Author's note: This fic was written for the Dean h/c remix challenge at Hoodie_Time on LJ. It's a remix of a fic called 'After the Flood' by I_Speak_Tongue, which I can't link to on , but which you should totally check out.

Now, New Hampshire

It would have been an ugly job in spring, with meadows full of flowers stretching out like wings from the centre of the town. It would have made his flesh crawl even with the smell of fresh cut grass in his nostrils, and the sun shining, clean as newly-washed cotton sheets, on the back of his neck.

It wasn't spring.

Dean stood next to the door of the 7-Eleven, and waited for Sam to come out with coffee. The winter sunlight was coming in flat, glinting off the cars in the parking lot and into his eyes. The air was so cold it hurt going down into his chest, and hurt coming back up, but he'd almost gagged on the smell of dirt when he'd followed Sam in to the convenience store, his boots sticking to the filthy floor.

There was a tattered poster from the New Hampshire tourist board taped to the glass of the door. Dean would have curled his lip at the faded picture of autumn leaves drooping artfully over a picturesque bridge, if his face hadn't been so fucking cold he thought it might crack. This town sure as hell wouldn't be starring on any posters, wouldn't be enticing any tourists north for leaf-peeping and antiquing, and whatever other rustic Americana New England peddled.

They had walked along Main Street when they first hit town, going in to the stationer with empty shelves, and the lunch place in a storefront, with picnic tables set up on the cheap carpeting. There were two stores selling tourist tack, targeted at the few station wagons with families in them that they had seen pulled in to the parking lot, maps spread out along the dashboard, but the stock was dusty and faded.

He looked back out over the parking lot, towards the low-rise buildings of downtown. They were white, alright, like he'd imagined every New England town to be, but there were no charming inns serving clam chowder, no places to eat with open fires burning in a grate. The paint was peeling off the wood, scoured by the salt hanging in the air like mist, and the sidewalks sagged, as though disappointed.

He watched two high school kids walk past, hunched in the wind. They both had acrylic hats on, but one didn't have gloves, and he was blowing on his fingers to warm them up. Neither of them had boots worth shit, and Dean didn't need to be told what that meant, what that was like, and he could feel the poor of the town swirling on the edge of the gusty breeze.

The door swung open, and a blast of sour, warm air hit Dean.

"Here," Sam held out a coffee, nose twitching in the cold.

"Thanks." Dean's voice scratched in his throat. He coughed, clearing it.

Sam's brow wrinkled. "You getting sick?"

Dean shook his head. "Nah. It's just colder than a witch's tit out here." He blew across the plastic lip of the takeout cup, steam eddying towards his face.

Sam stepped off the curb. "C'mon. This wind is nasty."

Dean followed him back to the car, feeling off-balance. It had been a long, fruitless day of digging, both literally, in the frozen wastes of one of the kid's backyards, and in the stacks of the mildewy library. He was good for a hard day of work, usually. Liked the aching tiredness in his muscles at sundown. Today, though, he felt as weak as a kitten, exhaustion flickering in his stomach like hunger.

Sam looked at him, oddly, as he eased himself behind the wheel. "You okay?"

Dean slid the key into the ignition, looking at the frayed cuff of his hoodie, poking out of the sleeve of his jacket.

"Just tired."

And he was. Tired to his bones, but there was something else, fluttering at the edge of his consciousness like a moth.

"We can skip the research tonight." Sam shook the hair out of his eyes. "Get a jump on it tomorrow."

Dean turned the key, listened to the sound of the engine coming to life. "Nah. We'll get it done tonight."

2006, New Orleans

The August evening was like a stifling, clammy cloak, and there was no bottle of beer on earth that wasn't going to taste good after walking ten blocks in that. Dean walked down the stairs from their room, mentally cursing New Orleans' relative lack of mom and pop stores, and the fact that his jeans were already hot and heavy against his legs.

