Author's Note: I know, I know – it's taken me far too long to write this last chapter. But I hope y'all enjoy it (I tried to make it at once both the most satisfying and longest that I could, as a reward for my absence). And of course, enormous thanks to my beta, Adara, who could care less that I dropped off the radar for more than a month. Oh, and PS: For the sake of this mild-AU, let's assume Dean's whole deal thing never went down, k?

I

A steady, low scream in the night: the sound of tires rolling on a dark highway, endlessly, towards a fixed destination.

The scream belonged to the tires.

The tires belonged to the Impala.

The Impala belonged to Dean Winchester.

And Dean belonged wholly and utterly to his destination: his brother.

The night was calm and cool; a breeze stirred the leaves along the road on which Dean was currently sweeping at 60 mph. But inside the vehicle, all was tumultuous. Disregarding the erratic, extraordinarily loud, music being filtered into the tiny space every second of every minute of those long hours Dean spent driving, the emotions currently running in overdrive were equally stormy. The night was calm, but the man journeying through it was not.

He really should have answered his phone – that's what it all boiled down to. And in hindsight, it was easily, and equally, the most ironic and moronic act Dean had ever committed.

It was ironic because he'd only just vowed to himself (and in part to Psych Girl, since he was talking out loud) to find his brother, and re-ignite the most vital connection in his life.

And it was moronic because when an opportunity to do just that had appeared, he'd let it past by – waved even, in dumb ignorance, as its train pulled away from the station.

Well what was he supposed to do?! For a moment, consider it from his perspective, if you would. He was famous, in his own small way, for accomplishing impossible tasks; and he'd just set before himself a big impossible task – finding a brother whose location he didn't know. Heady on the sense of vast possibility for doing the impossible, yet still lying in a cheap bed with an unknown woman (who he'd just had sex with, no less) and wearing nothing but a pair of white boxer-briefs the prison had sent him packing with, what, really, were Dean's options? On the faraway dresser, his phone was ringing, and what was he to do? He did what he did – sit there, ruminating on possible courses for saving/rescuing/nurturing/etc Sam – for lack of any other apparent better option. And dropped as one is in his shoes, could they say he was wrong? Or if they could, would they then turn around and locate some possible avenue by which he could have conquered his twin feelings of success and doubt and actually crossed the room to stifle the ring tone?

Exactly.

He really should have answered his phone – that's what it all boiled down to. But he didn't answer the phone. And now he was reaping what he had sown, in whatever unknowing way he had committed the deed. And so he raced down the dark highway, breathlessly counting the remaining miles in his head – praying for the dawn that would reveal him only minutes away from the house his little brother was currently staying in.

Oh, how he prayed for dawn.

--

Before that morning, Sam had no idea just how truly aggravating linoleum could be.

And God, was it annoying.

It just sat there, static. It didn't offer any condolences or advice. No, it just lay on the floor all day long – heedless of the pointed stares the only human currently in residence kept throwing its way.

It wasn't particularly tacky, this linoleum, but it wasn't high-end either; however, looking around, Sam noticed other furnishings were quite nice, yet the floor was just so…so…average.

"What am I thinking? I'm sitting here critiquing a floor. It's just linoleum, Sammy, get the fuck over it. That's hard to do though, when it's such a tempting distraction – because, well, we all know what I'd be doing if I weren't acting all Cuckoo's Nest in Matt's kitchen…yeah, we all know that that would look far more crazy."

And so Sam's mind rumbled on, embroiled – tying itself into knots, really – over one teensy little elephant in the room: Dean.

--

The light was just peeking over the horizon, just starting to lighten the strip of gray highway far off into the distance, when Dean took his first true breath in hours. He opened his mouth, and in rushed a tiny gasp of oxygen. It flew down into his lungs, warming and enlivening his blood, which then proceeded to go tingling down to his feet (too long numb from being pushed ceaselessly down on the accelerator). That one breath was, in effect, like thirty cups of coffee for Dean Winchester, and it got him even more anxious for his arrival.

