Archive of Our Own ^beta

Now that Dean had finally found his lost brother, he discovered it wasn’t just easy to keep his promise that he would stay by his side; it was impossible not to. The idea of letting him out of his sight was unthinkable, especially as fragile as Sam had revealed himself to be. When Sam went to work, Dean followed. When he went to the store, Dean tagged along. Maybe he was getting on Sam’s nerves; it was hard to tell, since Sam showed no visible reaction to almost anything after that first night. Sam emerged from his room the next morning and blinked owlishly at him, as if he must be a mirage, then simply went into the bathroom without a word, ate breakfast without looking at him, and headed out the door, Dean on his heels.

At Sam’s tattoo shop, Dean managed to dig up a folding chair from the junk-filled back room while Sam sat at the counter on the only real chair in the joint, working on a laptop, and they sat there together all morning, silent. No customers came in, but that wasn’t surprising, Dean decided, since the shop looked like nothing from outside, no hours on the door, no sign, no advertising, nothing, just the numbers of the address on the window. Sam sat there expressionless, typing, while Dean twiddled his thumbs, but inaction was not his forte. He finally jumped to his feet (Sam flinched and glanced at him for the first time all day), muttering, “May as well make myself useful,” grabbed a broom, and started sweeping up some of the stray needles on the floor. Maybe it was good that Sam didn’t advertise; the health department would have a field day with this place.

The whole day passed with no customers. At dusk, Sam closed up shop, stopped by the little grocery store he’d mentioned, and went home. Sam looked a bit bewildered when Dean followed him back through his apartment door, but seemed helpless to object, allowing it as he’d allowed all Dean’s trespasses on his routine today. Dean had picked up a few things at the store while they were there, too. As Sam got out a pan, Dean stopped him. “No one ever took care of you your whole life, Sam. I wasn’t there. So let me start now. I can cook a few things.”

Sam’s eyes crept up to meet his for a split second. Dean could only describe what he saw there as confusion, but he stepped back and let Dean cook. They ate dinner in silence. Dean asked if he could shower; Sam nodded with a grunt, Dean showered. When he emerged, Sam had already gone to bed. Thus passed his first day back with his brother.

Back on the couch that night, Dean wondered why he hadn’t tried to say more, but he knew why; Sam’s frigid presence froze the words in your throat. It wasn’t that Dean found him intimidating anymore; rather, it was that everything about his demeanor discouraged casual conversation--or any kind of conversation. As Dean drifted off, he realized it was even more something else: It was that any move, any word, even his very presence, frightened Sam. Sam had an impressive poker face, but after his breakdown the night before, Dean could see it there all the time, just beneath the surface. Sam was like a wounded animal. It was better to let him get used to Dean’s presence before trying to advance the development of their relationship. Sam wasn’t doing too bad, all things considered. This new guy pops into his life, turns it on its ear, and he didn’t freak out, just went on as before. It was okay. Just as long as he had Sam back, it was more than okay. It was perfect.

No customers came in the second day, either, or the third. Dean was deciding it was a good thing tattoos cost an arm and a leg and Sam’s rent on his apartment and his shop must be dirt cheap, when on the fourth day, a customer finally arrived--a hunter, getting the same sigil Dean had. Dean cringed inwardly--it was like being a girl at the prom seeing someone else wearing her dress. News of any recently uncovered valuable weapon in the fight against the wicked spread quickly through the hunting community, evidently.

Sam greeted the guy exactly as he’d greeted Dean, with a gruff statement about paying up front, and got to work, only this guy didn’t fuss about the fact that Sam worked freehand and he didn’t try to engage Sam in conversation; they just sat there in silence as Sam worked, which Dean guessed must be the way it usually went with Sam’s customers. Sam barely ever glanced up from what he was doing, like skin was nothing more than a bloody canvas to him.

It was only when the guy was leaving and Dean struck up a conversation that he learned this guy knew how to deal with Sam because he’d gotten other tattoos from him. Dean asked if he could see them, then if he could photograph the more impressive ones, and the guy reluctantly let him--only the non-hunting-related ones, and only if his face wasn’t visible.

“Sweet,” said Dean, waving his phone at Sam with the pictures on it. “I can get these printed up and put ’em in the window so people know this is a tattoo shop and that you’re really good.” He spent the afternoon at that, then made a hand-lettered cardboard sign that read “TATTOOS” and put that in the window, too. He’d try to get Sam a real sign at some point, but for now, it was better than nothing. Sam seemed baffled by his efforts, but as usual, either untroubled or too afraid to say anything, and let Dean do as he pleased.

In fact, he let Dean make all kinds of changes to the shop over the next several days, scraping the filth off the front windows, cleaning out the back room, generally making the place seem more welcoming ... or at least less off-putting. There was nothing he could do about Sam’s surly attitude, but Dean was there now to greet potential customers with some friendly, encouraging words and to talk up Sam’s talents. Sam allowed it all without comment, letting Dean give his spiel before starting in with his usual statement about money.

They were getting more customers now, but still, long days passed with no one coming through the door. If Dean saw someone outside looking at the pictures, he went out to chat them up, but this crappy part of the city was practically abandoned. “You know,” Dean said one day when it was just the two of them there, eyeing the scuffed walls, plaster peeling off, “most tattoo shops have pictures on the wall, ideas for tattoos you could get. Maybe we should put up some stuff like that.”

Sam looked uncomfortable, out of his depth ... which, for some reason, he usually did whenever Dean tried to talk to him. “I just give them whatever they ask for.”

“I know, you can do that because you’re really good, but most tattoo artists can’t do that, know what I’m saying? They can’t work freehand like you; they have stencils, that print the image on their skin for you to copy. It’s easier.”

Sam got up from his chair, frowning. “No. I can’t work like that. I don’t know how to do that.”

“It’s easy--”

“No!”

Sam had retreated to the far corner of the little space behind the counter, and the way he was looking at Dean, outraged, betrayed ... Dean couldn’t understand it, but he knew for sure he never, ever wanted to give his brother any reason to look at him like that. “Okay, that’s great. I’ll just make this sign, then ....”

Dean cut another piece of cardboard off one of Sam’s supply boxes and wrote “CAN DO ANY TATTOO YOU WANT, JUST BRING PICTURE” on it, and hung it in the window, too. Sam watched the proceedings with sharp suspicion, as confused as ever, finally sinking slowly back into his chair once Dean had sat back in his folding chair and didn’t appear to have any other designs on changing the way Sam did things.

It was always like that. In fact, that little interlude freaked Sam out so much that for several days, he jumped up any time Dean did anything even slightly unusual in his shop and watched hauntedly from that far corner behind the counter, so Dean learned to space out the new ideas over time. Sam didn’t like change, that was plain.

Actually, he didn’t like much of anything. Dean worried he didn’t seem to much like Dean, either. There was no brotherly vibe, not even so much as a recognition on Sam’s part that Dean was someone he should know. There was no talk about their shared past or memories Sam might have of the six years of their lives they’d spent together. Dean decided that if Sam didn’t remember him, surely he would remember their dad, so he told him some stuff about him, but if it affected Sam in any way, he didn’t show it. It was for all the world like to Sam, a stranger had up and decided to move in with him and come to work with him, and he only allowed it because he didn’t know how to refuse. Another person might complain that for a stranger to horn in on his life was inappropriate, but Sam didn’t seem to even have a reference point for that, as if he thought maybe people had to let some dude move in with them all the time. He shared his food without a thought, tried to keep out of Dean’s way (as Dean kept out of his), and that was that.

It was a good thing Sam acted so intimidating and unfriendly, Dean decided, or someone else might have taken advantage of him like this a long time ago. Searching for Sam had been the only thing Dean had ever done, the only thing his father had ever asked of him. He wouldn’t know what else to do, so he stayed by the brother who didn’t remember him or care about him, even though it kind of hurt his feelings. Okay, more than ‘kind of.’ Dean had spent countless hours over the past decade thinking about Sam, remembering playing together, memorizing his face, collating the little quirks that made the boy the person he was. Had Sam never in all those years thought of Dean at all? Dean didn’t know much about Sam’s captors, but one thing he knew was that they’d brainwashed him into believing he never had any other family, and that explained it, it did. He had no right to expect more from Sam. How could he? Expecting him to be able to get up in the morning, pay the rent, and take care of himself seemed a bit much, given the challenges Sam had had to grapple with. So Dean stayed by his side, and burned with the agony of Sam’s indifference to him.

One night, lying on the couch, unable to sleep, Dean considered taking off. It wasn’t like he had to stay. He’d found Sam, and Sam was all right. Was that what their dad had planned, just to find him and make sure he was okay? Sam would have been eighteen when their dad died, and Dean often thought maybe that was why, because Sam was grown then, an adult, and any hope their dad had of getting to be a real dad to him was gone. If John had lived, though, and found Sam like this ... what would he have done? What could he do? Make sure he was doing all right, Dean guessed. What else really was there to do? It scared Dean how fragile Sam was under the surface, so he dreaded the idea of leaving him like that, alone in the world ... but was Dean just another person terrorizing Sam unwittingly, making his life harder than it had to be? Sam seemed to have everything pretty much figured out in terms of making a living and getting by--better than Dean did, having grown up outside the law, never having a permanent address or a real job.

