you were still sitting there when the smoke cleared
first second third fourth fifth
Dean woke up in a great deal of pain.
There was a hatchet buried in his skull, his skin several sizes too small and sore all over. Even without opening his eyes, he could tell sunlight was going to be a problem for him today. He was on top of the covers and his jeans were stiff and the fly was undone and Dean was still wearing his boots.
He lay there for a few minutes, recuperating. There was this terrible taste in his mouth and he kept thinking it was grave dirt even though that made no sense.
The previous day filtered back to him. He was in an unfamiliar room, unfamiliar bed, because he'd come to Kansas with his brother. Yesterday he had stood in the cemetery where both his parents were buried.
Yesterday he'd gotten drunk.
Dean let his eyes open, slow and sticky. The white expanse of the ceiling was somewhat reassuring. Lifting onto one elbow, Dean took a careful look around. The other bed had been slept in, covers tossed recklessly, and there was a glass of water and four aspirin on the night table.
Dean sat up all the way, cradling his head in one hand. He took the pills and finished the water, fixed his pants without wondering how he'd gotten like that. Whole swaths of the night were gone from his mind.
Lying back down, Dean kept a hand flat on his forehead, trying to hold in the throb. He felt sick to his stomach but it wasn't nausea, more like guilt and Dean couldn't think of why.
Sam wasn't gone for long. Dean was dozing, drifting, when the doorknob rattled as a warning before his brother came in. Sam had coffee and a white pastry bag and he was chewing on a coffee straw and he had put his hand on Dean's dick last night.
Dean jerked half-up, his headache exploding. He remembered all at once, Sam pressing him down on the bed, sliding his hands under Dean's shirts, into his shorts. Sam staring at him as Dean broke down, his eyes so bright and hot and dark, and Sam moaning from the back of his throat, bringing himself off with one hand flat on Dean's body.
"Sammy," Dean croaked.
Sam came over between the beds, set one of the coffees on the table. "Got you your old-fashioned."
He sat down on his bed, rummaging in the pastry bag. Dean couldn't stop staring at him, trying to remember what the fuck he'd been thinking, letting Sam do that. Sam pulled out Dean's donut and took a chomp before passing it over, grinned at Dean with his teeth dirty from chocolate.
Dean took the donut numbly, sat all the way up. He planted his feet on the floor and it helped a little, made him feel more secure, better positioned if he needed to fight or run. Sam was eating his glazed, flakes of frosted sugar dusting his knees. His face was outwardly placid, but his eyes were sharp and alert, fixed on Dean, and Dean knew that Sam remembered too.
He ate his donut. He needed some time to think.
His mind wasn't interested in anything measured or reasonable, though, off-balance from the hangover and jammed with memory. Sam just planting that hand on his chest, laying him down, and how Dean's skin had been cool and damp until Sam touched him, and the wild focus in Sam's eyes, his open mouth.
Dean shook his head, harsh and spurring pain, and he flattened his hand against his temple, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Dean?"
"Yeah."
"Y'alright?"
Dean bit his lip. "Yeah." He forced himself to look at Sam, found Sam looking back all guarded and watchful. There was a stubborn blush on Sam's face, almost funny to see with how hardass he acted all the time, but Dean was just wondering how far down it went.
"So," Dean said, cutting his eyes down. "Guess you were pretty drunk last night."
A long weightless moment passed. Dean kept his head bowed, ignoring the wrenching feeling in his stomach and the almost unbearable urge to lift his gaze and see Sam's face. The carpet was once-green, nubby and faded, and Sam breathed a little louder, popped his knuckles against his knee.
"Guess we both were," Sam said finally, his voice sounding dull.
Dean nodded. He had one hand slid under his leg and he dug his fingers into the meat of his thigh, hidden from Sam's view. The wrench in his stomach was opening up, widening, forming a pit.
"Sam, I don't-" and Dean didn't know where he was going with that, so it was probably a good thing that Sam cut him off.
"It's okay, Dean." Clear and a little hoarse, regular no-big-deal voice. "Crazy shit happens, you know?"
Dean glanced up then, couldn't help it. Sam was watching him, his mouth small and tight and his eyebrows forced up so he could seem casual. Sam gave him a smile that was way too easy. He'd gone out with shower-wet hair and now there was frost silvered in and melting onto his neck and Dean thought suddenly like getting felled by God's grace: jesus christ i want him.
He made a smile, roiling on the inside. "Yeah," he said, and Sam smiled back, plainly fake and still fucking beautiful, and Dean made some excuse to get the hell out of there, hunching over the bathroom sink with his forehead on the mirror and his whole goddamn life unraveling around him.
He stayed in the bathroom as long as he could, until Sam was banging on the door and hollering about the drive. Dean pulled himself together as well as he could and slicked down his hair, went out to face the day.
The Impala was dressed in snow and they cleaned her off, sweeping arms across the frozen black metal. Dean thought about the ten hours of highways ahead of them with nothing but Sam for distraction, and asked his brother if he could drive.
"No," Sam said immediately.
"Even for just part of it?" Dean wheedled.
"Nope."
"C'mon, Sam, don't be a dick." Dean pressed his hands to the side of the car, sensation leeched out by the cold. "I thought it was implied when I gave her to you that you'd still let me drive her more'n once a year."
"You drive her when I'm drunk," Sam pointed out. "Hardly rare."
"Yeah, but usually I'm ticked at you, so I don't get to enjoy it."
"Nobody asks you to get ticked at me. Get in the goddamn car."
An unaccustomed sharpness in Sam's voice, normally Dean had to work harder to get him riled like that. Dean glared at his brother, hating the tight heat in his gut that wouldn't go away, and got in the shotgun side.
They drove in silence for the first half hour or so, tension rife between them, and then Dean's stomach, not remotely appeased by a single donut, announced itself with a rumble loud enough that Sam snorted.
"Little hungry there, Dean?"
Dean wove his fingers over his stomach, looking out the window. "I could eat."
"Yeah, all right." Sam tapped his thumb on the steering wheel, speculative look on his face. "I know a place."
"What are you talkin' about, you know a place," and then Dean realized where they were, just past Kansas City limits. "Oh." He fell quiet, disturbed by the thought that Sam knew a lot that Dean didn't.
They'd skirted the place coming down, and Sam hadn't said anything so Dean hadn't really even noticed, his thoughts fixed on Lawrence. But Sam took them off the highway and through a dingy warehouse district before emerging in a residential area, mostly housing projects and ranch houses rotting on their foundations.
"My old neighborhood," Sam said without intonation.
Dean studied the place, sidewalks grimed and salted and carrying random bursts of graffiti, trying to picture Sam here but not having much luck. He wanted to ask Sam which house had been his, but he didn't know why that seemed important, and so he kept his mouth shut.