With each moment the sky grew brighter. As the light of the day became more apparent, Dean Winchester grew more anxious. As Dean grew more anxious, his foot pressed more with greater urgency down, down. And as his foot pressed down, he required more oxygen – only allowing himself a tiny gasp every few minutes.

And around and around his merry go round went. Around, and around.

--

"You're up?"

"I never went to sleep."

"Oh. I kind of figured…"

"That I'd go to bed after the big news, right? That surely a normal human being would need to 'catch some Zs' if they wanted to be in a fully-healthy state of mind for this, the biggest of fucking long-lost reunions."

"Uhh, yeah."

"I kind of thought that too."

"So…"

"If you were getting into some sort of routine, you know, work or something, I could go be cynical and reticent upstairs."

"And deprive myself of your company? Heh, fat chance. Besides, I'm off today – I'm not sure you'd want to know, but this little Podunk town you're currently stewing in is celebrating its centennial festival all day long. You know, overcooked food in big crowds waiting for some brief moment or two of sub-satisfying entertainment. So, umm, I'm off today."

"Are you going to hang around?"

"Are you?"

A smirk, tired and startled into employment.

"Well?" A return volley of goodwill.

"Yeah, no. You still have me to contend with at least until…you know–"

"'The biggest of fucking long-lost reunions.'"

"Exactly." Another tired facial expression – one would even call it a smirk, had it lasted longer than a millisecond.

"The more the merrier."

And Matt started breakfast.

--

"What. The. Hell?!"

This is what Dean had been shouting inside his vintage Impala for the past – he checked his watch for the fourth time in frustration – 23 minutes. He'd been shouting because he was late, by his calculations (though, for the record, neither of the brothers had chosen a specific meeting time, both being too shell-shocked at the time). He'd been shouting at the madness currently blocking him from moving more than three feet every thirty seconds down Main Street. (Which was, ironically, America's longest Main Street: a record 4,135 feet. Poor Dean.)

There were clowns and middle-aged women with strollers and snow cones and gaggles of seven-year olds high on helium from the balloon-station currently sitting about a third the way into the intersection he was driving up on.

"Christ," he added, in case Jesus wasn't already glued to his television over the unfolding saga. It was a circus, it was hell. And it was taking up all the precious fucking daylight he'd driven so hard to find in the first place. This was not happening. It just was not.

Except that it was.

"Goddamn it," he added – to himself, to the crowd he was about to mow down, to Jesus (again) – and started driving.

Through Main Street.

Through the festival.

Heaven help the seven-year olds.

--

His anger at the linoleum intermingled in his head with the smell of a farm-fresh omelet (hot off Matt's stove, mind you, and not microwaved) creating an odd effect. He kept picturing some sort of physical manifestation for his frustration taken out on the floor tiles…and then, inevitably, either he or the floor would turn yellow, puffy, and organically tasty.

"I feel like a chicken, all 'cooped' up," he thought.

"Ah, a joke – I think that's what the shrinks would call progress," Matt responded, as he turned from the stove to quirk an eyebrow at his guest.

Ok, so he hadn't thought it. He'd said it. Out loud. He'd have to get better control of that before Dean came.

"Good, looks like I've stopped thinking of it as a slight possibility now. It's a certainty, Sam's subconscious, so go ahead and get the hell over it," Sam thought (for real this time).

Happy with himself for having momentarily forgotten about floor tiling and chickens, and for finally deciding that this reunion was actually happening – and it wasn't some sad, elongated fantasy of his – Sam Winchester sat back resolute in his chair in Matt's kitchen.

And promptly went to sleep.

--

"Are cold cuts acceptable at an Oprah-moment?" Matt wondered as he stood over the stove, finishing his and Sam's breakfast.

"I mean, I could always run over and get some, I don't know, baked beans and slaw and maybe some ribs I'd have to re-heat. Do I have any barbeque sauce? I'd have to get some of that. Will they eat A-1? Who doesn't eat A-1? It's just like those commercials say…but getting across town would be impossible. I'd have to do it on foot. How weird would I look: hoofing it back here carrying bags full of cold ribs and cole slaw and barbeque sauce. At least I'd do my weirdest act on the town's weirdest day of the year." Then Matt remembered what exactly was supposed to be going down in his home at some point today.