Maybe in his heart, Sam wished Dean would just go away. Maybe Dean was a painful reminder of a past he lost long ago, a youth he could never recapture, a family he never got to have. The whole idea of having a brother seemed beyond Sam ... which only made sense, raised by a bunch of hostile adults who, from what little Dean had been able to gather, didn’t treat him as family in any sense of the word, more like a dangerous animal they kept locked up. Sam had no idea what it meant to have a family. He had no idea what it meant to be cared about by another human being. He asked nothing of Dean, expected nothing of him, and seemed simply to hope that Dean would never ask anything of him he really didn’t want to give.

He’d already given him food and a place to stay--not because Dean was his brother, Dean could tell; more because he seemed to believe you had to do whatever anyone asked you to ... which, come to think of it, must have been the rule where he grew up, contemplating other similar behaviors Sam engaged in--like feeling compelled to answer any question, no matter how much he didn’t want to; refusing certain things (like Dean’s idea for the flash images on the walls) while still believing he would be forced to comply. That must have been how it was, raised by strangers he had to obey, no matter what they demanded.

Dean cringed, wondering again what Sam had been put through. Even if Sam wanted him to leave ... how could he abandon Sam in this broken state, scarcely able to refuse anyone anything? Yet, what good was he really doing Sam, other than helping him bring in a little more business? Maybe it was time to think about moving on, getting his own place, figuring out what to do with his life now that the only goal he’d ever had had been realized. He could come through town to check on Sam now and then, tell him to call him if he needed anything, and leave the poor kid in peace. He’d talk to him about it tomorrow.

The idea seared him. He didn’t spend his life searching for his brother so he could be treated like an unwelcome invader in his life. He’d imagined a joyful reunion, relieved hugs, something--sure as hell not this. But this was what he got, and it was time to deal with reality instead of clinging to hopes that plainly were never going to pan out. There were no guarantees in this life. Just because you loved your brother didn’t mean he would love you back. Just because he’d been everything to you didn’t mean you meant anything to him. Just because all you’d ever wanted was to see him again didn’t mean he felt the same way. It didn’t seem fair, didn’t seem right ... but just because he’d hung so many hopes on it didn’t mean they would come true.

He heard a sound--unusual in this mostly empty building in this deserted area of town. He tilted his head to hear better, and heard nothing. When he finally decided it was an anomaly and rolled over, he heard it again, unmistakeable. The third time, he knew it was Sam, shouting. Dean flung off the ratty blanket he brought up from the Impala and ran into Sam’s room. Sam was thrashing in his bed, bashing parts of himself against the wall and still not waking himself up. Dean grabbed him. “Sam!” he shouted, shaking him. “Sam, wake up, it’s okay. It’s okay, it’s just a dream!”

He had to shake him several times, but at last Sam awoke with a flinch, his eyes huge in the dark, and shrieked, “Dean, Dean, they got me! Hunters, they got me!”

“I know, Sam, I know,” Dean said, holding him tight, “but I got you back, it’s over now. It’s okay, they’re gone, you’re out of there now. It’s all over.”

“They got me, we’re in the woods, you have to come save me! Tell Dad, please, tell Dad ....”

Dean tried to breathe around the sudden stab of pain in his belly. It was like the thirteen years that had created a seemingly unbridgeable divide between the two of them had never happened. Sam was back there right now, plainly, but so was Dean. Here, in the dark, it was like they were two little boys again whose whole world was each other, like nothing had ever come along to change that ... only it had, it had changed everything. He and Dad never had found Sam; he had to get out on his own. Dean could hear in Sam’s voice the way the hope slowly bled out of him over all those years, until his belief that the father and brother he loved and trusted to come along and make everything all right had ever even existed shriveled along with it, leaving this empty husk Sam had become, who didn’t believe in anything anymore. “God, Sam, I’m sorry,” Dean wept. “I’m so sorry.”

“Did you at least try to find me?” Sam sounded so small, like the little boy he had been. His voice was different now, oddly gruff, but for the first time, Dean heard proof this really was the same person he knew so long ago in a different form, because right now the voice--the voice sounded just the same.

“That’s all we did, Sammy.” Dean managed to force out. “We just looked for you. We never stopped.”

It seemed so paltry, to Dean. What was Sam’s stolen childhood compared to Dean’s weak assurance that they’d tried to find him--tried and obviously failed? Yet he felt Sam relax perceptibly in his arms, like it meant everything to him, just to know that they tried, that they cared, that they’d never forgotten him. “They got me,” Sam said, even as he drifted back into sleep.

“Not anymore,” Dean said. “Not anymore. Now I’ve got you, and you’re going to be okay. I promise.”

In the morning when Sam woke up to see Dean in his bed with him, he looked confused at first--then he remembered; Dean saw it in his eyes. Sam looked down and could no longer meet his eyes. He only politely crawled out of the bed at its foot so as not to disturb Dean by crawling over him, and went into the bathroom like any other morning. Dean had believed that if nothing else, a sense of brotherly connection had been rekindled by the events of the previous night. Was he wrong?

“Dad’s dead?” Sam asked noncommittally over breakfast, like he was asking about the weather. It must have been something he’d cultivated, to eradicate any hint of emotion from his tone of voice. Dean shuddered to think what might have made that necessary. Dean sighed and nodded.

“But he ... but he remembered me?” Sam said, and his careful stoicism formed a perceptible crack when his voice quavered and he looked down quickly, to hide tears.

“Sam,” Dean said, staring at him heavily, “a man doesn’t forget his son. He just doesn’t. Here.” Dean got up and got Dad’s journal, setting it in front of Sam on his little formica kitchen table where they ate. He opened to the first page, which had always been, for as long as Dean could remember, the most recent photo of Sam Dad had when he was taken. Every time he or Dad opened that journal, that was what they saw: Sam. At Sam’s blank stare, Dean said, “That’s you, Sam, when you were six.” Sam looked back at his food, unmoved, like ... like he didn’t believe him. “You don’t believe me?” Dean went into his room and nabbed the collection of photos from Sam’s time with the hunters, quickly sifting through them to find the one where he looked the youngest, and set it next to the photo in Dad’s journal. “See?”

Sam leaned forward, looking with mild interest, then suddenly leaned close to the pictures, picking them up and comparing them. Dean could tell by the time he set them down again by the shaken look in his eyes that he was convinced.

“You were the most important thing in our lives, even when you weren’t there,” Dean said. He was pretty sure he saw a few tears fall before Sam abruptly got up and went into the bathroom. Sam was good at smothering the sound, but Dean still heard the occasional sob through the door. He figured Sam wanted a little privacy to process the news, so he let him be for now. Bad as it was to hear him cry, it was better than the way he didn’t seem to feel anything the rest of the time.

Dean picked up the journal and paged through it, as he had a thousand times in the last year, since their dad died. Dean had gotten all his dad’s stuff, what little there was of it, when he died, but this was the only thing of real value among it: every wisp of a lead he’d ever found on Sam’s whereabouts, potential sightings, theories, similar news stories, anything. Dean was about halfway through the familiar pages, thinking maybe it was about time to go see if he could help Sam somehow, when something caught his attention: a lead in Minnesota, where Sam now lived. It stood to reason that Sam probably hadn’t gone far when he escaped his captors, not knowing much about the world around him; if he’d hitched a ride, whoever it was probably dropped him in the nearest city and Sam just made a life where he landed. Plus, there were tons of backwoods properties up here, miles upon miles of them that got almost no attention, especially on the Canadian border, a sort of no man’s land. Dean had a vague memory of them driving down tiny dirt roads up here when he was twelve, but it got so muddy, they had to turn back. Dad thought it was a weak lead, anyhow. But they might have been right at Sam’s door. If they had gone just another mile or two, could they have found him? Dean was sick with the thought.

That night, after Sam recovered and they’d spent the day at the shop, Dean asked him about it. “So they had you out in the woods up here?” The only time Sam didn’t answer was when he didn’t understand the purpose of his question well enough to, which happened now. “I mean, uh ... how’d you get here, when you left them?”

“Hitched.”

“How long did you ride?”

Sam seemed uncomfortable with the line of questioning, but then he always did, like he’d been interrogated many times in his life, and it often hadn’t ended well. “About four hours.”

Dean nodded. That would be about right. “They kept you out in the woods?” Sam nodded. “What kind of property?”

Sam didn’t seem to know what kind of answer he wanted, so he answered with everything he could think of. “Um ... wood ... wood cabin and outbuildings, only ... some of them were made of corrugated steel.”

“’Dja have your own building?”

“Sometimes.” Dean eyed him to try to decipher whether this was a good or a bad thing, but could glean nothing from Sam’s non-expression.

“Pretty far off the road?”

Sam nodded definitively. “There was a dirt road about half a mile away, then you had to go another two miles to a bigger dirt road, then it was many miles to a paved road.” So precise. That must have been a requirement.

“Did anyone ever come around, other hunters or anything?”

“Sometimes, but usually they took me to them.”

“What? What for?”

“For ... if they needed a tattoo.” At Dean’s stare, Sam said, “I told you I’ve been doing this for eight years.”

Dean nodded slowly. He had told him that, back before it had ever occurred to him he’d stumbled upon his brother. “So that was your job.”

“One of them.”

“What else?”

“Cooking. Cleaning, keeping house. Pouring bullets, like you said, making salt rounds, grinding sigils and runes into weapons--like, like tattooing weapons so you could use them to kill the unkillable, because they thought I was good at tattooing things. Stuff like that.” At least they told him he was good at something, Dean thought. He spent a lot of time trying not to think about the kind of things that had been done to Sam at their hands, but it seemed like he might be about to find out.

