not when his emotions are so raw.
He doesn’t want to start crying, damn it.
“Look, we just need to focus on fixing this, okay?” he says, going for a softer tone. “I can’t share this body with that other guy forever, can I? We can talk about that other stuff when I don’t have a passenger riding roughshod in my brain all the time.”
Sam nods, but his eyes are shiny. He looks away, then starts to turn away, and Dean reaches out on instinct to grab his arm.
“Hey, Sammy.”
Sam freezes, looking down at Dean’s hand.
Dean pulls it back.
“Look, man, I just got back from Hell,” Dean says quietly. “And I’m grateful to you and the other Dean for getting me out. I am. I could just use a little privacy. You know?”
Sam looks up. “Yeah, of course.”
“I know this isn’t my body,” Dean goes on, pacing away from Sam, then turning on him again. “But until I get my own body back, you two can’t just do stuff without my permission. You get that, right?”
Sam nods vigorously. “Absolutely.”
“All that stuff he was talking about,” Dean waves his hands between them. “I don’t know what to think about all that, and you gotta give me time to figure it out.”
“Of course,” Sam agrees, eyes wide. “I know what it feels like to be possessed, Dean. I would never want my body to be used for anything I didn’t sign up for.”
“Yeah, well, this is a little different, since I’m the one possessing somebody else’s body here,” Dean reminds him. “But same principle applies.”
“Right.”
“And same goes for him,” Dean says. “Ground rules: neither of us does anything without the other one’s permission, especially anything having to do with –” He waves his hand between them again. “Anything.”
Sam nods again. “Right.”
Dean nods, satisfied. “Now let’s get to work.”
//**//**//
Sam:
Over the next few days, they sleep, eat, and do research. Future!Dean has a magic credit card that never gets rejected, so Sam focuses on finding the spell to resurrect his brother while Future!Dean keeps him fed and full of coffee.
They’re both wounded and healing, so hunting isn’t possible anyway. Sam’s not sure he could hunt in his condition, with this other Dean, anyway.
It’s hard to keep his mind off the elephant in the room, even when Sam’s brother is in charge of Future!Dean’s body. Maybe especially then. After the first day, Dean stops surfacing, ostensibly because Future!Dean knows more about pretty much everything to do with anything.
But Sam thinks it’s more than that. He strongly suspects that Dean’s hiding from him. Finding out the truth is a lot, for both of them, but knowing that his brother feels the same way takes a lot of processing.
//**//**//
Future!Dean:
At night, both Deans sleep. It’s probably not necessary for Other!Dean to sleep, since he’s nothing but a soul, but somehow he gets tired anyway.
Dean lets him up to the surface to say good night to Sam, and he can feel Other!Dean’s hesitation. Now that the secret is out, Sam and Other!Dean are wary and shy around each other, like teenagers in love, and Dean can feel Other!Dean’s frustration as he thinks about Sam’s body, now that he’s allowed to.
“He wants it, you know,” he reminds Other!Dean, who scowls at him and crosses his arms defensively.
They usually talk in the mirror in the bathroom, even though they can potentially talk silently, inside their head. But they both like to face each other, which is something they couldn’t do in Purgatory unless they chanced to find their reflection in a body of water. Other!Dean obviously prefers it. In the mirror, he can see that he’s not himself. He needs the reminder that he’s got work to do.
“He wouldn’t push you away if you climbed into bed with him, I promise,” Dean assures his doppelgänger.
“Shut up.”
“He’s been in love with you since puberty. Told me so.”
“Shut up. He did not.”
“Did too.”
“Sam’s not your brother, duchebag,” Other!Dean growls. “You don’t know that’s what it was like for him. Just because your brother was a perve –”
“Shut up! You leave my little brother out of this!”
“And what are you going to do, once you’ve resurrected my body, huh? You going back where you came from? Back to your own little brother?”
Dean falls silent. Other!Dean knows damn well that Dean’s little brother died. That’s why Dean’s here in the first place. To fix that.
“‘Cuz you sure as hell can’t stay here,” Other!Dean growls. “This is my home. Sam’s my little brother.”
“And this is my body, you asshole,” Dean reminds him. “So if you wanna stay topside, you better learn to keep your trap shut and do as you’re told or I just might send you back to Hell.”
“You can’t do that,” Other!Dean says, but he sounds doubtful. Even a little scared.
“You don’t know what I can do,” Dean reminds him. “And unlike you, I’ve got nothing to lose.”
Other!Dean falls silent, temporarily chastened.
Dean smirks. “That’s more like it.”
He knows Other!Dean won’t stay quiet for long, though. Dean’s put the idea of finally getting what he wants into Other!Dean’s head. Other!Dean notices everything now. Dean can feel him paying close attention to Sam in a way he never did before. He watches Sam’s mouth move when he eats, watches his hands as they move across the keyboard of his laptop. When Sam leaves the bathroom after a shower, holding a skimpy towel around his waist, Dean feels Other!Dean flush with embarrassment and try to look away.
Dean looks. Maybe more than he should, he looks. Sam is gorgeous, desirable, and the doppelgänger of the love of his life, so it isn’t a hardship to look. A lot. He lets his feelings for Sam crowd to the front of his mind along with all his most lascivious thoughts and memories, so that Other!Dean can’t help noticing.
“Stop!” Other!Dean pleads.
Dean chuckles. “Hard to take, huh? Just now facing all the years you’ve missed this? What an idiot you’ve been, not letting Sam know how you feel? What about how he feels, huh? What’s the matter with you for never asking?”
It’s too easy to taunt Other!Dean for missing a boat he should’ve been on years ago. Like low-hanging fruit.
Other!Dean groans and gnashes his teeth inside Dean’s head. He shouts at Dean to stop, over and over, until Dean almost feels sorry for the guy.
Almost.
After all, when he and his Sam were in this situation, Dean didn’t have an older version of himself in his head, letting him know just how much of a jerk he’d been. Dean didn’t have his future self chastising him for not being sensitive to Sam’s feelings, for not giving Sam what he wanted, for not recognizing how badly Sam wanted it.
One day, Dean gives in.
“Okay!” he explodes inside his own head, addressing Other!Dean directly for the first time in days. “Just do it. Stop obsessing about it and do it, damn it! I can’t take it anymore!”
Other!Dean cringes. He didn’t know he was being so obvious. So loud.
They’re in the bathroom, staring at themselves in the mirror after a shower in which Other!Dean couldn’t keep their hand off their dick, thoughts of Sam flooding his mind until Dean can’t stand it anymore.
