Chapter 15

The bunker is cold and empty and silent. Neither of them make a sound, and it's just their foot falls on the stairs that echoes out into the vast space when they enter.

Dean feels dirty. He heads straight for the shower, to wash the crap off his face he used to get on the plane. Sam follows behind, in the subdued silent trance he's been in since Dean told him the grail was gone.

Sam stands in the corner of the bathroom, watches Dean as he strips off his clothes. His eyes linger on every bit of freshly exposed flesh as Dean reveals it. His face is blank, impassive.

"Starting to get a little creepy, there, Sam," Dean says, as he shucks off his jeans and shorts and climbs in under the steaming spray of water.

"Do you want me to leave?"

There's so much fear in Sam's voice that Dean couldn't tell him to go even if he'd wanted it. "Nah. Get in here. Keep my back warm."

Sam seems to take a long time, and Dean watches his camouflage wash down the drain before he feels Sam get into the shower behind him. Then there are large, warm hands on his waist, Sam's broad chest pressed against his back, lips on the back of his neck.

Dean leans back, until he can feel Sam's hips pressing against his ass. Sam's dick is soft, but still impressive, and it feels good nestled between Dean's cheeks. "Come on, Sammy," Dean whispers, as his cock starts to harden.

Sam lets out something like a wet sob, and, fingers tightening on Dean's hips, he pushes forward. He kisses down the line of Dean's shoulder, then comes back up to suck and bite at his throat. His dick starts to harden between the cheeks of Dean's ass, and he rolls his hips. "I need you, Dean," he says, voice catching.

Dean presses his palms against the tiled wall, closes his eyes against the water raining down over him. "I know," he says. "Same here, little brother." He arches his back, pushing his ass out, blatantly inviting. "I need you, right now."

Sam's breath huffs out over Dean's shoulder, in quick, hot puffs. "What?"

Dean spreads his feet apart. "Do it, Sam."

Sam shudders, then takes one hand from Dean's hip, wraps it around the base of his cock. It's fully hard now, and twitching, as he drags it down the cleft of Dean's ass, and over his hole. "Jesus, Dean." He slides a thumb after it, presses, but not hard enough to push inside. "I don't wanna hurt you."

There's a bottle of body wash on the shelf in the corner. Dean grabs it, passes it back. "I took a bullet through the heart, Sammy. It barely slowed me down. I want to feel it when you fuck me."

"God." Sam gasps for breath, shakes as he snaps the cap off the bottle. There's a filthy squirt sound, and then hot, hard pressure against Dean's hole. "You're sure?"

"Make me feel it, Sam," Dean says.

Sam pushes forward. His fingers dig deep into Dean's hip, and he leans into it.

Dean groans as the tip of Sam's cock stretches him open, as the entire head slips inside. Sam stops, gasps against the back of Dean's neck, as Dean shudders with the pressure holding him open.

"Dean," Sam says. "Oh my god, Dean."

"Keep going." Dean arches back, pushes back. "Give me all of it, Sammy."

Sam's hips jerk forward. The entire hot, hard length of his cock fills Dean, and Sam's hips slap against Dean's ass. "Fuck."

"Yeah," Dean moans. He's surrounded in heat, the water on his face, Sam's skin against his back, the steady pulse of Sam's cock stuffed up his ass. He feels stretched, filled, lightheaded. "You hold onto me, Sammy. You keep me from bashing my head in when I black out, okay?"

"Stay with me," Sam says, voice thin and desperate. "Stay with me, Dean."

"For as long as I can, I promise. Now, move, because you're killing me here."

Sam moans and rocks his hips. All it does is drive his cock deeper inside Dean's body. His head drops down onto Dean's shoulder, and he pulls out then, slowly drawing back, inch by inch.

It feels like a loss, to Dean. It makes him feel empty, makes him clench up to stop losing any more. Sam thrusts back inside, a long, slow slide accompanied by a drawn out moan. Dean grunts when Sam's all the way inside again, squeezes as though he can keep Sam there. But he wants him to move again, and the conflict between one and the other makes him shake.

"Dean, Dean," Sam says, urgent and desperate. His arms wrap around Dean's chest, his hips snap forward, fall back, snap forward again. "Can I—? I need to come Dean, I'm going to come."

