(no subject)
Beyond Here
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, spoilers through mid-first season, R, 10,043 words.
Trying to ignore Dean is like trying not to breathe or trying to keep his heart from beating.
This is either girlmostlikely's fault, for some very loose definition of fault, or it is for her. Perhaps it is both; that seems likely.
Orange juice and bitter black coffee at the diner with the all-day breakfast menu, the diner down the road from the motel where they slept and Sam can still see the vacancy sign from here, tall signpost in the motel parking lot with half the letters burned out, flashing VA-NA--Y V-CA-CY -ACANCY like a taunt, a reminder that nobody will notice when he and Dean leave town.
Sam spent most of last night poring over maps, maps and newspaper articles so old and poorly preserved that the copies he made with the machine at the library were almost indecipherable. By the time he went to bed, his eyes were burning, his vision blurred, and he had a headache that followed him into sleep, where he dreamed of hot blood dripping slowly from the ceiling, of Jess's eyes cold and white as the empty moon.
The headache was still there this morning, this early-afternoon, when Dean woke him up by throwing a pillow at his head and telling him way too loudly to get his ass out of bed already. Sam was edgy, unnerved, left unsettled by the nightmare and still half-asleep when he dragged into the bathroom, where he discovered that Dean had used up all of the hot water and left all of the towels in a soggy pile by the door. And maybe he snapped at Dean after that, but it hadn't been personal, not until after Dean asked if it was his time of the month or what.
By the time they left the room, they weren't speaking, which Sam wouldn't have minded so much if Dean didn't have this way of making that kind of quiet unbearable, his entire being radiating annoyance with Sam so that Sam couldn't look at him without being confronted with Dean's apparent belief that his life would be so much easier if Sam weren't such a whiny bitch all the time, oh my god, what did Dean ever do to be cursed with such an impossible burden.
Sam's falling asleep at the table, his elbows bumping the edge of his plate and his head drooping down, until his third cup of scalding coffee, and all the while Dean keeps kicking him under the table and making these dumb comments, jokes at Sam's expense, which is stupid because Sam isn't laughing and it's not like there's anybody else paying attention. Dean's only doing it to bother Sam, and Sam knows that, but that doesn't make it any less effective, any less grating.
Sam wants to scream at him, wants to tell Dean to shut the fuck up, please, but instead he's just trying to ignore him, which is hard to do because he grew up in awe of his brother and then spent years watching his brother's back. He's been watching his brother for almost his whole life and it's years too late to break that habit. Trying to ignore Dean is like trying not to breathe or trying to keep his heart from beating, a biological impossibility, the way Sam's hardwired with so many failsafes against the mere idea, so most of the time it's easier to just accept the inevitability of Dean and move on.
But Dean's been staring at him for the past three minutes now, his lip curled in that knowing smirk like he's waiting for Sam to do something else, to provide him with more material. Sam wants to punch him, wants to make him look away and wants to see what he would do, wants that instant of contact. He wants to see if Dean would punch him back, blacken his eye and spend the next couple of days looking slightly guilty, or if he would grab Sam's shirt, haul him across the table and Sam would gasp without thinking and the waitress would drop her tray and everyone would stare.
The sun comes out from behind the clouds, light twisting in suddenly through the window behind Dean like it's trying to punish Sam for looking at his brother, for having these thoughts, like it wants to slip behind his eyes and peel back his skin from the inside out so that everyone will know.
"Get the check," Sam says. He rubs his eyes and his chair scrapes loudly across the floor when he stands up. "I'm gonna stretch my legs, I'll meet you by the car."
"Whatever, Stretch," Dean says, seizing that one word like Sam should have known he would, and Sam winces. He hasn't thought about that in years, Dean's nickname for him during one particularly hellish month, when Sam suddenly got taller than Dad, taller than Dean, and kept forgetting, kept walking into things, low-hanging treelimbs, decorative plants and doorframes, until Dean said maybe he was possessed. Dad was away for the weekend, maybe longer, and Dean said maybe he should do an exorcism. Sam was betrayed by his weirdly long limbs and this new center of gravity; he didn't have a chance of escaping when Dean held him down.
Dean was just fucking around, both of them knew that, but until Dean pulled him out of the burning wreck of his Stanford life, that was the last time Sam cried in front of his brother, hot frustrated tears mingling with the holy water Dean poured onto his face.
Dean made Sam's teenage years hell, when he wasn't busy filling in for Dad or teaching Sam how to fight or helping Sam with his math homework, so Sam was surprised to eventually realize that he loved Dean in this awful, worldshattering way, that he couldn't imagine life without Dean anymore, couldn't remember how he'd managed to survive when Dean wasn't there, a constant in his peripheral vision or in the other bed or on the other side of the bar at most. It's a visceral, consuming thing, the way he loves his brother, closer to in love than to love plain-and-simple. It's terrifying, but he's learned to live with it, mostly in peace, keeps it tucked away safe at the back of his mind like the impending onset of a genetic disease (which it kind of is) or the threat of nuclear war.
It doesn't matter, really, because Sam's not ever going to do anything about it and maybe one day he'll grow out of it, but it still burns a little every time Dean does something life-threateningly stupid or thoughtlessly cruel. It burns a little every time Sam tells himself he should get out while he still can, every time Sam tells himself that he should stop, that it's wrong, it's suicidal.
And every time, he realizes that knowing as much doesn't change a goddamn thing.
It's absolutely insane, how much Sam loves his brother, but so is Dean, so it kind of makes sense, as much as anything in Sam's life ever makes sense. It's one of those truths, unchangeable facts, like how Sam was born in Lawrence and got a 174 on his LSAT and once got kicked out of a campus bar for starting a fight (and he's not telling Dean about that, ever).
