A/N: My very first Wincest fic! Won't my mom be proud?? ;) But yeah, it's my first so go easy on me. This starts with some lines of dialogue from S2 Ep. 9 Croatoan, right after Sam has been infected with the demon virus and they only have hours before he turns evil. The real conversation got interrupted, and I thought I'd take the liberty of exploring what would've happened if nobody came back for them.

Also, I'm still something of a Supernatural newbie, and I haven't seen past season 2, so please don't spoil me. I'm having the ride of my life with this show!

Sam stared at his big brother with tears in his eyes.

"Dean, I'm sick. It's over for me. It doesn't have to be for you."

"No."

"No, you can keep going."

"Who says I want to?"

Sam paused, not understanding. "What?"

Dean sat wearily on the desk in the corner of the exam room.

"I'm tired, Sam," he laughed sadly. "I'm tired of this job. This life. This weight on my shoulders, man. I'm tired of it."

"So what, so you're just going to give up? I mean you're just going to lay down and die? Look, Dean, I know this stuff with Dad had—"

"You're wrong. It's not about Dad. I mean part of it is sure, but—"

"Then what is it about?"

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose and let out an exhausted sigh.

"Dean…" Sam whispered, pleading.

Dean got up from his seat on the desk and grabbed a stool. He dragged it over to the exam table where Sam sat, shoulders hunched over and tears streaking his face. It made Dean sick to see him so hopeless. He wanted to scream, to break things, to put a bullet in every living person who'd had anything to do with this day. But as he sat down on his stool and looked into his brother's desperate, drowning eyes, he knew he couldn't lose it now.

Sure, Sam was acting strong. He was doing the right thing, begging his older brother to leave him so that they wouldn't both have to die. But that look in Sam's eyes, that goddamn familiar look that broke Dean's heart every time he saw it…

"Sammy," Dean breathed around a lump in his throat, touching his little brother's shoulder tenderly.

"Please," Sam implored. But the higher tone of his voice gave him away. He wasn't asking Dean to save himself anymore. He was asking for his big brother to make things all better. And Dean would be god damned if he wouldn't do just that. At least for the time they had left.

In a grand and startling gesture, Dean pulled the medical supply tray toward them, dramatically sweeping all of its contents onto the floor with a jarring metallic clatter. Sam's shoulders rose in surprise, but he remained silent, staring at the discarded medical instruments on the ground, then into Dean's eyes. Dean positioned the tray so that it was almost directly between them, but making sure that his knee maintained contact with Sam's thigh.

Sam continued to stare a question at Dean, and in response, Dean rolled up his sleeves and cleared his throat, preparing for a performance. He held his left hand out, palm up as if gripping an invisible deck of cards. He pulled a card from the top of his imaginary deck and turned it face up on the tray in front of Sam. Then a face down card for himself. Then another face up card for Sam and a face up card for himself. He tsked, looking down at Sam's invisible odds.

"That's a tough one, right there. You have a seven and an eight. Dealer is showing a ten. What's it gonna be, Sammy boy?"

Sam's jaw remained lowered for a few more seconds before he gathered himself enough to wipe the tears off his face with the back of his hand. "Blackjack?" he asked unsurely.

Dean shook his head. "Uh, no, Sam. Blackjack has to be 21, remember? You only have fifteen."

A pause as Sam looked again at his non-cards. "Are you serious?"

After a couple of hours and several rounds of imaginary blackjack, make-believe poker, and pantomime go-fish later, they gave up on cards, and a heavy, expectant silence ensued. Dean looked out through the open blinds at the dark and barren streets of River Grove, Oregon, wishing to God they had never come here.

"We were a normal family once," he said under his breath. "You know that?"

"Oh, shut up, Dean."

"No, I mean it." Dean knuckled the tense muscles in the back of his neck. "You were too young to have any memories of life with Mom. Before Dad got all obsessed and militant. Things were different then. Softer."

Sam folded his arms across his chest. "And then I came along and screwed it all up, right?"

"Sam, you know that's not what I mean."

"Then what?"

"Do you remember that summer in Wisconsin? Dad was following a lead on a bunch of dairy farmers who believed their cows to be possessed with some kind of angry bovine spirit?"

Sam snorted in spite of himself. "And our 'spirit' turned out to be mad cow disease? How could I forget that?"