They were staying in the French Quarter, near to the scene of the haunting, in a hotel with lush greenery in the courtyard, and AC efficient enough to keep a film of condensation on their beer. It was the only city that he'd ever had the least bit of interest in going to, and that was probably all about the movies that situated their evil against the verdant backdrop of the New Orleans cityscape.

They'd scoped out the Ursulines Convent – oldest colonial building in the Mississippi Valley – in the early morning, when the city was still sleeping off the previous night's excesses, and it was undeniable that the Quarter had charm. He'd looked forward to sampling the bars along Bourbon, the morning street littered with bright yellow cocktail go-cups under the wrought-iron curlicues of the balconies above, but there was something dark thrumming underneath the decadent laissez-faire. Something old as dirt, and something that made his skin itch.

"You feel it too?" John's face had been impassive when Dean had suggested getting a few beers and taking them back to the hotel.

"Yeah." Dean had bitten his lip, drawn his eyebrows closer together. "What is it?"

John had shrugged. "Noah and his ark is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to flood myth and lore. They're usually about rebirth, about new beginnings. Literally wiping the slate clean." They had been standing within twenty feet of a condemned house, close enough to see that a family was still living in it. "This look like a new beginning to you?"

Dean had shaken his head.

Shook his head too at the fact that the first store he went to only had Shiner Bock chilled down, and what the fuck was up with that? Twenty frat boys just left, the counterman had said, and that was just his luck. He found Sam Adams at the next place, and he was so hot he nearly popped the cap on a cold one right then, but he just wrapped the sweat-slick handles of the plastic bag around his hand and picked up the pace back to the hotel.

He walked back along Royal, but all of a sudden he was at St Ann, and he'd come too far, could see the stores lining Jackson Square when he looked. He turned back, wiping his forehead against the already damp skin of his arm, and missed the sound of footsteps behind him under the shrill laugh that gusted out of a nearby bar.

He heard the whoosh of the weapon a few seconds later, but not soon enough to stop it smashing into the back of his head.

2007, New Orleans

John hadn't wanted to take him back. Had tried to persuade the dealer to meet him somewhere else, but they guy had been resolute. He was only going to be in New Orleans for a day, and then he was flying to Belize, on some errand John hadn't asked, or been told, about.

Dean had set his jaw when John had tried to talk him into doing something else, going somewhere else.

"We need to check on Sammy," he'd said, finally, like a man throwing everything in on aces high, and Dean had been openmouthed with shock, because there was a name that hadn't been spoken between them in eighteen months.

John read non-compliance into the silence, and looked away. Another man might have said I'm worried about you, son, but John wasn't another man.

The guy, the dealer, wanted to meet at Cafe du Monde, and Dean had rolled his eyes at that, because it sat uneasily with him, doing their business in front of busloads of tourists, and because it was so deeply fucking lame.

"I'm going alone," John said, and Dean nodded, but slid a gun into his own waistband nonetheless.

They travelled on the streetcar to the Quarter, and John left Dean by the river. He had expected to be cooler, it being October and all, but he could feel the trickle of sweat under his shirt as he sat and looked at the Mississippi. John brought him some beignets and a cup of coffee, and smiled, sun in his eyes, at Dean's look of disgust at the green logo on the paper bag.

He dropped powdered sugar all down his shirt, and if it was possible to eat those damn things without that happening, he didn't see how, and watched a towboat push fifteen barges past him on the flat, brown river.

He remembered a history teacher telling him about the Mississippi and the slave boats that travelled up and down it, about New Orleans being one of the centres of the slave trade. He'd written a paper on it, a litany of facts that made him feel hot and cold, and awkward in his skin, but he had a better imagination now for the shit that people would do to each other without blinking, and he probably hadn't even scraped the surface on the atrocities that took place.

The beignet and coffee sat uneasily in his stomach, and he half-wished he'd stopped drinking sooner the previous night. They were staying at a place out on I-90, and after they had unloaded the car, John had pulled a bottle of Jameson's out of his duffel, along with two shot glasses, and stood them on the table, half challenge, and half consolation. They had drunk until Dean's throat had stopped burning, until the tension had drained out of him and he was sloppy-limbed and warm. John had put him to bed for the first time in forever, tugging his shirt over his head, and pulling his boots off. Dean had grabbed his wrist when he felt John's fingers on the top button of his jeans.

