![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Anchor
By:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kellifer_fic
Fandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/adult themes)
Category: Alternate!Dean/Sam
Words: 2,600
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: None
Summary: In an alternate world, Sam finds a family he wasn't expecting.
Notes: All mistakes are mine. This is a continuation of and hell followed with him and But For The
“You come back,” Dean says, pressing their foreheads together. “You come back to me.”
“I always do,” Sam huffs, impatient to leave because it means he’ll be back sooner.
“Yeah, well, you keep that up,” Dean warns and Sam touches knuckles to the edge of Dean’s scar, the place that isn’t his brother but wholly this Dean.
*
I’m not going to hurt you
Sam had said that once, equal parts plea and promise when he was staked out under an unforgiving sun. Being out now in one of only three working vehicles, a pickup held together mostly with prayer, he wonders if that’s still true. Sam’s the only one that can get past the border of their little community, beyond the protections, salt and copper.
He’s the only one the demons let by.
They gather, testing the fences, the protections. They come in increasing numbers and Dean keeps trying to assure Sam that it’s because they’re one of the only few remaining handful of humans left but Sam isn’t so sure.
Sometimes Sam feels like a giant flame, a burning brightness in an otherwise dark world that all manner of things are drawn to.
Dean mostly doesn’t want to believe it because Dean doesn’t want him to leave.
*
Sam has to go further to find supplies, dwindling stocks of canned goods and long-life packages. He brings back cuttings too; snippets from gardens gone wild of vegetables and fruits. Some take and some don’t but it’s not enough yet to feed their people.
He mostly hasn’t come up dry yet because he’s been working his way through a widening circle of hunters he knows. Most of the places are abandoned, some cleared out already but some he finds shelters and panic rooms fully stocked. He’s lucky that this other world he fell into seems to mirror his own in a lot of ways, people he knows still living the same way in the same place.
He’s at Deacon’s property, trying not to swallow too hard at how he has to pick through the blackened remains of a house to find the trap door to the underground bunker when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. He straightens, cursing his complacency because he’s become used to nothing coming at him when he’s on these solo jaunts and then he’s swallowing hard for an entirely different reason.
“Ava,” he says, voice a dull crack in the silence.
“Hello Sam,” she says. She’s in jeans and a t-shirt, bare feet. Her hair is cut short making her features too big.
“You really here?” Sam asks because maybe he’s just worn out, seeing things.
“As much as I am anywhere,” she replies, picking her way daintily through the skeleton of Deacon’s house. Sam knows it’s just a shell but he still resents her presence, her touching anything that belonged to anyone he cared about. “I should ask the same of you.”
“I didn’t just pop into existence,” Sam points out and Ava snorts.
“Neither did I,” she says, waves an arm behind herself at the mostly cleared street and an ancient yellow beetle stopped at an angle.
“That’s my car.”
“You drive?” Sam asks, incredulous.
“How do you expect me to get around? On my broomstick I suppose,” Ava says and rolls her eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a girl just stop by and say hello?” Ava asks and it’s Sam’s turn to roll his eyes.
“We’re standing in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland so I’m going to have to say no to that one.”
“Fine,” Ava says and then her mouth tilts up but it’s not really a smile. “Just wanted to let you know the clock’s ticking.”
“I don’t really have time for riddles,” Sam snaps. He doesn’t turn his back on her but he edges away, not willing to give up the rest of the cache of goods here if he doesn’t have to but he has to be careful. If he never comes back, the community will die, trapped and helpless.
“Not a riddle,” Ava says. “Didn’t your friend Bobby ever tell you that the universe has a funny way of reasserting itself, making right anything that’s gone haywire?”
Sam can reach his truck if he sprints before she can reach him, he thinks. He’s tensing to do just that when Ava throws out her hands and laughs. “The universe has been pretty slack then,” Sam says when she’s done.
“But can’t you feel it?” Ava asks, looking at him sideways. “Can’t you feel the tug?”
“I don’t know what you’re game is-“
“You don’t belong here,” va suddenly screams at him, making him flinch. “There was supposed to be a Sam here, someone to lead us, make us great. You sure as shit aren’t him and you’ve outstayed your welcome.”
“Ava-“
“I just hope you have time to get back to say goodbye,” Ava says. “Before it happens.”
“Before what happens?” Sam demands, watching Ava turn and head towards her car.