"Scratch that. I guess it's the weirdest day for the whole world."

He nodded once more to himself, working out the details of how, if he could snatch a moment away, he'd run to the market and get something other than cold roast beef and bread for his guests to eat. First though, he had to cook the bacon for breakfast. And tell Sam he might be going out for a minute or two.

Matt plopped the bacon into the pan on the stove, freshly cleaned from having made omelets, and turned back to the kitchen table to accomplish just those two tasks.

And instead of meeting the countenance of a young man jaded and battered by life, he saw a seemingly even younger man, asleep in one of the kitchen chairs – slouching almost to the floor. He couldn't have dozed off for longer than a few minutes, but Matt resolved for that short time to not be the only given to him as rest today. After all, he'd need his strength.

"I'll go in a bit, if he wakes up. If he doesn't, you know what? Screw A-1."

Matt turned back to his stove.

He had been cooking not even ten minutes longer, the bacon had just started to sizzle, the grease and fat running off the pieces in tiny rivulets, when the doorbell rang.

II

It was absurd really, the situation he found himself in. But absurdity was the sort of currency these circumstances dealt in, and God only knew how many strange circumstances Dean had found himself embroiled in over the course of the last year: fighting the Seven Deadly Sins, dying over and over (and, to hear Sam tell, over and over and over and over and over), having to deal with those freaks Ed and Harry again, and then, as he could never forget, the two most important new women in his life – Ruby and Bella. Yeah, it was a fucking crazy year. And so why wouldn't he expect to find himself, at the end of it, standing on the stoop of some stranger's house in some no name town about to talk to his little brother for the first time in six months?

Well…when you put it like that…

But what was really, truly, blow-your-mind-all-over-the-pavement absurd was what was happening now. He'd found Sam, found him in seemingly no worse for the wear condition, and supposedly he was just a few feet away through a less than sturdy wooden barrier.

The more he thought about it, the more he was rankled and electrified by the very idea of just going to get his little brother – plunging straight into unknown territory like he used to do to save the one person who mattered much of anything to him anymore.

But the more he thought about, and the more he wanted to do something, the less he did.

God, he knew he should go in, screw courtesy and waiting for the door to be opened for him, because he was Dean Winchester and he knew exactly what he was going to find when he went in the house – and he wanted it back.

But then that recurring thought, the one that kept him frozen (if still thrumming with desire): he didn't know what he would find when he was finally let in (or when he finally busted down the door). Would it be his brother? Could he be unchanged? Dean wasn't, and going by that same logic, his brother wouldn't be either. And the thought that there was an impact to him when the one person in the world who should have stopped it was hours away locked up himself tore at him, tearing little gashes all across his heart. His breathing grew ragged and still he tensed up further into infinite coils of doubt and intent, frustration and action. He was a panther tensed to strike.

Scratch that, he was a panther half-way in the air, when he suddenly hit a sky-high cement wall.

"I know what I want. Right? Right. But…no, I know. It's Sam. It. Is. Sammy. No questions. Screw it."

Dean's hand rose to the doorknob, intent on all manner of violent entries, when he was spared the excursion. The door opened for him.

--

Matt couldn't lie. Late at night, after a shift when he wasn't quite yet nodding off, he'd channel surf. And sometimes he'd find himself watching TLC. And on TLC sometimes he'd see the big reunion shows – you know, where the adopted child meets their biological parent, or the adult siblings estranged for decades by this or that grudge from the age of Methusala finally reconcile at the local Denny's.

Matt had seen it all, or most of it, on late night cable. And so he considered himself in his head (in only the most sardonic of tones, mind you) just the tiniest bit of an expert. He had questions, sure – who wouldn't if they were letting a strange man, who was just released from prison, into their home? But, in his reckoning, the guy – Dean – had been grounded enough to calm Sam down the tiniest bit, so he couldn't be, like, the next Charles Manson.

