Like a Memory it Falls

By Chalcedony Cross

A lock this simple hadn't been enough to stop him since he was twelve years old, but Dean was a slippery mess of blood and rainwater spilling through his hands and Sam didn't have the time for any kind of finesse.  His first solid kick set a dent deep into the wood, his second tore the lock and handle free, and the door gave way on a disgruntled groan from hinges unused to being hurried.  Dean wasn't walking as much as paddling feebly at the floor, supporting almost none of his own weight, but it was enough for Sam to readjust his grip on the arm across his shoulders, grab the back of Dean's belt and hoist-drag-fumble them both over the threshold, into the nave of the little church.  He settled Dean carefully into a pew well away from the ruined door, relatively safe, before scrambling back to see what he could do to re-secure it.

The largest of the black dogs was waiting for him at the top of the flagstone steps, its good eye glowing an infected yellow in the lightning-stung dark beyond the door.

Sam skidded to a stop on the wet hardwood floor, freezing instinctively.  He had no weapon with him, and his already trembling hands curled uneasily around the absence, tightening to fists for lack of any other means to keep the damn thing away from his brother.  Defending himself wasn't an issue; he was dead already if it sprang from this range.  If holy ground wasn't enough after all ...

He watched the dog and the dog watched him right back, titling up its massive, squared-off head to scent the air.  It was huge, about the size of a bear but leaner, with longer legs and a wolf-like tail.  Its shaggy black coat was matted with filth, blood and dirt and branches, and it stank more strongly of decomposition than any corpse Sam had ever dealt with.  Ropes of milky, putrid saliva lathered its jaws, sizzling where they fell, etching trails like hungry worms into the stone.  Staring unblinkingly at Sam, it let out a burring whine made of mud and tearing metal and hunger, baring teeth more like a snake's than any kind of canine ... but it didn't advance, and Sam began gradually allowing himself to believe that it couldn't.

"Sam?" Dean called from behind him, weak but still (always, stupidly) protective.  "Sammy!  You all right?"

The dog's ears perked at the sound of Dean's voice and it whined again, fidgeting, honest to God wagging its tail as it shifted, peering deeper into the church.  Weighing its chances, maybe: wounded prey ... holy ground ... wounded prey ... holy ground.  It crouched just slightly, tipping a sly glance at Sam, hunkering back as if it might actually be planning another try at Dean, and that was enough to overcome the last of Sam's instinctive paralysis.

Five steps that felt like five hundred miles and Sam had the door in hand, pushing it closed, painfully slow, through the resistance of damaged hinges.  The dog angled closer, definitely considering it now, glaring at him intently until the door was back in place between them.  It snuffled for a moment at the splintered hole where the latch had been, snorting a huff of fetid breath, but by the time Sam braced himself and crouched to look through the gap, it was already moving away.  It leaped heavily down from the stoop into a storm that showed no signs of letting up tonight, rejoining the rest of its pack in the unlit gravel lot: six of the things, in all.  Five sets of eyes gleaming like malevolent candle-flickers in the rain.  One unmatched eye lit with an intelligence that scared the absolute crap out of Sam, he wasn't ashamed to admit.

He pressed his forehead to the door and forced himself to take several deep breaths: in through the nose, hold it, out through the mouth.  He was going to shake himself to pieces if he didn't get it under control right fucking now, and there was too much else working against him (them) already.  He was exhausted, he was soaked through, he was dangerously low on adrenaline after all the demand, and his head hurt so much he was afraid he might give birth to a Greco-Roman warrior goddess at any moment.  That, or cry.  One of those two options.

"Sam!"  Unanswered and alone, Dean was getting frantic, the clatter of his boots echoing through the church as he tried to get his feet underneath him.

"I'm fine," Sam mumbled into the door, then again, steadier, loud enough for his brother to hear, "I'm fine, Dean.  Stay put.  I'll be there in a second."

The pews were heavy, carved wood under a century of accumulated wax and polish, but they slid smoothly enough over the floor.  Sam pushed two of them against the doorframe, knowing even as he did so that it wouldn't be enough.  Nothing he could do would be enough, not if the dogs decided they wanted to come in, and the door itself wouldn't stand up to much more abuse in any case ... but it made Sam feel better.  Any delay, any warning would be an advantage, and it did cover the kicked-out hole so nothing could look in.  All he and Dean had to do now was hold out until sunrise ...

Fuck.  Holding out, making do?  How did they get to that point in the first place?

They weren't even supposed to be on a job ...

---

Two months since Dean traded his soul for Sam's life, and Sam was just now getting a handle on the anger he'd promised Dean he wouldn't indulge in to begin with.  He knew directing it at Dean wasn't fair, knew Dean had been set up to take this fall, whether that red-eyed bitch was the one manipulating the board or was only another game-piece, but he just ... he didn't know what he felt half the time.  He was grateful and he was grieving in torturous slow-motion, facing an entire year of knowing not just that Dean was dying for him but what was coming after, and for most of the first month, Sam had been so angry all the time, he would spend hours of the day one breath, one misplaced word away from punching Dean right in the face.

They hadn't been back to Bobby's but the once, to raise a toast to their father and the end of his decades-long battle, to victory in a war that was already upon the survivors.  Bobby had been the first to figure it out, of course; three days of helping Dean sit his vigil - up to and including washing the mud from Sam's corpse - was a little much for Dean to bring Sam back by later and get away with "guess we should have held a mirror up to his mouth after all, huh?"  He had to be almost as angry as Sam, but there was always an undercurrent of guilty sorrow, as if the past months spent being the closest thing they had left to a father made it his responsibility somehow.  As if he could have done any more for them if he'd tried.  Dean was clearly uncomfortable, and Sam hadn't had any room left inside himself for anyone else's grief, so they took off after only a few short days of downtime.

If Bobby said anything to Ellen, she didn't talk to Sam about it, but she whispered something in Dean's ear when he hugged her goodbye that made his face go carefully blank, and Sam had his suspicions.  Oh, and then there was Jo.  A few weeks went by before they heard from her, out of the blue.  She called Dean's cell one night to tell him her exact opinion of his deal, in depth and at great volume.  Dean listened to what she had to say for a while, silent, before handing her over to Sam in the passenger seat.  Thereby, Dean made his point, Sam had the single most awkward conversation ever, and somewhere in the process he started to understand that Dean had enough people in his life telling him he was an idiot ... but none of them adding in the part where he was also one of the bravest, best people they'd ever known.

It didn't make Sam any less angry, but he got better at channeling it productively.

Wherever they stopped, Sam hit up the libraries for books he would never return (and they would never miss, lost in forgotten corners as those books so often were).  Got online anyplace he could find a connection to save page after page, file after file, to read on the road.  Bobby was working his own sources back in South Dakota, and they communicated some by email, but Sam rarely had a moment alone to call him, to discuss what either one of them had found that might yet get Dean out of this alive.  He knew better than to try while Dean was awake.  Dean barely tolerated him working on it in the car, worried as he was about the deal - and Sam's life - being taken back on the pretext of bad faith.  So, Sam angled his books toward the window, tucked his knees up to keep the laptop right in his face.  Defied Dean to tell him it wasn't worth the risk.

That's what he was doing when Dean spotted a road sign that made him hoot and punch Sam in the arm: NEW ROUTE 491, OLD ROUTE 666, above a directing arrow.  It was a gorgeous, clear summer afternoon in New Mexico, Sam was nursing a slight headache after a day spent fighting the glare and some truly heinous font and background combinations, and they were between jobs.  He didn't have a good reason (or the wherewithal to make one up) why they couldn't go ahead and change plans that were barely plans at all.

Driving US Route 666 had been on Dean's "Shit To Do Before I Croak" list since they were kids, back before it was re-numbered ... and checking things off of that list was not giving in to the inevitable, damn it.  Sam had long since lost that argument with himself.  Dean deserved the occasional treat because he deserved it, not ... no, no other reason.  Ever since Cold Oak, it was a bitch and a half just getting him to order a slice of pie when he wanted it, so to ask for something?  Sam wasn't cold enough to say no to that.  You know, if it wasn't completely insane.  Or something a five-year-old knew better than to do.

Besides, with Dean distracted, Sam might be able to finish up what he was working on in relative peace, then lean back and rest his gritty, glued-up eyes until they found a place to sleep.

This being Dean, of course, nothing ever worked out quite the way Sam planned it.

Dean was cruising the Devil's Highway in his father's big black car, the trunk full of salt and silver and holy water, like he was kicking ashes in the face of every evil thing that had ever tried to take them down, and this inspired a level of glee in him that simply could not be contained.  It was downright infectious, and there was no chance of getting lost in the research when Dean had to point something out to him every five seconds.  Sam gave up and put the laptop away within thirty miles of the first turn, and before long he was laughing right along with Dean at every kitschy sign and clever (or not so) piece of wordplay whisking past the open windows.  The wind whorled and knotted in his hair, soothing his head with smooth, dry fingers, Dean was smiling and safe and right here beside him, and for the first time since he'd started, Sam was able to set aside his angry desperation to fix this ... if only for the moment.

There were things about it Sam couldn't ponder for too long at a time without his stomach going sour, but Dean had changed a lot since the night he made his deal.  It could have been the result of taking down the yellow-eyed demon, the goal of a literal lifetime, but maybe ... well, Sam didn't know, did he?  Dean just seemed so much ... happier.  More at ease, or more willing to let it show.  As if he'd thrown off a chain and found he liked the length of his new stride ...

Everything had its limit, and things were still far from perfect between them, but Dean was much more willing to talk lately, open in a way that made it possible to reminisce about their childhood, the bad as well as the good, without it turning into an argument.  Hell, even when they did have their patented Winchester standoffs anymore, it was as likely to be Sam's fault as Dean's.  Dean was even getting more comfortable with casual touch, not just pointing things out to Sam but bumping his shoulder or brushing his cheek to get his attention.  Even reaching out a few times to grab his chin and physically point his face at something almost-past, something Sam wouldn't have seen otherwise.  He'd always been a very tactile person, sensual (in the Lit class sense of the word which Dean would never have let him get away with), but he used to repress the urge so viciously, except when ... well.  It was like he'd spontaneously forgotten whole categories of his own rules about what it took to be a man.

Sam thought about asking him if he'd given in and bought that copy of Caring and Sharing for Emotional Cripples, but since he didn't want to discourage this new behavior ... yeah, better to keep his mouth shut.

Around eight o'clock that night, in Colorado, they were both starting to want dinner, but the urge came on in the midst of an uninspiring collection of possibilities: The Devil's Highway Pub and The Devil's Highway Diner and The Devil's Highway Bar & Grille.  They ended up stopping at a smoky little bar hidden away in the corner of a strip mall, for beer, food and the relative novelty of the name: The Blooded Lamb.  It was a good choice.