“So they kept you there most of the time?” Sam nodded. “And ... and did you like doing that stuff?”

“It was all right.” Again, nothing discernable from his expression.

“So how’d you get away? You, um ....” Dean made a sound while he mimed cutting his own throat, stopping when he saw Sam frown.

“No! No, I just ... I ... escaped when I found out their plans for me. I ... I went to the road and walked along it until someone came by, and I asked for a ride, that was it. I didn’t kill them until they came for me here. They would have kept coming, Dean! I knew they would, and I knew what they were planning, and I just couldn’t let it happen--”

“Which was what?”

Sam’s expression darkened. He looked down for a long minute before answering, and when he finally did, it was like he had to force himself to. “I’m Lucifer’s vessel,” he said flatly. “They were preparing me .... I thought they wanted me to say no, but--but it turned out they meant to make me say yes so they could trap him in my body and try to kill him, but you can’t, you can’t! You can’t kill the devil! Every piece of lore and every demon and angel, everyone said so, and I can feel it, and I guess I would know, wouldn’t I?” he said bitterly. “But they didn’t believe me. I’d always planned to say no, and their plan, it was madness; it would turn him loose in the world, it would wreak havoc--”

“Waitwaitwait--what? What what? Vessel, what?”

“His vessel. He’s an angel, remember? Fallen, but still an angel, so you have to consent, before he can possess you ....” At Dean’s blank stare, Sam went on uncertainly, like it would never occur to him that Dean’s lack of comprehension could be due to ignorance, like Sam assumed everyone must know and believe all the same things he did on the subject, “But I never planned to say yes. If I just never did, then he couldn’t make me his vessel like I was supposed to be, and maybe he would never become powerful enough to do whatever he was planning. I felt like it was kind of all up to me, to choose, to do the right thing. Maybe they did the right thing with the demon blood, but this--I’m his vessel, so I know things. I just know.”

Dean laughed mirthlessly, shaking his head. “What? No, you’re not. Man, those hunters must have been batshit, if they believed ....” Dean stopped. The way Sam was looking at him, it was like ... like Dean had lost him, like they’d begun rekindling their brotherhood, and something about Dean’s disbelief had sent him back inside that unresponsive shell again, undoing all the good Dean had managed to forge today and last night. Wouldn’t Sam be glad to have someone tell him all this garbage wasn’t true? Or to get him over his brainwashing, did Dean have to pretend to believe it for a while? Faking was not Dean’s forte. They looked at each other, at an impasse, and finally Sam just got up, threw away the rest of his breakfast, and went to work, like any other of the hundreds of days he’d gone to work sincerely believing he was the devil. Dean thought, not for the first time, that if those hunters weren’t already dead, now would be a good time to go get the job done.

Dean spent the morning at Sam’s shop ruminating on all he’d learned. That Lucifer stuff, wow. They really did a number on poor Sam’s head. To convince a kid he was actually destined to be Satan .... Maybe these hunters meant to try to raise Lucifer and offer Sam to him? Maybe he had to have a special kind of vessel or something, and they’d made Sam into that with all the tattoos and religious ceremonies? Dean still hadn’t gotten a gander at all of Sam’s tattoos, but he didn’t have a single tattoo that appeared to be voluntary, an image of something that meant something to him personally; it was all plainly lore stuff.

But that was all just garbage. Dean was more troubled by Sam’s description of his life with these hunters, and his implication that he would have stayed with them forever if he hadn’t found out about this plan he couldn’t bring himself to take part in. Kind of sounded like he could have walked out to the road and hitched a ride away from there any old time. “Sam?” he heard himself say into the empty shop, where Sam sat reading a book about physics and astronomy. Sam looked up. “Did you ... did you ... think of those hunters as your family?” Dean couldn’t help it; the possibility that he had killed him.

Sam set down his book and considered the question. “That’s what they called themselves in relation to me.”

“But did you believe it?” Dean persisted. “I can’t get a bead on how they treated you. They told you you were good at something, and you did work for them, you took care of them. Maybe you even liked it. I mean, did you ....” Dean could hardly make himself say it. “... Love them?”

Dean wished he didn’t feel so much better to hear Sam’s brief, bitter chuckle. It would be better if Sam had been happy, with a family he loved, right? But Dean couldn’t bear the thought. “No,” Sam said bluntly, and went back to reading.

Of course Sam hadn’t tried to leave them before; they’d obviously brainwashed him into believing he had to stay with them, that it was the right thing. Maybe they kept him locked up in the beginning, but you spend so many years with people, no matter who they are, they become your whole world, the only thing you know. Out there in the woods, maybe Sam didn’t even realize there was a way out until he became desperate enough to start seeking one. “Did you ever try to run away?” Dean couldn’t help but ask. Dean would have tried to run away daily, although maybe not if he’d been taken when he was six. Still, Dean could hardly believe a Winchester could help it.

“At first,” Sam replied emotionlessly.

Dean smiled. That was his Sam. “They always found you and dragged you back?”

“Always.”

“So how’d you get away the last time?”

Sam got one of those looks that made Dean usually decide not to ask so many questions, pain he couldn’t comprehend, etched all the way through him. “I didn’t,” Sam said quietly, and Dean remembered: they came for him, all right. So Sam had to solve the issue permanently. Dean got it then: he could have gotten away at any time. He just had to be willing to kill. It seemed he was willing to suffer just about anything to avoid it. He would only do it when he thought it was the only way to save everyone else.

The next day, in the shop, Sam--who was usually able to sit perfectly silent all day long--cleared his throat hesitantly. Dean looked up. Sam was standing in front of him, not looking him in the eye, which was generally how it was. “Um, I, uh ... I was thinking ... there’s a tattoo I’d like to give you. For free, I mean.”

Huh, this was new. Dean wasn’t in the market for any new tattoos, only ever getting the ones he thought were really important, but on the other hand, he was willing to do anything he could to bridge this vast distance and silence between him and his brother. This was the first thing Sam had ever asked him for. “Um ... sure,” Dean said reluctantly, praying it wasn’t going to be something really ugly or freaky. Lord, what if he planned to put a giant crucifix on him or something?

Sam almost smiled, looking greatly ... relieved? ... and started cleaning his equipment. Dean sank back in the chair, already regretting this. “It’s a unicorn, isn’t it?” Dean joked, to relieve his own anxiety, since he knew Sam wouldn’t laugh. “Because actually, a pretty flower right on my chest would be--”

“No,” Sam cut him off, “someplace hidden, like maybe under your arm.” Oh, good, this just got better. Wasn’t that supposed to be one of the most painful places to get a tattoo? “Take off your shirt,” Sam ordered.

Dean eased off his shirt, willing a customer to walk through the door right now and rescue him long enough to think of a good excuse, but no; it was a Thursday, and as dead as it ever got, which was really saying something.

Sam was as efficient as ever, disinfecting the area practically as soon as his shirt was off and grabbing the tattoo gun. At least judging by the size of the area he swabbed, it would probably be a small tattoo. Sam got to work, and sure enough, it hurt like a son of a bitch. Dean tried to keep his groans to a minimum. He’d been in tattoo parlors where they teased customers about complaining about the pain, and Sam wasn’t like that. Just the other day, this hunter came in who carried on the whole time like it was the worst torture anyone experienced, and Sam didn’t bat an eye ... although Dean had to admit it was pretty funny when Sam helpfully offered to tie him down so he would stop squirming so much and making it hard to finish the tattoo. Still, Dean would lay a lot of money on Sam never making a peep no matter what kind of tattoo he got, and he couldn’t let his little brother make him look like a pussy, so he did his best to keep quiet.

Someone did come in then. Dean tried to get Sam to stop and attend to a paying customer, but now he apparently was single-mindedly fixated on finishing this tattoo come hell or high water; he didn’t even look up at the guy. Dean had to assure him Sam would get to him as soon as he was done working on Dean. As if this couldn’t get more perfect, now he had twice the reason to stifle his groans.

For all that, it was done in half an hour. Dean looked at it as Sam went to get plastic to wrap it: a small rune Dean had never seen the like of before. If the other guy was a hunter, he didn’t seem to recognize it, either. Sam wrapped Dean’s tattoo, even handed him the “how to take care of your new tattoo” sheet, and turned to the customer, getting to work immediately.

On the couch that night, Dean felt at the bandage. Sam had hardly looked at him for the whole rest of the day, and was even more monosyllabic at dinner than usual. What the hell? The problem with spending all your time with crazy people was that shit like this happened. Oh, well. Between Dad and all the other hunters Dean had ever known, he was used to it. Not like tattoos were permanent, right? Dean sighed.

Dean had been trying to figure out Sam’s schedule so he could put some hours on the door, but as far as he could tell, Sam worked from whenever he got to the shop to whenever he felt like leaving. Somehow, it had never been a problem, except maybe today, when for the first time, someone was waiting as they walked up--a woman in her twenties. She stood beaming expectantly as Sam unlocked the door. Dean eyed Sam, who hadn’t looked at her even once, though she was smokin’ hot and dressed to prove it. Sam walked to the chair and starting cleaning his equipment. “Cash first,” he said emotionlessly.

“I know, I know,” she said, grinning, leaned over the money she placed on the counter, not-so-subtly squeezing her breasts together with her upper arms. She caught Dean’s eye where he was smirking at her. “Hey.”

