Always Be a Good Boy
Title: Always Be a Good Boy
Pairings: None.
Warnings: Sexual harassment, adult themes. Nothing too explicit.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dean has a practical streak. Sometimes Sam thinks he takes it a little too far. Missing moments from Folsom Prison Blues.
It starts in the prison shower, and that's such a cliche that Sam thinks he might laugh if the circumstances were different. Much different. It's not much, that time, just a slap and tickle, a big con named Lenny passing too close and pinching him viciously on the ass while he's rinsing his hair. His first impulse is to spin around and deck the bastard, but that's all there is, just that one pinch and then Lenny's moving on toward the door. Sam forces his hands to unclench. Keep your head down, he reminds himself sternly. Don't draw attention to yourself.
He doesn't tell Dean, because he doesn't need to deal with Dean having a freaking meltdown on top of everything else. Besides, he can handle it.
If Dean notices that he's distracted in the cafeteria that night, he's too busy gloating over his ever-increasing collection of cigarettes to mention it. Sam lets him ramble on and steal most of his dinner (grayish strips of meat drowning in lumpy gravy) without comment. One week. That's all they need. One week. He can keep his head down that long.
***
He manages to avoid Lenny and his band of cronies the next two days; it helps that Lenny gets his nose broken in a fight that first night and doesn't seem inclined to be amorous (or whatever passes for amorous in here) with two black eyes and a nose like a ripe tomato. The third night, Tiny is killed by a brand new ghost in the hospital wing just when they thought it was freaking over, and the next day Dean is guilty and tensely nervous. Being Dean, he deals with it by trying to needle Sam into an argument, and Sam decides to go away and let him work off his aggression by beating several arithmetically challenged cons at poker.
He's on the other side of the exercise yard when he remembers about Lenny and his buddies, and by then it's already too late. There are three of them trying clumsily to box him in, and of course no guards nearby. No Dean, either. No help from any quarter, and Sam curses under his breath and shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, backing up so that he can keep all three of them in his line of sight.
"You gonna scream for help, pretty boy?" Lenny asks raspily.
Sam shakes his head, tautly, and doesn't say anything. Of the three of them, Lenny is the one he has to worry about. He's almost Sam's height and a lot broader, a red-haired neckless ape of a man with hands big enough to strangle a bear. The other two are just along for the ride.
So to speak.
It's not going to go that far--not here in the yard, anyway--but Sam's not in a big hurry to find out just how far it will go before somebody intervenes. He's so tense that his skin is prickling with it, and when a hand comes down on the back of his neck, he very nearly brings his elbow back without even turning to see who's there.
Then he stops, relaxes marginally, as Dean steps forward. He keeps his grip on the nape of Sam's neck, but it's Lenny he's looking at and he's wearing the ferocious grin that Sam knows only too well from countless bar brawls. "Hey, Lenny," he says.
"Winchester," Lenny grunts.
"We need to have another chat?" Dean asks pleasantly, ignoring Sam's frantic attempts to telegraph don't provoke him, you moron without opening his mouth. "The last one didn't go so hot for you."
"You jumped me. Too chickenshit to take me in a fair fight."
"So you're gonna jump my boy, here?" Dean says. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, obviously spoiling for a fight, and his fingers on Sam's neck feel like tightly coiled springs. "I told you to keep your hands off him."
Sam blinks. He's starting to get the impression that there's something going on here besides the obvious, and it's not really a comfortable feeling. "Dean," he says tentatively, "I don't--"
"Shut up, Sammy," Dean says without looking at him.
And for some reason, that's when Lenny backs down, puts his big hands out in a vaguely conciliatory gesture. Grinning, for fuck's sake. "Fine, fine. He's all yours."
"Don't I know it," Dean says, and before Sam can get a word out he's being steered toward the tables on the other side of the yard. Dean keeps his grip on Sam's neck until Sam drops onto one of the benches, and only then does he let go and sit himself down. "So, I'm thinking--"
"What the hell was that?" Sam interrupts.
"Uh, what?"
"That. Back there. When did you get into it with him?"
"It's no big deal, dude. Seriously, don't we have bigger things to worry about right now?"
