fic: Beggars Would Ride: 4/5 (Supernatural; Dean/girl!Sam; AU)
Beggars Would Ride
Part 4
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue | Notes
Or you can read it in one long chunk here.
*
It was weird when they started, and it's weird now that they've stopped. Dean's gotten so used to being able to touch her, kiss her, fuck her, and now he can't do any of those things. Sometimes, he thinks about telling her to forget it, he didn't mean it, he never wanted to stop, and please can they start again? But he can't. He won't.
She disappears from the breakfast table just as he stumbles into the kitchen, and comes to the dinner table worn out from track and whatever hand-to-hand Dad's drilling her in afterward. She's silent and shadow-eyed for a few weeks, mouth twisting in a sad, jaded smile when Dad asks how she's feeling. She sits on the far end of the couch now, or lies on the floor when they watch television, instead of cuddling up with Dean and sharing the bowl of popcorn.
He throws himself into hunting--Dad is glad of the backup, and Florida is full of freaky shit that keeps them busy. They take Sam with them sometimes--she's gotten good at knowing which battles to fight and which to let pass, and she's turning into a skilled hunter, as much as she'd like to deny it. Dean's less nervous each time--he knows she can take care of herself, and he and Dad are there if something goes wrong--but that sick feeling in his stomach never quite goes away, that worry that something's going to happen to her and he's not going to be able to stop it.
Maybe college really would be better--safer--for her. That thought makes him a little queasy, too, and not just because it's a betrayal of Dad and everything he's raised them to be, but because he knows, suddenly, he knows, with a certainty he's been trying to ignore, that she's going to leave. Maybe he's always known it.
He's making pretty decent money, taking extra shifts so he doesn't have to hang around the house and watch Sam avoid him, and one night he sneaks into her room while she's sleeping, slips two hundred dollars into her paperback copy of The Sound and the Fury--he doesn't know what the deal is with applications and test fees, but more money's always better than less. And maybe if they spend some time apart, get some distance between them, her feelings will fade, and she'll find someone else to love. He's pretty sure his feelings aren't going anywhere; everything he is, is all wrapped up in Sam and has been since the day they brought her home from the hospital seventeen years ago. He tightens his fist at the thought, nearly rips the back of the book off at the thought of her with anyone else, but that's the only kind of normal he has to give her.
She rolls over, murmurs, "Dean?"
He swallows hard, whispers, "I'm here, Sammy." He brushes the hair back from her forehead, leans close to breathe her in and press a kiss to her temple.
"Okay." She settles back into sleep and he watches her for a few minutes before he goes to his own room and reminds himself that he's doing the right thing.
*
They're after a poltergeist in Jacksonville this time, so she sits and reads while Dean drives, the squeak of her highlighter against the glossy pages of her textbook loud and accusing in the unaccustomed silence.
He turns on the radio to drown her out, and that damn Santana song with the guy from that lame band Sam likes comes on.
"Man, Santana really sold out with this shit," he says.
"I like it."
"You would."
"It's fun." She taps her highlighter against her teeth. "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it. Dick."
He shoots her a glance. She's smirking at him. He can't help but grin back.
"It's no 'Black Magic Woman.'" He has good memories of that song on the radio while Melissa Greeley went down on him in the parking lot of Woodrow Wilson High School his junior year. Probably smarter not to mention that right now, though.
"And thank God for that."
"You just don't know good music when you hear it, Sammy."
"Whatever. Just because I like things that were recorded after I was born doesn't mean I don't know what's good." He grunts, and she slides a glance in his direction. "You know, he collaborated with Eric Clapton on that album, too." Says it like she's laying down the winning hand in a poker game. Says it like she's interested in teasing him again, in having a conversation, instead of the way it's been the past few weeks.
"Well, maybe it doesn't completely suck," he concedes, and feels something ease in his chest when she laughs.
*
They spend the holidays with Pastor Jim again, and Dean kind of digs the tradition, though he'd never tell anyone that. He knows Sam likes it, too; she and Pastor Jim have long talks about books and philosophy and stuff Dean pretends not to be interested in, because that's Sammy's thing, and he knows she likes having something that's hers and no one else's.
They head west this time, land in Pocatello just in time to get Sam enrolled in her last semester of high school. Dad's unsure at first if they're even going to stay, so they end up living in a two-bedroom suite at the Thunderbird Motel for a couple of months, and by that point it's not even worth renting an apartment, Dad says, since they're going to be leaving after Sam graduates, anyway.
Dean works as a day laborer on a construction site near the university, but he and Dad both spend most of their time hunting--lots of restless spirits up this way, and a lot of miles logged between hunts and what's passing for home these days. When they're not hunting, he goes to the bars--it's a university town, and there are always frat boys to fleece and sorority girls to fuck, and it's so easy to lose himself in their sweet-smelling hair and supple bodies, and walk away after without a backward glance.
If Sam notices, she doesn't say anything. No smart remarks, no teasing, no disgusted looks at breakfast. He should be glad he doesn't have to deal with her shit, but he kind of misses it.
He tries not to think of what else he misses, not now that they've come out the other side and things have started to settle into some kind of normal between them. He'd thought, when he'd made the decision, that that was the hard part, but a two-bedroom suite isn't really big enough to give them any kind of distance. They're still together more often than not, and it's hard not to reach out and pull her into his lap when they're watching "Behind the Music," hard not to not climb into bed with her when he hears her tossing and turning restlessly at night, especially when he knows a surefire cure for her insomnia.
It's easier, then, to spend his nights elsewhere, even if sometimes it feels like a betrayal.
He gets into fights occasionally, because he sometimes forgets that the frat boys don't like losing both their girls and their money all at the same time, and he comes on a little strong. One night a couple months after they arrived in Pocatello, he's washing up after a fight (big, lumbering jock type, thought he could overpower Dean, who used his own strength against him), running cold water over his bruised knuckles and shaking his head at the drunken stupidity of certain members of his gender, when he hears Sam crying in the bedroom. The sound stops him dead, makes his stomach drop and his gorge rise.
He dries his hands quickly and moves into the bedroom.
"Sam, Sam, Sammy," he whispers, sitting down on the bed beside her. "What's wrong?" He expects her to brush him off, so he's kind of shocked when she flings herself into his lap and starts sobbing against his chest.
He grabs the box of tissues off the nightstand and feeds them to her two and three at a time, and she clings to him the way she used to when she was little and was afraid Dad wasn't going to come home from a hunt. He rubs circles on her back, trying to calm her down, and buries his face in her hair, breathing her in.
"Baby, what's wrong?" he asks again when her sobs have tailed off into hiccups and whimpers.
"There's this girl, Kathy, at school," she whispers, head still tucked beneath his chin, and he braces himself. Sam hasn't gotten picked on much since middle school--she's good at fitting in, at making friends, making herself invisible if she has to be, all the things Dean never quite managed when he was in school. "She's on the track team, too, does the long jump and the pole vault." She reaches for another tissue, blows her nose, and tosses it at the garbage pail. She misses, and they both ignore it. "You'd like her. She's almost as tall as I am, but busty. She's got red hair and blue eyes and legs...." She trails off, and he feels like he's missing an important piece of the puzzle.
"So, what? You both like the same guy and he chose her?" he guesses, ignoring the curl of jealousy in his belly at the thought of Sam liking some guy, and anger at the idea of the guy not liking her back. "Guys are stupid, you know. Think with our downstairs brains all the time. I can beat him up for you, if you want."
"No," she chokes out, and starts sobbing again.
He keeps rubbing her back. He hates crying women, even when it's not his fault they're crying, and a crying Sammy is about ten million times worse, especially since he still doesn't know what's wrong. Or how to fix it.
"Okay, okay. I won't beat him up. You want that satisfaction yourself, huh?"
She gets hold of herself a second time, scrubs at her face with the back of her hand. "No," she says. She won't look at him, stares down at the soggy, snotty mess of tissues in her fist. "There's no guy."
"Okay, so, what? Did this Kathy chick insult your hair? Get a higher grade on her English paper? Gimme a little help here, Sammy."
"What's wrong with my hair?" It's weak, but the fact that she made the effort is good. She still won't look at him, though, and that worries him more than anything.
"You're getting a little shaggy," he starts, and she grunts and thwacks him one, which is another good sign.
"You're such a jerk."
"Yeah, but I'm your jerk," he says, and that gets him a teary smile. "Come on, Sammy, spill."
"We're--me and Kathy--we were friends. She was really nice to me when I started school here, and we ate lunch together, and her locker is next to mine in the girls' locker room, so we used to change together, and she would, when we changed, I thought she was--" She starts shredding the wad of tissues she's holding. "I thought she was flirting with me, and I liked her, and I tried to kiss her, and now she thinks I'm a ginormous freak." That sets her off again, even though he'd have thought she was all cried out.
And then what she's said sinks in, and he rests his chin on the top of her head and tries to process it.
"Okay," he says, mouth on autopilot while his brain catches up. "Okay. So. I normally don't hit chicks--well, unless they're evil--but we could totally prank her. Break into her house, put some Nair in her shampoo or something. Does she have a car? We could set her car on fire."
She pushes away, hits him again, flat of her palm against his chest. "Don't you understand? She's going to tell the whole school I'm some kind of lesbian freak."
"Well, you're definitely a freak, Sammy, but I got my doubts about the lesbian thing. You like dick too much to be totally gay." He stops, horrified that he actually said it out loud, and she makes a choking sound that might be laughter or might be disgust. He can't seem to stop talking. "Though I guess it would explain all the angry chick rock."
Another thump to his chest, and it's okay, because better an angry Sammy than a crying one. "Dean."
And yeah, okay, he certainly shouldn't know that about his kid sister, and he probably shouldn't have said it, either, but it's true.
At least, he thinks it is.
He swallows hard, stomach dropping in sudden fear. "Sam. Sammy. You liked it, right? I didn't--It wasn't--I never meant to hurt--" The you gets swallowed when she kisses him, fierce and desperate, all wet heat and tongue and salt-sharp saliva. He closes his eyes, kisses her back with that same desperation, and God, maybe there really is something wrong with him, but he's missed this, missed her, the way she tastes and smells and feels when they're this close together and nothing can get between them.
"You never did," she whispers against his mouth, shifting so she can straddle him. "You never would."
