The heat was getting worse, and it started to feel like they were actually in the desert. The light was brighter too and it hurt his eyes. It was like staring into the sun.

They hadn’t done this for dad - of course they hadn’t known they could, but they wouldn't have, he’s pretty sure. He couldn’t really imagine marching through hell to ask the devil to give his dad back, he just can’t.

“Dad,” he asked, “did you know this was even possible? That you could do this? I mean. After. After mom---“ He looked at dad and tried to gauge his reaction.

“I didn’t know. I don’t think I would have done it, either. I was too inexperienced back then. Plus, I’ve always been convinced that your mother was an angel.” Dad smiled, and there was a soft note in his voice that Dean hadn’t heard in a long time.

All of a sudden a river appeared in front of them, with a small wooden bridge. They walked across the bridge and he started hearing soft footfalls behind them, just one person, and he surreptitiously looked over his shoulder, and faltered, would have stopped dead in his tracks if it hadn’t been for dad’s warm hand steady on his shoulder, that kept him vertical, kept him going. The person behind them is--- it was him.

A muted and --- transparent? A transparent version of himself, that walked a few paces behind him. Not behind them, behind him. Exactly behind him. It was as if he put his feet down the exact same places Dean had done. It was unsettling, it really was. It was his shadow, he realized as dad’s unfaltering presence propelled him forward, and he wondered why his dad didn’t have a transparent double that followed in his footsteps.

“I’m dead, Dean,” his dad said, sandpaper gruffness and a shade of amusement, and his fingers squeezed Dean’s shoulder briefly, before letting go.

And yeah. Dean’s dad was dead. He wondered if dad was upset with them, if he had wanted them to go search for him, the way Dean was now searching for Sam.

“Dad---“ he said, but dad just shook his head.

“Dean, no. It was my time, and it was my choice. I would have liked to stay with you boys a little longer, but those were the options, and I made my choice, and I don’t regret it. And you boys weren’t in fighting shape, you know that. And I doubt it would have made any difference. I made a deal, my life and the Colt for you life, and it was one of the best damn things I ever did in my life, Dean. If you’d come after me, I would have kicked both of your asses.”

Dean smiled. He knew it was only temporary, but he was going to enjoy dad’s company for as long as he had it.

There was nothing as far as he could see, there was just. Nothing. They walked on. It was hot, incredibly hot, sweat beaded around his hair and around his collar, armpits, it rolled liberally down his back, but he could see no apparent source of the heat.

The light was sharp and hurt his eyes but there was no apparent source for that either. It just was. His tongue felt swollen and his lips were cracked, he wished desperately for the chap stick Sam kept in his pocket (Sam didn't really use it, Dean did but he didn't like admitting it. Whatever, his lips got dry.)

He wasn’t sure if they were walking in the right direction. Hell, he wasn't sure if they were walking in any one direction at all, or just sort of walking, maybe it was all a trick and they were on a treadmill or something, he just kept walking, like that was the important part, even if he wanted to sit down for a minute, take his heavy boots of, get some water--- he didn't stop, and dad didn't either, they just kept walking on.

At one point, they walked and dad veered off in another direction and Dean didn't question it, not really, he just took a moment to wonder if dad actually knew where they were going or if it was just a hunch. Dad was always good with hunches and always told them to follow their gut and maybe that was all it was. Maybe it was dad's knowledge of hell, maybe he had some kind of roadmap in his head, kindly drawn by mom and jess --- Dean didn’t know, he had no clue, so he just stumbled after dad.

It was as good as any direction.

His shadow slunk silently after them, taller and thinner than before, like the heat was wearing on him as well. He moved around a lot, probably as confused about the light source as Dean was. He had started off behind them, but sometimes he darted off ahead of them, sometimes he walked side by side with them, and one time, the shadow fell over dad’s face. Dean had waved it off, and it had fallen back in step with them, and then gradually slunk back behind them, and had stayed there for a while now.

They reached the edge of the sandy desert and crossed over into the salt lake. At the edge they walked on it easily enough but as they got further into it, the crust sometimes gave under Dean’s boots and the thick pulpy mush underneath clung to his soles and it made his feet heavier and dragged him down.