Dean had a steak that couldn't have been off the cow for more than five minutes, it was so bloody, and a mound of thick-cut fries big enough to support its own atmosphere.  Sam's order was a chicken pasta dish so spicy, it startled his taste buds right out of the coma they'd been beaten into by months of bad road food.  The two of them tucked into it like starving men.  Dean noticed the burgundy-felted pool table in the corner while Sam was picking at the last of his fries - Dean wasn't able to finish them, that was how generous the portion was - and when he suggested a few quick breaks before they got back out on the road, Sam agreed with a sincere grin.

That turned out to be the best part of the night.

It was so nice to stop thinking futile circles around their situation for a while, stop thinking at all and just play!  Usually, if it was the two of them at a table, Sam was playing badly and Dean was playing worse, trying to draw in a mark he could take for some easy cash.  This time, Dean won the first two games but he had to work for it, and his trash talk and "accidental" hip checks were kind of comforting after so much unaccustomed tenderness.  Gave Sam back a little of his balance.

Sam owned the third game, but he'd had enough beer by then to either unleash his inner genius ... or completely fail to notice that Dean was letting him win.

It was past eleven by the time they settled up their bill, and Dean followed Sam to the door with a warm hand pressed flat to the middle of his back.  Sam was still getting used to that gesture.  Not that he minded so much, and the reason Dean was doing it wasn't hard to figure out.  It was just so uncharacteristic, or it would have been before Sam's ... misadventure.

Now that he thought of it, that simple touch had been the first of the changes Sam noticed, before the easy talks, before any other kind of physicality.  Before Sam had even gotten control enough of himself to interact with Dean and not make a confrontation of it.  At first, Dean only ever did it when Sam was asleep.  Morning would swell around the edges of thick motel drapes and up under the door, woven with the dull thunk of car doors and the smell of dew-wet asphalt, and Sam would wake to find Dean sitting on the bed beside him, his strong, steady hand covering the oddly innocuous scar left by a rusty Bowie knife.  Not stroking it, not testing the texture of it, only covering it, like he needed to obscure it ... or maybe he meant to hold something in, that intangible something Dean had sold his own future to retrieve.

Sam vaguely remembered the first time, surging up from a dark and sludgy dream, panicked by a presence he was still too out of it to identify, until Dean softly shushed him.  His eyes were warm and calm over a gentle smile, his murmur a comfortable lull, a compulsion - "Hey, it's all right.  Go back to sleep, Sammy ..." - so Sam did.  And if he leaned into Dean's hand just a little as he sank back into a quieter slumber, neither of them seemed to think it worth mentioning again.

So, no, he didn't mind it so much.

Not for the reasons he probably should.

They'd just reached the door when their waitress - middle-aged, pretty in an "I'm doing this for me, not for you" kind of way - shouted to them from behind the bar, "You boys be careful out there!  There's no moon tonight.  The dogs might be out ..."

Another night, another location, they might well have asked her to elaborate on that, but ... see, it was late, they were comfortably full of good food, Dean might be fine to drive but Sam was definitely feeling his buzz ... and it was just that kind of area.  The filling station where they topped off the tank earlier in the day had cans of air freshener labeled "Demon Mace," for crying out loud.  Even an experienced hunter could be forgiven the assumption that it was all part of the floorshow, no matter how sincere her concern for them seemed.

Whatever, Sam offered back a thank you and a promise to watch themselves - Dean only rolled his eyes - and they stepped outside into a rainstorm that had torn the night wide open out of nowhere.

They both knew the tale, of course, the pack of black dogs that were said to prowl this road, among other demonic nasties.  Even if Sam didn't remember, he'd read about them again barely a week ago, while researching techniques that might turn a hellhound off its prey.  Not that he was going to mention this to Dean.  That would qualify as telling Dean what he was working on, and Sam really didn't want to have that argument again.  Not yet.  Besides, almost the same account was referenced in Dad's journal, in a newspaper clipping tucked between his take on Native American Skinwalker lore and a transcription of a Santería healing ritual.  The note he scribbled in the margin amounted to, "I've seen real black dogs, but this 'pack' is a load of crap."  So.  No reason to worry.

God, he was so ready for a motel.

As soon as Dean started the Impala, he flicked the heater on high to dry them off, and a wave of warm air washed over Sam like a double dose of Nyquil.  He slouched in his seat, knees wide, and tried to pull off his soaked left sneaker just as Dean was turning right out of the parking lot.  Inertia triumphed, and Sam's cheek squashed wetly into the sleeve of Dean's jacket.

Dean laughed, giving him a gentle, one-handed push back toward his own side.  "Dude, you are such a cheap date!"

There was a truly awesome comeback in there somewhere.  Something about brothers and dates and tragically low, like Mariana Trench low levels of desperation.  Just because he wasn't able to piece it together right that very second didn't mean it wasn't in him.  He glared at his shoes, but they stubbornly refused to remove themselves from his feet.

"Shut up," he grumbled sagely.

"Oh, touché!"  Dean clapped a hand over his heart, as if stung.  "Do you have writers?  You must have writers.  A gem like that ..."

Sam tried to turn the unsuccessful shoe-dissolving glare on Dean, to see if it worked any better in that capacity, but it split into a jaw-cracking yawn and Dean laughed again, softer this time.

"Hey, why don't you get some sleep, man?" he asked, patting Sam's thigh right above the knee; his hand lingered, thumb stroking absent arcs next to the bone, and he turned the Concerned Big Brother Eyes^TM up as high as he had the heater, with less warning.  "I'm wired anyway.  I'll find us someplace to stop in an hour or two.  Go ahead, lay back."

So, admittedly, the upholstery felt unusually soft against Sam's back, cradling his head as it jived with the jounces of the road, and the humid curl of Dean's hand on his soaked-through jeans was kind of soothing ... but the suggestion was one Sam didn't mean to take.  After a lifetime of it, he'd developed a well-earned hatred for being woken from a sound sleep, then forced to function immediately afterward.  It was like looking through the walls of a glass box, the world crystal clear but flat and muffled all around him.  So what if the Impala was rocking him like a warm (if damp) cradle?  He could cram in a little more research to keep himself alert ... maybe just brainstorm ...

Whatever his opinion on the subject, Sam must have drifted off after all, because when he jerked back into consciousness there was no longer a hand on his leg, the lights of town were gone, and Dean was chanting, "Shit!  Shit!  Shit!" as the Impala skated a sideways arc toward the shoulder and the wooded drop-off beyond.

Someone could have drawn him a diagram, and Sam still wouldn't understand how Dean kept them on the road.  Of course, Dean had been driving this car since he was nine or ten years old, when Dad needed him to, and his instincts were just this side of supernatural by now, but for all the times Dean had made the Impala dance where she should have stumbled, Sam was convinced they were ending up in the trees tonight.  They were spinning, for an instant the entire rear end was over empty air and tipping down ... and then she jarred back up over the edge of the road bed and they juddered to a wrenching stop.  When they were done rocking, they were at least halfway on the shoulder, facing the right direction for the lane they were jutted out into (though it wasn't the lane where they started), and it took Sam several seconds to understand that they really hadn't crashed.

Sam's hands were still pressed to the roof and door, fingers panic-clawed, when Dean scrambled out and stalked around the front of the car, cursing the whole way.  Sam gusted out a held breath and tried to follow, but the passenger side door wouldn't open.  He had to bump it twice with his shoulder before it popped loose, and he could step out into the rain to see what had Dean so upset ... though, at first, he didn't completely understand what he was seeing.

Both tires on this side of the car were flat.  No, not flat, they were gone, nothing left but the naked rims and a few sad scraps of rubber, the rest spun to shreds; they didn't just blow, they exploded.  Something had raked a deep gouge into the body of the car from front to rear, creasing sheet metal like paper and pinching the doors together.  Sam stared, rain hissing in his ears, slithering past his collar again to make him shiver.  He would have heard an impact like that on his side of the car, surely, even if he was fast asleep.  Felt it, at least.

Straightening, Sam checked the road in both directions, but there was no sign of another car out there, stopped or still in motion.  "What did we hit?" he asked, baffled.

Dean made a strangled, wordless noise of indignant frustration, wiping rainwater out of his eyes with a whip of his hand.  "Nothing!  There was nothing!  The tires just went on the curve.  Fuck!  It was all I could do to keep her from flipping ..."

"But Dean, that's ..."  Sam gestured eloquently at the side of the wounded car.  "There's no way to get that kind of damage just from tire shrapnel."

"You think I don't know that?"  Another furious whip of the hand, this time back through Dean's hair, holding at the back of his neck.  He traced the damage with his eyes, like he was wishing he could soothe it away, apologize to his precious girl.  Sam's mouth tightened and he started to turn, to give the eternally happy couple their privacy, but then Dean added, quieter, "There's something really wrong here, Sammy."

It came to them both at the same moment, if for somewhat different reasons.

Moonless nights, attacks on passing cars: the damn black dog pack that their father thought was nothing but a line on a tourist-trap brochure.  It was real after all.  The two of them had bumbled right into a job, flaunting themselves around, tempting fate, and they were nothing close to ready for it.  Sam tried to get the words out, but language failed him when he saw Dean frozen mid-gesture - most likely interrupted before he could tell Sam to grab a weapon from the trunk and watch his ass - eyes wide in a way that turned Sam's spine into a column of ice.  Between one breath and the next, Sam was turning, lifting his foot to step back toward the car as Dean shouted his name, tried to grab his arm, do something ... but they just didn't connect ... and then it was on him.

It hit Sam high, a nightmare blur of black fur and yellow teeth snapping inches from his face, but he was right at the edge of the drop-off already and that probably saved his life.  The bulk of it hit him in the side of his chest, knocking him back, and they overbalanced before it could recover.  In a twisted tumble, they rolled together down the embankment, brushy branches whickering past or slapping wetly at them as they fell, but nothing more.  Sam saw sky under his feet three times before he hit something substantial enough to stop him.

He was absurdly aware of how his limbs splayed when the back of his head hit the tree, jerking outward before falling limp, spread-eagle, like a kid who fell asleep making a snow angel.  A rain angel.  Sam would have laughed, but his lungs didn't seem to belong to him anymore, and it was easier to close his eyes than try to make them see more than black smudges and fizzy white fireworks.

Seconds lost, minutes, he wasn't sure, but he came back to rain in his eyes, a scuffle of pine needles and Dean screaming, short and sharp, from the ground at his feet.

The dog had Dean pinned on his back not three feet away, needle-teeth sunk to the gums into his right arm.  There were more of them ... four ... five more.  Sam could see them slouching in the shadows, fawning things, waiting for their alpha to make its kill.  In the midst of their circle, Dean twisted and howled, a sound more pissed off than hurt now, bucking and kicking and using his free arm to punch the thing on top of him in the side of its blocky head, as hard as he could.  Not nearly hard enough.  It was going to kill him, right there, and Dean couldn't stop it.  Not alone.

