Work Text:
From the rain comes a river
Running wild that will create
An empire for you
Illuminate
There is a river
Running wild that will create
An empire for you
An empire for two
Empire by Of Monsters and Men
Dean’s arm around his shoulders, Dean’s arm around his shoulders, Dean’s arm around his shoulders, Dean has his arm around his shoulders.
Forty years to the day since he last touched Dean, since Dean last touched him, since they last were in the same space together.
Their bodies aren’t really bodies here, but this place has mercy, and he feels Dean’s warmth against him, feels it inside his heart that froze into a broken shard of loss forty years ago, and it melts, it melts, and blood, easy and hot, flows through his incorporeal veins.
He looks at the expanse of freedom before him, its soothing colors, its gracious calm. The light saturating every leaf, every splash of water, wipes away the grayscale theme of his Dean-less days, and he finds he doesn’t want to close his eyes, doesn’t want to hide in the crumbling sanctuary of his memories.
There will be new memories. There will be a new life.
He turns toward Dean and finds Dean looking at him, a smile on his lips, crinkles around his eyes, a chest-deep satisfaction brightening his features, the face that have been etched into the back of Sam’s eyelids all this time, right here, real and true.
“Dean,” Sam says again, all the words that have been piling up on his tongue, filling up his lungs until he couldn’t breathe anymore, his anger, his hurt, his grief, and his devastation, all made unnecessary, old dust, ashes scattered over the end of his mourning.
Because this is it, the lifting of the weight, the bestowing of the ultimate blessing, the deliverance.
It’s Dean, and he squeezes Sam’s shoulder, and he looks just like Sam remembers him, like he never left, like nothing ever parted them.
“Let me look at you,” Dean says, as if Sam can deny him anything or can want anything else. He lifts a hand to cup Sam’s cheek, pulls on the corner of his mouth, tugging it up. “You look just like I remember you.”
Sam isn’t surprised.
“Maybe that’s the point,” he says, and Dean’s eyes shift for a second before he pats Sam’s cheek a few times and slides his hand down to the side of Sam’s neck.
“Because of the soulmates thingy?” he says, like it’s a joke, but it isn’t, neither for him nor for Sam, it’s what kept them fighting and sacrificing, even before Ash said the word out loud.
It’s what threw a thick, heavy cover over the rest of Sam’s life, a funereal shroud binding his body and soul and mind.
It is, also, what makes Sam’s body and soul and mind soar high at this particular moment, and he nods, and Dean nods back, and he smiles wider, and Sam smiles, too.
Dean doesn’t take his hand away. Sam doesn’t want him to.
“It’s, uh, it’s a new Heaven,” Dean says. Sam has kinda guessed, but he waits patiently for Dean’s explanation, doesn’t really need one past the obvious fact that they share whatever new world this is. “Jack brought down the walls.”
That changes everything and it doesn’t change a thing.
Sam is here with Dean. Whoever else is around, they can wait, and if they end up waiting forever, that’s not Sam’s fault.
“That’s—that’s nice,” he says, not quite a lie, just not his most sincere words.
Dean nods and he doesn’t suggest visiting anyone.
They stand like this, touching and looking and disbelieving, Dean’s eyes playing under the sunshine, beautiful like fresh grass, like apple candy. Sam can see himself in them, better than in a mirror because mirrors lie, but his brother doesn’t, not about this, not about the love that makes them who they are.
To say that Sam missed it would be an egregious understatement.
Dean’s thumb rubs over the side of Sam’s neck, a short shy swipe up and down, and Sam wouldn’t even notice if he weren’t tracing every line of his brother’s body, his every breath, no matter how unnecessary here. They persist as a collection of habits, to remain familiar to themselves, find peace in the form they understand. And so, their chests rise and fall, their hearts beat, their skin gets warmer where they touch.
The sky above them changes color, and Sam almost doesn’t notice until the first drop hits him right on the nose.