"I'm not actually an idiot, you know," Sam says, irritably. "And I'm not discussing anything else until you tell me what that was about."
It would be a gamble if Dean weren't so damn impatient, but he is, so it's not. "Sam--"
"Did you seriously get into a fight defending my virtue?" Sam asks incredulously.
Dean looks uncomfortable. "Not exactly."
"Then what? Exactly?"
Dean looks down at his hands for a second. The skin across his knuckles is split, from one of the fights he's gotten into in the past couple of days. It seems there were more of them than Sam thought. When he looks up again, his expression is caught halfway between guilty and hopeful. "I guess it wouldn't make a difference if I told you you really don't want to know."
"I really do want to know."
"No, you really, really don't," Dean mutters, and damn it, now Sam's even more curious.
He tries for honest. "Come on, man, you know I'm gonna bug you until you tell me, so you might as well get it over with."
"No."
"Dean."
Dean throws up his hands. "Fine! Fine, but if you're traumatized for life I'm not paying your therapy bills."
"No, some credit card company in Oregon will end up paying my therapy bills," Sam says. "You're stalling."
"I told them you were mine, okay?" Dean says in such a rush that Sam can barely decipher the words. When he does, he considers this for a long moment.
"You mean, as in...?"
"Jesus, do I need to spell it out for you?"
"You told a bunch of inmates that I was your bitch." Sam thinks that his voice sounds kind of freakishly calm, considering the hysteria that's beginning to build like a slow bubble in the back of his throat.
"Well." Dean rubs his forehead in a nervous gesture that's eerily reminiscent of their father. "Not exactly. I just told Lenny, and then it kind of spread." He gets a look at Sam's expression and adds, hastily, "Look, it was the only thing I could think of that would get them to leave you alone."
"And you just--" Sam stops again, mercifully stonewalled by his own brain. "Gross."
"Hey, you should be so lucky."
"We're brothers," Sam says, like Dean might have forgotten. "And now everybody thinks--"
"They don't know we're brothers."
"Deacon does."
"Deacon also knows it's not true. Don't we have a spook to gank? Can we focus, please?"
Sam wants to. He really, really wants to, but now he can't get his brain away from the subject. "Why didn't you just tell him to leave me alone and leave out the creepy incestuous molestation part?"
"You're a persistent little shit, you know that?" Dean pauses, apparently to see if that's enough to make Sam change the subject, and when it isn't, he sighs. "I did, okay? It didn't work. So I improvised."
"By breaking his nose and telling him you were sleeping with me."
"Worked, didn't it?"
"How did you even know--" Sam stops, belatedly realizing that maybe Dean didn't actually know about that pinch in the shower, and it's not like he really needs to give Dean an excuse to pick a fight at the best of times, which this isn't.
Dean just gives him a disgusted look. "It was all over the yard, College Boy. You should have knocked him on his ass."
"I didn't want to draw attention," Sam says defensively.
"Not knocking him on his ass is what drew attention, genius," Dean says in the same kind of overly-patient tones he'd use on a toddler. Actually, Sam's heard him talking to toddlers, and he's a damn sight more respectful than this. "This is prison, not Stanford."
"Oh, that's right, you're the expert," Sam says. It comes out even snippier than he meant it to. "I forgot."
"More of an expert than you are, obviously."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that the only way to get guys like that off your back is to let them know you're more trouble than you're worth. They knew I could take care of myself so they listened to me, but as far as they figure, you're just some pretty-boy college kid who's theirs for the taking."
And okay, Sam's still kind of torn between pissed off and freaked out by this whole thing, but that's a little too rich for him to pass up."You're calling me a pretty-boy? Have you looked in a mirror recently?"
"How do you think I figured this shit out?" Dean says without even pausing for a second to preen, then shakes his head before Sam can answer. "Dude. Focus. You said your buddy, there, uh--what's his name--"
"Randall. And what--"
"--right, Randall," Dean continues like Sam hasn't even said anything. "He's been in and out of here for years, right? Maybe he knows something."