Sam tried to get up, but the first, slightest movement set a screaming tangle of agony loose in his skull.  All he managed to do was fall over, curled and heaving into the deadfall, a bitter rush of beer and food and bile surging out of him, acid burning in his nose.  The dog cut its eyes at him as he panted there, trying gracelessly to knuckle away the mess on his own lips and chin, as if it was amused by his weakness, and when Dean tried to hit it again, it arched its thick, powerful neck and shook him, easy as a flimsy piece of rawhide.  The only protest Dean managed this time was a groan, and he abandoned striking out at it for trying to pry its jaws open, accomplishing nothing but shredding his hand on its teeth.

"Get away from him," Sam choked out, dragging himself on to his belly with fingers clawed into the mud.  He was close enough to touch its near forepaw, gnarled and bigger than his own hand, and he was suddenly, wretchedly sure that it was going down like this because Dean had put himself in the way, scrambled down the slope and stepped between them.  Suffered the attack instead of Sam.  Again.  Always.  Sam grabbed for its leg - useless, feeble, but what else could he do? - but it easily shifted out of reach, jerking Dean along with it.

At the sound of his voice, Dean had finally realized that Sam was awake and trying to get to him.  He tilted his head back to see, in the process baring his throat to the beast in a way that made Sam cry a warning and try to lurch forward.  Try, and fail.  His head was too heavy for his neck, a useless knot of flesh and bone and pain and he couldn't hold it up.  He wanted to cry, wanted to scream, struggling at the foot of the tree with a stamp of his own blood still livid on its trunk.  It couldn't happen this way.  He had to help Dean somehow!

Damn if Dean wasn't smiling at him, pure relief shining through the pain in his eyes.  "Sam!" he breathed, then sharper, "What are you doing, Sammy?  Run!  You have to ..."

The dog must have sunk its teeth deeper in then, because Dean's face pinched and he groaned again, his free hand clawing at it, sinking harmlessly into the filthy ruff of fur at its throat.

There was something hard pressing into Sam's hip, crumpled but familiar, as he watched the rest of the pack spiral in, anticipating the end.  It was ... oh.  Oh, God, he'd forgotten!  Ever since Jake Talley opened the Hellmouth in Wyoming, there was one tool he and Dean never failed to carry.  Always on them, no matter what, and how many times had it already saved their lives?

Sam flopped over on to his back, working the half-crushed plastic bottle from his pocket.  Fighting with the after-spasms of his gut and the dizzy dark that wanted so badly to rise up and claim him.  The cap kept sliding through his muddy-wet fingers, but he fumbled with it until it came free, and slashed the open container of holy water across the black dog's face.

Satisfaction was instantaneous.

The dog let go of Dean and wailed, retreating so quickly it rolled backward over its own haunches, writhing, pawing at the smoking ruin of its face.  When it looked over again, one of its eyes was gone, a melted gob of pus oozing from the socket, the skin around it hairless and blistered red.  It was hurt and it was pissed, but it wasn't out of the action.  They didn't have much time.

Sam crab-scrambled forward, patting at the pockets of Dean's jacket.  "Where is it?  Where's your flask?"

Dean blinked up at him, still half-dazed.  "What?"

"Your flask, Dean!  Holy water.  It's all we've got.  Where is it?"

"I ... uh, front left pocket.  Here."

Sam grabbed the silver flask from him and held it out like a shield, not even bothering with the cap, making sure that each and every one of the pack knew there was more of the stuff that burned their alpha so badly.  They hung back, whimpering uncertainly amongst themselves.  The lead dog growled and tossed its still steaming head, flecks of bloody water flying from its nose, but it kept its distance.  Point made.

Dean clambered unsteadily to his feet, reaching down to hoist Sam up after him (with his less wounded arm).  Sam wanted to whimper himself, his head hurt so much, as if his skull was trying to climb inside itself in some impossible moebius of bone, and he had to lean his face down into Dean's neck for a long moment before he could even think of trying to walk.  Dean supported him without complaint.

Again.

Always.

"They're staying between us and the car," Dean said, deceptively calm.  "Not gonna let us go back, no matter how hard you waggle that thing at them."

Sam opened his eyes and smiled ruefully against Dean's collar.  "I know.  What do we do?"

"There was a church a little ways back, just off the road.  If holy water burns them, holy ground should keep them out."  He nodded to the flask still held in in Sam's white-knuckled grip.  "You warn them off us with that, maybe we can make it on foot."

"Sounds like a plan ..."

Gingerly, reluctantly, Sam lifted his broken head.  He couldn't focus properly yet, and there was too much color to be real: swoops and strokes of it under the shattered prism of the rain, dancing over the dogs' coats in an uneasy, oil-slick corona.  He could stay upright, though, and he thought he could walk with help.  Hopefully without covering them both in what little was left of his ill-fated dinner.

"Some fun date night you planned, huh?" Sam mumbled, a wan attempt at humor, and Dean tried to smile, but his face was tight and too pale; he held his bitten arm close to his chest, dripping red with blood and rain, and when Sam tried to lean in to look at it, Dean wobbled under the shift in weight.  "Are you all right?"

"What?  Yeah.  Yeah, I'm fine, Sammy."  He thumped Sam reassuringly on the breastbone - with much less force than normal - before turning, orienting them toward the church.  "C'mon, we've got to get moving."

---

Dean wasn't fine.

Sam had known that much long before the first time Dean fell, barely halfway to the church, and couldn't get up again under his own power.  After that, Sam leaning on Dean gave way to the two of them leaning on each other, a gradually shifting balance, until Sam was struggling just to keep Dean on his feet and making some kind of forward progress.  When it got bad enough that he needed both hands to lug his brother along, Sam tucked the flask back into Dean's pocket, put his head down like a horse throwing its weight into the harness and used everything he had to make those last hundred yards disappear.  With each step, Sam had been more and more certain that the dogs would notice, crowd closer, make another try.  For all he knew, they did - he hadn't been watching them; he couldn't do it and watch them at the same time - but that didn't matter anymore.  He and Dean were safely inside, protected by holy ground, and that was the only part of it Sam could afford to dwell on right now.

When he made his way back up to the pew where he'd left Dean, he found him sitting sideways, twisted in the seat from trying to see what was going on.  His hands were cradled limp and swollen in his lap, palms up and wrists crossed, his forehead resting against the back corner of the pew where the arm came to a shallow point.  His eyes were closed, squeezed tight behind the dark smudge of his lashes, and he didn't stir when Sam crouched next to him.

"Hey, Dean?  Hey."  Sam gripped his shoulder, jostling him, just slightly.  "You still with me?"

Dean moved his head in what must have been a nod, though he didn't raise it from the pew.  "Is it working?" he asked, his voice too wet and too quiet.  "Can we keep them out?"

"Yes," Sam nodded emphatically, wondering even as he did it if he was trying to compensate for Dean's worrisome stillness; it was stupid, regardless, made his headache that much worse, and his face squashed itself into an involuntary squint.  "Definitely.  You were right.  I just managed to scare myself, is all."  Reaching gingerly into Dean's jacket pocket, he retrieved the flask, waggling it in front of Dean's eyes when he finally opened them.  "Forgot to bring this with me."

"Oh, yeah," Dean said, and coughed, "about that ..."

But Sam was already in motion.  "Hold that thought, Dean.  I'll be right back.  I promise."

The chancel was high but not very deep, lectern and pulpit on opposing corners and the altar set between.  From what Sam could see, there was no basement or attic, no other rooms in the tiny stone building except the sacristy, which was firmly locked.  Sam fought a short, fierce battle with his conscience before he kicked it in.  He had some cash he could leave behind to help cover the damages, and he still didn't have time - or the necessary focus - to dick around with picking locks.  Inside, he was at least careful not to disturb anything he didn't need.  He took a wool cassock, a pair of white acolyte's smocks he hoped were clean cotton, and an armful of pillar candles, wrapped them all up in a white linen altar cloth with a cross embroidered on it in gold, and quickly carried the package back to Dean.

With the candles set up on the floor of the aisle and the help of Dean's borrowed Zippo, he gave himself enough light to see what he was doing.  He crouched again and, as carefully and gently as he could, started rolling back the sleeves of Dean's jacket.  At his first touch, Dean hissed in a breath and arched, head lolling back, baring his teeth at the ceiling in a snarl of pain.  He didn't make another sound, but he was shaking with the effort it took not to.

"Sorry," Sam whispered miserably, "I'm sorry, Dean, but I need to see."

There was more than the physical damage at play, he already knew that ... but it was worse, so much worse than Sam had been expecting.  The punctures and tears themselves weren't too severe, nothing that would need stitches.  From what Sam had seen of the dog's long, needle-narrow teeth, they were meant to sink in and hold fast, so no surprise that there wasn't much cutting.  No, it was infection they needed to worry about, or venom, or whatever the hell was doing this.

The wounds were so swollen, they gaped like mouths in Dean's skin, leers and smirks and wet pouts, drooling blood that was unnaturally thick and almost black in the candlelight.  Pus choked the deepest of them, and a spider's web of lines in red and black and sickly green radiated under the surface, wriggling in twisted patterns up Dean's arms and under the sleeves again.  The right arm was by far the worst, and pale grayish threads were already visible just above the collar on that side of his neck.  The injured areas at least should have been blood-warm, feverish, but the temperature Sam felt coming off of Dean when he got close enough was cold, a chill so profound he didn't even have to touch him for it to set his own skin prickling into gooseflesh.

Swallowing against a sour gorge of fear that wouldn't do a damn thing but render him useless, Sam draped the altar cloth over his own hand and drew Dean's right arm over it, letting it rest in his palm.  "Hang on," he murmured, "this is going to hurt."

"Sam ..."

When he tipped the flask over Dean's arm, Dean cursed through clenched teeth, an emphatic blast of air that puffed out his lips, but there was nothing like the reaction Sam had been expecting.  Clear, cold liquid flowed over Dean's arm and soaked into the cloth below, but no smoke or steam, no sign that the wounds were being cleansed.  Confused, Sam sniffed at it ... and then stared up, stunned, at his monumental idiot of a big brother.

"Dean ... this isn't holy water."

"I know ..."

"Dean ... this is vodka."

"I know, and you're wasting it!"

Sam shook his head, mouth open on an angry, disbelieving breath of a laugh.  "That motel, when we checked out.  They charged us for using the mini-bar, but you swore up and down you didn't drink anything.  You swapped it, didn't you?  You poured water into those stupid little bottles, and ..."

"C'mon, Sammy!"

"I just finished dragging your ass through a mile or more of woods, in the driving rain, in the middle of a moonless night, with a pack of black dogs trying to crawl up our asses the entire way ... and you didn't think maybe you should warn me that all I had to defend us with was a flask of fucking Stoli?!"

