Archive of Our Own ^beta

“No, not me. Sam. You remember, they ‘sterilized’ him? Very much against his will?”

“Oh.” Cas frowned. “Yes, it would be a trivial matter. But the reasoning was sound. He’s - as much as our feelings towards him as an individual have softened, he’s an abomination of nature. Preventing him from breeding-”

Dean shuddered, and not for show. “Tell you what. Trust me on this, do not ever use the term breeding to refer to human reproduction, got it?”

“No, I don’t ‘get’ it. But I will heed your advice.”

“Humans take reproduction seriously, Cas. Choosing of whether to have kids, and when, is - it’s unthinkable to take that from someone. People spend tens - hundreds of thousands of dollars on fertility treatments and risk their lives to abort unwanted pregnancies. It’s a big deal.”

Cas frowned. “We don’t know what would transpire if he were to reproduce. What abominations he might spawn, especially if Lucifer does possess him. It seems to have been a rational decision by the auction house.”

“They saw him as a something, Cas. He’s not. He’s a someone. And he might wanna keep it, I don’t know. But it should be his choice.”

Cas still looked baffled. “Why is one person’s reproductive capacity important enough to squander time discussing when there are world-ending threats at hand?”

“Look. We’re asking him to make the choice say no to being Lucifer’s vessel. A man who has literally been trained since infancy to obey orders from others. I don’t know how this is gonna go, but I don’t imagine Lucifer’ll walk away nicely if Sam says no. We can’t make him say no, it’ll have to be his choice. If we expect an abused, broken man to stand up to the literal Devil, don’t you reckon he should get some practice deciding what happens to his body?”

Castiel’s face softened. “Yes.”

“They tried to train him, and tame him, like an animal. It didn’t work, because he’s human. If we have any chance of winning this, it’s going to be thanks to that unbreakable human streak in him they couldn’t beat or train or snip out of him. We have to build his spirit up, and this’d be a decent start.”

Sam huddled on the couch, studying a dusty text about wendigos. Dean handed him a beer and sat. Sam actually took seconds at meals without asking now, but he still wouldn't help himself to beer or snacks outside of meal times.

“Thanks,” said Sam with a slight smile, his shoulders relaxing. He’d stopped reacting to Dean with dread; now, he seemed to welcome Dean into his space with relief. 

Taking a swig of beer, Dean gestured to the tags that had been crunched into Sam’s ears like he was livestock. At the time, he hadn’t felt pity, just - no, actually, it seemed awful. He’d shielded himself against caring. He told himself it didn’t hurt that bad, people had it done willingly all the time. That the monster was dangerous, that he was lucky to be alive. That somehow that otherness gave them the right. 

And he tried like hell to overlook the fist clenching Cas’s coat to cope with the misery, while said monster tried not to cry.

“Kinda surprised you haven’t taken those out,” said Dean, keeping his voice gentle.

Sam’s eyes widened in horror. “I would never-”

“I owe you an apology for not doing it,” said Dean. “I - helped you clean your ear, when I should have taken the damn things out. It didn’t occur to me because - because I wasn’t seeing a wholly human person yet. I’m sorry. I mean that.”

Sam’s eyes grew almost liquid, fear and adoration battling it out. “You were kind. You were so kind, it terrified me.”

Dean tightened his lips to get his own emotions under control. “I thought - I thought I was being ‘humane’. That wasn’t kind, Sam. It was monstrous. Maybe we were both too messed up in our thinking to see it then, and I’m glad you saw me as kind if that was any comfort to you.”

Tears stung Sam’s eyes. “I hate them. Cas healed my ears, they don’t hurt, but I hate them.”

“So take them out,” said Dean. “But - you gotta do it because you have that right as a human being, get me? Not because I gave you permission. That permission isn’t mine to give. It’s your decision, and your right to make it.”

Sam reached up and brushed the tags so tentatively, Dean wondered if he’d even dared touch them before. “But you own me?”

“I bought you,” said Dean. “Which is fucked up all on its own. I don’t own you. Nobody owns you. Whatever’s going on with your demon blood type, you’re a person, and we made owning people pretty friggin' illegal for a reason.”

“I’m willing to be yours,” said Sam. “I kind of want to be yours.”

Dean impulsively wrapped an arm around his back. Sam was so - something, that it made him feel like he didn’t have to play tough. “You can be mine. You can be my friend, my family, my little brother, my whatever. You can’t be my property. Legally or morally.”

Sam allowed himself a soft sigh of relief and touched his ear again. “Would - would you take them out?”

Dean’s heart went soft at the request, but he decided to make sure there wasn’t some horrific reasoning behind it. “Why me?”

“Because…. you’re kind. And the person who put them in wasn’t. It just feels like it would balance the scales,” said Sam.

Dean rubbed Sam’s back, marveling at the intensity of the instinct that compelled him to. He’d had good friends, near lifelong friends, that he hadn’t ever known anything close to this drive to comfort and defend and nurture.  

Sam closed his eyes when Dean steadied his head with one palm and carefully explored his ear tags with the other. Dean was the only owner - no, the only person - in his life who had never touched him roughly. Never hit him. Even when Dean thought he’d purchased a monster, his touch had been light and pleasant cuffing Sam to the bed, giving him pain meds, or helping him wash his throbbing ear. 

