Preface

Cultivating Your Belongings in the After
Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/31181519.

Rating:

Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Supernatural

Relationship:

Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester

Character:

Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester

Additional Tags:

Cuddling, Disasters, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Hurt/Comfort, fairy tale-ish, Panic Attacks, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt Dean Winchester, Boy King of Hell Sam Winchester, Demon Blood Addict Sam Winchester, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon season 3 is rewritten a little bit to enable the canon divergence for after S3's finale, Apocalypse, Cuddling & Snuggling, No Sex, Kissing, Soft Kisses, survivor camps, nonsexual romantic sam and dean, Queerplatonic Sam and Dean, Sam Winchester Gets A Dog, Dean Winchester gets a dog, Gencest | Emotionally Incestuous but Non-Sexual Dean Winchester and Sam Winchester

Language:

English

Collections:

SPN Dystopia Bang 2021

Stats:

Published: 2021-05-09 Words: 16,662 Chapters: 1/1

Cultivating Your Belongings in the After

by fogsrollingin

Summary

In the aftermath of asteroids and meteors showering the earth for days on end in 2007, those left behind, traumatized and destitute, must survive and rebuild. The brothers quietly serve their small camp community as they all strive to heal, salvaging comfort and hope from the rubble and ruin.

Notes

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to the amazing LeafZelindor for their amazing artwork. It's in the fic and also at their tumblr right here - go give them a like & reblog!

All my love and gratitude to my fantastic beta who stuck through the last few thousand words of this story with me last night, steelybo.

Thank you to the fantastic SPN Dystopia Bang mods, Enoliel and hit_the_books. 💛💛💛

and finally thank you to all my favorite desolate post-apocalyptic spn fanfiction too, for inspiring me.

See the end of the work for more notes

Cultivating Your Belongings in the After

Prologue

The Fall was a combination of meteors and asteroids hitting the earth. People died from explosions, debris falling, violent rioters and panicked crowds.

The skies filled with water vapor and dust, resulting in a bizarre climate battle between the vapor augmenting the greenhouse effect and the dust blocking it. Survivors' lungs in the Ozarks, where Sam and Dean had been at the time, felt the gritty humidity as the temperature settled at a never-warm-enough forty degrees fahrenheit.

The lack of sun killed plants; anything needing photosynthesis was dying or rendered dormant. All the animals that relied on them began to starve. So, famine. More people died.

The power grids failed, including nuclear plants. Whole swathes of land, vegetation, animals were irradiated. The brothers found geiger counters and stayed away from high measurements.

Even the most basic infrastructure was obliterated; health facilities were either destroyed or looted. A single rusty nail or a pot of water that hadn't been boiled long enough was a likely death sentence to survivors. After a few weeks excrement and rotten sewage overflowed into basements and streets during the flash floods and wildfires. The stench was unbearable. Ash mingled with cold, acidic rain that was killing aquatic life in the lakes, leaching life from anything still growing on the topsoil. 

The roads had gotten so bad that eventually driving in the Impala was impossible. She was a tank of a car that couldn’t maneuver the rough terrain or between all the crashed, stripped, or burnt-out cars. They’d parked her in the most secure garage they could find, a sturdy brick building that'd been housing a boat before they pulled it out for Baby to go in there. They washed her exterior, deep cleaned the interior, said goodbye to her with tears in their eyes. Dean kept the keys and kissed her hood, whispered sweet promises to her. Sam didn’t have to hear it to know Dean vowed to come back and get her one day. 

Then they were traveling on foot, pounding the hot cracked asphalt of a neverending rural road and it felt so final they were both quiet for a while, so lost and lonely without her. Sam in particular hadn't realized how much he wanted the shelter of their Impala now that he couldn't have it. The sleek black and chrome, the soft leather, how solid and safe and powerful it was. He couldn't count how many times he'd climbed in and breathed a sigh of relief. After a hunt, after a fight, after tears had been shed or blood had been spilled, that car had been their sanctuary.

It started raining, a sign they shouldn't have left her but it was too late now.

They raced to take cover and found themselves crossing a parking lot to a modest-sized mall. After stripping off their wet clothes and getting warm in the lobby, they… shopped.

Dean was uncharacteristically gleeful, decking them out in brand new gear, the expensive labels that claimed their sleeping bags had 'technology' to them and the backpacks with indecipherable series of letters and numbers to them.

Sam tried to take an interest but mostly brooded through it. Dean ignored him, stayed cheerful. When he was done exploring the gear he picked out some choice pieces of wardrobe for himself. Then it was Sam's turn. He made Sam try on a thick knit oatmeal-colored sweater and a gray-green rain jacket combination that would be “perfect camouflage for the low contrast city and smaller town rubble,” Dean said, “The northern forestry we'll be traveling through too.”

Sam pressed a hand to his chest as he looked around. They were surrounded by the labels so superficially sought after in California - Patagonia, Arc'teryx, Oakley's. All these status symbols Sam had had to learn about to fit in for Stanford and now... now everyone was gone, dead, their shallow labels reduced to so much useless, decaying waste.

Carefully, calmly, Sam sat down on the carpeted floor in front of the clothes racks and had a fucking meltdown.

They had no hand in the Fall, nor did anything supernatural as far as they knew. 

Sam pondered whether it could’ve been some cosmic clash, something that could steer or attract something so far out in the cosmos like asteroids. A god or goddess from an ancient pantheon, maybe. And then after the giant space rocks took their pound of burning flesh, perhaps it was Mother Earth Gaia herself who took it from there; who whittled the human population down to damn near extinction. 

But, as Dean so eloquently pointed out every time Sam brought it up, "What the hell does it matter now, Sam?" 

This time, he paused, looking out over a black, burned-out meadow. They'd stopped for a break along the side of the road.

Dean sighed, shook his head. "Maybe, maybe before…” Dean trailed off, exchanging a meaningful look with his brother. A little over six months before The Fall, they might've had the power to stop it.  "...but now?" 

Sam pressed his lips together and nodded.

"Hey," Dean followed Sam with his eyes until he got his younger brother to look at him. "You made all the right calls. Things went down the way they should've, you understand me?"

Sam swallowed and blinked, nodded. Dean's knack for saying things Sam needed to hear but also made him emotional had turned into this finely-honed treatment. It was so precise. It hurt Sam and then it healed him.

"What we really need is a damn time traveler," Dean grumbled, waking Sam back to things. He'd finished a water bottle, smacked his lips, and without a word between them, they moved out in tandem.

Walking past the empty husks of abandoned cars, around sinkholes and cracked concrete, the acrid smokey crater-riddled forests on either side of them. They were trailing the northern border of the Ozarks from St. Louis, where they’d started out, to Springfield. Eventually they’d cross to Kansas. 

They were in no hurry, but they still moved fast. 

They got to an overpass with an abandoned truck underneath. Sam signaled to Dean. Dean nodded and slowed down. Sam wiped dirt and ash off his face as he approached and stepped up onto the truck's runner, cracked the door open to take a look inside.

“Too bad we don’t know how to get one," Dean said suddenly.

“One what?” Sam asked, distracted, finding a map in the glovebox and rolling it out.

“Time traveler. Our family business sure as shit wasn’t ‘saving people, finding things to turn back time.’”

Dean chuckled and looked back at his brother, who wasn’t paying attention.

“Man, you suck,” Dean whined. Sam turned around and looked down at his brother on the road.

“What? Why?”

“I’m hilarious and it’s friggin wasted on you.”

“Dean, you’re not as funny as you think you are.”

“Well you wouldn’t even know it, you weren’t listening to me.”

Sam got the map and jumped down. Strapped his backpack on and they resumed their trek, their pace in perfect sync again.

“Dean, I have no choice but to listen to you,” Sam snarked, deliberately prim to make Dean laugh.

Dean punched him and they snickered together, exhausted but strangely light-hearted.

They hadn’t seen a monster, ghost or demon since the Fall. It was a new era, where ghouls, beasts, and hell-borne creatures weren't threats to contend with anymore. Theirs was a different fear now, a variation on a theme of the poverty they had grown up in. No horror or terror of evil or predators in the closet or under the bed, just a familiar, low-grade hum of creeping worry; a keen awareness of the most mundane concerns that kept them alive: their rations, clean water, medicine, shelter, and the skill to scavenge for them. Above all else, an insidious paranoia and hypervigilance bled into them as they encountered other survivors, desperate and willing to kill for those things and more.

Now

3 months after the Fall and the brothers finally decided to find a group. They knew they were out there but they'd been wary. But the subsistence living they were doing wasn't cutting it. They could live better and do more if they joined forces with other survivors, traumatized and ruthless civilians though they may be.

Their first group, The Loop, had proved the brothers right to have been wary and distrustful. 

Then they found the Harbinger Camp. They were so high up, nobody really came looking for them: nobody would look up to the mountains, the altitudes they were in and think yeah there's a thriving community of survivors up there . The terrain was too rough, the risk of firestorms too high. In the Before, people would stay here and ski.

The camp gave itself away sometimes though. Wood-burning fires released smoke and ash that could be seen for miles if you were nearby. Naturally, every once in a while survivors would track them. Some with the intent to lay waste to them, others to take their home over, while others were simply interested in joining them. Sam and Dean had been the latter. They scouted a Harbinger outpost for a couple nights. The guards were civilians with little to no training judging by how they carried their weapons. The brothers were confident either one of them could take them all down if anything went south. So together at around 7 in the morning they stepped out onto the road under the perpetually overcast dawn light and ambled right up to the little cabin that held three armed guards. 

The brothers were separated and put through an exhaustive interrogation. They’d prepared for that though. After The Loop they weren’t going to make the same mistakes. They paid meticulous attention to detail when they'd crafted the story they were going to tell this camp, and it went off flawlessly. 

Before, they'd just been a young couple. Sam had been a grad student at law school and Dean a bartender. He’d been gearing up to buy the bar too. Then the world had gone to hell in a handbasket. They were together (that's as close as Dean would ever get to saying it) visiting Sam's family in Missouri when the Fall happened. They'd been at Trader Joe’s on Brentwood when St. Louis had been hit. They'd only survived by the skin of their teeth until they were blessed with the incredible luck of finding this camp before their tickets got punched by lack of survival skills or the roaming gangs. 