His steps were unsteady and he started swaying so much that dad had to reach out to steady him.

“Dean, hey,” he said, and stopped them long enough to scrape the stuff off Dean’s soles. Then they walked on.

And the heat was unbearable. Intensely dry and humid at the same time, it scraped at his throat and he coughed, dry and useless, feeling the burn in his throat, like he had chain smoked a pack of cigarettes in a minute and chased it with paint thinner.

It went right through his skin, it singed all the hair on his arms, his face, and he felt how it melted his skin and crackled his bones, how it made his blood evaporate and his marrow boil deep inside.

He wondered if this part of hell was the same for everyone, if his dad had gone through this, if Sam was going through it, right at that very moment. Dad walked beside him, hands deep in his pockets, as if he didn’t feel the heat beating down on them, sharp as a belt folded in half, and Dean was relieved that, if dad did had gone through this once, at least he wasn’t anymore.

He felt dizzy, there was a headache pressing between his eyes like a bullet, every breath was like swallowing fire, and it felt like his feet dragged a mile behind him, heavy and useless.

He choked on a mouthful thick and soupy air; the smell of sulfur, taste of ashes and he felt it burning all the way through him.

He knew he was dragging air in, knew his breaths were harsh and noisy, but he barely heard them himself. The silence overwhelmed him and he worried a little, that he wouldn’t be able hear if someone something snuck up on them, nothing made a sound down here it seemed, but it wasn’t like he had seen any sign of life. Or. Unlife?

Silence, silence, and then.

From far away he heard a buzzing sound and he looked up. It was the first sound he had heard that wasn’t his own or dad’s voice. He looked over his shoulder and could see a dark swarm close in on them and heard his dad yell “RUN” and they took off as fast as they could. Unfortunately, the harder they tried to run, the deeper they sank into the mush, and the swarm closed in on them, and all of a sudden they were surrounded by angry hornets that stung him, stung his arms and legs, stung his face and neck and he felt the stingers as they penetrated his skin, felt his skin swell and he felt the heat, felt how it boiled his blood and burst his veins, and then he felt the crunch of his kneecaps when they hit the ground, the impact jarred all the way through his body like a full-body funny-bone, and even though it seemed to him to happen in slow-motion he couldn’t make his limbs react or move and he didn’t have time to reach out and prevent the rest of the fall, and he keeled over, shattered his chin into the salt, and bit clear through his tongue and he registered the pain and the iron taste of blood in his mouth just before his head hit the ground and he blacked out.

“Dean. Dean, c’mon kiddo we gotta move on.” A warm hand cradled his head, another held on to his middle, and he couldn’t feel his toes. Or his fingers.

He blinked his eyes open to a winter wonderland that looked incredibly fake, and that he would have believed was fake if it hadn’t been for the cold that seeped through his clothes and into his bones. There were no hornets, and although he couldn’t find a single mark to suggest that he had been stung by several of them, he could still feel the poison thrum under his skin.

“Hey kiddo,” dad said, and Dean felt about five, but he couldn’t help but like that, couldn’t help feeling safe.

Dad helped him up, and they brushed of the snow that clung to their clothes. Dean turned his collar up and pulled at his sleeves, but the cold was inevitable.

His eyes stung. The glare of the whiteness was hard and disorienting, and he still had no idea what direction their were going in, or if they were even walking in the right direction. They could be walking in circles, or back where they came from.

There wasn’t really a lot to do, besides walking. All they could do was to think, think and talk. Two things Dean wasn’t too keen on, really, but it was that or being bored out of his mind while he walked willingly through hell.

He remembered Sam in fragments. He remembered those temperamental eyes, that stubborn jaw, his long, clever fingers. He remembered his collar bones, pointy nose, slick, warm mouth and he remembered the dip of his spine and the sound he had made the first time Dean had pushed into him, the sounds he had made when he came, the way his face had crumpled as if in so much pleasure it was almost painful.

Dean missed all the parts, but most of all he missed the whole.

When he had thought about sex with Sam (because okay, fuck you, alright? So he had thought about it. A few times. Sometimes. He had always had a very healthy sex drive, thank you very much, and as long as he hadn’t done anything except think about it and wonder, and yeah, maybe he had fantasized a little, well, no harm, no foul.)

