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Dean Winchester is twenty-eight. His baby brother is dying in his arms.
Sam can’t talk. He opens and closes his mouth like a suffocating fish, eyes wandering until they stop on Dean’s—big eyes, wide and trusting and stupid eyes—all while his lifeblood pours out over Dean’s hands. Somehow, he doesn’t look like he’s in pain, only confused; which is odd because Dean feels like the one who’s been stabbed, the wound boring through him as he struggles to breathe, as his world ends—
Dean Winchester is thirty-five. He’s dying in his baby brother’s arms.
There’s a hole in his chest—that’s why it’s hard to breathe. The intensity of the pain, which, as it turns out, is not metaphorical, starts making more sense.
Sam runs straight to him, completely ignoring the elephant-sized threat in the room. Dean really, really means to chew him out for it, but, well... There’s a hole in his chest. And he feels better with Sam’s hands on him than without. Shame is absent.
“Sammy, you go to get out of here before he comes back,” Dean settles on instead of a real tongue-lashing, the blood in his lungs turning every word red. Right, Sam’s gotta go before the guy, uh, Jake, gets back.
Bobby, he goes after the guy. The guy. What guy? There’s only Sam in his arms and a hole in his jacket. A hole in his back.
No, that’s not right. The guy’s, um, Marv. Metatron! Metatron. Goddamn Metatron. Dean would rather have been stabbed in the back. Going down like this to a guy like that head-on? Embarrassing. Plus, he’s afraid that if he looks down, he’ll see it—the black thing inside him eating him up.
Goddamn, this hurts. How had Sam just lain there and said nothing?
Sam doesn’t look at him, now that he thinks about it. Can’t. His eyes roll around in his skull aimlessly; or, if they’re looking for something, they can’t find it. Dean has to hold him up because his legs give out; he’s soon-to-be-deadweight. His spine is a puzzle with two pieces. There’s no pain, but the confusion is agonizing enough.
Dean can’t stand. He can hardly move. His spine—
Is whole. But his bones are powder and his guts... His guts don’t feel right. It hurts.
Sam shushes him, tells him to shut up (bitch), then pulls out a bandanna out of nowhere and tries to plug him up with it. Even makes Dean help, the moron, and Dean can’t argue with it right now because what else do you do with a hole? You plug it up.
“Just save your energy, all right?” Sam orders as they hold him together, voice wobbling all over the Richter scale. “Oh, man. We’ll stop the bleeding. We’ll-we’ll get you a doctor or—or I’ll find a spell. You’re gonna be okay.”
“Hey, listen to me. We’re gonna patch you up, okay? You’ll be good as new. Huh? I’m gonna take care of you. I’m gonna take care of you.”
But Sam dies anyway.
Dean will take care of this.
“Listen to me. It’s better this way,” Dean whispers and for some reason Sam is shocked by this, as if he didn’t see what’s been gnawing away inside him from the beginning. Sam knew. Knows. “The Mark. It’s making me into something I don’t want to be.”
“You have to watch out for me, all right? And if I ever turn into something that I’m not... you have to kill me.”
Something he’s not. A wicked thing. A dark thing. A black hole from which nothing can escape.
There’s a part of him, wretched and cowardly, that fears he will listen. That his brother will look him over, realize that he’s not worth the trouble, has never been worth the trouble, that something has been wrong with him his whole life, and pull the trigger. Put them both out of his misery. Dean Sam’s not that smart.
He can’t think straight. Sam tells him not to worry about the demon blood the Mark, forget the Mark, and hauls him to his feet.
Dean’s insides dance, curdle, and rearrange themselves; but they stay inside him for now. Sam wants him to live. His brother wants him.
“What happened with you being okay with this?”
“I lied.”
“I promise.”
Thank you,” he blubbers, touching his face in the dark of that damned hotel room. His face. “You are...”
But he’d lied.
You are what? What had he meant to say? Why had he been shoved away when they were so close together? Why did they stop? Why do they always stop just short?
“Ain’t that a bitch,” Dean gasps; and perhaps he’s imagining Sam’s grip tightening but it feels real. It feels real even as the rest of his body goes numb. He only exists in the spaces under Sam’s fingertips.
They don’t walk. They stumble, trip, limp. There’s no destination besides forward. Thunder crackles up above, mocking him with the promise of washing the failure off his body, but when he looks up—
Water. On his face. The last thing he feels. The last thing he’ll ever feel, besides his brother’s hands. The pain is gone.
—there’s only a featureless gray ceiling. Nothing’s going his way today.
Sam drags them along toward fruitless salvation. That’s him with Sam, the ol’ ball and chain. The thought almost makes him laugh (though he chokes on it before it can form)—Sam would never think like that. That’s how Dean knows it’s all real. That’s how he knows he’s actually dying and not having a fucked up vision like they he used to get back in the day. That, and everything still hurts.
Then... it stops hurting. All at once.
Oh.
“Sam. Hold up. Hold up,” Dean insists as his knees buckle. Sam takes the hint and gracelessly leans him against some hunk of machinery to steady him, giving him a moment to breathe.
He can’t breathe. I’m not breathing.
Dean Sam thinks he’ll still be breathing after this. Stupid. “I got something to say to you.”
“What?” Sam asks, desperate for any secret, any revelation. What else can there be but for Dean to open his mouth and share the magic words that rewrite the universe? There’s no other possibility.
At least this time, they can look each other in the eye, even as the maw between them widens. The hole in his back chest expands. Breathes.
Say something, say something, say something, Sammy, you gotta say something, show him you’re still there, tell him we’re here, Dean, help me, Sammy, Sammy—
Sam’s face swims before him, and then his own face, not black and blue, just red all over. Dean’s a goddamn mess. He clumsily pats Sam’s shoulder, then touches his face like that time in the hotel room where he wanted to die live but didn’t want to change. He wants to be Dean’s Sam and Sam’s Dean for as long as he won’t live.
Sam and Dean Winchester are twenty-four and twenty-eight and thirty-one and thirty-four, and they’re dying in their brothers’ arms. And.
And.
“I’m proud of us,” Dean says, more clearly than he’s ever said anything. Means it. They’re dying together, and all is well. All is well.
His hand goes to his jaw. Cheek. Touches his mouth. Their blood mingles together on the tongue like it always has and always will. No pulling away this time. He’s dead. Asking for death. Dying. Dying. He’s—
He’s—
They’re—