i used to think about you and me forever
backwards!
This is the first time Sam left a mark:
Sam got a full-ride to Stanford and towards the end of summer he told his family he was leaving. It was a Wednesday night. Dean would always remember that it had been a Wednesday night, although he couldn't begin to understand why it mattered.
They were in Bakersfield, California. Sam had found them the hunt, crop circles even though everyone and their mom knew crop circles were bogus. But Sam had pretty much insisted, coming home with sheaves of photocopies and computer print-outs until John had scratched his beard and said, "Hell, Sammy, if it's that important to you," and then gave Dean a look like, crazy kid we got here, huh? And Dean had grinned back, rolled his eyes a little.
Of course the crop circles actually were bogus. They were in Bakersfield because it was as close as Sam could get without flat-out making something up. Which had probably been his Plan B.
Dean stood in the kitchen and watched Sam and their dad yell at each other. Sam had his acceptance letter in his hand, crumpled from how tight his grip was. Dean felt curiously drained, made out of empty glass.
John told Sam that family comes first, and Dean found himself nodding his head in unconscious agreement. Sam's eyes skipped past their father and landed on Dean, a wild unhinged look on his face that was part plea and part condemnation and Dean didn't know which was worse.
"Family's not supposed to be like this," Sam said, looking right at Dean and it made Dean cower, hiding his face behind his hand.
"Don't do this, Sam," John said, a warning.
"It's already done."
Sam turned his back then, went into the bedroom that he and Dean shared. John ripped his eyes away from where his youngest son had just been and looked over at Dean. John looked gutted. He looked torn in half.
Dean said, "I'll," and then nothing else, just walked on nerveless legs across the room, down the short hall to the bedroom. Sam already had his duffel packed up on the floor. He was stuffing odds and ends into his backpack, books and a butterfly knife and the green plastic alarm clock shaped like the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo that Dean had gotten him when he was ten. That stupid goofy clock had somehow survived eight years in the crushing grind that was their life, still barking Sam awake every morning.
Sam glanced at Dean, hair hanging in front of his eyes. "I took five hundred dollars from the emergency stash."
"What?" Dean said, feeling dazed.
"Five hundred dollars, Dean. And that Beretta you never use anymore. And your Skynyrd T-shirt, the red one."
"Jesus, shut up," Dean breathed out. Sam stopped for a second, his chest hitching and his hands hidden in the backpack. "I don't care what you've taken. What. What the fuck are you doing?"
"Was I not clear on that?" Sam started packing again, jamming sweat socks and boxes of ammunition into the corners. Dean wanted to grab his hands, make him fucking stop.
"Don't, don't-"
"No, actually, I think I will," Sam said, a near-hysterical tone in his voice for just a second. "You don't know what it's like for me in this house, Dean, in all of these fucking houses. It's the same room over and over again and Dad and you, and nothing else, and I can't do it anymore."
Sam took a shuddering breath, and then snarled, showed his teeth in a malicious grin. "I don't want to."
That shut Dean up pretty effectively. Sam wasn't pulling punches; someone could get seriously hurt here.
Sam finished packing, stood in the middle of the room with his whole life in two bags on his back. He looked at Dean, mouth set implacably because Sam was going to be a man worthy of the name: he was going through with this no matter what. His hair was still too long, hung in front of his eyes and when Sam brushed it back with the side of his wrist Dean thought that he could have been seven years old again.
"Will you give me a ride to the bus station?" Sam asked.
"No," Dean said, then almost immediately, "Yes, I mean yes," because otherwise Sam would leave right now, and Dean wasn't ready yet.
Sam blinked fast, like he hadn't really thought Dean would. Dean kept thinking that Sam didn't know him at all.
Back in the kitchen John had the whiskey bottle out and a couple of shots behind him, righteous courage flooding his face, and he stood up from the table already starting to roar. Sam kept his head down, moved fast for the back door, not answering their father, not even sparing him a glance.
John said, desperation laced all through it, "You walk out that door, Sammy, don't ever come back."
For one single instant, Dean wanted to punch his dad in the face. But that passed.
Sam's shoulders broke downwards, and he didn't hesitate in the slightest, right through the door and into the night. John made a choked sound but Dean couldn't worry about him right now. Dean could only save one thing at a time.
He followed his brother. Sam was slumped over on the Impala, big duffel slid off his shoulder and his forehead flat on the smooth black metal of the hood. Sam was breathing in and out raggedly, as if in crippling pain, but when Dean came up to him he straightened, pushed his hair back and turned away. Neither of them said anything until they were in the car and moving.
