so never mind the darkness we still can find a way

[candle_beck]

Sam/Dean, 6074 words, rated PG-13 or very light R, maybe (nothing but guesswork over here). And it totally stands alone because that is what makes prequels great (except the goddamn Star Wars prequels).

Gone
By Candle Beck

They were in Jersey, a little ways outside Trenton in a thirty-dollar-a-night motel room that had paper placemats on the floor of the bathroom instead of a proper mat, half-sized pink towels and a charred hole in one of the shiny grimed bedspreads, big enough to throw a baseball through. Usually they tried to do better than this, but they'd hauled down from Maine on a straight shot, putting miles between them and the evil motherfucking clown they'd killed in Derry.

Dean had put his foot down somewhere in New Hampshire, sometime around two a.m., slumping on his arms on the wheel, covered all over by the gas station lights and saying he was sleeping, "Go 'way Sammy m'asleep." Sam had gone around to his side and shoved him over, taken over driving for the rest of the night while Dean snored against the passenger side window, his breath fogging up the same little patch of glass over and over again.

Sam had been more disturbed by the clown than Dean, which Dean said was natural considering that girls spooked easier, but Sam wasn't trying to dignify that with any kind of response. He just wanted to put a few major metropolitan areas between the two of them and the last scene of horror. It was hardly out of the ordinary; that was why they had such a great car, or so he'd always been led to believe.

Sam fell into some kind of highway-induced trance after a few hours, the road melting away because there was no difference in color between the fresh asphalt and the black winter night, and all the cars were spaceships, the streetlights whipping by like comets ignited by the atmosphere. He kept looking over at Dean and being kinda surprised to find him there, over and over again, strange squeezing feeling in his heart.

New York City had sparked the delirium in him; it was close to dawn and the skyline hulked all massive and sharp and dangerous-looking. The sun was just barely invisible, a few stray shards of gold blinding off the buildings and an alcoholic haze lightening the sky at its edges, and Sam looked over at Dean, felt his heart do that damn clutching thing again. It was all very familiar, and Sam had thought then that the trouble was the same as it had been when he was sixteen. He was becoming locked in, losing his sense of the outside world for days at a time, waking up as if from slight recurrent comas, all blinking and shocked at the date.

It wasn't the life. It was his brother, so much the worse.

Sam had resolutely steered his mind away, but he was weak and tired and sick from staring at taillights, and his mind, never one of his allies to begin with, veered right back. He looked at Dean again, chewing the corner of his lip and scowling.

Dean was conked out, his arm pushed at a weird angle across his body and his dead-fish hand dangling. His hair had been shoved up into a little mohawk where his head leaned on the window, and Sam thought about how dumb Dean looked and how he was gonna be sore as hell from sleeping like that, even though Dean never was, or at any rate, never for long, cracking and popping the stiffness out of his joints. Dean was stupid, Sam told himself. He was really barely worth Sam's time.

It was just the drive. Sam had always been kinda raw and irrational after a bad scare, and that motherfucking clown, man.

So he got them into New Jersey, washed clean in the bleeding colors of morning, and Dean woke up pissed-off already, not liking the circles under Sam's eyes or his trembling hands. Dean said, "Pull the fuck over right the fuck now," and it was an order and so Sam wasn't culpable for anything that happened after.

The whirring undercurrent of exhaustion spiked once they were inside. It was at least a little bit a kind of existential depression. This decrepit room, the razor marks scratched on top of the dresser and half the pages in the Gideon Bible ripped out, and Sam said, "This is pretty obviously all your fault," which Dean didn't like at all, but whatever, Sam was not going to be swayed.

He pulled the bedspread off one of the beds and the sheets were tinged yellow like they had a bad smoking habit, but the other wouldn't be any better. Sam dragged off his hoodie and toed out of his shoes, fell down in the rest of his clothes. He was asleep before his face hit the pillow, which was probably for the best.

Sam dreamed his regular dream.

They're racing. Like when they were kids and Dean gave him a three-mississippi head start to balance Sam being a shortass, and that's how it always starts, Sam in front with Dean chasing and Sam knowing with every cell in him that Dean is faster, and the distance is closing. Sam can feel the pound of his heart in his tongue, pressed up against the roof of his mouth.