Dean glared at him, too hurt and exhausted to raise his head, much less put any real heat into it.  "What was I supposed to do?  Huh?  Tell you, right in front of them?  Give up the only card we fucking well had?  You believed it was holy water, so they believed it was holy water ... and here we are."

Sam opened his mouth to protest.  Closed it.  Scowled in thought.  "Ok, good point, but Dean ... what the hell?  You can't just stop carrying holy water and not say anything!  What if mine had fallen out of my pocket, or ... ?"

"Sam, please."

That soft plea finally shattered the spiral of Sam's anger, and he stopped, really looked at his brother.  Despite the frightening chill of his skin, Dean was sweating, like he was trying to combat a fever he didn't have.  He fought to breathe through the wet crackle of his lungs, and his eyes were dull, dark holes in his paper-pale face.  Sam couldn't remember ever seeing him in so much pain.  God, this was so far beyond Sam's knowledge-base, and that scared him to death.

"You can bitch me out later," Dean mumbled hoarsely, "just ... can we please just get this done?"

"I ... sure.  Sure, Dean.  But ..."  He gestured at the flask, helpless, and the tears were pricking at his eyes again.  "What do I do?  Mine's gone.  I don't have any more holy water."

Dean just sort of stared at him for a moment, as if waiting for his brain to catch up with his mouth; when Sam didn't show any sign of copping wise, Dean closed his eyes again and sighed.  "The fount, genius."

"Huh?"

"The holy water fount?  Back of the aisle?  Big bowl-looking thing?  We ran right past it, Sammy."  Dean cracked his eyes back open, just a sliver.  "Exactly how hard did you hit your head?"

"Oh!"  Sam blinked, hardly believing his own concussed, panic-driven stupidity.  "Right.  Church.  Yeah.  Um ... I'll be right back."

Before Sam could disappear with the flask, Dean made an impatient "ah!" sound and tried to grab it from him.  His hands were dead and useless, knotted painfully at the end of his wrists, so Sam had to hold the flask for him while he drained it.  Probably a smart idea on Dean's part, or at least one Sam understood.  They didn't have any kind of painkillers with them and, short of stealing the sacramental wine, there was nothing in the sacristy.  When Dean was done, he let his head fall back with a clumsy force that made Sam wince, made him hustle that much faster to get this process underway.

Thankfully, when Sam pulled the heavy wooden lid off the fount, he found it full.   At last, something was going right for them on this ridiculous, Keystone Kops in Hell adventure they found themselves riding.  There was a nice change.  He dipped the flask into the shallow bowl and brought it back, repeated the process with the altar cloth and started to tell Dean again to brace himself.

"Just do it," Dean grated out, and Sam complied.

Now came the reaction he expected.

The instant the holy water made contact with his skin, Dean's entire body went rigid, and his arm was obscured by an explosion of dense, white steam, almost like smoke.  There was a sound like sizzling bacon, popping and hissing, like Dean was being fried alive, but the smell that burned its way into Sam's nostrils was of rot and damp grave-dirt, the stink of a black dog.  Dean was trying so hard not to scream, biting the sound into blunt bullet-hits of consonants, and he was succeeding right up until Sam wrapped the altar cloth around his arm and applied slow, squeezing pressure.

"God, Dean, I'm sorry!" Sam almost sobbed, "I have to get all the infection out, make sure ..."

"I don't need the narration, Sam, just ... fuck, fuck!  Just get it over with!"

Sam had to all but shut himself down to get it done.

Mechanical, efficient, he poured out the rest of the holy water over Dean's arm, then refilled the flask, repeating the process until the wounds no longer reacted, cleansed and purified.  He couldn't allow himself to listen to Dean's choked, broken cries of agony, couldn't let himself understand the words when Dean began begging him to stop, or else he would stop, and he'd never be able to start again.  Tears were flowing freely down his face by the time he moved on to Dean's other hand.  He could feel them slip free when Dean jerked at the freshening pain, choking on his own agony, almost convulsing.  He could taste them when they ran into his mouth, but he was only vaguely aware of what they meant.  He was too busy plucking a broken fang from between his brother's knuckles, carrying it to the fount where he watched it dissolve like a lump of poisoned sugar.

That close to the door, Sam could hear the dog snuffling near again, just outside.  It scratched at the kickplate, claws scrawling over the metal, throat burbling out that horrible whine.  Drawn to the sound of Dean's suffering.  Sam stared at the pews stacked in front of the door for a while, passive, wobbling on his feet.  When the blockade didn't show any signs of giving way, he turned and walked back to Dean.  He wasn't frightened of the dog anymore.  There were other, more important things to be afraid of.

Dean was unconscious by the time Sam finished, breathing in shocky little sips, curled down into a comma-shape like he'd just been set on pause, and Sam thought in fuzzy, wistful terms of calling someone for help.  He had his cell.  But call who, he wondered, as he wrapped Dean's hand and arm in strips of linen torn from one of the smocks.  The local cops?  Aside from the fact that Dean would give him hell for that - later, when he was better, because he would get better - if Sam told the truth he'd be dismissed as a crank, but if he lied he'd be bringing innocent people out here, unprepared and effectively unarmed, like lambs set upon a pack of wolves.  Well, there was Bobby, of course, he'd come in a heartbeat, but he was too far out to reach them before sunrise.  By then, the dogs would be gone, back to wherever it was they hid when they weren't prowling, and Dean ... whatever was going to happen would be over and done.

God, but he missed Dad.

His father, who these very same black dogs had known better than to fuck with, or even show themselves to.  His father, who had been killing things just like them since before Sam was potty-trained.  His father, who never failed to have a plan.

Not that having John Winchester alive would be a guarantee of help - or even of a telephone conversation, the way things were toward the end - but at least it would have been an option.  An outlet.  It would have kept the loneliness from hitting Sam quite so hard.

Sam laughed softly at that thought, at himself.  Pitiful.  Just look at him: twenty-four years old, the selfish man-child who spent most of his life believing that his family was holding him back, did whatever underhanded thing it took to break away from them, prove himself different, smarter, better ... and all he wanted right now was for his Daddy to come and make it all better.  He was too old (and it was too late) to be calling himself an orphan.  It didn't really matter if that was how he felt.

After a lot of cheek-tapping and calling of his name, he managed to get Dean conscious and upright enough to drink some holy water without aspirating it, just as an extra precaution.  Dean coughed and wriggled back, batting feebly at the flask when Sam tried to give him more, but there was no other reaction.  That accomplished and feeling reassured by it, he rearranged Dean so he was lying mostly flat on the pew with his feet toward the aisle, the other smock bunched up under his head for a pillow and the cassock for a blanket.  His arms were folded awkwardly, his broad shoulders hunched on the too-narrow seat, but the only alternative available was the floor.  That, or the raised chancel: lay him out like a corpse at the foot of the altar, ready for his own funeral.  Neither option appealed to Sam very well.  Worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, Sam brushed his knuckles over Dean's temple, back through his hair, not really caring that it wasn't long enough to require the gesture; the bigger concern was Dean's complete lack of reaction to the touch.

Once Dean was settled, wounds tended and bandaged and as comfortable as he was likely to get, Sam didn't quite know what to do with himself.  Well, he knew what he wanted to do, which was sleep, but he also knew that it was a bad idea.  Apart from the fact that head injuries and sleeping were a tricky combination - especially with no one to wake you up every hour or two - Dean might need him.  They had some hours to go yet before Sam could even think of letting down his guard.

He wandered almost aimlessly toward the sacristy, where he leaned over the lacquered metal sink and let his stomach consider the pros and cons of throwing up again; it gave a half-hearted flip inside him, but nothing came up.  There were smudges of blood on his sleeve, ground together with dirt into the texture of his skin, where it had settled too deep for rain or holy water to rinse it away.  He splashed his hands and face and tried to drink a little, swishing and spitting out the taste of vomit instead when his throat refused to work in a swallow.  He found a stack of plain linen doilies on a shelf near the sink and wet one down, using it to dab at the tight, hot lump on the back of his head.  It stung like an absolute bitch, and the cloth came away stained a pale, splotchy red, but most of what blood there was had aleady dried and messing with it only made him feel dizzy.  He left it alone after that.

There were three windows in the sanctuary: a cross over the altar, which looked relatively new - intricate stained-glass work done in vibrant reds, oranges and yellows - and then two rectangular windows beside and just in front of the chancel.  Those were very simple, made to be opened for ventilation, two sashes holding sixteen squares apiece of single-colored glass.  Sam found a pale yellow pane in the window to the left of the chancel, clear enough to see through, where he could watch the pack mill across the lawn and sew their way through the tree-line.

It wasn't long at all before he was noticed.

They watched each other for a while, Sam and the lead dog.  It hunkered like a misplaced and misbegotten shadow in the fringe of rain-slogged grass, Sam leaned heavier and heavier against the rough stone sill of his window ... and it wasn't an aggressive exchange, not really.  Just a mutual acknowledgment of fact.  I have something you want.  Prey, or a way out.

Neither of them was going to relent.

Both of them knew that.

"He's mine," Sam said quietly, and the dog lay down on its belly on the lawn, its lamp-yellow eye still tilted up, fixed on the window; as it breathed, the grass shriveled and faded to brown in a perfect, expanding circle around its muzzle.  "We have a year.  He's not yours to take."

"Sam?"

That tremulous voice startled Sam out of something like a self-induced trance, and he broke the silent stand-off to rush to Dean's side, offering reassurances the whole way.  "I'm here, Dean.  It's all right.  We're all right."

Dean's eyes were open but he wasn't really awake; he stared at Sam and through him all at once, reaching up like he was trying to touch him but missing him completely, and Sam felt a curiously childish brand of dread coil in his gut again, cold and vicious, at the sight of his big brother made so helpless.  "Sammy?  I'm ... something's not ... the water ..."

"Holy water?" Sam asked, already digging in his pocket for the flask.  "Do you need more holy water, Dean?"

"No!"  Dean shook his head so violently, Sam had to put a hand on his chest before he knocked himself right off the pew.  "I can't ... I can't carry it ... she'll know ... have to protect you, Sammy ... promise ... keep my promises ..."

"Hush, Dean," Sam soothed, moving to sit beside him even as his heart tightened to a trembling fist inside him.  Oh, God.  He had to be misunderstanding this.

Dean couldn't carry holy water now?  Ten months before the crossroads demon had any claim on him, and he couldn't even defend himself without worrying that she might call him on it and break that wretched deal?  Damn it, Dean!  What did Sam have to do to make him understand?  Why couldn't he see that it didn't always have to be on him?

"It's all right," he forced himself to say, "I'm safe.  You always keep me safe, Dean.  You always look out for me ..."