"This is so fuckin' stupid, Sam," Dean said, taking the turn out of the driveway of the house they were squatting in. "This is like the stupidest thing you've ever done."
"Wow, that's not true at all." Sam pressed his thumb to the window to make fog appear around it. "You obviously haven't been paying much attention these past couple of years."
"Stop it," Dean snapped. "Quit making fucking jokes, what the fuck is wrong with you? Did you even see what you just did to Dad?"
"Yes," Sam said plainly, emotionless. Dean gritted his teeth.
"Look, it's not--you don't need to do this, whatever's gone wrong-"
"You motherfucker, it's everything, would you fucking listen to me for once."
Dean bit through the inside of his cheek. The hard metal taste of blood coated his mouth and he swallowed, already sick to his stomach. He punched the steering wheel a few times just because he had to punch something. His mouth hurt, suddenly abused and sore.
"Goddamn it, Sam," Dean said, meaning for it to be enraged still but it came out weak and small, not half of what he'd intended.
Sam sighed, a rusty sound, and rubbed his hand across his face. "I know."
Then they were quiet. Dean's throat jammed with variations on don't go, but he wasn't going to do that. Lie cheat and steal, but never beg, and for a long moment Dean wished he were a different man entirely.
That passed too.
Inside the blinding light of the bus station, Sam pulled the ticket out of his back pocket and Dean thought about Sam walking around with that on him all day, all week maybe, touching it through his jeans over and over again to make sure it was still there. Dean thought that Sam must have been planning this for months.
Sam checked the time on the schedule board, folded the ticket up and stuck it back in his pocket. He pulled his lower lip between his teeth, old nervous habit, and glanced at Dean with a guarded look in his eyes. Dean was just staring at him, blatant and not caring who saw or what they might think.
"I got about forty minutes," Sam said. "You should-" and his voice was thin and boyish before he roughly cleared his throat and continued, "You should go back. I think. I think it would be really bad if you were here."
Dean shook his head, meaning, it will be really bad regardless, but his mouth said, "Okay."
"And-"
Sam cut himself off, his face falling sharply as if fully appreciating what he was doing for the first time. He looked at Dean, stricken, and then dropped his bags on the ground and grabbed Dean in a tight embrace.
Dean's arms were around Sam in a fraction of a second, pure instinct. Sam had his face buried in Dean's shoulder and Dean could feel him breathing out fast and hot. He could feel each of Sam's fingers pressing a trench on his back. Dean turned his face into the side of his brother's head, eyes shut very tight.
This was really happening. A big silver-blue bus was waiting out the open double doors, and in less than an hour Sam was going to get on, cram his backpack into the overhead rack and take the window seat. Sam was going to rest his head on the glass and look down at the spot where he had last seen his brother, and when the bus pulled away, Sam would go with it. This wasn't a dream or the worst prank of all time, wasn't a vicious spell cast on Sam that would wane with the moon. It was nothing other than what it was.
Then Sam slid his hands up, shaped them around Dean's head, the nape of his neck. Sam held him still, opened his mouth on Dean's throat, just under the line of his jaw.
Dean's whole body jerked, a gasp flying out of him. Sam's mouth was searing, working carefully at one specific spot. Dean could feel Sam's teeth, the slick drag of his lower lip. He could feel Sam's fingers flexing on his neck, making him go shivery.
Sam bit and sucked until there was a dull wanting ache in the pit of Dean's stomach, and a dark purple mark shaped just under the line of his jaw. Dean held on to Sam, forearms latched against his sides. Dean shuddered under his brother's hands.
Sam was leaving. Dean let it happen.
*
This is the first time:
They were someplace that didn't have a name. It was a vast landscape of dirt and thousands of prickly desert bushes, small stunted green trees and low mountains the color of twilight lining the horizon. If there were a gun to his head, Dean would have probably guessed eastern Nevada. But that situation was unlikely to transpire.
It was just another highway. It was the first day of a twenty-five hundred mile drive, Carson City to Lancaster County, PA, where there was an absurdly Victorian ghost-in-the-attic story developing. It was wintertime and the sun was pale gold in color, the sky over-starched blue. It was someplace in between.
Sam was keeping himself entertained writing lists: American presidents in chronological order, then alphabetically, then by state of birth. Every country in the world, and then their capitals. The kings of England, the fights historical. World Series winners all the way back to when Babe Ruth was a pitcher. The fifty states, their capitals and state birds and mottos, the Latin ones properly spelled and everything, because Sam couldn't just be a little dorky; god forbid he give it less than his all.