Sam takes his time walking around the block, his thumbs hitched in his belt loops like if he pretends he's not hurrying, something might change, this bleak black mood might lighten. Like if he's not around Dean for as long as possible, there might be a chance of recovery. Sweat beading on his forehead and if he waits long enough, the sunlight might burn something out of him, might leave him temporarily sane by the time he gets back to Dean.
When Sam gets back to the parking lot, Dean's in the car with his window unrolled and that weary martyr's smirk on his face, like he's prepared to spend the rest of his life waiting here for Sam but that doesn't mean he's happy about it. Sam looks down and almost misses the way Dean's gaze locks onto him for an instant, his eyes narrowed, before he looks away and starts drumming his fingers impatiently on the hot black vinyl of the steering wheel.
"Took you long enough," Dean says, the cut of his mouth curt and annoyed, at odds with his muggy-afternoon drawl. "I was gonna leave without you. Figured somebody picked you up and decided to give you a good home."
"So why didn't you?" Sam says.
Dean shrugs. "If you'd been gone another minute, I would have."
"Sure," Sam says. "Right. You'd make it three blocks and get hopelessly lost."
"Dude, I didn't get lost once the whole time you were at college," Dean says. "I only get lost when you're here fucking with my head and that's only 'cause you give me bad directions and never learned how to read a map."
"Your head's fucked plenty without me," Sam says, his face towards the window and his words half-muttered. "I can read a map a hell of a lot better than you can."
"You've been fucking with my head so long I don't even remember what it was like before," Dean says, rendering Sam speechless. Unexpected honesty, an out of place confession, and how the hell is Sam supposed to respond to that without giving something away? He wonders if Dean knows that, if Dean said it just to fuck with him, but, "Good thing I got used to it," Dean continues without waiting for Sam to reply, like he's only talking to himself, like he thinks maybe Sam's asleep.
Sam closes his eyes. It's worth a try, but it doesn't work. Too much coffee, caffeine jittering in his bloodstream, for sleep to be possible, and the light burning through his closed eyelids is the color of fire, so he opens them again and stares out the window. Lonely interstate with green and white roadsigns like battered oases, promises that civilization is a real thing they can reach again if only they keep going long enough.
Two hours down the interstate, once they get out of town. Use Your Illusion playing the whole time, bleeding back into itself, and normally Dean would sing along until Sam had no choice but to give in, too, but today there's just the music, the tape wearing thin to let the road-hum noise of the tires seep in. Sam sneaks the occasional glance over at his brother. Dean's wearing sunglasses, isn't paying attention to him at all, and every once in awhile he licks his lips or scratches his nose or turns his head a little to check something in the sideview mirror.
He's boring as hell and Sam looks pointedly away, back out the window, like even the glare of the dead wasteland sprawl is more interesting than his brother, and what's Dean going to do about that?
Nothing in particular marks the place where they stop, halfway between two mile-markers. Something's shoving hikers off of cliff-edges and Sam thinks it's the ghost of a murdered sheriff, this ghost whose bones are buried somewhere out beneath that blinding sun and who's gotten territorial with age.
Dean pulls off alongside the road, tires edging off the asphalt, onto slightly softer earth. The engine clicks for a moment, angry beetle noise, but Dean doesn't look alarmed, so it's probably nothing. He rests a hand on the steering wheel, looks almost wistful, and then opens his door.
Nobody around, nobody else for miles, for as far as Sam can see. He slips on his sunglasses, the world rendered flat and grey against the flaying knife of the sun, and goes after his brother.
Dean's standing by the trunk, which he's propped open with their second-best shotgun. He looks up when Sam approaches, sneers a little before looking back down and shouldering his bag."You'd better know where we're going," he says.
"Thought you didn't trust me with a map," Sam says.
"I don't, but I swear to god, if we gotta sleep out here because you get us lost, I'm feeding you to the coyotes," Dean says. He contradicts himself all the time, doesn't make any sense, and sometimes it drives Sam insane, because how is he meant to win an argument with someone who doesn't even agree with himself?
Sam rolls his eyes, even though Dean probably won't be able to tell. "They'll go after the weaker members of the pack first," he says conversationally, because nothing annoys Dean faster than when Sam acts like Dean's the one with the issues. "Or the smaller ones, since they're easier to take down."
Dean's mouth opens for a second like he can't believe Sam had the audacity to say that. Sam grins until Dean shoves a backpack at him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. "Nobody'd better fuck with my car," Dean says, slamming the trunk shut and looking at Sam like he's going to hold Sam personally responsible if someone does. It's an empty threat, the last card Dean always plays before giving up, so Sam ignores it. He entertains himself with the idea of getting lost in the desert with Dean, having to subsist on, like, cactus, and wonders how long it would be before Dean threatened to eat him.
They're stripped down to t-shirts, leaving behind leather and flannel and even Sam's beloved hoodie. It's only temporary, though; they won't be gone for long, should be back just after dark at the latest, and then they'll go somewhere less infernally hot. Sam glances back at the car one last time and then follows Dean out into the expanse, red-edged hills in the distance.
The sun's starting to set by the time they get to the right place, drop their bags. Sam takes his sunglasses off, looks up at the sky, these mingled shades of violet and orange and red. Dean follows his lead, slips his own glasses off and frowns at him. "This is it?" he says.
"I think so," Sam says. Dull-edged rocks piled high beneath their boots and this view, looking out onto miles and miles of carrion nothing.
