Dean tells himself it's sleeping with his mouth open, or all the booze he drank the night before. It's the morning breath from hell, that's all it is, and he brushes his teeth first thing and downs enough coffee to sear the thick, bitter coating from his tongue and throat. Slicks his lips with chapstick to combat the dry stretched feeling of his mouth and drinks enough water during the day that it won't happen again.

He finds out Sam's soul got left behind in hell and still, he takes the glass Sam offers right before he hits the hay, because it helps him sleep like it never has before and he welcomes sleep, especially now.

The denial is all that stands between Dean and the truth, when he wakes in the mornings, feeling it in his ass. He can't brush that off as the way he slept, can't tell himself it's time to quit the booze, but he ignores the smirk on Sam's stupid face as he limps to the bathroom, because, soulless or not, it's unthinkable.

He welcomes the dreams. That's all they are. He's dreaming, and whatever physical evidence there seems to be in the morning is leftover from the shit his brain does to him at night. He misses his brother, that's all, he's worried about Sam's soul, stuck in the cage with Lucifer, and it manifests in dreams that any therapist would have a field day with but Dean doesn't put much stock in. It's fine. He'll get Sam back and the dreams will go away and everything will go back to normal.

---

They get Sam's soul back, and Dean can't sleep anymore. He spends his nights watching Sam. He looks so young, so peaceful when he's sleeping, but it doesn't last. Sam starts to remember, things come back to him, in flashes that Dean can see on his face, and one day Sam can't look him in the eye at all.

He should leave it alone, but he can't, like a scab he's got to pick at until it starts bleeding all over again.

"I'm sorry," Sam says, over and over. "So sorry, Dean." Tears wet his shirt and when Dean reaches out, Sam jerks away. "How can you be near me," Sam says, "after what I did to you?"

Flashes of something that feels like memory hit Dean, but they were dreams, dreams he doesn't have anymore where he woke to a mouthful of pillow, breathing motel dust and cheap detergent. The smell of rubber, the slick sounds of sex, a burning fullness in his ass, someone else's sweat dripping on his back.

"You did nothing," Dean says. "Nothing, you hear me?" Almost tells Sam it's all a dream, but that would be too close to admitting that their experiences are the same.

Sam pulls something out of his bag, throws it onto the bed. "I found these in my stuff." Dean stares at the strip of tiny white pills.

He hasn't been able to sleep since Sam got his soul back. Tries to replace the glass of whiskey Sam handed him every night with great quantities of whatever liquor he can get his hands on, but he's got to get blind drunk before he can pass out. Reaches for the pills, because he knows, if he took one, he could sleep.

"I looked it up," Sam says. "It's—"

"Shut up," Dean says. Doesn't want to hear it because he knows what it is and he knows what it's for. "Just leave it. Forget it. It didn't happen."

"It did. I remember."

Dean remembers, too. The inability to speak or make his limbs do as they're told, the disorientation. He remembers choking on his brother's cock, drool on his chin. "No, it didn't," he growls, his fist clenching, crumpling the strip of pills. "It did not fucking happen, Sam, you hear me? Nothing happened."

Sam hangs his head, slumps to the edge of the opposite bed. "I don't know how to make it right, Dean. I don't know how to fix it."

There's a glass at Dean's elbow, a couple fingers of whiskey in the base. Dean pops out a pill, the strip crinkling.

Sam's hand shoots out, comes down on Dean's wrist. "I get it. They're addictive. That's why you can't sleep. Doing this won't fix it, it won't make it go away—"

Dean swallows the pill, washes it down with the last of the booze. "Gotta get some sleep, Sammy," he whispers.

He doesn't dream.

fin