“This isn’t your world Sam,” Ava tosses over her shoulder. “Sooner or later we all end up where we belong.”
*
Sam drives with his foot down the whole way after he'd stripped Deacon's place quickly, knowing that at any moment an obstacle can come out of nowhere and if he flips the truck there’s no help.
It doesn’t matter. Ava’s words have shaken him to the core.
There’s always a small group waiting for him when he gets back, people breaking off from their day to day chores to get first pick at whatever he’s brought. Dean’s usually at the head of them but he isn’t this time because Sam wasn’t due back for another day, maybe two and Sam knows he’s probably on one of the far boundaries, mending fences that always seem to need mending, an endless task.
Sam ignores the usual excitement over his finds and abandons the truck as soon as he’s slammed to a stop, heading for Bobby’s trailer. Bobby’s outside, sitting on an old bench seat that used to be inside a Thunderbird. Bobby just raises his eyebrows and tilts his hat back when Sam skids to a halt in front of him.
“Could I just get yanked back at any moment?” Sam demands and feels something cold settle in his stomach when Bobby doesn’t even ask what he’s going on about, just sighs heavy. Bobby stands, shades his eyes against the midday glare and looks towards the border of the property, the familiar shape of Dean just a blur at this distance.
“Been reading the signs for a few days,” Bobby says, leaning down to tug a battered and tape-repaired book from under the hemorrhaging cushion of the bench seat. He flips it open and frowns at the pages. “I hadn’t bothered to let you know because you hadn’t asked me about leavin’ in a while.”
“I don’t want to,” Sam says, looking out to where Bobby had, sees the blur of Dean pause in his labor, probably spotting Sam’s truck and the gathering of people around it. “I mean I... should but I thought it wasn’t possible.”
“We can’t force it, certainly,” Bobby agrees. “But sometimes things have a way of... resetting themselves.”
“You weren’t going to tell me that this was a possibility?” Sam demands and Bobby shrugs. The Dean shape grows larger as he jogs towards the truck and the excited crowd.
It had been a good haul, the first time Sam had found toothpaste that wasn’t dried-out powder in months.
“I didn’t want you to feel like you had to choose,” Bobby says as Dean veers in their direction, spotting Sam by Bobby’s trailer.
“Hey!” Dean says, grinning as he reaches them. There’s a concerned edge to it, probably less than there would have been had Sam been late rather than early. Dean doesn’t hesitate though, not even put off by the presence of Bobby, barrelling into Sam and half-lifting him and squeezing until Sam is forced to let out a half-strangled plea to be let down, laughing all the while. “Everything okay?” he asks when Sam’s feet touch dirt again, Dean still with his hands fisted in Sam’s shirt.
“Hit the jackpot,” Sam says, waving a hand at the kids that are now running around with a whole menagerie’s worth of stuffed toys aloft. He has no idea why Deacon would have been keeping toys with his emergency supplies but he’s pleased as hell he was considering he hasn’t heard the kids excited and laughing like that since he dropped into this world.
“Where’s mine?” Dean asks, pouting so that the scarred side of his face evens out with the unblemished half. Sam rolls his eyes and untucks a small scruffy toy wolf from his back pocket. Dean makes a completely un-manly sound of glee and snatches it, tearing off to join the excited children and immediately do battle with a girl with a polar bear.
“Like you said, I hadn’t mentioned it in a while,” Sam says to Bobby over his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do to anchor myself here?”
“Yeah,” Bobby says and waggles the book he has in hand.
*
Mary’s watching him across the bench table in the middle of the compound. She has a pile of clothes she’s mending and Sam’s working his way through a package of freeze dried ice cream. He’d always hated the stuff as a kid but he can’t imagine anything better right at the moment. When Sam raises an inquisitive eyebrow at her she huffs a laugh. “Sorry... you just seem more...”
“Here?” Sam finishes for her, rubbing absently at the burn of the tattoo over his ribs on his left side. It still itches and Bobby hadn’t exactly been the gentlest of tattoo artists. Dean had silently accepted Sam’s explanation of extra protection when Sam had first shown him the tattoo and had then gone on to lick around the healing skin until Sam had squirmed and begged for mercy.
“Grounded,” Mary says, nodding. “I’m not sure I ever told you how happy we are you’re here,” she adds like it’s an afterthought even though Sam can tell by the very careful way she’s not looking at him anymore that it’s not.
Sam suspects Mary always knows more than she lets on.