"That's great," Dean says. "I'm not digging up the entire desert just because you think he's buried somewhere, like, in this general area." He spreads his arms wide to encompass the world, like a man beseeching the sky for rain or pleading with the gods for absolution.
"I didn't ask you to," Sam says. "I narrowed it down to pretty much here, just for you. You're welcome."
Dean unhooks the shovel from his bag and tosses it at Sam's feet. "Start digging," he says. He turns around, raises a hand over his eyes and looks out at the flatness below them. Sam wants to ask what he's looking for, because there's nothing to see, but there's no point because Dean will just make something up.
"No way," Sam says. "I got us here, I think that counts for something."
"It counts for me not kicking your ass all the way back down the hill," Dean says, glancing back at him.
"I think the whole fair division of labor idea means you--" Sam begins. There's a noise like distant radio static, a ringing in his ears, and he looks over in time to see the ghost appear a few yards away, dead-empty eye sockets beneath the brim of his tattered hat and the rusty six-shooter in his hand the color of blood beneath the dying sun. That's an answer to something Sam was wondering, how exactly the ghost shoved the hikers, whether it startled them or what as it's not exactly corporeal, and then the ghost pulls the trigger. Gunshot crack, but decades old, reduced to a noise like paper tearing, and Sam's shout of warning tears out of his throat a half-second too late.
Dean staggers back, takes one step too many, his boots slipping off of the rocks. Sam is too far away, is staring dumbly at the Looney Toons flail, the desperate Icarus swing of Dean's arms in the instant before he plummets over the edge.
Sam blinks. The salt-loaded shotgun fits in his hand, though he's not sure how it got there, doesn't remember drawing it or aiming or any of these automatic-pilot things he does before he pulls the trigger and the ghost flickers apart.
Sam stares at the place where it was and then, very deliberately, he stares at the place where Dean was standing. This rugged, ragged landscape gone silent again and Dean is nowhere in sight and this is not how he loses Dean. It can't be. The jarring fact of Dean's absence is something around which he cannot wrap his head, like finding out that the earth is flat or that Galileo was wrong after all, that the sun orbits the earth as surely and irrevocably as Sam did Dean and now he'll spin out of control, nothing to ground him, to keep him in place, keep him from crashing out into the black.
He can't make himself look over the edge. Can't make it be real, his brother dead on the rocks below, blood turning black beneath the darkling sky because not even Dean could survive that fall, not even Dean who can do anything, and it must be shock, he thinks numbly, shock, the way he can't make himself move at all.
And Dean has the keys. Had the keys. Until Sam looks over the edge, Dean is both alive and dead, so Dean has-had the keys to the car, and Sam's going to have to rifle through his pockets to get them back and he has to cover his mouth to keep from laughing, this desperate hysterical crow's-cry that's going to strangle him and he could have sworn he was breathing but apparently not, because his vision is starting to sparkle and fizz at the edges and maybe he'll pitch over the edge and land next to Dean and they can haunt the desert together.
He sort of killed his brother, he thinks. He was too busy staring at the ghost to tell Dean to move, and how the fuck is that something he can even think about, even comprehend, how can he stand here and put it into words, there's gotta be something wrong with him.
And then Dean's hand reaches back up over the edge of the cliff, the rest of him following a moment later as he hauls himself back up onto solid ground. He wipes the back of his hand across his face, says, "Motherfucking sonuvabitch, what the hell do I keep you around for, are you just gonna fuckin' stand there," and glares at Sam. His arms are scraped to hell and his jeans are torn and dusty and he's alive, he's amazingly incredibly alive.
"Dean," Sam says wonderingly. He loves his brother more than anything, he really does.
"No, the goddamn Easter," Dean begins and then he trails off, frowns at Sam. Sam swallows and knuckles at the salt-trails on his cheeks, hopes Dean won't be able to distinguish them from the sweat and dirt smear. "Bunny," Dean finishes, but the venom's gone out of his voice, and Sam laughs. For real this time, because of course Dean caught himself, of course Dean didn't die, he's too fast for that, too good, reflexes like lightning and he's always two steps ahead of Sam in everything that matters. He's immortal where it counts, a force of nature, a miracle, and he looks slightly worried, so Sam stops laughing.
"Told you you were gonna drive me crazy one of these days," Sam says. His voice is a little strained, cracks on crazy, and he doesn't care at all.
"Yeah, but you lie all the time," Dean says, which isn't true, which is in fact itself a lie, and then he sits down a safe distance from the edge. Sam comes to sit next to him, drops to the ground rather than lowering himself gracefully because all of a sudden his legs won't support him anymore.
"You're okay," Sam says.
"Fucked up my shoulder and you were no fucking help, but I'll live," Dean says grudgingly, like it's nothing, like Sam's the dumbest person in the world for thinking otherwise. Sam looks at him, stares at him, taking in the line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth and the shifting green of his eyes. Dean smirks a little, but he doesn't say anything, like just this once he doesn't mind, like just this once he'll give this to Sam.
"I liked these jeans," Dean says after a minute. He wipes his hands on his thighs, stares down at his palms.
Sam shakes his head. "A sacrifice to the desert gods," he says. "Your jeans for your life, seems fair."
"They were pretty awesome," Dean agrees. "Hey, gimme a little warning next time, okay?"
"Maybe if you weren't deaf from all that shitty music, you'd've heard me," Sam says, gleeful and daring. Dean's eyes go wide and enraged, but there's a smile playing around his mouth like he doesn't mean it. He reaches back and punches Sam sharply on the collarbone. It fucking hurts, but Sam's used to it, used to Dean leaving bruises all over him, usually on the inside where nobody can see, so he grins and knocks his shoulder against his brother's. It's impossible to be angry right now, impossible to be anything but giddy and reckless.