He pops out of his seat, and Sam follows more slowly. Something about this is bothering him. Besides the obvious; he's never thought much about Dean's swagger or his short fuse or how edgy he gets sometimes when people get in his personal space. How touching him when he's not expecting it is a good way to end up with broken fingers. It's just always been Dean. And Christ, their lives suck enough without him trying to imagine some Lifetime Movie backstory for his brother, but it would certainly go a long way toward explaining Dean's punch-first-ask-questions-later attitude.
"You're thinking," Dean remarks as they pass under the guard post. "That's a bad habit."
"Yeah, I've noticed how you try to avoid it at all costs." The sarcasm comes almost automatically, and Sam's just relieved that his voice doesn't sound weird.
"And with good reason. You should try following my stellar example." Dean stops short, leans against the chain-link fence, and folds his arms. "Okay, just spit it out already."
Sam opens his mouth, pauses, closes it again. There's just no way to ask what he's wondering without it coming out awkward, and he's pretty sure that Dean will punch him if he tries. Whatever the answer is. "What I said at that haunted hotel," he says finally, awkwardly. "About how you're overcompensating with all the--you know--" He gestures vaguely, trying to sketch out the shape of Dean's cocky swaggering macho Dean-ness. "You know I didn't really mean it, right?"
"Okay, yeah."
"And you know you can, uh, tell me anything, right? If you want to?"
As meaningful statements go, it leaves a lot to be desired. Dean blinks and shifts his posture, brow furrowed, baffled expression firmly in place. "Yeah," he says. "I know. Are we done with the heart-to-heart now?"
"...yeah," Sam says.
"Great. Awesome. Let's go."
***
Dean's always been the natural front-man. Not that Sam's shy, but getting people's attention is what Dean does. He tells lies that a toddler wouldn't buy and backs them up with nothing more substantial than a heavy dose of charm, all wide gestures and cockiness, fight and attitude. Sam's the one who smooths ruffled feathers and keeps their asses out of trouble.
Here, though, it's the opposite way around. Here, Dean seems invisible. He slots into the rhythm of this place effortlessly, like these are the steps to a dance he's known his whole life, and Sam's always one beat off.
It's not that he wants to fit in with a bunch of convicts, but it's a little unsettling to realize that he can't. And it's kind of pissing him off, too. He can kick Dean's ass two times out of three, and they both know it. He can take care of himself in a fight. Just because he doesn't go around decking everybody who gets on his nerves--
Okay, so it turns out there actually is a place that Dean's conflict-resolution techniques work well. Prison. Of course.
"Figures," he mutters.
Dean glances over his shoulder. "What?"
"Nothing."
His brother's crooked grin is a little too knowing. "I promised I wouldn't trade you for smokes, didn't I? Stop worrying so much."
"When we get out of here, I am so kicking your ass."
Dean takes the bleacher steps two at a time, rubber soles slapping the worn wood. "You do that, Sammy."
If anything about this is bothering him, he does a good job of hiding it.
***
"You lucked out, kid," Randall says when Dean's on the other end of the yard, talking to a couple of skinny punks with sleeves of what Sam's pretty sure are gang tattoos.
Sam snorts. Right now, he feels about as far from lucky as it's possible to get. "How do you figure?"
"Ain't everybody got a big brother who'd go to bat for them."
"He got me into this," Sam snaps, then colors when he remembers just exactly what Dean's idea of going to bat for him entailed. "And I don't know what you've heard, but we're not sleeping together."
Randall shrugs, lighting up one of the smokes that Dean paid him with. "Not that I give a rat's ass either way, but I figured that much out for myself. Still. My brother sold me out when we was arrested." He spits to one side. "There's worse things than dumb and cocky."
"There are better things than dumb and cocky, too," Sam retorts, watching Dean stroll back toward them, grinning like a little kid.
"Won't argue with that," Randall says.
"Hey, Sammy!" Dean stops a few yards away and actually crooks a finger at him. Sam considers flipping him off, and then sighs and climbs to his feet.
"See you around, Randall," he says, and steps down off the bleachers. Dean slings a possessive arm around his shoulders and Sam heroically manages not to punch him.
"You're an asshole," he hisses through gritted teeth. "I just want you to know that."