He was having a hard time with this whole thing. It was like walking drunk through a dark room, no idea where to put his feet, no clue how to look at Sam now.
Sam pulled in to a barbecue joint just opening up for lunch. It smelled unbelievable, sweet and tang and char, ramshackle place about the size and shape of a boxcar, the big oil-drum grills in the back belching black smoke into the gray sky. Dean forgot for a second that he kinda wanted to fuck his brother, instead focusing on how he was gonna eat a whole pan of cornbread, then some ribs.
They were at their table with its red-white checkered tablecloth, and Dean was concentrating on the food and trying not to notice how Sam kept looking at him, when a barrel-chested black man in a grease-stained white apron came up and grabbed Sam's shoulder.
Sam jerked, and Dean kinda did too, dropping the bone he'd been gnawing on. But Sam got a look at the guy and his face split in a startled smile, and Dean relaxed minutely.
"Jesse friggin' January, I'll be goddamned."
"Sam my man!"
Sam got to his feet so Jesse could crush him in a bear hug, lifting Dean's brother clear off his feet for a second before slamming back down. Dean smirked behind his hand, liking this guy already.
Sam was laughing, shaking his head and punching Jesse's shoulder. "Still makin' trouble, huh? Man, how the hell you been?"
"I got the gout," Jesse said cheerfully. "But me an' Hector bought the place clean six months ago, helps ease the pain."
"Hey congratulations." Sam gave him a smack on the back, grinning. "'bout the place, not the gout. Hector around?"
"Nah, he went away with his girl for the weekend."
"Hector's got a girl? Hell, I did miss some shit."
Jesse grinned, teeth gold and shining. "You left in such a goddamn hurry. Some people leave forwarding addresses, ya no-good hick."
Sam ducked his head. "Yeah, well." He glanced at Dean and visibly remembered himself. "Oh, sorry, Jesse, this is my brother. This is Dean."
Dean waved a rib bone, mouth full and hands too messy to shake. Jesse sized him up, sharp dark eyes under graying eyebrows, and then said, "So you're the legend."
Dean swallowed too fast, chunk of half-chewed food jammed in his windpipe before he choked it down. He gulped at his water, leaving red sauce fingerprints on the glass.
"What," he managed, weak-voiced. "What're you talkin' about?"
"Sam's got nothin' but stories about his big brother," Jesse told him, winking at Sam as Sam stood there with a mortified expression on his face. "Everything anybody 'round here could do, Sam's brother could do better."
"C'mon, Jesse," Sam mumbled, his face looking hot to the touch. Jesse clapped him on the back, rolling his eyes at Dean.
"You know it's true, boy. Your brother knows too, am I right?"
Dean nodded without really thinking about it, drawn by Jesse's enthusiasm. He was half-grinning, enjoying watching Sam squirm. He wondered what kind of stories Sam told about him. He wondered if it was possible that he had haunted Sam as badly as Sam had haunted him.
"You back, Sam?" Jesse asked him. Sam shook his head.
"Just passin' through."
"Still living, where the hell was it you went, Bumfuck, South Dakota?"
Sam laughed, not too bitter, and nodded. "Sure am."
"How's that workin' out?"
"Ah, you know." Sam didn't elaborate, changing the subject smoothly to Jesse's wife and kids and Dean was surprised how good Sam was at that, deflection and distraction.
They caught up for another few minutes (Sam's version of recent history heavily edited), and then Jesse went back to the grill, but sent over a double order of the best baked beans Dean had ever had in his life, and that occupied them for awhile.
Sam slowed down, leaned back and watched Dean eat. Dean got swiftly self-conscious, trying to remember if Sam had always done that, just watched him, or if it was one of the consequences. It was generally the other way around, Dean thought. He watched Sam, always, out of duty and devotion, whenever Sam was within a city block, Dean had him pinned down.
And that, was that supposed to be a clue? Dean watched Sam, knew every inch of him, dimensions and angles and the smallest variations of his gestures and expression, and maybe it was something he was supposed to have grown out of. Sam wasn't an eight year old flight risk anymore, and Dean knew firsthand that he could take care of himself just fine, but he'd never shook the habit. Glancing at Sam was like touching a pocketed talisman, making a wish, when the simple fact of his brother would loosen something in Dean, an opening like wings. Dean liked watching Sam.
He looked down, grabbed for one of the moisty naps for something to do with his hands, and to hide his mouth, which suddenly felt untrustworthy. His hands were shaking the slightest bit as he wiped them clean.
There were probably a million things Dean had been doing without realizing it. This couldn't have come from nowhere; things didn't happen like curses. It could have been going on for years, just under the surface where he still wrestled with Sam even though they were kinda too old, and always half-wanted to push Sam's hair out of his eyes, and never felt totally comfortable if his brother wasn't in the room. The dreams he had about him and Sam in the backseat of the Impala, playing cards and talking shit and nothing graphic but Sam was usually just wearing board shorts, sleek and wet like he'd just gotten out of the lake, Sam laughing when Dean put him in a headlock.
Dean couldn't get a grip on the scope of it. He couldn't look Sam in the eye, maybe never again.
what the fuck are we gonna do, Dean thought helplessly, and as if he was answering Sam said out loud:
"You know that part in the first Tremors when they find that guy on the electrical tower who stayed up there until he died?"
Dean took a moment, placed himself in the vicinity of Sam's wavelength. "Because of the vibrations and the subterranean worm monster."
"Exactly. I'm thinking he woulda passed out before dying of thirst. Takes what, four five days? No way that old dude held on to that tower the whole time and then also stayed up there until rigor mortis set in. I call bullshit."
Dean blinked at his brother. Sam had barbecue sauce at the corners of his mouth and covering the pads of his fingers like ink from having his prints taken. He had an odd look on his face, kinda begging Dean to go easy on him but Dean wasn't going any way at all, just trying to eat some ribs and not talk about anything upsetting. He guessed Tremors qualified.
"Um. What made you bring that up?"
Sam shrugged, drinking his Bud and keeping his hand loose around the bottle on the table.
"I was thinking about Mr. Miyagi."
It wasn't a terribly satisfying answer. Dean rubbed at his chin, gave his brother a look like, cut the bullshit, but Sam didn't add anything.
"Okay, well, I call bullshit on Mr. Miyagi gettin' killed off so early," Dean said. "He was funnier'n hell."
Sam nodded. "True. Good death scene, though."
"Yeah, it was gross."
Dean fiddled with his glass, filling it up from the plastic pitcher on the table and then finishing most of it in one swallow. He filled it up again, slower this time. He looked up to find Sam's eyes on him, steady and implacable, and Dean fought a shiver.
"Let's get on the road," he said to the table. "Long drive."
"Eight hours," Sam said, kicking at Dean's feet. "I'll put money on it."
"Dude, I can only overlook the casual lawbreaking for so long," Dean told him, pained.