"Do you remember sneaking out of the motel room that day when Dad was out investigating?"

Sam was silent. Dean turned away from the window and back to his brother whose face was contorted with the effort of trying to remember. He shook his head.

"You were five or six or something," Dean said. "You were just starting to really understand what Dad was doing when he left us in motel rooms alone, why we were always moving around, why we were never allowed to make friends or go to school or do all the normal things the kids on TV got to do."

This story was clearly making Sam uncomfortable. "So?"

"So I decided to sneak you out that day. We passed a county fair on the way into town that morning, and I thought it would do you some good to get you out around people and laughter for a change."

Sam's face lit up then. "Oh, my God, that's right! We got our picture taken with those disgusting obese pigs!"

"Hey, those pigs were a thing of beauty!"

"Dean, they were too fat to clean themselves. They were covered in their own shit!" Sam laughed out loud. The sound was like music to Dean's ears.

"And let's not forget the Ferris wheel," Sam went on.

Dean covered his eyes with his hand. "Right. The Ferris wheel with the spinning seats."

"That ride was your idea," Sam defended himself.

"I thought it would be relaxing. I didn't realize there was a spin option."

"Well, I didn't realize you had problems with motion sickness." Sam was laughing even harder as he finished the sentence. "That poor family of four in the seat below us."

"Oh, Sam, please…"

"You ate so much cotton candy that day that your puke was bright blue! They were covered in it!" Sam was laughing so hard now that his face turned purple. He leaned back on the exam table and pulled his legs up, convulsing as he rocked gently from side to side.

"You know, come to think of it, I don't remember having a fear of heights before that day…" Dean deduced.

"And then you got spooked by that pesky clown," Sam went on, barely breathing through his guffawing fit, "so you punched him in his big red nose, and it squeaked like a rubber duck while spurts of blood flew out of it!" Sam actually rolled off the exam table over that one, slapping the linoleum floor with delight. "All the other kids were terrified!"

"Sammy, I was not spooked," Dean declared. "That clown was clearly evil!"

"And I'm sure you've spent years telling yourself that," Sam sputtered and went right on laughing.

Dean held onto his righteous indignation for a good ten seconds more, then finally broke down into laughter too, no longer able to withstand the humorous sight of his brother face down on the floor, shaking with laughter, and his butt sticking high into the air. Dean walked over and squatted down, pushing Sam over onto his side playfully. Sam, still laughing, rolled right back and pushed Dean onto his butt. Dean took that as a cue to start a wrestling match, and they spent the next several minutes pulling each other into headlocks and sitting on top of each other, rolling around on the ground like a couple of prize winning hogs.

When the horseplay finally died down, Dean was sitting with his back to a medical cabinet and Sam was lying on the ground with his head in Dean's lap. A nostalgic shiver went through them as they silently remembered how many of their childhood wrestling matches had ended in this same position. Even the ones when they were actually angry at each other. Except that when they were younger, Dean had always leaned up against a tree or a rock, and Sam lay down in his lap, exhausted, to gaze up at the stars.

"Annual Normal Day," Sam said with a contented sigh. "That's what you called it. You said that with all of the weirdness we put up with, I deserved at least one day every year where we could just be normal kids."

"That's right. Annual Normal Day," Dean nodded. "I forgot that part."

"And with all of the trouble you got us into, it was probably the least normal day I had ever had."

"Right. You know, I'm not sure why I even brought that story up," Dean said ruefully, as his breathing slowly returned to normal.

Sam smiled. "You brought it up to lift my spirits. And it worked. Thank you."

"Well, I just hope that one day of trouble was enough for you." Dean paused with another heavy sigh. "As I recall, we never did it again. I'm sorry about that, Sammy." His hand found its way to his brother's dark hair and gently grazed his fingertips along Sam's scalp.

Sam closed his eyes, allowing himself to be touched. "We had other things on our minds. It's okay."

Dean shook his head. "It was never okay."

"Dean, don't," Sam intoned softly, becoming more deeply relaxed with every stroke of Dean's callused fingertips. "It was a good day."

"You deserved more than just one normal day. I could have taken you away that day. I could have taken care of you. If I had just had the sense to understand what kind of life we were in for, what Dad would eventually turn us into… But I was too busy trying to please him." Dean cleared his throat against the returning lump. "I let you down, little brother. I didn't take you away from this life when I had the chance. And now…"

He glanced across the room at the medical equipment still strewn along the floor. Amidst the rubble was the glass slide with a sample of Sam's infected blood smeared across it, the slide now broken cleanly in half after hitting the ground. Tears began to sting Dean's eyes.