“How you doin’?” Dean nodded, grinning.

“Sam’s given me lots of tattoos,” she informed Dean proudly, spinning around to show off some of them--although there really weren’t all that many--visible under her scanty clothing, bending over to simultaneously show Dean one on the back of her thigh and give Sam a look down her shirt.

Sam looked at her like he hadn’t even noticed all the boob maneuvers (which continued as she did a little hop to make them bounce impressively and then folded her arms beneath them to lift them up--she knew all the tricks, Dean noted with admiration), gesturing to the tattoo chair, which she now ran to and climbed onto eagerly.

The woman glanced at Dean, decided he wasn’t worth worrying about, and proceeded with her shameless flirtation as if he wasn’t there. Dean sat back and watched with delight. So chicks did dig Sammy! Maybe there was some hope for him after all. Maybe he had even had a girlfriend of some kind--someone who was presumably very fond of time to herself.

“I was thinking a little something right here ...,” she said, pointing directly between her breasts. Sam glanced at her only long enough to see where she was pointing before turning back to his tattoo equipment.

“’Kay. Unbutton your shirt.”

Yeah, that’s what she’d wanted to hear. She did a nice slow striptease Sam missed entirely, before easing back on the chair like it was a bed with silk sheets. Sam finally got the tattoo gun ready, then started selecting colors. “What do you want? And how big?”

“What do you think would look pretty there?” she asked sensually, fondling the area temptingly.

Sam looked at it scientifically, plainly contemplating nothing more than the question she’d asked. Dean stifled a laugh. “You could do a flower or a hummingbird or something,” Sam said affectlessly, suggesting the kinds of tattoos he knew most ladies generally wanted there, “but it might be cool to utilize the, uh, nature of the area and make it like an origami or something, that opens up to reveal more of a shape depending on, uh ... whether you’re, uh ... wearing a ....” Sam started to blush furiously and turned away, finally grunting almost inaudibly, “... bra.”

Dean couldn’t keep it in. Several snorts and chortles came out of him despite his best efforts. Sam glanced back at him, alarmed, like he thought Dean was choking, and the girl shot Dean a nervous glare, but she clearly only had eyes for Sam. “Okay, yeah, whatever you think,” she said, and suddenly Dean saw a vulnerability in her eyes that reminded him of Sam’s that first night when all his walls crumbled, before he managed to put them all back up in the space of a few hours.

Sam unceremoniously put one giant hand on one of her boobs (clearly what she came here for; her eyes rolled back in her head and a dizzy grin came over her), thumb on the other, spreading them apart, and poised the needle above the spot.

Dean jumped out of his folding chair with a scrape. Sam, startled, pulled the needle quickly away from her skin, looking back at him, wide-eyed. “Hey, Sam, can I talk to you for a sec?” Dean said, taking the tattoo gun out of his hand, setting it down, and nodding at the girl.

He took Sam outside. Sam looked freaked out, and--Dean could see it in his eyes--scared. “It’s nothing, no big deal, I just thought you should know--Sam, she’s not here for a tattoo; you know that, right?” Sam glanced askance at the front of his tattoo shop, at the girl in the chair, barely visible through the grungy windows. To Sam’s eyes, plainly, all he could see was a customer waiting to be tattooed. “Dude, she digs you! Girl is willing to get a tattoo just to have your hands on her! But a tattoo between your boobs--not a good look, okay? That’s not right.”

“I just do whatever anyone asks me to--”

“Yeah, okay, but do this girl a favor and just, I dunno, talk to her or something. Don’t poke her with the little needle when what she really wants is the big one, you know what I’m sayin’?” No, Sam did not know what he was saying. Tattoo-shop groupies. Even Sam had one. Dean shook his head. “Okay, Sam. Look, you want to get laid?” Sam was looking more confused by the second. Anything outside his usual routine freaked him out good, and Dean was beginning to gather this was way, waaay outside of his routine. “I’m pretty sure you can take her into the back room right now and have sexy times--just, man, for God’s sake, you better wear a condom with this one--and if you’re not interested in that, tell her so, ’cos it’s just cruel, man, to keep giving her tattoos when all she really wants is you. Okay?”

Sam was frozen, uncomprehending. Dean pulled him back inside the shop. “Hey, uh--what’s your name?”

“Cammy,” she and Sam said at the same time.

“Great, Cammy, so you like my brother Sam. He’s a great guy, not much of a conversationalist, but anyway, why don’t you two go back in the back room and get to know each other? Don’t worry, Sam, I’ll hold down the shop.”

Cammy’s eyes lit up--she wasn’t looking forward to getting inked; that was plain--and she got up and led Sam shyly into the back room. After the door had been shut maybe two seconds, Dean remembered, fumbled madly in his wallet for a condom, opened the door just long enough to hand it to her and tell her firmly to use it, then shut the door again. He could hear them talking in there. When it started sounding like more than talking, Dean went outside and watched the shop from there. He took the opportunity to survey the impression the shop gave and come up with some ideas for how to improve it--then, not ten minutes later, Cammy was leaving, flushed and looking very happy, giving a lingering goodbye to an also flushed but freaked-out looking Sam.

Cammy gave one last wave to Dean as she pranced down the street, and Dean went back in the shop, thumping Sam on the back. “First time doin’ something like that?” Sam kept his head down, and finally nodded. “Awesome! Maybe not the most romantic first time ever, but mine wasn’t, either. And I was even here for it! I never would have thought you wouldn’t have already--” He stopped himself in the middle of that thought. Of course Sam hadn’t done it before. Dean didn’t know exactly what Sam’s life with the hunters had been like, but if it was full of religious rituals and efforts to keep Sam away from everyone else, dates wouldn’t have been an option, and who knew how long he’d been out in the world on his own. “So how was it? Was it good? Did you have a nice time?”

Sam nodded uncertainly, then turned to his tattooing equipment and started cleaning up again slowly, his back to Dean. He dropped what he was doing in the middle, turned, grabbed the keys even though it was the middle of the day, and headed for the door. “Hold up!” Dean said when he saw his intention. “I’m coming with.” Sam locked up behind them and started heading home at an unusually brisk pace. He hit the steps of his building at a run; Dean almost couldn’t keep up. When they got inside, Sam ran into the bathroom and slammed the door.

Dean crept up to it, listening, only to hear Sam weeping. Shit. He was willing to bet Sam hadn’t cried half as often until Dean came into his life and started poking holes in all the ways he’d kept himself together. He opened the door, which didn’t lock except with a key that was probably lost years before Sam moved in here, just like Sam’s bedroom. “Sammy?” Dean said softly as he came in. Sam looked up at Dean, startled, perpetually baffled that there was someone living with him now, or maybe unable to believe someone would care that he cried. Sam tried to go back out of the bathroom, as if he thought Dean had come in to take it over and he meant to get out of Dean’s way, but Dean caught him and sat him on the toilet. “Sam, what’s wrong?”

“Did I just do ... something bad?” Sam asked wonderingly, looking, shell-shocked, at his hands. “What just happened?”

Dean couldn’t help but smile, patting Sam’s cheek. “No, Sam, judging by the look on Cammy’s face when she left, you definitely didn’t do anything bad. It wasn’t bad, Sam. No matter what your--uh--your ‘family’ told you.” Meanwhile, Dean berated himself. What the fuck, he just throws this girl on top of Sam before he was ready? Dean thought Sam would have enough experience to know what was going on, or at the very least he thought that something would only happen if it was really what Sam wanted--which kind of seemed anatomically inevitable. Maybe Cammy was that good, or Sam was just that horny, but even if he could do it, Dean figured he’d say no if he didn’t want to ... but that’s right, Sam couldn’t say no. Even to that? Dean kicked himself. Idiot.

Dean bent down to look in Sam’s eyes. He could not help but ask, “Sam ... did you even want to?” Sam had no response, only staring. Dean was getting more anxious by the second. He was such a crappy brother. “Well did it at least feel good?” This got a little reaction; Sam nodded uncertainly. “Good!” Dean said, vastly relieved. It wasn’t everything, but it was a lot. “Good, well then, it’s cool, right? It’s good, right? You’re okay, right? You’re okay.” He patted Sam repeatedly, trying to convince himself as much as he was trying to convince Sam.

“It ... wasn’t bad?” Sam’s eyes traveled up to Dean’s, and the trust and vulnerability in them was crushing. Sam would believe anything Dean told him; he could see it. Why wouldn’t he? It wasn’t like he had anyone else to ask, and he’d never had anyone trustworthy around, anyway. Dean wasn’t just his best option, he was his only option.

“It wasn’t bad, Sammy,” Dean whispered, choking up--even more when Sam nodded then, accepting his word for it, and looked like he felt somewhat better. Dean got him up, washed Sam’s face with his one washcloth (Dean would have to buy himself a set of towels sometime), hugged him (Sam didn’t return the gesture, but then, he never did, as if he didn’t know you were supposed to--for that matter, maybe he didn’t), then led him out of the bathroom and made him an early dinner. Sam sat on the couch the whole time, staring, thinking, coming to heaven only knew what conclusions, so after they ate, Dean spent the rest of the evening telling him everything there was to know about sex. Good thing Dean was an expert on the subject.