"It's just me, son." John's voice had been clear. "Just me." He had waited until Dean's grip slackened, before carrying on, sliding Dean's jeans down his legs and folding them over the back of a chair.

Dean sat and looked at the ugliest river he'd ever seen, and knew what his father had been trying to do. He didn't have a choice, though. He had to go back.

Now, New Hampshire

Missing kids always made for a bitch of a case. Paranoid law-enforcement, rushing everywhere because they didn't want to be caught moseying on the six o'clock news. Television vans lined up on verges, and camera crews all through the streets, trying frantically to find people that hadn't already been interviewed. Parents too broken-hearted to answer questions about strange noises, and cold spots. And suspicion slopping over everyone and everything like grease.

It had been six months since the last one had vanished – Tamara Jones - and the town had settled a little, like debris after an earthquake. The missing children posters, stuck to the clapboard of the town library, were tattered and faded, despite their protective layers of plastic. School photos and candid shots, they were a bunch of happy little kids, and Dean hadn't wanted to look at them.

Sam had done most of the research, had stuck copies of the pictures around the walls of their motel room, along with heavily abbreviated details of their disappearances. They'd told the local sheriff, the motel manager, and the school principal that they were writing a report on the disappearances for some child exploitation taskforce, because it paid to be obviously on the side of the angels when it came to cases like those. People in the town hadn't been unhelpful, exactly, but the missing children were like scraped raw flesh that had just started to scab, and no one wanted to pick at the edges too hard.

Dean sank onto his bed, onto the blue bedspread that looked, miraculously, like it had recently been run through a washer and dryer.

"Can I help?"

Sam was consulting one of the books piled up next to his laptop. They had been in town for two weeks, long enough for Sam to have commandeered the desk in the room, and Dean recognised the arrangement of books and papers and pens from the twice he'd broken into Sam's dorm at Stanford.

"I've got it." Sam frowned at the book in his hand. "You could just watch TV?"

Dean sat, the protest lodged in his throat, and then shrugged and flicked the box on. He'd read enough about occult uses for children's body parts.

"Can we watch this?"

"Huh?" His fingers paused on the remote.

Sam looked up from his book. "I like this show."

Huh. Dean liked TV because it was noise, a warm hum of sound that let his thoughts spin and sort in the background. He'd kind of given up on following shows when he was younger. He and Sam would get all into some cartoon or other, and then John would come back from somewhere and drag them on to the next place, which might have an affiliate that wasn't airing that show. Or he might flip the TV off himself, and say boys, don't you have anything better to do?, which meant go do some training¸ clear as a bell. Sam would drag himself off the sofa, protest clear in every line of his body, and Dean would hold himself tight for the moment their dad would start to yell.

The show Sam wanted to watch was some kind of drama about making a TV show, which seemed kind of pointless to Dean. He liked it when they watched crime shows – or shows about stuff that went bump in the dark – and got to say mean, sarcastic things about the detectives. Except Scully. She may not be a believer, but he wouldn't hear anything said about Scully.

He half-watched, conscious that Sam was smiling for the first time in days, and it wasn't until the third mention of Hurricane Katrina that he felt the lurch of apprehension. The people – producers? – of the fictional show were making a Christmas episode, and they were paying some refugee musicians from New Orleans to play some Christmas song over a backdrop of shots from the flood.

Huh. "Typical," he said, and he hadn't really meant to.

Sam looked at him. "Typical?" He sounded mellow enough, not like the Sam who would narrow his eyes and bludgeon people with his rightness until they just gave up.

He cleared his throat. "Like playing one Christmas show and making everyone feel better about themselves is going to fix everything for these guys."