Dean turns to look at him again and Sam's heart stops, stutters, beats panicked in his chest like wings. He's trapped, stone-frozen, caught off-guard by the faint absinthe of Dean's eyes, by Dean's shoulder pressed up close against his. He thinks it has to be obvious, all of his efforts gone to waste as all of his secrets are written across his face, no way Dean can't know, but Dean only says, "We should get moving before it comes back."
"Yeah," Sam says. He gets to his feet, offers Dean a hand up, and Dean accepts, his fingers wrapping tight and strong around Sam's wrist.
The bones are buried just beneath the spot where the ghost appeared, like maybe it was trying to help, like maybe all it wants is peace, but Sam will never believe that because the fucking ghost almost killed his brother.
Sam does most of the work after all, digs up the body while Dean keeps watch. They burn the bones while the sun sinks lower behind the horizon and if Sam's eyes water when he looks over at Dean, it's only because Dean's a goddamn pyromaniac, addicted to flame and danger and excess and sometimes all three at once, and the wind is blowing the smoke in Sam's direction, thick black clouds stinging his eyes.
When the fire finally burns down (and it's a miracle that Dean didn't start a forest fire, even considering that there aren't actually any trees around), Sam wipes at his face and turns around to catch Dean digging through Sam's own bag. "What the hell, Dean," Sam says. Just because Sam's glad that Dean's alive doesn't mean Dean doesn't have to keep his hands to himself, doesn't have to keep his hands off of Sam's stuff.
Dean glances up at him, his teeth pressed sharp and white against his lower lip, and holds up the medkit Sam shoved into his bag like an afterthought, the medkit that wouldn't have done anything, that would have been worse than worthless, insult to injury, if Dean had fallen. "You wanna play doctor, Sammy," he says absently and then he twists the lid off of one of the bottles, shakes a few pills into his hand and washes them down with one of Sam's carefully-hoarded water bottles.
"I thought you were okay," Sam says accusingly. Whatever it is, it's not bad, it's not bad at all compared to how bad it could have been, so he can afford to be a little annoyed.
"I am," Dean says. "Just a little sore from falling off the cliff, you remember, and by the way, thanks for caring." He flings the water bottle at Sam's head and Sam could duck, but the bottle's empty and Sam's feeling kind of nice, so he lets it thwack harmlessly against his forehead, which makes Dean laugh.
"So you can make it back to the car," Sam says.
"Uh, yeah," Dean says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Not that I'm not flattered you wanna camp out with me, but since I ain't even close to dying, don't get your hopes up."
Sam feels himself blushing, but he thinks it's dark enough that Dean won't notice. "I'm not gonna haul your ass all the way back to the road, that's all I'm saying," he says.
"Not even if I asked nicely?" Dean asks. Sam thinks he might be fluttering his eyelashes, but it's too dark to tell.
It seems like something Dean would be doing, though, and even the idea is exasperating, so Sam says, "Okay, that's it, I'm leaving you here," and shoulders Dean's bag because Dean is still messing with Sam's own. He has to stop to adjust the straps, but it only takes a moment, and then he heads for what passes for the trail without looking to see if Dean's following him.
He walks slowly, though, and he stops, pretends to be interested in a rock, pretends he's not waiting for his brother, as soon as he hears Dean scrambling after him.
By the time they make it back to the car, the sky's gone the color of tarnished silver, slipping into smooth obsidian at the horizon, and they're walking side by side, exhausted and punch-drunk, stumbling like landfallen sailors as they near the Impala.
"Hey, it's still here," Sam says. He was sort of expecting the car to be gone, because Dean is okay, despite the shoulder thing, and the ghost didn't come back, and not having to chase down a car thief seems like pushing their luck.
"Of course it's still here, who's gonna fuck with my car," Dean says, narrowing his eyes at Sam as though Sam meant it as an insult. Dean's even more protective of the car than he is of Sam, sometimes, and there are times when Sam thinks Dean likes the car more than he likes his brother, brief moments of insanity that leave Sam reeling, though he thinks that if it ever came down to a choice, Dean would choose him.
Probably.
"Nobody," Sam says. "Nobody's gonna fuck with your car because if they do, you'll hunt them down and make them wish they'd never been born."
"Damn straight," Dean says, smiling crookedly at Sam, dramatic and moonlit. Sam rolls his eyes but can't help smiling back, just a little. Dean pops the trunk and slides the pack he stole from Sam off of his shoulders, cracks his neck. Sam sets his bag next to Dean's, watches as it topples over and knocks Dean's flat. It seems fitting, an apt metaphor, though he's not sure for what. He rubs his eyes, yawns and tries not to think about it.
"No way we're makin' it back to the motel, is there," Dean says. Sam's dead on his feet, but not so much that it counts, so he frowns at Dean.
"I can drive," he says. "I'm not the, the one-armed bandit here."
"Watch who you're calling a bandit, klepto, don't think I don't know what happened to my Metallica shirt," Dean says.
"Oh my god, Dean, for the last time, I did not take your Metallica shirt and that was like ten years ago, man. I think you should probably move on."
"I'm just saying," Dean says. "And no, you're not driving, because you'll wreck my car and then I'll kick your ass and we'll both be stuck haunting this goddamn road until somebody put us out of our misery."
"I thought you didn't want to camp out," Sam says.