He starts, throwing his head back and blinking at the steel-gray outrage above. Another drop hits his forehead.
“It’s raining,” he says, halfway between marveling and puzzled.
Dean takes his hand off Sam’s neck, and it’s immediately attacked by a gush of cold wind. He shivers both with the chill and the disappointment, while Dean puts his hand in front of himself, palm up. Drops appear on it within a few seconds.
“Huh.” He looks surprised.
“It rains often in Heaven?” Sam asks, fiddling with the hood of his hoodie.
Dean puts his hand down, his other hand still on Sam’s shoulder, fingers drumming over Sam’s jacket in a mindless pattern, and Sam wants to be a mic in his brother’s hand, a guitar, a goddamn fiddle, whatever Dean might want to play, Sam will be it for him.
“Dunno,” Dean says, and another chill runs through Sam. “Only been here for, like, twenty minutes.”
It crashes over Sam’s head like a tidal wave, clogs his lungs, fills his mouth with sand.
Something must change in his face because Dean’s forehead lines, and he steps back, he steps back, his hand sliding off Sam’s shoulder, he’s not touching Sam anymore, he’s taken bits of Sam’s skin with him, and the raindrops falling onto the exposed flesh turn to acid.
“Forty years, Dean.” His voice shakes, he can’t stop it, is six years old and Dean ate all his Halloween candy. “Forty years to the day. Without you,” he adds in a whisper, as if saying it out loud can bring it all back.
Dean’s face falls, they are in the barn again and Dean wants to do his best to take care of Sam, except there’s nothing he can do.
“Sammy,” he says, gentle like the mother they never had, even when they had her. “I’m sorry.”
It’s not his fault, it’s not anyone’s fault, and that makes it worse, makes it unfair on a cosmic scale. He thought Dean would understand, thought they were together in that dragging wait, thought Dean missed him just as much.
Maybe he’s the one being unfair, he wouldn’t wish that slow torture on anyone, least of all Dean, but the shock gets the better of him.
“I’m glad you lived that long,” Dean offers, and Sam knows he means it, that it has always been Dean’s most cherished dream, and that’s why Sam kept fighting, kept living, even when every breath slashed his lungs worse than razors.
He looks away, sucks the Heaven air into his chest, lets it spread cool and measured through him, lets it wash away the sand. Rain dots his cheeks, and he sighs, wrenches himself back to forty-two, one day before his life stopped.
This is his brother, who couldn’t handle two days with him dead without selling his soul, who stuffed an angel into him just because he couldn’t fathom existing without him.
He turns back to Dean, and Dean’s looking at him with guilt in his eyes, and the hurt rushes out of Sam, replaced with relief, honest and bittersweet.
“I’m glad you didn’t have to wait that long,” he says, and he means it, too.
Dean’s mouth tips up in a hesitant smile, like he isn’t sure if he’s allowed, so Sam smiles at him, claps a hand over Dean’s upper arm.
He wants to touch Dean, keep touching him, keep basking in the warmth of his non-body. They were close in life, maybe closer than ordinary, sometimes closer than strictly sane, and there’s no one to tell Sam they can’t be even closer here, after they’ve done all that was asked of them.
No matter how differently their paths ended, they are both done, done with the world, and perhaps the world can do them the courtesy of being done with them, too.
The rain grows heavier, cold drops splashing over Sam’s forehead, peppering his light jacket with dark round stains. Dean looks up at the sky, and Sam almost expects him to whip his gun out and start shooting at the gray clouds.
“It’s not so bad,” he says, raising his palms to catch the water.
He doesn’t pull his hood on. It seems oddly ungrateful.
“We could wait in the car,” Dean says, and they turn around, but there’s no sign of the Impala, just an empty bridge, as far as the eye can see.
Sam braces himself for a murderous outburst on his brother’s part.
“Huh,” is what Dean says, like he hasn’t just been confronted with his worst nightmare. Sam squints at him, looks for any signs of hysteria. “That’s weird.”