Dean didn't make fun of Sam too badly for it, grateful for anything that kept Sam quiet and occupied when they were six hours into a fourteen-hour day. When Sam got bored he could make a drive hell, jittering his knee and tapping his fingers and bitching until Dean wanted to muzzle him. It was a peace of mind sort of thing. Dean's affection for driving was the least complicated thing about him; he just honestly enjoyed everything about it, loud music and crashing wind at ninety miles an hour with the windows down, endless roads, endless country.
He was singing along with the tape under his breath, flying along the black strip painted down the middle of the bristling land. Dean thought about how every time he saw film of some pristine piece of the world (Sam and his damn Planet Earth obsession), it looked unnatural to him because there was no clear straight line down the heart of it, no road. Dean didn't like to think about those kind of places.
Dean was in a generally good mood. This attic ghost thing sounded like cake, and they were overdue for that, after the past couple months run ragged on werewolves and malicious sprites and that one town with all the possessed stray cats (almost indistinguishable from regular cats, was the bitch of the thing). He and Sam had been sniping at each other the past few days but they'd been better since they got on the road. The road always helped.
Sam muttered something that sounded like eureka, and lowered his notebook. He blinked out the windshield as if surprised to find that they were moving. Dean smirked with the side of his face Sam couldn't see. It always took Sam's brain a second to wake up out of its trivia-riddled daze.
"How far to food?" Sam asked.
"Like a hundred miles," Dean answered, noticed Sam giving him the hairy eyeball, and added, "Not being a smartass, we're literally a hundred miles from anything. Unless you've decided you can eat dinner at gas stations again."
Sam blanched, tongue caught between his teeth. "No way. You ruined it for me, dude, that time with the teriyaki beef jerky and the Sno-Balls? That was traumatic."
Dean slapped his own belly. "Iron stomach, Sammy. I could probably eat Tupperware."
"So wrong," Sam mumbled, but he was half-smiling, trying to hide it by angling his face away as if Dean didn't know him better than that.
"We should try to make Salt Lake before stopping," Dean said, his mind happily occupied calculating speed and distance and time. "Manage that, and I think I can get us to Cheyenne for the night."
"I think that's crazy talk."
"And that's why you're not allowed to drive."
"Oh, wow, what a crushing disappointment."
Sam stretched his arms out, laid his fingers down on the dashboard. He twisted the stiffness out of his shoulders, making a satisfied rumbling sound from deep in his chest. Dean watched him out of the corner of his eye, the flex and give of Sam's forearms drenched in watery sunlight.
Dean cleared his throat. "You wanna play twenty questions?"
Sam sighed, but straightened up, said, "Yeah okay."
"I'm going first. Wait a minute. Okay, I got it."
"Animal, vegetable, or mineral?" Sam asked.
"Mineral. One."
"Are you a vehicle?"
"No. Two."
"Are you a weapon?"
Dean cursed inwardly. "Yes. Three."
"Are you a handgun?"
"No. Four."
"Are you a different kind of gun?"
"Motherfucker. Yes. Five."
"Machine gun."
"Fuck."
Sam was laughing. "My god, Dean, be more predictable."
"That was a lucky guess." Dean shot his brother a dirty look, feeling kinda stupid and totally transparent.
"Yeah, five of them in a row. Maybe we should find a casino real quick."
"Maybe you should shut your mouth before I give you a smack." Dean waved a threatening hand, but Sam was unfazed, grinning at him. Dean's stomach tightened, never really comfortable when Sam had that look on his face.
"My turn now," Sam said. "Animal, one. And you're gonna lose, by the way."
Dean scowled at him. "Keep your opinions to yourself, because no one cares. Is it a person?"
"Yep. Two."
"Is it a dude?"
"Yeah. Three."
"Do we know him? I mean, have we met him ever?"
"No. That was two questions, but I'll give it to you. Four."
"Don't do me any favors, bitch." Dean rubbed his thumb on the steering wheel, thinking. He could feel Sam watching him, studying and weighted. Sam watched him like that a lot when Dean was driving. It made Dean's skin tingle, weirdly pleasant.
Mentally scrolling through the box of tapes under Sam's seat, Dean asked, "Is he a musician?"
"No, and that's five. One more, buddy." Sam wove his fingers together and bent them palms-out to crack the knuckles, tasting his victory in the air.
Dean took a blind shot. "Steve McQueen."
"Nope! Aaaaand . . . you lose."
Like the intolerable brat that he was, Sam threw an L up on his forehead, grinning at Dean. For some stupid reason Dean wasn't even irritated with him.
"Dude, only twelve year old girls still do that," Dean said, driving with his wrists and stealing glances over at his brother as often as he could get away with.