All through the fields, corn-yellow and ripping soft slashes in Sam's arms and face that he doesn't feel, and Dean is shouting from behind, "you'll never make it Sammy," and Sam knows that's true, he doesn't need it rubbed in.

Dean catches him. Sam watches the flying tackle from the outside like a movie, and then slings back into himself and they're rolling in the dust, Sam all legs and arms the way he suddenly became at fifteen years old, Dean with his perfect twenty year old's body but his face the same one he wears now.

Suddenly they're both stripped to the waist. Suddenly Sam has Dean under him, his wrists pinned down over his head and his skin stretching so smooth and taut when he breathes in fast and angry. He gnashes at Sam, shoving his head up to bite at air, and Sam is dizzy, hips flush to his brother's and Dean arching, the structure of his ribs showing and Sam wants to lick him right there, follow those trenches with his tongue.

Dean is grinding up against him, hard and careless while cursing a steady stream, "let me go you dumb motherfucker or I'll never forgive you and I'll never let you sleep and what'll you do then what the fuck'll you do Sammy tell me."

And Sam doesn't know what to tell him. He knows he doesn't want to stop. There's never been anything better than this. Sam feels like he's drowning.

Then he woke up.

It was at about the normal spot, taking him just far enough to make a man weep for want of a fitting conclusion. His fingers curled into the pillow, knuckles pressed to his lips, mind clearing in slow stages. He stopped wishing he'd had time to kiss Dean in the dream, started being really upset with himself for wanting to kiss Dean under any circumstances. Then he got up to wash his face, not thinking about it anymore.

It was early evening, and Dean wasn't in the room, but he'd left all his stuff and the car was missing from the parking lot, so Sam extrapolated a food run, settled himself in to wait. He got his computer out and the television on, worked on finding some distractions.

He poked around looking for a job even though they usually gave themselves a few days in between. Sam was usually the one insisting on it, filling Dean's head with thoughts of beignets and jambalaya so that he'd drive two thousand miles to New Orleans before bothering to ask what they were gonna kill next. It was just good sense, a necessary psychological break and that wasn't even mentioning recovery time for all the minor injuries they were always lying to each other about.

But Sam was antsy right now, one foot on the floor and his knee jogging compulsively. He didn't like this motel room and he didn't like Dean being gone, and finding a job, getting the hell out, it was all he could think to do.

Mysterious drownings off the Washington coast, mysterious fires in eastern Colorado, killer dust storms in Texas, some kind of toxic fog seeping out of the Everglades and turning people inside out. Sam's eyes flicked from the computer screen to the television, his head aching and stuffed full of zodiac signs for some reason.

TBS was playing A New Hope, the end with the attack on the Death Star and Han Solo coming out of nowhere to blast Darth Vader and send him careening into space. It was one of Dean's favorite parts; he was always crowing right along with Solo, a kid's grin on his face.

Sam rubbed his face hard. He dug his fingers into his eyes just enough for blurry spots to shatter across his vision, red and white. It wasn't fair trying to keep his mind off Dean when most everything he knew tied back to his brother in one way or another. Star Wars reminded him of Dean, and so did the cloudy lead-tasting motel water, and the rush of cars going by outside, and that commercial for ice cream. Wallpaper reminded Sam of Dean. His own goddamn hands reminded him of Dean.

Sixteen years old was the last time this had happened, the last time Sam's world had telescoped down to Dean, and Dean, and Dean. Sam couldn't see anybody else, couldn't think about anything but his brother, daydreaming about that summer in Idaho and Dean never with a shirt on, falling asleep on the couch and waking up with his hand pushed down his shorts and Dean's name ringing like a klaxon in his mind.

Sam had figured out what was wrong with him, the hot throb low in his stomach when Dean was in the room, the trip and stutter of words gone chaotic on his tongue. He couldn't pretty it up, couldn't hide it from himself, too smart for that kinda thing. He got hard thinking about his brother and there was only one word for that.

It had been a tragedy at sixteen, a perfectly good reason to abandon his family. Sam spent two years snapping at Dean and shoving him away, studying by flashlight into the small hours of the morning, piecing together a better future. He had a bunch of different ways to explain it, all kinds of rationalizations about normalcy and potential and the real world, but at the end of the day, it was cowardice, that was all. Sam had run away, plain and simple. He never let himself forget that, never forgave himself for it.