Sam has to do a double-take.
“Just weird?” He leans toward Dean, peering at his face. “No homicidal rants? Or, I guess, deicidal?”
Dean shrugs.
“It’s Heaven, man.” He waves a hand at the space in front of them. “When I got here, she wasn’t there either. Popped up out of nowhere when I needed her. She’ll be back,” he says with an easy confidence, no flaring anger, no chilling terror.
Dean’s at peace, Sam realizes. He’s found what he sought here, and maybe Sam’s a more important part of it than even Baby, maybe with Sam here, Dean truly doesn’t need anything else.
Sam would love to believe that.
All the decades with Dean the first and the last thing on his mind, his morning greeting, his nightly farewell, always, until the last day, and now beyond.
He wants to ask Dean if he thought of him in those twenty minutes. If he felt Sam’s absence like Sam felt his, with the skin of his lips, the lining of his guts, the walls of his veins.
Dean turns to him, looks into his eyes, the green serious and sincere.
“Would it help if I told you it felt like forty years?”
No one else could ever read Sam the way Dean does, and he wants to cry because at long last, he is known again.
“Did it?” he asks, and he hopes for a yes as much as he hopes for a no.
“Not really,” Dean admits. “More like just twenty.”
It doesn’t matter if it’s true. Dean wants to give this to Sam, and Sam is only happy to take it.
He steps forward and hugs Dean, again, doesn’t want to stop.
“Glad you’re here, man,” Dean tells him, chin on Sam’s shoulder.
“Yeah.” Sam pats Dean’s back, presses his hand into it. “Me too.”
They hold on, longer than they allowed themselves back when they had bones and skin and muscle, their phantom forms offering more malleable rules for contact—or, rather, removing the rules altogether, giving them the freedom to touch without the fear of violating their own terms.
Their entire Heaven could be one extended chick-flick moment, and Sam would love it, and something—a life of experience—tells him Dean would love it, too.
Even the rain, with its seeping cold, its baffling persistence, doesn’t spoil anything.
“C’mon,” Dean says, stepping out of the hug and sliding his hand down to take Sam’s, squeeze his fingers in his for just a brief but unmissable second before sticking it into his pocket. “Let’s find some shelter.”
Sam wants to hold Dean’s hand, a familiar urge from his childhood when Dean was everything and everyone, and would you look at that, he still is.
He will always be. Sam’s fine with it.
They start down the road, leaving the bridge, and make their way through the woods, the rain falling on their heads, over their shoulders, unrelenting.
The trees don’t offer much canopy, and they don’t meet anything where they could hide, but Sam doesn’t care. This is the best walk he’s had in four decades; he’s happy enough, even soaking through.
“Okay,” Dean says after they’ve covered a couple of miles, or what feels like a couple of miles in a place without real space. “Did you break Heaven, Sammy?” He gives Sam a dirty look, but his eyes are smiling.
“I’ve been here less time than you,” Sam defends himself, feigning affront.
“I’m not the one who needs to bitch about everything,” Dean says lightly, planting his boot right into a puddle and sending splashes at Sam’s jeans.
It takes effort, but Sam refrains from bitching about it.
“Like what?” he asks instead.
Dean tilts his head up and grins.
“Like rain.”
Drops break down over his nose, make his skin shine.
It almost distracts Sam from the insinuation.
“You saying the rain is my fault because—” He raises his eyebrow, challenging Dean to end the sentence graciously.
“Yep,” Dean says, slanting his eyes to glance at Sam and wink at him. “This your Heaven, Sammy?”
And Sam wants to say, Yes, he wants to say, Yes, Dean, you are, I don’t care about anything else, he wants to say, Can’t you see, it’s raining because it doesn’t matter, sunshine or thunderstorm, as long as—you know, Dean, I know you do.