"It's not camping if we don't got a fire," Dean says seriously, like he genuinely believes he has a winning argument, and Sam heaves a sigh that's mostly for effect.
"Just remember that it was your idea," he says. "You want the front or the back?"
"We got a tent in the trunk," Dean says.
Sam stares at him. "You're serious."
"As a heart attack," Dean says. "And I think I'd know." Which isn't something Sam likes to think about, likes to remember, so he doesn't push, so he glares at Dean and goes to dig the tent out from beneath everything else Dean has jammed in the trunk.
Sam puts up the tent while Dean leans against the hood and heckles him, says c'mon, put your back into it, it ain't rocket science, Sammy, you'd'a made a lousy boy scout.
The tent smells like old fires, clean woodsmoke, and it's smaller than Sam remembered. He takes a step back, frowns at it.
"I can sleep in the car," he says. He doesn't make the offer completely out of the goodness of his heart. He's not sure he's up for sharing such close quarters with Dean right now, or maybe ever. If Sam's not careful, he'll run them both headlong into grief and ruin.
"Nah," Dean says. "You, uh. You might choke in your sleep or something and then who'd save you?"
"You are so stoned," Sam says affectionately, shaking his head at his brother. It's the easiest, safest of all possible explanations and it has the added benefit of being true.
"Yeah," Dean agrees, tipping his head back. The moonlight washes over his face, pale and cold, and Sam bites back a smile.
"Okay," he says, a little too eager, not hesitant enough, giving in too easily because it doesn't count as taking if Dean offers on his own, offers it up all by himself. He shoves his hands into his pockets and goes to stand by Dean, who hands him half of the ham and cheese sandwich left over from yesterday's lunch. It's a little stale and the cheese is melted, slightly congealed, but Sam is suddenly so fucking hungry that he doesn't care at all. They trade a bottle of Jack back and forth while they eat, the whiskey warm in Sam's mouth, settling even warmer in his stomach, and he can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be than right here, sitting on the hood of the Impala with Dean, eating half of a stale sandwich and getting a little buzzed and watching the clouds roll in slowly from the east.
Dean takes a swig from the bottle, swallows and when Sam looks over, there's one drop left clinging to his lower lip. Sam has the sudden self-destructive urge to lean in and lick it away, push Dean back flat onto the hood, but luckily he comes to his senses in time and Dean wipes his mouth a moment later, erasing the opportunity. When Dean hands the bottle back to Sam, his thumb scratches the underside of Sam's wrist and Sam suppresses a shiver and looks away, pretends to be distracted by the faintly audible howl of coyotes.
He remembers reading that coyotes haven't been sighted in the area for something like twenty years, but it's possible that he's remembering wrong. It's possible.
"How many other ghosts you think are out there?" he asks eventually.
"Don't matter, as long as they keep to themselves," Dean says.
Sam shakes his head, makes this noise that's half sigh, half agreement, because Dean's right, after all. The dead are only their business once they start to get violent, once they start to get loud, make trouble. He takes another shot, lowers the bottle and has the unnerving sensation that he's about to fall asleep or pass out, but then he realizes that it really is getting darker, the clouds moving in to cover the stars, blot out the moon.
"Storm's coming," he says, recapping the bottle.
"Always is," Dean says sleepily, and then he blinks, scrubs a hand across his face. Fading moonlight reflects off his ring, makes it wink like a beacon, light guiding Sam home.
Sam snickers. "You're so lucky you got me," he says, though in truth he thinks it might be the other way around. "Otherwise you'd be wandering around the desert right now, philosophizing at, at rocks or something."
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't've been in the desert to begin with," Dean points out.
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here to begin with," Sam says.
"If it weren't for you, neither would I," Dean counters and he's drunk enough that Sam can tell he means it, the way he leans in a little, the way he puts his hands flat on the hood for balance when he does, the way he looks at Sam like Sam's the only clear point in his vision. The words click into Sam like a key, opening the door to something that leaves him flushed and shivery, unsure what do to with his hands. But Dean probably means something completely prosaic by it, only means it in the sense that Sam found them the hunt, so there's no need for Sam to overanalyze, to take it to heart.
And it's a bad sign that Sam was starting to anyway, that he almost did, so he says, "I'm going to bed before the coyotes come looking for us," and pushes off of the car. He doesn't dare look back, because he thinks that what would happen if he did would be a lot worse than turning into a pillar of salt, though maybe not than sending Dean to the underworld. He looks up instead, trying to ground himself, which is a mistake. The stars reel slightly beneath the thick cloud veil and Sam is momentarily lost to vertigo, the ground rising up to meet him, but no, he's still standing, standing tall, his shadow lost to the mess of black spilling across the desert floor.
"Leave me to get eaten, sure, that's real good of you," Dean says and Sam hears his boots hit the ground a moment later, earth-scuffing, scuffling noises as Dean lowers himself to the ground and lurches after Sam.
Sam unzips the tent, unrolls their sleeping bags while Dean fumbles with the laces of his boots. Dean's taking too long, so Sam crawls into his sleeping bag and waits for his brother to stop moving around.
"You got first watch," Dean says, his words slurred ever so slightly.
"Sure," Sam says, even though they haven't had to worry about taking turns in a long time, maybe since they were camping with Dad, because now they keep each other awake most of the time, bullshit stories and caffeine and how Sam doesn't trust Dean not to get bored and do something dumb and juvenile and possibly involving Sam's hair.