Sam absorbed the information wordlessly, soberly. Only when Dean seemed to be winding down would he hesitantly ask a question, and, eager to know what Sam needed to know, he would launch into a thorough explanation. Only, man, the kid knew nothing about sex, nothing at all. This was probably for the best, Dean decided--better than if he’d been given lots of freaky beliefs about its being ‘sinful’ or something, but as far as he could tell, whoever raised Sam hadn’t believed sex would ever even enter into the equation, so they had apparently never brought it up. Maybe Sam had beat off now and again--Dean sure hoped so--but maybe not; it was impossible to tell from the things he asked. It was almost as if he’d gone his whole life having no idea sex existed. Dean wondered how many other such things there were that Sam was equally ignorant about.

His reward came at the end when Dean dared to mention Cammy again, and Sam smiled, just a little, but enough that Dean could tell the afternoon’s liaison had become a happy memory for Sam. Dean grinned, slapping Sam lightly on the shoulder as he got up. Sam flinched; Dean ignored it. “Well, at least I got to do something for you that a big brother’s supposed to do, huh? Teach you all about sex, help you through your first time. That’s somethin’, isn’t it?” Dean couldn’t help feeling unaccountably happy ... and strangely enough, Sam couldn’t seem to, either.

It wasn’t actually the only brotherly thing Dean was able to do for Sam. Since Sam hadn’t grown up like a normal person, there was a lot he didn’t know about life and the world that Dean was able to teach him. Sam had done a lot of the cooking for his captors, so he was pretty good at that. Dean wasn’t sure how Sam figured out about paying rent and such, but that was all he did: he paid rent on his apartment and his shop, paid utilities, paid for his cell phone and wifi, and he paid for food; he didn’t have transportation or insurance or anything. In fact, Dean wasn’t 100% sure Sam even knew anything about the city he lived in beyond the few blocks he walked to the grocery store and a couple of other local shops; anything he needed that he couldn’t get someplace he could walk to, he ordered online, like his tattoo equipment.

He didn’t know how to drive, so Dean taught him that. (Only three years after he would have if they’d been able to stay together all this time; not too shabby, or so Dean told himself.) Sam had gotten himself some kind of an education, but it had big, weird gaps that Dean was able to fill in for him somewhat--important gaps, gaps John would never have allowed in one of his children, like how laws differed from state to state and the importance of getting across the state line under certain circumstances. Dean wasn’t exactly convinced Sam knew what state he lived in, or what a state was. An address seemed to be just a series of letters and numbers to him. He even seemed a little unclear on whether he lived in the United States or Canada, but Dean could see how he got that idea, all the Canadians around here. At the same time, Sam had vast, extremely specific knowledge about other things, like for instance, astronomy, the latest theories on the formation and structure of the universe, and savanna-dwelling animals, their diet, habits, and migration patterns, which Sam brought up one evening as if it was something everyone must know.

Dean kind of got the picture that Sam had internet access the whole time and had taken it upon himself to educate himself with the information he found there, which ... if he’d only known Dad’s e-mail address, if he’d been old enough to memorize something like that, if it had ever occurred to Dad to teach it to him ... they could have found him forever ago. He was right there, all the time, within reach, if they’d only known where to look.

If he had learned everything he knew via the internet, then it made sense that his knowledge of local, immediate, timely things was hazy. They didn’t call it the world wide web for nothing. Sam could probably more easily find out about littering laws in Hong Kong than he could the bus schedule out of wherever he was--and if they were out in the boonies, so much worse. The news--whether local, national, or international--probably all seemed equally irrelevant to his day-to-day life, a mess of noise. He wouldn’t have any way of knowing how to sift the important from the frivolous. When he evidenced some gap in his knowledge, Dean smoothly covered over it like it was nothing, because Sam tended to display extreme shame when there was something he felt like he was supposed to know that he didn’t. Then, later, Dean would conveniently leave a website on the subject open on his laptop (which he didn’t seem to feel he had a right to refuse Dean the use of), and he’d see Sam later reading it with interest. Dad taught Sam to read at four. At least he’d had that to go on, when they couldn’t do anything else for him.

The funnest part of Sam’s education was teaching him all about pop culture: movies and music and t.v. shows. Sam didn’t have a t.v. and kind of freaked when Dean suggested they get one, but Dean was able to convince Sam to let him show him some stuff on his laptop. Dean felt like they really bonded sometimes, when it happened to be something both of them liked, which happened more often than Dean would have expected, having been apart for so long. They didn’t even have the same taste a lot of the time when they were kids, but maybe that was because Sam was enough younger that he couldn’t appreciate older-kid stuff Dean liked. Some things really were genetic, Dean thought as he happily settled deeper into the couch next to a riveted Sam, watching Jurassic Park on his laptop, sharing a bag of chips.

So their reunion wasn’t exactly what he’d pictured, but it was getting closer. They’d even both been raised by hunters, so they had that in common, too. Dean had had awkward moments with civilians, at school, on dates, when he accidentally let slip something about his life growing up as a hunter or he didn’t realize something that was everyday to him wasn’t to everyone else, but there was never a moment like that for Dean with Sam, and there never would be, because Sam would always be the more awkward and ignorant one. He was an easy, accomodating, polite, undemanding roommate. He accepted Dean totally, and--better yet--seemed grateful for every new thing he learned about him, as if Dean just being Dean was way better than what he was used to out of people. He didn’t act that different from how he had at the beginning, so it was hard to tell, but Dean thought he felt a bond forming. He really thought so. He hoped so, because he was doing everything he could think of to forge a connection, and if this wasn’t working, he’d already used up everything in his bag of tricks. He was out.

Sam was in the bathroom at the shop. It often took a while; maybe a holy-water thing. He didn’t actually bathe in holy water every time; it seemed to go in phases, but other times he even washed his hands in holy water. Dean was standing at the counter, looking at a porn mag. He never thought he’d be a workaday sort, but the kind of job where you could read porn all day if you wanted to suited him just fine. After he carefully brought it up with Sam, Sam had started giving him a cut of the take (Dean tried not to remember how freaked out Sam had been, how willing he was to give Dean all he asked for), which was great, because now he could afford gas and cell phone bills and all that stuff without having to leave Sam’s side, as well as food he knew Sam would like but would never buy on his own--basically, all the good stuff: fruit pies, chips, coffee, candy ....

He happily flipped a page, rummaging below the counter for some chips, and looked up even happier when he heard the door jingle--probably a paying customer! Or maybe Cammy, who came in regularly for her thrice-weekly booty call, but that would be good, too, because it would put Sam in a good mood. Dean’s grin evaporated when he got a gander at this guy. Something was off. Dean didn’t get the sense he was there for a tattoo. Also, he looked scary as shit. Was he some kind of hunter come for Sam? That was as far as Dean’s thoughts got before the guy pulled a gun and demanded money.

Great, a fucking hold-up? Dean rolled his eyes. “We don’t have any!” he said honestly, holding his hands out so the guy could see he was unarmed. “We haven’t had any customers today!”

“Bullshit,” the guy snarled.

The guy’s eyes went to the door to the back room, from which Sam was just now emerging, wiping his hands on his pants, and Dean got really scared for the first time--for how traumatized Sam would be; for what stupid shit he might do, overpowered with terror; and for his health, since the appearance of another employee ratcheted up the robber’s anxiety significantly, now pointing the gun at Sam and Dean alternately. His demands grew louder and more intense.

Dean only had eyes for Sam, who for his part showed no expression as he quickly took in the scene. Unhesitatingly, he strode behind the counter next to Dean, ignoring the guy’s hysteria. Sam grabbed a gun from under the counter that Dean had noticed but not thought a whole lot about before, figuring since Sam grew up with hunters, of course he had a gun at hand. Dean didn’t think he actually used it. In one smooth motion, Sam pointed it directly at the guy’s head. Oh, shit. “Uh, Sam, maybe we should just scrounge up some money to give him,” Dean suggested as lightly as he could, because the last thing ol’ wound-up-tight psychopath robber needed was for something to push him over the edge.

“You hurt my brother and I’ll kill you,” Sam said evenly. His hand didn’t shake in the slightest.

“I swear to God, I’ll kill him!” said the robber, pointing the gun at Dean and slowly, dramatically cocking it.

Sam didn’t bother with drama; he just cocked and fired instantly. Dean flinched and fell back, staring at Sam disbelieving, then at the would-be robber, who was feeling frantically at the side of his head and looking at his hand. There was no blood on his hand, but he now seemed to be missing part of his cap. The guy took one terrified look at Sam and fled.

Sam watched him go warily. Once he seemed convinced the guy was gone for good, he put the gun back under the counter, went to the door, and locked it, peering out through the glass. “We should probably keep this locked today,” he said to Dean conversationally. “Only open it if they look legit.” Dean could only nod, huge-eyed. Then Sam took a spatula-looking thing and a little tub of plaster that had always sat under the counter next to the gun and started busily filling the hole in the wall left by the bullet he’d fired, like he’d done this dozens of times.

Dean, frozen, watched in disbelief for a few seconds. “Guess I see why the plaster’s peeling,” he joked--again, just to ease his own anxiety. No response from Sam, naturally. “I gotta pee,” Dean said, and hurried to the bathroom in the back room, muttering, “if I haven’t already pissed myself.”