They were accepted in. 

Dean made a joke about being pledges that nobody laughed at.

They hadn't seen the resort complex, the center of the camp, until the Jeeps they’d been shuffled into crested a hill.

Three hundred people packed comfortably into a sprawling resort of warm, spacious cabin suites. Its foundation was on a flat solid rock plateau on a mountain that gave way to even higher altitudes.

But for the gaping meteor hole that’d seared straight through the highest floors on the east side of the complex, the connected buildings were immense, standing tall and secure against the backdrop of snow-capped stony mountains and gray-dusted skies. They formed a semi-circle around a roundabout driveway. In the center of it where the valet probably used to work, was another camp governance outpost. 

There, they met Gideon, the camp’s elected leader. He was in his 50s with salt and pepper hair that distinguished him. He was shorter than them but still exuded a steady confidence and strength. There was something about him that Sam couldn’t place, something he didn’t like about the man. It made him nervous, defensive. He was on guard as they were interrogated again, this time with Gideon just watching, arms folded over his chest. Eventually they were allowed back together again and Gideon gave them some kind of speech. Something between a welcome and a warning. “You know I was the one to name this place. Harbinger Camp. If you join us, you’d be Harbingers.“

Dean’s eye twitched with the desperate desire to be a smartass, quip at this guy about dreams coming true. Sam pressed his lips together, tried not to smile. He looked up at Gideon earnestly, staying in character.

“See,” Gideon carried on, either having missed it or deciding to ignore them, “the moniker speaks to how we all want to believe there’s something to look forward to. We’re alive because we’ll bring something forward, carry it on, like Harbingers.” 

“What exactly would that be?” Sam asked, tone open and innocent. Inwardly, he wondered with growing anxiety was this a cult? Had they scored zero for two on joining groups, one a bunch of idiots and the second a cult ?

"We'll know it when we see it, when it happens," Gideon said, a twinkle in his eye. What a charmer , Sam thought, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. Gideon continued. “What matters now is surviving until that day. Together.”

Gideon was good. He was endearing, a natural leader and speaker. He'd been a Sergeant in the military. And that’s when it struck Sam that he reminded him of their father. 

They were conditionally accepted, Gideon disappeared, and a boy with sad eyes named Troy took them to the main building to ‘check in.’ Their jaws dropped as they entered, eyes wide as they surveyed the giant lobby. Scratched hardwood floors and exposed ceiling beams made the place feel spacious and open. Dean nudged Sam to look up at the massive chandelier hanging high up in the center of the ceiling. It glinted and twinkled even in the perpetually diffused light shafting through floor to ceiling windows. The furniture and design evoked every image of the perfect “ski lodge in the mountains" glossy home design magazine covers: worn brown leather couches, rustic picnic tables, Native American art on the walls. 

Beyond the lobby there was a sprawling dining hall with two huge fireplaces. They were old, still usable, and people were strolling around taking breaks, warming their hands, heating up food using aluminum foil and grills.

The dining hall's exit doors opened to the rear of the complex outside where there was a half-mile perimeter of benches, tables, and platforms. An area where in the Before the whole family could get their ski gear before lining up, hopping on a lift to a mountain for an exciting ride back down.

Now, the metal carriages swung empty and rattling in chilly winds. It was haunting until Dean realized there were people out there, walking around the lift operating station. 

“Sam, c’mere,” Dean beckoned with a smile, then followed Sam's line of sight. It was an indoor garden. Decent size, too. It was situated in front of a south-facing window. Tomatoes, cucumbers, green peas, potatoes, beets were all clear yields. Dean ambled over, quiet so as not to break the moment of Sam just admiring it. Then he got impatient.

“Aw man,” Dean huffed loudly and Sam startled, gave him an amused eye roll. “This is like your dream come true, isn’t it?”

“Shut up.” Sam grinned though. This was one of his fears, abated. He’d been worried about the Earth dying. No light, acid rain. He hadn’t thought about indoor gardening though; he’d been on the move with Dean so long they’d forgotten that once settled, a community could reserve houses that’d shelter their crops.

“I like they brought a massive amount of soil here and just dumped it on the floor to get this started.” Dean admitted. “It’s scrappy.”

Sam nodded. “They’re survivors.”

It was a compliment.

“C’mere, look at this.” Dean led Sam over to the windows looking out over the ski lifts. “The ski lifts...” Dean trailed off as a man with an empty backpack walked out from another building on the east wing. He waved to the ski lift operators as he trudged his way through the muck. The operators turned the systems on in preparation for the approaching traveler. Metal groaned and screeched as the whole beltway began to move.

“That’s amazing,” Sam murmured.

“With streets cracked and all the sinkholes, plus all the cars blocking them… this is a way to bypass all of that.”

Sam nodded excitedly, whispered back. “They have access to all the small ski towns in the area now too.”

Dean hummed in agreement, “Scavenging must be easy as pie. Even taking big stuff, you just use paracords to tie it to its own ski lift.”

“You’re not wrong.” Troy came up alongside them, looking out the window too. He looked to be about 16 or 17 years old. His dark skin was ashy but his clothes were clean, warm. In the post-apocalypse, it looked like the Harbingers took care of their kids, another tick in the right box.

“When we came back up, we rationed until we got these up and running.”

“You came back up-?” Sam asked, brows furrowed in confusion. Troy nodded.

“We got a bunker under this whole place. Cold War era. It had up-to-date supplies, everything.”  

Sam and Dean gave each other the same look over Troy’s head: that was impressive.

“Gideon knew about it?”

“Yeah. He’d worked here as a skiing instructor like thirty years ago so he knew,” Troy explained, relaxed. He put his hands in his pockets with a sigh. He still had an aura of sadness around him. The brothers appreciated his calm though. They knew that quiet sort of tragedy.

“Would you like to see the rest? I’ll show you to your apartment.”

“Yeah, lead the way,” Dean replied with a smile, and Troy turned out with the brothers on his heels. They walked to the end of the hall on the ground floor. Dean whispered to Sam they were in the east wing - they must be under the damage the meteor had done to the floors above. Sam made a face and shrugged. If their room had problems, they’d just have to deal with it.

Instead, the brothers stepped into a cozy, luxurious wood-panelled apartment. They had a balcony that looked out over a lifeless crater, probably the one that had blown through the building above. 

Then, something miraculous happened. 

Troy turned on the lights. 

Between exclamations of disbelief and delight from the brothers that actually managed to get Troy to laugh, he explained with a grin that the emergency generator was running on renewable energy. It got its power from solar and hydroelectric rigs on the nearest mountain summit only half a mile out. As a result, the complex had a low store of electricity.

The brothers made Troy laugh again when he rendered them speechless by telling them they could have a warm shower.

They kept to themselves as much as they could while still proving they were useful assets to the camp. They quietly volunteered for hard labor like construction: repairing the complex, building extra outdoor structures for the few cows they must’ve found and brought up here at some point. They fortified roadblocks and scavenged heavy equipment. The sharper, more discerning survivors of the camp could see there was experience, even cleverness in the way these new entrants worked. Survivors like Julie, who managed a lot of the operations around camp. She was tall, athletic, and her beady eyes glinted with intelligence. She wore a perpetual frown; weights hanging off the corners of her lips, and talked out the side of her mouth.

She used to train people in weapons Before and she still did now.

“Wow,” Dean had marveled when they first met, “that must be one of the only occupations that survived.” 

She gave him a rueful look, not knowing Sam was giving him the same face behind her. 

“Yeah well, I don’t get paid anymore,” she replied dryly. 

Dean decided he liked her. Julie, on the other hand, wrote them off. She let them volunteer for the hard jobs with an idle interest to see how they got on. 

They impressed. For most hard labor jobs, the inexperienced tended to rely on blunt strength. These boys worked smarter, not harder; their movements were economical, their pacing methodical and relentless and before you knew it they were done earlier than anyone would’ve expected. 

They were only very lively with each other. Without Dean, nobody in the camp would’ve known Sam had dimples and without Sam, nobody would’ve known Dean had a trademark grin, almost childish in pure glee. They also wouldn’t have known Dean was so tactile. Dean understood personal distance barriers for everybody in the camp but where Sam was concerned? The man found every way to casually touch Sam. Sam always leaned in.

A man named Patrick who lived in the west wing sometimes watched them with a casual wistfulness, not quite jealousy. He’d loved like that once in the Before. Now he loved maps, and recorded what roads were still passable by vehicles. They all knew that one day cars would be obsolete what with gas going bad, but roads? Knowing those would still be useful.

Another survivor, Sharon, noticed their banter during their fireplace lunches in the dining halls. She thought to herself the way they were, it was the kind of timeless dynamic that took decades to build, decades they were far too young for. But then she shrugged it off. Maybe they were high school sweethearts. That’d explain it.

Others like Roger watched the brothers and wished they'd knock it off after he'd convinced himself he'd feel the same way if it were a heterosexual couple. Roger considered himself Gideon's right hand man even though the brothers were pretty sure Gideon consulted Julie far more. And for good reason. The camp came to see the Winchesters as their own romantic and efficient work unit but Julie, Julie began to suspect there was another reason why and how Sam and Dean were how they were.

She got them started on weapons. They bungled their attempts to act like novices. They were familiar with every single scavenged firearm she kept in the camp’s paltry armory. She put them on guard shifts, scavenging operations, sometimes even chaperoning events so nobody got too sauced. And finally one night while they were on guard duty, they took down a small caravan of survivors threatening to invade the camp at the border gate. They’d moved as one. Slow was smooth and smooth was fast. They were quiet, in sync, communicating with complicated hand signals to one another as they took down and incapacitated each and every civilian.

Julie separated them just to see what would happen. Without each other they were laconic and serious, their eyes haunted, their stares a thousand yards. Turned out, they really did only smile for each other and again Julie had some respect for them even if they were liars. No romantic partners really had this kind of shorthand unless they'd been trained as soldiers for years. Probably Navy Seals.

As for the brothers, they knew she knew.

Sam and Dean discussed what to do about it. What if she confronted them? What should they say? Double down on the lie or take her into their confidence?

But she didn't confront them. She never ran her suspicions past anyone, far as they could tell. Or at least if she did, they weren’t getting in trouble for lying so egregiously. 