Without opening his own eyes, Sam softly took Dean's hand out of his hair and kissed his palm, then held the hand to his chest.

"And now I'm where I want to be," Sam finished for him quietly. The fact that his breathing was becoming ragged did not go unnoticed by Dean who, for the moment, was too emotional to say anything about it.

"And what the hell is normal anyway?" Sam continued, squinting up at his brother through tired eyes. "You think that normal is getting a full ride to Stanford, dating a gorgeous blond who adores me, and going to parties every weekend with my friends from school?"

"No, that's not normal," Dean argued. "It's ideal. It's what you always wanted."

"It's what I thought I wanted, Dean. Until I finally got it, that is. Do you have any idea how abnormal I felt around those people? In that school?"

"You're a nice guy, Sammy. Not like me and Dad. You deserved to have a nice life."

"I have a nice life, Dean. With you."

The end of Sam's sentence was cut off with a violent coughing fit that brought his knees up to his chest. Dean choked out several sobs before he was able to stop himself, then held his breath against more. He raised his knees to elevate Sam's upper body, and he placed a wet kiss on Sam's forehead.

"You're gonna be okay, okay?" he said desperately. "You have to be okay."

"I have been okay," Sam wheezed. "I've always been okay as long as I was with you, Dean. With my big brother."

"God, Sam…"

"You are my normal, Dean."

Dean broke down into open sobs then, resting his forehead against Sam's. Sam continued to wheeze uncomfortably, but he held Dean's hand to his warm cheek and whispered barely audible words of comfort.

"I don't understand," Dean cried. "None of the other infected people showed any symptoms before they turned. What's happening to you?"

Sam shook his head weakly. "We both know I'm different than other people. Maybe my body just can't handle the virus. I think it's a blessing."

"Oh, fuck you. Fuck your fucking blessing, bro. How can any of this—"

"If I turn," Sam whispered, "you're gonna have to kill me before I kill you."

"I'll let you kill me, Sammy, please. I know it won't really be you…"

"You care too much, Dean. You care too much about this world to let me loose with some demon virus in me."

Dean didn't answer. He couldn't. Sam was right.

Sam took another belabored breath through his constricted airway. His eyes were tightly shut as breathing was obviously beginning to pain him. "But like I said. It looks like the virus is affecting me differently than it did everyone else. So maybe you won't have to hurt me. That's better, right?"

Dean pulled his hand out of Sam's and buried his fingers back into his brother's hair, pulling him close for another kiss on the forehead. He shuddered at the fiery heat he felt against his lips. "And what am I supposed to do, then? Just burn your body and call it a day?"

"You have to."

"Fuck, Sam, no! I can't do that! I can't just walk away without you by my side!"

"Well, you can't kill yourself, Dean. Promise me you won't."

"Eat me."

"Dean, come on. It's not going to do anyone any good for both of us to die when there's nothing wrong with you."

"It's not going to do anyone any good for me to walk this planet without you."

Sam coughed again softly. "You've done the job without me before," he said hoarsely.

"When I knew there was a possibility you'd come back!" Dean said. "I can't just keep driving across the country knowing that you're really gone. I can't keep going without you, Sammy. Please, don't ask me to do that."

"And I can't die peacefully knowing that you're going to hurt yourself," was Sam's reply. Tears squeezed out of his closed eyelids, and he began to shiver. "Dean… I need you to promise me. I don't want to go until you promise me."

Dean shuffled out of his jacket and lifted his brother up just enough to wrap him in it. When Sam was bundled up tight, Dean lowered him back into his lap and held him close to his chest, planting a soft kiss on his temple.

"Dean…" Sam's breath was so shallow.

Dean thought back to several hours earlier when Sam had first been diagnosed with the virus. His first reaction had been to look at his older brother with that pleading stare. That all too familiar and heartbreaking look that said, "Dean? Please make it better?"

It was that look that had brought up the memory of the county fair in the first place.

"Dean? Please talk to me?" Sam's arms thrashed around nervously.