He shut the door to the bathroom and ran cold water over his shaking hands, staring at them for long minutes. What the hell just happened? Not like he loved running into a gun-toting robber, but it wouldn’t be the first time, and he knew how to handle himself. No, it was Sam who had his mind swirling. The kid who cried all the time in the bathroom just comes out and almost blows a guy away? Terminator-style, no emotion, cold as an assassin. He doesn’t even break down after the danger was over, just starts plastering the wall? Dean thought back on the floor of the shop, wildly trying to remember if he’d seen blood stains there. Had Sam missed? If he’d been caught a little less off-guard, would Dean be helping him bury a body? Sam, little Sammy, his little brother he didn’t, honestly, know that well yet ... was he now a cold-blooded killer? Is that what those hunters turned him into?

He didn’t know how long it was before he finally turned the water off and staggered back out to the main area in a daze, where Sam was sitting behind the counter reading his physics book ... and nibbling the chips now himself. Dean sank into his folding chair and surreptitiously watched Sam, looking for signs of delayed trauma or anxiety. Nothing.

“So ... ’dja miss?” Dean didn’t mean to sound sarcastic ... and actually, with the way his voice quavered, he probably didn’t.

Sam glanced at him without moving his head, this side-eye thing he often did. “No.”

“No? You weren’t planning to shoot him in the face?”

Dean was relieved to see Sam look alarmed at the idea. “No!”

“Then you’re a fucking great shot.”

Sam nodded. He wasn’t exactly the picture of self-esteem, but at least he knew when he was good at something. “I always hit all the targets, even at three hundred yards.”

Dean nodded, feeling a little better--but only a little. There was a little silence, but Dean couldn’t keep it in. “You’re, uh ... calm in the face of danger,” he noted pointedly.

Sam made a little noise of irritation, like he hadn’t expected this conversation to keep going and he didn’t want to be interrupted from his reading, but he looked up from his book again and considered what Dean had said, as if trying to divine what he meant by it. At last, he looked like he thought he’d figured it out, and dutifully, he set down his book. “You all right?” he said, perfectly imitating the way Dean said it to him when Sam was freaking out about something. It was touching, but weird. Sam had started imitating him in all kinds of ways. Dean had heard of the phenomenon before, that when people had nothing else to go on, they copied the people around them, which only made sense, Dean supposed. When in Rome .... “Need anything?”

“Um ... uh, yeah, Sam, I do need something. I need to understand why when some psycho’s waving around a gun, you’re not afraid,” Dean couldn’t help but say.

“I wasn’t going to let him shoot you,” Sam said calmly, like he thought it would reassure Dean, like ... like he thought all Dean was concerned about was himself.

Dean was caught between horror at the clear implication of the statement--that Sam was willing to do whatever it took to keep him safe, including kill a man--and deep feeling at the declaration of brotherly devotion he’d been so longing to hear since they’d found each other. Just, why did this precious gift have to come in the form of an offer of murder? “Um ... yeah, that was clear, but ... that’s not what I asked.”

Sam had plainly thought he was answering what Dean really wanted to know--rare for him, usually taking everything literally. For once, Dean wished he’d be so literal, instead of trying to do what he thought Dean wanted him to. Sam thought back on Dean’s question, and said, “There was no danger.” Dean started to protest, and Sam interrupted him. “Once he saw me and I was on the move, he would only have shot me, especially once I had a gun. You were never in any danger.”

Dean jumped to his feet, and the chair banged back down to the ground. Now Sam looked a little scared, flinching back at Dean’s vehemence. “But you were! Wh--Is that nothing to you?! Why weren’t you afraid??”

Sam looked completely taken aback--by the question, by Dean’s sudden emotional outburst--everything. “I--I--” he fumbled nervously, getting more scared by the second. “I ... don’t know,” he said weakly at last. All the fear and feeling Dean had needed to see on Sam’s face was finally there, but still not because he could have been killed today; rather, because Dean was upset. What kind of life could make a man more afraid of a little conversation than of death itself??

“I need to take a walk,” Dean said abruptly, and headed for the door.

Sam scrambled to his feet, grabbing the gun and holstering it in the back of his pants. “He’s still out there--I’ll come with you!”

“I’ll be fine. That dude’s never coming within a mile of this place again, after that. And anyway, I’ve got my gun.” He took it out from the drawer where he stashed his stuff during the day, checked the magazine, and holstered it as Sam had.

“No, Dean--”

“I need to be alone!” Dean shouted. He really didn’t mean to yell at Sam, especially not right now, but this was all too much. Not one thing about this was okay. Sam looked most anxious ... but nodded and let him go.

Dean walked around the shitty neighborhood for a long time, trying to clear his head. So many things bothered him about this--the fact that Sam’s gun that was always lying around like a coffee-table book was loaded with the safety off, the fact that Sam’s shop was in such a lousy neighborhood that he acted like it was de rigeur to get held up, the fact that Sam acted like mortal danger was so commonplace for him that it didn’t even get his heart rate up. The fucking plaster sat right next to the gun, like the whole reason it was there was to repair bullet holes! The rent on that place better be next to nothing, Dean thought, dangerous as it was to be in there, his little brother defending himself from bad guys just so he could make a living. Dean had recently learned the shop came in that state with all the junk in the back room and under the counters; Sam had just utilized the empty space and left the rest as he found it.

So much about Sam’s reality was driven home by that thirty-second encounter: the perpetual danger in which he lived, and how that was what he considered normal. But ... truth was, the most dangerous thing in that shop--more dangerous than the safety-off gun, more dangerous than the psycho robber--was Sam. Hunters were about the most hardcore people out there, rough and violent and kamikaze as hell ... yet still, Dean had never seen anything to compare to Sam in there. Where Sam had no reference points for so much of what Dean had introduced into his life, Dean had no reference point for this, because it was off the scale of cold and calculated and competent and violent and merciless. He couldn’t even admire what a badass Sam was (and he was), because it was so disturbing, so ... inhuman. But then there he is afterward, all concern for Dean, offering rare reassurance, getting all flinchy because Dean was--bafflingly, as far as Sam was concerned--upset. It didn’t make any sense. His little brother, his flesh and blood, the little boy whose scrapes Dean used to bandage while snot ran down his face, wailing ... Dean couldn’t begin to comprehend him. Dean couldn’t let himself think it, he couldn’t, but it flashed through his mind anyway. Was Sam ... was he really ... evil?

The thing was, Sam’s cool analysis of the scenario was spot-on. Even if Dean had suddenly pulled a gun, psychologically speaking, the robber would still have had it in his mind that Sam was the dangerous one because he was moving toward him and then because he had a gun first, so if he’d been startled, it’s Sam he would have shot, even if he was trying to manipulate Sam by aiming at Dean. This meant Sam knew full well his life was in danger the whole time, but he’d never brought that up, as if ... as if it was irrelevant. What did that mean? Everyone, when it came down to it, put their life above everyone else’s ... didn’t they?

Dean walked for an hour or more. It was only when he arrived back at the shop and Sam hurried up next to him to unlock it and let him in that Dean realized Sam hadn’t let him walk by himself at all--he’d followed him at a distance, to make sure he stayed safe. Which was sweet, right? Yet Dean found himself doing the flinchy thing Sam did all the time to him, afraid to get too close to Sam, who seemed like a half-unpinned grenade that might go off at any time. He couldn’t stand that he felt this way about his own brother ... but he couldn’t help it. He watched Sam surreptitiously for the rest of the afternoon, the way Sam never appeared to have any expression, the way he could focus on some boring-ass physics book with a persistence and intensity that resembled a machine, the way he didn’t even squirm or shift around. Over the course of the afternoon, Sam sometimes moved a foot from the shelf under the counter where he was resting his feet to the floor, and vice versa. That was it.

They usually spent the evenings eating, resting, watching stuff, bathing, and sometimes Sam was by himself in his room doing whatever he did. Dean tried not to torment him with questions, since he hated it so much. But tonight, Sam was going to have to tolerate it, because Dean had to know.

“So,” said Dean, “I take it that ain’t the first time you’ve been held up there.”

Sam looked a little nervous, but only because he associated the subject with Dean getting upset. He seemed to have already forgotten the altercation. “Yeah, it happens occasionally.”

“And do you always shoot at ’em first thing?”

Dean’s tone was kind of condemning, but Sam took it at face value. “I’ve found it’s the most efficient way to go.”

“And you want it to be efficient because ... you want to get back to reading?”

Sam shifted a little uncomfortably. Maybe he was starting to notice Dean’s tone. “I’ve found that the longer you let that kind of interaction go on ... the more trouble it becomes.” He looked at Dean uncertainly, almost pleadingly, pleading for understanding, and said hesitantly, “I mean ... don’t you think that if someone points a gun at you, you probably shouldn’t give them the benefit of the doubt?”

Dean couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, but did you mean to shoot his cap? I mean, it was ugly as shit, so I understand ....”

Sam chuckled, too, incongruously softly and sweetly. “I ... did try to, yeah. He was intense enough that he might have shot back if he hadn’t been able to ... feel it.”

Dean collapsed in chortles. It wasn’t funny, it really wasn’t. Was it? Yet it was too surreal not to laugh. Plus, hearing that Sam had such a good rationale, Dean couldn’t help but shed a couple of tears of relief. He wiped them away as he got back to business. “All right, but Sam, you know that most people don’t have to live like that, right?” At Sam’s uncomprehending gaze, Dean went on sadly, “... But you did, huh? Did ... did those hunters pull a gun on you a lot or something?” Sam hunched at the introduction of the topic of his youth, and he looked down quickly. He shook his head. Dean sighed. “Sam ... you know you’re gonna have to tell me about it sometime. You can’t get around it forever.” Sam didn’t volunteer anything ... but at least he didn’t get up and walk away like he sometimes did. Dean decided it was time to push the matter. “Did they threaten to kill you?”