“You heard me,” he growls aloud into the mirror. “Just do it. I won’t watch. Or at least I’ll try not to watch. I won’t make any promises, but I’ll try to stay out of the way.”
Other!Dean’s eyes widen, and Dean lets him take over his facial features. Other!Dean’s lips tremble. Dean can feel his excitement, his eagerness, but also his trepidation.
“You – You won’t watch? The whole time?”
Dean frowns. “How long are you planning on taking? You’ve been repressing it for a long time, dude. Doesn’t seem like you’ll last very long, if you ask me.”
Other!Dean bristles and fumes, but his eagerness wins out. They look down at their body, naked after the shower.
“Should I just – I mean, maybe if I just walk out like this,” Other!Dean says, hopeful.
Dean rolls his eyes, but it’s Other!Dean’s half-hopeful, half-terrified expression he sees in the mirror. Dean’s already let him have the wheel.
Dean feels his throat contract as Other!Dean swallows nervously. He watches his hand turning the doorknob and opening the door. At the last minute, Other!Dean grabs the towel off the washbasin. He holds it awkwardly in front of him as he steps out of the bathroom.
Rookie move, Dean thinks, but Other!Dean either ignores him or doesn’t hear him because he’s too distracted.
Sam’s deep into his laptop, doesn’t even look up until Other!Dean’s been standing there for too long.
By the time Sam looks up, Other!Dean’s got a raging hard-on. Just from looking at Sam studying his laptop.
What a dweeb, Dean mutters inside their head.
Other!Dean pointedly ignores him this time. He clenches their jaw and drops the towel, like ripping a Band-Aid off a wound. The towel wasn’t really hiding anything anyway.
Sam’s expression goes from surprised to understanding in about two and a half seconds. His gaze drops to Dean’s crotch, then darts away as he flinches and turns a deep, embarrassed red. He lets out a laugh that makes his dimples pop as he forces his eyes to return to Dean’s face.
“Really?” he says. “This is your move?”
Other!Dean shrugs. “Honesty’s the best policy, I always say.”
Sam scoffs. “No, you don’t.”
Other!Dean shrugs. “Well, anyway. I want you. That’s gotta be clear, right?”
“Or you were just jerking off in the shower,” Sam reminds him.
“While thinking about you, bitch,” Other!Dean growls.
Sam closes his laptop but doesn’t get up. He’s thinking.
“He’s letting you use his body for this,” he says, finally looking up. “I thought you were gonna wait till you had your body back.”
Other!Dean shifts awkwardly. He clears his throat.
“Yeah,” he says. “He’s letting me drive. Figured it would be good to get this out of the way now, while it’s still on our minds, you know?”
Sam huffs out another breath and grins almost bashfully. It’s adorable.
“Don’t think it’s going away anytime soon,” he says, and his gaze drops to Dean’s erection, still at full mast.
Other!Dean frowns. Having Sam’s gaze on him is definitely intoxicating, but he’s getting damned impatient for the opening act.
“Just kiss me, Sam,” he growls.
Sam takes his time pushing his long frame up from the chair. He crosses the room without looking up, and Other!Dean shivers as Sam gets close enough to make him fully aware of their height difference.
It’s always turned him on, ever since Sam got taller than him.
Of course, everything about Sam turns him on. He can’t help his body’s response to Sam. Never could, even when they were kids. Having Sam in his arms made Dean feel safe. It always felt right, holding Sam as a baby or a toddler or a little boy. Not sexual, obviously, but deeply, deeply right.
The sexual part is just an extension of Other!Dean’s all-consuming love for this person who is his in every way, just as he is Sam’s.
Standing so close, Other!Dean can almost feel his heat. Sam finally looks up, meeting his gaze, and Other!Dean gasps. Sam’s pupils are blown, his irises a rich golden-green color. He’s so beautiful that he takes Dean’s breath away.
“You sure this is okay?”
Sam’s hand is on his face, fingers curling around behind his head, long thumb brushing over his cheekbone. Other!Dean leans into the touch. He’s dying for it.
As Sam’s lips touch his, Dean retreats inside his own head, just as he promised Other!Dean he would.
But he feels it. He can’t help it. It’s so good to feel Sam’s lips on his again, even if it’s Other!Dean’s first time. He tries not to let those feelings of familiarity wash over him as Sam holds his head with both of his big hands, angling his face so that Sam can deepen the kiss.
Other!Dean isn’t sure whether the familiarity is his or the body he’s inhabiting, but he doesn’t care. Sam’s kissing him. Finally. He’s good at it, too. The moan that escapes his throat sounds real, not forced at all, and he’s trembling, like he can’t quite believe Dean’s letting him do this.
It’s the best feeling ever.
//**//**//
Sam:
“I think I found something.”
Sam looks up and immediately flushes hot with memories of the previous night.
They’re sitting across the table from each other at a little independent coffee shop in upstate New York, in one of those college towns where they have easy access to libraries, coffee, and decent wifi. Future!Dean used his magic credit card to buy a second laptop, so they’re both busy searching, knees knocking together under the table.
“Yeah?” Sam croaks, voice hitching. He clears his throat, tries again. “Yeah?”
It’s been a little over a week since that first night, and neither of them can get enough. It’s like a fucking dam breaking. They’re like teenagers who’ve never had sex before.
Except it’s Future!Dean sitting across from Sam at the moment, and Sam’s finding it more and more difficult to make the distinction. He knows in his head that this man isn’t his brother, now his lover, but his body still responds as if it is.
It doesn’t help that Future!Dean keeps sliding his foot against Sam’s, pressing their knees together under the small table.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Future!Dean shifts on his seat, as if his jeans are a little tight. Or as if his ass still hurts from the wound he sustained in Purgatory.
Which is how Sam knows that Future!Dean feels it, too. His body has been enjoying a week’s worth of nearly constant sex, and he probably aches all over, even though his Purgatory wounds have mostly healed.
Sam chuckles to himself, turning it into a cough so that Future!Dean doesn’t notice.
Future!Dean looks up, his piercing green gaze fixed on Sam sharply.
“You okay?”
Sam nods, grabbing his glass of water to take a sip.
“I’m fine,” Sam assures him, wheezing. “What did you find?”
Future!Dean frowns for a moment, like he’s trying to decide whether Sam’s lying to him, then he takes a deep breath and looks back at his laptop screen.
“There’s a witch in Lewiston who might be able to help us,” he says, flipping the laptop so Sam can see the screen.