He lifts his hand, makes a loose fist, and punches Dean’s upper arm. Dean drops his head and looks at Sam with a mix of false outrage and geniune adoration. His cheeks are all wet, but it’s a good look on him.
“Oh?” He rubs his hand over the spot where Sam’s punched him. “You started it, little brother,” he threatens cheerfully, and shoves at Sam’s shoulder, just strong enough to push him straight into another puddle.
Sam’s shoes get submerged and his socks stick to his feet and he hasn’t had this much fun in, oh yes, forty years.
He makes a show of studying his wet footwear and turns an almost convincing glare on Dean.
“You didn’t,” he says and squares his shoulders, taking a step toward Dean, one arm reaching out to grab his jacket.
Dean sidesteps, Sam lunges at him, his hand grazes the sleeve of Dean’s jacket, Dean twists away, Sam’s fingers catch the collar of Dean’s shirt, a headlock happens, some arms flail, a foot finds itself over another foot, and Sam doesn’t notice when he starts chasing Dean through the woods, the slick mud climbing up their jeans, and neither of them caring.
They are kids, they are teens, they are young and not-so-young adults, they are every single instance of a person that they’ve ever been with each other, an amalgamation of all the Sams who have known Dean, all the Deans who have known Sam.
If the old Heaven was a string of memories, then the new Heaven is a feast of selves where you can be whoever you want to be from your past—or create someone new, someone you wanted to be but couldn’t, not in life.
Sam catches up to Dean, who maybe slows down, maybe doesn’t, and pushes him against a tree, caging him between his hands planted on the wet bark.
Dean’s hair is plastered to his forehead, raindrops glisten on his eyelashes, he’s panting and grinning and glowing, and Sam isn’t sure he’s ever seen him so free, but he wants to see him like this forever.
“Looks like you got me, Sammy,” Dean says and laughs, raising his hands to lock his fingers around Sam’s wrists.
“Looks like,” Sam says, with his own grin, and he isn’t sure he’s ever felt so free either.
Something happens in Dean’s eyes, the way they flick lower, the way the green shines.
He keeps smiling, but there is a question in that smile, and Sam is momentarily scared he doesn’t know the answer.
There have been other questions between them, and they didn’t always have the answers, or the right answers at least, and they’ve bled and cried and suffered for it. They’ve hurt and got hurt, they’ve fought and lied, they’ve been cruel and they’ve been unfair.
This, however, the question that simmers low but hot before Sam, it’s ancient, it’s primal, it goes to their very core. It challenges and unsettles and maybe offers a kind of salvation, the kind that has only become possible here, in a place where the judgment has already been passed.
Sam closes his eyes and brings his forehead to Dean’s, like forty years ago, except this time Dean’s skin goes from cold to warm under his touch. This time, they aren’t losing each other; they’re finding each other anew.
Whatever else they find along the way, Sam wants it, wants it before he knows what it is, wants it because he already knows.
He draws back, opening his eyes to meet Dean’s, and the green is soft, softer than in their childhood, softer than in their last earthly moments.
“What now?” Dean asks with a shifting grin, a shy jester, a boy who wants more than he thinks he can ask for.
His hands move around Sam’s wrists, cinch in a short squeeze before falling away.
Dean’s pressed flush against the tree, held captive by Sam, and he isn’t struggling. He’s all light, all trust, all everlasting devotion—he was the first to go, but he will be the last to arrive, waiting for Sam to let him, to show him how to settle in this new world.
Sam takes his hands off the tree and smoothes his palms over the front of Dean’s jacket.
“Shelter, you said,” he offers, and Dean meets him with a simple nod.
Sam grabs Dean’s hand, tugging him away from the tree, neither of them pointing out that a shelter won’t help them now. They are soaked and covered in mud and the only thing that hints at this being Heaven is that their teeth still aren’t chattering.
“You think we can catch a cold in Heaven?” Sam asks as he guides Dean back toward the road, hands still clasped together.
“I’m not wiping your nose,” Dean promises, although they both know he’ll do that and worse.