Sam shook his head again.

“Was there some other kind of danger?”

“Define ‘danger’,” Sam said coolly.

“Um ... why don’t you?” Dean suggested carefully.

“They were gonna do whatever they were gonna do to me, and I couldn’t escape.”

“And they tortured you, you said.”

“Purified me,” Sam amended mutedly.

“Which involved ...?”

“The tattoos and the rituals.”

“I know the tattoos hurt. Did the rituals?”

Sam nodded, barely, like the question was too heavy to answer.

Dean didn’t want to ask it, but he had to get some sense of degree. “Which, um ... which was worse?” Dean had had tattoos, so if they were the worst part, at least he knew about how bad it had been.

“Um ... depends on the ritual, but ... I really hated the tattoos. I hated them the most. That’s why ... when ... when they were gonna give me one, I finally asked if I could give it to myself, and, and they said I could, if it was perfect. I worked so hard, I was so careful ... and I learned they weren’t trying to torture me with the tattoos, they just hurt that much. It was better when I could control it.”

“That’s where you got your gentle touch,” Dean said, agonized, imagining little Sam, ten or eleven, having to put himself through that, having no other choice. If Dad knew, it would kill him. “And that’s how you got so good at it.”

Sam nodded, and the look on his face ... it was still flat and unmoving, but now it held only an all-consuming sorrow.

“So ... what were these rituals?” Dean could hardly get the words out. He couldn’t bear to hear it, but he had to know.

“These hunters ... they found all these old prophecies, and they dug up symbols and rituals and things that worked to counteract them. They ....” He lost all volume for a second, and Dean winced a little. When even Sam couldn’t get the words out, you knew it must have been bad. “They were for getting the demon blood out of me, and pre--preparing me for--for Lucifer--” He was so overcome, he was starting to stutter.

Dean put a hand on his shoulder, and knew he should have expected Sam’s flinch in response. “It’s okay, Sam. And is that it? The tattoos and the rituals? Is that the worst stuff they did to you?”

Sam had to think through that one, and Dean understood why: the psychological damage was far, far worse, surely. Sam seemed to decide Dean meant only physical things, not psychological ones, and nodded.

“They trained you to be a good shot. And a hunter? Did they teach you that?”

“Yeah, everything. I think they thought if they taught me to destroy evil, it would help make me good. Plus, they had me do research for them.”

“Were they ever ... Sam, were they ever nice to you?” Of all the things Dean had ever wondered, this one niggled at him the most often.

Sam looked untroubled enough by the question that Dean got the impression that at least they weren’t unrelentingly cruel. He shrugged. “At first, they treated me like I was a ... well, like I was a demon, I guess, locking me up and keeping me under guard, but after a while they seemed to realize I wasn’t going to do anything.”

“How long did that take?”

“Couple of years.”

“And after that?”

“One of ’em found a prophecy that said the demon-blood powers don’t kick in until you’re twenty-two and that it’s dormant before that, so after that, they kept me locked up at night so I couldn’t escape, but during the day, as long as someone was around to keep an eye on me, they let me out and let me do stuff, help out. By the time I was giving myself tattoos, though, it was like ... it was almost like I was one of them. I mean, I wanted the demon blood out of me as bad as they did.”

“So ... they treated you like you were one of them?”

“No. I was always set apart. But they trusted me not to try to escape. That’s why it was so easy when I finally did.”

“Because you found out about something else they were gonna do to you.” Dean caught it: the flash of betrayal in Sam’s eyes as he nodded and looked down. Dean understood. A kid needs a family. He’ll make a family out of whatever he’s got, no matter how much it sucks, but when you find out they plan to use you and kill you, no matter how bad you want to believe in it, you can’t anymore. Sam didn’t just walk away from everything he’d ever known that day, knowing they’d come for him. He walked away from any concept of family he’d ever had, thus agreeing to stand completely alone in a world he didn’t understand ... and then he had to kill the people he’d once believed were family with his own hands. The pieces were all coming together. What they did to him ... that was bad enough. Anyone would have been nine kinds of messed up from that. But what he had to do to them ... that was the final straw. When everything he ever believed in and did and tried to achieve was betrayed, that’s what broke him.

“Sam ... you know they were nuts, right? There was never any demon blood in you.”

Sam looked away vacantly, then got up. “I gotta take a bath.”

Dean hung his head as he listened to Sam chanting through the bathroom door. It seemed like everything he tried to do to help Sam only made him worse.

Sam was going to be working late finishing a tattoo for some douche Dean had almost come to blows with. The guy didn’t seem to get to Sam, though. Almost nobody did. All the kinds of customers Dean knew from time spent in other tattoo shops that tattoo artists tended to hate--the whiny ones, the braggy ones, the stupid ones, the pretentious ones--didn’t bother Sam a bit. Even direct insults rolled off him for the most part. If he decided he didn’t like you, though, he ordered you out of the shop and that was that, so Dean had made a “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone” sign.

Dean decided it would be better to go home than to drive away a paying customer, especially in the middle of a large tattoo that would cover the rent on the shop for the month--good thing, because they were going through a dry spell, no customers for days at a time. This way he could make a decent dinner for them for once without Sam’s surreptitious surveillance of Dean’s attempts to take care of him making it awkward.

Dean got inside (he’d finally lifted the key one morning when Sam was sleeping in and had a copy made), and set down the groceries. He was just getting out some pans when an unfamiliar voice made them clatter to the floor. Dean drew his gun and cocked it instantly at a nondescript man standing in the doorway to the kitchen smirking at him, evidently not the least bit troubled by the gun. “You’re not Sam,” he said.

Dean had a wild moment’s thought that Sam had some friend (/lover/sugar daddy??) he’d never bothered to mention to Dean when Dean’s gun went flying out of his hand and across the room, and then Dean knew what it was. “Demon,” he growled.

“Hunter,” it replied accordingly. “One of Sam’s little zookeepers? I was going to kill you all when I came for him, but then Sam made that unnecessary.” A twisted smile spread across its face. “He’s my most promising project of all.”

Dean blinked, then again. Was this real? Was this really happening? Was this ... was all that garbage about demon blood for real?? Or--or was this-- “Lucifer?” Dean choked out.

The demon sighed with a lazy smile. “You flatter me. Just a loyal servant, prepping dear Sammy for his arrival. I’ve got a lot of plans for Sam, though. Lots.”

Dean gasped, abruptly fighting back tears. It was real?? Little Sam, everything they did to him-- “They purified him,” he managed to get out.

“Oh, that’s not possible,” the demon said, all smug self-indulgence. “I mean, nothing’s impossible, but what Sam would have to go through ... he’d probably rather have gone to hell.”

“What are you planning to do to him?” Dean had to ask. This one was a talker--chances were, it would tell him, and if Dean knew, maybe he could stop it. He could at least try.

“Well, first, we have to get him back together with his brother, because we have plans for him, too,” it said with a sinister grin. Dean hoped he managed to keep the poker face he’d worked so hard on, because it had never come naturally to him. He listened intently, scarcely breathing. “Then, there’ll be a battle for supremacy between all my children, which I’m afraid Sam’s probably too soft-hearted to win, and then--oh, all kinds of goodies; I won’t bore you with the details. Just know it’ll be fun. Too bad you won’t be around to see it.” It smiled and flicked its wrist. Dean looked at it nervously. It looked at its own hand, consterned, and flicked it again. Dean took a surreptitious step back, waiting for something big, but nothing happened. The demon stood between him and the salt, but Dean was casting through his mind for anything in the kitchen that might be made of iron. “What the ...?”it said. It frowned at Dean, baffled.

Dean heard the front door opening. No, no, no, no ... of all the worst things that could happen right now ... not Sam! Dean would have said he never prayed, but a prayer came to his lips, to keep Sammy safe, no matter what happened to Dean. Not this, too, not after everything Sam had been through. What would this, the realization of all his worst fears, do to Sam? The demon looked pleased as he greeted Sam’s arrival. “My boy! Daddy’s home.”

There was only a moment’s expressionless hesitation, then Sam strode purposefully across the apartment and pulled open a drawer in the living room, from which he withdrew a knife--one of the knives he’d described making, tattooed with symbols all over it. “No, Sam, it’s a demon!” Dean cried. With everything Sam knew, he didn’t know demons couldn’t be killed with a knife??

“Come and get me,” Sam said to it, with a grin Dean would have to admit looked way more evil than the demon’s.

“Sam,” the demon cooed, moving slowly toward him. “I haven’t seen you since you were a baby--those hunters who kept you locked up were aces with the warding. ’Dja miss me?”

“Why me?” Sam demanded.

The demon shrugged. “Mommy made a deal. Don’t be too mad. If she hadn’t, you and your brother would never have been born, and we couldn’t have that, could we? You’re both too important.”

Dean was reeling with the news about their mother, but Sam must be so accustomed to horrifying revelations that this didn’t appear to impact him that much. His eyes flickered briefly to Dean in the kitchen. “Why? What’s my brother got to do with this?”

“You’re my master’s perfect vessel, and your brother ... he’s gonna suit up for the other guys. You’ll kill each other in the most spectacular battle of all time--it’ll be awesome. I’ll have ringside seats. Can’t wait.” He winked.

“You gave him blood, too?”