He wanted to take Dean's hand, but he was so afraid of hurting him, of making it all worse.  Instead, he settled for lifting Dean's head and sliding over, replacing the smock-pillow with his own thigh.  He cupped his hand against Dean's forehead, almost relieved to find him running a fever now instead of that fatal cold.  When he carded his fingers through Dean's hair, Dean settled a little, his eyes fluttering shut again.  They rolled behind his bruised lids, still dreaming or hallucinating, but Sam's gentle touch seemed to soothe him, and that shouldn't have been a surprise.  Dean was always so hungry for touch lately.  For talk.  Proximity.

"You used to do this for me when I was little," Sam told him, for something to say if nothing else, making sure that Dean knew he was still here.  "I remember, when I was sick and Dad wasn't around.  Even when he was.  You used to bring me soup, with those little round oyster crackers in it."  He chuckled fondly.  "Some of the places we stayed, I don't know where you managed to get them, but you always did.  You fed me soup and oyster crackers and juice, and then you'd sit in bed with me and let me put my head in your lap, and you'd tell me stories until I fell asleep."

"Sammy ..." Dean whispered, "... safe," turning blind toward the sound of Sam's voice, and Sam brushed his knuckles over Dean's cheek and refused to let the tears soak into his words.

"I don't know how you can suck as much as you do at cover stories, dude, because you were a genius with the bedtime kind.  You used to ask me what I wanted the story to be about, and I'd always say something stupid like puppies or shoes or ... I don't know, watermelons ... and you could just pull the best stories right out of the air, like it was nothing.  Like it was just talking.  Always made me feel better."

Dean had gone still again, quiet except for the raspy, wet slur of his breathing.  It sounded like drowning slow, and the sweaty heat of him soaked through the denim of Sam's jeans.  Sam didn't know what else to do.

"Hey ... maybe, if you promise not to make fun of me ... maybe I could tell you a story.  It'll have to be a true one, though.  I was never any good at the other kind, when it wasn't for the job.  I always left that to you ... I always left all the hard stuff to you, didn't I?  But you took care of it anyway.  Same as you do now."

Sam curled his arm across Dean's shoulders, over his collarbone, held him the way Dean always used to do for him, his baby brother, his Sammy ... and just started talking.

"I remember, it was raining that day, too ..."

---

Sam was nine years old; he remembers this specifically, because nine was a big year for him.

Nine was the year of The Bogeyman Incident.

Nine was the year of finding out in the small hours of Christmas morning that Santa Claus didn't exist, a revelation whispered into the breath-humid bubble of sanctuary under a motel bedspread, after Dean realized that Sam was fighting sleep not because he was excited but because he was terrified.  His memories of the shtriga attack three years before were disjointed dream-stuff by then - almost faded to the nothing they would stay until his adult self faced the creature again - but when he thought of Santa hunting them down through a year of new addresses, getting past all of Dad's precautions and prowling the room while they slept, he imagined hands like mittens stuffed with winter branches tugging back the sheets, a black-hole mouth under a net of matted white beard.  Sam was so wary of any not-quite-human-seeming thing that gravitated toward kids, the only way Dean could have eased his mind more profoundly that morning would have been to convince him that clowns didn't exist either.

Before anything else, though, nine was the year of making a wish on the taper candle squished into his birthday pastry (a precarious three-layer affair made of Ring Dings, that year) and, for the first time ever, watching it not come true.

Nine would become the year of starting to fully understand the life he was living, because nine was the year of Dean deciding (and Dad following suit) that it was kinder to fully answer Sam's questions than to let him come to his own conclusions and get so worked up by them.  Out at the fringes of knowledge, Sam had already seen enough of the supernatural to believe it much more plausible that he screwed up than that the birthday candle wish deal was bogus.  Maybe he was too greedy, asked too much.  Or maybe Dean was wrong after all, and there wasn't a loophole in the one inviolable rule of birthday candle wishes (never ever tell anyone what you wished for, never) that made brothers exempt.

All Sam knew for sure at the time was that he wished for his Daddy to stay with him and Dean from then on, and not be so sad anymore, and never have to go on any of his stupid hunting trips ever again ... and not even two whole weeks later, Dad dumped them both in Blue Earth and took off to do something "very important" he would never even name.

Sam doesn't think he knew the word "cynicism" yet, but nine was one of the years that probably contributed most to his personal definition of it.

So, if Sam was nine, that would make Dean thirteen, starting to change in fundamental ways (and not just the obvious ones).  His voice was getting deeper as his body rearranged itself, stretching out and filling in, demanding more space, less graceful sometimes but stronger every day ... but more than that, his attitude, his entire personality was changing.  He was more stubborn and he could occasionally be mean, boastful, always in motion and angry more often than not.  Instead of going wide-eyed when Dad prepared to leave them, quiet and still and deferential, he was more and more adamant about wanting to go along, to at least follow Dad to wherever he was staying and wait there in case he needed help.

Dad still wanted him to stay with Sam, but ... see, Dad was starting to change too, because "not a chance" and "don't you backtalk me, boy" were slowly giving way to "maybe when you're older" and "keep up the good work on the firing range and we'll talk" ... and Sam remembers finding that scary in a way that even clowns couldn't compete with.

The rest of it aside, Sam didn't mind staying with Pastor Jim, who was nice and soft-spoken, and seemed to genuinely like kids ... in a very not-creepy, un-clown-like way.  Dean would have rather stayed with Bobby (if he had to stay with anyone) because Bobby didn't seem to notice that they were kids: no enforced bedtime, no enforced bathing, and he always let Dean help him pull parts off the cars in the salvage yard.  Fine for him but, for Sam - who would never share Dean's mechanical genius - Bobby's place was nothing but a gigantic maze of "Don't touch that because it could kill you."  No teetering piles of jagged metal outside the parsonage, just some monkey bars and a swing-set, and if the Pastor owned any ancient grimoires just itching to devour the souls of curious little boys, he kept them safely locked up in his basement.

The morning after Dad dropped them off, it was raining in a cold, constant spittle, just soft enough to tempt you with the thought of going out, just hard enough to drive you right back in if you tried.  Denied the playground, they moped around the parsonage until even the good-tempered Pastor was tired of having them underfoot, and brought them over to the church to set them loose in the Sunday School classroom.  He had some work to do in the next-door office anyway, he said, and they should come right in if they needed anything.

Sam found a pile of board games on a shelf and bugged Dean into a round of Candyland, for lack of anything else that still had all its pieces.  Problem was, Dean was wound so tight from last night's argument (and from watching Dad leave without him in spite of it, again), he was too agitated to stay put.  He needed to be moving and he kept popping to his feet in between turns to glare up through the high-set basement windows, scanning the sky for any sign of a break in the weather.  He wasn't even done losing this game before he was agitating for something new to play: tag, or a wrestling match, or a race down the corridor, or - and here his face split wide into a "this is the best idea ever" grin - hide-and-seek.

Sam actually said no, but by the time he looked up from maneuvering his green gingerbread man through the Molasses Swamp, Dean was already gone.

"I'm not playing!" didn't work.  Neither did "I'm telling!" or "I won't count or close my eyes, and you don't get to call me a cheater, 'cause you're the cheater!"  Trying to ignore Dean's absence until he got bored and came back wouldn't have worked either.  Dean was too stubborn now, and Sam's belly would go all tight and trembly when he went too long without knowing where Dean was.  Dean was the one who kept him safe, always had been, and if the idea of Dad leaving him was frightening, the idea of Dean leaving him ... just thinking about it made his lungs constrict.

He went through the classroom he was in first, efficient and thorough, before crossing the corridor to the big room the church used as a banquet hall: no Dean.  He didn't bother with Pastor Jim's office - Dean wouldn't have tipped him off that they were wandering - but he did throw open the broom closet door before clattering up the stairs.  No Dean in the narthex, no Dean crouching out under the drippy eaves, no Dean in the secretary's office or behind the potted lily that sprawled between the closed sanctuary doors.

Sam was feeling the first stirs of panic as he stepped into the nave and scanned around.  The Winchester version of hide-and-seek (as taught by their father) required the hider to do everything in his power to evade the seeker, never just sit and wait, and Dean was insanely good at it.  If he wasn't here in the sanctuary, then Sam had missed him, giving him all the time in the world to scout the perfect location, and this could go on literally all day.  It had before, when Dean was in the mood to make it.

Up the aisle to the chancel, no Dean.  The doors on either side of the altar were locked, no Dean.  Down one side aisle and back up the other, no Dean, and now Sam's throat was tightening and his eyes were prickling hot.  He was running when he hit the center aisle again, not paying any attention to where he was going, so when he clipped a pew with the toe of his sneaker he went down hard, skidding, skinning his chin raw on the carpet runner and slamming his teeth together on the very end of his tongue.

It hurt so much in that first instant, he couldn't breathe, and his vision went fluttery white.

He couldn't find Dean.  Daddy left him, and his mouth was full of blood, and his birthday wishes didn't mean anything anymore, and he couldn't find Dean.  All of his misery crammed itself down into that low place in his gut, that place where the old, deep, sick terror of abandonment, of being taken, festered black, before he finally sucked in a gasp and it all gurgled out of him on a wordless wail.

Dean would admit to him later that he was hiding in the pulpit, nearly folded in half and still unable to close the cabinet - "You went right by me, dude; thought I was busted for sure!" - but it seemed to Sam at the time that he was just there as soon as Sam began to bawl, miracle-quick, materializing at his side between the first and second hungry snatches of air.

The angry teenager who needed an outlet, who had maybe wanted to freak baby brother out (a little): he disappeared and Sam was left with just Dean, comforting and constant, crooning soothing nonsense as he eased him up out of the pillbug curl he'd tightened into.  He sat Sam down on one of the pews, delicately forcing his mouth open to see the source of the blood when Sam proved to be crying way too hard (and his tongue in too pitiful a state) to make himself understood.  Dean made a sympathetic grimace and a soft "wow" sound, at which Sam's eyes must have gone wide because Dean quickly assured him that nothing was missing.  It was just kind of - and here he seemed to be searching for the word that wouldn't freak Sam out - dented.

The scrape on his chin was oozing slowly, and blood and saliva and tears and a healthy serving of snot were all running down his face, so Dean had him bunch up his shirt and hold it against his mouth while he ran off, Sam assumed to fetch Pastor Jim.  To his surprise, Dean stopped at the holy water fount, yanked off his own flannel over-shirt and dipped the sleeve of it in, carrying it back to Sam.  He crumpled the body of the flannel in his left hand and used the sleeve in his right to dab at the mess on Sam's face.  When he had it under some kind of control, he twitched the crumpled bit up under Sam's chin and said, "Spit."

After he complied, Sam stared with miserable suspicion at the stain he left on the shirt, but Dean was right.  No severed tongue bits.  The sobs were still braying out of him and his breath wouldn't stop hitching on the intake, shaking his entire body, but even he knew it was a sign of improvement when he found the strength to inform his brother that he just did something wrong.