He wishes he could be that sure.
It's so easy to hold her, to hold on, to slip his hands up under the t-shirt she's wearing to feel warm skin beneath his fingertips, as she rolls her hips and breathes in his gasp of relief.
It's her turn to gasp when he slides his hands around, thumbs brushing the undercurves of her breasts, and he pulls back, lifts her off his lap and onto the bed. Forces himself to say, "Sam, we can't."
"Even you don't want me anymore. I know you've been fucking around again," she says in a low, bitter voice, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'm a freak."
"Yeah, but you're my freak." He forces a grin, trying to cajole an answering grin out of her.
Her mouth doesn't even twitch. "It's easy for you, isn't it?"
"None of this is easy for me," he answers, possibly the most honest he's ever been with her while he's not fucking her, letting his body say all the things he can't. He cups her cheek and she turns her face, presses a kiss to his palm. She takes his hand, slides her lips down to rest warm and wet on his wrist, between the bracelets she gave him for his birthday. His breath hitches, and he says, "Sam."
"It can be easy," she says, then touches her tongue to his pulse. "As easy as this." She pulls him close, and he lets her, lets himself lean into her, press her back against the pillows, fitting between her legs like he belongs there. Because she's right--this has always been the easy part, the part where it's just him and her against the darkness.
Her skin tastes like tears, like salt poured to protect them both. This is as close as he comes to true prayer--whispering her name against her lips--and to belief--in the heat of her cunt surrounding him, the shift and shudder of her muscles as they move together, and the arch of her back when she comes keening into his mouth.
He cradles her close when they're done, and she's asleep before he can even start to regret letting himself fall into her again, four months of trying to keep his hands to himself swept away by her tears.
*
As far as Dean knows, Sam's shunning only lasts about a week--some new scandal comes along to capture the attention of the kids at Hillsborough High, and Sam's back to being that weird girl on the track team. At least, that's what she tells him. She occasionally talks about another girl on the team, Stacy or Tracy or something, and someone named Taylor from her AP History class, but she never mentions Kathy again, and he doesn't ask.
He's sure now that she's planning to leave, has seen the fat envelopes stuffed into her backpack--of course, they all want her; why wouldn't they? She's practically a freaking genius. He'd never tell her how awesome that is, but he brags sometimes, to the guys he works with, to Bobby, to Pastor Jim. To Dad once or twice, who grins and claps his shoulder proudly. He catches her filling out forms once, but he doesn't ask about that either, and she doesn't volunteer anything. She closes herself off to him now, more than ever before, and he wonders if she's doing it for his protection or her own; either way, it's only making things worse as far as he's concerned.
He spends more time now training her, hours spent drilling her in hand-to-hand, always her weakest area, because if he's not going to be around to protect her, he needs to know she can protect herself.
Of course, protecting her has been hardwired into his brain, so the next time Dad takes them hunting--skinwalker in Reno--she freezes for just a second and Dean shoves her down, engages the thing himself. It tosses him like a ragdoll before Dad pumps its heart full of silver, and Dean can feel his ribs crack, the agony making him black out.
He loses the next few days in a haze of pain and narcotics, but he remembers the determined set of Dad's jaw, the scared, pinched look on Sam's paper white face, the sudden paleness making her eyes startlingly green. He remembers the ridiculously cheerful ER doctor babbling on about the possibility of a punctured lung that, thankfully, never does materialize, and who sends him home with a prescription for painkillers and admonitions to rest and let himself heal, and to be more careful on his motorcycle.
Sam slips into bed with him when she gets home from school each afternoon, the long line of her body pressing warm and soft against his good side, and it hurts a little less to breathe when she's there, though he can't tell her that.
"I'm fine," he lies, but she doesn't believe him, doesn't go away, so it's okay. It's worth the pain to be able to wrap an arm around her shoulders and hold her close, to be able to fall asleep and wake up beside her without feeling like it's wrong in any way.
Dad takes off to handle a black dog up in Great Falls that Saturday morning, and for the first time ever, before he goes, he hands the shotgun to Sam and says, "Watch out for your brother, will you?"
She squares her shoulders and takes the gun with a solemn look. "Yes, sir," she says, and for once, there's no anger or mockery in her tone.
Dean's propped up against some pillows, clicking through the channels, milking the situation for all it's worth. He makes Sammy bring him sodas with bendy straws, and generally orders her around until she snaps, "You need me to help you take a piss, too?" and throws a pillow at his head.
"Cranky girl," he says, catching the pillow and tucking it under his good arm. "I have the perfect cure."
"I'm not cranky," she lies. "I'm just tired. Some of us haven't been lying around on our asses for the past four days. Some of us were worried about our stupid, overprotective brothers."
"You were worried? Oh, Sammy, that's so sweet," he teases, but the warmth in his chest isn't from the pain or the drugs. "Don't you know I'm indestructible?"
She rolls her eyes. "Then you don't need me waiting on you hand and foot. Maybe I'll go to the library."
"It's Saturday," he says, scandalized. "No books or homework or geeky shit today, Sammy. I have something way better planned."
She cocks her hip, rests a hand on it, looks like every waitress in every diner they've ever eaten dinner in, which makes him smile. "Oh, yeah?"
He hits TNT just as the voiceover comes on. "Yeah." He gestures towards the television. "Star Wars marathon."
She laughs in disbelief. "You just said, 'no geeky shit,' Dean."
"Nothing geeky about Han Solo. Or Princess Leia in that bikini."
"Uh huh."
She comes close enough for him to grab her wrist--so strong and still so delicate--and pull her down onto the bed next to him. He grimaces when the bounce of the mattress jogs his ribs, but then she settles in, her head on his shoulder and her hand resting lightly on his belly. The familiar words scroll up the screen, and there's no place else he'd rather be right now than here.
*
Sam graduates from Hillsborough High three weeks after her eighteenth birthday. Dad takes them out to dinner to celebrate. They didn't do much for her birthday--Dad was gone on a hunt with Caleb, and Sam herself was buried in studying for finals. Dean couldn't really understand that--she'd already got the whole college thing in the bag, so it's not like those grades mattered, but Sammy's a grades junkie, through and through.
She and Dad had actually agreed to postpone the celebration without any shouting. Dean's still worried one or the other of them might be possessed.
They dress up and go out for graduation--Dad's in a jacket and tie, and Dean's got on his nice khakis and a blue button down shirt Sam picked up for him at the Gap for his birthday and has bitched at him for not wearing since, and she's got a sleeveless yellow dress on, with a skirt that shows off way too much leg. Every eye in the place follows her as the maître d' leads them to a table, and Dean's torn between being proud and wanting to hide her away, because this is it, this is the big deal. She's eighteen and she's a high school graduate--she can be whatever she wants now, and he knows the last thing she wants to be is Sam Winchester, demon hunter.
Once they're settled at the table, Dad orders a bottle of wine and pours some for each of them.
Dean raises his glass and says, "I'm proud of you, Sammy."
They clink glasses, delicate crystal chiming like bells, and Dad looks startled for a second before he says, "Me, too."
Sam flushes pink and laughs, lips bright with wine and lipstick, the happiest Dean's seen her in a long time. Maybe this will work, he thinks. Maybe we can make this work.
But Dad's never been one to let the moment stand, or maybe he's just oblivious, so focused on the hunt that he can't let it go, even for one night. "We're leaving for Green Bay in the morning," he says. "Caleb has a job for us. Said it might be a water wraith."
Sam sets her glass down hard, her wine swirling dangerously and her smile disappearing. Dean forces himself not to flinch. Instead, he catches the waiter's eye and calls him over.
"What are the specials?" he asks, though he knows he's probably just going to order steak.
The tension defused for the moment, Dean takes a sip of wine and starts mentally cataloguing what needs to be packed and what can be left behind. It keeps him calm while he waits for Sam to explode. He won't be sorry to leave Pocatello and that goddamn motel room. It'll be nice to be back on the road, doing what they do best.
They make it through dinner without a fight, though Dad drinks too much wine and Sam barely cracks a smile, even though Dean's totally working the charm. They decide to skip coffee and dessert, because Sam can't open her gift in public, anyway. On his way home from work, Dean had picked up a couple of CDs he thinks she'll like, as well, and a carton of ice cream. It'll be more than enough.
Back at the motel, Dad slips his tie off and pours himself some scotch, while Dean puts the ice cream out to soften and sets the coffee brewing. He digs Sam's presents out of the hiding place and hands the big one to her with a grin.
She laughs at the Star Wars wrapping paper, and tears it open slowly, frown of concentration on her face.
The box is fine wood, and when she flips it open, the scythe is nestled against green felt, blade sharp and gleaming.
"You know," she says, standing and dropping the box onto the table, "I have an Amazon wishlist. This wasn't on it." She stalks into her bedroom and slams the door shut behind her.
"That went well," he mutters, still holding the wrapped box with the CDs in his hand.
Dad looks like he can't decide if he wants to start yelling or finish his drink.
Dean gets up, puts a hand on his shoulder, and says, "She'll come around." The lie tastes bitter on his tongue, but he forces it out. "I'm just gonna--" He jerks his head towards the door and Dad nods. He's pouring another two fingers of scotch into his glass when Dean walks out.
Dean doesn't know how long he sits outside, the glass of the windshield warm against his back, the stars popping out as the night falls. He doesn't know why he doesn't just get in the car and drive away. He's thinking about it, watching the lightning bugs fly around the motel parking lot and listening to the crickets hum, when Sam comes outside. She's still in her yellow dress, looks like a lit candle in the twilight.
"So you know that episode of Star Trek with the mirror universe, where you can tell Spock is evil because he's got a goatee?" she says, sliding up onto the car next to him. He nods once. "Would you believe me if I told you that that was evil Sam from an alternate universe in there?"
"You don't have a goatee."
"The goatee is a metaphor."
He laughs, can't help it, can't stay mad at her. "Seen weirder shit," he says, nodding again. He glances over at her and she's smiling sheepishly, like she really is sorry.
"It's a beautiful knife. Thank you."
"We had it made special. Caleb has a friend who makes really cool weapons. You should see some of the shit on his website."
She nods, and lays her head on his shoulder. They sit in comfortable silence for a little bit, staring up at the stars.
"Take me for a ride, Dean."
"Dad?"
"He's got Johnny Walker keeping him company tonight."