Sam snorted, but he didn't say anything else. Dean eyed him as he was saying goodbye to Jesse and Dean was paying the check, filing away the ease of Sam's charm, called up out of the blackest moods and deepest drunks. Sam had always been smart and serious and tough, but never really friendly. He never got to know random people over the course of the day the way Dean always seemed to, but apparently in Kansas City Sam did all right.
They got through the suburbs and drove back into the nothing, the flat featureless expanse of the plains under snow. Dean angled himself towards the window and kept his cop sunglasses on like there was sun was blinding off the white, but the cloud cover was dense and lightless and Sam probably saw through it.
He faked sleep for hours, deeply disgusted with himself.
Sam drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and he shifted and coughed and sighed, talked to the car occasionally when he blew her past a semi-truck at a hundred and ten. He found a radio station that seemed to play nothing but Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band, remarkably clear all the way north through Iowa, and sometimes Sam hummed along. A couple hours in, Dean heard him reach behind the seat and dig into the paper sack from the minimart, and then the crack of a can opening followed by the unmistakable scent of a fresh beer.
Hard to ignore that, but Dean needed the practice, and the time, the quiet inside his own head so he could figure out what the hell he was supposed to do, how the fuck they were supposed to go on.
He had that picture of Sam lodged in his mind now, taking up all the empty space with his panting mouth and blacked-out eyes, his long fingers sliding around on Dean's stomach as Sam's other hand worked inside his own shorts. Something Dean had never even seen, only heard and felt, but somehow the memory was there in fucking technicolor. Dean kept shaking his head, trying to jar it loose, but it didn't do any good. It struck him, hard as a punch to the chest, that he'd be able to picture Sam like that for the rest of his life, and that scared him worse than anything else.
years, Dean thought helplessly, musta been like this for years. Watching Sam and putting his hands on him and holding him so close that Sam had choked, and all the while this sick thing growing in Dean, sinking into his bloodstream and distorting his perception, blackly corrupting his motivations. It had taken Sam down, too, fucked with his head relentlessly until he thought that it was okay, that Dean wanted it.
do want it, he heard immediately, a constant dull heat coloring his face. Sam's giant hands and the wicked curve of his mouth, his endless legs and slatted hips, his shoulders blotting out the sun. Dean wanted to push Sam's shirt up and lick his stomach, bite the bones of his hips. He wanted Sam on his knees. Bent over the hood of their car.
Dean wanted to scream. If anyone else in the world had been thinking this shit about his little brother, Dean would have literally shot them in the head.
The engine roared, Sam executing neat weaves through the sparse traffic, and Dean stared unblinking from behind his sunglasses, trying to be soothed by the feel of the Impala around him. She'd always moved best at high speeds.
He counted backwards, and it had been sixteen months since Dean had given Sam his car.
Sam had just broken the news a couple days before. He'd taken Dean out to the Spoke and it was loud, juke bellowing some song about a flood, half the town crushed together on the dancefloor, two-stepping.
Sam leaned on the wall, shoulder to shoulder with his brother, and because it was loud, he put his mouth close to Dean's ear and half-shouted, "I asked Jessica to marry me and she said yes."
Dean had pulled away, tried to get a look at Sam's face and it was all shadows and blue neon except for his grin, frantic and happy and faintly pleading. Dean didn't make him repeat it, believed him the first time for once. He wanted to ask why, but that wasn't the right thing to say, and anyway, Dean had his suspicions. So he hollered congratulations and spotted the next few rounds, telling Sam that it was gonna be great, she was so far out of his league it wasn't even right, but goddamn boy.
It wasn't like it had been a surprise. Sam and Jess had grown up throwing clots of dirt at each other, had been dramatically together and estranged at various points during high school, and after Sam came back from Kansas City, it was only a week or two before she was showing up at the house again. Sam had moved in with her three months after their father's funeral, her little house with the chipping white paint and pale blue ceilings, and he'd meet Dean for breakfast at the cafe some mornings with scratches on the back of his neck, hickeys under the line of his jaw, sleepy sated grin pulling at the corners of his mouth.
Dean had been all for it. Sam was pretty fucked up after their dad had died, and Jess was the only one who could get him to act like a human being for longer than five minutes at a stretch. Dean wasn't any good to his brother back then, didn't even want to look at Sam because Sam had Dad's eyes; they brought out the worst in each other, made vicious by their loneliness and misery. So Jess had taken care of Sam. Dean had thanked God for her more than once.
Two days after Sam had told Dean about his engagement and asked Dean to be his best man in a weirdly formal tone, Dean picked him up from the salvage yard and they drove out to the ravine. They shared a green apple left over from Sam's lunch, sour and sharp on Dean's tongue, and the Mexican beer that the general store was selling that month, and Sam hucked stones into the gorge, whole body throws that traveled so far there was no sound of impact.
Dean had finished his beer and set the bottle down on the ground, gone to stand next to where his brother was backlit by the setting sun, and he'd held out the key to the Impala on the palm of his hand. Dean had said, "Here, Sam, she's yours," all rushed and breathless with this sudden feeling like he'd been hollowed out, echoing and light enough to float.
Sam had laughed in disbelief, and he tried to refuse but Dean had insisted, pushing the key at him and swallowing hard as Sam's eyes shone silver as a badge. Sam had taken the key, a massive grin on his face, and twirled it around his thumb, told Dean that it was perfect--he and Jessica were moving to California after the wedding and fuck, the Impala on those coastal highways, can you imagine?
And Dean was struck dumb by shock, but he managed to keep a moronic smile on his face, laughed right along with him. California, pretty name like a mythical city, stuck like a fishhook in Dean's mind, an incantation seared in memory, a lesser prayer. Sam was back to his old tricks, eyes fixed on the farther horizon.
Dean didn't really know what his intentions were when he decided to give Sam his car as an engagement present (it wasn't a bribe; Dean was almost certain that it hadn't been a bribe), but he was sure Sam had misunderstood him in some fundamental way. The very last thing he meant for his brother to do was fucking leave again. Not just leave, leave in Dean's car.
To his credit, Sam tried to give her back three times, even once while perfectly sober. Dean, who could do stubborn just as well as the rest of his family, refused him each time. It had become all warped in his mind, convinced that the Impala was the price he'd paid so that Sam could get out and get on, marry his girl and live with her in a place where it never got cold.
And it seemed right, because their dad had given the car to Dean and Dean had gotten his years out of her and now it was Sam's turn, Sam and the new family he was willing into existence out of thin air. This could go on for decades, Dean remembered thinking, generations bound by sky-black steel.
Sam had never made it to California, nor the altar. He lost Jess three weeks before their wedding day. It had been two months before the baby was due.
Since then the Impala had been Sam's through and through. He'd never again offered her back to Dean.
Dean would never ask.
"Food, Dean."