Sam frowned. "Better than nothing." He still had that uncertain tone in his voice like he wasn't sure what was happening.

Dean shook his head, felt his chest tighten. "Whatever." He stood up. "I'm going for a walk."

"It's like ten below out there."

"I'll remember my mittens."

"Dean—"

"See you later, Sam."

Dean put on his boots, his jacket, his hat, and his gloves and swung open the door.

2006, New Orleans

He came to chained to a wall, and that was never fucking good. He did an inventory with his eyes still closed, because the first rule of Fight Club was that sometimes it paid to keep the fact that you were conscious to your own damn self. His head ached. Someone – something – had taken his boots and his gun. His shoulder hurt enough to be dislocated, and the fingers on his left hand felt broken. He was sitting on a wooden floor. He smelled mold and piss, but, shifting slightly and feeling dry-ish denim against his skin, he didn't think it was his. Not yet, anyway, and with that thought, he opened his eyes.

There was a kid's face about a foot away from his. He blinked. So did the kid.

"Who are you?" She looked about seven. Maybe younger, and wearing a denim skirt and a green t-shirt. She didn't have any socks on and, even in the half-light, he could see that her feet were dirty.

"I'm Dean." His throat was rough, and he would have given all the money he had for one of the beers he'd just bought. "Who're you?"

"Serafine Hardy." She moved away from him, as if she'd suddenly realised how close she was standing. "I'm six."

"Pleased to meet you Serafine." He licked his lips. "That's a pretty name."

She nodded. "It was my great-great-great grandmas."

"That's nice." He was grasping for some kind of segue into the scary-ass questions that he had to ask the kid. "Um— "

A floorboard creaked, somewhere outside the room that they were in, and Serafine's face turned the colour of ash. Question asked, and answered.

"Sit down," Dean said, as quietly as he could. "Close your eyes like you're asleep."

She obeyed him, slumping to the floor against the same wall he was attached to. He felt the temperature drop in the room, watched his breath hang in the air like steam, and he didn't need an EMF meter to know that there was something else there.

The floor dipped slightly, underneath him, and then there was a man standing in the room, holding two children in his arms like they had fallen asleep in the car, and he was just carrying them upstairs to bed. He dropped them, just let them fall to the floor like sacks of grain, and Dean swallowed a gasp.

"Serafine," he said, and his voice was normal. Shapeshifter, Dean's brain supplied, but he could see the flicker of an older man in the corner of the room, like a broken projection, and he'd never heard of a shapeshifter working with a spirit. "I know you're not sleeping."

Dean felt, rather than saw, Serafine open her eyes.

"Come with me, baby," the man said, and she whimpered into her hand.

Dean sucked a breath in. "Leave her the fuck alone," he said. "Take me, instead."

"Serafine." The man cocked his head to one side. "I won't ask you again."

She stood up, and he waited until she was by his side before taking her hand and half-dragging her out of the door.

2007, New Orleans

It took him a while to find the place, but it was half a miracle that he found it at all, given that he was unconscious going in, and barely conscious coming out. It looked nothing like it did when he dreamt about it, but it was almost spookier that it was behind a perfectly ordinary door, instead of the gaping black maw that was enough to jerk him awake, heart pounding like he'd run a race.

He was no coward, he knew, but he stood at the top of the stairs with chills running up and down his spine, and it took him a long time to force himself to move down the stinking steps on shaking legs.

The hallway was long, and the door seemed to kaleidoscope away from him. He was dizzy, heart hammering against his ribs, and there was a metallic taste in his mouth, like he had a penny tucked under his tongue. He couldn't go back, though, not when he had the bowed wood of the door under his fingertips, and he pushed it open.

It was almost a moment of relief when he realised that there was nothing there but him, and he reckoned that his father must have had someone salt and burn the bodies they'd left behind. He breathed in, shaky, and the smell was rank but he was pretty sure that he didn't have actual evil in his lungs. He breathed out, as slow and steady as he could, and it wasn't, but that was okay. He had never thought that this was going to be a cakewalk.