“Mistress Magda?” Sam reads, making a face at the lurid design of the website. “Really?”
Future!Dean rolls his eyes, both of them now that the swelling has gone down and his eyes are mostly normal again.
“His real name’s Chuck Shurley,” he says. “He wrote a series of books about us. The Winchester Gospels, according to the angels. Stupid.”
“What the hell?” Sam’s flabbergasted, which has become a regular thing lately.
“Yeah. Turns out, he’s God Almighty.”
“What the hell?” Sam repeats.
“In a world with no angels, we might be able to get a little help from God himself.” Future!Dean chuckles darkly. “He owes me one.”
Sam stares. “God’s real.”
Dean glances up at him as he pulls the laptop toward him.
“Oh yeah. And he’s a major douche, just like the angels. Worse.”
Sam waits for the sensation of a balloon being popped. He expects to deflate as all his biggest hopes and dreams slide right out the window under Future!Dean’s words.
But it doesn’t happen. Maybe he always knew. Maybe he always expected God to be an asshole, after everything that’s happened to his family. To a lot of families throughout history.
“Okay,” he says as he straightens up in his seat. “So what do we do now?”
Future!Dean’s mouth tightens into a grim line.
“We drive over to Lewiston and talk to the guy.”
Sam hesitates. “Isn’t that a little dangerous?”
Future!Dean shrugs. “Yeah, probably. You got a problem with dangerous?”
“Only if it’s stupid,” Sam says. “Provoking the most powerful entity in the universe might just be a tiny bit stupid.”
Future!Dean grins. “Yeah, probably.” He rolls his eyes. “The guy’s a real jerk. I need to mess with him. Come on.”
Future!Dean drives. Future!Dean always drives. Sam’s finding it hard to distinguish between the two Deans in more ways than one. They’re both dominant personalities, both like to push Sam around and tell him what to do.
Having two bossy big brothers is starting to get on Sam’s nerves.
Dean knows right where the guy lives. He drives straight up to his house, gets out, climbs the steps two at a time, and bangs on the door.
“Chuck? It’s Dean. Let me in. Chuck?”
When there’s no answer, Sam says, “Maybe he’s not home.”
Dean frowns. “Oh, he’s home, all right. He’s hiding because he knows it’s us.” He bangs on the door again. “Chuck? Open up, man, before I have to break this door down. Don’t think I won’t!”
A curtain flutters on the front window, then the door opens a crack. Sam can see a small, nervous man peering out, his hand keeping a bathrobe closed in front of him. He doesn’t remove the chain lock.
“Who’s there?”
“Chuck Shurley, I’m Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam.” Future!Dean waves a hand at Sam dismissively. “Or close enough. I think you know who we are, and if you’ve been writing about us lately, you know why we’re here.”
“What?” Chuck’s voice goes up an octave. “That’s not possible.”
“Skip all the crap, Chuck, we know who you are. The real you. We need your help, so let us in.”
“Dean?” Chuck squeaks, narrowing his eyes and adjusting his glasses. “What’s wrong with you?”
Dean rolls his eyes. “I’m a different Dean, as you can probably tell. From the future. And I’ve got this world’s Dean riding shotgun in my brain, or in my chest, wherever souls ride along in other people’s bodies, so that’s probably why you’re seeing double right now. I can explain the whole thing if you just let us in.”
Chuck’s eyes widen. He glances at Sam, then back at Future!Dean.
“If I let you in, will you let me live?”
Future!Dean rolls his eyes. “Nobody’s doing any killing today, Chuck. Not that you don’t deserve it. I’m just hoping you can put your God hat on for a few minutes and give us a little help with our doublemint problem, that’s all.”
“I’m not Him,” Chuck says, voice dropping from a squeak to a hoarse, anxious whisper. “I mean, He’s not in me right now. He takes breaks. I think he’s in Acapulco.”
“Of course he is.” Future!Dean glances at Sam, who shrugs.
Whatever. Sam’s not sure he’s following any of this, but he trusts Future!Dean. He has to. Doesn’t have a choice.
“But I know the spell you’re looking for,” Chuck says quickly, his voice getting squeaky again before breaking entirely.
Future!Dean’s eyes widen, like he wasn’t expecting that. He glances at Sam again, and Sam can see his surprise masked as “I told you so” confidence, so he gives him a tentative smile of encouragement.
“So if I let you in and give you the spell, you’ll leave me alone, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Future!Dean says half-heartedly, and Sam wonders if Future!Dean’s beef with this dude is about to come to fruition.
“Nobody dies today,” Sam reassures the nervous little guy who still doesn’t want to let them into his house.
Sam throws a look at Future!Dean which he hopes conveys a stern warning to hold himself in check, gets Future!Dean’s reluctant nod in return so he knows the message has been received.
It’s almost too easy, silent communication with this other version of his brother. Sam’s getting far too accustomed to it.
When Chuck unlocks the door, Future!Dean pushes his way in, elbowing Chuck out of the way so that the little guy stumbles backwards and almost falls.
Future!Dean looks smug. He really doesn’t like this guy. Sam doesn’t need psychic abilities to see that.
Chuck’s house is a wreck. Bottles of whisky, rum, vodka – is that rubbing alcohol? – lie everywhere, among piles of dirty clothes, fast food wrappers, and endless piles of well-worn notebooks and loose typed papers. A desk with an old-fashioned typewriter sits against the wall, with piles of manuscripts and more notebooks all around it. A half-empty box of typing paper sits on the ground next to the typewriter. On another desk, an old computer screen blinks at them, its keys old and yellowed, cursor at the ready.
“So in this universe, you write about these Winchesters, am I right?” Future!Dean growls. “So you know what’s been happening.”
“I – yes, I do, but – I didn’t really believe it,” Chuck stammers, stumbling as he attempts to walk backwards ahead of them into the room, keeping his hands up to protect himself.
As if.
“You guys aren’t supposed to be here,” Chuck says as he backs into a bookshelf, effectively ending his retreat, trapping him. “I didn’t see this. I mean, I didn’t dream about it.”
“We just decided this morning,” Future!Dean tells him. “Your porn alias came up as an ad on a website we were looking at.”
Chuck’s eyes widen. “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Well, it did,” Future!Dean growls. “And you already said you’ve got the spell we need, so just give it to us and we’ll be on our way.”
“You know you can’t go back, right?” Chuck says, as if it’s news. “You’re stuck here, even if Dean gets his body back.”
“We’re aware,” Future!Dean says gruffly, so that Chuck knows that Sam knows. Dean, too.