Dean was good; he barely flinched. He opened his eyes to find that it was full dark, or anyway looked that way through mirrored lenses. He listened to Sam huffing out a breath.
"You ain't asleep, you ain't been asleep, so look alive and tell me what you want t'eat."
Sam punched him solidly on the shoulder. It reverberated, chattered Dean's teeth, and then Sam punched him again, soft and kinda aimless.
Dean straightened up, if only so Sam would stop touching him. He pulled off his shades, rubbed his eyes. It was only twilight still, dusk, but they were getting into the woods, patches of the road lightless and unmarked. Dean relaxed a little, glad after the fields and badlands to see something that looked more like home.
"Whatever, man, I don't care."
Sam tossed an irritated look his way. He looked rough, shoulders slumped and four or five days scruff darkening his face.
"Since when do you not care about food?"
"Care about food, just not about what kind of food." Dean pressed his fingers into his stomach, training his gaze on the wedge of road revealed by the headlights. "Whatever you wanna get's fine."
Sam muttered under his breath, and Dean eyed his hands on the wheel, driving with his palms, fingers loose. He thought about arm-wrestling with Sam, and thumb war in the backseat of the car, the encyclopedia entry he could write about Sam's hands. He wouldn't be able to touch him in good conscience anymore, Dean realized with a creeping sense of horror. Neither of them could be trusted.
They got cheeseburgers at the last drive-thru until Spearfish. Ate sitting on the hood of the car just outside Sturgis, conspicuously not talking to each other, staring at the highway. Dean didn't have much of an appetite.
Twenty minutes from home, with the way Sam was driving, and Dean was trying to keep a hold of himself, sideways eyeing the lanky bend of his brother's legs against the side of the car. Dean found it kinda incredible that something like this could happen and he still had to go in to work on Monday. All the other rules of existence seemed to be in effect, but how was Dean supposed to live in the same house as Sam and have coffee with him in the morning? Go through his day and come home to Sam already half loaded and pliable, red-lit by the flickering light of special effects gore, and what was Dean supposed to do then?
Sam balled up the burger wrapper and the bag and pitched it into a nearby bin. Once his hands were empty, Dean noticed immediately that they were shaking.
"Sam, you okay?" he heard, a second late recognizing the voice as his own. It was like muscle memory, like stripping and cleaning a weapon, making sure Sam was okay; something he didn't even think about.
Twitching, Sam looked over at Dean and then down at his trembling hands. His face collapsed, and he slumped, looking very tired and very young for a moment before his mouth hardened, cracked a dark smile.
"I"m fine." Sam swiped his arm across his mouth. "Just need a goddamn drink."
Dean opened his mouth, didn't say anything. He never knew what to say. He'd tried everything on their father and nothing had worked, and now Dean had to relive his history knowing in advance that all his efforts were hopeless.
Dean rubbed his face, drained. He quit on his fries even though he'd only managed half, and sucked at his root beer, looking down.
"Hey Dean."
Something in Sam's voice, something barbed and low, had Dean's head jerking up, and Sam was leaning towards him, just enough for it to be too close, too implicit, and Dean froze but Sam went just that far and no farther. Sam's eyes were heavy, muddy midway green color that kept fucking with Dean's head, and he licked his lips quickly before saying:
"I'll let you drive her if you let me pick up a fifth."
Dean tipped back, swallowing panic, and slid off the car, away from Sam. He shook his head, trying to clear it, get rid of that look of blatant invitation on his brother's face. His hands were in fists again.
"Dude, no," Dean said.
Sam pulled out his keys, held them up with a cheshire smile. "Sorry, I misspoke. Shoulda said, Dean, I'm gonna pick up a fifth. You wanna drive?"
"Sam-" Dean began, but Sam tossed the keys at him and he was distracted with catching them, and Sam got far enough away that Dean would have felt stupid chasing after. He watched Sam walk across the long parking lot towards the frantic glow of a liquor store. The keys cut into his palm, his grip ruthless.
When Sam came back, Dean had the car running, seeking aimlessly up and down the radio dial. Sam already had the bottle cracked, folding himself into shotgun with a rough-edged sigh. His hands were steady now, Dean noticed, feeling a weird bitter disappointment. One hand around the neck of the bottle, long fingers curved and loose, and Dean fought a tide of dirty thoughts, gripping the steering wheel.
"You gonna drive or stare at me?" Sam asked flatly.
Dean started, snatched his eyes away. He hadn't even realized.
He got them back on the highway, feeling punch-drunk and nauseous, before saying, "This whole self-destructive thing is gettin' pretty old, Sammy."
It was easier to talk with his eyes on the road, Sam slouched in his peripheral vision, the streetlights flashing across the bottle.
"Ah," Sam said, dismissive. "Runs in the family."
It was a really mean thing for him to say, actually, even if neither of them realized it for a moment because Sam was just being a smartass. Then Dean took a sharp, aborted breath, a dense weight like he'd been kicked in the ribs.
"Don't say that," he said, too loud and uneven and Sam was the one staring now, biting his lip and blinking at Dean from behind his stupid goddamn hair. "Don't. Quit acting like this is all some fuckin' joke."
"Oh my lord, worst joke ever." Sam smirked, but it didn't hold up, wavery at the edges and looking more like he was on the verge of tears.
"I will beat the living shit out of you, Sam, so help me-" Dean threatened, feeling his control slip.
"Go the fuck ahead, I don't care. You think I don't know what this disease is called?" Sam actually laughed, turning away and passing his hand over his eyes. "It's because of Dad, or because I'm a fuck-up all on my own, or because of Jess and the baby, or, or because of you. I got my fuckin' reasons, Dean. I got cause."
That shut Dean up for a minute, disarmed him completely. Sam never talked about the perverse turns his life had taken over the past few years, just went about the matter-of-fact business of obliterating his memory, acting like it was expected of him, the standard procedure. And maybe it was, Dean thought. A situation as fucked up as this one had no healthy reaction. A person's response should be fucked up. It was only fair. This was a fucking tragedy.
But Dean had to watch it happening. Dean wasn't really built to just watch.
"Nobody's arguing with you about that," Dean said eventually, dropped into a lower register. "It's just the consequences, Sam, that's all I'm. That's all."
Sam shook his head, staring out the window at the black wall of trees streaking past. He was pressing his knuckle against his leg but it wouldn't pop. Hanging on to that bottle like the anchor of his place in the universe, the only thing keeping him safe from black holes.
"I get it, Dean," Sam said, tired. "I'd be the same way if it were you."
Dean tightened his hold on the wheel, biting his teeth together. Several times, he'd thought that he would trade places with Sam in a heartbeat, take the flattening weight of grief and desolation off his brother's shoulders because Sam shouldn't have to bear it; he'd always been the better brother. It had always been Dean's job to make sure Sammy was okay.
He didn't say that to Sam. He didn't know what to say to Sam.