"Whose fault is that?"
She sighs. "Dean, please?"
He growls low in annoyance at her, at himself for not being able to say no to her. "Fine. Get in the car."
"Can I drive?" She slides off the hood, practically bouncing.
Well, except on this one topic. "No."
"Dean--"
"No."
Another sigh. "Fine."
He takes her for ice cream, even though there's a perfectly good carton of vanilla fudge ripple back at the motel. Instead of heading straight back afterwards, he pulls into a secluded area behind the strip mall, and turns the car off.
When he kisses her, she tastes of cold and chocolate, and she laughs into his mouth. She cups his face with sticky fingers, and he sucks each one into his mouth, licking them clean as she giggles. She slides into his lap and they spend some quality time making out. He thinks he could do this forever, just him and Sam in the car, slick wet slide of tongue and lip against soft, sensitive skin, the gasp and moan and whisper of her voice speaking his name, and the low growl of her name in his mouth when he tells her how beautiful she is, and how much he wants her.
"Backseat," he says hoarsely, and watches as she swings her long legs over the back of the front seat to get there, skirt riding up to show him her panties. She scoots back against the door and he kneels between her thighs.
He goes slow, dragging her dress up her body, raising goosebumps and kissing them away. He pulls it off, tosses it onto the front seat, and does the same with her bra. His shirt follows, still buttoned and yanked up over his head in impatience to feel her skin warm against his with nothing in between.
Once he has that, though, he takes his time, presses long, lingering kisses to her mouth, her neck, her tits. Her hands stroke over his shoulders and back, and she asks questions she already knows the answers to.
"Where'd this one come from?" she asks, thumbing the thin, white-pink line of a scar on her bicep.
He leans in to trace his tongue over it. "Black dog, down in Abilene. Knocked you out of the way when you froze."
She folds her leg up and points to the small scar bisecting her kneecap. "This one?"
"You fell off your bike when you were twelve. There was glass in the street, cut right through your jeans." He runs the tip of his tongue over the mark, remembering the blood on her skin, the taste of it on his lips--though she was too old by then to believe anyone could kiss it better, he still wanted to, and she still let him. "Scared the shit out of me." He holds her leg there, blows a raspberry against the soft skin on the inside of her thigh before licking at it, changing her giggles to gasps. He breathes her in, presses his mouth to the crease where her leg joins her body, salt-tang bitter and addictive on his tongue, the taste of the slow, heavy pulse of need beating through him.
She pulls him up for a kiss, tongue thick and sweet like honey in his mouth, and wraps her leg around his hip, rubbing against the bulge of his erection, making them both pant a little. Then she ghosts a hand down his chest, finds the old scar just below his ribs, thin white line no one else would ever notice.
"Where'd you get this one?" she says, fingers tracing it lightly enough to tickle, making him suck in a surprised breath.
"You did that, Sammy, first time you ever handled a knife." He hadn't expected her to lunge, hadn't moved out of the way fast enough; it had looked worse than it was, not very deep, but he'd bled like a stuck pig. He hadn't expected it to scar, either, but he'd learned early on that there wasn't always a way to tell with these things. She'd cried, then, cried the way she rarely did when she hurt herself, and he'd spent more time comforting her than he had bandaging himself up. It's not the only scar she's left on him, though it's the only one she can see. He hopes it's the only one she knows about.
She bends forward, licks the scar, the flat of her tongue warm and wet on his skin, and he shivers. She slides her lips up, tip of her tongue darting out at random intervals now, no pattern he can find.
"What're you doing?"
She looks up, eyes dark and bright. "Counting freckles."
"Sam--"
She wraps a hand around the nape of his neck, pulls him in, and rains kisses on his face. "Want to kiss them all, every last inch of you," she says before she sucks his lower lip into her mouth, nips it with her teeth before letting go, her hands finally unzipping his khakis and slipping inside to stroke him.
"Might take some time," he manages, finding a condom before he shoves his pants and boxers out of the way.
"Be worth it, though," she answers with a grin as she wriggles out of her underwear and guides him inside her.
"Yeah," he breathes, trying not to read anything into it, trying not to hope she'll stay, that he can make her stay if he says or does the right thing, some mysterious ritual he hasn't figured out yet, but will if she gives him enough time and clues, just like a hunt, but so much more important and dangerous.
He kisses her softly as he thrusts, long slow strokes that have her gasping and pleading with him to speed up, her fingers slipping down between them to circle her clit. He loves the feel of her cunt tight and slick around him, the way she keeps talking, her voice breaking on his name when she's close, the sudden faraway look in her eyes before they flutter shut as she comes, muscles clenching around him, holding him so tight and deep inside her, his favorite place to be. He picks up the pace, thrusts harder and faster, desperate to lose himself in the short burst of heated oblivion when the world disappears and there's nothing but fierce pleasure so good it steals his breath.
When he's done, he slumps against her, sweaty, sticky, and satisfied, all the tension of the evening fucked away. She wraps her arms around him, won't let him pull away, though it can't be comfortable for her, with the door digging into her back.
"Dean," she says in that awed yet sleepy tone he never gets tired of hearing. "Dean, I--"
"I know, baby," he whispers against the sweaty hair at her temple. "I know."
Finally, he moves, gets rid of the condom, starts pulling his clothes back on. She lies there, looking well and truly fucked, her eyelids heavy and her mouth still red and swollen.
"We better get back," he says. "Got some packing to do."
She pushes a hand through her hair, takes a deep breath, and says, "We don't have to."
He knows he heard right the first time but he can't quite wrap his sex-fogged mind around it. "What?" He hands her the dress, wills her to put it on so he can pay attention to the conversation he doesn't want to have.
She yanks the dress on over her head, but ignores the bra and panties, which really doesn't make it easier to focus.
"We don't have to go back."
"Sam--"
She looks eager, earnest, her eyes wide and bright now, her voice pleading. "We could just drive away right now. We could go anywhere. I bet Dad wouldn't even notice until sometime tomorrow."
The tension comes flooding back, stiffening his shoulders and throbbing behind his eyes, all his contentment washed away.
"Sam, don't talk about Dad like that. He's our father, and he deserves our respect. Of course, he would notice." He shakes his head. "I don't know what your problem is, Sammy. I don't know why I even thought--" He stops, because he knew it was dumb to even think about hoping, but he can't help it where she's concerned.
"We could do it, Dean. You know we could."
"No, we couldn't. It's not safe."
"That's such bullshit. How is facing a water wraith or a pack of hellhounds safer than going somewhere far away from here and being normal? That doesn't even make any sense."
"Give up on normal, Sam. We can't ever have it." He's so tired of this argument, has run out of ways to explain it, and anyway, it wouldn't matter if he'd found the perfect explanation, because she doesn't want to understand. "We know too much. Don't you get it? We can't--I can't walk away, not when I know other people, other families, need our help. But if you want to be a selfish little brat--" He stops himself again, afraid if he tells her she can go alone, she will. He takes a deep breath. "We have to go back."
She climbs into the front seat and stares out the window as they drive back to the motel. They don't speak. There's nothing left to say.
They pretend it never happened, but Dean knows the clock is ticking, and ignoring it won't make it stop.
*
It's a kelpie, not a water wraith, in Green Bay, and then a poltergeist in Wabash. Powries in Pittsburgh, a shapeshifter in Charleston, and vengeful spirits all along the way. June slips by in miles logged and monsters killed, in hours spent sneaking off with Sam, making every moment count, trying to memorize the soft curve of her hip, the low pitch of her laugh, the way the late afternoon light makes her eyes more green than brown when she comes apart in his arms.
Dad's drinking again, during the downtime between hunts, which is always when he's at his worst, and Sam's alternating between bitchy and sullen, as if she's permanently stuck in PMS-mode, and Dean sometimes wishes he could wash his hands of both of them, but mostly he wishes they could see how alike they are. That family--their family--is more important than college or even hunting, and that if they'd both just give a little, everything would be much easier. But they don't listen, don't seem to care. Both of them are dead-set on having their own way, and neither seems to give a damn about him, stuck in the middle and trying to keep the peace.
Dad's temper frays early and often, and he disappears for three days in Tulsa, and for a week in Galveston.
He takes off again when they hit Shreveport, leaving them to deal with a ghost wreaking havoc in one of the riverboat casinos. They pose as a couple to investigate, and Dean realizes how easy it would be to become the people they're pretending to be. For a second, he even thinks about doing it, but then reality sets in.
They're back in Florida for the fourth of July, being eaten alive by mosquitoes when they're not melting from the heat, hunting some kind of swamp monster in Lake Okeechobee. Dad and Sam make it almost all the way through the town's fireworks display before they start fighting, and between them Dean feels every barb and sharp remark like they're aimed at him.
Dad stomps off to the bar to drink Jack Daniels with the good ole boys, muttering about stubborn women who don't know what's best for them, and Dean wants to bitch Sam out for not being able to shut the fuck up for once in her life, for always pushing, but he can't, because he doesn't know when she's going to leave, and he doesn't want to push her into going.
Instead, they sit and watch the finale of the fireworks show, oohing and aahing with the crowd, and Sam looks so happy it makes Dean's chest ache. Then she goes down on him in the car, her hand slipping down into her shorts to finger herself while her mouth is tight and wet on his dick, and hotter than the humid summer air heavy on his skin. He tangles a hand in her hair and closes his eyes, knows the shape of her bones in his fingertips, and he comes like one of those mortars, bursting into a thousand glittering shards of light and slowly floating back to earth.
Every time they fuck now, he thinks it could be the last, and he can't bring himself to stop, though he knows he should. Knows that soon enough, it won't be up to him at all, and that makes it harder and easier all at once.
The middle of August finds them out on the west coast, in Aberdeen--rumors of a sasquatch--and when Sam's not talking about Billy Gohl, she's babbling about Kurt Cobain. Dean doesn't know why he's surprised at how morbid she is sometimes.
The rumors turn out to be false, and Dad's out getting drunk with one of the hunters he knows in the area. Sam's at the library, doing God only knows what, and Dean is stuck in the motel room, bored, and sick of the rain.
He pulls out his throwing knives--Dad thinks it's mostly a waste of time, but Dean's gotten pretty good at both circus and combat-style throwing. It's not the same as having a well-loved gun in his hand, but he likes the rigor of it, the attention the knives demand, edges honed sharp and metal warm from his touch, the way his focus narrows to the knife and the target.