“So, what? You’re just gonna live your life out here?”
Sam watches as Future!Dean’s face cycles through several expressions. He’d bet his life that Future!Dean’s checking in with Dean. They’ve talked about it.
“Maybe,” Future!Dean says. “First things first. Where’s that spell?”
“Wow,” Chuck breathes. “That’s some really bad fan fiction, right there. I’m so relieved I didn’t write it.”
Future!Dean frowns. He pulls himself up to his full height, grabbing the front of Chuck’s bathrobe with one fist while pulling back the other as if he’s about to punch Chuck in the face.
Chuck cowers, flinching and putting his hands up defensively.
“Are you gonna give us that spell?” Future!Dean growls menacingly. “Or am I gonna have to beat it out of you?”
“No, no, please don’t,” Chuck pleads. “I’ve got it right here. I promise.”
Future!Dean steps back, releasing him just enough to let him gather his robe around himself, but keeping his fist cocked, just in case.
“Okay.” Chuck takes a deep breath, closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again. “Done.”
Future!Dean stumbles back, his eyes wide, an expression of shock taking over his handsome features.
“Dean?” Sam steps forward automatically, reaching out to put a hand on his not-brother to steady him.
“What did you do?” Future!Dean demands in a hoarse whisper, staring at Chuck in horror and confusion.
“I sent him back to his body,” Chuck says.
“You what?”
Chuck tilts his head. There’s something different about him. More confident, suddenly, more authoritative.
Chuck goes on, his voice steady and clear now, no longer simpering and pleading.
“And since his body’s buried in a box in Illinois, I’d say you boys have about – oh, twenty minutes – until he suffocates. So you’d better hit the road, dontcha think?”
Future!Dean glares. “You bastard. You were him the whole time.”
Chuck gives an indifferent shrug. “Yeah, I lied. I gotta say, Dean, you made an interesting choice, coming here. I’ll be watching to see where this goes. Maybe. If it stays interesting enough.”
“Oh no, you won’t!” Future!Dean surges forward, grabbing onto Chuck, and Sam’s sure he’s about to witness a murder in cold blood.
But then the little guy just disappears into thin air.
“Gah!” Future!Dean explodes, stamping his foot. He pushes the bookcase over, punches the wall behind it, flinging books to the ground, taking his frustration out on everything in his path until he catches Sam watching him.
“See what I mean?” Future!Dean growls at Sam, then yells up at the ceiling. “Douche!”
“Dean?” Sam reaches for Future!Dean, laying a calming hand on his arm. “We need to go.”
Future!Dean shrugs his hand off. “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go.”
They leave the house as it is, slamming the door behind them, and descend the steps to the street two at a time. Sam’s heart pounds as Dean starts the car, pulling out into traffic and heading for the interstate.
Sam’s done the math. Even if they drive one hundred miles per hour, it’ll be over an hour before they get to Pontiac.
“He’ll be okay,” Future!Dean assures him, as if he can read Sam’s thoughts. “I’ve been there, remember? He can dig himself out. It ain’t easy, but it’s doable.”
Sam takes a deep breath. “I buried him shallow,” he says. “Knew I’d need to get him out when I figured out how.”
“Well, now you won’t have to,” Future!Dean comments.
“Why would Chuck do that?” Sam’s overwhelmed. He still can’t wrap his head around the fact that they just met God Himself. It doesn’t feel real.
Future!Dean clenches his jaw. “Because he can,” he says, voice tight and angry. “Because that’s what he does. He writes. He entertains himself. We’re his entertainment.”
“That’s sick,” Sam comments, shaking his head.
“Tell me about it,” Future!Dean growls. “Believe me, it gets worse. In my world, it got way worse.”
“Ruby,” Sam nods, almost afraid to remind him. “The apocalypse. Angels.”
“Worse,” Future!Dean says, jaw working like it does when he’s very, very angry.
Future!Dean gets off the interstate when they roll into Illinois. He takes backroads like the pro that he is, not once asking Sam for directions. Sam thinks about waking up in a pine box, not-quite-six-feet-under but deep enough. He thinks about what it would take to break out of the box, then fight his way through lightly-packed soil to the surface.
“Will they know?” he asks. “The angels, I mean. Will they know we got Dean out?”
“Probably,” Future!Dean growls. “Doesn’t matter. They don’t know Chuck like I do. They’ll never guess it was Him.”
“I guess that angel that got you out lost his job,” Sam says as Future!Dean turns down the little country road that leads to the field where Sam buried Dean’s body.
Future!Dean shrugs. “If we did this right, you and your Dean won’t ever even meet him.”
Sam feels sad about that. He thinks he would’ve liked to have met an angel. Even if they’re as douchey as Future!Dean says they are.
“He can’t be that bad if he got you out,” Sam reminds Future!Dean.
Future!Dean shoots a warning glance at him, and Sam shuts up.
“There he is,” Future!Dean announces.
Sure enough, up ahead, walking toward them in his t-shirt with his jacket tied around his waist, looking tired and dirty but very much alive, is Dean.
Dean.
Sam starts opening the door, so Future!Dean slides to a stop so he can get out. He takes off running towards his brother, not sure what he’s doing, not caring if he’s emotionally overwrought.
Dean stops when he gets close, so Sam pulls up short, and for a moment they stare at each other, Dean wincing up at him like the sun’s in his eyes.
Then Dean smiles.
“Dean.” Sam lets out his brother’s name on a breath of relief he’s been holding too long. Dean lets him sweep him up into his arms, wrapping his own arms around Sam and squeezing tight. For a moment, they cling to each other, pressed so tight it’s like they’ve become one body, two hearts beating between them, almost perfectly in sync.
Then they step back from each other, still holding on, still connected. Sam just needs to look, to see the brother he watched getting torn apart by hellhounds barely four months before (?). It seems impossible that he’s whole again, young and beautiful as the day he died. He’s missing old scars, Sam notices immediately. He wants to strip Dean’s clothes off right here and now, look him over carefully to find the scars he remembers, but he guesses they’ll be gone, too. Dean’s skin looks fresh and new, if a little dirty from the scramble out of his grave.
Dean’s eyes dart away from him at the same time Sam hears footfalls. Future!Dean stops barely an arm’s length away, so that the three of them form an isosceles triangle, with Future!Dean standing equal distance from each of them.
“Pull up your right sleeve,” Future!Dean orders warily.
Sam looks hard at him, frowning. “It’s really him,” he insists. “It’s Dean. You think I can’t tell my own brother?”