Dean could say something about stamina, or lack of it, but he doesn't. Instead, he gives Sam another squeeze, covers Sam's hand with his own."Do it, Sammy. Give it to me."

"Inside?" Sam whimpers, as he thrusts forward. "Dean, can I—?"

"Yes, Sam," Dean growls. "Swear to god, if you pull out now, I will kill you."

Sam lets out a strangled laugh against the back of Dean's neck. "Not yet, Dean. I won't ask you to do that yet." He lets out a sob, and then he tightens his grip around Dean, and he picks up the pace.

Dean's elbows threaten to go out from under him under the punishing rhythm of Sam's thrusts. The push and pull of Sam's cock inside him absorbs all of his attention, the warmth, the heat, the pressure, it all consumes him.

He blanks, the sound of the water raining down, the rhythm of Sam's thrusts into his body, his grip on the wall, cut up like a CD skipping over a scratch. "Hold onto me, Sammy," he says. It happens again, and his arms have fallen away, and Sam's arms are tight across his chest.

Sam groans and thrusts again. "You with me, Dean?"

"Yeah."

Sam bites into the meat of Dean's shoulder, grunts, and rocks his hips. He moves inside Dean, twitches. The heat inside him increases, along with a long, drawn out groan from Sam.

Dean flickers. Snapshots of Sam's orgasm hit him, hard and fast. He clings to here, holds on as tight as he can, but it's too hard.

Then he's on the tiled floor, on his knees, hanging limp in Sam's arms. "No, he grunts, because he's empty, he missed the end, and chances are he's never going to have a heart beat again, and how is that fair? That he gets this, he gets Sam, but he doesn't get all of it? Bits and pieces, always something missing, and in between? Sam's left fucking a corpse. "Goddammit. No."

The bathroom door rattles and bangs open. Then it slams shut.

"Shh, Dean. It's okay."

The mirror shakes and explodes out into the room. "No, it's not, Sam. It's not."

He's trapped inside this body, something to fall when he glitches out, a dead lump of meat that's going to break Sam's heart over and over again, until he can't stand it anymore and blows his brains out. "Let me go," he says. "Let me go, Sammy."

Sam's grip on him loosens. He stands, turns the water off, and then holds a hand out to Dean to help him up.

Dean wants to hang his head, to shiver here in the cold. But he takes Sam's hand, lets Sam pull him to his feet. "I'm ready to go, Sam," he says, standing in a kind of daze as Sam rubs him dry with a towel.

Sam shakes his head. "We've got five days," he says. "And I'm not ready to let you go."

"I'm going nuts," Dean says. He looks up at the broken mirror, down at the glass littering the floor. "I'm getting dangerous."

"I'm not letting you go until I have to, Dean." Sam's eyes are on his work as he pats droplets of moisture from the skin around the bullet hole in Dean's chest. "I've got five days. And there's a pattern."

"What we're doing is wrong," Dean whispers. "And there's something trying to drag my ass to hell for it."

"That's not it," Sam says. He looks up, drops the towel onto the floor, then takes Dean by the hand.

They're both completely naked, but Sam pulls him out of the bathroom, down the hall, and into Dean's room. It's the closest. He yanks back the covers on the bed, and pulls Dean in with him. When they're in their usual place, Sam wrapped around Dean from behind, his face tucked into the back of Dean's neck, he speaks.

"It's emotion, Dean. When you tore down that fence, you were scared. That cop had his gun on me, and you lost it. Just now, you were upset because you blacked out..." He lowers his voice, breathes the next words against the back of Dean's neck. "While I was coming." His hand slides up Dean's chest, wraps around his throat. "Thank you." The words are a hot tingle, and they make something twist in Dean's belly. "You felt so good. Thank you for letting me."

"Anytime," Dean croaks. He swallows hard. He'd let Sam do it again, because now he's always going to be chasing that ending, and his own ending. But there's something else there, right at the edge of his awareness. He's never going to get it. "God, Sammy. No. I take it back. We can't."

"Because you get pissed when you black out," Sam says. "The blackouts are tied to emotion, too. Ghosts get angry, that's when you get interference. They overdo it, they black out for a while, like when we hit them with salt or iron."