“I was getting worried about Dean,” she continues and her eyes find his again. She puts her work down and reaches a hand across to Sam, links fingers with him. “He needed something to live for.”
*
Sam watches the plush wolf walk up his chest and pause just below the wings of his collar bones. Sam ruffles the spiky fur on the top of its head and he feels the rumble of Dean’s chuckle against his side. “No fair getting me presents,” Dean complains. “It’s not like I can run out to the local Walmart to pick you up something.”
Sam settles with a band of sunlight across his chest and Dean a welcome jumble of angles against him when something jangles and then swings into his line of sight. It’s not the necklace Sam gave his brother because this Dean didn’t have a little brother to give him anything but the silver cross is important to Dean nonetheless, Sam knows. “Hey, no-“ Sam starts to protest.
“Shut up, it’s not like I’m proposing or anything,” Dean snorts and drapes the chain across Sam’s neck. Sam lifts his head enough for Dean to secure the chain. The wolf wobbles on his chest but doesn’t fall off with his movement.
“Really? I’m disappointed. I wanted you to make an honest man of me,” Sam says and Dean snorts again, presses is nose into Sam’s cheek and plucks the wolf off Sam’s chest, tossing him aside.
“Speaking of honest, you want to tell me what this is really for?” Dean says, hovering a hand over Sam’s tattoo. His fingers trace the edges, the skin still warm and red.
Sam was kidding himself if he thought he was going to get away with not explaining it.
“What did Bobby tell you?” Sam asks, neatly evading answering the question directly and Dean pulls himself up on one elbow so he can look down at Sam. Sometimes this world’s Dean does actually remind Sam of his own brother. The steely not buying your crap expression he’s wearing is one of those times.
Makes Sam feel a little odd about lying next to him in a bed wearing nothing but a sheet.
“Big fat zip, which is why I’m suspicious,” Dean says, one eyebrow raised. He presses a little into the tattoo with the edge of his thumb and Sam hisses and jerks away from the touch.
“Ow, hey!” Sam protests. “Fine, okay,” he huffs and watches Dean settle back a little wearing an expectant expression. “It’s so I don’t... leave.”
Dean just looks at him for a moment, really looks. The intensity of it is so much that Sam’s skin itches, but all at once the intensity seems to flow out of him and Dean flops down, chest across Sam’s own. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
Dean smiles, rubbing a knuckle across Sam’s ribs, the unmarked side of him. Despite the casualness of the affection, his face is serious when he finally looks back up at Sam, face tipped back so he’s all cheekbones and stubbled chin. “I keep waiting for you to disappear like you arrived,” he finally admits. “I just... I’ve never had anything good y’know? I keep waiting for it to be taken away.”
“I can’t promise that’s not going to happen,” Sam says and when Dean frowns, Sam tries to smooth the expression away with his thumb, pad catching on Dean’s scar for a second. “I can promise I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it doesn’t though.”
“You must miss... him,” Dean says slowly. “Your brother.”
“I do,” Sam agrees. “I can’t put into words how much but I... I can’t really explain it but I belong here now. No matter how it happened.”
“I don’t want to be the reason you stay if you can escape a world that’s like this,” Dean says, sitting up and making an expansive gesture with his arm, encompassing their small dwelling and everything inside it. “There’s a world out there where you can have hot showers, watch a movie and not go hungry.”
“Just...” Sam sighs, slings an arm over his eyes. “I can’t say I enjoy the demon storms or Mary’s not-bacon which is not bacon but my life has never really been about enjoyment-“
“I don’t want to be a duty either,” Dean says flatly and Sam unearths his face to scowl at him.
“That’s not what I’m saying. Some people are carved out for something, there’s a place they’ve been made to fit and I fit here. Does that make sense?”
“Not in the slightest,” Dean says but the darkness has left his expression and he grins wryly. “But I’m used to that.” He bites his lip for a moment and Sam can tell he wants to say something else but he won’t do it without prodding. Sam obliges, literally, poking Dean in the side with his knee.
“Is there something I can do?” Dean asks finally, hand fitting back over Sam’s tattoo, but gentle this time.
“You really want to offer yourself up to Bobby and his far too gleeful tattooing?” Sam snorts but at Dean’s unwavering expression, he sobers. “Maybe. We can check.”
“Let’s do that,” Dean says, curling down and fitting around the spaces Sam never realised he had.