He doesn’t have to add that Dean’s wearing the clothes Sam buried him in, after washing the blood away as well as he could, taking his time to gently pull clean jeans up Dean’s shredded legs, a clean t-shirt over his head to cover the damage to his chest and stomach.
This t-shirt.
But Dean’s already obeying Future!Dean’s order, displaying his perfect deltoid, bare and muscled and lightly freckled.
Future!Dean nods, breathing out a small sigh of relief.
“No angels,” he says. “That’s good. That’s good.”
Dean croaks out something neither of the others understands, gesturing at his throat, miming tipping a bottle of water into his mouth.
“Water!” Sam exclaims, jumping into action, ready to sprint back to the car.
Future!Dean puts a staying hand on his arm. “We’ve got some in the car. Come on.”
Sam watches as Dean smiles his thanks at Future!Dean, starts toward the car, walking between them.
Future!Dean puts a hand on Dean’s shoulder. “Good to see you in your own skin,” he comments warmly.
Sam blinks a little at the natural familiarity between the two Deans. Of course, they spent a week fighting for their lives side by side in Purgatory, he recalls. The camaraderie is natural. Plus, they’ve lived together inside Future!Dean’s body ever since, shared the driving, giving up control to each other on a regular basis, willingly taking the backseat when they both agreed.
Even Sam can’t imagine what that kind of closeness feels like. Even sharing the kind of bond he has with Dean, he’s never actually lived inside his body.
Sam refuses to be jealous, but he’d be a liar if he didn’t admit to feeling a knot of something like it, coiled in his belly like a snake.
When they get to the car, Dean takes a moment to guzzle a couple of water bottles, then clears his throat.
“Thanks,” he croaks out, aiming his gratitude at Future!Dean, relegating Sam to the backseat with a single word and glance.
When both Deans glance at the car, Sam doesn’t hesitate.
“I’ll sit in the back,” he says, nodding as he turns away and reaches for the back door.
He watches as Dean and Future!Dean silently agree that Future!Dean should drive, at least for now, and Sam puts a damper on his growing jealousy. It’s stupid to be jealous of these two men in any way, he tells himself. After what they’ve been through, their bond is completely understandable. Sam shouldn’t feel like an outsider in any way. After all, they’ve both crawled out of their own graves to get back to Sam, or some version of him. Sam’s already the center of their world. He shouldn’t be so greedy as to want more than that.
Besides, Future!Dean has traveled across time to help Sam. He’s given up his whole world, along with any chance he might have had to be reunited with his Sam, to be here. Sam should be grateful.
And he is, really. But.
As Future!Dean guides the car back to the main road, heading northwest toward North Dakota. Sam watches jealously as Dean picks the music.
You never let me pick the music, he pouts silently, then remembers that his brother is the driver in this universe. Future!Dean’s just along for the ride.
After swooping in to save the day.
And that’s what really gets to Sam, if he’s honest. He wanted to be the one to get Dean out of Hell. He wanted to be the one to save him, the way Dean had saved Sam by selling his soul in the first place.
Instead, Future!Dean saved them both. Sam didn’t need to sell his soul, or worse, to get his brother out of Hell. He didn’t need to go on a murderous revenge quest, although he’s still planning to track down Lilith for sending Dean’s soul to Hell in the first place. Sam’s sure it was no picnic down there, and Lilith should pay.
Sam was headed down a dark path when Future!Dean arrived and saved him from plunging deeper into his own personal Hell. Now they’ll hunt Lilith together. Now they can triumph over the demons they let loose in Wyoming.
Together.
It’s almost sunset by the time they pull into Singer Salvage. Sam hasn’t seen Bobby since the day he buried Dean, so he’s unsure of his welcome.
The two Deans, however, seem absolutely confident they’re doing the right thing. They stand side by side at the doorway, leaving Sam to hang out behind them, so that when Bobby opens the door, they can say, “Surprise!” in unison.
The look on Bobby’s face is as comical as Sam expected, of course. He almost feels sorry for Bobby. He’s sure it wasn’t easy for him when Dean died.
But at least Dean didn’t go to Hell for him. Dean wasn’t tortured in Hell because he sold his soul for Bobby. Bobby can’t begin to know what that’s like, and Sam doubts he’s got much inclination to use his imagination on that front.
“Hey, Sam,” Bobby says, looking over the heads of the two Deans. “What’s going on?”
“Hey Bobby,” Sam says. “Dean’s home, as you can see. And we brought a friend. Also named Dean, in case you couldn’t see that, too.”
“I got eyes, boy,” Bobby says gruffly. “I guess you already run all the tests.”
“You know me, Bobby,” Sam says. “Thorough as they come.”
Bobby squints at the two Deans. “This one’s old,” he comments.
“Hey now,” Future!Dean protests. “I’m still younger than you, old man. You gonna let us in, or what?”
“You smell like grave dirt,” Bobby grumbles as he steps aside to let them in. “Better take your shoes off. On second thought, don’t. Somebody needs a shower.”
Dean raises his hand. “That would be me,” he says cheerfully. “Three hours ago, I was six feet under.”
“Well, not quite six feet,” Sam mutters petulantly.
“You mind telling me what happened?” Bobby steps past them to lead the way into the kitchen, and Sam’s pretty sure they just walked over and under a couple of devil’s traps. Bobby’s not taking any chances.
“Long story,” Future!Dean says, shaking his head.
“I’m all ears,” Bobby answers, handing them each a glass filled with what Sam’s pretty sure is holy water.
“The old guy dropped in from the future a while back,” Sam says, figuring he’d better do the talking. Bobby’s still displaying a lot of suspicion toward the two Deans. “He knew a thing or two about getting Dean out of Hell, so we did what he suggested and here we are.”
“Huh,” Bobby comments, laying silver knives on the table, brushing them against Dean’s and Future!Dean’s skin as he does, so that Sam can tell they’re real silver.
“Hey,” Dean protests, picking up one of the knives. “We’re not skin-walkers, Bobby.”
Bobby shrugs as he turns back to the stove to open a couple of cans of chili. “Can’t be too careful.”
Future!Dean knocks back the holy water, then puts out his glass.
“I could use something stronger, Bobby. We all could.”
Sam and Dean knock back their own glasses. Sam winces at the flat taste.
Bobby nods, uncorks a bottle of whisky, and pours doubles all around.
“So I guess this is a celebration,” he says as he pours a glass for himself and raises it. “Here’s to miraculously making those sons-of-bitches let you go, Dean. No strings attached.”