“Dude, I’m the older one now,” Sam says, and it almost doesn’t hurt.
He catches Dean’s eyes burst with fondness.
“Dude, you’re just old,” he corrects Sam, but there’s no bite in it. “Which is awesome.”
They walk through the trees, not even minding the puddles anymore.
Sam has so many questions, but none of them matter as much as the one living inside Dean’s head.
“Why?” he asks anyway, unnecessary.
“‘Cause, y’know.” Dean waves his free hand and shoots a sideways look at Sam. “Never thought either of us would get to be old. Like, real old.”
“It’s highly overrated,” Sam tells him, plows on before realizing what he’s saying. “You can’t see shit, everything hurts, you forget the damnedest things—”
He stops when he notices that Dean’s staring at him.
Fuck.
What was he thinking?
“That,” Dean says, and he isn’t jealous, no, he isn’t jealous at all. “That’s awesome, man.”
He’s happy. He’s fucking happy.
“Wish you had that, too,” Sam says, and the rain mixes with a brimming wetness along the edge of his eyes.
“Nah,” Dean says breezily. “Been there, done that. Not for me.”
Sam wants to tell him that being swindled out of fifty years by a witch isn’t the same as growing old, as growing old together, as watching the most important person in your life live and change and stay the same. He wants to tell Dean that every day, he imagined Dean going through that day with him, what he’d say, what he’d do, how he’d look at him. Wants to tell Dean that he daydreamed about the new wrinkles weaving over his face, the gray hairs salting his head.
His chest feels tight with it, and he doesn’t say anything.
This moment, it’s for celebration, not for dwelling on the life he didn’t want, the life he doesn’t miss.
They reach the road, a bus stop with a transparent canopy idling on the edge, as if waiting for them to find it.
“Now there are buses in Heaven?” Sam asks, drawing Dean toward the shelter.
They plop onto the wide wooden bench, finally safe from the pelting rain. Sam takes his hand away from Dean’s to swipe it through his sopping hair, combing it back, out of his eyes.
“Hey,” Dean says, elbowing Sam’s side lightly. “You think we’re gonna see the Catbus?”
Sam loves him so much.
He drops his hands, wrapping his fingers around the edge of the bench, and glances at his brother, his unencumbered grin, his incandescent joy.
Thunder rips through the air, almost making Sam jump. He looks at the sky through the canopy and finds no signs that the inclement weather intends to let up anytime soon.
“We’re in Heaven, right?” he asks, turning back to Dean. “Aren’t things supposed to be perfect?”
“They are,” Dean says, just as thunder roars over them again.
He takes Sam’s hand, pulls it away from the bench, and twines their fingers together, or maybe Sam does, maybe they both do at the same time. Sam’s heart turns into a songbird, beating its wings excitedly as the cage around it breaks.
Dean slides off the bench and lowers himself to one knee before Sam, eyes glimmering under his clumped eyelashes. A hot, tender thing spreads down Sam’s throat.
“Sammy?” Dean asks, just that, and Sam doesn’t need to ask him what he means.
This is the only question that matters. There’s only one answer that Sam can give.
“Yeah,” he says, means it with all the years that lay behind him.
Dean brings Sam’s hand to his lips and presses them to Sam’s knuckles for a long, long moment. His eyes stay fixed on Sam’s, and Sam watches their lives flash through them, like they are moving through another death to be reborn into who they are supposed to be.
It’s electric, and it shocks Sam’s wet skin, but it can’t kill him anymore.
“Yes, Dean,” he says, “of course,” he says, “forever,” he says.
Dean rests his forehead against Sam’s knee, his shoulders sagging in relief, as if he wasn’t sure what Sam was going to say.
Sometimes Sam’s genius big brother can be a real idiot, and even death, apparently, hasn’t changed that.
More reason for Sam to do the smart thing.
He bends down, cups Dean’s chin, and tilts his head up to meet his mouth with his.