"Just," Sam said. "Lemme go on some stuff, huh? Gimme some time."
Been ten months, Dean almost said, bit back at the last second. He nodded jerkily. It was still an open wound, Sam still despondent and manic and barely functioning. Dean had put all his faith in time's power to heal, and here they were no noticeably better than when they'd started.
Quiet for a second, space for Dean to wonder if he'd picked a fight about Sam's drinking to avoid talking about the handjob thing, and then Sam was saying:
"You call this driving?"
and Dean was obliged to put the pedal on the floor, listening to the great consuming roar of the engine as he opened her up.
*
Back in Sturgis, there was the closest hospital to Kingston, some saint's name that Dean could never remember. Built low to the ground out of brown-colored bricks, spindly winter trees like ink sketches against the snow, and Dean used to park at the deserted far end of the parking lot where he could leave the car all night without worrying about her getting dinged.
He knew the place by heart: the shortcut through radiology to the cafeteria, the alcove formed by dumpsters out back where the lab techs took their smoke breaks, the nodding birthday balloons tied to the ends of beds in the children's ward. Dean knew most of the night shift by name, cadging free coffee and the Powerbars the residents lived off of, flirting with the nurses, playing cards with the janitor at three in the morning. He probably would have liked the place if he never had to go into his father's room.
John had been in and out of the hospital all through the last winter of his life. Dean remembered how it built, how he kept getting more and more tired and took longer to rise in the mornings, and how he'd chalked it up to his dad just getting old. The jaundice came on so subtly Dean didn't even notice it; Pastor Jim came to visit and the first thing he said was, "Christ, John, what've you got?" and Dean remembered hearing it like a cold fist closing around his heart.
It was only a month or two after that, when John lost consciousness at the Roadhouse and Ellen put him in the back to sleep it off for a couple hours, couldn't wake him up at closing. Phone call in the middle of the night, Dean groping from under the sheets and half-expecting to find Sam drunk on the other end, but instead it was Ellen, saying as she had his whole life, "It's your dad, Dean," only this time she was stammering and hard to make out.
That night was the first time Dean went to the hospital in Sturgis. His dad was stripped and put in a paper johnny and made to look frail and impossibly vulnerable, and against the starched white of the sheets Dean could see how yellow his skin was. Standing over him, Dean experienced a flood of terror stronger than anything since he was a little kid. It made him shake, staring at his father and trying to see the man who had run into the fire, the man who had come out somewhat less than whole.
Dean hid out in his car, the far end of the hospital parking lot like Siberia, icy breath billowing as he hunched over the wheel and called his brother.
Sam didn't answer the first four times Dean tried him, but on the fifth he snatched up the phone and his voice shattered into being, snarling, "Motherfucker it is three in the goddamn morning-"
"Sammy."
That was it, only word Dean could say and only thing he needed to say, because Sam fell immediately silent, his breath hushed and uncertain against the receiver, before he said carefully, "What's wrong, Dean?"
All Dean had to say was, "Dad," and Sam's breathing drew ragged before he said, "I'm leavin' right now. Right this second," and he was being literal, showed up a little more than seven hours later in the falling snow with no socks under his shoes, coat thrown on over sweats and a holey T-shirt.
He found Dean in the hospital hallway, sitting opposite a vending machine and dully memorizing the order of the candy bars. Sam, shoes squeaking on the linoleum, grabbed Dean's shoulders and hauled him up and hugged him, rib-crushing the way Sam's hugs always were. Dean gasped against his brother's shoulder, forearms pressing hard on Sam's back, the physical heft and warmth of Sam hitting him like a wave.
He took Sam to see their dad and Sam just stood at the foot of the bed for a long time, not coming any closer. John's closed eyes were sunken, lids puffy and tinged purple. His hands rested like props at his sides, waxy and insensate. Dean watched Sam watching John, leaning in the doorway and trying not to think about how fragile his family looked from this angle.
Sam and Dean went to get coffee in the caf, and sitting across from his brother, not making eye contact, Sam said that he would come back. Help out until Dad got better.
It was a sincere force of will for Dean to keep from crushing his styrofoam cup, fingers flexing and making coffee slosh over the rim. Sam wouldn't meet his eyes, looking over at a table full of nurses in pastel-colored scrubs, but his jaw was set in a familiar way, the decision already made.
Dean thought about how he should say, no sam, you don't have to, and get Sam to go back to his classes and job and whatever else he had in Kansas City, not let him fuck up his whole escape plan with a last-minute technicality, but the words wouldn't come. Just Sam, sitting across from Dean with his hair bedheaded and wrecked by the wind at a hundred and ten miles an hour, Sam with his boyishly tough face and monster hands, Sam close enough for Dean to touch if he needed to. Just Sam, and Dean nodded, said that was probably a good idea.
He tried not to acknowledge the morbid and growing certainty he had that his dad was not going to get better. Tried not to think that he had Sam back for good now, having made some kind of unholy trade, a deal at the crossroads.
Sam took a weekend and two day-long trips to get his stuff moved, overcrowded into his childhood bedroom, garbage bags of clothes spilling out into the hallway. His muddy boots tangled with Dean's in the front hallway, his orange juice without pulp shouldering aside the milk in the fridge. Sam just resumed, like no time had passed. Took up his spot at Dean's right hand, at the forefront of his mind.
John got sicker as the weather got colder. He'd come home for a week or two at a stretch, moving slow and looming like a spectre, and Sam would get nervous and solicitous, hovering until John snapped him away. Dean kept the schedule for his dad's medications and talked to his doctor at least once a day, bought the groceries and paid the bills, all the basic logistical stuff that no one else ever thought of, and in that way he maintained an element of control. He and Sam went out drinking every night, reckless and wild and daring fate, egging each other on and laughing all crazed and disjointed.
The world around them newsprint-gray and unfeeling, John ended up back in the hospital over and over, until Dean knew the route blindfolded and Sam kept referring to the place as "our winter home," no matter how hard Dean smacked him.
It took a long time. Old soldiers never die, Dean thought on a broken loop, watching his father fade away.
Night after night of stale cafeteria food and Sam eating two million things of red jell-o, the squeal of black rubber wheels on linoleum, the persistent undercurrent of pained moans, and Dean and his brother sat side by side at John's bedside. The three of them played never-ending hands of gin, stared dully through late-night talk shows and infomercials. Talking in fits and starts, long stretches of nothing but the machines' beeping, and Dean watched Sam yawning against the back of his wrist, burying his hand in his hair and leaning on his elbow. Dean kept seeing these shards of his dad in Sam, like barbs catching pieces of his memory and tearing them out. Something in the way Sam slumped. Something about the line of Sam's jaw when he had his mind made up.
John died on a Thursday.