His voice drips with sarcasm, and Sam can tell he still doesn’t trust that they’re who they say they are. Or what they say they are.
“They didn’t exactly let me go, Bobby,” Dean says. “It took planning and preparation, and even then we had to fight our way out. That took a couple of weeks, at least. Pretty much lost track of time. Then we had another week’s worth of fighting our way through Purgatory, which is definitely not Disneyland.”
Sam sucks in a breath. He didn’t realize it took them so long. They’d only told him about the week in Purgatory. No wonder the two Deans were so close.
“The demons won’t come after us, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Future!Dean adds. “The only thing that might come after us at this point is something you’ve never even heard of before, but I’m pretty sure that ain’t happening, either.”
Bobby’s eyes narrow. “What haven’t I heard of? ‘Cuz you should know I’ve heard of most things by now, boy.”
Future!Dean smiles grimly. “Angels, Bobby,” he says. “Angels rigged the whole thing. Sending me to Hell so I could start their apocalypse, manipulate Sam into raising Lucifer, and trying to get us to fight each other. It was all a set-up. The demons were just minor players in the game. The angels were the ones running the show.”
To his credit, Bobby doesn’t even look surprised. “Angels, huh?” He shakes his head. “You’re wrong. I’ve heard of them. I’ve heard they’re generally uninterested in human affairs, unless they get orders from up top.”
Future!Dean nods. “These angels had orders, all right. But not from God. He could care less about the angels.”
“That so,” Bobby says skeptically. “So who gives them their orders?”
Future!Dean pours himself another drink. “Michael did, for a while, but mostly they break off into factions, squabble amongst each other for power. Same as the demons.”
Sam had slipped away to the stove to stir the chili as soon as Future!Dean and Bobby started to get intense, and now Dean slides up beside him, brushing his shoulder against Sam’s arm, leaving it there.
“Whaddya say you and me slip away after supper and let the old folks talk, huh?”
Sam flushes. He can’t help enjoying the feeling of Dean pressed up against him, alive and breathing, even if he does smell like grave dirt. He’s dying to take Dean into his arms, to hold him close for the rest of their lives.
He was prepared to die for that not too long ago, as a matter of fact.
“Maybe you should take a shower first?” Sam means it kindly, but of course, Dean’s insulted.
“What? You don’t like me when I’m a little ripe?”
“You’re not ripe, Dean,” Sam says. “You smell dead. Like death. Like something rotting in a grave, or maybe like something that never got buried and got left out in the sun.”
“Okay! Never mind! You could’ve just said you had a headache,” Dean huffs.
“And there’s no way in hell we’re doing anything or getting up to anything in Bobby’s house,” Sam hisses. “That’s gross.”
“Hey!” Bobby says sharply, making both Sam and Dean jump. “You wanna share that chili? Or do I have to wait till Hell literally freezes over to get some supper here?”
“No, yeah, of – of course,” Sam stutters, grabbing bowls from the cupboard while Dean pulls some spoons from a drawer.
“So what’s the plan?” Bobby asks after they’ve eaten a few bites to take the edge off their hunger.
Sam hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he took his first bite of Bobby’s canned chili. Something so simple and familiar makes his chest hurt and his eyes smart. It’s been a helluva few weeks.
He glances at the Deans, but they seem too absorbed by their food to answer, so Sam clears his throat.
“I guess we’re just planning to go back to hunting,” Sam says. “Keep doing what we do, you know?”
“No revenge quest?” Bobby asks skeptically. “No tracking down Lilith?”
“Dean says killing Lilith is off the table,” Sam says. “Something about that starts the apocalypse and destroys the world.”
“Well, we wouldn’t want that,” Bobby says sarcastically. “Obviously.”
“No, we wouldn’t,” Sam agrees.
“And you’re okay with that?” Bobby asks. “Just letting her go? After what she did to your brother?”
Sam’s jaw clenches. “No, I’m not okay with it, Bobby, but seems I don’t have a choice. I’m not letting fucking Lucifer out of Hell, and I’m not going to start the apocalypse that ends the world. So if that means I have to let Lilith go, then that’s what it means. End of story.”
“Well, all right then.” Bobby pushes his bowl away and drains his whisky glass. “I got a case for you boys, if you’re up for it.”
And just like that, they’re back in it.
The Deans decide they won’t spend the night at Bobby’s. Future!Dean’s magic credit card gets them two rooms at the local Holiday Inn, so after they get the intel they need from Bobby, they head there.
Sam can’t help noticing that Bobby seems relieved. He still doesn’t completely trust them, although he finally gives Dean a hug when they start out the door.
“It’s good to have you back, boy,” he says, tears in his eyes.
“Yeah,” Dean agrees, returning the old guy’s hug warmly. “Same here, Bobby. Thanks.”
“He doesn’t trust us,” Dean comments when they’re back in the car.
“Can’t say I blame him,” Future!Dean says. “Our story is pretty wild.”
“Yeah, but it’s true,” Dean says. “Not too many people we can tell it to."
“Yeah, well, at least now he knows.”
“He’ll probably be up all night researching angels,” Sam comments from the back seat.
Both Deans chuckle, and Sam has to admit there’s something funny about Bobby becoming obsessed with angels, even though there hasn’t been a sighting of one in this universe for a very, very long time.
Sam stands in the doorway of the room he’s sharing with Dean and stares at the two queen-sized beds.
“I guess there’s just no way we could all three fit in here,” he suggests, surprising himself.
Dean brushes past him with his duffel, the one Sam’s kept in the trunk for the past two months (?), and dumps it on the closest bed.
“You want him to sleep with us?” Dean cocks an eyebrow, then shrugs as he begins digging through his duffel for clean clothes. “I guess I could go for that, if you’re sure.”
“No!” Sam hastens to clarify. “I just meant, we could talk, you know? Figure things out between us. All three of us.”
Dean snorts. “I don’t know about you, Sammy, but about all the talking I’m up for at the moment is singing in the shower. Maybe a little sex talk. You waking me up if I talk in my sleep.”
Sam makes a face. “Dean.”
Dean puts up a warning finger. “Shower. Not another word.”
While Dean showers, Sam paces the room, too keyed up to sit. He misses Future!Dean and he doesn’t know what to do with that. A couple of hours ago, he was so jealous of the older man that he could barely see straight. He knows Future!Dean thinks he’s giving Sam and Dean their privacy. He’s letting them be alone together, just the two of them.
And maybe that’s the problem. Future!Dean thinks he’s being magnanimous, letting Sam have his brother all to himself, after all the time the two Deans spent sharing the same body, the same location in space. Future!Dean thinks he’s being thoughtful.