Dean's eyes slip shut and Sam is content to watch him, because for once Dean's not running off, for once he doesn't have to worry about Dean getting killed. All the things already trying to kill them, so many evil things that already have the taste of Winchester blood like hot pennies on their tongues, and Dean always has to go find more. And because demons and ghosts and curses aren't enough, he has to fuck around with heart attacks and car accidents and truckers jacked up on god knows what, like maybe there's a victory in it for him if he lets something completely non-supernatural kill him.
"What is it, Sammy?" Dean says without opening his eyes, and Sam's busted, caught red-handed, left grasping for an excuse.
"If it rains, the tent's gonna wash away," he says, which is stupid and statistically improbable.
"No it won't," Dean says promptly.
"Flash floods happen all the time," Sam says, arguing for the sake of arguing, arguing because he doesn't want Dean to go to sleep just yet, selfishly wants him to stay awake and keep Sam company.
Sleeping bag rustle as Dean turns over to look at Sam, his face screwed up with fond exasperation, his face which is almost unbearably close to Sam's, the way they're jammed tight in this painfully small tent. "You're. Such a geek," Dean informs him, breath warm and intimate on Sam's face. He glances down at Sam's mouth and then his gaze darts back to Sam's eyes and Sam's stomach twists, something tight and nervous fluttering against his ribs.
"Heard that one before," Sam says, hardly louder than a whisper, but that's okay because Dean's so close, it makes sense for him to be whispering. Dean doesn't have to know it's because there's suddenly no oxygen left in his lungs, no oxygen left at all.
"Yeah?" Dean says. His pupils are huge, his eyes pitch-dark.
"Yeah," Sam says. "Gonna have to find another way to shut me up."
Dean looks at him and Sam's heart is shaking and he's sure Dean can hear the terrified rhythm of his breath and he shouldn't have said that, oh god. He shouldn't have said it, he got sloppy and careless in the wake of this good night, this good fortune, and it's too late to take anything back because Dean's mouth presses against his, closed and warm and insistent, forceful and only slightly less destructive than his knuckles would have been, bruising Sam to the bone. Sam opens his mouth, just to, to, to say what or dean or oh god, not to escalate this, he swears, and Dean pulls away.
His eyes are half open, crescent-moon glints in the dim, dim light, and Sam is petrified. He considers going after the rest of whiskey in order to burn this potential humiliation, this epic fuck-up, from his brain, but he probably wouldn't pass out, would probably only get drunker and do something awful and unforgivable like try to kiss Dean, and anyway he doesn't trust himself to move without knocking into something, tripping over Dean or bringing the tent down around them.
He's pretty sure he has the advantage here, is the one closest to being in his right state of mind and all, so it doesn't make sense that Dean's the one who looks so calm.
Dean licks his lips. Still this close to Sam's face, and then he says, "Go to sleep, Sam, we're not gonna drown," and rolls over to face the wall of the tent.
Sam tells himself that this suffocating sensation in his chest isn't the feeling of his world imploding. It's something much less important, like his lungs collapsing or gravity turning against him.
He tries to console himself with the idea that Dean might not even remember in the morning, that even if he does, he won't bring it up or that if he does, maybe Sam can pass it off as some drunken hallucination or something. And it's not like Dean can say anything without damning himself, too, because after all, he's the one who kissed Sam, even though Sam practically told him to, and Sam is such a bad person, he's probably ruined everything, Dean's going to hate him forever, Dean is never going to look at him again.
This miserable litany of condemnation and panic runs him eventually into sleep, long after Dean's breathing evens out, runs him into this dream about hot blood dripping onto his face, so that when he opens his eyes again, he's confused as to whether he's actually awake. It's rain, though, not blood, clean water splattering against the walls of the tent.
Dean has his face wedged up against Sam's shoulder, his mouth open just above the hem of Sam's sleeve. Sam lifts his head a little to look at him, marvels at the improbability of waking up before Dean could move away, because this is something Dean would never do if he were anything close to conscious and as such it's something to be savored for as long as possible. "Go back t' sleep," Dean mumbles, his words muffled by Sam's shoulder, shaking like an earthquake across Sam's skin. "You're keeping me 'wake."
"Yeah, obviously," Sam says, or tries to say. Thinks he tries to say. His mouth is dry, his tongue thick, and if he closed his eyes again, he'd be asleep instantly. He feels something wet on his face just then, needle-sharp like a tear, like maybe he's still asleep after all or maybe his dream is leaking into reality, which seems plausible.
It's only the tent, though, only the tent roof leaking, not his subconscious. He stares up at the torn plastic for a few seconds, trying to work out what that means. Another raindrop hits him squarely in the forehead and he reaches one arm out of his sleeping bag to shake Dean awake.
"Fuck off," Dean says, a little more coherent this time, but his eyes are still closed when he rolls back over.
"The tent's leaking, man," Sam says. "You wanna sleep in here, be my guest, but gimme the keys first."
He thinks Dean might already be asleep again, because for one long moment, Dean doesn't respond, but maybe it just takes him that long to process Sam's words, because he sits up suddenly, his hair matted flat on one side of his head, standing straight up on the other, his eyes wide and confused, and if Sam weren't being rained on, he would laugh at the absurdity of his brother, but as his brother has the keys, maybe he'll do that some other time.
They scramble out of their sleeping bags, stumble for their boots. The tent zipper sticks and Dean swears at Sam while Sam tries to tug it loose, until he finally manages to work it open and the rain comes pouring, pooling inside.