This is what Matt kept firmly in the forefront of his mind as he walked to the door, quickly trying to wipe off grease and other assorted kitchen juices from his stint as short-order cook just a second ago.

He grasped the cool metal of the doorknob, assembled as smile on his face, and pulled.

"Well, he isn't Charles Manson," Matt thought immediately, wryly. Standing in front of him was a man of about his age, maybe a year older, who looked very much in the middle of something. What it could be, to any naked observer, would be quite astounding: after all, what more is there to do on a front porch but ring a doorbell and wait patiently for fifteen or thirty seconds? But, remember, Matt fancied himself just the slightest bit the expert. (Plus, he'd had time with part two of this equation, and so was partially fluent in Winchester body language already.) He saw the tense shoulders and the hovering hand, the furrowed brow, the eyes cloudy with all manner of bone-deep emotions. He saw, and he understood.

"You must be Dean."

And his understanding was rewarded with a nod, distracted but terse, and his entrance into Matt's home.

"He's just right through here," Matt explained, motioning with his hand down the hall to the kitchen. "I'll take you to him."

As they passed through the foyer, and down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, Dean's new host took a moment to glance back once or twice, to take in even more of the man so much of Sam spiraled about. In that sense, he'd expected a Sun – a great big collapsing Supernova of importance and vitality – but what he observed was more akin to a black hole. He had magnetism, Dean did, but it pulled all onlookers only into a void. Matt very much got the sense something was missing central to his new guest's charisma. And being the "expert" that he was, he already knew who that missing piece was. And where.

"I almost forgot, your brother just nodded off about fifteen minutes ago waiting for you. He hasn't gotten much sleep, so he might be a little out of it…" he explained to Dean as they walked to the entrance into the little kitchen.

"That's umm…ok, that's, I'll just…" Dean replied, or attempted to as, as he then moved without stopping into the kitchen. To Sam.

Matt, snatching one more breath, lagged a second or two behind, and then he followed Dean in.

--

"Does he look any different?" the man asks me.

"I should know the answer, I should be able to pull something out with not even a second's pause. Come on Dean, you know this: does Sam look any different than what you imagined? Uh, let's see: he's about as tall as I'd pictured, and his color isn't as horrible as I've seen it, but he's skinnier than the Sam I knew (though I guess that's expected), and is it just me, or is everything about him just, I don't know, a little misplaced somehow – like I dreamed up this whole version of my brother in my head and then someone came by after I locked up and turned off the lights and just, umm, fidgeted. Or something."

It's been about ten seconds since Matt asked, and he's still no closer to an answer. So he stabs into the dark – dives head-first, really.

"He's not as tan."

"Oh."

"…Yeah."

"Well," a beat of awkwardness, "go ahead and sit down, please. I'll have some food ready in a second if you're hungry." Matt doesn't wait for Dean to reply – he just hurries on the last few feet to the stove, turning his back to a drama he's suddenly realized is much too complex for his "expertise."

Dean drags his feet the last few inches to the chair next to Sam's and eases his body down into it.

He's hungry, and if his stomach were what was causing his appetite he'd have been thankful for Matt's mention of food. But he isn't hungry for food, for something to eat, for taste. He's hungry for sight, for a glimpse of his brother. And now what's being offered is a veritable buffet. So he stares, and he stares, and he stares.

Dean was right in what he thought a second ago, Sam is skinnier. That's the first real thing he notices about his little brother's person. And then it's like the flood gate open, and it all pours out:

There are circles, deep black dusky pools, under his eyes from lack of sleep.

His hair isn't as dirty as it's been, but there's enough grit there to be noticeable.

His shoes are untied.

His right pinky has a long gash up its side.

His left knee is open to the world, for all to see, because there is a large hole in his jeans.

He has about 100 more freckles and he isn't nearly as pale (Dean had been right about that too).

These are the sorts of things that pop into Dean's head as he just sits there, for what seems hours, soaking in the presence of someone so long missed, they'd been forgotten and then remembered like a waking dream.

Dean sat there and Matt finished cooking and Sam slept. And then Sam woke up.