But Sam’s not ready to be alone with Dean. After everything they’ve been through, facing Dean without Future!Dean’s wise mediation feels overwhelming. Too intense.
The truth is, Sam’s come to depend on the two Deans having each other’s backs, having each other to focus on so that Sam can just be himself.
Now, without Future!Dean in the room, Sam feels almost naked, like a vital part of himself is missing.
The light knock on the door makes Sam almost jump out of his skin. He knows who it is before opening the door, but he peers through the peephole anyway.
Future!Dean winks at him.
“What are you doing here?”
The words come out sounding like an accusation, but Sam just has time to start mumbling an apology when the bathroom door opens.
Sam steps aside on instinct, so that the two Deans can stare at each other.
“Couldn’t stay away, huh?” Dean smirks.
He’s freshly washed from head to toe, clad in shorts and one of Sam’s baggy t-shirts to sleep in, and Sam almost gasps. He’s more beautiful than Sam remembers. Young, bright-eyed, without a sign of the old scars his body used to bear on his arms and legs. His skin practically glows, freckled cheeks and nose more prominent than Sam remembers.
This body Sam’s never kissed, he thinks with a swoop of trepidation in his belly.
Future!Dean is staring, too. His gaze is heavy and hot.
Sam glances between the two Deans, feeling the air crackling with tension and something else.
“Sam wants you here,” Dean says, lifting his chin at Sam. “You might as well stay.”
Future!Dean grins. He steps inside the door, shuts it behind him, and pulls two bottles of whisky from his inside jacket pockets.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” he drawls.
Sam watches him, feeling like he’s watching a scene from a movie, as Future!Dean sets the bottles on the table and takes off his jacket. Sam gets a whiff of cheap motel shampoo and notices that his hair is wet. Future!Dean has just showered. A shiver goes up Sam’s spine.
Future!Dean lifts his eyes to Dean, gives him a slow once-over.
“Like what you see?” Dean asks, challenging.
Future!Dean nods. “Me, all young and fresh from Hell. Hot.”
Dean smirks. He takes a step, then another, never taking his eyes off Future!Dean.
“When we were in Purgatory, you said...” Dean lets the rest of the sentence drop, but it’s dripping with possibility. Promise.
“I know what I said,” Future!Dean said. “And you said, if it’s all right with Sam.”
Dean lifts an eyebrow, looks up at Sam. They’re standing almost abreast now, just an arm’s length away, well within reach of each other. Future!Dean is a little further, the apex of the isosceles triangle again.
“Sam?”
Sam blushes hot, keeping eye contact with his brother. “Yeah.”
Before he can overthink it, Sam grabs Dean’s clean-shaven face and pulls him in for a kiss.
Dean surges up, kisses with that same practiced, thorough tenderness that Sam’s already come to know. But his face is smooth, free of wrinkles. Even the crinkles around his eyes are barely there yet. His lips are fuller, softer. He even smells young, as if the years have sloughed off, instead of waiting to bring the weight and definition to his skin that age will bring.
Sam can’t get enough. He kisses again and again, drawing Dean into his lungs, pressing his whole body into Dean’s, reveling in every bone and muscle, every formerly ripped and torn piece of him, all of the tendons and sinews ripped apart by hellhounds, magically healed and whole again. His hands wander over Dean’s back, down over his hips, back up to his shoulders. When he finally lets him go, Sam gives him a final kiss, shivering at the loss as soon as he steps back.
“I wanna watch,” he says breathlessly, and Dean smirks.
“Sure, Sammy. Whatever you want.”
//**//**//
Afterwards, Sam and Dean fall asleep in one bed, Future!Dean in the other. Sometime in the night, Sam wakes up to voices whispering in the dark. The two Deans have rolled over to face each other. Sam can’t help overhearing, but he lies still so that they won’t know he’s awake.
They could leave the room, go back to Future!Dean’s room if they really wanted privacy, he reasons. They mustn’t mind too much if Sam listens in. Nevertheless, he lies as quietly as he can, ears peeled.
“You didn’t break, Dean,” Future!Dean says. “That’s all that matters. You didn’t break, so you didn’t break the first seal.”
“I wanted to,” Dean says. “I wanted it to stop.”
“Wanting’s not doing,” Future!Dean assures him. “Believe me, I know.”
“What happened after you broke?” Dean asks.
Future!Dean doesn’t answer right away. Sam can hear his sheets rustling, imagines Future!Dean rolling over to stare at the ceiling, maybe gathering his courage.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says finally. “It didn’t happen that way for you. You got out.”
“Did Sam lose faith in you?”
That’s what Dean really wants to know. That’s what Dean always wants to know. Will he ever do something that will make Sam lose his trust in his big brother, his belief in them as a team?
“A little, maybe, for a while,” Future!Dean says. “But Sam was going through his own shit. He was alone without you for four months. He doesn’t do so well without you.”
Dean’s quiet for a moment, then he says, “It’s so weird, not hearing you in my head anymore.”
Future!Dean snorts. “You’ll get used to it. Trust me, it’s better this way.”
“I know,” Dean says. “I just miss it, that’s all.”
“You’ll be fine.”
“You’re like the big brother I never knew I wanted,” Dean says.
Future!Dean chuckles. “Yeah. I guess it feels that way.”
“It does,” Dean agrees. “We’re family.”
“Not technically,” Future!Dean reminds him.
“Yeah, but that’s why you did it, isn’t it? That’s why you came here for me and Sam. We’re as close to family as you’ve got.”
Future!Dean says nothing for a moment, and Sam has to strain to hear him when he finally answers, his voice barely a whisper.
“Yeah, I guess you’re right. Now go to sleep. No more Hell dreams, okay?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Dean says, his voice shaking.
“Hey. Those will fade with time, I promise,” Future!Dean says. “You’ve got Sam. He’s been living with Hell in his veins since he was a baby, remember? He understands. Just give him a chance.”
Sam starts. He never told Dean about the flashbacks Azazel showed him, back in Cold Oak. It never occurred to him that Future!Dean would tell his brother about that.
But of course he did. They shared everything. There are no secrets between them because they’re basically the same person.
Not for the last time, Sam thinks about how close the two Deans are, not just because of everything they’ve been through together, but because they know each other deeply, more deeply than Sam can ever hope to know his brother, no matter how much shared experience they have.
When Dean rolls over next to him, Sam doesn’t cuddle. He doesn’t think Dean wants that, but he doesn’t really know. He doesn’t think he’ll ever really know.