So there was nothing to be done, really. She just looked at them shrewdly anytime they mentioned their false pasts. The brothers started to think she intended to use it as leverage for something but who knew what? They figured they’d just cross that bridge when they came to it.

Unfortunately even with Julie playing her cards close to the chest, it still didn’t take long for Gideon to notice them too.

Sam for one didn't appreciate the attention. When Gideon came near, Sam went taciturn - more taciturn than he normally was, at any rate - and wouldn't make eye contact, even refused to angle his posture to face Gideon directly. 

Dean noticed but he didn't care; he wasn't all that gracious to Gideon either. After their last camp, democratic leadership didn't have any appeal. People didn't know what the fuck they were talking about, didn’t know who to vote for. This camp was a step up from the last though in that Gideon was military, not some ivory tower hippie-dippie like the Loop's leader had been. Dean was slightly more amenable to him on those grounds. 

Much to Sam’s dismay, Gideon noticed that too, and he zeroed in on Dean, tried to find ways to build his trust. But between the reminder of their father and the slight manic gleam in Gideon's eyes that Sam caught every once in a while, Sam didn't like the leader or his tactics. So Sam leaned into his cover as Dean’s partner and interfered whenever Gideon tried to get close. He passed himself off as possessive of Dean but it was protective: Sam knew Dean could be lured into nearly anything if it were framed as a moral obligation. God knew their father strung them along on that (their father's deep rumbling insistence that lives are at stake! before he issued his orders still echoed in Sam’s head when he thought about it) until Sam saw the illusion for what it was. 

Sam had shattered the illusion when he took off on all those "lives at stake" to further his education. Dean had seen the illusion too but he had the benefit of actually liking hunting, of enjoying the camaraderie with their father. While Sam liked it well enough, he'd always been the odd one out, the one both Dean and his father treated as their weakest link for being the youngest, the most vulnerable. They hadn't known how lonely that'd made him, how excluded he'd felt. It’d turned him off hunting because Dad and Dean had never really let him into the clubhouse.

Years later it had been a revelation to hunt with Dean and only Dean though. Sam hadn't expected to love hunting as much as he did when Dean was running the show instead of Dad. With Dean cracking jokes, cleaning the guns, driving and singing off-key, listening to Sam, taking Sam's advice, saving Sam's life and instead of getting angry and blaming Sam for "getting himself into that situation" like Dad sometimes would, Dean would just be extra touchy for a few days. He'd walk closer to Sam or put an arm around his shoulders in a loose hug while looking over Sam's research. 

Sam had felt something he’d never gotten when he’d hunted with Dean and their dad: he’d felt respected and loved. It’d made all the difference.

But the minute Dad joined them Sam realized the dynamic reverted and he hated it, hated that Dean bought into John's rhetoric of moral obligation and duty. And if Gideon, who seemed the type, tried any of that shit on his brother, it'd be over Sam's dead body. 

Besides, before the brothers had even stepped foot into Harbingers Camp they'd agreed they would fulfill their moral obligations to whatever camp they ended up in next. They would do everything they could to help. But only on their own damn terms.

Then

It was about 18 months ago, before the Fall, that Dean was torn apart by hellhounds. And within days of his arrival in hell, Sam infiltrated the underworld and retrieved his brother. 

Hanging by meathooks digging into his flesh, Dean hadn't even given up on calling for Sam yet. It was more of a chant though, a prayer. Repeating the sounds strung together by three measly letters, invoking his brother to face the infinity of hell with him, a gouged and mutilated marionette strung up in an eternal, infernal red storm. In all of it, all he had were the soft, affectionate, sibilant tones. ‘Sam-Sam-Sam, Sammy. Sam.'

It hadn’t been long when something besides the usual lightning shocked through the red swirling maelstrom of blood, grit, and wind. It rattled the chains and hooks and Dean screamed in agony as his flesh ripped under the rusted, crusty hooks.

Sam's powers shredded into the red skies. Maroon-black particles sticky and wet burst and swirled from the slashed opening, coalesced into a delicate black bridge made of burnt blood and charred flesh. 

Sam stepped through. He wore an all black suit with elaborate red and silver embroidery snaking through the whole thing from collar to cuffs. His eyes were glistening, black as pitch, his lips vivid red and thin against a sickly pale face. There was no emotion in his face. He was cold and perfectly still.

Sam walked on the hellish bridge he'd made, his strides elegant and powerful. He looked everywhere but at Dean, drinking in this hell dimension. He wore a perpetual sneer, it seemed. But not disgust, Dean realized, not fear. It was the expression of a supervisor who was displeased.

As Sam approached, Dean shook, terrified on a whole different level that he wasn't really looking at his brother. 

"S-Sammy?" Dean whispered, tears falling down his face.

The Boyking stared, tilted his head like a curious dog. 

"Sam-" Dean was about to beg when Sam flicked his ghoulishly thin wrist, and the meat hooks withdrew. 

Dean cried out as he fell to the black bridge. It gave a little; there was unburnt skin keeping the bridge buoyant and flexible. 

Dean gasped and scrambled up in horror, his hands coming away dark with blood and ash.

"Sammy," Dean gurgled through torn vocal chords. On his knees, bloody, reaching, crying, and in that moment he saw Sam's frigid, impassive face crumple. His baby brother was in there. The black eyes shined wet with emotion, his thin frame trembled under that suit. Dean's boy shaped his hands into fists and stood his ground though, just staring at his collapsed brother, locking himself up from Dean's pleas and Dean had no idea why.

"Sam-?" 

Another flash of light through the dimension rift and Ruby appeared like she'd just landed from a three-story height. The bridge gave her some lift as she popped up and raced towards them. At first Dean was worried for Sam but he turned away from her as she ran past him. Then she was in his face screaming.

"Rally, Dean!" Her breath was sulphur on his face. "Get up. Don't fuck with Sam, he's on the edge already , he's gotta keep this up until we can all get out, you understand?"

Dean reeled back but nodded. He coughed an "okay!" through the soot and smoke and Ruby pulled him up to standing like he weighed nothing. 

They hobbled after Sam, who had walked a little further down the bridge and stopped a few feet behind him. Sam didn't so much as look back, he just raised his hand and another tear began, searing through this dimension's reality. It crackled and sizzled, small shafts of gray light breaching.

Thunderous, trumpeting noise from behind them. Dean turned to see demons screeching, blowing infernal horns and rampaging. They were coming from all sides like gravity didn't even exist. Closing in and Dean could see beasts like horses with red eyes, snarling rabid hounds barking mad as they rushed the three of them.

Sam directed his powers through his palm to keep the portal widening. He brought his other hand up to push an invisible barrier against the onslaught of demons and hell creatures.

They screamed in startled rage. Ruby shouted for Sam to go faster. Sam's face screwed up into agony. His nose, eyes, and ears started bleeding. Dean wanted to go to him, hold him, when suddenly Sam yelled.

"Okay now !"

Ruby launched Dean and herself through the portal. 

They landed on a riverbank, their surroundings absolutely colorless. Dean flailed in the sandy gray mud, frantic they'd left Sam behind until he saw his brother flash through the portal and drop into the river shallows right before it closed. 

Sam collapsed. Dean splashed in to get him, frantic. 

"Sam? Sammy!?" 

His brother's body was limp in his arms as he dragged him to shore. The waterlogged suit added weight. Dean was out of breath when they hit gray, muddy silt.

"Sam?" Dean tapped Sam's cheek. He looked up. "Ruby a little help here!"

Ruby waved him off, busy drawing a symbol on the shore a few yards away. 

Dean ruled her out as useful and refocused on Sam, unconscious and drenched. He gently checked Sam's eyes. They were just black voids, no soft hazel with patches of turquoise and gold, not even the whites of his eyes were visible. Chills ran up and down Dean's spine. He swore and let go, shaken, but not so much that he didn't come right back. He leaned over his brother calling his name. He pressed a palm to Sam's chest, gave him a sternum rub.

Suddenly Ruby was there, slitting her wrist and pressing it to Sam's lips. 

"Ruby, no!" Dean gasped, voice strangled with shock and disgust.

"It'll wake him up, juice him for the last trip."

Dean couldn't take his eyes off the sight of Sam responding to the demon's blood. It was… unholy. Depraved.

He forced himself to look up. "Last trip?"

"We're in purgatory. One more jump to go before we hit Earth, Sammy," she added, looking down. Dean followed her line of sight, startled when he saw Sam's eyes were open, he was looking up at her, those infernal black eyes… glistening with unshed tears. His forehead and eyebrows were wrinkled like this was torture, drinking from her wrist, and Dean didn't know how he knew but those dead shark eyes angled at him and the regret, the apologies were all there as he sucked on Ruby's open wound. 

Silence, tense and dreadful as Sam fed. Dean hated it but he knew to keep his mouth shut. If this was their meal ticket out of here and back to Earth, Dean wasn't going to interfere.

"That's enough," Ruby said as she ripped her hand away. Dean's eyes widened at the sight of Sam's bloodied mouth. He was a vampire, a bloodsucking leech in a suit. His baby brother.

Dean wanted to throw up.

Ruby helped him sit. He put his hands on his knees and held Dean's gaze. Eyes still black as pitch, Sam's chin trembled before he locked it up, pressed his lips together.

"You can go," he said evenly. A tear rolled down the pale skin of his cheek. "After this. Once we're out. You can leave me."

"No, Sam," Dean said, a mix of disgust and fondness playing on his face.

Sam nodded, bowed his head and sniffed. "Yeah, you're right," Sam rasped. "You can kill me, then."

Dean opened his mouth to object: Sam was completely misinterpreting him, but then Ruby picked Sam up like he was nothing more than a bag of flour, and they were all stepping into the circle she'd made in the sand. 

Sam was a hang doll in her arms, unwieldy, and Dean stepped to his other side to help. 

"Now, Sammy," Ruby ordered, gentle and firm. 

Sam raised his palm shakily and one last portal opened. 

He looked at Ruby and something honorable passed between them.

Then, surprisingly, the demon turned to Dean, jammed a red glass bottle into Dean's chest, and spoke into his ear.

"Sam saved you. Now you take care of him."

He looked at her, and there was real concern. He nodded, she nodded, then she shoved Dean through the portal. 