--

There is a radio next to the stove in Matt's kitchen (mostly because Matt likes to sing while he cooks, hey…don't judge, and partly because his mother got it for him three Christmases ago) and it happens to be right behind where Sam lay sleeping, when he wakes up.

As he strives from the murky pool he'd been lying in, his eyes still closed, the first sounds he recognizes are of music, and of a voice – singing:

"Sometimes my mind don't shake and shift, but most of the time, it does. And I'll get to the place where I'm begging for a lift or I'll drown in the wonders and the was."

The song sounds appropriate to Sam somehow, on some level, and it stirs him further. One of his eyelids twitches. Then the other. Then they open. And suddenly he thinks maybe he isn't awake, but rather pushed into an even deeper, more intricate, state of slumber; some sort of mega-REM sleep, some über-dream. Because Dean is right in front of him, smiling uncertainly which is weird, but right in front of him. Seriously, not inches away. If he wanted to, he could reach out and grab him. He's more than half-tempted to do just that. He's teetering on the brink…

"Hey, Sammy."

And he's been pushed, and he's falling forward, scrambling to grab on to something – on to him. And he does, and it's ok suddenly, in a weird way, because he hasn't hit bottom, he hasn't splattered onto the cold and dusty rocks below. He's been rescued from his own demise, his own despair.

"I've got you," he says into the leather jacket of his savior and gets only a harder grip in return.

"I'm not letting go." Dean says into his brother's hair. And that's how Sam comes to realize that he won't be falling again for a very, very, long time.

III

The bread has gone nearly stale, and the coffee is cold when the conversation finally turns back to Matt. It's ironic at that point, for Matt to be finally a figure in the verbal exchanges that had dominated the last five hours, because the person in question wasn't quite aware they were discussing him. He was too busy processing the events he'd just taken in. Words had been tossed around, a story built with them of staggering emotional damage, and it'd sunk into Matt, slowly wrapping itself around his heart, strangling it. He thought he'd gotten most of the details of the overarching plot from Sam last night, when he was in full nervous-confession mode, but really he had no idea – really, none at all. And so when the brothers finally turned to him, to include him in their catch-up that had finally caught-up to the present, he didn't, at first, realize it.

Noticing their stares, he stuttered something out.

"You were, umm, you were saying?"

Dean, haggard though he looked, was determined to plow on through and tie up all the loose ends.

"Yeah, no we were just talking about how lucky Sam was that you just happened to drive by. I mean, if you hadn't…" he trailed off. He had a feeling he'd be doing that a lot in the future, if (not when, that was way too inevitable) the subject of their separation ever came up.

Noticing how he fumbled, Matt put aside his own difficulties and hastened to answer, "No, really, it was my pleasure."

"Trust me, we won't forget it," Sam added.

"And I doubt I'll forget you," Matt thought.

There was a lull then, as the conversation turned back to just including the Winchesters. Their host took that opportunity to glance around, noticing at once how long it had been since this morning. It'd been five hours, which was a long time for one heart-to-heart anyway, but it had felt like days. Matt came away from it bruised and battered and cleansed, in some difficult way to name, in the hard knocks another life had suffered.

More importantly though, he came away realizing how dirty his kitchen was after being continuously inhabited for any length of time.

"Would you just excuse me for a…" Matt didn't even finish apologizing for his abrupt momentary leave to clean, noticing as he did the brothers were too deep in discussion to notice him.

"Alright then, let's get to it,"he said, bringing back a pail of soapy water, a mop, and some heavy-duty gloves to his kitchen counter.

It was a nothing phrase, a time-waster, some little bit of oxygen and phonetics a bored person uses to fill an empty room, but it alighted in the ears of Sam Winchester, who found its sentiment oddly appropriate, motivating.

As much as they had done, they still had so much to do, so many large elephants in the room to strangle. And there was that little dilemma of being in some Midwest nowhere, with nothing. There was that.

Forty-five minutes later the counter was now shinier than it had been in quite some time.

The house owner was now more worldly and emotionally experienced than he ever anticipated being.

The town he lived in was now exactly 100 years old.