What Sam meant to say was, "That was sacrilegious," - a word he had learned in this very church on one of their previous visits, when the secretary caught Dean lying on the chancel with his crossed feet propped against the pulpit, munching contentedly on Cheetos and reading a Hellblazer comic book - but since he didn't actually manage any of the consonants, Dean probably only knew what he was talking about because he pointed at the fount.

Dean shot him the sideways, under the brows glance that meant c'mon, squirt, I know you're smarter than that.  "You don't go to Hell for taking care of your own brother, Sammy.  Spit," he said, wiggling the flannel again, and Sam did.  "God wouldn't do that.  And if He would, then He's just stupid."

Sam choked on his next breath.

At fifteen, when Sam was feeling especially lost and looking to an old friend for guidance, Pastor Jim would explain that he was happy to talk and would have liked to encourage Sam's curiosity earlier in life, but John Winchester had one rule about his kids staying under this roof when they were younger: "Don't talk to them about religion unless they ask you a specific question, and then you give them a specific answer, nothing else; I won't have it shoved down their throats."  Fifteen-year-old Sam would be angry to hear that, like he was angry about everything else - twenty-four-year-old Sam just feels a bit sad, looking back - but what nine-year-old Sam knew of God and religion he'd mostly learned from the kind of devout nutcases who were likely to approach a small child they didn't know at a truck stop or on a street corner, and begin to proselytize.  There was a lot of smiting involved.  And fire, lots of fire.  Pastor Jim did tell him once who the man on the cross was - specific question, specific answer - but why anyone would do that was still beyond him.  The smitey people didn't mention the New Testament often, mercy and forgiveness even less.

So, Dean calling God "stupid"?  Right in the middle of His house, where He could hear everything best?  Not the way to make Sam feel better.

"Does something else hurt?" Dean finally asked, when Sam was still blubbering several minutes later and his last ordered spit had only been a little pink.  "Here, let me see your hands.  Did you catch yourself wrong or something?"

It wasn't the fear of smiting - which ... he wasn't even sure what that meant, just that he didn't want anything to do with it - or the pain, or the blood, or being scared almost all the time, or the birthday wish failure, or the growing, deep-down certainty that he caused that failure by making Daddy angry, by being too much of a baby to take the gun and shoot the bogeyman in his closet when Dad told him to three days after his ninth birthday, and maybe Daddy wouldn't even come back at all this time ...

It was all of those things and it was none of them, but that was what came rushing out when Dean finally coaxed him into talking.  Sam was old enough to be embarrassed by the sniveling, by the weakness - "big boys don't cry, son" - but he wasn't old enough to make it stop.  Not that Dean told him to.  Dean never told him things like that.  He just listened, and when the words had finally slowed to a snotty, lisping trickle, he put his hands on both sides of Sam's face and forced him to make eye contact.

"Ok, first?  There is no such thing as the bogeyman, all right?  We talked about that.  You remember?"  He waited for Sam to nod before he continued.  "They're called rawheads, and they live in basements and sewers and stuff, not closets.  That place didn't even have a basement, so there was nowhere for one to be coming up from.

"Second, if Dad is angry at anyone about that night, it's me, 'cause I chewed his ass out over it after you fell asleep."

Sam gaped at him, scandalized and secretly thrilled.  Dean talking bad about God was one thing, but Dean talking bad about their father, and swearing all at the same time?  That just ... he couldn't even remember a precedent for that.

Even Dean seemed surprised, and he back-pedaled a bit.  "I mean, you do need to know how to defend yourself, Sammy, but that was ... a gun won't do squat against a rawhead, ok?  It takes electricity, lots of it.  If he's going to tell you about ... about stuff, he should at least tell you what works."

"Then ... why, Dean?"

Dean shrugged.  "He wanted you to feel safe, I guess.  He knew you were scared of having your own room for the first time, and you're always having bad dreams.  And we checked, like three times, so we knew for sure it was clean."  Dean chucked him (very gently) under the chin, smiling reassuringly.  "He was just trying to help, dude.  He loves you."

Sam sniffled and rolled his eyes; that was more like what he was used to.

"Sammy ... look, Dad's doing really important work right now.  He helps people.  So many people, Sammy!  And he's going to find out what ... he's going to ... dang it.  He's gonna make it all right for us ... and I want to be a part of that, someday real soon."  Sam's face crumpled and he grabbed at Dean, would have begged him to take that back, right that very second, if Dean hadn't shushed him.  "But Dad always comes back, right?  Never fails.  Just like I would always come back for you, Sammy.  Always.  That's how important you are."

Thumbing the last of the tears from his cheeks, Dean leaned in to kiss Sam softly on the mouth, not too quick but very careful, and that was always just theirs.  Special.  Dad would angle away if Sam ever tried, ever forgot, and tell him that big boys weren't supposed to kiss each other on the mouth.  Those were the rules.  Big boys didn't kiss each other, big boys didn't cry, and big boys didn't sleep in the same bed, weren't supposed to want to ... but Sam didn't believe him.  Not when he was nine.

Whenever he cried to Dean about it, frightened and confused and hungry for comfort, Dean would always tell him that brothers were exempt.  That was Dean's word, wherever he'd picked it up.  Exempt.  Just like with birthday candle wishes.  Just like with anything Sam needed.  He used to tell Sam that Dad must not have had a little brother, so he didn't always remember the rules correctly because he learned different ones.  They just had to be careful in front of him, so he didn't get upset - in front of anybody, really, since there was no way of telling what set of rules they were working from - and Dean never kissed him like that anyway unless Sam was crying or scared or angry, and he knew it would help him feel better.

It was just theirs, and it was perfect.

Pastor Jim made a fuss over Sam's injuries when Dean brought him down to the office, gave him a Scooby-Doo bandage for his chin and an especially mushy tuna salad sandwich (with a side of Tylenol) for lunch, but Dean had already taken care of the most important damage by then.

"I'm always going to take care of you.  No matter what.  You'll always have me to look after you, because you're always going to be my brother, and I'll always be yours, Sammy."

Nine was the year of learning that he was kind of in love with his big brother ... and eventually it would become the year of learning exactly how much he wasn't supposed to be.

---

You don't go to Hell for taking care of your own brother, Sammy.

Hey, every good story was supposed to have a moral, right?

Too bad it was bullshit.

Sam plucked idly at the woolen cassock, tucking it closer to Dean's throat, chuckling softly when Dean's hand twitched up to rumple it right back down.  Still stubborn.  Not even unconsciousness could mitigate that particular force of nature.

"You remember when Dad finally caught us?" Sam asked, barely resisting the urge to smooth the cassock up again; he might have learned his stubborn streak from Dean, but the student had long since become the master on that score.  "I was something like three hours from turning ten, and I was angry at him ... but that doesn't narrow it down much, huh?"  He laughed, ducking his head a little, even though Dean couldn't see him.  "I wanted him to stick around for my birthday, just one more day, but there was ... oh, I don't remember what, but it needed killing, apparently.  Time was a-wasting, people were dying, and he was packing up.  I was pissed, that awful, helpless mad I used to get because I knew he wasn't going to listen to me, even before I opened my mouth, and I told you ... I told you I was going to run away.  That'd teach him, right?

"We were staying in that nasty little rental place, remember?  The 'furnished' one?  The yard was just a patch of dirt with this gnarly old tree at the corner of it, and every time the wind kicked up at night we were convinced it was coming down on top of us.  I remember, I stomped away from Dad, out into the yard, like I really had someplace to go besides under that tree, and I told you I was getting out of there, done, that was it.  You gave me this look, this panicky look, and you ... you got a hold of me and I thought sure you were going to knock me down, but then you kissed me instead, and it was ... different.  It wasn't just to comfort me, like you used to do, it was ... I mean, we were both so young, I'm not sure either of us could have really understood what we were doing."  Thoughtless, Sam's free hand came up to toy with his lower lip, thumb stroking across it and feeling it curve into a bittersweet smile.  "You squashed my nose, and you were squeezing my ribs so hard I couldn't breathe ... but I didn't want you to let go.  Maybe not ever ...

"We didn't even know Dad was watching us, until he came out of that house like a storm.

"He got you by the scruff of your neck and just ... he wasn't just mad.  You could see in his eyes, he was scared.  Scared, and so sad.  Like there was something really bad wrong with us and he thought it might be his fault.  Maybe it was.  I don't know."  A tired, one-shouldered shrug.  "It's too easy to blame him.  It always was.  You've been trying to tell me that most of my life, and it's just now sinking in: he was doing his best with the cards he got dealt.  So, yeah, he freaked out, but ... we were his kids, you know?  He probably suspected already, the way he kept pushing us apart ... but then he'd always have to push us right back together again, just to keep us safe.  He couldn't have done much different, really, the life we were stuck in.

"Whatever.  You caught the worst of it.  You always did.

"There was just the one bedroom, so that was Dad's, but he put me in there and he told me not to come out until morning, if I didn't want the skinning of a lifetime.  He kept you in the living room where we'd been sleeping.  I could hear his voice all night, but not what he was saying to you, and I was ... God, I was terrified.  I'd never seen him that kind of angry, and I thought ... I mean, he never did, but I thought he might actually hurt you that night.  I remember, I peed my pants, first time in a long time ... and then I just sat in it, in the corner under the window, all night.  I wasn't coming out of that room for anything.

"He never really talked to me about it, not even when he put me in the tub the next day - I didn't even get one of those 'big boys don't' speeches - and I remember ... I was confused, even when you tried to explain it to me.  I didn't understand what we did wrong, not then, and you never ... I didn't feel ashamed.  You never put that on me.  I just knew, from then on, I had a separate room if there was one and, if there wasn't, Dad would get a cot.  That was my bed, and that was where I was going to sleep.  End of discussion.

"I don't think I actually did sleep for at least a month ... except in the car.

"Remember?  I used to sack out sideways on the back seat, and you'd reach back between your seat and the door, where Dad couldn't see.  As long as we were touching, even if it was just your fingertips on my ankle, I could sleep.  I was safe.  It was that simple."

Sam swiped the back of his hand across his eyes.  He wasn't crying - he was pretty much tapped out at that point - but they felt swollen, itchy, stinging with salt and candlelight and too little sleep.  Dean's touchy-feely flashbacks to childhood had been helping, as Dean had surely meant them to, helping Sam forget and sink down to somewhere peaceful in his own mind, hold on to it for a few more precious minutes of the morning.  There was only so much he could accomplish, though, when his touches weren't just a reminder of his presence but the looming threat of his absence.  The reason Sam couldn't sleep worth fuck-all in the first place.