He landed with a bounce on an ugly motel bedspread in what he'd later discover was Owensville, Missouri. He swiftly rolled to see through the portal, his brother's name on his lips when he stopped, somewhat awed at the sight of Sam and Ruby holding each other kissing on the other side, and how the black, red, and gold of Sam's suit was breaking away like some strange mixture of gas and liquid and leaving him nude. His skin was pale and his body skinny. Dean needed him to get his ass though the portal and back to him now. 

"Sam!" Dean called, terrified, as the gloppy mist from Sam's suit sloughed around his embrace with the demon until it found a home circling above Ruby's head, an infernal halo.

Sam pulled away from the kiss, weak and drained. Ruby still held him up, held him close and smiled. From the smokey halo, a crown materialized and settled upon her glossy curls. It was gold and obsidian with red trimming, just as delicate and striking as Sam's suit had been. 

Sam gagged and fell to his knees. Ruby caught him. She was strong, gentle.

"Sammy! Ruby, send him through!" Dean demanded, voice cracking in panic. He eyed the portal's dimensions. If the thing looked like it was gonna close even by an inch Dean was ready to jump back through. He wasn't leaving his brother. 

It seemed fine though, no thinning or shrinking. When Dean refocused on the pair in hell, he realized Sam had passed out in Ruby's arms and she was holding him against her chest like a teddy bear she didn't want to relinquish. She glowed a deep neon red as the new queen goddess of hell. She still wanted Sam, Dean realized.

"Let him go!" Dean roared. "He's mine , Ruby!"

Her eyes met his. They reflected fire and brimstone, ice and glacier sharp knives.

"He is no one's," she roared, her voice reverberating through hell and past the portal, into the motel room. "But I honor his love."

Using her new infernal powers, Ruby floated Sam's body through the portal where Dean got him, pulled him up into bed and got some covers over his naked body. He held onto him, rocked them, tried to get Sam to wake up. When he didn't, Dean looked up to get Ruby to do something. But the portal was closed. 

Dean glanced down at the dirty maroon carpet where the glass container of thick red liquid had fallen. He tugged Sammy in closer.

It was Ruby's blood. Given to Dean so that he might wean Sam off the addiction Ruby had fed, an addiction Dean had never known Sam developed while his countdown to hell had ticked down the past year.

Sam finally told him after the tenth time Dean had furiously refused to kill him, leave him, or give him the bottle. Dean just wanted to know what the hell was going on. When Sam told him in tears, he went quiet with shock. His little brother was a better liar than he'd ever thought. 

But not now.

The blue and purple neon motel sign glowed, the light reflected off the tear tracks on Sam's face. The kid was exhausted. The long con was over. The suffering of withdrawal was slouching its way towards him.

"I just…" Sam sniffed, rubbed his nose. "I needed you back. I needed to know you were out. I did everything so I could know you weren't in hell anymore." Sam's voice cracked, his breath hitching with suppressed sobs.

Dean swallowed and the pit in his stomach got worse when he thought to ask, "What did you trade?"

Sam pressed his lips tight, blinked watery red-lined eyes up at him. "She runs hell now."

Dean closed his eyes. "What have you done."

"Nothing I wouldn't do again," Sam growled back, low and threatening. Startled, Dean looked back at him. Sam was giving him that dangerous look he got sometimes. It would've had the desired effect if he wasn't wearing the ugly floral bedspread, sitting on a cheap plastic lawn chair, getting shaky and frail from withdrawal already. 

Still, his voice was steady when he spoke.

"I don't give a fuck about hell now that I know you and Dad aren't in it anymore. Let Ruby run it. We're out now. We're all out." 

Sam looked out the window with a huff. They were on the second floor. A car drove by. The ice machine kicked on loud and rumbling down the hall. Dean sighed and strolled over to the bottle of blood on the nightstand. He picked it up and sensed Sam turning, eyeing him holding it.

"You better be right, little brother, 'cause after this we're never letting you near a demon or its blood again."

"Wouldn't be soon enough," Sam whispered, this time a single tear crawling its way down his hollow cheek.

Dean studied his brother. It was hideous, what Sam had done. 

If their places reversed Dean knew he'd do the same exact thing. 

"Okay," Dean stepped over to his brother. Sam braced, looked up at him from where he sat in the stupid flimsy chair, with those damn puppy eyes. Scared but not so damaged that he couldn't still hope to trust his big brother. Dean came around and hugged Sam from behind, the sides of their heads touching, Dean's hands wrapping around Sam's trembling fingers to hold them steady. "Thank you, Sammy. You saved me. Okay?"

Sam started crying. Dean kissed his temple. 

"I got so fucked up, Dean," Sam gasped, "I'm different, I'm..."

"You're my little brother."

"A vampire," Sam choked out. Dean winced, knowing it was what he'd thought when he'd seen Sam drinking Ruby's blood.

"An addict. The drug's just a little different," Dean spun it. For both their sakes. "We've got what we need and we know what to do with it. We'll get you off it. And then it's gonna be fine."

Sam nodded and clasped on to Dean's arms as he spoke.

"It's gonna be just fine," Dean repeated, voice gentling, knowing Sam was listening to his words, internalizing them.

"Okay. Okay, yeah," he sniffed. "Thank you," he whimpered, embarrassed but so grateful. Dean shushed him.

"We'll take care of it, kiddo," Dean hugged Sam tighter. "We'll get through it. You're okay. We're okay."

Sam clutched his brother's arms around his chest, Dean's reassurances washing over him and making him feel all of ten again when Dean would forgive him for something and Sam would know everything would be okay now that Dean had his back, now that his big brother would be there to help him deal. 

The weight of his transgressions lifted as Dean held him like a child even though he understood Sam was an addict now. The edges of withdrawal were peeling into him already too, brittle pieces of himself curling and cracking off and dusting away.

Sam could take it, he'd take it all. It'd be his penance, only not really because he'd be going through it all knowing Dean's forgiveness, Dean's love. 

Dean was right. This wouldn't be that bad. 

It'd been a year and a week of secrets, lies, demons and blood and it was finally over; Sam could finally just fucking breathe. And soon he was going to shatter, but he wouldn't break.

"I'd turn around and hug you but I'm naked," Sam laughed through tears, trying to pull himself together. 

Dean's grounding touch remained on Sam's shoulders as he came around and got Sam to stand up. The blanket hooked around Sam's shoulders to keep his modesty intact and Dean pulled him in. 

Sam couldn't have been more grateful just then. He held on to his brother tight, thanking anything and everything that Dean was his brother, that Dean still wanted to hug him like this.

Because their hugs, they always fit like puzzle pieces, Sam just sliding in against Dean's neck and shoulder, their chests warm and expansive, arms rubbing up and down from shoulders to the small of their backs. 

Sam closed his eyes. He could fall asleep in his brother's arms like this.

Instead Dean managed to put him to bed with promises of clothes, breakfast, and maybe they'd go see a movie together in the afternoon. 

He spooned up against him and Sam snuggled in even as his body began to fry, his skin sizzling, his head buzzing but Sam had Dean. Dean was covering him, shielding him, and everything was going to be all right.

They ended up in a trailer park outside St. Louis. They didn't ditch town altogether because neither brother was up for a road trip just yet, especially not all the way through Illinois to get to Sioux Falls, as Bobby was the only person they'd want to see right now. 

Bobby could wait though. They had their own shit to work through before they'd have to meet and explain it all to the man.

They chose a trailer and this particular trailer park because it was cheap and nobody batted an eye with Sam looking like he did. Drugs and addiction were a part of life here, Dean could tell by the drug refuse scattered around in with the gravel. No going barefoot here, Dean had joked. Sam could barely twitch a smile for him but it wasn't for a lack of trying.

The former king of hell, Dean's little brother, was raw. Between the slow doses of Ruby's blood that Dean doled out to him, Sam was in perpetual anguish, bedridden, plagued with stomach aches, nausea, muscle spasms, headaches. His body wasn't regulating his temperature so he’d get sweats one minute, chills the next. And Dean was there with him every step of the way, medicating him with over-the-counter painkillers, keeping him hydrated, getting his favorite salads. One afternoon he actually made Sam a smoothie parfait too. Sam had gotten comically emotional when he set eyes on it, the tall glass full of blended berries and bananas topped with granola. They both chuckled as Sam's sore, watery eyes shed a few tears. It was okay though. Sam was just easily overwhelmed as he endured withdrawal. 

Dean kept making the smoothies. 

Every once in a while he would think about the absurdity of it. The Ex-King of Hell was his little brother wedged into a trailer bathroom with a tummy ache, was the long-haired ghoul with dark smudges under his eyes hugging the pillows in bed, was the boy crying over the parfaits Dean made him. 

Every time he did, he'd take a break from whatever he was doing and go check on Sam. Smooth his hair down, rub his back. It was just as overwhelming for Dean too sometimes, just how much he loved this kid.

Now

The rain had become acidic so all crop cultivation would have to be indoors like in the lobby. Sam was going through books on gardening and farming that might cover information on that. Starting with how bad were the pH levels? Was it sinking into the topsoil, killing the surviving vegetation that'd gone dormant for lack of sun? And if they were going to grow crops indoors, how would those selected buildings handle decay?

Sam shook his head and rubbed his face. 

He thought of NASA and programming and the internet. Factories, irrigation, sewer systems. The majority of new knowledge for the past twenty years for all these things was stored on servers, not paper. Could they find them, power them up somehow, access that information? How did that even work? What… damn cords would you need? 

All this knowledge was kept in data storage centers which used conductive minerals and materials from the opposite side of the Earth. Would humanity ever resume making new circuit boards? Who the hell knew such specialized manufacturing? Had any factory been doing it in the U.S. before the Fall? He could swear it had been outsourced to countries with awful labor laws. Assembled in the states though. So maybe... a random factory assembler survived? 

Sam blew out a breath and rubbed his face.

He hoped there were people more educated and intelligent than him who survived. So far as he knew, most were just normal though. He shuddered to think what would happen if they didn't strive to learn new information that'd help them get back up and running. Because otherwise they'd fall deeper and deeper into a nouveau medieval age. Surrounded by technology they knew how to use but couldn't turn on . The generator would eventually break and they'd need to learn how to fix it or, better yet, how to make a new one. Or else they'd lose power and stop being able to travel via the ski lifts. No more warm showers or electricity, either. 