He had almost convinced himself with his own brave little toaster act, that this was going to be five minutes of ripping the bandaid off before he could move on with his life, when he saw the red stain on the floor. His knees gave out, almost before he had realised what was happening, and then he was howling, sobs coming out so hard and so fast that he could barely breathe through them, and he thought he might actually choke on his own snot and die.

A floorboard creaked in the hall, and he'd thought he'd felt terror before then, but this was like a bolt of adrenaline so intense that it actually hurt, and he felt his head jerk on the end of his neck.

"It's okay, son." His father's voice, and that made no fucking sense. "I got you, Deano."

He was kneeling on the floor, on a rug that reeked of floodwater and death, and John had his arms round Dean, tight and strong across his shoulders, one hand holding the back of his head, fingers warm against his scalp.

Dean fisted his hands in his father's shirt, and he could hear his heartbeat, steady and strong, even over the sounds he was making, and if he had any control at all then he wouldn't be making those noises where anybody could hear him.

"It's gonna be okay, Dean." His father just kept talking, and talking, it'sallokitwillbeokeverything'sgonnabeok, fingers ruffling Dean's hair, and Dean kept crying, open mouthed, crying like something inside was just broken, into his father's shirtfront.

And then, slowly, the world filtered back, gray round the edges, and he could feel his knees, mashed against the floor. His breath hitched wetly in his chest, but there was no noise being carried on it anymore. His whole body ached, and he was damp with sweat, and John let him push himself out of his embrace.

Dean cleared his throat, and wiped his nose on the back of his hand. Things fell into place, like tumblers on a slot machine. "This is what we were really in New Orleans for?" He got to his feet, unsteady like a newborn colt.

John nodded, standing up. "Yeah."

Dean felt a wash of shame. Gritted his teeth. "I'm—"

"Don't you dare apologise to me, son." John's tone was fierce.

"Sir?" Dean looked at John's ear.

"If what happened last year hadn't broken your heart then you wouldn't be the kind of man I would want to know."

"I—" Dean scrubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Looked his father in the eye. He was so damn tired. "Thanks. Thank you."

John nodded.

2006, New Orleans

The man threw Serafina back into the room like she was garbage, and she sat up slowly with a look on her face that no child should ever have. It was the look of someone who knew what evil was, and it hit Dean so hard in the stomach that he thought he might puke.

He might have, if he didn't have the other little kids – Tyrell and Shana – tucked into his sides.

"Tyrell," the man said. "Come here."

Tyrell didn't move. Dean breathed out.

"Tyrell?" The man raised an eyebrow, and Dean wanted to take a rock and smash every bone in his face. In his body.

"He's not going anywhere with you." Dean tried to keep his voice steady. Tried to keep the fact out of it that he was chained to a fucking wall and no use to anybody.

"I don't mind an audience." The man let that sink in, and Dean swallowed down bile, harsh at the back of his throat. "Tyrell?"

Tyrell didn't move. The man moved towards him, smiling. When he was within striking distance, Dean kicked out, hard. He'd meant to sweep the man's legs away from him, but the angle was all wrong, and he connected with his kneecap. The man fell back against the floor, cursing, out of reach.

Smiling, in a way that made Dean's heart thump in his chest, he got to his feet. He pulled a knife from his belt, the kind Dean had, the kind Dean used, and picked Serafina up.

"Put her the fuck down," Dean shouted.

The spirit laughed, and it sounded like wind howling across a prairie.

Now, New Hampshire

Sam hadn't called the entire two hours and change that he had been walking around, snow squeaking under his boots, and that was some kind of record for Sam just letting him be.

He looked up when Dean opened the door, brown paper bag under one arm. He watched while Dean slid the bottle out of its wrapper, and took two shot glasses out of his pocket and put them on the table between the two beds. Moved to sit opposite Dean, the way they'd sat a thousand times, in a thousand different ugly motel rooms.