And it had all been for nothing, anyway. Making Dean think Sam hated him, breaking their father's heart, getting his girlfriend killed--all that and here Sam was right the fuck back where he'd started, still crazy in exactly the same way.

Dean came back ten minutes into The Empire Strikes Back (god bless cable television), and grinned at the television before even looking at his brother.

"Tauntaun guts!" Dean noted happily, passing off a paper bag that clinked and sloshed. Sam investigated, found two bottles of whiskey and a deli sandwich still in its white paper.

Dean sat on the end of the other bed, leaned back on his hands watching the movie while Sam ate his sandwich. Dean had remembered the special mustard, and the cutting taste of it brought tears to Sam's eyes, something that almost never happened anymore.

Empire went to commercial, and Dean turned to face his brother, lifting his eyebrows with a faintly maniacal shape to his grin. Sam scowled back, suspicious, but Dean only wanted them to get drunk and watch the marathon until the Ewoks danced. Dean said, "Let's not bother with anybody else tonight," and Sam said, "Yes yes yes."

This was how Sam preferred it, salt lines in front of the doors and windows, the snow starting to fall with real intention outside, whole world sealed up tight. Whiskey and Star Wars and Dean. Sam could do nothing for the rest of his life except this, an inconceivably terrifying thing to think.

They got right into the drinking part of it, digging out their dented tin camping mugs because there was only a short stack of Dixie cups in the bathroom, all the while knowing they'd forego vessels altogether once they'd cracked the second bottle. It was somewhat comforting, a routine for getting loaded with Dean same as there was a routine for everything else.

Dean kept calling him a scruffy-looking nerfherder and Sam didn't help matters at all, giggling idiotically instead of getting irritated like he was supposed to. It made Dean smile like he'd won a prize. Sam cried, "Scoundrel, scoundrel," but Dean knew the answer to that one, his lip curling as he told him, "You like me because I'm a scoundrel," and yeah, yeah, what else was new?

Sam was oh, so drunk, watching his brother more than the movie. He knew how it was going to end, anyway.

"Is it just me," Dean wanted to know, "or is Luke a whinier little punk every time we watch this?"

He took a knock straight from the (second) bottle, passed it across to Sam on the other bed. Sam licked at the mouth, chasing some trace of warmth but it was a goddamn poor substitute. Sam was eyeing the flush on Dean's neck, thinking of scratching ephemeral white lines with his teeth. He was sort of aware that Dean had asked him a question, but he couldn't really remember.

Dean didn't care. He got the bottle back, shouted at the screen, "Listen to Yoda, you stupid bitch! Ah, fine, lose a hand, see if I care."

He slumped back, gave Sam an expectant look, fishing for a laugh or a rejoinder or who knew what. Sam was having difficulty reading him, wanting to blame the drunk but he was pretty sure his obsession with Dean was fucking with his perception. There seemed to be an awful lot of portentous meaning hidden in all this typical sitting-around-drinking stuff.

Sam made a smile. He was dizzy, one foot on the floor because he kept canting towards Dean unconsciously, scared of falling off the bed entirely and god knew Dean would never let him live that down. It felt like sections of his mind were shutting down, his balance and his speech center and his inhibitions all shot to hell. He couldn't trust anything that was happening.

"Cloud City," Sam said randomly, as if it were an answer to something.

But Dean nodded, agreed with a toast of the bottle, "Cloud City it is."

Sam smiled at him for real. He'd become an unreliable witness to his own life but that was just because he'd forgotten for a second: Dean was here and Dean would remember if he didn't.

They watched Luke lose his hand and cry about it a lot, and then there were about seven hundred commercials, and then Jedi started, Leia in the gold bikini and all. Dean was entranced, unreachable until Boba Fett got fed to the Sarlaac and the scene moved off Tatooine. Sam snuck glances at him, his throat feeling collapsed and his mouth bone-dry.

It was worse this time around, a certainty that came swimming up out of the muck and haze. At sixteen Sam had felt sick, damaged and depressed amid flat-out terror. He had hated himself in a very real way, hated the life that had set such a faithless love so deep in his heart, but at least then he'd held on to a dim strand of hope that someday he'd get over it. If he could get far enough away from Dean, go months without hearing his voice, find some other people to fall in love with, maybe, maybe.