"Okay, okay. It's okay," Dean spoke low into Sam's ear, soothing his wild arms. "At the end of our first and last Annual Normal Day, I bought us a couple of ice cream cones to make up for all of the trouble I made. Remember?"

Sam's agitation decreased and the corners of his mouth twitched in what appeared to be a vague hint of a smile. "Three scoops," he breathed.

"That's right," Dean agreed. "Three scoops. I guess I was making up for more than just that day, huh?"

Sam settled into the warmth of his brother's arms.

"Do you remember what happened next, Sammy?"

Sam shook his head.

"You were so excited to get that enormous tower of ice cream all to yourself, that your arm started to shake. And before you knew it, your fingers slipped and you dropped the cone into the dirt."

"No," Sam whispered sadly with a quiet gasp.

"Yup. I guess your scrawny girl arms couldn't handle the weight of it."

Sam hesitated. "You'd tell a dying man he has girl arms?" he croaked.

"Hey, facts is facts, kiddo," Dean shrugged.

"Bitch."

"Douche."

"Was there a point to this story?" Sam coughed violently again, and Dean nearly cried out with frustration. He had originally begun telling the story as a way to take Sam's mind off of the virus. But the closer he got to the end of the memory, the less he wanted to continue.

He held his shivering brother even closer to his chest as he remembered the end of their day at the county fair. The look on little Sam's face in the moment that he dropped his ice cream… Dean had never seen him so heartbroken. Like Sam was mentally begging him to make things better, and Dean couldn't do it. He could have died for Sam that day. For all the things that Sam had to witness, all of the things he had to go without, all the craziness that their dad made them endure. It was like that had been the moment when it all really dawned on Sam. That their lives wouldn't ever be normal, and the only thing he could really count on was disappointment.

"Sammy… Baby, I'm so sorry."

Teardrops landed on Sam's face, and he shook his head one more time. "You forgot the next part," he whispered, as though he had been reliving the memory right along with Dean.

"What?"

He took a deep, painful breath. "You handed me your ice cream cone, and you said, 'Don't you know that I got this one for you too?' Dean, you did make it better that day. You always make it better."

Dean nodded at Sam's recollection. He may not always have been able to fix things, but he did always try. But this time…

"I don't know if I can do it this time, kid. I don't know if I can promise what'll happen to me without you."

"I think you can," Sam said as a drop of blood slipped out of his nose and trailed slowly down the side of his face. He could barely be heard. "You always make it better…"

"Sam?"

"Dean…" His voice nothing more than a shallow breath.

"Sam?!" Dean shook him roughly.

"Dean… better…"

And then he went limp.

"Sam!!!"

Dean continued to shake his brother for several moments with no response, then collapsed over him in unbridled screaming sobs.

He screamed too loud to notice the bell tower at River Grove Town Hall, only a block away, striking three in the morning.

Dean woke to the feeling of leather under his face. Forgetting where he was, he assumed for a moment that he was asleep in the backseat of the Impala, using his jacket as a pillow as he often did when he and Sam had to pull over in the middle of nowhere to get some shuteye.

Sam.

"Sam!" He shot upright and looked around, finding himself in the exam room, the morning sun shining warmly in through the blinds. He looked down to see Sam still lying on the floor, still wrapped in Dean's jacket, eyes shut, dried streak of blood trailing from his nose.

"Oh, fuck, Sammy," Dean moaned as his vision instantly blurred over with fresh tears. "Oh, baby boy…"

He rested his head on his brother's chest again, unsure of where to go from here, or even that he could go on.

"What am I gonna do, baby boy? Huh?" He rested a shaking hand on Sam's chest as he sobbed onto the leather jacket. "What am I gonna do?"

He nearly cried out in terror when a sleep-clogged voice choked out from beneath him.

"You can start by shutting those goddamn blinds."

Dean gasped in shock and sat back up again. He glared down at Sam who was totally still for another agonizing few seconds, before his chest rose with a strong, deep inhalation.

"Sam!"

"Dean." Sam whispered.

"Sam!!!"

"Dean." Sam repeated patiently, eyes shut tight against the light.

"SAAAAAAM!!!"

"Dean," Sam said a third time, now with an exasperated edge to his voice. "I love you too, I swear I do, but I'm recovering from a satanic virus and that sunlight is like a rusty screwdriver being jammed into my skull."

"Sam!!!" Dean shrieked again.

"Dean? I'm serious."