He loses track of time, and he's still at it when Sam comes back.
She leans against the desk, arms crossed over her chest, legs crossed at the ankles. The look on her face is intent, hungry, and she says, "Do that again," when he's finished.
"C'mere." He grabs her hand, pulls her upright. "You trust me?"
"You gonna throw knives at me?"
"Why the hell would I wanna do that?"
"In the movies--"
"Yeah, and at the circus, too, which you'd know if you hadn't spent the whole time hiding from the clowns like a baby."
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying. You'll face werewolves without flinching, but clowns--"
"Clowns are evil, Dean. Everyone knows that. Except you, apparently."
She says it completely seriously, too, which would make him laugh in other circumstances, but right now he ignores that, too busy positioning her in the spot he'd been standing in, about ten feet from the target, and she lets him.
"Here." He puts the knife, steel warm and smudged from his fingers, into her hand, guides her arm into the right position. "And throw." The knife falls short of the target, and he snorts in disgust. "Come on, Sam, I know you can do better than that." She's always been more interested in knives than in guns. "Didn't you throw javelin in track?"
"You know I didn't."
"Well, maybe you should have. Could be a useful skill for a hunter to have." He puts another knife in her hand. "Again."
This time, she throws, and the point of the knife is embedded in the target, and he presses another one into her hand. It joins the other in the target, quivering a little from the force of the throw.
"Maybe I don't judge everything I do by how useful it'll be in hunting."
"Maybe you should," he repeats.
She turns to him, mouth open to argue, and he kisses her. He doesn't want to hear her reject what he has to teach her, the only life he has to give her. He sucks her tongue into his mouth, hands tightening on her hips, pulling her flush against him. Awareness that every day brings the day she'll leave closer makes him rougher than he normally is, seeking to hold and mark what's his, make sure she never forgets, though he knows she will. Knows she should.
They stumble around a little, and then she's sitting on the desk and he's standing between her knees, hands cupping her face, thumbs brushing over the smooth, soft skin of her cheeks, the bump of the mole by her nose. She wraps her legs around him, urging him closer, her hands slipping under his t-shirt to glide along his belly and back, soft, quick touches that make him breathless and needy.
It's warm and it's hot, two different kinds of heat burning inside him, one purely the physical, and he can live without that if he has to, can get the sex anywhere, though it's never as good because it lacks that other warmth he only ever feels with her. And it's not enough--he wants to be inside her, wants to hold her inside of him, twined together until there's no separating them, no way for anyone or anything to take her away.
She undoes his belt and fly, shoves her hand down into his boxer-briefs to curl around him, and he fumbles for the condom in his wallet before he lets his jeans fall to his ankles. She's as desperate as he is, breath coming in short, quick bursts against his overheated skin, the air conditioning in the room not enough to cool this down, even if it was capable of producing more than mildly cold air. She's got to be counting the days down, too, on some secret calendar she's got stashed somewhere, red X's through all their days together and nothing but a blank future ahead. He can't think about that right now, though, not while she's shimmying out of her jeans and panties and pulling him close.
He tries to go slow, tries to memorize every gasp and flutter and moan she makes as he fucks her, but fear makes him drive into her, fingers stroking at her clit. He tells her how tight she is, how wet and hot, teases her about how much she loves having his dick in her cunt, how much he likes watching himself slide in and out, better than any porn he's ever seen, his voice low and hoarse and filthy. She takes it all and begs for more, breathlessly chanting his name like it's the name of God, voice breaking on it when she comes, clenching tight around him and shuddering in his arms. He follows, world whiting out with pleasure, and for a few minutes nothing exists but him and her, and the sticky-hot way they're clinging to each other, his cheek resting on the top of her head, her face nestled in the crook of his neck. He tries to pretend it's not anything like goodbye.
He loves the way she's so sleepy and content afterwards, like a cat lying in the sun, loves the way she lets him hold her instead of trying to break free.
"Dean," she says, voice thick with satisfaction, "when summer's over--"
He kisses her again, the easiest way ever to end a conversation with her, and she sighs into his mouth, shoulders tensing for a second then relaxing. He knows they'll eventually have to have a talk--possibly A Talk, about Feelings, even--but he's going to put it off as long as humanly possible.
*
Dean can hear them shouting when he gets out of the car, the familiar rhythm of their fighting almost comforting, until the meaning of Sam's words penetrates--I got a scholarship, and I'm going. You can't stop me.
Even knowing it was coming, he's not prepared for how much it hurts, nothing near as easy as a knife sliding cool and clean into his belly; more like the burning punch of a bullet to the heart, all pain and fire and gasping for breath that won't come. He's proud of her, too; it's swamped under by the hurt, but the pride is there, fierce and sharp like a knot of razors in his chest.
And Dad's spitting ultimatums in return, anger and fear and desperation to keep her safe goading him to say the words guaranteed to drive her away, words that will echo in Dean's head for years--If you leave, don't come back--proof of what Dean's always known, that even love has its limits, and that words, once spoken, can't be taken back. Better not to speak at all. Dad, of all people, should know better, after the hours he's spent drilling them in rituals and exorcisms and spells; he taught them that the power of words is never something to be taken lightly, and that words spoken in anger have multiple layers of strength.
Dean gets between them, guilty that he wasn't here when it started, that maybe he could have kept it from going down like this, but it's too late. Maybe it's always been too little, too late, and he's never been enough to hold them together when they try to tear each other apart--they've been heading towards this fight for years, no detours or alternate destinations allowed.
She turns away, throwing Dad's words back in his face--Fine! I'm going and I won't come back!--and grabs her duffel bag from beside the bed. Dean can see it's all packed and ready. Fuck. He'd hoped she'd give him some warning first, though he knows that's not the Winchester way--they're always prepared to leave at a moment's notice, to leave behind everything if they have to. He's just not used to being the thing that gets left behind.
She slings the bag over her shoulder and storms out of the room in a righteous fury, and Dad just stares after her like he can't quite believe it's happening, like it's some kind of nightmare he can't wake up from.
But Dean knows it's not a dream, can feel the sweat trickling down his back from the summer heat, hear the low hum of the air conditioner and the buzz of a mosquito lazily hovering in the warm air of the room, smell the take-out he's just dropped onto the table in grease-stained paper bags, and he knows now it's going to be left to sit uneaten all night. He wishes Dad would snap out of it, say something, do something, before she's too far gone to bring back. If she isn't already.
Dad looks at him, eyes dark with regret and something that might be fear. He scrubs a hand that trembles a little over his face, like he's just waking up, and his voice is hoarse when he says, "Go after her, Dean. Make sure she's--"
"Yeah, Dad. Of course." Dean turns and heads back out into the early evening heat. Sam's halfway across the parking lot, heading for the road. "Sammy, wait."
She stops and lets the bag slide down her shoulder into her hand, but doesn't turn to face him. He knows she's pissed at him, too, thinks he should have defended her, supported her, or maybe she wants him to beg her to stay. Maybe both. Sam's always wanted more than he could give her, and he's given her everything he's got.
"Sammy," he says again, reaching out to touch her arm. "When were you planning to tell me?"
She purses her lips, annoyed. "When were you planning to ask?"
He rubs his jaw, because he doesn't want to fight, not now, not like this, even though he feels like she's gouged a hole in his chest where his heart should be.
"I'm asking now."
"Well, I'm telling you now." She takes a deep, shaky breath, shoves a hand through her hair, already darkening with sweat at the temples in the Arizona heat. "I'm going to California, Dean. Stanford. It's practically Ivy. They gave me a full ride--tuition, housing, the whole deal."
He doesn't even try to smile, though he knows he should--smile and tell her how proud he is, how much he wants this for her, really he does. But not like this. Never like this.
Instead, he grabs her bag. He expects her to fight, but she doesn't; she lets him take it and sling it over his shoulder. It's not as heavy as he expected, and he wonders what else she's leaving behind.
"Come on," he says. "I'll drive you to the station." It's the closest he can come to congratulations or any of the other things he knows he should say--any of the things normal people would say--and he hopes she understands.
She doesn't say anything, just follows him back to the car, maybe the last time she'll ever follow him anywhere, but he can't think about that right now. When they're in the car, she pulls a tape out of her bag and shoves it into the tape deck, and he lets her, doesn't even complain when the familiar opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blare from the speakers.
It's only about ten minutes to the bus depot, and it feels both longer and shorter, music only making the silence between them harder to bear.
When he pulls into the parking lot, she turns to look at him, finally, and says, "You could come with. Get an apartment, get a job." He shakes his head, won't look at her. She keeps talking, voice intense and shaky. "Have a life, Dean. A normal life. You and me." She reaches out, cups his jaw, traces his lips with her thumb. "We can start over in a place where nobody knows us."
"Baby, I can't. You know that." He looks at her, then, mirrors her gesture, soft skin of her cheek warm against his palm. "This isn't part of normal," he says. "It can't be." He doesn't say, I can't be, but it means the same thing. He takes one of the bracelets she gave him and slips it off his wrist and onto hers, the only bond and protection he can give her. "Take care of yourself, Sammy." He wants to tell her to call, to write, to stay in touch, but he knows she won't, not after what Dad said. Not after she's asked him to come with her and he's said no.
She nods. "I figured that's what you'd say, but I had to ask." Her lower lip trembles and the tears in her eyes spill over, hot and salty on his tongue as he kisses her goodbye, trying to say everything he can't say in words, about how much he loves her and needs her, how he knows she has to go and hates that she does. How she'll always have someplace to come back to as long as he's alive, and that Dad didn't really mean it, and please don't go, all wrapped up in the stroke of his tongue over hers, the soft ragged panting of their shared breath.
"Jerk," she says when she pulls back from the kiss.
"Brat," he answers, smearing a tear away with his thumb.
He kisses her again, softly, gently, press of lips on lips with no tongue at all, and doesn't flinch when she opens the door and gets out of the car. He watches her walk into the bus station, shoulders square even under the weight of her bag. He watches until she's out of sight, and he doesn't leave until his hands have stopped shaking, and Kurt Cobain swears he doesn't have a gun.
When he licks his lips, all he tastes is cherry Chapstick, and nothing of Sam at all.