Dean hip-checks him into a wall as they approach the building, still grinning like a lunatic. "Now, baby, don't be like that."
"Asshole."
"You're hurting my feelings here, Sam."
"I'll hurt something else once we're clear of this place," Sam mutters back. When he glances over his shoulder, though, there's Lenny and a couple of other guys standing around the picnic tables, watching him. And suddenly he's thinking about narrow hallways and prison showers and the cramped places in storage rooms where his long limbs would work against him and it wouldn't be hard for three or four halfway-skilled guys to pin him down.
He can take care of himself. No matter what Dean says, he's not actually a pussy, but suddenly the solid weight of his brother's arm, the familiar shape of him, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, is incredibly comforting.
Dean just chuckles. "Sure. Let's just hope the lovely Ms. Daniels came through for me, and I'll let you beat on me all you want to soothe your wounded manliness. What little you had to begin with," he adds, almost as an afterthought.
"Seriously, I hate you," Sam says, but the door's swinging shut behind him, blocking Lenny from view, and he can't put much venom into it.
***
It's not until they're on the highway with Little Rock two hours behind them and Dean humming along absently to 'Black Dog' that Sam finally gets around to saying it. "So, um, thanks."
Dean glances over at him, eyebrows raised quizzically. "You're welcome. What for?"
"You know. Keeping Lenny and his mooks off my back. Literally."
This time, the glance Dean gives him is only half-quizzical; the other half is pure smugness. "Just so we're clear on this: are you thanking me for making you my prison bitch?"
Sam suppresses a sigh. He's going to be hearing about this for months. "Yes, you asshole."
The passing headlights of a farm truck illuminate Dean's wicked grin as he turns the music up. "Awesome."
***
A/N: I haven't slept at all this week, which means that I'm looking and acting like a zombie, but I've actually gotten around to finishing the fic drafts laying all over my hard drive. Seriously, I wrote three-quarters of this months ago, and I only now remembered it. Hope it isn't too choppy. If you enjoyed, please let me know. If you think it completely sucked, well, I guess let me know that, too :P
Pairings: None.
Warnings: Sexual harassment, adult themes. Nothing too explicit.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Dean has a practical streak. Sometimes Sam thinks he takes it a little too far. Missing moments from Folsom Prison Blues.
It starts in the prison shower, and that's such a cliche that Sam thinks he might laugh if the circumstances were different. Much different. It's not much, that time, just a slap and tickle, a big con named Lenny passing too close and pinching him viciously on the ass while he's rinsing his hair. His first impulse is to spin around and deck the bastard, but that's all there is, just that one pinch and then Lenny's moving on toward the door. Sam forces his hands to unclench. Keep your head down, he reminds himself sternly. Don't draw attention to yourself.
He doesn't tell Dean, because he doesn't need to deal with Dean having a freaking meltdown on top of everything else. Besides, he can handle it.
If Dean notices that he's distracted in the cafeteria that night, he's too busy gloating over his ever-increasing collection of cigarettes to mention it. Sam lets him ramble on and steal most of his dinner (grayish strips of meat drowning in lumpy gravy) without comment. One week. That's all they need. One week. He can keep his head down that long.
***
He manages to avoid Lenny and his band of cronies the next two days; it helps that Lenny gets his nose broken in a fight that first night and doesn't seem inclined to be amorous (or whatever passes for amorous in here) with two black eyes and a nose like a ripe tomato. The third night, Tiny is killed by a brand new ghost in the hospital wing just when they thought it was freaking over, and the next day Dean is guilty and tensely nervous. Being Dean, he deals with it by trying to needle Sam into an argument, and Sam decides to go away and let him work off his aggression by beating several arithmetically challenged cons at poker.
He's on the other side of the exercise yard when he remembers about Lenny and his buddies, and by then it's already too late. There are three of them trying clumsily to box him in, and of course no guards nearby. No Dean, either. No help from any quarter, and Sam curses under his breath and shifts his weight onto the balls of his feet, backing up so that he can keep all three of them in his line of sight.
"You gonna scream for help, pretty boy?" Lenny asks raspily.