But now years and years had passed. Now Sam knew there was no such thing as recovery.

"Hey Sam."

Sam looked over, feeling his mouth press into a smile without thinking about it. Dean had his eyes narrowed, studying, and Sam could see how lit he was from his red-tinged nose, the tip of his tongue swiping at his lips over and over again.

"You're, uh, you're thinkin' too much. Waste a liquor, you are." Dean waggled the bottle at Sam disapprovingly, light sparking off the glass.

"'m not," Sam said, sounding feeble to his own ears. He grinned at Dean for no special reason, just because Dean's eyes were so green it was hardly to be believed, and Dean grinned back, automatic. "Gimme."

He held out his hand for the bottle, but when Dean leaned to pass it to him Sam got a better idea. Dean had that clean-looking grin on his face and his hand was curled so nice around the neck, and Sam wrapped his fingers around his brother's wrist, guided Dean to feed him a shot.

Sam didn't mean anything by it. It just, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Dean's pulse kicked up under his fingers. There was this strange second-degree coordination, tilting Dean's hand to tilt the bottle to his mouth, and Sam's throat was seared as he swallowed, his eyes watering and locked on Dean's face. Dean was staring back at him, looking poleaxed.

Sam let off the bottle with triumphant gasp. He grinned moronically at his brother and Dean's expression flashed stricken, shock coloring his face. Sam's instincts snapped, Dean was scared, why was Dean scared. He half sat up but Dean was already on his feet, stumbling across the room in the same general direction as the door.

Sam said, "Dean?" but Dean didn't answer. Sam said, "What are you doing?" and Dean had one hand up on the door but he seemed stymied, his back tense. There was a blizzard out there. There was nowhere to go.

Sam got to his feet and moved towards him, feeling cautious and soft-footed. He put his hand on Dean's shoulder, tugged him around and asked, trying to keep it light, "Did you get lost?"

And then he got a look at Dean's face.

Dean's face that Sam knew better than he knew anything else, wrenched in brand-new ways, all huge panicked eyes and his skin pale but for where there were visceral streaks of flush, and his mouth half-open, stammering over Sam's name. Sam couldn't hear it, reading his lips, suddenly recognizing the heat in Dean's eyes and feeling something puncture his heart.

Sam was still, but only for a moment. Then his body cried out, every cell straining for his brother. Sam slid his hand over Dean's shoulder and swayed in, and Dean kinda gasped, twisted his head fast to the side but he didn't throw a punch and he didn't say no, so Sam pressed his lips to his cheek, ducked and opened his mouth on Dean's throat.

Dean was shaking. His hands were flat to the door and his heartbeat thrummed against Sam's tongue. Desire poured off Dean even as he held himself back with all his power, clouding Sam's mind and making him think dazedly that Dean was just the same, somehow they were both just the same.

Sam sucked a mark onto Dean's neck, mouthed at his jaw and heard his voice break and slur as he begged, "Move, Dean, please," and a tremendous shudder ran through Dean's body, and then all at once his arms were around Sam's neck, his hands buried in Sam's hair. Dean pulled Sam hard into him, burying a soundless scream in his brother's shoulder.

It was beautiful. Sam had Dean held so tight against him, Dean's teeth just shy of too painful on his skin. Sam couldn't stop grinning, feeling sorta hysterical as he shoved his hands between them and went to work on Dean's belt.

Dean wouldn't let Sam kiss him, kept hiding his face, craning his head away. His mouth was scorching and soft on Sam's throat and Sam was moaning, better intentions blown right out of his mind. He got Dean's jeans open and then his own and then leaned all his weight on his brother again, pressing him into the door and feeling the staggered rush of Dean's groan. They rocked together, cut-off gasps and slow grinds and Dean's hand fisted in Sam's hair, and Sam's head was all glitter and fuzz, pleasure whiting out everything else.

They chased it down. Sam was blind from the feel of Dean against him, and they both had their faces jammed into the other's shoulder when they came in shivers and grunts, one right after the other. There was a moment when they were physically closer than they had ever been, squeezed against too hard to breathe, and then the tension dropped out of Dean and he slumped, sagged away from Sam. Sam caught a sideways glance at his face and Dean was reeling, his mouth bruised, his eyes glassy and flaring mutedly.