*
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue | Notes
*
Part 4
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue | Notes
Or you can read it in one long chunk here.
*
It was weird when they started, and it's weird now that they've stopped. Dean's gotten so used to being able to touch her, kiss her, fuck her, and now he can't do any of those things. Sometimes, he thinks about telling her to forget it, he didn't mean it, he never wanted to stop, and please can they start again? But he can't. He won't.
She disappears from the breakfast table just as he stumbles into the kitchen, and comes to the dinner table worn out from track and whatever hand-to-hand Dad's drilling her in afterward. She's silent and shadow-eyed for a few weeks, mouth twisting in a sad, jaded smile when Dad asks how she's feeling. She sits on the far end of the couch now, or lies on the floor when they watch television, instead of cuddling up with Dean and sharing the bowl of popcorn.
He throws himself into hunting--Dad is glad of the backup, and Florida is full of freaky shit that keeps them busy. They take Sam with them sometimes--she's gotten good at knowing which battles to fight and which to let pass, and she's turning into a skilled hunter, as much as she'd like to deny it. Dean's less nervous each time--he knows she can take care of herself, and he and Dad are there if something goes wrong--but that sick feeling in his stomach never quite goes away, that worry that something's going to happen to her and he's not going to be able to stop it.
Maybe college really would be better--safer--for her. That thought makes him a little queasy, too, and not just because it's a betrayal of Dad and everything he's raised them to be, but because he knows, suddenly, he knows, with a certainty he's been trying to ignore, that she's going to leave. Maybe he's always known it.
He's making pretty decent money, taking extra shifts so he doesn't have to hang around the house and watch Sam avoid him, and one night he sneaks into her room while she's sleeping, slips two hundred dollars into her paperback copy of The Sound and the Fury--he doesn't know what the deal is with applications and test fees, but more money's always better than less. And maybe if they spend some time apart, get some distance between them, her feelings will fade, and she'll find someone else to love. He's pretty sure his feelings aren't going anywhere; everything he is, is all wrapped up in Sam and has been since the day they brought her home from the hospital seventeen years ago. He tightens his fist at the thought, nearly rips the back of the book off at the thought of her with anyone else, but that's the only kind of normal he has to give her.
She rolls over, murmurs, "Dean?"
He swallows hard, whispers, "I'm here, Sammy." He brushes the hair back from her forehead, leans close to breathe her in and press a kiss to her temple.
"Okay." She settles back into sleep and he watches her for a few minutes before he goes to his own room and reminds himself that he's doing the right thing.
*
They're after a poltergeist in Jacksonville this time, so she sits and reads while Dean drives, the squeak of her highlighter against the glossy pages of her textbook loud and accusing in the unaccustomed silence.
He turns on the radio to drown her out, and that damn Santana song with the guy from that lame band Sam likes comes on.
"Man, Santana really sold out with this shit," he says.
"I like it."
"You would."
"It's fun." She taps her highlighter against her teeth. "It's got a good beat and you can dance to it. Dick."
He shoots her a glance. She's smirking at him. He can't help but grin back.
"It's no 'Black Magic Woman.'" He has good memories of that song on the radio while Melissa Greeley went down on him in the parking lot of Woodrow Wilson High School his junior year. Probably smarter not to mention that right now, though.
"And thank God for that."
"You just don't know good music when you hear it, Sammy."
"Whatever. Just because I like things that were recorded after I was born doesn't mean I don't know what's good." He grunts, and she slides a glance in his direction. "You know, he collaborated with Eric Clapton on that album, too." Says it like she's laying down the winning hand in a poker game. Says it like she's interested in teasing him again, in having a conversation, instead of the way it's been the past few weeks.
"Well, maybe it doesn't completely suck," he concedes, and feels something ease in his chest when she laughs.
*
They spend the holidays with Pastor Jim again, and Dean kind of digs the tradition, though he'd never tell anyone that. He knows Sam likes it, too; she and Pastor Jim have long talks about books and philosophy and stuff Dean pretends not to be interested in, because that's Sammy's thing, and he knows she likes having something that's hers and no one else's.
They head west this time, land in Pocatello just in time to get Sam enrolled in her last semester of high school. Dad's unsure at first if they're even going to stay, so they end up living in a two-bedroom suite at the Thunderbird Motel for a couple of months, and by that point it's not even worth renting an apartment, Dad says, since they're going to be leaving after Sam graduates, anyway.
Dean works as a day laborer on a construction site near the university, but he and Dad both spend most of their time hunting--lots of restless spirits up this way, and a lot of miles logged between hunts and what's passing for home these days. When they're not hunting, he goes to the bars--it's a university town, and there are always frat boys to fleece and sorority girls to fuck, and it's so easy to lose himself in their sweet-smelling hair and supple bodies, and walk away after without a backward glance.
If Sam notices, she doesn't say anything. No smart remarks, no teasing, no disgusted looks at breakfast. He should be glad he doesn't have to deal with her shit, but he kind of misses it.
He tries not to think of what else he misses, not now that they've come out the other side and things have started to settle into some kind of normal between them. He'd thought, when he'd made the decision, that that was the hard part, but a two-bedroom suite isn't really big enough to give them any kind of distance. They're still together more often than not, and it's hard not to reach out and pull her into his lap when they're watching "Behind the Music," hard not to not climb into bed with her when he hears her tossing and turning restlessly at night, especially when he knows a surefire cure for her insomnia.
It's easier, then, to spend his nights elsewhere, even if sometimes it feels like a betrayal.
He gets into fights occasionally, because he sometimes forgets that the frat boys don't like losing both their girls and their money all at the same time, and he comes on a little strong. One night a couple months after they arrived in Pocatello, he's washing up after a fight (big, lumbering jock type, thought he could overpower Dean, who used his own strength against him), running cold water over his bruised knuckles and shaking his head at the drunken stupidity of certain members of his gender, when he hears Sam crying in the bedroom. The sound stops him dead, makes his stomach drop and his gorge rise.
He dries his hands quickly and moves into the bedroom.
"Sam, Sam, Sammy," he whispers, sitting down on the bed beside her. "What's wrong?" He expects her to brush him off, so he's kind of shocked when she flings herself into his lap and starts sobbing against his chest.
He grabs the box of tissues off the nightstand and feeds them to her two and three at a time, and she clings to him the way she used to when she was little and was afraid Dad wasn't going to come home from a hunt. He rubs circles on her back, trying to calm her down, and buries his face in her hair, breathing her in.
"Baby, what's wrong?" he asks again when her sobs have tailed off into hiccups and whimpers.
"There's this girl, Kathy, at school," she whispers, head still tucked beneath his chin, and he braces himself. Sam hasn't gotten picked on much since middle school--she's good at fitting in, at making friends, making herself invisible if she has to be, all the things Dean never quite managed when he was in school. "She's on the track team, too, does the long jump and the pole vault." She reaches for another tissue, blows her nose, and tosses it at the garbage pail. She misses, and they both ignore it. "You'd like her. She's almost as tall as I am, but busty. She's got red hair and blue eyes and legs...." She trails off, and he feels like he's missing an important piece of the puzzle.
"So, what? You both like the same guy and he chose her?" he guesses, ignoring the curl of jealousy in his belly at the thought of Sam liking some guy, and anger at the idea of the guy not liking her back. "Guys are stupid, you know. Think with our downstairs brains all the time. I can beat him up for you, if you want."
"No," she chokes out, and starts sobbing again.
He keeps rubbing her back. He hates crying women, even when it's not his fault they're crying, and a crying Sammy is about ten million times worse, especially since he still doesn't know what's wrong. Or how to fix it.
"Okay, okay. I won't beat him up. You want that satisfaction yourself, huh?"
She gets hold of herself a second time, scrubs at her face with the back of her hand. "No," she says. She won't look at him, stares down at the soggy, snotty mess of tissues in her fist. "There's no guy."
"Okay, so, what? Did this Kathy chick insult your hair? Get a higher grade on her English paper? Gimme a little help here, Sammy."
"What's wrong with my hair?" It's weak, but the fact that she made the effort is good. She still won't look at him, though, and that worries him more than anything.
"You're getting a little shaggy," he starts, and she grunts and thwacks him one, which is another good sign.
"You're such a jerk."
"Yeah, but I'm your jerk," he says, and that gets him a teary smile. "Come on, Sammy, spill."
"We're--me and Kathy--we were friends. She was really nice to me when I started school here, and we ate lunch together, and her locker is next to mine in the girls' locker room, so we used to change together, and she would, when we changed, I thought she was--" She starts shredding the wad of tissues she's holding. "I thought she was flirting with me, and I liked her, and I tried to kiss her, and now she thinks I'm a ginormous freak." That sets her off again, even though he'd have thought she was all cried out.
And then what she's said sinks in, and he rests his chin on the top of her head and tries to process it.
"Okay," he says, mouth on autopilot while his brain catches up. "Okay. So. I normally don't hit chicks--well, unless they're evil--but we could totally prank her. Break into her house, put some Nair in her shampoo or something. Does she have a car? We could set her car on fire."
She pushes away, hits him again, flat of her palm against his chest. "Don't you understand? She's going to tell the whole school I'm some kind of lesbian freak."
"Well, you're definitely a freak, Sammy, but I got my doubts about the lesbian thing. You like dick too much to be totally gay." He stops, horrified that he actually said it out loud, and she makes a choking sound that might be laughter or might be disgust. He can't seem to stop talking. "Though I guess it would explain all the angry chick rock."
Another thump to his chest, and it's okay, because better an angry Sammy than a crying one. "Dean."
And yeah, okay, he certainly shouldn't know that about his kid sister, and he probably shouldn't have said it, either, but it's true.
At least, he thinks it is.
He swallows hard, stomach dropping in sudden fear. "Sam. Sammy. You liked it, right? I didn't--It wasn't--I never meant to hurt--" The you gets swallowed when she kisses him, fierce and desperate, all wet heat and tongue and salt-sharp saliva. He closes his eyes, kisses her back with that same desperation, and God, maybe there really is something wrong with him, but he's missed this, missed her, the way she tastes and smells and feels when they're this close together and nothing can get between them.
"You never did," she whispers against his mouth, shifting so she can straddle him. "You never would."
He wishes he could be that sure.