"Whiskey?" His nose was wrinkled, and Sam was more of a beer man. Dean didn't know how to tell him that Jameson's was we'll make it, and everything will be okay, and I love you, you crazy fuck.

"We, uh, drank it in New Orleans." He said it halfway between the way Sam said it, and the way people who lived there said it.

"You and Dad?" Sam was being careful, had the same hey trust me, I'm really a puppy expression on his face that he used on grieving parents and suspicious schoolteachers.

"Yeah." He paused, and he knew that he could cut things off here, like scissors through thread, and they could just get drunk and talk shit and watch crappy TV, but the ache had been blooming in his chest for days.

He poured two shots of Jameson's. Scooped his. Sam wrapped his fingers around his, glass tiny in his ridiculous hands, and took a cautious sip.

Dean felt the warmth chase the liquid down to his stomach.

"We, uh, went to New Orleans a year after Katrina." Sam took another sip. A bigger one, and Dean couldn't tell if he liked it, or if he just wanted Dean to keep talking. "There was a whole bunch of freaky stuff happening at this old convent."

"In the whole damn place, really. The flood—" He paused, trying to organise his thoughts. "It dragged up things that should have stayed buried."

There was a whole bunch of other things he wanted to say about the flood, but he didn't have the words, didn't want to step foot onto Sam's turf. Because his was just one of the post-Katrina stories, and he knew that there was a whole world out there of upheaval, and pain, and hurt. He had read stories about racist murders, and people being abandoned to die, and people being called looters for taking medicine for their kids. The whole thing made him so sick he could puke.

"So, this one evening, I went to get some beers, and this guy hits me over the head, and—" Sam put his empty glass down, and Dean filled them both up. He drank his in one. "I wake up in the basement of this abandoned house."

2007, New Orleans

He was so tired, so thirsty, so strung out on adrenaline that the whole rescue was like little flashes, as though he was watching a DVD that kept skipping. He saw his father come in like the Sirocco, kicking open the door, and shooting the man in the head like it was nothing, while the spirit screamed like a stuck pig.

Then he saw his father leave the room with the can of salt, and he wanted to call out but his tongue was welded to the roof of his mouth.

Then his father was kneeling beside him, holding a canteen to his lips, and he'd never tasted anything so good as that water, warm and faintly plasticky, filling his mouth smooth as silk. There was blood all over him, drying on his skin, soaking his jeans. The floor was slick with it. "Any of that yours, son?" He shook his head.

Then he was in the hotel room, and it was cold with the central air. John half-carried him into the bathroom and sat him on the closed lid of the toilet, turning the shower on.

The room filled with steam, and John leaned Dean against himself and began to pull Dean's shirt over his head.

"I c'n manage." Dean batted away John's hands. "I can do it."

Dean had his head against John's shoulder, and his father's sigh ruffled the hair that wasn't clumped with blood. "Just let me do this for you, son."

Dean let him. Let him unbutton his jeans, and pull them off, and help him sit down in the bath in just his underwear. Let him shampoo his hair, and rinse it off. Let him soap his back, and his chest, and his arms and his legs, and wash his face with a flannel like he was two years old. Let him pull him up from the bottom of the bath, and wrap a towel around him, and it was then that Dean realised that his father had been crying, tracks still on his face.

"I don't ever want to lose you, son." Dean was limp like a dishrag, horror at seeing his father cry not even coming close to balancing out the exhaustion he felt, and John was holding him up, arms strong around him. "Never."

Now, New Hampshire

"Dad figured out that the spirit was a guy whose children let him drown." Dean swallowed his third shot.

"Nice." Sam curled his lip.

"They, uh, had their reasons." Dean looked away from Sam's look of dawning comprehension. It made him deep down squirrely to talk about this stuff with Sam. "The man, the man who was down there with the spirit. He was just a sick fuck."

"What happened to him?"

Sam wasn't nearly done with his sipping, but Dean poured himself another shot. Gulped it down and damn if the burn wasn't fading. "Dad shot him."

Sam was still. "Dad shot a human?"