"So I should stay chilled." Dean rolls over so he's facing Sam. He tips his head up, parts his lips, and waits for Sam to kiss him. It's so slow and gentle he wants to scream. Parts of him are tearing him up inside, fighting against each other. He could pull Sam down on top of him, part his thighs and beg Sam to do it again. Again and again and again, for the next five days, until he just fades away. Or he could find his shorts, climb back in here to keep warm, and forget about kissing his brother just so he can be a little more human for those five days. "I don't know what to do, Sammy. We were supposed to bring the cup back. We're supposed to be figuring out how to make it work now, not this."

Sam's face screws up as though he's about to cry again. "I don't know, either, Dean."

"But we got options, right? We're not just going to lie here, are we?"

Sam's chin trembles. "That's one option. You know I'm coming with you, Dean."

Dean shakes his head. "We keep looking. There's got to be information on something in this dump that isn't a crossroads deal or a angel thing or a whatever-the-fuck. There's got to be something."

"We've used up all our lives, Dean. I'm sorry. I should never have done this to you in the first place."

"I'm not going to let you shoot yourself, Sam." Dean wipes the tears from Sam's face with his thumbs, and he tries something else. "You don't need me. So I'm done. I've been done over and over and over again. I went to hell, and you dealt. I went to purgatory, and you dealt. You can do it again."

Sam shakes his head. "I didn't. I tried to, but I couldn't. I swear to god, Dean. The day you die and I can't bring you back, I'm swallowing a bullet. There's nothing you can do, nothing you can say that's going to stop me. I need you. I always have. I always will."

Dean brushes his lips over Sam's mouth, and then rolls over. "Okay, Sammy. Okay."

---

Dean stands over the bed, looks down at Sam wrapped around a corpse. He's asleep, and it's Dean's body lying there in his arms, eyes open and staring blankly at nothing.

Dean can't even close his own eyes. When he tries, his fingers go through his head, and he knows how to do things, how to move things on the physical plane, but it was a long time ago he learned how, and he doesn't want to summon that kind of anger right now.

His eyes will feel like sandpaper when he climbs back into his meat suit, but he doesn't have time to worry about that now.

He walks right through the closed door, heads for the archives.

He's glitching, but it doesn't even slow him down like this. He's lighter, quicker, if anything he's more in control. He passes through walls, doors to get where he's going, taking shortcuts and detours.

It wasn't hard to get out this time. He knew where the chink in the magic was, a little bigger now that he's already busted through once. Now it's probably wider still.

He slips into the room with all the books. The filing system is standard Dewey, and if only the Men of Letters had stuck around long enough to go digital, because what he wouldn't give for a search box right now. 'Raise the dead' would be a good start, with a '-zombie' to go with it, because so far he's not had a hankering for brains, and he's got no interest in starting.

This time he channels a little of that negative emotion, using his fear for Sam, because if he's got Sam in mind, hopefully he won't bring the whole bunker down on top of them.

Hours later, surrounded by books with nothing in them, Dean thinks about the lengths they've gone to in the past to bring each other back to life. He sold his soul, got a measly year, to bring Sam back. He wouldn't let Sam do it now, even if it was an option. Once, he would have prayed to Cas, get him to come do his thing, but Cas is gone now, too.

Even with the vast knowledge of the Men of Letters at their disposal, there's nothing. Nothing that won't have him eating brains and still walking around without a heartbeat.

Dean's ready to go. He's had a life. Not a particularly long one, but he's seen and done things most men only dream about in their worst nightmares. And maybe that shouldn't seem like an achievement, but it does. He survived, over and over and over again. He fought, even when he was shitting his pants with fear, because it was the right thing to do.

But Sam's going to eat a bullet. And that's not right. As fucked up as they are, and they're pretty fucked up, always have been, even more fucked up now, it's not right.

Dean can't save himself. But maybe he can save Sam.

He blinks, and then he's standing over his brother's sleeping body again. Over his own corpse, eyes still wide and staring. It's kind of disgusting, really, all that bloodless flesh, heavy, awkward, cold. He's been wearing it around for close to a month, and it's gross. Sam fucked that body, and if Dean had stomach contents, he'd probably lose them.

He waits, watches over Sam until he starts to stir, and only then does he let the magic pull him back into his meat suit.