The idea of humanity just... sliding backwards as it forfeited everything in favor of bare minimum survival. Sam imagined the grief of walking through a deserted, debris-filled town full of gadgets and contraptions they could use if only they could charge them. Everyone living in rags eating scraps by fire in a camp right next to it, that town embodying salvation if only they had the means to wake up the dead technology.

Dean found Sam kneeling on the floor, head in his hands and hyperventilating.

"Sammy," he called, racing down the aisle and crouching down next to him. 

"It's okay," Sam said breathlessly, his heart beating so fast so loud he could barely hear himself. Dean grabbed his hands and Sam realized they were shaking. He touched his hair, brushed his fingers through the strands and Sam relaxed a bit. 

"Okay. Breathe, Sammy. Hug?" 

Sam shook his head. "Okay, no problem." Dean slid his palm over Sam's hair again and again.

"How 'bout water?"

Sam nodded.

"Stay," he choked out, tightening his squeeze on Dean's hand.

"Right here, right here," Dean murmured as he looked through their bag. He came up with the water bottle and unscrewed the cap before handing it over. 

Sam's throat worked as he took small sips between gaping breaths. He sat all the way down and leaned against the bookcase. Dean settled next to him.

"Take your time, Sammy. Easy," Dean said softly, almost unconsciously as they both faced the opposite book shelf. He took his little brother's hand in his. Sam gripped back and worked through the attack. His brother right there, right next to him, quiet and patient, giving Sam the space he needed.

Dust floated in the air, illuminated by shafts of light coming in from the windows. The musty smell of books was pervasive and comforting. The warm line of his brother next to him. Sam should be grateful, and this and other libraries would save them. He shouldn't have gotten so overwhelmed. There was enough information here for several camps to learn how to get back on track, generate electricity, fix and manufacture new generators. He squeezed Dean's hand in a rhythm he couldn't identify. It was calming him though and he began to breathe deeper, longer, his heartbeat gradually settling. He swallowed. "Th-thanks."

Dean rubbed his thumb over Sam's hand and shushed him. A wave of nostalgia hit Sam then. The touches, the sounds of Dean interrupting his anxieties, trying to get him to be quiet to relax or go to sleep whether they were in a rundown motel room or the backseat of the Impala and now in the library stacks of an empty ski town in the After.

Dinner was subdued. The lodge dining hall echoed with conversation, laughter, forks and spoons clinking, the fireplaces crackling. The sights, sounds, smells put them at ease but Sam was exhausted and Dean was overly watchful. Sam knew having a panic attack would throw Dean into that protective, possessive mode he had so he didn't fight it when Dean got them going to bed earlier than normal. He pulled him down in the bed then turned him on his side so he could be the big spoon. He slid an arm under Sam's, over his ribs and past until his hand rested right below Sam's neck like a breastplate. He was Sam's armor in the night.

Sam snugged in and their legs tangled. He never fought Dean on how they slept. The closeness healed him in ways he couldn't begin to describe. It did the same for Dean. 

Dean's body relaxed behind him, his breath always steadying whenever Sam was in the circle of his arms. It meant "you're mine" and Sam snuggling into it meant "I'm yours." They belonged.

Then

They were two weeks through Sam's withdrawal, past the worst, and Sam was watching the news in their trailer while Dean was sleeping in the back. The first meteor debris was going to hit in the Atlantic a thousand miles off the Florida coast. Sam watched with excited fascination, his inner nerd (as Dean called it) coming out with everybody else's shown on the news. There was a correspondent at Cape Canaveral interviewing delighted astrophysicists at the Kennedy Space Center, staff talking about the boon of tourism they'd experienced ever since news of a giant asteroid headed for Earth - but which would certainly miss the planet and just leave some debris trails - was announced by the U.S. government. 

Sam's stomach gurgled and he considered making something but his hands still shook and he got sharp pains in his stomach still, so instead he pulled out the Chinese takeout they'd gotten a few days ago and heated it up in the microwave.

Sam turned back to the small TV where the anchor was explaining how astronomers named the asteroid Kowalski, after the American astronomer Isabel Kowalski who had discovered the anomaly barreling toward their small blue planet growing bigger in the telescope at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii.

Sam ate Chinese as he watched on. A cult had incorporated Kowalski into their beliefs. Floridians were rigging their roofs with beer and lawn chairs for the spectacle. A professor walked through the anatomy of an asteroid. A mayor extended the guarded beach hours in South Carolina.

When it hit, it was a mile wide and it was closer to Florida than it should've been. Sam watched, hand over mouth, as the resultant tsunami swept the coast of Florida from a helicopter's footage. 

Sam shakily called for Dean to get up. His brother padded in, muzzy and concerned. "You okay, Sammy, what's goin' on?" He slurred, grabbing a coke from their fridge.

"Watch!" Sam ordered, pitchy, and Dean froze in shock at the footage.

"This just happened."

"Do we know anybody in Florida?" Dean rasped. 

Sam shook his head. "No, thank god. It decimated the caribbean islands too."

Dean sat down and the brothers camped together in front of their beat-up TV. At first, scientists were scrambling to explain it. They sputtered over their miscalculations and rationalized that certainly, that one was the largest. Don't panic. It wouldn't get worse.

But the Earth spun and a similar-sized meteor was landing in the Pacific close to Indonesia. Americans were barely aware of that news, either asleep when it happened or too horrified by the footage of the destruction and death in Florida and Georgia to notice.

More experts came on the news to explain they'd been wrong; the odds had been low but not impossible. And now Earth was looking at a sustained belt of cosmic debris, mostly ice and organic material that'd burn up in the atmosphere. It was the nickel-iron alloys they'd need to brace for.

They assured the reporters and the public that there would be nothing like the extinction level event asteroids like what happened to the dinosaurs. Instead, smaller ones were raining down into the atmosphere. It wasn't long before people realized the loss of life and destruction was still going to be devastating. Just how much more than if it were a single giant asteroid, they'd have to wait and see.

Scared and grieving experts had a theory for a little bit: the Earth's surface was 71% water so most of these giant rocks soaring down on them in flames as they tore through the atmosphere should just be smacking into the oceans. So landlocked states were faring better. Sam was slightly relieved. 

It was the third day from the first impact. His hair was stringy, he needed a shower but he sat on the edge of his bed clutching a pillow in his lap, watching the TV and reading news articles on his laptop. He'd lost a lot of weight since he'd rescued Dean from hell and started detox. After a few more days of the schedule he and Dean had decided, the bottle of Ruby's blood would be gone. Dean had gone out. While Sam couldn't look away at what was happening, Dean was taking breaks, keeping busy. An hour ago he'd had to get up, do something, and he landed on stocking up on supplies.

After those benighted reports about most meteors "not hitting land," it was like the whole belt of debris had heard and decided to prove them wrong. Alberta and Texas were the first North American states impacted. Brazil to the south. The Earth turned and news of Switzerland and Nigeria, then Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and then the Pacific Ocean took most of the hits for a while. The states and South America got some time before dawn to prepare. The list of countries suffering the immeasurable death and destruction continued.

Sam heard some screaming and shouting outside. When Sam opened the door, the skies were a fiery sunset and a couple young guys were waving a gun around banging on Trudy's double wide.

Dean came home to Sam, who was shakily smoking a cigarette outside their trailer, sitting on the flimsy fold-out table. His knuckles were bloody, he had a black eye. The copper tang of blood visible on his lips, between his teeth.

"Sam?" Dean got closer, dropped his bags. "Sammy?"

"I'm okay-" Sam started, stopped when his lips trembled as Dean grabbed him, held his face in his hands. Sam threw the cigarette away. 

"Looters." A sound of disgust and Dean was pulling his little brother in. Sam shivered, Dean's affection tearing his guard down. "I'm okay though, I swear."

"Okay, I believe you," Dean replied easily, holding him steady. 

"They didn't get anything."

"What'd they want?"

"Our weapons. Tried to tell 'em they were in the car. That asshole Ryan couldn't handle it."

Dean pulled out of the hug, stepped back and looked around. "Those sons of bitches."

"Don't waste your time. We gotta get out of here. It's too dangerous to be around people right now. Especially," Sam swallowed, looked around the trailer park, shrugged. He pulled out another cigarette from his pack. Dean moved to sit next to him. He pulled a flask from his pocket. "This is the last of it."

Sam lit his cig and inhaled, nodded and reached out, took it.

"Bottoms up," Sam said, exhaling smoke towards a little swarm of gnats. Sam downed the last of Ruby's blood as Dean pulled a cigarette from Sam's pack 

and lit up.

A fireball flew over them, past them, a common occurrence now. Most of them burned up in the atmosphere like that. It lit up the dusky sky though. Screams and shouts echoed around the run-down trailer park, shitty cars' engines revving, wheezing, popping. The air was thick with midsummer humidity and acrid scents from burning cities all over the states, wildfires, and closer yet the car crashes nearby from civilians panicking and driving into telephone poles and street lights.

The brothers squinted up at another smaller fireball overhead as it crossed the heavens. There were just wispy streaks of pink, orange, reds of what used to be a sunset now. The meteorites' fire lights illuminated them. The colors flickered over the hard edges of the brothers' faces as they watched. The fireball streaked a trail of dark cloudy matter in a sea of overlapping layers of it. Sedimentary rock in the sky. Sometimes the dust glistened like an apocalyptic aurora borealis. It was mesmerizing as they sat there, still and watchful, knowing they could die any minute from these freak space rocks just hurtling through to the earth with absolutely no prejudice.

Dean shook his head and took a drag, left the cig to hang off the corner of his mouth as he got the bags he'd dropped when he'd seen Sam. He pulled out a couple distinctive boxes of baked goods. Sam huffed, incredulous, as he dropped the empty flask, wiped his mouth free of blood, and joined Dean on the roof of the Impala. Sam tapped the ash off his cigarette, Dean slapped at a mosquito on his neck.

Dean had been mauled to death by hellhounds and his soul damned. Sam was an ex-King of Hell and a demon blood junkie. They were trailer trash on the outskirts of St. Louis, the world was ending, and they were going to watch it on the hood of a '67 Impala smoking cigarettes and eating Twinkies and Ho-hos. 