And anyway. So when he had thought about sex with Sam, it had involved scented candles and soft sheets and like, fucking rose petals or whatever, and the gay missionary, and all that was kind of boring – except of course the fact that gay sex with your brother probably wouldn’t ever have been considered boring – but when he had thought about it, boring but by default insanely kinky sex with Sam --- yeah, it had been alright.

So he had been pleasantly, more than pleasantly surprised when it turned out that Sam? Sam was a kinky motherfucker.

Sam and his sharp teeth had littered Dean’s body with marks, Sam’s long wonderful fingers had carved vivid bruises into Dean’s skin, had fucked roughly into his ass and had pulled at Dean’s hair.

And Sam, god Sam. His wet, pink mouth had been stretched so wide around Dean’s cock, and if that hadn’t been the hottest fucking thing ever, Dean didn’t know what would be. It really wouldn’t have been that great a blowjob, actually, but man. It had been Sam, it had been Sam and it had been his dick sliding so obscenely in and out of his brother’s mouth, and the noises Sam had made, like there hadn’t a place he rather would rather have been than on his knees with his brother’s cock inching towards his throat.

Dean hadn’t been able to resist reaching out and touching Sam’s face, feeling the corner of his lips where his cock slid into Sam’s mouth, the hollow of his cheek, feeling himself as he moved under his brother’s skin, and god, Dean couldn’t remember the last time he had come so hard. Nothing would ever compare.

He remembered Sam's breath, beer sour and whiskey sweet, remembered how his hair had felt between his fingers, familiar and remarkably new at the same time, a brand new context between them that made even mundane things seem shiny and new.

He remembered ripping Sam’s shirt, remembered Sam’s smug laugh against his collar bone, the “Eager, huh?” and “Man I like that shirt, you’re totally sewing those buttons back on,” remembered marveling at how easy it had been to fall into something so monumental - easy, because it had been them, and because the context might have been new, but they stayed the same, and they knew each other better than anything else.

After they had slept together --- things hadn’t really changed, actually. At all. Sam had still bitched at Dean about his food and wet towels on the floor and porn bookmarks on the laptop, and he had still drunk lame coffee and got himself worked up over the weirdest little things; and Dean, he had still mocked Sam relentlessly for his lame coffee and emo music and the formerly white boxers that Dean had purposely washed with a red sock, and there had been a distinct lack of anything that said, ‘Hi, we’re brothers, and we had sex.’

Dean had wondered what that meant, if it meant that it had just been a one time thing, or if it meant that it now was natural to just do that, to just jump his brother, and then the next morning have it be like nothing had changed.

He had liked the idea of it being that simple, but had been weary to trust it. He knew that most often, if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.

And well. It had been. Two weeks later, Dean had woken up alone, Sam’s bed had been made with military corners as per (as of late) usual, the laptop had been silent and dark on the table, the salt lines undisturbed, and no sulfur anywhere.

It wasn’t an unusual way for Dean to wake up. Sure, usually, when he had woken up, lately, Sam had been hunched over the laptop, typing away or reading intently, two coffee cups on the table, one empty and one filled with tepid black coffee that Dean would always, always drink down.

But he thought that Sam had probably just slept in, which, god knew he had needed, and then gone for coffee, and Dean had gotten up, rummaged through his duffle, had taken a shower.

But Sam still hadn’t come back when he had been fully dressed, hadn’t come back when Dean’s stomach had begun to let him know that it was way past breakfast time, and Dean had known that there had been something very, very wrong.

Looking back, he was grateful that Sam hadn’t just fucked and run. He didn’t really want to think about what would have happened if they had fucked around right before leaving, didn’t really want to think about what it would have done to him, if he had woken up to an empty motel room and a missing little brother.

He knew that Sam had known that, and had taken it into account, and he was grateful.

He cupped his hands, stomped his feet. He brought his hands to his mouth and blew a warm breath into his cupped hands. The cold was relentless and it bit into him. When he yawned, he wasn’t entirely sure his facial muscles moved at all, or if they were frozen in place.