Ten feet at most to the car and they run, tumbling together, tripping over untied laces and over nothing at all. Dean fumbles to get the keys out of his pocket and Sam is being drenched, towering over Dean and inadvertently sheltering him from the worst of the rain and Dean so owes him for this. Sam's freezing and he can hear thunder in the distance, but he grins, even as his teeth start to chatter and he hisses hurry the fuck up Dean, hurry the fuck up. It's the kind of exhilarated alive he feels when they're being chased or when they're chasing, when the night spins like a coin around them, head or tails and it could go either way, but tonight the worst possibilities, the ones that end with Dean bleeding or Sam alone, have already been ruled out.
Black satin gleam of the car and the chrome glinting and Dean gets the door open, falls inside. Sam crushes in after him, forgetting momentarily about Dean's shoulder, until Dean recoils on the other side of the backseat, says, "Ow fuck you asshole."
"Sorry, sorry," Sam says, pulling the door shut behind himself.
"No, you're not," Dean says. "You like hurting me because you're a sadistic bastard. I'm so on to you, Sammy."
Sam rolls his eyes. "That's exactly it," he says.
"Knew it," Dean mutters. "Good thing I'm used to you."
"What if the car gets hit by lightning?" Sam asks, staring out at the storm, his face plastered against the glass like he's four years old, but it's not like Dean's going to tell him to stop. Or if he does, it's not like Sam's going to listen, not like Dean's actually going to do anything about it.
"Then we'll die," Dean says. "And then at least you'll be quiet." He sounds mad, but he isn't really. He's got so many tells, the way his mouth quirks and the undertone in his voice like he's trying to keep from laughing and the way he can't look directly at Sam, and he's not fooling Sam in the slightest. Sam punches him, brief press of his knuckles against Dean's (uninjured) shoulder.
"One of us has to do the smart thinking," Sam tells him.
"Knock yourself out," Dean says. "Just do it quietly and on your side of the goddamn car."
"I get a side now?" Sam asks.
"No," Dean says. "If you're lucky, I might give you a ride back to town, though." He glares at Sam and Sam smiles widely back at him. Being angry at Dean is a distant memory; right now, Dean could do just about anything and Sam would forgive him, would be overwhelmingly glad that Dean's willing to put up with him. Rain dapples the window behind Dean, smashes into the glass, rain all around and Sam's here with Dean in the middle of it.
"Hey, Dean," Sam says.
"Yeah, Sam."
"Good idea you had, camping out."
"I said it wasn't camping out," Dean protests. "I told you that."
"Yeah, I forgot how your logic works," Sam says dryly and Dean's forehead creases.
"What'm I gonna do with you, man," he says, shaking his head, and Sam doesn't remember the car being this small a minute ago, could have sworn Dean was pushed up closer to the other door. He swallows. His heart's pounding, louder than the rain, and his mouth is dry again and he just remembered the last thought he had before he fell asleep, which was that even if Dean could ever look at him again, there was no way Sam would be able to meet his eyes.
"I don't know," Sam says. "You tell me."
"You gotta promise not to freak out if I do," Dean says. He's looking at the ceiling like the secrets to the universe are written in up there, written in ink or maybe blood, written somewhere just out of Sam's range of vision.
Sam feels like he's missing something vital, like he's got a head injury and maybe just hasn't noticed yet, the way none of his thoughts are working, are disintegrating before he can grasp them, the way he can't look away from Dean's sleep-swollen mouth. "Okay," he says, a little dizzy, and Dean nods.
"Okay," he echoes and then he leans in, his mouth fitting against Sam's again, but this time it's open, his tongue pressing between Sam's lips. Sam forgets how to breathe for a second, Dean kissing him full and rough and sloppy, pushing him back against the door, the storm raging on the other side of the glass but it's not anything so loud, so violent, as the noise in Sam's head making it so difficult for him to think, so difficult for him to do anything but kiss Dean back.
It's more like a collision than like any perfect movie kiss, which is in and of itself perfect, the wet sound Sam's mouth makes when he sucks at Dean's lower lip and the way the stubble on Dean's chin scratches across his nose.
"You're not freaking out, are you," Dean says, mumbles against Sam's cheek, and Sam draws in a breath shaky with laughter and these other crackling dark things, how he's half-hard already off of that one kiss.
"Does it," he says, and he opens his mouth against Dean's neck, holds it there for a second, Dean's adam's apple stuttering beneath his tongue. "Look like I'm freaking out," he finishes.
Dean shrugs, one hand tangled in Sam's hair so he couldn't pull away even if he wanted to. "Never know with you," he says, the sharp edge of his teeth against Sam's throat, leaving Sam gasping, breathless, twisting beneath his mouth. "You've always been a weird kid."
"Fuck you," Sam spits out, shivering because he needs Dean to keep touching him, needs Dean in such a vital way that he'd never thought he could need anything, ever. And Dean does, Dean puts his hands all over Sam, so sure and steady like he's meant to be doing this. Sam is delirious, deliriously happy, that Dean is doing these things to him, that maybe sometimes Dean lies awake all night trying not to think about his brother, just like Sam does, that Dean wants this, too.
"You're, uh. Real eloquent when you're hot," Dean says, drawing back far enough to grin at him. Sam's hand scrapes across the back of Dean's neck, short hair bristle against his palm, and then Dean says, "I take it back, oh fuck, I take it back," into Sam's mouth as Sam closes the distance between them, runs his tongue over Dean's lips and slides a hand up under Dean's rainsoaked shirt. Heel of his hand against the flat of Dean's stomach, damp skin and his brother's pulse reverberating through Sam's body.
Brief flare of Dean's cheekbones, illuminated hollow and curve, when lightning splits the sky, leaves Sam blinking and blind. His hand is still on Dean's face, his fingers brushing the scar on Dean's forehead that's been there for as long as Sam can remember, the scar Sam has memorized, so he knows exactly where it is even when it's too dark to see anything.