Now

They were excellent scavengers. They didn't let people know. Part of the whole "we'll help the community but only on our own terms" thing.

They went out farther than where Gideon advised, got good stuff, and tucked it all into the nooks and crannies of the destroyed, derelict ski tourist towns nearby. Packs of ramen in a realtor's office kitchen cupboard here, bullets in a spare drawer behind a bar there, lanterns and candles strewn around moth-eaten camping gear in an attic, antibiotics stashed in the medicine cabinet of any suburban home.

In this way, the brothers were inadvertently training the novice scavengers while also secretly keeping the camp well-stocked. 

A few weeks in, it started feeling like a fun scavenger hunt, and guiltily found themselves taking bets with each other whose caches would be found first and by which of the greenest scavengers in the camp. Dean was fond of a loud teen named Gina and Sam was soft on a vet tech named James. 

Today, the plan was to scavenge far away like they normally did, take their spoils closer and hide them in places where Dean thought Gina would look, Sam where James would look. Loser did the winner's laundry.

When they lit out at dawn, they took a ski lift to as far as they could go and then hotwired a car to keep going until they found something interesting. 

They found a hospital, half-destroyed by a meteor. They rock-paper-scissored to pick sides of the building. Dean deliberately got the worst one.

Tracking through the spooky hallways, Dean idly thought about how bizarre it was that they hadn't found ghosts or poltergeists, monsters, beasts or ghouls taking over. He supposed the Fall hit them too. The decimated population of humans to feed on meant famine and starvation for them as well. At least the corporeal ones. He was still confused how the world wasn't teaming with ghosts...

Out of the refuse, Dean found some first aid supplies, packaged syringes, gauze, bandages, casting materials for broken bones. He shattered the fire emergency glass with a metal clipboard from a nurse's station and kept the axe, which he then used to get into the vending machines and idly snacked down the halls. He stopped in front of the cappuccino machine and radioed Sam on their battery-powered walkie-talkies to come over. 

It used to be done only with alcohol but now when the brothers drank anything they tapped the bottom of the cup on any nearby surface before swigging it down, a nod of respect, of celebratory recognition of all those loved ones, the good people who perished. It was macabre but the brothers had talked about how, when they die, they'd like to be honored this way.

So they did as ritual demanded, then relished the taste of the fancy hot insta-coffee, the stale junk food. Sam mentioned they were really going to have to brush-floss-brush their teeth (no dentists in the post-apocalypse, or at least not in their camp. Gideon accepted strays though; they may get one some day).

They split up again because Sam wanted to investigate where he'd been a little further. He'd had better luck than Dean finding things they could carry to bring home. Specifically, he'd found a lot of meds.

Dean wasn't doing as great, kept finding big stuff like defibrillators and insulated storage containers. 

With such huge but useful stuff, Dean was thinking it'd be better just to try to seed the idea to Gideon that it would be good to search around here. They'd come, see the hospital, see the salvageable equipment here, and figure out how to bring it all back to base camp. It'd be nice and official without him and Sam having to stealthily haul any of it around. Because that'd just be a lot of extra work with no pay-off.

Dean wandered into the hospital's gift shop, not paying much attention, deep in thought. Get well soon balloons were deflated on the floor as well as toys and puzzles and gadgets, popular books and journals.

Dean played with a pink feather-tipped novelty pen. He was more certain now: whatever he and Sam could carry today, they'd stash it in one of the clinics near their camp for the other scavengers to find, and for the bigger stuff they'd find some way to tip Gideon off. Sam was really good at that, Dean knew. He'd find a local map to breezily offer as useful. Dean huffed a laugh at the memory of Sam's various fake innocent looks. He realized he was standing in front of a long shelf lined with well-preserved chocolate. He smiled. These were great brands, an awesome variety of flavors. 

Dean knew chocolate was a non-essential. Nevertheless it boosted morale just as it famously did during World War 2. It was about the rich, luxurious taste of it while in the mud facing the elements, your own mortality staring at you ticking its spindly rotting fingers down. Chocolate wasn't a part of any of that filth, that struggle. You savored it, nibbled it to make it last like you were a child again just relishing a treat.

Every survivor loved chocolate. Including Dean. He took some for now, to be added to Susan's camp rations, and the rest could be found and scavenged by a bigger crew. He was just about done when he slowed to a stop at a wall of stuffed animals. He considered. These were all brand new. They had no heavy past of a dead child that might've adored them once. 

He admired their pleasant, furry faces. He should be moving on, though. They were just some stupid things for kids.

He reached past the crinkly gift wrap that one of them was in, felt it. It was a dog, floppy and splayed out with long ears and sweet eyes. It was soft.

He had to give it to Sam.

He stuck it in his pack. 

They didn't hoard as a rule but they did gift each other stuff sometimes. He was about to leave when he saw a silver and black dragon with mischievous eyes. 

Well there were still some kids back at the camp.

It was late afternoon and Sam was on board with the plan to just take what they could carry and slip Gideon hints to come here. He said he knew just how to do it too and Dean smiled, proud of his brother; confident in them as a team, always. 

They trekked back, stashed all the important stuff they got from the hospital that day into the clinic, and that's finally when Dean revealed what was in the huge bulky but light laundry sack he was carrying along with his own pack to the clinic (Sam had laughed he looked like  Santa Claus the whole way here). 

They were in the clinic's waiting room and Dean was huffing, annoyed, rummaging through the sack until at last he found the dog. 

"For you."

Sam made a face, incredulous, amused. He took it, looked at it. He was scared to like it, braced for Dean to say he was just messing with him, so Sam scoffed, gave a sarcastic thanks. 

Dean was a little let down. Sam asked more questions about the stuffed animals in a tone like he wanted to be let in on the joke. Dean explained it was another morale booster for everybody, like chocolate, and how it would be great for the kids. Also they were "brand new, Sammy; no way they could be haunted."

Sam was still suspicious. Dean huffed and showed him the dragon. 

"This one's mine. I've named it Impala - Pala."

Sam blinked, swallowed. He mentally scrambles over which joke to make first.

"Mock me all you want, Sammy, but we live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and I," he paused, angled Pala's face to look at Sam with dewey beaded eyes, shrugged, "think she's cute."

Sam just laughed then. It was a laugh for how funny it was that Dean, big bad intimidating  brother and hunter Dean, would say such a thing. It was also light, even sweet, and Sam felt like a weight had been lifted. He looked down at the dog stuffed animal again, this time handling it gently as he examined it. His eyes went soft, his dimples were deep. 

"What're you gonna name yours?" Dean asked, coming over to sit down next to him on the wooden bench seat along the wall.

Sam answered quickly, failing to suppress a genuine smile. "Otis."

Sam loved Milo & Otis growing up. He'd had a stuffed animal named Otis before, Dean recalled, around when he was four or five. It was his favorite for years. 

Like most of their favorite things during their childhoods though, it'd gotten lost. 

Dean remembered Sam as a young boy of ten, distraught but trying to handle the grief, and overlaid it with Sam as he was now, hunched over petting his new Otis, an energy of easy happiness sliding between them. Dean brushed Sam's hair back, tucked it behind his ear. Sam turned to look at him. Dean didn't think, just let the affection wash over him to manifest itself however it would. He touched his lips to Sam's. They were warm, a little chapped from the mountain wind. Sam's breath hitched under the kiss but he didn't pull away. Dean smoothly moved on to the corner of Sam's mouth, his cheek, his temple. Sam melted closer to Dean, angled to fit against him as his matching puzzle piece. Dean finished his kisses, sighed into Sam's hair. It smelled like breakfast over the lodge's fireplace from this morning.

"I love you," Sam breathed. Dean squeezed his little brother, pressed Otis and Pala between them and made Sam chuckle.

"I love you too."

When Sam and Dean came back to the camp, they gave a kind of shopping experience to the few surviving families who openly delighted at the sight of the stuffed animals. The ones left over were placed around the dining hall tables as cheerful centerpieces.

The stained skies cracked open and poured out rain that night. Gossamer curtains swayed in their bedroom from the window that Dean had opened for circulation. He noticed they were getting wet though so he got up, careful not to wake his brother sleeping next to him, and closed it as softly as he could.

He turned and bit his lip at the sight of Sam tucked on his side facing where Dean had been sleeping. His hair was a little shorter than shoulder-length and it fanned out over the pillow where his head rested. The nights were so dark and quiet now that civilization had come to an end, Dean could hear Sam's even breath. It relaxed him but he didn’t feel much like sleeping now. He decided to walk a circuit around the ground floor, maybe get the coffee started. He left the bedroom and slipped on his pair of shearling-lined moccasins he’d scavenged from a touristy ski town shop. Sam had them too and wore them just as often. One of those weird, discordant luxuries to embrace in the apocalypse. 

He padded around the common areas. In the dining hall the fires had reduced to soft glowing red and orange embers. Dean smirked when he realized the leftover stuffed animals had been taken from the tables.

When Dean got back he realized Sam was having a nightmare. He was sweaty and panting, wincing and choking subvocal pleas. Dean got in and woke him up. Sam sagged with relief, rolled into his brother's arms. Dean kissed him, stroked Sam's hair and Sam squeezed him around the middle. Dean cupped Sam's head. They waited in each other's arms until Sam's heart synced up and slowed to something manageable. Once done they pulled away for water on their nightstands, touched the bottles to the wood to honor those who perished in the fall and swigged it down. They broke open their store of chocolate. They turned on this small, clunky battery-powered DVD player Sam found scavenging around an electronics store. They had a midnight party watching a movie, Jurassic Park. They pressed next to each other, a long warm line of reassuring security running from shoulders to hips, nearest legs tangled. Their faces lit up blue as they watched. Dean got immersed in it, enjoyed every last minute. Usually Sam did too but sometimes he could get derailed thinking about how everybody who made this movie was probably dead, that movie-making as they knew it was dead, that he was never going to see another new movie of this caliber again for the rest of his life. 

It always broke something in him to have these revelations. Sam hung onto his brother through them. Dean was better at training his thoughts not to go there. Only by a little bit though. His brother got a lot of nightmares too.

“Hey, so," Dean paused the movie. "You know the gift shop stuffed animals?”

“Yeah?” Sam lifted his head to look for Otis until he realized he’d been using it as a pillow.