Sam shakes his head, tautly, and doesn't say anything. Of the three of them, Lenny is the one he has to worry about. He's almost Sam's height and a lot broader, a red-haired neckless ape of a man with hands big enough to strangle a bear. The other two are just along for the ride.
So to speak.
It's not going to go that far--not here in the yard, anyway--but Sam's not in a big hurry to find out just how far it will go before somebody intervenes. He's so tense that his skin is prickling with it, and when a hand comes down on the back of his neck, he very nearly brings his elbow back without even turning to see who's there.
Then he stops, relaxes marginally, as Dean steps forward. He keeps his grip on the nape of Sam's neck, but it's Lenny he's looking at and he's wearing the ferocious grin that Sam knows only too well from countless bar brawls. "Hey, Lenny," he says.
"Winchester," Lenny grunts.
"We need to have another chat?" Dean asks pleasantly, ignoring Sam's frantic attempts to telegraph don't provoke him, you moron without opening his mouth. "The last one didn't go so hot for you."
"You jumped me. Too chickenshit to take me in a fair fight."
"So you're gonna jump my boy, here?" Dean says. He's bouncing on the balls of his feet, obviously spoiling for a fight, and his fingers on Sam's neck feel like tightly coiled springs. "I told you to keep your hands off him."
Sam blinks. He's starting to get the impression that there's something going on here besides the obvious, and it's not really a comfortable feeling. "Dean," he says tentatively, "I don't--"
"Shut up, Sammy," Dean says without looking at him.
And for some reason, that's when Lenny backs down, puts his big hands out in a vaguely conciliatory gesture. Grinning, for fuck's sake. "Fine, fine. He's all yours."
"Don't I know it," Dean says, and before Sam can get a word out he's being steered toward the tables on the other side of the yard. Dean keeps his grip on Sam's neck until Sam drops onto one of the benches, and only then does he let go and sit himself down. "So, I'm thinking--"
"What the hell was that?" Sam interrupts.
"Uh, what?"
"That. Back there. When did you get into it with him?"
"It's no big deal, dude. Seriously, don't we have bigger things to worry about right now?"
"I'm not actually an idiot, you know," Sam says, irritably. "And I'm not discussing anything else until you tell me what that was about."
It would be a gamble if Dean weren't so damn impatient, but he is, so it's not. "Sam--"
"Did you seriously get into a fight defending my virtue?" Sam asks incredulously.
Dean looks uncomfortable. "Not exactly."
"Then what? Exactly?"
Dean looks down at his hands for a second. The skin across his knuckles is split, from one of the fights he's gotten into in the past couple of days. It seems there were more of them than Sam thought. When he looks up again, his expression is caught halfway between guilty and hopeful. "I guess it wouldn't make a difference if I told you you really don't want to know."
"I really do want to know."
"No, you really, really don't," Dean mutters, and damn it, now Sam's even more curious.
He tries for honest. "Come on, man, you know I'm gonna bug you until you tell me, so you might as well get it over with."
"No."
"Dean."
Dean throws up his hands. "Fine! Fine, but if you're traumatized for life I'm not paying your therapy bills."
"No, some credit card company in Oregon will end up paying my therapy bills," Sam says. "You're stalling."
"I told them you were mine, okay?" Dean says in such a rush that Sam can barely decipher the words. When he does, he considers this for a long moment.
"You mean, as in...?"
"Jesus, do I need to spell it out for you?"
"You told a bunch of inmates that I was your bitch." Sam thinks that his voice sounds kind of freakishly calm, considering the hysteria that's beginning to build like a slow bubble in the back of his throat.
"Well." Dean rubs his forehead in a nervous gesture that's eerily reminiscent of their father. "Not exactly. I just told Lenny, and then it kind of spread." He gets a look at Sam's expression and adds, hastily, "Look, it was the only thing I could think of that would get them to leave you alone."
"And you just--" Sam stops again, mercifully stonewalled by his own brain. "Gross."
"Hey, you should be so lucky."
"We're brothers," Sam says, like Dean might have forgotten. "And now everybody thinks--"
"They don't know we're brothers."
"Deacon does."