“No, they don’t know how to take care of their own the way I took care of you, Sam.” Sam did squint at this, and Dean could see the fury rising in his brother. “But my blood in you ... where is it? I’m not seeing it at the moment ... probably one of those hideous warding tattoos.” It shrugged, but Dean didn’t miss the briefest hint of bliss pass across Sam’s face, and he knew Sam, for the first time, really was convinced he was free of demon blood, as the hunters had said.

“So, these ringside seats--how much are they going for?” Sam asked with a cool smile.

The demon beamed. “Sam! You do have a sense of humor about this! Ugh, all my other children are so pissy about the whole thing. I always knew you were the best one. My very favorite.” There was a flicker in Sam’s eyes at this, Dean saw it: the parental praise he’d been starving for his whole life long--here it was, at last.

“Sam, no!” Dean shouted, but not only the demon but also Sam held out a hand to stop him coming any closer, both looking equally murderous right now. Equally evil. What had those hunters made Sam into? All their efforts to turn him into something else drove him right into the arms of the enemy, because they left him nowhere else to go, no better option. When humans are incapable of love, when they torture and destroy you, how are demons worse?

“And Lucifer--when will he come for me?” Sam asked conversationally, letting the knife drop to his side, letting down his guard.

“Sam!” Dean cried, trying again to get around the demon to Sam, who looked remarkably unwelcoming.

“Stay where you are, Dean,” Sam ordered coldly, not looking at him.

“Only a few years now,” the demon assured him comfortingly. “You don’t have that long to wait. None of us do.”

“Oh, good, because I have something for him,” Sam said, taking off his shirt and revealing an incredibly complex tattoo Dean had only seen pieces of before. It stretched all over his torso, across his ribs, meeting over his heart both in front and in back. Dean heard the demon hiss as Sam fixed it with an empty stare. “You think he’ll like it?”

“What have you done?” the demon gasped. “You’ve--you’ve made yourself useless! USELESS!” it raged. It flicked its wrist again, this time at Sam, who gave a wicked grin and raised his arm, where Dean saw a little tattoo identical to the one he’d given Dean in the same spot. Whatever the demon was trying to do with all the wrist-flicking, apparently that tattoo they both had made them immune to it. The demon roared and lunged for Sam, who took a casual step back. Dean ran for him, but the demon stopped just short of being able to grab him, trying several times, and finally screaming in fury. Sam kicked aside the rug a little, where Dean saw a demon trap painted on the floor. Clever, clever. And to think Dean used to think Sam was too paranoid with all this stuff. Dean made sure to stay outside of the trap himself.

“Useless?” Sam pressed. “Are you sure?”

“I’ll fry every last stain of that abomination off your skin,” the demon chanted. “I’ll singe every last--”

“Well, you won’t, because I’m about to kill you,” Sam said, with a friendly tone that was undeniably creepy, not to mention that Dean had never seen him so animated and relaxed, “but as for the rest, I don’t think they could, because this ritual we did, see, burned it deep, into my bones, into my heart. Can’t destroy that without destroying the vessel. Right?” Dean could see Sam intently awaiting the response. He knew his brother well enough by now to know what this was about: he was egging the demon into telling him whether all his obsessive attempts to thwart Lucifer had succeeded or if he still had to do more, and Dean knew in that moment that whatever it cost him, Sam would never, ever stop until he was sure he’d gotten it right.

Dean thought it was safe to say from the demon’s reaction that he had. Sam and Dean smiled at each other across the room, the most genuine, happy smile Dean had seen out of Sam since he found him again. “Dean? Anything else you need to know?” Sam asked. When Dean mutely shook his head, a little baffled by the question, Sam took a step inside the devil’s trap and plunged the knife into the demon, which flickered red and fell to the floor. Sam got some holy water out of the bathroom and splashed it a couple of times, then salted it, but it didn’t react, as if the demon inside the body was gone.

Then Sam examined the knife, making a little sound of dismay at a chink he seemed to find in it, cleaned it on the demon’s clothes, and set it back inside the drawer whence it came. Dean remembered Sam telling him about tattooing weapons, all that nonsense about how it made them able to kill the unkillable. Everything, everything Sam had ever told him, it seemed, was true after all. No wonder Sam had despaired when Dean hadn’t believed him. This was the reality Sam had been grappling with all his life. Even if they could do nothing else to help, he needed someone to believe him. Sam wasn’t well-adjusted. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t balanced, he wasn’t mentally healthy. So far from it. It would be a long time before he was, if it ever happened. But Dean knew the biggest step toward being able to help him was one he’d just taken: to believe his brother’s truth, strange and horrifying though it may be, so he could help him carry the burden.

Sam surveyed the body, and sighed heavily. “Fuck.” A body to dispose of, just as Dean had always feared it would come to one day. But this was a body he was all too happy about.

“I’ll help,” Dean offered, and Sam looked up hopefully. “What are brothers for?”

Dean groaned and fumbled for the glass of whiskey he was keeping at hand for this monster of a tattoo, but it was empty. “The ribs are the worst part,” Sam informed him mildly, “but it has to be perfect to keep the angels out.” They were in the shop after hours, the door locked, and Sam was continuing work on this tattoo that would take weeks.

“And you know how to do this ritual?” Sam lifted the needle from Dean’s skin. Dean knew he’d gotten to Sam whenever he had to stop working and breathe through the feelings it brought up in him. “Sorry,” Dean muttered.

“Yeah. I can do it.” Sam had already told him that particular ritual was the most painful thing he’d ever experienced, but whatever, anything was worth it to forestall what Sam had informed him was the freakin’ apocalypse. The apocalypse! Dean never would have believed it, but Sam had been right about everything. Dean’s believing him had brought them abruptly closer together than Dean would have thought possible in such a short time. Maybe it was also partly that he was no longer afraid his evil was going to infect Dean, and maybe it had something to do with successfully fighting the demon together. It surely had to do with how much more Sam now felt he could relax about the future, but whatever the reason, nothing had ever made Dean happier in his whole life than getting to feel like they were brothers again. That ritual would be worth it for another reason, though: so that Sam wouldn’t be alone in the things he’d had to go through anymore. It wasn’t like Dean was looking forward to it, but he’d heal in a few weeks, Sam said, and Sam ... maybe it would heal a little something in Sam, too.

“So why’d they give you this tattoo if they were gonna let Lucifer have you anyway?”

“Guess they changed their minds after they’d already given it to me. I think they decided not long before I ran away. It has to be perfect. They could have marred the tattoo, done another ritual to mar the marks on my ribs and heart, and I’d have been open for business again, I guess.”

“How’d they plan to make you say yes?”

Sam’s voice got quiet. “I don’t know.”

“Well,” Dean said briskly, trying to lighten the mood while simultaneously distracting himself from the pain of the tattoo, “say what you want about those hunters, but I guess they actually knew what they were talking about. No more demon blood, no more Lucifer comin’ for ya ... maybe it’s time to go to Disneyland!”

Dean had hoped for at least a smile, but Sam just worked. At last, he mumbled, sounding kind of embarrassed, “I don’t know what that is.”

Dean grinned. “Well, it’s not like I’ve ever been there. Wasn’t on the top of Dad’s sightseeing list. I always hoped there’d be a ghost haunting the place or something, but no such luck.” He sighed. “Seriously, though, maybe we should go, just you and me.”

“What is it?”

“It’s an amusement park! Like, huge. It has everything.”

“What’s an amusement park?”

Dean tried to smile, but he couldn’t suppress the flare of pain Sam’s affectless voice, which had come to sound agonizingly innocent to Dean, caused in him. Sam had had no childhood. None. Treated like a monster and locked up at age six, tortured, however good the hunters’ intel was, Sam had been an innocent, confused, tormented man since he was a little boy--or, well, rather, taller than any man by any rights should be, Dean supposed it was really that Sam would always be an innocent, confused, tormented child. But it could be better. Dean could make it better. “I guess you’ll just have to find out.” Sam looked nervous--which only made sense, Dean figured, since most of the surprises he’d ever had hadn’t been good. “It’ll be fun, I promise.”

“Actually, I was just hoping ... have you heard of this thing called a Home Depot?” Dean couldn’t hold in his chortle, but Sam didn’t seem offended. Dean managed to nod, now laughing too hard for Sam to keep working anyway. Sam took the opportunity to clean the tattoo gun a little. “Well ... do you know how we could get to one?” Still smirking, Dean nodded. They were everywhere; Sam just didn’t know it. Sam looked more excited than Dean had ever seen him look. “Really? Because I hear they have lumber there, and with lumber, you can build things, and, well ... there’s all kinds of things I want to build. Like a bed, for starters. So you have someplace to sleep.”

Dean beamed to himself and barely heard another word as Sam excitedly described this carpentry that to him seemed like an impossible dream come true. Apparently hard work of his own choosing sounded like heaven on Earth to Sam. Oh, Sam. Still, if Sam wanted to build Dean a bed, then that meant that Sam was making a place for Dean in his life, which meant that he wanted Dean to stay.

Dean’s family had never been whole. Dad had died before they found Sam. Mom had died long before that. But Dean had completed the quest, defeated the dragon (or, okay, Sam had, and it had been a demon, not a dragon), and now they could finally live happily ever after, even if it wasn’t as gilded and perfect as it was in storybooks. Even if his Disneyland was going to be Home Depot for a while. Even if the pieces of their family lay scattered across the years. All that mattered was that they’d gotten here at last, they’d lived. They made it.

~ The End ~