The rain patters over the plastic roof, a drum roll, turns from nagging to festive as two lifetimes catch up to each other.
Sam tastes fresh water, tastes solace, tastes truth, fourth of July sparklers illuminating his blanked-out mind. He holds Dean’s face, and Dean isn’t turning away, is leaning in, sitting up tall, kissing back.
Their tongues are just figments of mutual imagination, and yet when they collide, Sam feels it, feels it all through his body, giddy and unbelievable.
All their years, apart and together, they knew and they didn’t, they hid and they looked away and they didn’t talk about it because they couldn’t have it, couldn’t let themselves dissolve in each other, casting away everyone and everything else.
They already loved each other too much.
Here, now, they can love each other even more.
Dean raises his hands to cup Sam’s cheeks, slides his lips against Sam’s, souls tangling together in an ancient dance, eighty-some years in the making. Around them, wind whips through the trees, the leaves whispering their secrets into the air, and Sam wants to shout his own at the top of his lungs.
That the longer he waited to see his brother again, the more often he dreamed about falling asleep with him in his arms, pulled close, inextricable. That he married a woman with his brother’s eyes and divorced her when he realized she could never be his brother. That he looked at his son and saw his brother’s smile and it was the only thing that kept him going for so long.
He will tell Dean everything—he’s already telling Dean everything, with the swipe of his tongue, the tilt of his mouth, the warmth of his breath.
“Sammy,” Dean says, hands sliding up, fingers carding through Sam’s still wet hair. “You’re really here.”
“I am,” Sam confirms, “I am, Dean, I’m here.”
Dean touches his nose to Sam’s, kisses his cheek.
Above them, the sun peeks from behind the clouds, as if it wants to see them, witness them, bless them. The light hits Dean’s eyes, and it’s the most beautiful thing Sam’s ever seen, here or anywhere.
He dives in to kiss Dean again, nibbling at his bottom lip, sucking on his tongue. Whatever their forms are composed of, they react like a human would, and heat builds in the pit of Sam’s stomach.
“Dean,” he mutters into his brother’s mouth, and Dean shivers, face hot under Sam’s palms.
“I do if you do,” Dean says, because he’s Dean, because putting Sam first is how he makes sense of himself.
Sam pulls on his shoulders, tugging him up and forward, guiding him into his lap where he’s already straining to meet his brother. Their mouths collide again as their unreal bodies grind together, feeling each other through layers of damp clothes, scorching and dizzying.
They don’t have needs, not anymore, but they have a need, and it guides them, pushes them together, lets them unleash themselves against each other.
Dean braces himself on Sam’s shoulders and bends down to press his forehead to Sam’s, panting hot against his skin, phantom air that uplifts the reality of Sam’s dreams. They are both hard and heavy and hungry, made of glory and greed, hopped up on the certainty of their unity no one will take away ever again.
This, the urgent roll of Dean’s hips, Sam’s unbreakable grip on his back, it’s a dissolution into solidity, the final arrival, the taking shape. Sam is more Sam now than he was before, and so is Dean, their souls are the complete versions of them, all the pieces in place, all wishes fulfilled.
They merge and they stay themselves, distinct and devoted, the big brother and the little brother, both imbued with their special kind of love that they freely share. It pours out of Sam when he leans forward to mouth at Dean’s neck, it slips off Dean’s lips when he murmurs Sam’s name. They are the cradle of their limbs, the furnace of their groins, the cosmos of their hearts.
Together, they are everything.
It’s clumsy and it is exquisite, it’s graceless and it is majestic, it’s carnal and it is divine.
Sam’s mouth finds Dean’s again, his hands slipping down to the small of Dean’s back, fingers fanning over the taut denim. He sets a rhythm, and Dean follows, the fantasy of their bodies delivering the perfect dream of touch.
Raindrops hit puddles all around them, a cleansing soundtrack to their want. Thunder matches the thudding of their pulse, and the flash of lightning makes the world go white not just in their heads.