"What was I, twelve?  When I decided I needed my 'space' all of a sudden, like I was such a grown-up?  You know, except for when I wasn't.  I started pushing you away, and you were like sixteen so you were old enough for Dad to start taking you with him on hunts, or he thought so ... and Dad started relaxing for the first time in a while.  If you were willing to leave me and I was willing to let you go, even if I was just sitting in the car or asleep back at the motel, we must have been ok, right?  Back to what we were supposed to be.

"That made it a whole lot easier when we weren't ...

"You used to wait until Dad was dead asleep, and ... hey, he was the one who trained you up to move like a ghost.  He was the one who made sure I always had a separate space.  Sometimes I didn't even know you were coming to me until you were there.  It wasn't often but, somehow, you knew when I needed you.  You just knew, especially once it was the three of us out there.  Once I got my first good look at what my life was really about.

"You would lie there with me, kiss me, hold me, talk to me, and ... even then, that was all it was.  I was getting old enough to know there was more to it, something more I wanted from you, but you ... you never made me feel ashamed of it, Dean, never ... but you never let it past a certain point, either."  Sam laughed ruefully.  "Which was frustrating as all hell, by the way.  I didn't even know what I was asking you for at first, but I was dead convinced I was going to explode if I didn't get it.  You never ... you never hurt me, Dean ... even when I hurt you.  Even when we were right back to barking and posturing at each other the next day, being men in Dad's eyes.  Telling you I didn't even need you.  You never made me feel wrong.

"I figured shame out all on my own."

His hand tightened into a fist over the cassock, over Dean's heart, the metronome of Sam's entire existence.  He couldn't feel it now, could barely feel the stuttered rise and fall of every hard-won breath.  It took everything he had to get the last of it out, force himself to say it ... but the story just wouldn't have been complete without it.

"When I told you and Dad about the scholarship to Stanford, I recognized Dad's anger.  It was the same as what I saw in his eyes under that tree, when he was shaking you like the family dog that just tried to bite his kid: angry and disappointed and scared, all at once.  I wasn't going to back down, fuck no, but I wasn't sure how long I could take having him in my face like that before I threw up on his shoes.  You were so calm, though.  You got between us and you gave me a chance to grab my bag and get out the door.  I was planning to walk to the bus station - it was just a few miles - sleep there waiting for my ride ... but you followed me in the Impala and picked me up.  She wasn't even yours yet, man!  I know you must have caught sixteen kinds of hell over that when you got back ... but you drove me all the way to Palo Alto first.  Two days on the road.

"We stopped over in ... oh, I think it was Utah?  Some no-name place, generic little motel.  King-size bed ... you told me that was all they had left.  Maybe it was.

"I just ... I woke up in the middle of the night with you on top of me, kissing the life out of me, and just begging me, 'please don't go, please don't go, Sammy, please don't go.'  You were moving against me, touching me everywhere, and I realized that this was what I'd been wanting from you before I even knew what it was, and I hated you for giving it to me then.  I finally had my chance to break free, and I hated you for being what I needed, and I loved you so much it hurt ... and when we were done and you were still shaking and smearing your fingers through our come on my stomach, like it meant something ... God, Dean ... I ...

"I looked you right in the eye, and I let you believe that you'd taken something from me that wasn't yours.  I didn't ... I don't even know if you ever wanted it for yourself at all.  I don't ...

"I just wanted to be normal.  I wanted to be safe and have friends, a job.  A home.  Like, if I could just have that, everything else would follow and I'd be happy, just happy, for what felt like the first time in my life.  I was so scared, so angry.  I wanted to be normal so badly ... I just convinced myself that I was.

"And if I was normal?  And if a normal person wouldn't want to do that with his own brother?  Well, it must have been you, right?  Your fault, not mine.

"So I left.

"I ... I forgot what we were, Dean.  I made myself forget what we were, and I'm sorry.  I'm sorry I threw you away.  I'm sorry I forced myself so goddamn deep into who you are, you'd rather sell your soul than ... God, Dean, I'm sorry."

Dean's head rolled against Sam's thigh, his back arching like he was trying to push himself up, and for one exultant moment, Sam thought he was coming around, even trying to respond ... until he noticed the bloody, black froth rising between Dean's parted lips, spilling from the corners like death's own slaughterhouse grin.

Panic-fast, Sam yanked Dean up sideways and half into his lap, letting Dean's head droop down between his knees, and a few thick, sluggish splats smacked the hardwood floor between Sam's sneakers, smearing the leg of his jeans when Dean arched again, his open mouth a slur of blood.  It wasn't vomit; it came straight from Dean's lungs, and he wasn't getting any air in around it.  The Heimlich Maneuver was Sam's first thought but that didn't seem the best approach, so he did the only other thing he could come up with, whacking Dean on the back to try to loosen the clogging flood: three quick, forceful blows.  The third turned out to be the charm, knocking loose an evil-looking knot of mucous and dark, jellied blood, followed by a thinner stream of the venom-black infection Sam was becoming all too familiar with.

He hadn't gotten it all.

How could he get it all, he wondered, wretched, as Dean went completely limp in his arms again, the only color showing on his face a smear of blood, a pale tinge of purple-blue beneath.  What could he do?  Should he have tried to make Dean aspirate the holy water after all?  God, how did the black dog even do this to him in the first place?  Did it breathe the poison in his face, make him inhale it, or simply bite him somewhere Sam hadn't found?  Or maybe it was carrying some kind of souped-up bacteria that wasn't precisely demonic, but ... fuck!  Sam could have literally drowned Dean in holy water and still not fixed this.

A fresh scrabble-clatter of claws against the door, insistent, and there was no way they could have heard Dean this time.

"Go away," Sam murmured, helpless and small, as he used the crumpled smock to swipe at the mess on Dean's face.

A hospital.  That one thought kept lighting up Sam's brain like the manic strobe of a bubble-light, an endless circle, back and back to the hopeless promise of it: he had to get Dean to a hospital.  They wouldn't be able to fix him, no more than Sam had - less, not even holy water, the closest thing to a black dog antivenin in existence - but they could at least prolong (his agony) his life.  Ventilator.  Suction.  Antibiotics that might even do him some good.  Just a few more days.  Just a few more hours.  Long enough to call Bobby, pool their resources, find the answer ... there had to be an answer!  He just needed a little more time ...

Dean couldn't die tonight.  Even if he died early, the deal stayed in effect, and ... he was promised an entire year!  A year for Sam to find the loophole, the catch, anything to get his stupid, brave, stubborn, beautiful brother out of his monstrous deal.  A year for him to track down that red-eyed bitch and call the deal off entirely, if it came down to that, to leaving Dean alone.

A year for him to make Dean understand exactly how much he was worth.

"Go away!" Sam bellowed, but he could hear the short, scrunching squeals of the pews in front of the door moving, a little at a time.  The dogs were done waiting.  They were coming in.

As gentle with him as with a sleeping child, Sam slipped out from under Dean and arranged him on the pew, sideways and slightly curled, his face right at the edge over the foot-space to help keep his airway as clear as possible.  He was still breathing.  He was painfully still, silent and as pale as the bleached white smock Sam tucked between his ear and the wood, but when Sam laid his fingers against Dean's lips, he could feel that he was still breathing ... and as long as that was the case, Sam wasn't done fighting.  Not by a long shot.

He had the flask of holy water in hand, full to the top and with the cap twisted off, as he headed toward the door.

"Don't worry, Dean," he said, "they're not touching you again," and that was simple fact.

There was a thump and a lurch, and a huge, wet head and sloped shoulders bullied past the door - one of the smaller dogs; two eyes - but it was already trying to withdraw before it even cleared the threshold, jerking back with a yelping squeal and a trail of white smoke.  It wasn't the only one trying to get through, though.  He could hear them milling around, reluctant, the clatter of their claws and their nervous whines.  One at a time, they would get up the nerve and throw themselves at the door, driving it further and further open before falling back.

Sam braced himself.  If they came, it was going to be after the door gave way fully, at speed and in a group.  They might not survive a direct assault, but that didn't mean he was going to get off easy either.

The door had started to break up from the first hit and, once they concentrated their efforts above the level of the pews, it didn't take long to reduce it to shards and splinters.  Sam could see them now, the brimstone embers of their eyes in the deeper dark of their fur.  Five pairs of eyes.

Five.

Sam only just had time to register that number before a jangling crash from behind him told him exactly where the sixth of the beasts had gone.  It set him up.  That scary-smart motherfucker set him up.

The biggest of the black dogs stood on wide-splayed feet in front of the chancel, its filthy coat still bristling with the rainbow remains of the window it had leaped through, the window Sam had been watching it from before.  Its head hung low between its shoulders and it was shivering as smoke rolled along its flanks, a gray-white caul where it clung close under the fur.  It let out a gargling, abject moan of pain that almost had Sam feeling sorry for it.  Almost.

It was also much closer to Dean than Sam himself was now ... and it knew that.

He remembered this sensation from the crash with the semi eight months ago: his body trapped in slow-motion with the rest of the world while his mind punched into overdrive, stretching the split second between his first glimpse of headlights and his own stunning impact with the window into a crystalline eternity of helplessness.  The dog was advancing on Dean, almost on top of him, and it would be the work of seconds to finish what it started.  Somewhere behind him, the other dogs scuffled and mewled, too timid to come inside and too cowed to disobey their alpha.  The flask tumbled from Sam's fingers, turned a slow spin, clank and spatter at his feet, and all the emotion in him - fear, guilt, gratitude, anger, need, despair, love - all came to a whitewater crescendo in his chest, breaking into a strange, warm sense of peace ... and the low-banked glow of controlled power.

"No," Sam said quietly.

The dog stopped, cocking its head toward Sam and, for the first time since this nightmare began, Sam looked into its malignant yellow eye and saw fear.

It was like holding electricity in his hands, feeling the current encircle his heart, spark between the particles of iron in his blood ... but it wasn't painful.  God, not painful at all.  Nothing he would have expected to have still in him, with the yellow-eyed demon gone ... or feel come so easy.

"He's mine," Sam told the dog, serene in his command, confident of obedience.  "He's mine, pledged and accepted.  You can't have him."

Sam took one slow step forward, and the dog dropped to its belly on the bare wood floor, slinking back toward the altar.  It whimpered, a pitiful wheeze in its throat, tongue lolling from its jaws, and the footprints it left behind were more of charred flesh now than filth.  They moved in synch, him toward and it away, until it backed up against the chancel stair and could go no further, cowering at Sam's feet.

His arms were spread as if in invocation, standing over the piteous, smoldering thing like a priest, like a prophet, and he found himself thinking of Pastor Jim, unbidden.  Of a conversation they had when Sam was fifteen and already world-weary, lost.  Years before a demon in human guise would break into the basement of the parsonage and slit the Pastor's throat.  Years before Sam had any idea of what he himself might be.