Oh, and yeah: the Winchesters were good as new.

Well, relatively anyway. As Dean looked back at his brother, who was just finishing another of his million sentences in this hours-long conversation, he noticed the darkness under his eyes, the ragged lines of weary around his mouth and brow.
"Oh, the miles to go."

His apprehension and worry were just one small element of his thoughts however – one very tiny, miniscule part of his mental makeup. The other 99.87 was just utterly, incandescently thrilled at where he was. And who he was with.

Stopping Sam in the middle of his next thought, Dean couldn't help himself: he flashed a rare smile that enveloped his face (hell, it felt like it enveloped his whole body) and then he said:

"Sammy, I love you. And I am so fucking happy we're back together."

Sam, for his part not phased a bit by Dean's sudden emotional nakedness, simply replied with a similar mega-watt smile to his brothers, and returned:

"I love you too."

--

"Not to rush you," Matt said as he set a platter of ribs (the very same ones he thought would be eaten at his "reunion lunch") for dinner, "but if you're going to move in I'll need to buy a couple more beds."

"No, no it's fine – Sam and I can share," Dean answered.

"What he means is," Sam took up instead, not without a snicker first at his brother's lame joke (oh how absence does make the heart fonder and the soul more forgiving of bad jokes), "is that though we'd love to return your generosity, we know that doesn't involve his imitating you in some wacko version of Three's Company–"

"I'd be John Ritter," Dean piped in. (God, having Sam back made him giddy.)

"So to answer your question," here Sam turned to mock glare at his big brother, already falling – with an inner grateful sigh – into the rhythms of their banter, "we'll be going. Soon hopefully."

"No, don't do that. I mean, do that if you want. But don't go flying out the door because I might have sounded pushy."

"You, pushy? Seriously, I practically jumped into your car when I was leaving…leaving…" Sam paused, tripped really on another pothole in his recently (if unwillingly) renovated emotional landscape.

"Prison," Dean filled in, his voice warm and protective and helpful.

"Yeah, that. My point is you being pushy, which you aren't being, would only be the reasonable response after what's happened the last two days."

"Well I'm glad you still insist on painting me as a saint. One of these days you'll have to drop a line to Oprah and fill her in on the details. Maybe then I can get free tickets to Chicago."

"Oooh, Oprah," Dean said, his giddiness swiftly returning after his brother's little stumble.

"Dean here is a big fan, in case you couldn't tell," Sam half-joked.

"No, no: I got a vibe," Matt cracked back.

"Now that we're on the subject though, and since you really are still the saint I've been imagining, could we beg just another night's stay?" Sam questioned.

"Do you even have to ask? We haven't known each other a long time, but it's not like you or your brother are going to rob me in the middle of the night and slit my throat. So absolutely you can stay here another night. I'll even get some old clothes together for your trip tomorrow. Because I'm pretty sure, Dean, you've been wearing that same outfit since you've been, umm, free. And Sam, I know you have."

"You weren't lying one bit, Sammy. Matt ranks right up there with Jesus," Dean said. He was kidding, but only slightly.

"Since you're bringing up beds then, I guess it's your not-so-subtle way of hinting you need sleep. You've got to excuse me for being a bad host; if I were more Martha I'd have strapped you and Dean down to rest hours ago."

"It's no trouble, I swear, but the more we talk about sleep–" Sam was cut off by a yawn.

"What he said," Dean added.

Matt laughed and said, "Good night then…although I guess after the days y'all had, it's hard not to be."

The situation having been decided, the Winchesters got up and started to drag themselves up the stairs, Dean following Sam back to Matt's guest room.

"Guess what?" Sam turned back in the hallway upstairs to ask his brother.

"Huh?"

"We'll have to share."

Dean could have been mock put-out by that, played along with Sam's banter some more (not an unappealing proposition), but he didn't have it in him. Truth was, being close to his brother after so many months of being apart – and being thus able to reach over at any moment and re-affirm his physical existence here and now – was the best thing he could have asked for.

"I'll live," Dean said. And now, finally here in this house with Sam, he knew he meant it.