Sam immediately brought his hands together and popped a W with fingers and thumbs. He looked terribly amused with himself, pressing his lips together to muffle his snickering. Dean rolled his eyes, forced himself to stare straight ahead at the speeding highway, the semi-trucks trundling in the right lane that he blew past too fast to even read their license plates. He couldn't let Sam distract him so badly.
"You still wanna try to get it? I mean, you'll lose some more, but you gotta be used to that by now."
"Oh har de har." Dean squeezed the perfect ring of the wheel, fingers set into the notches as if it had been made from a mold of his hands. "Was I at least in the ballpark?"
"You were, shockingly," Sam said, tipping his eyebrows up significantly. "That's seven."
Dean guessed Paul Newman and Lee Majors and then got smart about it and narrowed down the time frame. Action stars of the nineties, and with eighteen questions asked Dean had eliminated Jean-Claude van Damme, Bruce Willis, Chuck Norris, and pretty much everybody who'd ever been in a Jerry Bruckheimer picture.
There was a creeping itch on the back of Dean's neck, and he scratched at it absently. Ahead of them were iron-colored clouds in great thick upward sweeps. They were driving towards rain.
"Sylvester Stallone," Dean said, digging deep.
"Really more of an eighties action star, I'd say. Nineteen."
"Dude, Judge Dredd. So you can just go to hell."
Sam smirked, tipped his head back on the side of the car. His body was slouched, bent towards his brother. He was watching Dean so carefully.
"Two more, Dean," Sam said in a strange low voice.
Dean swallowed, stole a look at Sam out of the corner of his eye. The game was starting to feel like a backwards-running clock, a countdown.
"Will Smith," Dean said.
"Not even close. Last shot, man."
"I know, obviously. Shut up and let me think."
It wasn't going to help. Dean was going to lose, convinced of it by the mocking angle of Sam's mouth, the casual way his arm was up on the back of the seat, big hand hanging down close to Dean's shoulder. Dean wanted to quit playing but he hadn't been able to get away with that since Sam was six and unthinkingly agreed with everything Dean said.
"Goddamn it," Dean said. "The fucking Governator."
"Bzzzzt," Sam hummed quietly, under his breath. "Sucks to be you, bro."
"Who the hell was it?" Dean demanded, not liking Sam's inscrutability, that faintly superior expression on his face like he was playing Dean, setting him up for some brilliant fall.
Sam didn't answer for a long moment, and Dean shot him a glare, got ready to repeat the question at twice the volume but then Sam was saying:
"Steven Seagal. It, it was Steven Seagal, man, how did you not get that?"
Dean didn't respond, couldn't really. His hands were leeched of blood, ghost-pale and wrapped too tight around the wheel. His tongue felt stuck to the roof of his mouth. Dean hadn't seen more than two seconds of a Steven Seagal movie in seven years. The man's career, his entire existence, was stashed away with all the other stuff Dean wasn't allowed to think about.
Five or six miles flashed past. Dean's eyes were dust-dry and scratchy as hell because he kept forgetting to blink. The curtain was down in Dean's mind and he was remembering gravel under his feet, movie violence grunting from dozens of metal speakers, Sam silver-eyed and ethereal in the light of the big screen. Fucking Steven Seagal, leaving his front open and telegraphing every move like he was trying to lose, and Sam so angry, so full of disbelief, refusing to accept that Dean had told him no.
Dean didn't know what the fuck Sam was playing at. He jerked his eyes over to his brother and Sam had one knee pulled up and resting on the dashboard. He was gnawing on his thumbnail, catching Dean's gaze immediately. Something hot and bright rushed through Dean and he willfully mistook it for anger.
"What the fuck, Sam?"
Sam flinched almost imperceptibly. "What? You lost, get over it."
"Fuck you, answer me. What the fuck do you mean, Steven Seagal? Is that supposed to be fuckin' funny?"
Sam flinched worse, hand jerking against the seat as he pulled back in a bit. He took his eyes off Dean, fixed them on the highway.
"I wasn't--I didn't mean anything by it," Sam said, but he was lying, a blind man could tell he was lying.
"Don't, don't fuckin'-" and Dean didn't know what he wanted to say except don't make me think about it, and Sam would read too much into that. "Just don't."
Sam huffed, crossed his arms over his chest. His cheeks were fired with shame, mouth chipped into a sad curve and his shoulders hunched down. He stayed quiet, hurt. Dean's old friend guilt curled up in his chest, kicked his heart aside and made itself right at home.
Sam had only been fucking around. He'd probably thought it was funny, because Sam had a screwed up sense of humor sometimes. Ha ha, remember when I was a kid and I kept trying to get you to fuck me? It was a twisted black comedy for the whole family to enjoy. Dean shouldn't have come down on him so hard.