His tone hit something raw in Dean. "He—. You don't understand, Sam."

"So why don't you talk to me about it." It was Sam's reasonable voice.

"I am talking about it." Dean was shouting, he was being mean, but he couldn't stop. "This is me. Talking about it."

Sam always wanted to talk, but it was so functional for him. Feel bad, say words, feel better. Sometimes Dean felt a pure rush of envy that Sam had such assurance in being able to get the cap back on the tube. The things inside Dean were so molten, so much that he was scared they would spill out of his throat and burn his life to a cinder.

"He took the kids away, and hurt them." He said it in a rush, on one breath. "I couldn't stop it."

Sam didn't hesitate. "You were chained up with a dislocated shoulder."

"He said if I fought him he would do it right there." Dean felt his mouth shake. Sam closed his eyes. "I didn't want—"

To see it. And the thought that coiled in his belly like a snake, was that he didn't want to know what he would have done to not see it.

"He killed them in front of me." He couldn't stop the words just falling out of his mouth, little bitten off pieces of horror.

Sam's eyes opened. "Shit, Dean."

"With a knife." The look on Serafine's face, screwed up in pain and fear, would be with him forever. "In front of the other kids, too, while there were any left."

Sam leaned forward, elbows propped on his legs, and he rested the tips of fingers against the denim covering Dean's knees.

"I knew people could be bad, Sam." He poured another shot, hand unsteady. "I didn't want to see it."

That was as close to the truth as he could get. The truth that, while he totally understood that they were trying to grind evil under their boots, the fact that there was no engine braking on man's inhumanity was like a slap in the face.

There were moments in Dean's life when things felt good. Not thank fuck you're alive, which was always bubbling with too much adrenaline to genuinely feel nice, but good. An unexpectedly tasty burger, with fries that were the right amount of crisp. Getting the truth out of someone, Sam sitting next to him, the questions unspooling between them like they had a script. A bottle of beer by the side of the road, dappled sunlight falling on their heads, and air heavy with the smell of cedar. Some people whose lives would be okay now, staring at them like they had brought a gift basket of hope to the front door, with satiny red ribbon tied in a bow round the handle. Hell, even a new pair of warm socks, smooth and thick and snug against his feet.

There were also the other moments, where he felt like he couldn't do this another minute, couldn't ride the wave of the hunt through to the shore, because he was just so damn tired of not knowing who the bad guys were. He never hunted the feeling down. Never poked it, like he would his tongue into a tooth that wasn't quite sore yet. He just waited, hunt by hunt, for the sight of another daughter flinching away from her father, another pair of kids hustling on the street, another old man broken down by the factory closing down and taking his town away, to fade from his heart like a bruise.

Sam stood up, and he'd barely been touching Dean at all, but the space he left behind him felt cold. Dean watched as he sat down next to him, side-saddle on the bed.

"What—"'

"I know you don't—" Sam pulled his special, empathetic bitchface. "Just—" He leaned forward, wrapped his arms around Dean, and Dean let himself be pulled against Sam's chest.

His brother was warm around him, against him, the smell of his childhood, and he felt himself relax just a little. Those children on the washed-out posters were still missing, and either scared out of their minds or dead, and nothing could ever make it okay, but sometimes it didn't entirely suck to be him.

"Are you humming 'He's Not Heavy He's My Brother'?" Sam sounded half-amused, half-offended.

Dean snorted against his brother's shoulder. "Not unless AC/DC have done a cover I don't know about."

Sam laughed, and it rumbled against Dean's ear. "I'm pretty sure they're all dead."

"Bitch." Dean pushed him away. "Don't fucking talk about Bon Scott like that."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Jerk."

Dean stood up. "I'm gonna order some food. Pizza?"

"Sure." Sam looked at him, his expression unreadable. "Dean—"

He looked at his brother, all he had left, and he felt warm down to his boots for the first time since they'd come to the town. "I know, Sammy. I know."

He shuffled the menu open. "Pepperoni okay?"