Dean leaped on top of Sam then, hugging him tightly, his shadow effectively blocking Sam's eyes from the morning light. Sam sighed wearily.

"Well, I guess that'll do," he said, the strength of his voice returning.

"Sammy, I swear to God. You died in my arms!"

Sam shook his head. "It just felt like a really deep sleep to me."

"But your fever, your cough. The bloody nose? Wait. You're not a demon, are you?"

Sam shrugged. "No, I'm not a demon. I told you, Dean. I'm different. I guess my body pulled all of those stunts to burn the virus out of me. Good thing I'm special, huh?"

Sam's tone took on a hint of self-satisfied sarcasm, and Dean shook his head in elated disbelief.

"Special," Dean repeated. "Special? Special my fucking ass! Special doesn't even begin to describe…"

And before he knew what he was doing, he leaned forward and kissed his brother roughly on the lips, shoving his tongue deep into Sam's mouth. Sam's eyes shot wide open in surprise, and for a moment, he tensed up his body in resistance. But then he saw his brother's eyes tightly shut before his own, Dean's forehead creased in an expression of stress and relief and love. And the taste of Dean's tongue was foreign and invasive and… perfect. And Sam returned the kiss, reaching his strengthening hands into Dean's hair and pulling on it to elicit a moan out of his brother which, to his excited surprise, made him instantly hard.

After several minutes of unrelenting kisses, Sam finally pushed Dean away, and scooted out from under him, sitting up so that Dean was on his knees in between Sam's legs. "Dean, what are we doing?!"

Dean shook his head, tears of an unexplained variety in his eyes. "I… I don't know. You were gone and now you're back, and… and goddamn it, I want to touch you!"

He tackled Sam in another rolling embrace of tongues on tongues and legs in between legs and colliding breathless moans.

"Mm! Dean, wait!" Sam argued again through a mouthful of his brother's shockingly tasty saliva. He pulled away again. "We can't… I mean we can't just… This isn't—"

"Normal?" Dean supplied.

Sam shrugged in agreement.

Dean thought about it for a moment. "I guess we've never been that good at normal, huh?"

Sam couldn't help but laugh at that. Dean laughed too, and they stared intently at each other's smiling faces, as if really seeing one another for the first time.

Dean ran a gentle hand down Sam's cheek. Sam instinctively turned his face into the hand and closed his eyes as the electricity of their touch sent shivers down his spine.

"I guess not," he answered breathlessly.

"So…" Dean began cautiously. "Does that mean we can keep going?"

Sam opened his eyes and looked around them. "Can we maybe move to a spot where I didn't almost die of demon flu?"

"Car's outside," Dean said helpfully.

"Do you think the town is still deserted?"

"I'm willing to chance it if you are."

Sam stared into Dean's eyes thoughtfully for a moment. Then he held out his hand.

"Help me up."

Dean sighed with relief, grabbing his brother's hand and dragging him to his feet. "Hey, Sammy."

Sam stopped on his way to the door. "Yeah?"

Dean stood there for a minute, unable to find the right words. "When I thought I lost you…" he began.

Sam stared knowingly into Dean's eyes. Then he walked back to his brother and pulled him into his arms, burying his face in Dean's neck and taking a deep whiff of the comforting smell. Dean returned the hug forcefully and they both cried silently for a long moment, both giving and taking the comfort that they sorely needed. Neither of them could say anymore. Neither of them had to.

But eventually, Sam did break the silence. "Dean, I hate to be an asshole, but I've never wanted anything so much in my life as I want your tongue back in my mouth right now, so do you think that we can just go to the car and get on with it? I swear to God I'll let you weep to your heart's content when we're done."

Dean straightened up his shoulders defiantly, his pride hurt. "Weep?" he sniveled. "I don't weep."

"Yeah," Sam snorted. "And you're not afraid of clowns either. Whatever you need to tell yourself, bro."

"Oh, that's it. Your ass is mine."

"I'm counting on it!"

With that, Sam darted out of the building and toward the Impala, and Dean chased after him, catching him just at the passenger door and pressing him up against the side with more enveloping kisses.

"I can't get the door open with you kissing me," Sam said.

"Screw it then," Dean shot back.

"Pavement okay?"

"Sounds great."

And they fell into an undulating heap on the empty street, with only the rising sun to witness what turned out to be an anything-but-normal day.

Even for them.