“They’re all gone now. People took them."

"Aw," Sam hummed. 

"I guess they were too embarrassed to take ‘em in front of us,” Dean chuckled.

“Little do they know we have our own.” Sam grinned, patting Otis.

Then

The first camp they joined, the Loop, was a neighborhood of a hundred survivors in a college town that hadn't been hit that bad. Sam and Dean had, of course, introduced themselves as brothers. 

Everybody could sense they were close, traumatized and so fiercely protective of one another. Few survivors still had any family around so they understood. They figured they'd keep their siblings as close as Dean and Sam kept each other.

Dean was the most obvious about it: he pushed Sam to eat, he touched him a lot, and when they were challenged in any way, he always took a step forward in front of Sam.

Sam was just as wrapped up in his brother too though. Dean seemed to enjoy the occasional bar brawl (or the small survivors town equivalent of it) but Sam shut those down every time, thoroughly uninterested in the sight of anyone trying to hurt his brother. Dean learned quickly not to bring Sam along if he felt like a fight. Then he learned Sam was up for sparring. It was a healthier outlet.

People started to talk.

Their primary attachment to each other didn't diminish over time and things began to sour.

Despite his eligibility, Sam never went out with anyone. He didn't want to talk about why. Dean did occasionally hook up with some women in the Loop. Those nights dwindled because there was no such thing as secrets anymore, not in a camp so small, and people gossiped. Also the horror of what everyone had survived made a lot of them desperate for more than a lonely one-night stand. They wanted a relationship, and relationships Dean wouldn't do. He didn't want to talk about why.

Then Sam got sick, feverish and a swollen neck. It was an infection and the two of them had to move into a campus dorm where the Loop had set up a small medical center. Dean was a good assistant to the single healthcare professional among them, a male nurse named Beau. He helped Beau tend to everybody including walk-ins, even showed the nurse his impressive stitching skills. Beau had smiled and asked him if he could get Dean on retainer for any particularly brutal injuries that'd need his talented hand. Everything was easy and going fine except for how Dean would climb into bed with Sam and hold him. Beau couldn't have cared less and idly thought it was sweet. But there were others, walk-ins and visitors. One evening a man named Jeremy Stone, a nosy man who sniffed a lot, was waiting for Beau when he heard Sam calling out for Dean, frantic like it was a nightmare or delirium. Dean rushed to him, pulled him upright in the cot and snapped him out of it. Sweat and tears and shaking, Sam clung to him limp as a doll and Dean hugged him and rocked him and it was too much, too intimate for Jeremy. And Jeremy loved sharing his opinions.

After that the camp was unnerved. 

They had heard the two sharing childhood memories as brothers. They were asked if they were brothers by blood (to which they responded with bewildered confirmation that further irked everyone). So they were two good-looking bachelor brothers who were always touching, that slept in the same bed together. They bickered, they fought, they shared everything.

They made people in the camp uncomfortable.

They were so visible , too. Sam thought that was part of their downfall. Dean and him were always communicating, training, helping. They were in the public eye, leading.

Folks couldn't abide. Whispers of suspicion and disgust seeped through until they were bordering on pariah status. 

Then the feral animals appeared. Mangy dogs, then some coyotes were sighted nearby. To the camp, they looked so much like their pets or maybe even some friendly neighborhood strays. Dean overheard someone calling them 'majestic' and nearly choked on his water.

The brothers insisted the camp needed to hurt, maim, even kill these animals when they came too close to people, to the camp's borders. 

The camp balked. “This was the animals' natural habitat,” they cried. “These animals haven't done anything wrong. It was actually beautiful, in a way. Nature coming back, taking back civilization.”

They were disgusted by the naivete, nature-loving academics that’d never experienced the brutal reality of ‘nature.’

A wolf was spotted. Sam and Dean became frantic. The adults were idiots but there were kids here. These predators always waited to pick off the smallest and weakest from the edges. One unsupervised child too close to the forest beyond their backyard in this quaint college town, that’s all it would take.

Scandalized, the vaguely self-appointed leaders of the group rebuffed their advice, instead adopting a policy that only if these animals seemed intent to harm should anyone raise a weapon to them.

Defeated, the brothers lingered in the camp, not knowing exactly what to do or how to proceed. An older man who seemed like he went golfing a lot in the Before decided to explain to Sam how dogs were descended from wolves like the ones that would sidle up to human encampments just like theirs and feed off scraps. There was no reason the same evolutionary model couldn't apply here now. 

Sam cradled his head in his hands, trying to stave off the headache. The stupidity was astounding. These animals were starving and they’d found their camp. People were going to die. 

A few nights after that, Dean was taking a shift on the border wall when he shot into the brush where several wolves were taking cover. He killed one. It wasn't a baby but it was young, and instead of gratitude the town expelled him (and Sam along with of course) for having needlessly killed “a precious animal of the magical forest or some shit" by Dean's accord. 

Really though, that camp had just been waiting for an excuse to kick them out. “Too bad they chose this hill to die on. Literally,” Dean said as they trudged towards Colorado. Because they were right about those animals. And by now the Loop's population had probably been whittled down to maybe eighty percent of what it was courtesy of the wild natural predators and perhaps all the other dangerous flora and fauna they clearly refused to take seriously. 

Every time Dean vented about it, Sam couldn’t have agreed more. He didn’t feel as strongly about having been kicked out though. He’d been either unconscious or delirious for the majority of his time at the clinic so he didn’t know why, but he got the gist of it when people in the Loop weren’t as willing to engage or be friendly with him. By the time Dean was brought in for killing a damn wolf, he’d wanted to leave anyway.

Heroes were different, Sam had realized. Before, and even up to a point in the After, they’d thought perhaps heroes were the leaders. The ones with authority of these survival communities; at command. But now they knew that while leadership was more important than ever in the After, it was also just as mundane and public-facing. All too often subject to the fleeting whims of the people.

The brothers hadn't been leaders Before, and perhaps they shouldn't have tried to make their voices heard in the Loop in the After. What really mattered, what got communities to survive, was when the heroes - in whatever form or shape they took on now - had the leader's ear.

The brothers hashed these thoughts out together by fires or in the dark after their banishment. They sheltered in building lobbies and offices. If they were desperate for extra amenities they'd stay in a house, someone's home. They never liked doing that though. They’d hold themselves closer at night as the walls seemed to bend in on them. Houses were haunted in a way the brothers had never seen before. The spirits had moved on but the building hadn't. The homes inspected them, found them lacking, and Dean would rub Sam's back. Sam would cling tighter around him. 

"Next community we run into. You wanna try joining them? Just do it different, better-?"

Dean took a deep breath, let it out. "Yeah. I guess," he murmured. 

"We…” Sam paused, nervous and whispery, “We shouldn't say we're brothers."

The silence rolled over them. Thankfully, without tension. Dean just considered the suggestion as he held Sam, warm and secure in his arms. He remembers the looks people gave them when Sam had been sick at the clinic in the Loop.

"It's not a bad idea," he finally said. The stress in Sam's shoulders released and Dean felt it. He put a hand between Sam's shoulder blades. "I know, Sammy. I get it." He paused. "They're jealous," he shrugged, joking, and Sam huffed a laugh.

They were too close. But they wouldn't give it up, not for anything.

Now

The town directly below the Harbinger complex was named Haling, and Haling’s library was Sam’s favorite. It was untouched and spacious. It had a lot of natural light and a broad spectrum of literature. 

Sometimes there’d be a couple other survivors there but mostly it was empty. Sam’s panic attack that people weren’t improving themselves, self-educating, wasn’t completely unfounded.

So Sam started to bring some books back. Reference materials for engineering and electricity but also just the ones he liked most as an additional source of coping and escapism. Dean joined in and together they left their favorite fiction and nonfiction around the communal areas - the lobby, the dining halls. Two weeks later he overheard Patrick talking to Susan about how he’d successfully rewired a lamp from one of the books he’d laid out and Sam was practically ecstatic. 

Adult learning had to happen. They needed to get programs started, workshops. But also the books were starting to pile up so as an exciting adventure in the middle of the night, the two of them raided several spare hotel rooms for shelving and stealthily placed them all along a wall in the lobby, opposite the memorial wall. There was an inspiring symmetry to it. The memorial wall was for the past and these bookcases, Sam thought, were for the present and future.

The spare books in the communal areas were collected and placed onto the shelves. There was a lot of space for more and the two of them were intrigued to see how they’d be filled by the other Harbingers.

Turned out, the answer was: all sorts of things. 

Mostly books, of course: people had been inspired and trekked to the Hale library to pull down and add their favorites. But there were other things too. Someone put jewelry on the shelves. A collection of pins. Brochures of a bygone era.

Someone started hanging their favorite scavenged artwork up around the lobby walls at night like the brothers with the shelves. Everybody enjoyed the harmless changes of scenery, and whoever it was had great taste. Sam's favorite was a print of Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World over near the garden in the lobby. Sam wondered with gashes in the Earth and skies full of dust, what composition would Wyeth have made now? Dean shrugged and didn't tell Sam that he preferred the colorful prints. Monet, Renoir… anything with those crystal blue skies and lakes, sunshine reflecting off water ripples, and blooming, vibrant flowers.

Then

The skies fell on their particular patch of Earth in St. Louis a few days after Sam had drunk the last drops of Ruby’s blood. He was strung out but otherwise fine. 

The news had gotten worse. The random asteroid and meteor impacts weren’t going to stop any time soon, experts said, and various channels and broadcasts were now getting disrupted and extinguished into white noise. It was the satellites getting hit and going down. 

Their trailer park got more dangerous. More looters around and fights broke out as tensions rose. Sam suggested they leave, get in the Impala and go. Just like old times.

Dean was thrilled. Sure, it was the apocalypse but hey if they suddenly died by fireball driving in Baby together, it’d kinda fit.

Neither of them had the impression they’d die anytime soon though. It was an unerring certainty. They were with each other, Dean wasn’t in hell and Sam was clean. This global disaster of epic proportions was a curveball but they had everything they needed.

They decided they’d make their way up to Sioux Falls and get Bobby, maybe take him with them wherever they went next. Just before getting on the interstate, they made a pitstop to Trader Joe’s when all hell broke loose.