Dean hobbled over to the bed and sat down, then fell back, throwing an arm over his face. His jeans and belt were still hanging open, the wet patch on his shorts showing and Sam ripped his eyes away, swallowing hard.

He blinked at the television, stared unseeing at Lando Calrissian and the fish-head dude. It seemed perverse that the movie had just kept running in the background the whole time Sam and Dean had been rubbing off on each other, that the world had not taken a moment to pause and react with horror.

Sam looked back at his brother. Dean had both hands covering his face now, his breathing ragged and strained. Sam could see how he was still shaking all over, the open wings of his jeans trembling.

Sam's legs gave out. He slid down the door and ended folded up on the floor, knees pulled into his chest. He touched his own mouth, warmer than usual but that might just be in his head.

He stared at Dean's feet, the hole in his sock and half a toe showing. Sam thought, just fucked around with my brother, and then he had to bolt up unsteadily, run to the bathroom before he threw up all over the carpet.

On the bathroom floor with his forehead on porcelain, Sam heaved, panted. Out in the room he could hear Dean mumbling curses, and then a sudden small explosion, the sort of broken noise that would result from someone hurling a clock into the wall. Sam's stomach tried to escape again, and he clutched his head in his hands, knees aching from the tile.

And Sam was thinking endlessly, like there were no other words in the world: what have I done, what have I done.

Shoved Dean up against the door, held him down with his body. Both of them drunker than hell and lulled by the night they'd spent snowbound, a long time ago and far far away, and Dean hadn't moved until Sam told him to. Dean may have wanted Sam but that was only chemistry, only physical. Dean never would have gone along sober, never would have if Sam had given him even a couple seconds to think it over.

Sam knew his brother very well. Dean would not have allowed himself to feel that way, not consciously. It went against the whole rest of his life; he'd sooner have swallowed nitroglycerin.

That was what Sam had done to him.

Sam kicked the bathroom door shut. The clap of it startled him badly, as if he'd had nothing to do with it. He hauled himself half into the bathtub, stuck his head under the faucet, pure cold water washing out his mouth, the tears off his face, and he was numb, faded blue fields in his mind as he curled up on the floor, buried his face in his hands and willed himself to pass out.

It didn't entirely work, and he spent a miserable night jerking in and out of sleep, terrible nightmares and the instant relief of waking up destroyed as soon as he registered that he was lying on the bathroom floor. Two seconds to remember why, and Sam was banging his head on the filthy tile, praying for the terrors of his subconscious again.

There was no way to track the passage of hours. There wasn't even a window to watch the snow lighten up, the trickling gray hues of dawn. Sam surfaced for the last time and lay there for awhile, his eyes open with nothing at all to see. He was not drunk anymore. He could think in straight lines again, and for some mysterious span of time that was what he did.

Sam shaped words from it. He'd always felt further away from the brink if he could articulate the forces pushing him there.

He'd been calling it an obsession, and that was true, but it was just the dark side of it, just his cynical bent of mind. More plainly, Sam had actually managed to fall in love with his brother somewhere along the line; all the symptoms fit.

He figured it was likely Dean was in the same way, if steeped in much more denial about the fact. The only thing they'd ever been missing was the sexual component, anyway. And Sam didn't know what was wrong with him, but it made him weep, the heels of his hands notched into his eyes. He was in love with someone who was in love with him and he couldn't stop crying for the longest time.

Eventually he was quiet, and still, feeling scoured on the inside. He carefully worked out what he was going to say, what he was going to do, step by step and breath by breath. Sam put all his energy into the next hour of his life, trying as hard as he could not to imagine anything beyond that, next week like some kind of cruel joke, next month like promised torture.

He didn't want to. He didn't want to do any part of it, but he remembered how Dean had flattened his hands on the door and turned his face away from Sam's, and Sam didn't have any other choice.

His stomach was his last gauge of time, and when it began to make itself known, Sam pulled himself to his feet, turned on the lights for the first time all night, his face screwing up. Sleepwalking through a shower, dressing in the same clothes, Sam kept thinking that it was for the best, it was the only thing to do. He wasn't going to ruin his brother just by continuing to exist in his immediate vicinity.