--

"It's never warm here, which sucks," Matt said, as way of explaining away the frigid weather the following late-morning, the day of the hunters' departure.

Looking at each other, a new habit neither of the Winchesters thought they'd relinquish quickly, they could only laugh.

"Not really," they simultaneously replied. And then laughed some more.

"I think I'm going to miss them when they're gone," Matt thought, surprising himself.

"Let me just throw this bag in the trunk and we'll be off," Sam said. (The bag in question contained their new/old wardrobe from Matt: not-too-baggy jeans and sweaters and t-shirts, some socks, and most hilariously, a still shrink-wrapped package of white men's briefs their host had dug up from the back of his closet that were just Dean's size. Dean himself, after having been informed by his brother of this latest contribution, had only this to say: "Hell no.")

As his little brother went to accomplish this last chore, Dean turned to Matt.

"Thanks, really, for everything." Accompanying his statement was an even more sincere Winchester thank-you: a firm look in the other man's face, and an even firmer handshake.

"No, really, really, it was my pleasure. It was what anyone should have done."

"Well, in my line of work you have to believe the exact opposite of people most of the time, but you – you're something else. And if you ever need anything, just call." Matt was slightly tempted to finally ferret out what it was the Winchesters did for a living that would paradoxically require them to both be very cynical and very helpful to the average citizenry. He was tempted, but he didn't ask. They'd had answers forced from them from others.

"Yeah, no, I've got your number. And trust me, if I ever run out of flour right before I make a cake, you'll be the first to know," Matt said back, earning exactly the response he wanted: laughter, hearty and real, from Dean Winchester. It was reward enough.

"Ok, the car's ready," Sam said as he walked up. Dean nodded once more at Matt and then turned back to the Impala, grabbing his brother's shoulder for a brief second as he turned.

"I'll be waiting," he said as he went. And then it was just Matt and his first ex-prisoner-houseguest.

"Dean used to say I was really good at the whole heartfelt sharing/goodbye thing, but truth is, I'm not sure I was ever any that good. It was more quantity than quality with me," an only semi-disparate laugh broke his thought, "but for you I'll make an effort. I mean, you pretty much saved me and my brother, and trust me, we know a good rescue when we see one. So I guess what I'm getting at is thank you. God, if I hadn't met you…" Matt took his chance to dive in.

"If you hadn't met me it would have been someone else. I was just happy it was me who got to help you with your brother."

"So are we, Matt, I can't even tell you." Sam punctuated this with Matt's second helping of the Winchester Gaze, but Sam's he found to be so much more poignant. It was like watching The Way We Were forever.

A cold wind blew between them, sending shivers over Sam's still too-skinny body.

"You better go before you freeze to death. I'd hate for all my good deeds to be wasted right before the finish line," Matt joked one last time. Sam smiled his biggest smile for the second time in two days, and then wrapped Matt in a bear hug.

"If we ever get back around to Idaho for, uh, our 'work,' we'll come visit," Sam said as he broke the embrace.

"I'll see you then."

Sam turned, slip into the passenger seat, and waved (in unknowing synchronicity with his brother) before riding into the bleak day.

"What a week," The man left standing in the driveway thought, and then he went inside to warm himself up – both inside and out.

--

They were a lot like the hills and the plains of the Midwest, Dean thought as he drove down the highway: shocked and beaten down, coarse and gothic, but also infinite and endurable – resilient. They'd gone through a hell of a lot, just like the land through which they were driving, but they'd gotten through. They were driving through. As he turned from the wheel to playfully punch (though it was less a punch than a warm squeeze) his baby brother's shoulder, he whispered to himself.

"We're back."

And then he laughed, and the sound seemed to float away through the cold air, warming its surrounding as it flew into nothing.

The End.

Authors Note Pt. 2: So that's it. It isn't nearly as, umm, "unique" as The Final Solution but if you loved it, or hated it, or were somewhere in between…review! Please? Next up I'll probably get away from Supernatural a little, and stray into…wait for it…Twilight territory but I've got one more one-shot up my sleeve for now. So stay tuned!