It was a scattershot spray of meteors that took the city down to cinderous ruins. In the beginning people were flooding the streets in suits, stumbling down the concrete jungle of the city with bloody, ripped up faces from skyscrapers' falling rubble. 

The gray, steep MacArthur Bridge full of metal girding collapsed and the screams that’d been rending the air were silenced by drowning deaths. A school bus full of terrified families got swallowed by the collapsing concrete of a sinkhole. The brothers had sustained serious wounds trying to save them but to no avail. Those people’s faces as they fell away would haunt them.

For a long time, the brothers ran for their lives with the rest of the civilians, trying to just get away from the crumbling buildings and debris crashing down. They were no different than civilians in the face of this. No spell, no curse, no gods, goddesses, monsters or angels could stop the science of at least ten tons of space rock barreling into the Earth. 

That night they joined a whole lot of others in a school gym, a temporary shelter set up by the red cross. It stank like a gym. Rubber, wood, sweat. Plastic seats and old chewed bubble gum stuck under everything. Everyone was shocky and shaking. Sam was concussed, the result of a head wound from falling construction scaffolding that’d smacked him from behind. Dean was short of breath, his whole chest a giant dark bruise from a slab of pavement he'd gotten caught under for a few minutes before Sam had managed to drag him out. The two of them had just barely survived getting trampled.

Limping and leaning on each other, the brothers moved into the gym and found a clear space on the floor in a shadowy corner. They groaned as they gingerly sat down on the thick shellacked wooden flooring. It had scratches and scuff marks from teenagers' sneakers. The painted cement wall was cold and hard against their backs. 

A couple hours later they were handed sleeping bags by people wearing yellow reflective vests. Sam took his shoes off. Dean held his tongue. It wasn't smart to take their shoes off; they might have to get up and run again at any moment, but... Sam was exhausted. He’d started to shake, crashing adrenaline.

Dean kept his own shoes on as he got into his sleeping bag and settled on his back. He realized just how much he was shaking from the adrenaline too.

Sam, in his sleeping bag and on his side facing Dean now, muttered something incoherent. He was still a little slurry from his concussion.

"What, Sammy?" Dean got the question out on two separate breaths, still unable to breathe deeply.

Sam didn't repeat himself. He just inched closer in his sleeping bag, hesitant. Dean watched, tired and broken and when Sam put his hand out just to be able to touch Dean as an anchor, Dean batted him away. 

"No, c'mere," he wheezed, and pulled him in. Sam sighed with relief and snugged in against him. 

The gym was cold and the heat between them helped. It was cacophonous throughout the rest of the night. Grief-stricken cries, miserable groaning of loved ones’ names, and occasional shrieks and shouts of pain, likely the result whatever applications of field medicine were going on over there in one of the gym corners where they were keeping people stable on gurneys. The brothers would’ve helped in a heartbeat if they were in any kind of shape. All they could do was press in close to each other now, hurt but together and healing.

The next day and the next after that and so on and so forth the carnage continued.

People were covered in third degree burns, begging to be put out of their misery. Both Dean and Sam were strong enough to oblige those benighted souls but they became numb. They started sharing bedspace, holding onto each other in the dark and sharing that warmth to keep them feeling, to keep them awake enough through the stupor of trauma as they suffered and survived day after day by nothing but sheer luck. 

Wildfires lit up the sky at night reminding Dean of his time on the meat hooks in hell. He'd freeze and clench his jaw, staring unblinking at the sight of it until Sam would realize and get in his face, turn him around, snap him out of it with kisses, with hugs.

Then, one day, the asteroids and meteors stopped raining down. 

It was over. 

It was the After.

Now

They managed to stay away from the underground bunker. Even when the camp's sirens would go off and everybody routinely sheltered there, Sam and Dean would stay in their apartment. They’d listen to the howling winds, feel the whole Harbinger resort complex swaying like its foundations might uproot. 

But they breathed, they kept calm, and they stayed. They didn't go down to the bunker with the rest of them. It felt like graves. They’d had enough of graves. 

The first time they had to go down, it was Sunday and the afternoon was darker than usual, windy too. Julie was outside cleaning her weapons on a picnic table out by their makeshift firing range. Both feet firm on the ground and deaf in one ear, she felt the vibrations first. She took off like lightning to the central office. Gideon and Julie confirmed with their lookouts via radio: this was the worst firestorm they’d seen yet. They ordered their scouts to get back to the complex as fast as possible. Gideon turned the switch for the sirens to blare at full volume. 

It wasn’t long before everybody could feel the low tremors in the ground. Some idiots came rushing out to see it. They were pushed back inside and ordered to grab their things and get down to the bunker.

The brothers and every other sensible survivor was running the bathtub and soaking towels. Dean hadn’t gotten to packing just yet but he was thinking about it. Sam was looking out the window, squinting at the treeline. It had an orange glow to it and its heat marred his vision like road mirages driving under a hot sun. 

It got worse. The glasses in their suite’s kitchen began to clink and rattle loudly. Animals began fleeing out of the woods towards the Harbinger complex. Some fell into the meteor crater, destined to die now they were injured. Sam turned away.

This was bad. They couldn’t stay in their rooms for this. Dean took very little convincing.

They threw wet towels over every window sill they had before they ransacked their apartment suite, making sure to get everything they wanted. Sam’s oatmeal sweater Dean had gotten him in that upscale outdoor outfitter. Their chocolates, their silly stuffed animals, dragon Pala and dog Otis. They had their DVD player, their favorite movies, their favorite books. Dean didn’t forget the real impala, Baby’s keys. Soon they were all packed and mobile, all their belongings safe with them to bring down to the bunker. 

And if that bunker was a grave and they died, they’d die together with the things that’d kept them going ever since the Fall.

Backpacks full and strapped, they left their apartment and made their way through a winding hallway - ducking out of the way of random people darting up and down the same route in restrained panic - until they reached the lobby. It was chaos, with every survivor and the families especially running around trying to find things they’d left around on chairs, tables, shelves. Many were taking down the pictures of loved ones from the memorial wall in case the fires reached the resort. Neither brother knew what people thought would happen if the fires did overtake the complex. Firestorms could go for days and at least both Sam and Dean knew it was a real possibility they would all suffocate down there depending on the air source. Hopefully it was sourced somewhere near where the generator got its hydroelectric power. Otherwise, well...

Dean had packed some Blue Label.

Gideon ordered everyone to the few small not-so-secret-anymore entrances, into the bunker below. One was in a staff room beyond the desk reception area, under a rug like something out of a Nancy Drew mystery. The second was in the back of a utility closet midway down the hall of the wing opposite Sam and Dean's, and the last was under the accessibility stairwell next to the useless, grandiose elevators tucked to the side of the wide, tiled hallway that took people from the lobby to the dining halls. 

The brothers were about to take the elevator stairs when Sam looked over at the entrance of the lobby and suddenly changed course. 

“Sam?!” Dean called out, following him through the throng. He groused the whole way until he realized Sam had caught sight of a little foot peeking out from behind the lobby’s desk, which had turned out to be Gina’s younger friend, Tim, huddled and frozen with fear.

“Tim, buddy, hey, you gotta go downstairs. To the bunker. C’mon sweetie, let’s go,” Sam and Dean coaxed the kid up and moving. Susan came out of nowhere to help just then, took Tim into her arms and chaperoned him down to the bunker.

Sam stood up straight and looked around. There were less people in this area of the lobby, the front entrance. Dean scanned their surroundings as well. They stopped to stare out through the windows. “It’s coming down out there,” Dean breathed, referring to the ash that was beginning to fall in thick, lightweight gray tufts. 

At the same time, the two of them tilted their heads. Something was moving under the light layer of ash. Limping. It was small, too.

Sam looked around, found a shock blanket lying on top of the lobby desk, and bolted outside.

“Sam!?” Dean roared, following after him.

“It’s a dog!” Sam cried back. Dean yelled something back but it was unintelligible. The noise of the encroaching firestorm was nearly deafening with menacing cracks and snaps.

The creature, if it was a dog, was injured and terrified as they jogged over to it. There was ash, sand, dirt in its fur but Dean thought it might be white. And small enough that those desperate housewives in the Before TV shows would keep them in their purses. Dean would've rolled his eyes at the idea they were saving this random, probably feral, purse dog but its body was shaking and its eyes were soulful. It tried to scamper away but something was wrong with its leg; it couldn’t carry weight. Sam was quick and draped the blanket over it. The dog growled and barked but settled down when Sam picked it up. Sam rubbed it comfortingly but he knew the dog was just in a hazy, frozen panic. 

“You got him?” Dean asked. Sam looked and nodded, a hint of dimples appearing.

“Okay c’mon let’s go, we gotta go Sammy!” Dean pushed his brother and together they got back to the lobby and headed down to the bunker.

The bunker wasn’t like anything they’d seen before. First, their eyes had to adjust: like everything else in the complex, the phosphorescent lights were low on power and dim. Once their eyes dilated, they could see a sprawling space with low ceilings, hues of bland grays and greens painted the floors and walls, and nothing but twin beds all over the place. They were scattered around haphazardly, the signs of the bunker’s use from past emergencies and survivors rearranging the furniture to suit their preferences as they waited for the weather to blow over. 

The brothers found a couple beds that looked like they hadn’t been touched and shoved them together. Dean got his backpack off, helped Sam get his off too while still holding onto the dog, and they hopped into the makeshift double bed, making sure to keep the canine secured between them.

It had stopped growling at them by this point and they were pretty sure that meant it wasn't feral. Dean discovered it had a collar buried under matted fur. Its name was Tipsy and she had lived on a street in Hale. She'd probably been in the forest nearby scavenging when she'd gotten trampled by the other animals racing away from the fires. The brothers pet out all the ash and dirt. She whimpered and yipped, staring up at them with fearful hope. Distracted and enamored, they weren’t scared of the firestorm raging above. 

Sam was in love with her. Dean, of course, had no vested interest in the pup. None at all.

When they were done cleaning her off, Sam turned on his side and she snuggled in against his chest to doze.

The bunker shuddered. The waves of fire were probably right over them now.

Dean turned on his side and spooned Sam, one hand over the snoozing dog too. 

If they died now they’d die happy.

The End

Afterword

End Notes

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