Chapter 16

Breakfast. The birdseed and oats Sam usually eats hasn't been touched. Instead, he mainlines coffee and looks wrecked, even though he slept solid through the night. At least, if he didn't, he hasn't said anything about Dean's nocturnal wanderings without his body.

Dean hasn't told Sam yet. After the first night, he gave up on trying to find a way to get his life back. Last night he spent hours just wandering through the bunker, then more hours honing the art of interacting with the physical world without destroying the place. He's got three days now, all that's left of the magic that keeps drawing him back to his body. After that he's free of it. It won't be preserved any longer, it'll start to decompose, and Dean's not going to let Sam eat a bullet when that happens.

He wraps one cold dead hand around his coffee cup, spreads out the morning paper with the other. He scans for potential jobs out of habit. The weird stuff isn't usually on the front page, jobs are usually tucked away in the dark, ignored corners. This time, it's not. It's staring at him from the front page, a big bold headline. "This sound like a rugaru to you, Sammy?" he says, and then slides the paper across the table.

"Jesus," Sam says, and at least there's still some kind of feeling in him. "Those poor kids."

"Yep." Dean pulls the paper back, looks for the fine detail in the small print. "Watching their teacher eat the principal during class will put them in therapy until they're in the old folks home, pretty much." He pushes out his chair, the legs screeching over the floor. "So, we on it?"

Sam's head jerks up. "What?"

"It's still at large, Sammy. You want to wait until it crawls out of whatever hole it crawled into and eats someone else before we move?"

"Dean," Sam says, his voice full of anguish. "Three days, Dean. You've got three days. You want to waste that time on a hunt?"

"It's what we do, Sammy. We hunt." Dean stands, folds the paper, shoves it under his arm and heads for the door. "You don't want to come, that's fine. I'm going to do my job."

Sam's out of his seat in seconds, his hand flat on Dean's chest as he he pins him to the wall. "Please," he says, and his eyes are rimmed with red, wet. He bends his head, brushes his lips over Dean's mouth. "Please."

Dean turns his head away. "Don't, Sam."

Sam flinches back like he's been burned. "Dean." He looks hurt, mortified, cut by the sharp sting of rejection. "Dean?"

Dean shakes his head. "It's not that, Sammy. I want to. I do." He looks up into Sam's eyes. "You're kissing a corpse. It's gross."

"No." Sam puts his hands on Dean again, both hands on his chest. "It's not like that. You might not have a heartbeat, but you're not that."

He barely has to try now. He just does it. A second later, he's standing off to one side, and watching as his body slides down the wall to the floor, Sam's cry of dismay as he tries to hold it up echoing off the walls.

"Kiss me now, Sammy," he says. "Try it now, and see how it feels."

Sam swings around, gapes at Dean. One step at a time he crosses the floor and reaches out. His fingers slide right through Dean's cheek, nothing there to touch. Dean glitches, because the look on Sam's face hurts.

"I can't," Sam says. "I can't even touch you."

"I know." Dean sighs, closes his eyes. "But I'm still here. And I swear, Sammy. I'm not going anywhere. This doesn't have to be the end."

"I need to be able to touch you, Dean. I need to be able to hold you. I can't watch you lose it, because it'll happen. It always happens."

"You'll keep me human. You'll keep me connected. We can do this. Together." He reaches out, channels the affection he has for Sam as an emotion, and he touches him, drags the pad of his thumb over Sam's lower lip.

Sam gasps, shudders. Makes a sound like want and terror all at once.

"Yeah, Sammy," Dean whispers. "I can touch." He drags his lips over Sam's mouth, and feels a kind of need that he can't satisfy without a body when Sam whimpers. When he moves a hand down Sam's body to touch him through his pants, it's just to help his focus, and when Sam moans, Dean flickers.

Sam reaches out again, and his hand slides straight through Dean's shoulder. Dean feels it, but it's like a shimmer, a warmth, and then nothing. Sam lets out a whine, and then pulls away. "I can't," he says, and then he turns, and his eyes fall on Dean's body, slumped against the wall. "I'll do the job, but please. Just give me these three days."

Dean lets go, opens his eyes and pushes himself up off the floor. He's cold, heavy, claustrophobic. "Okay, Sammy," he says. "Okay."

---

They find the rugaru in the boiler room beneath the school. It stinks of leftovers, advanced human decomp, bits saved for later. It'd be easier for Dean if his sense of smell were as dead as his sense of taste, but at least he doesn't retch like Sam does when they get the door open.

"I got this," Dean says, taking the lead into the darkness. His only weapon is a blowtorch, but he's still got the silver knife he bought in Glastonbury, tucked safely inside his jacket. Sam's almost silent steps are audible behind him.

It leaps out at them from behind a stack of cardboard boxes, gaping red maw in the light from Dean's blowtorch. It swings, knocks the torch from Dean's hand, and it goes out before it hits the floor.

They're plunged into darkness. Something hits Dean from the side, knocks him down. "Sam," he cries out, in an almost panic, and he glitches.