When Sam came out of the bathroom, at long last, Dean sat up fast from where he was still lying on the bed, still fully dressed. His eyes cracked almost audibly into Sam's, bloodshot and puffy and darkly ringed, Dean's face drawn under stubble, and Sam thought that they'd spent the exact same night, twenty feet apart.

"Sam," Dean said in a croak, and Sam stared at the marks on Dean's throat, remembered applying each one in hyperreal detail.

Sam shook his head, bewildered all of a sudden. He forgot everything he'd meant to say, running his eyes over his brother desperately, like he'd never have another chance.

"I have to leave," Sam told him, and watched it hit Dean, gut him.

Dean stood at once to argue it, hands in fists and his mouth open but then an expression of agonized guilt crossed his features and he fell back to the bed again. His face was very white, his eyes shining brighter than torches, and Dean forced himself to nod.

"I know," he said, his voice this weak uneven thing that had nothing to do with Dean Winchester.

Sam wanted to touch him so badly. He knew everything that was going on in Dean's head, every last crippling fragment of it.

"It's not your fault," Sam tried to say, saw a ghost smirk tweak the corner of Dean's mouth as he looked down. Sam stepped forward, wishing Dean would believe him. "It, it's me, Dean, and I, I, it's just too weird, I know, and it's gonna fuck everything up so it can't happen again, and I know that, swear I do. I'm so sorry."

Dean's head snagged up and his gaze caught on Sam's, stuck there. They just stared at each other for a second. The space separating them warped as if from heat shimmer, and Sam just wanted to close the distance, get his hands on his brother again, find that taste on his skin, bend him and break him and never mind what it would do to Dean, never mind that. Sam would take it all.

"Don't, don't follow me," Sam managed. "And please, please Dean, it's not your fault, okay? You gotta believe me."

But Dean didn't. Dean never would. He made a sick half-smile and nodded and Sam knew he was lying, but he didn't have the stomach for that look on Dean's face, and he turned away.

He put on his shoes and coat and got his bag together, and Dean watched him silently, his hands wrung in the sheets. Sam kept cheating glances at him, his eyes burning. Panic was beginning to flutter in his chest: where would he go and what would he do? What did the world look like from places other than the shotgun seat?

There was nothing for it. Sam made a choked sound that might have been a farewell, and moved for the door. He could feel the proof of the storm out there, the huge banks of snow seeping cold through the walls. Sam hoped he'd go numb, gray-skinned from frostbite maybe and he could lose a couple fingers as penance.

"Wait."

And Dean was there suddenly, just behind Sam holding on to the strap of his bag and not letting him leave, not just yet. Sam's heart staggered, twisted like a rag. He turned back to face his brother and Dean was swallowing fast, eyes so big Sam felt like he was ten feet underwater and sinking fast.

"Stay," Dean said, scraped and flat. "I, I don't care about the other stuff. Just stay."

Sam almost gave, the struts inside him buckling and tipping him towards his brother. He set his hand on Dean's neck because he had to, he would have fallen otherwise. He wanted to touch Dean's cheek but it was impossible; Sam still had to leave.

"You're my brother and I love you but I can't," Sam told him in a whisper, his heart breaking right alongside.

Dean's eyes shut tightly, and he pulled away from Sam, turned his back. Sam could see his shoulders trembling, and he could see how Dean had his fist pressed against his mouth. Dean made a strangled sound and it might have been go, or anyway something close enough, and so Sam went.

Everything was white outside, sunlight bounding off snow. The air froze, crackled in Sam's lungs. He felt kinda like he was dying, but he made it through the powder, across the black ice, all the way to the edge of the highway, and he was still alive, still nothing to do but keep going.

Sam stretched out his thumb. He looked back, but only once.

THE END

unless, of course, you'd like it to continue for another thirty-two thousand words.

Endnotes: Heh, probably I don't even need to cite this, but they had vanquished and yet were still running away from Pennywise. Because he is just that scary. That book, by the way? Most fucked up ending of anything you will ever read, hand to god. The preceding seven hundred pages are only foreplay.

And only The Empire Strikes Back gets directly quoted. It is not remotely a coincidence that it's the one of the six George Lucas didn't write and it is the best of the bunch by a pretty fair margin.

eta: new podfic also. The Rookie and the Lefty, Control, and Roads