"You have to understand, Sam ... angelic or demonic, good or evil: it all springs from the same source.  Different decisions, yes, different applications, but the stricter definition can too easily trip you up.  As surely as God brought both into existence, He also gave us free will, the ability, the responsibility to make our own choices within that framework.

"They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and it may well be ... but I would also contend that there is no power in this universe that cannot be bettered by good intent; love can never steer you too far astray ..."

I'll always be yours, Sammy.

"He's not yours to take."

The poor creature let out one last, faint warble of hurt and cold despair, curling in on itself, laying its tail across its nose ... and then its shuddering stopped and it was just a carcass, crumbling to smoke and glass and powder.

As Sam turned, trying to find his way back to Dean's side, the warm rush of power was already receding, leaving him shivering and light-headed.  He was already starting to forget the feel of it, like a word he knew the meaning of but couldn't quite remember, couldn't hold the shape of in his mouth.  He staggered, his hip fetching hard against one of the pews, enough to knock it out of true.  A few more shambling steps and he sagged against the edge of the pew in front of Dean's, slumping down to sit on the floor beside it, his long legs piled useless as jackstraws.

"Dean," he said, a word that was so much more than just a name, "Dean, I ..." and his fingertips ghosted over the bony round of Dean's ankle, over denim and cotton and leather.

There was a spark, a tiny arc of gold-touched light, he saw it, felt it pass from him to Dean ... and something else was going with it.  A pull at his heart, like fine threads being drawn away.  Like he was unraveling.  He felt Dean's leg flex under his hand, restless, heard the hiss of Dean's next breath even through the rushing in his own ears.  Somehow, he knew Dean's heartbeat was ticking faster, a plucked string shivering in Sam's mind, even as his own began to fumble.

He never tried to stop it.

"Dean ..."

He was falling backward, losing his grip on his brother, but he just couldn't fight gravity anymore.  His head thumped back against the hardwood floor, rebounding before tipping toward the aisle, and he thought that probably should have hurt ... but everything was ... muffled.  Distant.  Calm.  The power was gone, the dog was just a dream and Sam was just a man, exhausted and well-deserving of a rest ...

Somewhere between one heavy blink and the next, the candlelight swelled in his vision, subsuming everything ...

... the world was golden ...

... the world was white ...

... and then there was no world at all.

---

"Sam!  Don't you do this, man.  Don't you dare.  Please ... Sammy!"

The surface Sam was lying on was really hard, and doing really unpleasant things to the bonier parts of his anatomy.  That was the first thing he noticed.  The second thing was the light hitting him full in the face, all red-orange-yellow and persistent, prying at the seams of his eyelids with tiny, spiky fingers.

Then the shaking - thing number three - started up, and he forgot everything else in favor of trying to wrap his entire body like a protective bubble around the thrumming engine of agony that was his head.

"Oh, thank God ... Sam?"

Thing number four was the fact that it was Dean's voice coaxing him awake, Dean's hands at his shoulder and hip, grounding him, and that was finally enough to make him try opening his eyes.  He had to slam them shut again almost immediately, but it was at least enough to make a point: he was trying to reassemble his consciousness from a jigsaw scatter of pieces, and the shaking thing really needed to stop while he got a handle on that.  Sam's second attempt at the sense of sight was somewhat more successful, and Dean's worried, conscious, beautiful face came into a focus that only wobbled around the very edges.

"Dean?" he croaked, and even he winced at how pitiful he sounded.

"Hey, Sammy ..."  Dean's jaw worked for a moment and he coughed, dry and obvious, crushing the last of an expression he didn't want Sam to see into his own closed fist.  "So ... you finally done napping, princess?"

Sam's response to that wasn't really a word - at least, he didn't think it was - but by then Dean had him by the lapels and was hoisting him up to sit with his back to one of the pews, and he was kind of distracted by holding the crunchy pieces of his skull together with only the force of his will.  He grabbed hold of Dean's wrists, more luck than precision, and it seeped into his foggy attention by degrees that there was no bandage under his hand.  Sure enough, when he managed a sort of cross-eyed focus on the forearm under his chin, no wrappings.  No wound either.  There was only a faint, pale scatter of scars, like freckles in negative.  Sam could swear that he already saw them fading ... but then, he could also swear that the entire church was doing a slow spin to the left, so ...

"You're all right," Sam whispered, breathy and full of wonder.  Goggle-eyed too, probably, loopy as a bird that'd just flown into a plate-glass window.  It would have hurt his head too goddamn much to start crying, so he settled for a soppy smile.

Dean ducked his head.  "About that.  Um.  What the fuck happened?  Because I thought ..."  He indicated his own arms with a jerk of his chin.  "It was pretty bad, right?"

"Yeah, it was, but ... I don't ... I can't really remember.  I know I tried holy water but, I thought ..."  Squinting through a dull haze of pain and the pure, warm-spectrum light beaming in through the window over the altar, Sam saw a cold pile of ashes at the base of the chancel.  It had to be the remains of a black dog but, beyond that, he honestly didn't know.  He thought there was something ... something important to what had happened, something unexpected ... God, but head injuries were a pain.  "The big one got in through that window, the one that bit you ... but then everything's just blank.  I must have passed out."

"So, one of them down then, at least," Dean grinned.  "Just five more to go ..."

Sam's limbs were in uncoordinated motion before his head had a chance to file an objection, but if that bright icicle-knife of pain puncturing the base of his skull couldn't made the veto stick, then Dean's "hey, dude, easy, easy," wasn't going to keep him down.  He struggled up to his knees, and the lurch of it pushed Dean back, forcing him to sit on the pew behind him or trip over it, but he recovered quickly.  Leaning down, he steadied Sam with strong hands gripping his elbows, and Sam was close enough to his face to see the odd little flicker of his eyelids when he said, "No."

Dean looked genuinely confused.  "What?"

"No, Dean.  No.  We're done with this one."

"Sammy," Dean tried, but Sam just bulldozed him.

"We'll contact Bobby, tell him everything we know about it.  He can pass it on to someone else ..."

"We can't just ..."

"I don't care!"

Sam clutched at the front of Dean's jacket like it was the only thing holding him up - which wasn't too far from the truth - locked on to his eyes and made him see the desperation in his own, every last scrap of it.  He wasn't backing down.  He couldn't.

"We've got a year, Dean.  We've got ten months, and I can't ... I just ... I want all of it, ok?  Please."  He leaned into his grip, trying to find the right pressure, the perfect timbre of his voice that would make Dean listen to him; make him hear the words Sam didn't even know how to string together himself.  "We're done with this one."

Dean didn't answer in words.  They were so close, Sam felt the faint breath of a laugh he couldn't even hear brush his cheek, a tiny huff of surrender, maybe even gratitude.  A little disbelief in the mix as well, a little confusion as to why Sam was so worried about him in the first place, and Sam wanted so badly to erase what distance there was left between them, just take Dean's mouth and everything else with it.  Enough of this ridiculous dance of right and wrong, sin and salvation, love and love, that never got them anywhere but lonely, deluded and incomplete ...

He didn't quite dare.  He wasn't sure he had that right anymore.  He wasn't sure he ever did.

Dean was kind enough to spare him the uncertainty by kissing Sam himself.

| Inspiration by Dreamlittleyo |

It was tentative, almost shy after all these years, sweet in a way that nothing else about them was anymore.  Just the warm, dry press of lips and the perfection of how they fit together, blurring the boundaries into something comfortable and necessary and them.  When Dean pulled away, Sam followed him to the limit of his reach.  Felt the flicker of lashes against his own brow when Dean lowered his eyes.  Tasted the sour bite of fear on his own lips when Dean whispered, "Sammy, I'm ..."

Sam just took Dean's face in both hands and reeled him right back in, took the words into his own mouth and replaced the weight of them with his tongue.  Too long, too goddamn many detours along the way.  He kissed Dean breathless and then he kissed him some more, until his own vision took on a spotty, velvet cast and Dean was trembling under his hands, and he had no choice but to break away.

He pressed his forehead to Dean's, breathed in the living presence of him and said, "If you try to apologize to me right now, I swear to God I will break your nose."

He actually heard Dean's laugh that time, and it settled inside him warm as an ember.

"I'm going to fix this, Dean," he promised, and when Dean would have interrupted, "we're going to fix this, all of it.  You promised me once: always.  I'm going to hold you to that."

One last kiss, quick, like stamping in a seal, and then Sam let him go.

Dean didn't agree with or even acknowledge what Sam had said ... but he didn't take the opportunity to scramble away either, to blow it all off with some sarcastic, cheapening comment, and Sam chose to take that as a positive sign.

"C'mon," Dean said, when he found his voice again, "we should get back to the car ..."  He trailed off, looking so stricken for a moment that Sam started to worry he was still hurt somehow, but then he went on, "Oh, shit, the car!  We need to get back to her before somebody tries to tow her!  I swear, if they beat her up any worse than she already is ..."

Sam smiled to himself, wider than he probably should have.  "Oh, yeah, you're back to normal."

They kind of both were.

They'd just forgotten for a while what their "normal" was supposed to be.

Impatient, Dean levered Sam up to his feet, got a good grip and supported him out past spent candles and splotches of blood like wilted rose petals.  Between that and the charred dog carcass by the chancel, it looked like the aftermath of an amateur satanic ritual, or at least they could hope the locals thought so: that it was some teenage rebellion thing, best dealt with locally and on the quiet.  Not that one more desecration on the Winchester's record would make a whole lot of difference, if someone did dust for prints.  It just would have been nice to leave one small town behind them that wouldn't hold a grudge.

There was a table beside the door with a small brass plate on it, which might as easily have been an ashtray as an offering plate, from the shape of it; Sam made Dean stop anyway, emptied every bill he could find out of his wallet and deposited it in the plate.

Dean groaned melodramatically.  "Dude ... I didn't let you win all of that so you could just blow it, you know."

"Shut up," Sam said fondly, and leaned into Dean's near hip hard enough that he tripped over the threshold, sending them stumbling down the steps into a muggy, mist-soaked August morning.  Dean growled at him over that one, but Sam was laughing so hard by the time they hit their knees in the rain-heavy grass, Dean couldn't hold on to his indignation.  They were filthy and ragged and plain stupid-lucky, wet denim kept them hobbled and the sun baked righteous disapproval into the backs their necks as they hiked toward the Impala, and they were alive and they were together ...

It was going to be pretty goddamn hard to top that for a while.

---

Ten months.

Then forever to follow.

One way or the other.

---

"Kathy's Song" - Simon & Garfunkel
ALBUM: (1972) Greatest Hits

I hear the drizzle of the rain
Like a memory it falls
Soft and warm continuing
Tapping on my roof and walls

And from the shelter of my mind
Through the window of my eyes
I gaze beyond the rain-drenched streets
To England where my heart lies

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day

And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you

And as I watch the drops of rain
Weave their weary paths and die
I know that I am like the rain
There but for the grace of you go I

The End

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