Since Dean now saw him as human, disavowed ownership of him, and offered to be his big brother…. 

“I don’t think these are meant to come off by hand,” said Dean, releasing his ear and giving his arm a caring pat. “Let me get a pair of wire cutters, okay?”

Horror lanced through Sam’s abdomen like an icy pit had opened up in there, and he got lightheaded, heart pounding. He didn’t realize he’d recoiled until he felt the absence of Dean‘s warm palm on his head. 

“Sam?” Dean sounded half horrified, half amused. “I’m going to cut the earrings with them, not the ears, you goofball.”

“Oh.” The relief was like a rubber band snapping, and for no reason at all, he was giggling. Even to his own fucked-up mind, the idea that Dean would chop them out of his ears was absurd. “I’m sorry. I swear I don’t think you’re a monster, really.”

Dean patted him. “I’ll be right back, dork.”

When Dean returned with a tiny pair of wire cutters, Sam simply glowed warm inside. He’d wondered, once, if it might be safe to ask Dean if they might consider removing that black, “shoot on sight” tag. Hell would just bring him back, but Sam would feel the bullet which might not even kill him. Worst of both worlds.

Maybe he’d harbored a naïve fantasy or two that Dean would one day remove them, but he never expected it to come true. Dean returned his welcoming look with a warm smile in his eyes. “Let’s do this, Sammy.”

Sammy.

Sam closed his eyes and held completely still, letting Dean work. It took him a considerable amount of fiddling, but it was all gentle touches and firm pressure, no pinching, no pain. Sam didn’t even flinch, or feel the need to brace himself so he wouldn’t flinch, each time a hard snapping sound announced the death of one of the tags.

Sammy.

Having those tags attached to him had been trivial on the grand scale of things and devastating to that tiny sliver of hope that he clung to. Now, he seemed to have an angel, a grumpy father figure, and a vying-for-adoption-as-older-brother who saw him as redeemable and worth caring about.

And calling Sammy.

“All done,” said Dean cheerfully, patting him on the back. Not like someone he pitied, but like a friend. “So, what, do we burn these?”

“Throw ‘em in an outhouse?” suggested Sam.

Dean laughed, a genuine, gleeful, affectionate laugh of the kind Sam had always longed to hear in response from another person. 

“Cas can heal the holes,” said Dean, bracing himself. This was a deliberate lead-in to the conversation he dreaded. “He can heal that unwanted vasectomy of yours, if you want him to.”

Sam stopped breathing, turned his head away from Dean, and froze. “I - I….” he paused because he was shaking.

“You don’t have to want him to,” clarified Dean. “But I wanna make it clear, this is your choice. Whatever you decide, it’s for you. You don’t even have to tell me what you decide, you could just drop a word in Cas’s ear.”

Sam looked right at him with those devastatingly stressed, soft, human eyes. “I don’t see it ever being a good thing for me to bring a child into this life. I used to want to be sterilized, but I knew I couldn’t afford it, and that’s so not a part of my anatomy I want Azazel or a hunter even thinking about meddling with.”

Dean grimaced. “I hear that. All of it.”

“What do you think?” asked Sam.

“I think if there was ever a decision you should make without someone else’s influence, it’s this one,” said Dean. “I’m not standing here thinking there’s a right or a wrong answer, just that you should make it.”

Some stress left Sam’s eyes, but he kept looking directly into Dean’s. Which was all kinds of uncomfortable when they were talking about the guy’s junk. But he wanted Sam to trust him, and if this wasn‘t trust, he didn’t know what was.

“I want it reversed this second,” said Sam. “I know that puts a bigger responsibility on me, and I might get it done on my own someday. But they don’t get to just sterilize me.”

“Cas!” yelled Dean. The angel came strolling inside and glanced questioningly at them both. To his credit, he managed to put as sensitive an expression on his face as an angel was capable of. It looked like a constipated guy was trying to ask a girl out on a date, but the effort was palpable.

“What is your decision, Sam?” Dean smiled. He hadn’t thought to caution Cas to ask Sam directly for the verdict, but bless his feathery little ass, sometimes Cas wasn’t one hundred percent clueless.

Sam met his gaze squarely. “I prefer to make my own choices. I want to to be whole again. Please.”

The please was a polite afterthought, not a plea, and Dean couldn’t have been prouder.

With a light touch, it was done. The holes in his ears faded, and Dean did a double-take at how much more human and innocent Sam looked without the ugly tags. Sam tentatively hugged Cas, who hugged him back, gave a brusque nod, and vanished.

Sam stood stunned, but held his head high and unflinching. Come to think of it, he hadn’t flinched when Dean cut the studs out of his ears, either. That realization made Dean grin like a madman. 

He didn’t have a single solitary clue why he found it so fulfilling being trusted by Sam in particular, or took personal pride in seeing him emerge from his abused shell and learn to stand tall, but it was the best thing ever.

Those heartbreaking, terrified, gentle eyes had moved Dean to his core. The secure, happy, still gentle expression in them now was everything. 

Everything.