“This is it, Sammy,” Dean says, presses down, moans into Sam’s mouth.
“What?” Sam asks, teeth grazing over Dean’s lips.
Dean smiles into the kiss.
“Heaven.”
“Yeah,” Sam agrees, laughs, kisses Dean again. “It really is.”
He digs his fingers into the seat of Dean’s jeans, kneads the firm muscle, makes promises that they both know he’ll keep. There are no lies here, no secrets, no curveballs.
Just them and what they’ve wanted to be to each other.
“Fuck,” Dean groans, his hips jerking fast, “fuck, Sam, baby brother—”
He clings to Sam’s shoulders and shudders over him, open mouth gliding against Sam’s, beyond curses and prayers.
Sam lets go, too, and it’s stars and riot and restitution, and just a hint of what they can do together.
He wants make-believe skin on make-believe skin, wants his brother inside and outside, wants everything a human mind can imagine and more.
“I love you, Dean,” he says, and it comes easy, words that he wouldn’t be able to say in the violence of their lives, not sober at least.
“Girl,” Dean says, kisses Sam’s temple, places his hand on the side of Sam’s neck. “Me too.”
Bus stops are for waiting and transforming and going to another place. They pluck you out of space and time, render you motionless, while scrutinizing your existence in suspension. Theirs is the realm of yearning, of expectations, thwarted and met with equal probability.
Sam looks over Dean’s shoulder, and there’s the Impala, sleek and shining, home and freedom and adventure.
The rain lets up, stray droplets sliding off the edge of the canopy. A rainbow stretches across the luscious blue of the clearing sky. The trees still whisper, but it’s not about secrets now—it’s a greeting, a welcome-to-your-peace susurration.
Dean’s lips find Sam’s before Sam can draw his attention to the car, Dean’s thumb gliding over the stubble on Sam’s jaw. Sam breathes in the ozone in the air, smells the damp denim between them, the soft musk rolling off their dreamed-up skin.
Mundane things slither through the immaculate sublimity of paradise, infusing the illusion with lifelike weight, and the hot splashes on the inside of Sam’s underwear cool down, crusting the made-up cotton.
“Didn’t think there’d be jizz pants in Heaven,” Dean says with a chuckle, sitting back in Sam’s lap, no indication that he intends to move. Sam’s fine with it.
“Got a laundromat here?” he asks, half-serious.
Dean rubs the back of his neck before his eyes light up.
“Lemme try something.” He lifts his hand and snaps his fingers. In a moment, their clothes turn dry and clean, warm like straight from the dryer. “Awesome.”
“Nice trick,” Sam agrees and Dean beams, the green full of sparkles.
“Just make a wish, Sammy.”
“Already got it,” Sam says, and he doesn’t care how cheesy he sounds.
Dean shakes his head with a laugh and he kisses Sam’s forehead, hands finding Sam’s.
They have waited and they have changed and they are ready. Whatever they find here, whatever they think up, they are not losing each other to anything, their doubts and worries included.
“Look,” Sam says, nodding at the car behind Dean. “Just like you said.”
Dean looks over his shoulder and turns back to Sam with a grin. He smacks another kiss on Sam’s lips before sliding off his lap and tugging him toward their best friend.
Somewhere above them, birds start to chirp, Sam’s pretty sure he saw a squirrel flying between the trees, and it’s all a Disney movie, lollipops and candy canes but for real now.
“Where are we going?” he asks as they reach the car.
“Forward,” Dean says, opening the door and ushering Sam onto the backseat, folding himself behind him.
The sun illuminates the drops still clinging to the Impala’s windows, and the lingering smell of rain turns every touch crisp with clarity. Swept up by the torrent of their hard-earned joy, Sam and Dean re-inhabit the familiar space, fill it with their pure heat, and wherever they go now, Sam doesn’t want to be anywhere else.