Dean had been in their usual parking lot corner, sleeping in the backseat of the Impala, having worked the swing shift the night before. He remembered his dream, a flooded subway tunnel and Sam laughing as he fell down a flight of stone steps and disappeared beneath the black water.
He was startled awake by the door opening, and Sam's voice destroying the silence, chanting, "Dean, Dean," and crawling over Dean's legs. Dean sat halfway up, his head muzzy and aching, and he saw that Sam was weeping and it made him go stuttering and erratic with fear. Gripping Sam's shoulders, pulling himself up and wrapping an arm around Sam's back, Dean pressed his hand flat to Sam's cheek and demanded, "What happened?"
Sam couldn't answer, sobbing into Dean's hand and Dean knew. Of course he knew.
He could feel Sam's tears running down the inside of his wrist. Pressed his hand into Sam's hair and pulled Sam's face against his throat, held him like that as he felt Sam's arms trembling hard against his sides. They might have been like that for hours, Dean would never really know. It felt like days.
Life was viciously hard for a few weeks, the whole town insisting on expressing their condolences when Sam and Dean were much more interested in getting loaded out at the ravine, in the dark and the silence. They buried their father in Lawrence and Bobby was the only thing that kept Dean from going drunk; Sam had no such conditions.
It was like he had lost all of his borders, the basic geography all out of whack. He was Dean Winchester, John's boy. He still had a lot of stuff to ask his dad; Dean wasn't ready yet.
Sam started a bar fight sometime around Valentine's Day (not the first swing--never--but the guy accused him of hustling and that was true) and it evolved inevitably into a full-blown brawl. Dean might have fought back-to-back with his brother for a few hectic minutes, just for old time's sake. Sam's nose was bleeding, red on his teeth and Dean's hands were killing him when Bobby came in putting bullets in the heavy timbers of the roof, bellowing for order.
Most everybody got a citation and a stern talking-to, but Sam and Dean Bobby locked in the back of a cruiser until he was done with the others. Sam tipped his head far back on the seat to stop the bleeding, and Dean relocated a knuckle with a wet pop, hissing between his teeth.
Bobby came back and slammed the car door, glowering at them in the rearview for a long moment. Dean tried not to squirm. Sam looked impassive, faintly contemptuous.
"You boys been having a rough go," Bobby said. "I don't blame you; couldn't, I remember how I was when my daddy passed. You're pissed off and you wanna hurt something, make somebody pay. I know."
Bobby turned in his seat, met their eyes through the heavy mesh. "But that's enough now." Gave Sam a steely look, then shifted it to Dean. "You get me?"
Dean nodded automatically. A moment of hesitation, and then Sam followed suit. There was something thick stuck in Dean's throat, shame-faced with his eyes lowered.
He glanced at Sam, found his brother with defiance still shining on his face, and Dean reached out, put his hand over Sam's fist. Sam started, looked over at Dean with bruises already starting to show. Dean gave him a half-smile, asked him wordlessly to settle down, and Sam sank back, exhaling.
Bobby drove them home. Dean went in to the station the next morning freshly-shaven and alert, intent on making his amends. Sam went back to fucking around at the salvage yard some of the time and fucking around with Jessica the rest of the time, and a year passed slowly.
Jess had her own place with an adult-sized bed and everything, but Sam liked bringing her back to the house, where she sometimes got fed up with all the canned food and microwaveable meals and fixed them a real dinner, enough for leftovers. It was a surefire way to make Dean more receptive, something not a whole lot of Sam's other girlfriends had figured out, but he liked her aside from the free food. She took all of Sam's shit and gave back twice as good. She called Dean 'ugly,' but in such a way as to be endearing.
She liked their monster movies and slasher flicks, in equal measures delighted and repulsed by the painstaking fake gore, turning her face into Sam's arm and shuddering while wearing a grin. She and Sam would share a bowl of popcorn and the smell would make Dean sick to his stomach like always, but he wouldn't let on because some of those nights Sam seemed honestly happy again, butter shining on his fingers and his mouth as he nudged at Jess, looking for a kiss.
The three of them went to the Spoke and Sam and Dean took turns dancing with her, through the haze of smoke and neon beer signs. Jessica told dirty jokes in the back booth, making Sammy laugh until his face was bright red, his eyes screwed up. Sam broke off a curly fry ring and asked Jess to marry him, just kidding around but Dean was sober enough to recognize the foreshadowing.
Dean's room shared a wall with Sam's. Lying on his back, watching the fleshless fingers of a tree scratch at the window, Dean could hear them in there, the soft give of bed springs and Sam muttering curses and Jess breathing out fast and high-pitched. Dean tried not to listen, but the wall might as well have been cardboard. He tried not to picture them but Jessica was drop dead gorgeous and sometimes he couldn't help it.
Sam had moved out without really telling his brother. Dean had come home from the station very late and Sam's door was shut and silent and Dean went right to sleep. He awoke to the full strength of day, and Sam's door still closed, no milky cereal bowl on the coffee table or picked-apart newspaper on the kitchen counter. No sign of him all that day and all the next, and when Dean opened the door to Sam's room he found the closet ransacked and the drawers barren, the lamp missing from the bedside table.
Dean had experienced a moment or two of visceral panic, the kind of thing that ripped clean through and left bloody trenches behind. He stifled it, let the anger come.
He found Sam at the Roadhouse, their dad's bar that Sam usually abhorred in favor of the Spoke, but there his little brother was, shooting pool with a couple good ol' boys in stained trucker caps. Softening them up, Dean could tell, getting ready to suggest they make things a little more interesting. Sam half-smiled when he saw Dean, ducked his head down.
Dean had wanted to take Sam into the alley and have it out with him properly, no fear of witnesses, but Sam wouldn't leave his beer and wouldn't apologize to his brother.
"Dude, you should be glad, we're gettin' out of your way. No more waiting for the shower in the morning, huh?"
Sam grinned, egging Dean, but Dean shook his head, not charmed. "Rather have the hassle than a fuckin' empty house."
Hiking his eyebrows, Sam fiddled with a beer coaster, spinning it like a coin on the bar. He wasn't making a whole lot of eye contact. "I dunno, we want a place that ours. Still feels like your house, back home. Dad's house."
Dean didn't have an answer to that. Sam glanced at him, let a smile curve on his face.
"And we're pretty done with the twin bed, too."
Flashing on the midnight soundtrack through the wall, Dean felt his face heat. Startlingly specific, he kept hearing Sam's voice break on the word please. He remembered wanting to shake Sam, get hands on him in some concrete way, but he ended up just clutching the bar.
"You still. You say goodbye, Sam," Dean told him. "You tell me, you don't just go missing again."
Sam's eyes jumped to Dean's face and he went still, his hand locking around his beer. Complicated expression on Sam's face, eyebrows up and startled and his mouth in a cynical knot, the better part of a smirk. Dean wondered if it honestly hadn't occurred to Sam that Dean would have a problem with him leaving.