"Deacon also knows it's not true. Don't we have a spook to gank? Can we focus, please?"
Sam wants to. He really, really wants to, but now he can't get his brain away from the subject. "Why didn't you just tell him to leave me alone and leave out the creepy incestuous molestation part?"
"You're a persistent little shit, you know that?" Dean pauses, apparently to see if that's enough to make Sam change the subject, and when it isn't, he sighs. "I did, okay? It didn't work. So I improvised."
"By breaking his nose and telling him you were sleeping with me."
"Worked, didn't it?"
"How did you even know--" Sam stops, belatedly realizing that maybe Dean didn't actually know about that pinch in the shower, and it's not like he really needs to give Dean an excuse to pick a fight at the best of times, which this isn't.
Dean just gives him a disgusted look. "It was all over the yard, College Boy. You should have knocked him on his ass."
"I didn't want to draw attention," Sam says defensively.
"Not knocking him on his ass is what drew attention, genius," Dean says in the same kind of overly-patient tones he'd use on a toddler. Actually, Sam's heard him talking to toddlers, and he's a damn sight more respectful than this. "This is prison, not Stanford."
"Oh, that's right, you're the expert," Sam says. It comes out even snippier than he meant it to. "I forgot."
"More of an expert than you are, obviously."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that the only way to get guys like that off your back is to let them know you're more trouble than you're worth. They knew I could take care of myself so they listened to me, but as far as they figure, you're just some pretty-boy college kid who's theirs for the taking."
And okay, Sam's still kind of torn between pissed off and freaked out by this whole thing, but that's a little too rich for him to pass up."You're calling me a pretty-boy? Have you looked in a mirror recently?"
"How do you think I figured this shit out?" Dean says without even pausing for a second to preen, then shakes his head before Sam can answer. "Dude. Focus. You said your buddy, there, uh--what's his name--"
"Randall. And what--"
"--right, Randall," Dean continues like Sam hasn't even said anything. "He's been in and out of here for years, right? Maybe he knows something."
He pops out of his seat, and Sam follows more slowly. Something about this is bothering him. Besides the obvious; he's never thought much about Dean's swagger or his short fuse or how edgy he gets sometimes when people get in his personal space. How touching him when he's not expecting it is a good way to end up with broken fingers. It's just always been Dean. And Christ, their lives suck enough without him trying to imagine some Lifetime Movie backstory for his brother, but it would certainly go a long way toward explaining Dean's punch-first-ask-questions-later attitude.
"You're thinking," Dean remarks as they pass under the guard post. "That's a bad habit."
"Yeah, I've noticed how you try to avoid it at all costs." The sarcasm comes almost automatically, and Sam's just relieved that his voice doesn't sound weird.
"And with good reason. You should try following my stellar example." Dean stops short, leans against the chain-link fence, and folds his arms. "Okay, just spit it out already."
Sam opens his mouth, pauses, closes it again. There's just no way to ask what he's wondering without it coming out awkward, and he's pretty sure that Dean will punch him if he tries. Whatever the answer is. "What I said at that haunted hotel," he says finally, awkwardly. "About how you're overcompensating with all the--you know--" He gestures vaguely, trying to sketch out the shape of Dean's cocky swaggering macho Dean-ness. "You know I didn't really mean it, right?"
"Okay, yeah."
"And you know you can, uh, tell me anything, right? If you want to?"
As meaningful statements go, it leaves a lot to be desired. Dean blinks and shifts his posture, brow furrowed, baffled expression firmly in place. "Yeah," he says. "I know. Are we done with the heart-to-heart now?"
"...yeah," Sam says.
"Great. Awesome. Let's go."
***
Dean's always been the natural front-man. Not that Sam's shy, but getting people's attention is what Dean does. He tells lies that a toddler wouldn't buy and backs them up with nothing more substantial than a heavy dose of charm, all wide gestures and cockiness, fight and attitude. Sam's the one who smooths ruffled feathers and keeps their asses out of trouble.
Here, though, it's the opposite way around. Here, Dean seems invisible. He slots into the rhythm of this place effortlessly, like these are the steps to a dance he's known his whole life, and Sam's always one beat off.