It's so easy to hold her, to hold on, to slip his hands up under the t-shirt she's wearing to feel warm skin beneath his fingertips, as she rolls her hips and breathes in his gasp of relief.
It's her turn to gasp when he slides his hands around, thumbs brushing the undercurves of her breasts, and he pulls back, lifts her off his lap and onto the bed. Forces himself to say, "Sam, we can't."
"Even you don't want me anymore. I know you've been fucking around again," she says in a low, bitter voice, wrapping her arms around herself. "I'm a freak."
"Yeah, but you're my freak." He forces a grin, trying to cajole an answering grin out of her.
Her mouth doesn't even twitch. "It's easy for you, isn't it?"
"None of this is easy for me," he answers, possibly the most honest he's ever been with her while he's not fucking her, letting his body say all the things he can't. He cups her cheek and she turns her face, presses a kiss to his palm. She takes his hand, slides her lips down to rest warm and wet on his wrist, between the bracelets she gave him for his birthday. His breath hitches, and he says, "Sam."
"It can be easy," she says, then touches her tongue to his pulse. "As easy as this." She pulls him close, and he lets her, lets himself lean into her, press her back against the pillows, fitting between her legs like he belongs there. Because she's right--this has always been the easy part, the part where it's just him and her against the darkness.
Her skin tastes like tears, like salt poured to protect them both. This is as close as he comes to true prayer--whispering her name against her lips--and to belief--in the heat of her cunt surrounding him, the shift and shudder of her muscles as they move together, and the arch of her back when she comes keening into his mouth.
He cradles her close when they're done, and she's asleep before he can even start to regret letting himself fall into her again, four months of trying to keep his hands to himself swept away by her tears.
*
As far as Dean knows, Sam's shunning only lasts about a week--some new scandal comes along to capture the attention of the kids at Hillsborough High, and Sam's back to being that weird girl on the track team. At least, that's what she tells him. She occasionally talks about another girl on the team, Stacy or Tracy or something, and someone named Taylor from her AP History class, but she never mentions Kathy again, and he doesn't ask.
He's sure now that she's planning to leave, has seen the fat envelopes stuffed into her backpack--of course, they all want her; why wouldn't they? She's practically a freaking genius. He'd never tell her how awesome that is, but he brags sometimes, to the guys he works with, to Bobby, to Pastor Jim. To Dad once or twice, who grins and claps his shoulder proudly. He catches her filling out forms once, but he doesn't ask about that either, and she doesn't volunteer anything. She closes herself off to him now, more than ever before, and he wonders if she's doing it for his protection or her own; either way, it's only making things worse as far as he's concerned.
He spends more time now training her, hours spent drilling her in hand-to-hand, always her weakest area, because if he's not going to be around to protect her, he needs to know she can protect herself.
Of course, protecting her has been hardwired into his brain, so the next time Dad takes them hunting--skinwalker in Reno--she freezes for just a second and Dean shoves her down, engages the thing himself. It tosses him like a ragdoll before Dad pumps its heart full of silver, and Dean can feel his ribs crack, the agony making him black out.
He loses the next few days in a haze of pain and narcotics, but he remembers the determined set of Dad's jaw, the scared, pinched look on Sam's paper white face, the sudden paleness making her eyes startlingly green. He remembers the ridiculously cheerful ER doctor babbling on about the possibility of a punctured lung that, thankfully, never does materialize, and who sends him home with a prescription for painkillers and admonitions to rest and let himself heal, and to be more careful on his motorcycle.
Sam slips into bed with him when she gets home from school each afternoon, the long line of her body pressing warm and soft against his good side, and it hurts a little less to breathe when she's there, though he can't tell her that.
"I'm fine," he lies, but she doesn't believe him, doesn't go away, so it's okay. It's worth the pain to be able to wrap an arm around her shoulders and hold her close, to be able to fall asleep and wake up beside her without feeling like it's wrong in any way.
Dad takes off to handle a black dog up in Great Falls that Saturday morning, and for the first time ever, before he goes, he hands the shotgun to Sam and says, "Watch out for your brother, will you?"
She squares her shoulders and takes the gun with a solemn look. "Yes, sir," she says, and for once, there's no anger or mockery in her tone.
Dean's propped up against some pillows, clicking through the channels, milking the situation for all it's worth. He makes Sammy bring him sodas with bendy straws, and generally orders her around until she snaps, "You need me to help you take a piss, too?" and throws a pillow at his head.
"Cranky girl," he says, catching the pillow and tucking it under his good arm. "I have the perfect cure."
"I'm not cranky," she lies. "I'm just tired. Some of us haven't been lying around on our asses for the past four days. Some of us were worried about our stupid, overprotective brothers."
"You were worried? Oh, Sammy, that's so sweet," he teases, but the warmth in his chest isn't from the pain or the drugs. "Don't you know I'm indestructible?"
She rolls her eyes. "Then you don't need me waiting on you hand and foot. Maybe I'll go to the library."
"It's Saturday," he says, scandalized. "No books or homework or geeky shit today, Sammy. I have something way better planned."
She cocks her hip, rests a hand on it, looks like every waitress in every diner they've ever eaten dinner in, which makes him smile. "Oh, yeah?"
He hits TNT just as the voiceover comes on. "Yeah." He gestures towards the television. "Star Wars marathon."
She laughs in disbelief. "You just said, 'no geeky shit,' Dean."
"Nothing geeky about Han Solo. Or Princess Leia in that bikini."
"Uh huh."
She comes close enough for him to grab her wrist--so strong and still so delicate--and pull her down onto the bed next to him. He grimaces when the bounce of the mattress jogs his ribs, but then she settles in, her head on his shoulder and her hand resting lightly on his belly. The familiar words scroll up the screen, and there's no place else he'd rather be right now than here.
*
Sam graduates from Hillsborough High three weeks after her eighteenth birthday. Dad takes them out to dinner to celebrate. They didn't do much for her birthday--Dad was gone on a hunt with Caleb, and Sam herself was buried in studying for finals. Dean couldn't really understand that--she'd already got the whole college thing in the bag, so it's not like those grades mattered, but Sammy's a grades junkie, through and through.
She and Dad had actually agreed to postpone the celebration without any shouting. Dean's still worried one or the other of them might be possessed.
They dress up and go out for graduation--Dad's in a jacket and tie, and Dean's got on his nice khakis and a blue button down shirt Sam picked up for him at the Gap for his birthday and has bitched at him for not wearing since, and she's got a sleeveless yellow dress on, with a skirt that shows off way too much leg. Every eye in the place follows her as the maître d' leads them to a table, and Dean's torn between being proud and wanting to hide her away, because this is it, this is the big deal. She's eighteen and she's a high school graduate--she can be whatever she wants now, and he knows the last thing she wants to be is Sam Winchester, demon hunter.
Once they're settled at the table, Dad orders a bottle of wine and pours some for each of them.
Dean raises his glass and says, "I'm proud of you, Sammy."
They clink glasses, delicate crystal chiming like bells, and Dad looks startled for a second before he says, "Me, too."
Sam flushes pink and laughs, lips bright with wine and lipstick, the happiest Dean's seen her in a long time. Maybe this will work, he thinks. Maybe we can make this work.
But Dad's never been one to let the moment stand, or maybe he's just oblivious, so focused on the hunt that he can't let it go, even for one night. "We're leaving for Green Bay in the morning," he says. "Caleb has a job for us. Said it might be a water wraith."
Sam sets her glass down hard, her wine swirling dangerously and her smile disappearing. Dean forces himself not to flinch. Instead, he catches the waiter's eye and calls him over.
"What are the specials?" he asks, though he knows he's probably just going to order steak.
The tension defused for the moment, Dean takes a sip of wine and starts mentally cataloguing what needs to be packed and what can be left behind. It keeps him calm while he waits for Sam to explode. He won't be sorry to leave Pocatello and that goddamn motel room. It'll be nice to be back on the road, doing what they do best.
They make it through dinner without a fight, though Dad drinks too much wine and Sam barely cracks a smile, even though Dean's totally working the charm. They decide to skip coffee and dessert, because Sam can't open her gift in public, anyway. On his way home from work, Dean had picked up a couple of CDs he thinks she'll like, as well, and a carton of ice cream. It'll be more than enough.
Back at the motel, Dad slips his tie off and pours himself some scotch, while Dean puts the ice cream out to soften and sets the coffee brewing. He digs Sam's presents out of the hiding place and hands the big one to her with a grin.
She laughs at the Star Wars wrapping paper, and tears it open slowly, frown of concentration on her face.
The box is fine wood, and when she flips it open, the scythe is nestled against green felt, blade sharp and gleaming.
"You know," she says, standing and dropping the box onto the table, "I have an Amazon wishlist. This wasn't on it." She stalks into her bedroom and slams the door shut behind her.
"That went well," he mutters, still holding the wrapped box with the CDs in his hand.
Dad looks like he can't decide if he wants to start yelling or finish his drink.
Dean gets up, puts a hand on his shoulder, and says, "She'll come around." The lie tastes bitter on his tongue, but he forces it out. "I'm just gonna--" He jerks his head towards the door and Dad nods. He's pouring another two fingers of scotch into his glass when Dean walks out.
Dean doesn't know how long he sits outside, the glass of the windshield warm against his back, the stars popping out as the night falls. He doesn't know why he doesn't just get in the car and drive away. He's thinking about it, watching the lightning bugs fly around the motel parking lot and listening to the crickets hum, when Sam comes outside. She's still in her yellow dress, looks like a lit candle in the twilight.
"So you know that episode of Star Trek with the mirror universe, where you can tell Spock is evil because he's got a goatee?" she says, sliding up onto the car next to him. He nods once. "Would you believe me if I told you that that was evil Sam from an alternate universe in there?"
"You don't have a goatee."
"The goatee is a metaphor."
He laughs, can't help it, can't stay mad at her. "Seen weirder shit," he says, nodding again. He glances over at her and she's smiling sheepishly, like she really is sorry.
"It's a beautiful knife. Thank you."
"We had it made special. Caleb has a friend who makes really cool weapons. You should see some of the shit on his website."
She nods, and lays her head on his shoulder. They sit in comfortable silence for a little bit, staring up at the stars.
"Take me for a ride, Dean."
"Dad?"
"He's got Johnny Walker keeping him company tonight."
"Whose fault is that?"