Then Sam said, "It still really bothers you, huh?" and his voice sounded dead.
"What?" Dean said, immediately stalling.
"Don't play dumb, it's annoying." Sam ran a hand through his hair, anxious but mostly covering. "You can't even hear Steven Seagal's name, I didn't. I didn't know it still bothered you that much."
"I'm not--it's not," and Dean stopped talking because he could tell it was going to end in disaster. He didn't let himself think about this stuff for a fucking reason.
"Look, I'm sorry," Sam said to the highway. Out of the corner of his eye Dean could see Sam's hands shaking. "I, I've wanted to tell you, ever since we. Ever since you came to get me. I shouldn't have pushed you like that, that was fucked up. I was fucked up. And I won't, you don't have to worry about me doing anything like that ever again. I mean, I was just a kid. I was. I was a really dumb kid, okay?"
Dean's hands moved on their own, sliding the Impala into the right lane and then carefully onto the shoulder. He came to a stop and put the car in park, breath coming fast and shallow and sweat broken out on the back of his neck. Trucks went bombing past like low-flying meteorites. Dean was somewhere between panic-crazed and giddy.
The thing was, Sam hadn't been a dumb kid. Fucked up and bitter and possessed of no filter between brain and mouth, but that didn't make the unthinkable things he'd said to Dean any less sincere. Dean had had four years on his own to think about the mark Sam had left on his throat, the starry look in his brother's eyes that night at the drive-in, Sam telling him, I know it's not just me. Dean had had to bury it all away because it was true, every goddamn word of it. There was nothing Sam wanted that Dean didn't want too. But Sam had been gone, so Dean couldn't let it matter.
"Dean?" Sam was hushed, church-toned. Sam was here now.
Dean let out a slow breath. He looked at his hands, then the road, then his brother. Sam was watching him like Dean would disappear if he looked away. Dean got a thick warm feeling in his stomach, his mouth going dry.
"You only apologized for the method," Dean said, and unbuckled his seat belt.
"W-what?"
"You only said you were sorry you pushed, not for trying in the first place." Dean licked his lips, terrified under his skin but hiding it, please god let him be hiding it. Sam's gaze dropped to track the move of his tongue, then riveted back on Dean's eyes again.
"Yeah, I," Sam said, stammering a little. "I know what I said."
"Figured you did."
Dean slid across the seat, saw Sam's whole body go briefly tense and then relax like a button had been pressed somewhere inside him. Sam was still staring at Dean, eyes wide and dark at how close Dean had gotten.
"Dean," Sam breathed out, that reckless teenage gleam back at his edges. "Holy shit, are you serious?"
"Shut up," Dean said, and then they grabbed each other's collars and were kissing, kissing, deep and hard and without any hesitation. It wasn't like a first kiss at all. Sam's tongue curled behind Dean's teeth. Dean's fingers were entirely hidden in Sam's hair.
Sam moaned against Dean's mouth and shoved him backwards onto the seat, crawling after with one leg slotting between his brother's. Dean's head racked against the door and he hissed, yanked Sam's hair a little.
"Careful, Sammy."
"Be quiet," Sam said, smiling hugely before leaning down and kissing him again. Dean tilted his head back as Sam licked into his mouth, Sam's fingers skidding down Dean's throat. His hips were pressing down into Dean's, slow killing grind that left Dean's mind fractured and unreliable.
"Jesus, do you even know," Sam muttered, lips on the line of Dean's jaw.
Dean abandoned whatever minor shreds of dignity he had left and hooked his leg around Sam's back, arched his body into his brother's with a long drawn-out groan. Dean was already halfway there and Sam hadn't even done anything yet.
"I, I didn't think you still-" Dean managed, but then he didn't really want to say it so instead he sucked Sam's lower lip between his teeth, swallowed Sam's gasp.
"I did, I do," Sam answered, hurried and abstracted with his hands working clumsily at Dean's belt and fly. "I mean, always, it's always for me."
Sam slipped his fingers under Dean's shorts, took him in both hands. Dean started having trouble breathing, and he touched his forehead to Sam's cheek, his eyes closed. It was so good, just impossibly good, Sam's huge hands shaping Dean how he wanted, making him into this brand-new thing.
"Yeah," Dean said indistinctly, open-mouthed against his brother's throat. "For me too."
Sam laughed, sounding like something flung joyfully off a roof, told him, "I know," and that was how Dean knew it was true.
THE END
Endnotes: Goddamn, how did Steven freakin' Seagal become a major plot point in this story? I swear, sometimes I'm just along for the ride.