"I'm sorry, Dean," his dad said out of nowhere, after a stretch of silence.

"I uh. I want you to know that I know. About--- about you and Sam." Dad resolutely walked on even as Dean stopped dead in his tracks.

"Wha-- what about us?" he said, shot for nonchalance and missed by about a mile.

Dad shot him a semi-amused, semi-indulgent smile – grimace – and Dean caught up with him.

"When I was. Here. The first time," he said, "one of the demons who were guarding me said something. About you and Sam, and how you were being--- uh. Less than brotherly. More than brotherly. Uh. That you were…” dad cleared his throat.

"What?! No! But we didn't, we hadn't---" Dean snapped his mouth together a moment too late, and his dad coughed beside him.

"It's okay Dean. Or about as close it as it can get. Look, I can't exactly say that this is what I wanted for you boys, and I can't say that it didn't take me a good long while to get used to the thought, but I've had a while, and your mother smacked some sense into me." Crooked grin, and Dean liked that thought, liked the idea of his mom up there somewhere, kicking dad's ass.

He allowed himself a short moment to think about what it would have been like to grow up with both of them, what mom would have been like, and how many times she would have put dad in his place when he had said or done something she didn’t like.

He smiled.

"We wanted you to grow up to be smart and strong and happy, and you are. It's not what I imagined back when you were small enough for me to carry around, but I can't say that there's anybody to blame for that than myself. I can't apologize and I refuse to be sorry for raising you to be strong enough to fight these things. I can't apologize for making you aware so that your lives wouldn’t be in danger. I am happy I have such strong able boys, but I am sorry about the lack of stability in your childhood." Dad sighed and finally stopped walking. He looked at Dean.

“I wanted so much more for you. I wanted you two to be lucky enough to have women as amazing as your mother. I know Sam came close with Jessica. I wanted you to have the lovely, loving homes that were snatched away from you. I wanted Sam to go to college if that’s what he wanted, and you too. I wanted so much for you.”

Dad shook his head and started walking again, and Dean pretended he didn’t see it when he brushed a hands over his eyes.

“Dean. Incest. That’s not okay. It’s not accepted, it’s not normal. It’s going to push you even farther away from normal than you already are. And if you don’t think you can handle it, if you don’t think you’re ready for it, both of you, then you need to forget it ever happened, and never ever talk about it again.” Dad chuckled wryly.

“I thank god for the fact you’re both boys. At least you won’t make babies.”

“So you've seen. Everything?” Dean swallowed thickly, tried to remember all the things he had said about his dad in his absence, all the things he had done.

Motherfuck.

“And wait, you’re. somewhat okay with this?” he asks, and tried to catch dad’s gaze.

“I have come to accept --- it has been brought to my attention,” dad said, “that the way I, myself, raised you boys, hasn’t really prepared you for a relationship with an outsider, not really. What Sam had with Jess --- even if it hadn’t been for the Demon, would it really have lasted? He never told her, and he never would have, you know that. I wonder if he really could have lived the rest of his life on a lie, just to have that illusion of normal.”

Dad put a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Dean. You and Sam. What you are, what you do. I may not understand it, I may not quite like it, but I have to accept it. I have to accept that the way your lives have been up until now --- I have to accept that maybe it was inevitable.”

They walked on, not talking for quite a while. It was okay with Dean, who desperately tried to wrap his mind around it.

He had sex with his brother. (And it was awesome, but that was neither here nor there. )

He had had sex with his brother, and his dad – their dad – knew about it. (He hoped to God that if dad knew *that* he also knew that it was only that one time. And that he didn’t know how incredibly hot it had been.)

He had had sex with his brother and their dad knew and he wasn’t --- well, he didn’t damn them to hell (which would be moot, anyway, since they were currently, all three of them, there) he wasn’t completely disgusted, and he was even saying that he sort of understood and takes some of the responsibility.

If he had ever imagined how a talk with his father about having sex with his brother would turn out (he hadn’t, because he’d only had sex with his brother that one time, and that was long after his dad had died, and even if he hadn’t it wasn’t the kind of talk he tried to imagine) it sure hadn’t been like this.

He’d take it.