She sighs. "Dean, please?"
He growls low in annoyance at her, at himself for not being able to say no to her. "Fine. Get in the car."
"Can I drive?" She slides off the hood, practically bouncing.
Well, except on this one topic. "No."
"Dean--"
"No."
Another sigh. "Fine."
He takes her for ice cream, even though there's a perfectly good carton of vanilla fudge ripple back at the motel. Instead of heading straight back afterwards, he pulls into a secluded area behind the strip mall, and turns the car off.
When he kisses her, she tastes of cold and chocolate, and she laughs into his mouth. She cups his face with sticky fingers, and he sucks each one into his mouth, licking them clean as she giggles. She slides into his lap and they spend some quality time making out. He thinks he could do this forever, just him and Sam in the car, slick wet slide of tongue and lip against soft, sensitive skin, the gasp and moan and whisper of her voice speaking his name, and the low growl of her name in his mouth when he tells her how beautiful she is, and how much he wants her.
"Backseat," he says hoarsely, and watches as she swings her long legs over the back of the front seat to get there, skirt riding up to show him her panties. She scoots back against the door and he kneels between her thighs.
He goes slow, dragging her dress up her body, raising goosebumps and kissing them away. He pulls it off, tosses it onto the front seat, and does the same with her bra. His shirt follows, still buttoned and yanked up over his head in impatience to feel her skin warm against his with nothing in between.
Once he has that, though, he takes his time, presses long, lingering kisses to her mouth, her neck, her tits. Her hands stroke over his shoulders and back, and she asks questions she already knows the answers to.
"Where'd this one come from?" she asks, thumbing the thin, white-pink line of a scar on her bicep.
He leans in to trace his tongue over it. "Black dog, down in Abilene. Knocked you out of the way when you froze."
She folds her leg up and points to the small scar bisecting her kneecap. "This one?"
"You fell off your bike when you were twelve. There was glass in the street, cut right through your jeans." He runs the tip of his tongue over the mark, remembering the blood on her skin, the taste of it on his lips--though she was too old by then to believe anyone could kiss it better, he still wanted to, and she still let him. "Scared the shit out of me." He holds her leg there, blows a raspberry against the soft skin on the inside of her thigh before licking at it, changing her giggles to gasps. He breathes her in, presses his mouth to the crease where her leg joins her body, salt-tang bitter and addictive on his tongue, the taste of the slow, heavy pulse of need beating through him.
She pulls him up for a kiss, tongue thick and sweet like honey in his mouth, and wraps her leg around his hip, rubbing against the bulge of his erection, making them both pant a little. Then she ghosts a hand down his chest, finds the old scar just below his ribs, thin white line no one else would ever notice.
"Where'd you get this one?" she says, fingers tracing it lightly enough to tickle, making him suck in a surprised breath.
"You did that, Sammy, first time you ever handled a knife." He hadn't expected her to lunge, hadn't moved out of the way fast enough; it had looked worse than it was, not very deep, but he'd bled like a stuck pig. He hadn't expected it to scar, either, but he'd learned early on that there wasn't always a way to tell with these things. She'd cried, then, cried the way she rarely did when she hurt herself, and he'd spent more time comforting her than he had bandaging himself up. It's not the only scar she's left on him, though it's the only one she can see. He hopes it's the only one she knows about.
She bends forward, licks the scar, the flat of her tongue warm and wet on his skin, and he shivers. She slides her lips up, tip of her tongue darting out at random intervals now, no pattern he can find.
"What're you doing?"
She looks up, eyes dark and bright. "Counting freckles."
"Sam--"
She wraps a hand around the nape of his neck, pulls him in, and rains kisses on his face. "Want to kiss them all, every last inch of you," she says before she sucks his lower lip into her mouth, nips it with her teeth before letting go, her hands finally unzipping his khakis and slipping inside to stroke him.
"Might take some time," he manages, finding a condom before he shoves his pants and boxers out of the way.
"Be worth it, though," she answers with a grin as she wriggles out of her underwear and guides him inside her.
"Yeah," he breathes, trying not to read anything into it, trying not to hope she'll stay, that he can make her stay if he says or does the right thing, some mysterious ritual he hasn't figured out yet, but will if she gives him enough time and clues, just like a hunt, but so much more important and dangerous.
He kisses her softly as he thrusts, long slow strokes that have her gasping and pleading with him to speed up, her fingers slipping down between them to circle her clit. He loves the feel of her cunt tight and slick around him, the way she keeps talking, her voice breaking on his name when she's close, the sudden faraway look in her eyes before they flutter shut as she comes, muscles clenching around him, holding him so tight and deep inside her, his favorite place to be. He picks up the pace, thrusts harder and faster, desperate to lose himself in the short burst of heated oblivion when the world disappears and there's nothing but fierce pleasure so good it steals his breath.
When he's done, he slumps against her, sweaty, sticky, and satisfied, all the tension of the evening fucked away. She wraps her arms around him, won't let him pull away, though it can't be comfortable for her, with the door digging into her back.
"Dean," she says in that awed yet sleepy tone he never gets tired of hearing. "Dean, I--"
"I know, baby," he whispers against the sweaty hair at her temple. "I know."
Finally, he moves, gets rid of the condom, starts pulling his clothes back on. She lies there, looking well and truly fucked, her eyelids heavy and her mouth still red and swollen.
"We better get back," he says. "Got some packing to do."
She pushes a hand through her hair, takes a deep breath, and says, "We don't have to."
He knows he heard right the first time but he can't quite wrap his sex-fogged mind around it. "What?" He hands her the dress, wills her to put it on so he can pay attention to the conversation he doesn't want to have.
She yanks the dress on over her head, but ignores the bra and panties, which really doesn't make it easier to focus.
"We don't have to go back."
"Sam--"
She looks eager, earnest, her eyes wide and bright now, her voice pleading. "We could just drive away right now. We could go anywhere. I bet Dad wouldn't even notice until sometime tomorrow."
The tension comes flooding back, stiffening his shoulders and throbbing behind his eyes, all his contentment washed away.
"Sam, don't talk about Dad like that. He's our father, and he deserves our respect. Of course, he would notice." He shakes his head. "I don't know what your problem is, Sammy. I don't know why I even thought--" He stops, because he knew it was dumb to even think about hoping, but he can't help it where she's concerned.
"We could do it, Dean. You know we could."
"No, we couldn't. It's not safe."
"That's such bullshit. How is facing a water wraith or a pack of hellhounds safer than going somewhere far away from here and being normal? That doesn't even make any sense."
"Give up on normal, Sam. We can't ever have it." He's so tired of this argument, has run out of ways to explain it, and anyway, it wouldn't matter if he'd found the perfect explanation, because she doesn't want to understand. "We know too much. Don't you get it? We can't--I can't walk away, not when I know other people, other families, need our help. But if you want to be a selfish little brat--" He stops himself again, afraid if he tells her she can go alone, she will. He takes a deep breath. "We have to go back."
She climbs into the front seat and stares out the window as they drive back to the motel. They don't speak. There's nothing left to say.
They pretend it never happened, but Dean knows the clock is ticking, and ignoring it won't make it stop.
*
It's a kelpie, not a water wraith, in Green Bay, and then a poltergeist in Wabash. Powries in Pittsburgh, a shapeshifter in Charleston, and vengeful spirits all along the way. June slips by in miles logged and monsters killed, in hours spent sneaking off with Sam, making every moment count, trying to memorize the soft curve of her hip, the low pitch of her laugh, the way the late afternoon light makes her eyes more green than brown when she comes apart in his arms.
Dad's drinking again, during the downtime between hunts, which is always when he's at his worst, and Sam's alternating between bitchy and sullen, as if she's permanently stuck in PMS-mode, and Dean sometimes wishes he could wash his hands of both of them, but mostly he wishes they could see how alike they are. That family--their family--is more important than college or even hunting, and that if they'd both just give a little, everything would be much easier. But they don't listen, don't seem to care. Both of them are dead-set on having their own way, and neither seems to give a damn about him, stuck in the middle and trying to keep the peace.
Dad's temper frays early and often, and he disappears for three days in Tulsa, and for a week in Galveston.
He takes off again when they hit Shreveport, leaving them to deal with a ghost wreaking havoc in one of the riverboat casinos. They pose as a couple to investigate, and Dean realizes how easy it would be to become the people they're pretending to be. For a second, he even thinks about doing it, but then reality sets in.
They're back in Florida for the fourth of July, being eaten alive by mosquitoes when they're not melting from the heat, hunting some kind of swamp monster in Lake Okeechobee. Dad and Sam make it almost all the way through the town's fireworks display before they start fighting, and between them Dean feels every barb and sharp remark like they're aimed at him.
Dad stomps off to the bar to drink Jack Daniels with the good ole boys, muttering about stubborn women who don't know what's best for them, and Dean wants to bitch Sam out for not being able to shut the fuck up for once in her life, for always pushing, but he can't, because he doesn't know when she's going to leave, and he doesn't want to push her into going.
Instead, they sit and watch the finale of the fireworks show, oohing and aahing with the crowd, and Sam looks so happy it makes Dean's chest ache. Then she goes down on him in the car, her hand slipping down into her shorts to finger herself while her mouth is tight and wet on his dick, and hotter than the humid summer air heavy on his skin. He tangles a hand in her hair and closes his eyes, knows the shape of her bones in his fingertips, and he comes like one of those mortars, bursting into a thousand glittering shards of light and slowly floating back to earth.
Every time they fuck now, he thinks it could be the last, and he can't bring himself to stop, though he knows he should. Knows that soon enough, it won't be up to him at all, and that makes it harder and easier all at once.
The middle of August finds them out on the west coast, in Aberdeen--rumors of a sasquatch--and when Sam's not talking about Billy Gohl, she's babbling about Kurt Cobain. Dean doesn't know why he's surprised at how morbid she is sometimes.
The rumors turn out to be false, and Dad's out getting drunk with one of the hunters he knows in the area. Sam's at the library, doing God only knows what, and Dean is stuck in the motel room, bored, and sick of the rain.
He pulls out his throwing knives--Dad thinks it's mostly a waste of time, but Dean's gotten pretty good at both circus and combat-style throwing. It's not the same as having a well-loved gun in his hand, but he likes the rigor of it, the attention the knives demand, edges honed sharp and metal warm from his touch, the way his focus narrows to the knife and the target.