By:
kellifer_ficFandom: SPN
Rating: PG (language/adult themes)
Category: Alternate!Dean/Sam
Words: 2,600
Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money!
Spoilers: None
Summary: In an alternate world, Sam finds a family he wasn't expecting.
Notes: All mistakes are mine. This is a continuation of and hell followed with him and But For The
“You come back,” Dean says, pressing their foreheads together. “You come back to me.”
“I always do,” Sam huffs, impatient to leave because it means he’ll be back sooner.
“Yeah, well, you keep that up,” Dean warns and Sam touches knuckles to the edge of Dean’s scar, the place that isn’t his brother but wholly this Dean.
I’m not going to hurt you
Sam had said that once, equal parts plea and promise when he was staked out under an unforgiving sun. Being out now in one of only three working vehicles, a pickup held together mostly with prayer, he wonders if that’s still true. Sam’s the only one that can get past the border of their little community, beyond the protections, salt and copper.
He’s the only one the demons let by.
They gather, testing the fences, the protections. They come in increasing numbers and Dean keeps trying to assure Sam that it’s because they’re one of the only few remaining handful of humans left but Sam isn’t so sure.
Sometimes Sam feels like a giant flame, a burning brightness in an otherwise dark world that all manner of things are drawn to.
Dean mostly doesn’t want to believe it because Dean doesn’t want him to leave.
Sam has to go further to find supplies, dwindling stocks of canned goods and long-life packages. He brings back cuttings too; snippets from gardens gone wild of vegetables and fruits. Some take and some don’t but it’s not enough yet to feed their people.
He mostly hasn’t come up dry yet because he’s been working his way through a widening circle of hunters he knows. Most of the places are abandoned, some cleared out already but some he finds shelters and panic rooms fully stocked. He’s lucky that this other world he fell into seems to mirror his own in a lot of ways, people he knows still living the same way in the same place.
He’s at Deacon’s property, trying not to swallow too hard at how he has to pick through the blackened remains of a house to find the trap door to the underground bunker when he catches movement out of the corner of his eye. He straightens, cursing his complacency because he’s become used to nothing coming at him when he’s on these solo jaunts and then he’s swallowing hard for an entirely different reason.
“Ava,” he says, voice a dull crack in the silence.
“Hello Sam,” she says. She’s in jeans and a t-shirt, bare feet. Her hair is cut short making her features too big.
“You really here?” Sam asks because maybe he’s just worn out, seeing things.
“As much as I am anywhere,” she replies, picking her way daintily through the skeleton of Deacon’s house. Sam knows it’s just a shell but he still resents her presence, her touching anything that belonged to anyone he cared about. “I should ask the same of you.”
“I didn’t just pop into existence,” Sam points out and Ava snorts.
“Neither did I,” she says, waves an arm behind herself at the mostly cleared street and an ancient yellow beetle stopped at an angle.
“That’s my car.”
“You drive?” Sam asks, incredulous.
“How do you expect me to get around? On my broomstick I suppose,” Ava says and rolls her eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a girl just stop by and say hello?” Ava asks and it’s Sam’s turn to roll his eyes.
“We’re standing in the middle of a post-apocalyptic wasteland so I’m going to have to say no to that one.”
“Fine,” Ava says and then her mouth tilts up but it’s not really a smile. “Just wanted to let you know the clock’s ticking.”
“I don’t really have time for riddles,” Sam snaps. He doesn’t turn his back on her but he edges away, not willing to give up the rest of the cache of goods here if he doesn’t have to but he has to be careful. If he never comes back, the community will die, trapped and helpless.
“Not a riddle,” Ava says. “Didn’t your friend Bobby ever tell you that the universe has a funny way of reasserting itself, making right anything that’s gone haywire?”
Sam can reach his truck if he sprints before she can reach him, he thinks. He’s tensing to do just that when Ava throws out her hands and laughs. “The universe has been pretty slack then,” Sam says when she’s done.
“But can’t you feel it?” Ava asks, looking at him sideways. “Can’t you feel the tug?”
“I don’t know what you’re game is-“
“You don’t belong here,” va suddenly screams at him, making him flinch. “There was supposed to be a Sam here, someone to lead us, make us great. You sure as shit aren’t him and you’ve outstayed your welcome.”
“Ava-“
“I just hope you have time to get back to say goodbye,” Ava says. “Before it happens.”
“Before what happens?” Sam demands, watching Ava turn and head towards her car.