In the morning, Future!Dean is gone.
There’s a note on his pillow reading, “Went to find Sam. I know he’s out there, looking for me. You two take care of each other.”
He signed it D. Not “love, Dean”.
Sam sits on the edge of the bed, staring at the note. He has a vague memory of hearing a car start up in the early hours of the morning, and knows Future!Dean probably hot-wired something in the parking lot. He’s hours away by now.
Dean rolls over, opens one eye. “What?”
Sam holds out the note. “He’s gone.”
Dean frowns, nods, and closes his eyes. He doesn’t take the note. He just gets it. He understands.
Sam gets dressed and goes out for a run. He’s got some idea he might run into Future!Dean. Maybe he hasn’t gone that far. Maybe he stopped in at the diner for breakfast before he hit the road.
By the time he gets back to the motel room, Dean’s up, showered, and dressed.
“Come on, Sasquatch,” he teases when Sam steps into the room. “Get showered and dressed. We can talk about the case over breakfast.”
And just like that, they move on.
//**//**//
In the days and weeks that follow, Sam misses Future!Dean, sometimes intensely. He brought chaos and insanity into Sam’s life, but he saved his brother, too. Sam can’t stop wondering about all the things Future!Dean revealed about the Winchesters’ possible future, but he’s grateful, too.
The demons have scattered. Dean thinks it’s because they’re scared. What happened in Hell shook them up, so they mostly stay clear of the Winchesters, retreat from whatever master plan they had to take over the Earth. They’re lying low.
Maybe they heard about the angels. Maybe they heard that God Himself made a cameo appearance in the Winchester saga.
Bobby gradually accepts their story. He stops asking where their friend is. Sam thinks he’s relieved that Future!Dean is gone. Things have gone back to normal, without the constant reminder that things could go very, very wrong. And weird.
Weirder. The Winchesters are still busy hunting vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. They investigate the occasional demon possession, which usually results in the demon abandoning the victim before the Winchesters get there.
“I’m probably the only human who’s ever escaped Hell,” Dean comments proudly when they wrap up one such case. “And you’re supposed to be the King of Hell and a vessel for Satan himself, in another universe. I’d say they’re more than a little spooked when they hear us coming. Hell yeah!”
Sam grinds his teeth and says nothing. He can’t help feeling there are loose ends they’ll never wrap up, mysteries they’ll never solve, and he knows he should be relieved and grateful, but he can’t help wondering how things could’ve gone, if they’d been different. That’s just the way Sam’s made.
Dean, on the other hand, seems perfectly content to let all possible futures go right out the window. He doesn’t even seem to miss Future!Dean the way Sam does, although Sam can’t see how he doesn’t. Having someone understand you like that, really know you inside and out, sounds like an unattainable goal for any relationship, romantic or platonic. Sam can only wish someone understood him that well.
He never doubts that Dean loves him, though. And Sam accepts the fact that Dean will probably never talk to him about his time in Hell, although he still wakes up screaming. Sam does his best to be there if Dean wants him in those moments, and although at first he doesn’t seem to, pushing Sam away if Sam tries to offer comfort, by the end of the year, he begins to allow Sam to hold him sometimes.
“Time moves differently down there,” he says one night.
Under cover of darkness, lying side by side, with their shared body heat creating a familiar and comforting space for just the two of them, Dean opens up a little. Finally.
Sam lies still, letting him talk, trying not to shut him down by saying anything. Just letting Dean know he’s there, listening.
“For me, it was years,” Dean says. “Every day the same, full of torture and screaming as they cut into me until there was nothing left except a quivering mass of shredded, dripping pain. And every night he made me that offer, that I could get off the rack if I agreed to put other souls on. Every night, I told them they could stick it where the sun don’t shine. And the next morning it would start all over again.”
Sam shivers. He feels tears prickle at the edges of his eyes, but he stays still, waiting.
“I almost broke, Sam.”
“But you didn’t,” Sam says softly. “You didn’t.”
Dean sucks in a breath. “He did.”
“Yeah.”
Dean’s hand touches his, and Sam turns his hand over so they can tangle their fingers together. He knows Dean’s thinking about that other Dean. Sam thinks about him, too.
“He told me Dad never broke,” Dean says. “That’s why they came after me.”
Sam takes a shaky breath. He doesn’t trust himself to speak.
“Dad’s soul roamed the Earth for years after he crawled out of Hell. He crawled out through that Devil’s Gate in Wyoming. It was really him, Sam, that night.”
Sam remembers. He saw their dad holding Azazel tight so that Dean could shoot him. Sam was helpless to do anything, but Dean and Dad put that bastard down for good.
“Dad’s in Heaven now,” Dean goes on. “Dean swears it’s true, so I have to believe him.”
Hearing Dean use the other Dean’s name that way twists something inside Sam.
“He did it all for you, Sammy,” Dean says, his voice cracking with grief. “He saved me so you wouldn’t go to Hell. It was all for you.”
Sam takes another breath, trembling. He’s overwhelmed by emotion for a moment, and then he realizes he’s not jealous anymore.
“You and me,” Sam says, his voice a hoarse whisper. “He did it for us both, so we could live out our lives together. So we won’t be separated again, like him and his brother were.”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Dean agrees, squeezing Sam’s hand. “He did it for us.”
“It’s like the way we try to save people so they don’t have to go through what we went through,” Sam says. “That’s the way we’re made.”
Dean says nothing, but Sam can feel him nod. Dean rubs his thumb over the back of Sam’s hand, steady and sure, and Sam draws a deep breath of relief and gratitude.
“You think he’ll ever find his brother?” Sam asks.
“Yeah, I do,” Dean answers. “It’s what I’d do. I’d never stop looking for you, Sam, if I was in his shoes. Nothing would stop me, not Hell, not death, not even God himself.”
Sam still can’t quite wrap his head around the God thing. He wonders what they’d find if they ever went back to Chuck Shurley’s house.
Probably nothing. The dude (God?!) moved on, bored with the way the story was going here.
He’s probably keeping an eye on Future!Dean, though. Sam really hopes Future!Dean can escape Chuck’s notice. He definitely deserves to be free of all the manipulation.
Sam’s not sure he deserves to be free, but he’ll take it anyway. It beats the alternative, as far as he can figure.
Dean loves him. Dean won’t ever leave him now, after everything.
That might not be how it was meant to be, but that’s how it is.
Of that, Sam’s one-hundred-percent certain.
fin