"I. Not missing, Dean, I'm so easily found." Sam tried a grin; no luck. He coughed, cleared his throat. "You'll be okay."
Dean scoffed behind his hand. "Yeah."
Then Sam looked kinda guilt-stricken but he covered it well. He bought Dean a beer and let him win two games of pool before Dean told him to knock it the fuck off. He didn't want that kind of sympathy. Or any kind, really. He was most comfortable left all alone with his despair.
Once Sam and Jess were living together, it was only a matter of time before they got engaged. Once engaged, it was only a matter of time before Sam admitted to Dean that he'd knocked her up.
"But it's okay," Sam had said with a shrug. "I love the hell outta her, I was probably gonna end up marrying her anyway."
"Now you get a kid out of it, too," Dean said, sitting across from Sam at the cafe.
"Kids're all right." Sam made an indistinct gesture, sucking on his lemonade straw. "She's gonna be awesome at it. I'm just gonna, you know, muddle through. Try not to fuck up too bad."
"Pretty low bar you've set for yourself there, Sammy."
Sam laughed. "Don't worry, I'll still find a way to trip over that motherfucker."
And Dean had laughed, feeling like an echo.
Dean missed his father and he missed his car and soon enough he would be obliged to miss his brother, too, a final fatal straw. His little town was in a slow process of decay: Gordon Walker broke his wife's jaw on Thanksgiving; Dean and Bobby rousted a trailer park meth lab in the flats, and had to turn two dead-eyed toddlers over to state services, still bearing the cartoon band-aids Dean had affixed to their cuts and scrapes.
Jessica started to show over the winter, graceful bump stretching her shirts, and she and Sam came over to Dean's place for dinner on Sundays. Jess fell asleep on the couch watching the news every time, and Sam and Dean would haul one of the space heaters out onto the porch and drink beer while they watched the snow fall, talking about things that had been and things that were to come. Sam was scared of getting married, and having a kid, and moving to California, but he'd thrown himself into all of it full-bore, the only way Sam knew how. When he kissed Jessica, he spread his hand flat on the bump, never quite able to believe it.
And then on a beautiful day in March, the sky an overarching blue, Dean was zapping speeders, his cruiser sheltered in a copse off the highway. Bored and sleepy in the unseasonable warmth, Dean was thinking about digging out the emergency Snickers he kept in the glove compartment, when his radio crackled to life.
It was Bobby, clogged with static and sounding old, and he told Dean that Jessica Moore had had a seizure at work and been rushed to the hospital in Sturgis. Sam had gone with her.
Dean sped out, shedding leaves and dust, punched his lights and siren and let the
banshee-howl of it split the afternoon. Every road cleared before him, Dean drove tasting his heart, praying in jagged riffs and broken faithless pleas, having never learned the real words.
Jess was already gone by the time he got there. Dean found his brother in the men's room, punching the tile walls and denting the hell out of the paper towel dispenser. Sam's hands were bloody and swelling, his eyes enormous and white and dry, his mouth hanging slack. He spun on Dean, swatted away Dean's reaching hands and clocked him hard across the jaw, and then Sam fell to his knees, began to weep.
Dean knelt before him, cradled Sam's head in his hands like it was made of glass. Eyes burning with tears because Dean couldn't see Sam like this, just flat-out could not bear it. Begging Sam to stop, promising that it would be okay, lying to him and feeling the rush of grief forcing its way under Sam's skin, making him shudder and blanch. There wasn't anything Dean could do, his hands pressing on Sam and his face aching where his brother had hit him.
The baby was still alive. Devastatingly small and trapped under thick plastic, Sam had a son.
For two days, Sam had a son.
They didn't leave the hospital. Dean paced the length of every corridor, his boots leaving scuff marks on the linoleum, needing the movement and daydreaming of escape. He took restless naps in empty rooms and on the floor at Sam's feet. He brought Sam red jell-o and cheese sandwiches and chocolate bars and Sam never ate enough to satisfy Dean. Sam never slept. He watched his son roll and shift and cry silently inside the incubator, his hands cramped on his knees.
Ellen came with homemade biscuits and reddened eyes (Jess had been friends with her daughter before Jo had moved away), and Dean was relieved to see her at first, proof of a decent world still in existence somewhere outside the hospital doors. All she could say was, "Oh, Sam," and she tried to touch Sam's head but he jerked away. She and Dean got coffee in the caf, butter in packets for their biscuits, and Dean explained it to Ellen haltingly, trying to remember everything the doctor had told him.
Eclampsia was the name of the thing. There had likely been warning signs that were missed. It had not been quick. It had not been merciful in any way. The baby, Dean's tiny nephew closing his fists on nothing, was getting weaker.
Ellen had let Dean's monotone run out, and then she grabbed his hand. He gave her a shaky smile, squeezed her fingers and tried to pull away but she wouldn't let him. His vision blurred, and he didn't want to cry in front of her but she said, "He'll survive it, Dean," and Dean broke down. Sobbed like he was the one dying, because he didn't believe Ellen, not for a single second.
Just before dawn on the third day, Sam's son, nameless and unknown, went to join his mother. The smallest soul, Dean remembered thinking, a smudge of white against the lightening sky, like a feather caught on the wind.
Dean took his brother home. Sam stayed blind-drunk for two weeks straight, slurring and asking how it was possible to miss a child he'd never even held, demanding that Dean tell him what his son's name should have been.
Dean formed himself into a wall, a sheer cliff for the tidal roar of Sam's loss to crash against. He made himself solid and senseless and strong, and he swore that he would get Sam through this, be whatever he needed. Dean didn't have any more family to spare, and he wasn't going to risk it. Sam could hit him or curse him or blame him, anything, use him and fuck him up and Dean would stay no matter what.
As long as it took, as bad as it could get, Dean would stay right here.
*
They got back home and puttered nervously around the house for a little while, encompassed by silence and the new distance between them, and then Sam split, slamming out the door without even shouting to let Dean know he was going.
Dean kicked his laundry basket over when he heard the growl of the Impala taking off, sour smell of dirty clothes rising and subsiding. He gathered up empties from the coffee table and kitchen table and went out back, hurling glass bottles into tree trunks in the cold dark. Each explosion jarred Dean, a little jerk and something trembling bone-deep.
He wanted to run, beat this out, but the snow was thick on the ground and the roads weren't safe.
Sam didn't come home that night, nor the next. Dean caught snatches of him from people around town: Sam at the cafe fifteen minutes before Dean came in, ordering the exact same pie and coffee; Sam at the Spoke, dancing with every girl who'd ever had a crush on him; Sam getting ticketed drag racing with Andy and Anson Beckett out on the fire road.
But he saw none of Sam himself and Dean got edgy, like he was waiting for a death sentence to be handed down. He didn't know why the immediacy hadn't faded, the urgent press of Sam inside his mind. Lawrence had been a fever, two hearts broken too young and a night of drinking and a storm outside and they couldn't be held responsible for what happened after that.