“This isn’t your world Sam,” Ava tosses over her shoulder. “Sooner or later we all end up where we belong.”
Sam drives with his foot down the whole way after he'd stripped Deacon's place quickly, knowing that at any moment an obstacle can come out of nowhere and if he flips the truck there’s no help.
It doesn’t matter. Ava’s words have shaken him to the core.
There’s always a small group waiting for him when he gets back, people breaking off from their day to day chores to get first pick at whatever he’s brought. Dean’s usually at the head of them but he isn’t this time because Sam wasn’t due back for another day, maybe two and Sam knows he’s probably on one of the far boundaries, mending fences that always seem to need mending, an endless task.
Sam ignores the usual excitement over his finds and abandons the truck as soon as he’s slammed to a stop, heading for Bobby’s trailer. Bobby’s outside, sitting on an old bench seat that used to be inside a Thunderbird. Bobby just raises his eyebrows and tilts his hat back when Sam skids to a halt in front of him.
“Could I just get yanked back at any moment?” Sam demands and feels something cold settle in his stomach when Bobby doesn’t even ask what he’s going on about, just sighs heavy. Bobby stands, shades his eyes against the midday glare and looks towards the border of the property, the familiar shape of Dean just a blur at this distance.
“Been reading the signs for a few days,” Bobby says, leaning down to tug a battered and tape-repaired book from under the hemorrhaging cushion of the bench seat. He flips it open and frowns at the pages. “I hadn’t bothered to let you know because you hadn’t asked me about leavin’ in a while.”
“I don’t want to,” Sam says, looking out to where Bobby had, sees the blur of Dean pause in his labor, probably spotting Sam’s truck and the gathering of people around it. “I mean I... should but I thought it wasn’t possible.”
“We can’t force it, certainly,” Bobby agrees. “But sometimes things have a way of... resetting themselves.”
“You weren’t going to tell me that this was a possibility?” Sam demands and Bobby shrugs. The Dean shape grows larger as he jogs towards the truck and the excited crowd.
It had been a good haul, the first time Sam had found toothpaste that wasn’t dried-out powder in months.
“I didn’t want you to feel like you had to choose,” Bobby says as Dean veers in their direction, spotting Sam by Bobby’s trailer.
“Hey!” Dean says, grinning as he reaches them. There’s a concerned edge to it, probably less than there would have been had Sam been late rather than early. Dean doesn’t hesitate though, not even put off by the presence of Bobby, barrelling into Sam and half-lifting him and squeezing until Sam is forced to let out a half-strangled plea to be let down, laughing all the while. “Everything okay?” he asks when Sam’s feet touch dirt again, Dean still with his hands fisted in Sam’s shirt.
“Hit the jackpot,” Sam says, waving a hand at the kids that are now running around with a whole menagerie’s worth of stuffed toys aloft. He has no idea why Deacon would have been keeping toys with his emergency supplies but he’s pleased as hell he was considering he hasn’t heard the kids excited and laughing like that since he dropped into this world.
“Where’s mine?” Dean asks, pouting so that the scarred side of his face evens out with the unblemished half. Sam rolls his eyes and untucks a small scruffy toy wolf from his back pocket. Dean makes a completely un-manly sound of glee and snatches it, tearing off to join the excited children and immediately do battle with a girl with a polar bear.
“Like you said, I hadn’t mentioned it in a while,” Sam says to Bobby over his shoulder. “Is there anything I can do to anchor myself here?”
“Yeah,” Bobby says and waggles the book he has in hand.
Mary’s watching him across the bench table in the middle of the compound. She has a pile of clothes she’s mending and Sam’s working his way through a package of freeze dried ice cream. He’d always hated the stuff as a kid but he can’t imagine anything better right at the moment. When Sam raises an inquisitive eyebrow at her she huffs a laugh. “Sorry... you just seem more...”
“Here?” Sam finishes for her, rubbing absently at the burn of the tattoo over his ribs on his left side. It still itches and Bobby hadn’t exactly been the gentlest of tattoo artists. Dean had silently accepted Sam’s explanation of extra protection when Sam had first shown him the tattoo and had then gone on to lick around the healing skin until Sam had squirmed and begged for mercy.
“Grounded,” Mary says, nodding. “I’m not sure I ever told you how happy we are you’re here,” she adds like it’s an afterthought even though Sam can tell by the very careful way she’s not looking at him anymore that it’s not.