There's a flash of sudden light, half-words shouted, then intense pressure in his side as he struggles against the heavy weight on him. Then it's gone, and there's a roar of pain as the thing explodes into flame and flails. It lights the room.

"I told you this was a bad idea," Sam says, almost panic in his voice. His hands are on Dean, pushing up his shirt. "Jesus." His hands are warm on Dean's skin, and the come away clean, though Dean expects a lot of blood.

He's still flickering.

"—with me, Dean?"

"Yeah," he manages to get out. "More or less. Goddammit— The bastard's fast."

"I got him," Sam says, and the light seems to dim. "He took a bite out of you, Dean." Sam swallows hard, seems to hold back another retch.

"I'm okay," Dean says. He's all here, now, at least mostly. The flashes are brief, barely cut Sam's words. He sits up, ignoring Sam's hand trying to hold him down, tugs at the hem of his shirt to see the damage.

There's a chunk of flesh missing just below his rib cage, a bite shaped piece carved out of him, edges ragged and bloodless. "Yuck," he says. He should probably feel squeamish, light headed, but he doesn't. He looks up at Sam, gives him a weak smile. "Nothing a band aid won't cure, huh?"

"Dean," Sam says, looking as pained as if it was him that bought it.

---

There might be a part missing, but you can hardly tell when it's covered up. Sam slides careful fingers around the tape on the edges of the bandage, yet another to match the one wrapping his thigh, the one over his heart, the exit wound on his back. "You can't hunt like this," Sam whispers, eyes on his work. "You get in a fight and start blacking out? We should never have come here."

"You're right," Dean says, eyes on the downturned corner of Sam's mouth. It's not because he's worried about the part of him that's currently smoldering along with the rugaru corpse back in the boiler room. He doesn't care about this body anymore. The expiry date is a little over forty eight hours away, and he won't need it then. But he put Sam in danger today. Sam thought Dean was there, and he wasn't. "I'm sorry."

Sam looks up. His eyes are always wet now, always on the verge of messy, ugly tears. "I want to go home, Dean," he says.

Dean looks around the crappy motel room they checked into before going after the rugaru. "Home?"

"The bunker, Dean, okay? I want to go there, and I want to lock ourselves in where we're safe, until it's over."

Dean swallows hard. "There doesn't have to be an over, Sammy. I'm not going anywhere."

"You're going to haunt me?" Sam's face is incredulous. "That's not how it works, Dean. You don't get to choose."

"Who says? We both know enough to make sure the conditions are right." He looks down at himself, at his body. It's just a shell, something to hold him, trap him. "This doesn't mean anything to me," he says. "Human remains? Bones? Nah. I'm sticking with you, little brother. There's nothing in the world that means more to me than you. I say I get to choose. Reaper comes? Death himself? I'm telling that bastard to get lost. I'm staying."

"I can't." Sam pushes himself to his feet, stands over Dean sitting on the edge of the bed. "I can't be like this if you're a ghost. I can't touch you, I can't—"

"Sammy, if this is about not being able to get me off, I swear to god I'll—"

"It's not." Sam's voice is firm, even hard. "I can't stand by and watch you lose yourself, Dean. You can't guarantee that it won't happen. You can't tell me that. It might take years, it might take just a few months. But you'll go crazy, and I won't watch it."

Dean shakes his head. "So you're just going to check out? Quit, Sammy? You're a quitter, now?"

Sam stares down at him, unblinking. A fat tear, just one, breaks free of his lashes and rolls down his cheek. "Yeah," he says, softer than before. "Yeah, I'm going to quit. Because I used up all my second chances a long time ago. We both did. I want to finish up knowing you're still you. That I'm still me. I'm done, Dean. Without you, I'm out."

He's so certain, so definite. A heavy weight settles on Dean's chest, and he looks away, blinking hard. "God, Sammy," he says, and the words come out shaky and distorted. "Oh, Sam."

And then it's too much. Tears run cold down his cheeks, and sobs wrack his chest. He keeps his head high, though, eyes fixed on a water stain on the wall. He doesn't know how he's going to do it, how he's going to stand there and watch Sam put a bullet in his brain. If anything, that'll be the thing that makes him lose his mind.

He jerks his head around, hard. "Fine," he says. "That's what you want. But I am not letting you shoot yourself, Sam. So here's the thing." He wipes the tears off his face, dries his hands off on his jeans. "Blaze of glory, Sammy. We go out fighting, just like we're meant to. Just like we were born to do." He shakes his head. "Now I'm not saying we walk into a vamp nest and just stand there and let them take us out, we're going to take some of those bastards with us, thin the herd a little. But we pick a fight no hunter ever would, something we can't possibly win. And we do it together."

Sam stares down at him for long moments. He swallows, hard. "Someone will hear about it. Other hunters. Someone will find us, give us a proper hunter's funeral."

"Right," Dean says, even as he shakes his head. "We'll move on. Go wherever we're supposed to go. "We'll be done."

Sam blinks, then he sucks in a deep breath. "Deal," he says.