But they were back now, back in their proscribed roles, their neat little boxes. Sam was just Dean's brother, irritating and smartmouthed and prone to violence, and nothing about him should make Dean's mouth go dry or sweat break out across the entire surface of his skin, but there he was.
He felt cheated somehow, conned into letting the memory follow him home. He felt sick, twisted, letting Sam live in his head like that, creep under the sheets with Dean at the end of the day. He caught himself wondering about Sam, wondering if he was embarrassed or appalled at what he'd done, or maybe it had stuck with him too and he was going nuts imagining Dean as Dean had been, moaning and arching and moving his hips to the rhythm of Sam's hand, and Dean had to bite his tongue to stop thinking about it.
It didn't matter if Sam wanted it, Dean reminded himself six hundred times a day. It wasn't suddenly okay just because they both wanted it.
And Sam probably didn't, anyway.
It was three in the morning and Dean wasn't sleeping, watching The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and siding with Leatherface against the annoying teenagers like usual, and Sam came stumbling home. Dean was wired on black coffee and Red Bull and vodka, about six hours from hunting his brother down like a dog, and Sam walked in amid a miniature cyclone of snow.
"Close the door," Dean said automatically, eyeing him from down the hallway. His pulse jumped at the sight of Sam standing there disheveled in clothes he'd been wearing for three days.
Sam swung the door shut, almost fell yanking off his boots and came thumping down the hallway, stripping off his coat and leaving it on the floor. He was listing, not quite steady. Blinking at the television, he commented, "Meathook. Love the meathook."
Dean did his best not to stare. The cold had left color on Sam's cheeks, his eyes glassy and sparkling and his hair a damp knotted mess. His hands were pale and seemed unnaturally big, scabs over each of his knuckles. Sam stood hesitantly, glancing at the spot on the couch next to Dean and Dean held his breath.
Sam sat down, farther away than he usually sat but still in the room, which felt like more than Dean could have asked for. Sam leaned back, kicked his feet up on the table. Every muscle in Dean's body abruptly lost its tension, slumping him down into the cushions.
"Where you been, Sammy?" Dean asked after a moment of acclimation had passed.
Hitching a shoulder, Sam said without looking away from the movie, "'round."
"That all I get?"
Sam gave him a sideways glance, rubbing at a damp patch on his shoulder where the snow had seeped through. "You don't really wanna know, Dean."
Dean considered that. "'kay." He considered some other stuff, swallowing a few times. "You back now?"
"I guess." Sam paused, let it feel significant. "If you still want me here."
Dean was startled, didn't show it. He'd actually never once thought of asking Sam to move out. Seemed odd, in retrospect, with all he was doing to rebuild the necessary walls between him and his brother. Definitely seemed like an option that at least should have been on the table.
"Yeah," he said. "'Course, Sam."
Sam's throat moved as he swallowed, eyes trained on the television again, and Dean had the disorienting thought that Sam was afraid of him. Moving slow and cautious like Dean was a predator on a broken chain, like Sam was making his way blind. There was an overriding sense of wrongness at the idea of it, a forceful rejection that Dean felt rise from the bottom of his gut.
He stared at his brother, helpless.
"I, um," Sam began, profile etched as if in marble. "I won't try anything. I don' want you to, to, uh. Worry. 'bout that."
Dean shook his head, his mind stuttering. "What. What're you." He trailed off, fascinated by the soft drunk look of Sam's mouth, stretch of clean neck under his wrecked hair.
"Know I shouldn't have," Sam said into the awkward silence. "An' I'm not--I won't. Not again."
"Sam," Dean said, and that was it. His vocabulary ended there.
The corner of Sam's mouth twisted up, some mirthless inside joke told in his head. He rubbed at his eye with the inside of his wrist, looking plainly exhausted.
"Shoulda seen your face, man," Sam mumbled, slouching lower. "Like the best prank ever, 'cept. 'Cept it wasn't."
Sam's voice all fucked up and scratched, and Dean suffered this deep keening feeling, this matchlight of terrified hope in the back of his mind.
"You think about it, Sammy?" he asked in a whisper.
Sam froze, teeth pressing into his lower lip. He angled Dean a searching look, heat banked in his eyes and Dean kept shivering every time his gaze met his brother's, an uncontrollable new tic.
"Do you?" Sam asked in the same whisper, like boys telling secrets.
Dean felt the yes like it was physically wedged in his throat. It cut off his air, trying to force itself into being, and Dean could see the future if he let it, the next few minutes at least, he could see Sam's huge hands pressing his shoulders into the couch and Sam's mouth open against his own, Sam groaning with Dean's palms flat on his throat. Just one word, just one moment was all it would take, their ruin close enough to taste.
"Can't," he said instead. He tried not to notice how Sam's face collapsed. "You know we can't."
Sam sucked at his lip, blinking fast. "We. We can do whatever we want."
Shaking his head, Dean wove together his hands, locked his thumbs tight. His blood had been electrically charged, buzzing under his skin. He was jacked on caffeine and kinda drunk and his brother seemed to be saying that he wanted them to fuck and Dean kept forgetting why he had to say no.
it'll fuck him up worse, Dean thought suddenly, and it was a thrown bucket of ice water. Sam was already as damaged as a person could get while still remaining upright. He might want more but he wouldn't be able to take it; Dean wouldn't do that to him.
"No, Sam." he said softly. Sam made a small noise that twisted like a knife in Dean's chest.
"C'mon," Sam breathed out, and Dean had to shut his eyes, steel himself against it.
"Said no."
"Dean-" and Sam's fingers curled around Dean's arm, bare skin just under his shirtsleeve and Dean's body jerked, pulled away.
"Jesus, Sam, no," and Dean's voice gave out, more like a plea than a demand, and he knew that Sam would have him in another minute, have him begging and thrashing and shameless and any other way Sam wanted him.
But the third time was the charm, and Sam retreated, throttled hurt sound from the back of his throat. Sam sniffed, muttered a few imprecations and called Dean a cocksucker with a lace of solid want thick through his voice. Dean didn't react, save a muscle jumping in his jaw. He sat tensed through the rest of the movie, not daring to look over at Sam until the heroine was cackling with hysterical laughter in the back of the pickup truck and Dean could hear his brother snoring.
Dean slid off the couch, careful to avoid waking him, and he moved shakily to the front door, stepped out into the bible-black night. He was in shirtsleeves and socks, splinters from the porch needling at his feet and the skin on his forearms taut and broken out in goosebumps. Steam poured out of his mouth and Dean imagined it rising from his skin, from every place Sam had ever touched him.
He stood out there until he was half-frozen. Clutched his elbows and chattered and counted stars, waiting to go numb.
*
4