Sam suspects Mary always knows more than she lets on.
“I was getting worried about Dean,” she continues and her eyes find his again. She puts her work down and reaches a hand across to Sam, links fingers with him. “He needed something to live for.”
Sam watches the plush wolf walk up his chest and pause just below the wings of his collar bones. Sam ruffles the spiky fur on the top of its head and he feels the rumble of Dean’s chuckle against his side. “No fair getting me presents,” Dean complains. “It’s not like I can run out to the local Walmart to pick you up something.”
Sam settles with a band of sunlight across his chest and Dean a welcome jumble of angles against him when something jangles and then swings into his line of sight. It’s not the necklace Sam gave his brother because this Dean didn’t have a little brother to give him anything but the silver cross is important to Dean nonetheless, Sam knows. “Hey, no-“ Sam starts to protest.
“Shut up, it’s not like I’m proposing or anything,” Dean snorts and drapes the chain across Sam’s neck. Sam lifts his head enough for Dean to secure the chain. The wolf wobbles on his chest but doesn’t fall off with his movement.
“Really? I’m disappointed. I wanted you to make an honest man of me,” Sam says and Dean snorts again, presses is nose into Sam’s cheek and plucks the wolf off Sam’s chest, tossing him aside.
“Speaking of honest, you want to tell me what this is really for?” Dean says, hovering a hand over Sam’s tattoo. His fingers trace the edges, the skin still warm and red.
Sam was kidding himself if he thought he was going to get away with not explaining it.
“What did Bobby tell you?” Sam asks, neatly evading answering the question directly and Dean pulls himself up on one elbow so he can look down at Sam. Sometimes this world’s Dean does actually remind Sam of his own brother. The steely not buying your crap expression he’s wearing is one of those times.
Makes Sam feel a little odd about lying next to him in a bed wearing nothing but a sheet.
“Big fat zip, which is why I’m suspicious,” Dean says, one eyebrow raised. He presses a little into the tattoo with the edge of his thumb and Sam hisses and jerks away from the touch.
“Ow, hey!” Sam protests. “Fine, okay,” he huffs and watches Dean settle back a little wearing an expectant expression. “It’s so I don’t... leave.”
Dean just looks at him for a moment, really looks. The intensity of it is so much that Sam’s skin itches, but all at once the intensity seems to flow out of him and Dean flops down, chest across Sam’s own. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
Dean smiles, rubbing a knuckle across Sam’s ribs, the unmarked side of him. Despite the casualness of the affection, his face is serious when he finally looks back up at Sam, face tipped back so he’s all cheekbones and stubbled chin. “I keep waiting for you to disappear like you arrived,” he finally admits. “I just... I’ve never had anything good y’know? I keep waiting for it to be taken away.”
“I can’t promise that’s not going to happen,” Sam says and when Dean frowns, Sam tries to smooth the expression away with his thumb, pad catching on Dean’s scar for a second. “I can promise I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure it doesn’t though.”
“You must miss... him,” Dean says slowly. “Your brother.”
“I do,” Sam agrees. “I can’t put into words how much but I... I can’t really explain it but I belong here now. No matter how it happened.”
“I don’t want to be the reason you stay if you can escape a world that’s like this,” Dean says, sitting up and making an expansive gesture with his arm, encompassing their small dwelling and everything inside it. “There’s a world out there where you can have hot showers, watch a movie and not go hungry.”
“Just...” Sam sighs, slings an arm over his eyes. “I can’t say I enjoy the demon storms or Mary’s not-bacon which is not bacon but my life has never really been about enjoyment-“
“I don’t want to be a duty either,” Dean says flatly and Sam unearths his face to scowl at him.
“That’s not what I’m saying. Some people are carved out for something, there’s a place they’ve been made to fit and I fit here. Does that make sense?”
“Not in the slightest,” Dean says but the darkness has left his expression and he grins wryly. “But I’m used to that.” He bites his lip for a moment and Sam can tell he wants to say something else but he won’t do it without prodding. Sam obliges, literally, poking Dean in the side with his knee.
“Is there something I can do?” Dean asks finally, hand fitting back over Sam’s tattoo, but gentle this time.
“You really want to offer yourself up to Bobby and his far too gleeful tattooing?” Sam snorts but at Dean’s unwavering expression, he sobers. “Maybe. We can check.”
“Let’s do that,” Dean says, curling down and fitting around the spaces Sam never realised he had.
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