It's not that he wants to fit in with a bunch of convicts, but it's a little unsettling to realize that he can't. And it's kind of pissing him off, too. He can kick Dean's ass two times out of three, and they both know it. He can take care of himself in a fight. Just because he doesn't go around decking everybody who gets on his nerves--
Okay, so it turns out there actually is a place that Dean's conflict-resolution techniques work well. Prison. Of course.
"Figures," he mutters.
Dean glances over his shoulder. "What?"
"Nothing."
His brother's crooked grin is a little too knowing. "I promised I wouldn't trade you for smokes, didn't I? Stop worrying so much."
"When we get out of here, I am so kicking your ass."
Dean takes the bleacher steps two at a time, rubber soles slapping the worn wood. "You do that, Sammy."
If anything about this is bothering him, he does a good job of hiding it.
***
"You lucked out, kid," Randall says when Dean's on the other end of the yard, talking to a couple of skinny punks with sleeves of what Sam's pretty sure are gang tattoos.
Sam snorts. Right now, he feels about as far from lucky as it's possible to get. "How do you figure?"
"Ain't everybody got a big brother who'd go to bat for them."
"He got me into this," Sam snaps, then colors when he remembers just exactly what Dean's idea of going to bat for him entailed. "And I don't know what you've heard, but we're not sleeping together."
Randall shrugs, lighting up one of the smokes that Dean paid him with. "Not that I give a rat's ass either way, but I figured that much out for myself. Still. My brother sold me out when we was arrested." He spits to one side. "There's worse things than dumb and cocky."
"There are better things than dumb and cocky, too," Sam retorts, watching Dean stroll back toward them, grinning like a little kid.
"Won't argue with that," Randall says.
"Hey, Sammy!" Dean stops a few yards away and actually crooks a finger at him. Sam considers flipping him off, and then sighs and climbs to his feet.
"See you around, Randall," he says, and steps down off the bleachers. Dean slings a possessive arm around his shoulders and Sam heroically manages not to punch him.
"You're an asshole," he hisses through gritted teeth. "I just want you to know that."
Dean hip-checks him into a wall as they approach the building, still grinning like a lunatic. "Now, baby, don't be like that."
"Asshole."
"You're hurting my feelings here, Sam."
"I'll hurt something else once we're clear of this place," Sam mutters back. When he glances over his shoulder, though, there's Lenny and a couple of other guys standing around the picnic tables, watching him. And suddenly he's thinking about narrow hallways and prison showers and the cramped places in storage rooms where his long limbs would work against him and it wouldn't be hard for three or four halfway-skilled guys to pin him down.
He can take care of himself. No matter what Dean says, he's not actually a pussy, but suddenly the solid weight of his brother's arm, the familiar shape of him, shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip, is incredibly comforting.
Dean just chuckles. "Sure. Let's just hope the lovely Ms. Daniels came through for me, and I'll let you beat on me all you want to soothe your wounded manliness. What little you had to begin with," he adds, almost as an afterthought.
"Seriously, I hate you," Sam says, but the door's swinging shut behind him, blocking Lenny from view, and he can't put much venom into it.
***
It's not until they're on the highway with Little Rock two hours behind them and Dean humming along absently to 'Black Dog' that Sam finally gets around to saying it. "So, um, thanks."
Dean glances over at him, eyebrows raised quizzically. "You're welcome. What for?"
"You know. Keeping Lenny and his mooks off my back. Literally."
This time, the glance Dean gives him is only half-quizzical; the other half is pure smugness. "Just so we're clear on this: are you thanking me for making you my prison bitch?"
Sam suppresses a sigh. He's going to be hearing about this for months. "Yes, you asshole."
The passing headlights of a farm truck illuminate Dean's wicked grin as he turns the music up. "Awesome."
***
A/N: I haven't slept at all this week, which means that I'm looking and acting like a zombie, but I've actually gotten around to finishing the fic drafts laying all over my hard drive. Seriously, I wrote three-quarters of this months ago, and I only now remembered it. Hope it isn't too choppy. If you enjoyed, please let me know. If you think it completely sucked, well, I guess let me know that, too :P