He loses track of time, and he's still at it when Sam comes back.
She leans against the desk, arms crossed over her chest, legs crossed at the ankles. The look on her face is intent, hungry, and she says, "Do that again," when he's finished.
"C'mere." He grabs her hand, pulls her upright. "You trust me?"
"You gonna throw knives at me?"
"Why the hell would I wanna do that?"
"In the movies--"
"Yeah, and at the circus, too, which you'd know if you hadn't spent the whole time hiding from the clowns like a baby."
"Shut up."
"I'm just saying. You'll face werewolves without flinching, but clowns--"
"Clowns are evil, Dean. Everyone knows that. Except you, apparently."
She says it completely seriously, too, which would make him laugh in other circumstances, but right now he ignores that, too busy positioning her in the spot he'd been standing in, about ten feet from the target, and she lets him.
"Here." He puts the knife, steel warm and smudged from his fingers, into her hand, guides her arm into the right position. "And throw." The knife falls short of the target, and he snorts in disgust. "Come on, Sam, I know you can do better than that." She's always been more interested in knives than in guns. "Didn't you throw javelin in track?"
"You know I didn't."
"Well, maybe you should have. Could be a useful skill for a hunter to have." He puts another knife in her hand. "Again."
This time, she throws, and the point of the knife is embedded in the target, and he presses another one into her hand. It joins the other in the target, quivering a little from the force of the throw.
"Maybe I don't judge everything I do by how useful it'll be in hunting."
"Maybe you should," he repeats.
She turns to him, mouth open to argue, and he kisses her. He doesn't want to hear her reject what he has to teach her, the only life he has to give her. He sucks her tongue into his mouth, hands tightening on her hips, pulling her flush against him. Awareness that every day brings the day she'll leave closer makes him rougher than he normally is, seeking to hold and mark what's his, make sure she never forgets, though he knows she will. Knows she should.
They stumble around a little, and then she's sitting on the desk and he's standing between her knees, hands cupping her face, thumbs brushing over the smooth, soft skin of her cheeks, the bump of the mole by her nose. She wraps her legs around him, urging him closer, her hands slipping under his t-shirt to glide along his belly and back, soft, quick touches that make him breathless and needy.
It's warm and it's hot, two different kinds of heat burning inside him, one purely the physical, and he can live without that if he has to, can get the sex anywhere, though it's never as good because it lacks that other warmth he only ever feels with her. And it's not enough--he wants to be inside her, wants to hold her inside of him, twined together until there's no separating them, no way for anyone or anything to take her away.
She undoes his belt and fly, shoves her hand down into his boxer-briefs to curl around him, and he fumbles for the condom in his wallet before he lets his jeans fall to his ankles. She's as desperate as he is, breath coming in short, quick bursts against his overheated skin, the air conditioning in the room not enough to cool this down, even if it was capable of producing more than mildly cold air. She's got to be counting the days down, too, on some secret calendar she's got stashed somewhere, red X's through all their days together and nothing but a blank future ahead. He can't think about that right now, though, not while she's shimmying out of her jeans and panties and pulling him close.
He tries to go slow, tries to memorize every gasp and flutter and moan she makes as he fucks her, but fear makes him drive into her, fingers stroking at her clit. He tells her how tight she is, how wet and hot, teases her about how much she loves having his dick in her cunt, how much he likes watching himself slide in and out, better than any porn he's ever seen, his voice low and hoarse and filthy. She takes it all and begs for more, breathlessly chanting his name like it's the name of God, voice breaking on it when she comes, clenching tight around him and shuddering in his arms. He follows, world whiting out with pleasure, and for a few minutes nothing exists but him and her, and the sticky-hot way they're clinging to each other, his cheek resting on the top of her head, her face nestled in the crook of his neck. He tries to pretend it's not anything like goodbye.
He loves the way she's so sleepy and content afterwards, like a cat lying in the sun, loves the way she lets him hold her instead of trying to break free.
"Dean," she says, voice thick with satisfaction, "when summer's over--"
He kisses her again, the easiest way ever to end a conversation with her, and she sighs into his mouth, shoulders tensing for a second then relaxing. He knows they'll eventually have to have a talk--possibly A Talk, about Feelings, even--but he's going to put it off as long as humanly possible.
*
Dean can hear them shouting when he gets out of the car, the familiar rhythm of their fighting almost comforting, until the meaning of Sam's words penetrates--I got a scholarship, and I'm going. You can't stop me.
Even knowing it was coming, he's not prepared for how much it hurts, nothing near as easy as a knife sliding cool and clean into his belly; more like the burning punch of a bullet to the heart, all pain and fire and gasping for breath that won't come. He's proud of her, too; it's swamped under by the hurt, but the pride is there, fierce and sharp like a knot of razors in his chest.
And Dad's spitting ultimatums in return, anger and fear and desperation to keep her safe goading him to say the words guaranteed to drive her away, words that will echo in Dean's head for years--If you leave, don't come back--proof of what Dean's always known, that even love has its limits, and that words, once spoken, can't be taken back. Better not to speak at all. Dad, of all people, should know better, after the hours he's spent drilling them in rituals and exorcisms and spells; he taught them that the power of words is never something to be taken lightly, and that words spoken in anger have multiple layers of strength.
Dean gets between them, guilty that he wasn't here when it started, that maybe he could have kept it from going down like this, but it's too late. Maybe it's always been too little, too late, and he's never been enough to hold them together when they try to tear each other apart--they've been heading towards this fight for years, no detours or alternate destinations allowed.
She turns away, throwing Dad's words back in his face--Fine! I'm going and I won't come back!--and grabs her duffel bag from beside the bed. Dean can see it's all packed and ready. Fuck. He'd hoped she'd give him some warning first, though he knows that's not the Winchester way--they're always prepared to leave at a moment's notice, to leave behind everything if they have to. He's just not used to being the thing that gets left behind.
She slings the bag over her shoulder and storms out of the room in a righteous fury, and Dad just stares after her like he can't quite believe it's happening, like it's some kind of nightmare he can't wake up from.
But Dean knows it's not a dream, can feel the sweat trickling down his back from the summer heat, hear the low hum of the air conditioner and the buzz of a mosquito lazily hovering in the warm air of the room, smell the take-out he's just dropped onto the table in grease-stained paper bags, and he knows now it's going to be left to sit uneaten all night. He wishes Dad would snap out of it, say something, do something, before she's too far gone to bring back. If she isn't already.
Dad looks at him, eyes dark with regret and something that might be fear. He scrubs a hand that trembles a little over his face, like he's just waking up, and his voice is hoarse when he says, "Go after her, Dean. Make sure she's--"
"Yeah, Dad. Of course." Dean turns and heads back out into the early evening heat. Sam's halfway across the parking lot, heading for the road. "Sammy, wait."
She stops and lets the bag slide down her shoulder into her hand, but doesn't turn to face him. He knows she's pissed at him, too, thinks he should have defended her, supported her, or maybe she wants him to beg her to stay. Maybe both. Sam's always wanted more than he could give her, and he's given her everything he's got.
"Sammy," he says again, reaching out to touch her arm. "When were you planning to tell me?"
She purses her lips, annoyed. "When were you planning to ask?"
He rubs his jaw, because he doesn't want to fight, not now, not like this, even though he feels like she's gouged a hole in his chest where his heart should be.
"I'm asking now."
"Well, I'm telling you now." She takes a deep, shaky breath, shoves a hand through her hair, already darkening with sweat at the temples in the Arizona heat. "I'm going to California, Dean. Stanford. It's practically Ivy. They gave me a full ride--tuition, housing, the whole deal."
He doesn't even try to smile, though he knows he should--smile and tell her how proud he is, how much he wants this for her, really he does. But not like this. Never like this.
Instead, he grabs her bag. He expects her to fight, but she doesn't; she lets him take it and sling it over his shoulder. It's not as heavy as he expected, and he wonders what else she's leaving behind.
"Come on," he says. "I'll drive you to the station." It's the closest he can come to congratulations or any of the other things he knows he should say--any of the things normal people would say--and he hopes she understands.
She doesn't say anything, just follows him back to the car, maybe the last time she'll ever follow him anywhere, but he can't think about that right now. When they're in the car, she pulls a tape out of her bag and shoves it into the tape deck, and he lets her, doesn't even complain when the familiar opening chords of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" blare from the speakers.
It's only about ten minutes to the bus depot, and it feels both longer and shorter, music only making the silence between them harder to bear.
When he pulls into the parking lot, she turns to look at him, finally, and says, "You could come with. Get an apartment, get a job." He shakes his head, won't look at her. She keeps talking, voice intense and shaky. "Have a life, Dean. A normal life. You and me." She reaches out, cups his jaw, traces his lips with her thumb. "We can start over in a place where nobody knows us."
"Baby, I can't. You know that." He looks at her, then, mirrors her gesture, soft skin of her cheek warm against his palm. "This isn't part of normal," he says. "It can't be." He doesn't say, I can't be, but it means the same thing. He takes one of the bracelets she gave him and slips it off his wrist and onto hers, the only bond and protection he can give her. "Take care of yourself, Sammy." He wants to tell her to call, to write, to stay in touch, but he knows she won't, not after what Dad said. Not after she's asked him to come with her and he's said no.
She nods. "I figured that's what you'd say, but I had to ask." Her lower lip trembles and the tears in her eyes spill over, hot and salty on his tongue as he kisses her goodbye, trying to say everything he can't say in words, about how much he loves her and needs her, how he knows she has to go and hates that she does. How she'll always have someplace to come back to as long as he's alive, and that Dad didn't really mean it, and please don't go, all wrapped up in the stroke of his tongue over hers, the soft ragged panting of their shared breath.
"Jerk," she says when she pulls back from the kiss.
"Brat," he answers, smearing a tear away with his thumb.
He kisses her again, softly, gently, press of lips on lips with no tongue at all, and doesn't flinch when she opens the door and gets out of the car. He watches her walk into the bus station, shoulders square even under the weight of her bag. He watches until she's out of sight, and he doesn't leave until his hands have stopped shaking, and Kurt Cobain swears he doesn't have a gun.
When he licks his lips, all he tastes is cherry Chapstick, and nothing of Sam at all.
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Epilogue | Notes
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