Dean cups Sam's face in his hands, his thumb curling behind Sam's ear. He tastes like Martian dreams cut with whiskey, this raw red-dust landscape and cruel metallic rain. He grins at Sam as he pulls back, shifts position, brings his legs up onto the seat so that he can lean over Sam without losing his balance. All the leverage in the world on his side, working against Sam so that Sam is helpless, one hand tangled in the leather cord of Dean's necklace as Dean's knee digs into his thigh, as Dean tugs Sam's shirt up and over his head, scrapes kisses all down Sam's chest.
Eventually they have to stop to breathe, all Sam's half-formed plans set back by the dumb necessity of oxygen, and because he's not sure how much longer he can do this before he pushes it one step further. The windows are clouded, steamed up, and he says, a little shaky, "I'm sorry I didn't warn you about the ghost."
"Yeah, you owe me big time for that," Dean says. "Good thing I'm feeling nice." Sam smiles a little and Dean grins back at him again, works a hand around Sam's belt and starts messing with the buckle.
"What," Sam squeaks. "What are you doing."
"What's it look like," Dean says. Sam's not sure how out of it is he is, his eyes sharp and quick in the dark and maybe he's been faking this whole time. Sam can never trust him about this kind of thing, can't trust him about anything but the most vital life and death kind of things, but either way, he sure as hell can't let Dean do this if Dean doesn't mean it, if there is any chance at all that he doesn't mean it.
"How out of it are you?" Sam asks. It comes out flatter, blunter than he intended, and maybe there was a better way to ask, a better way to phrase it, because Dean stops, stares at Sam, flare of panic in his eyes before they narrow defensively and his mouth snaps shut into one thin flat line. He looks petrified, Sam thinks, and then no, that's not it at all. He looks pissed off and humiliated, like he thinks Sam just rejected him, which is the stupidest thing Dean's ever thought in his life (and Sam would know, as he's an expert on the topic).
Maybe Sam will go to hell for taking advantage of the situation, but right now there's no better way for him to call Dean an idiot than to unbuckle his belt himself, to push Dean's hand back down onto his lap, and Dean lets out a breath. It might be a relieved breath, but Sam could be projecting.
"You okay," Dean says.
"Yeah," Sam says. "Yes," and Dean nods, unzips Sam's jeans, his fingers slipping, pushing across the front of Sam's shorts.
"You do things like that, you're making me crazy all the time," Dean says, pressed up flat against Sam, the line of his chest flush against Sam's. Sam bites at his neck in response as Dean's hand slips beneath the band of Sam's shorts. They're both going to be bruised all over in a few hours, the way this is going, and no way any of it will look like an accident. "Wanna know a secret, Sammy," Dean says, his voice hopelessly jagged, dragging across Sam's skin like all the best kinds of torture.
"Oh god, yes," Sam says, one hand smoothed against Dean's collarbone and the other digging into the back of Dean's neck and yes, yes, a thousand times yes, yes to everything Dean might ever ask.
"I've wanted to do this for a really long time," Dean says, low, almost a whisper into Sam's ear.
"Me, too," Sam says, fingers twisted tight in Dean's shirt. Any minute now the fabric's going to tear, he'll rip Dean's shirt and Dean will never let him live that down.
"That's good," Dean says. "That's really good, because otherwise this would be awkward." Sam's laugh is choked and desperate and the whole car smells like Old Spice and the gunpowder edge of sweat, skin-salt. Dean's half on top of him, shivering and breathing hard, leaning across his lap and nearly straddling him, and Sam's jeans are spread open like a confession. He's never been more exposed in his whole life as his hips jerk and Dean falls against him, wet slide of his tongue beneath Sam's jawline as Sam comes.
"Good," Dean says, breath-quiet, pulse-quiet, his chin hooked over Sam's shoulder. "Good, that's good," and after a moment he pushes off of Sam. His eyes shine in the dark as he wipes his hands on Sam's jeans, which seems only fair and it's not like Sam is in any mood to tell him to knock it off. "You're gonna sleep now, right," he says.
"Yeah," Sam agrees. A little dazed, he reaches up to touch his mouth, confirm that this is real, that this happened, is still happening.
"Good," Dean says again, his eyes hazy and dark. "Don't go anywhere," like he thinks Sam might go stand by the road in the hopes of hitching a ride or like he's going run off with gypsies or something, Sam doesn't even know with his brother. Dean pushes Sam's hand aside, traps it with his own, thumb moving back and forth against Sam's palm as he opens his mouth against Sam's again, kisses him hard, sealing Sam's fate. He sighs against Sam's cheek, looking weirdly happy, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and then he opens the door and gets out of the car. Sam panics, has this image of Dean wandering away in the storm and how dark it is and Sam will never be able to find him again, and then Dean opens the door on the other side of the car and slides into the driver's seat.
Sam lets out a breath and pulls his shirt back on because the desert gets cold at night. He waits for Dean to settle in, listens to him shifting and stretching out and sighing, before he kicks the back of Dean's seat. "Jerk," he says.
"Don't fuck up my car, bitch," Dean mumbles, sounding half-asleep already, sounding like his face is mashed against the intersection-angle of the seat, and Sam grins silently up at the roof. He reaches onto the floor for something he can use as a pillow, comes up with the hoodie he thought was missing, thought had been left behind when they were run out of this small town near Jackson. One more piece of good luck, and Sam balls it up, shoves it beneath his head and stops listening to the rain for a little while.
When Sam opens his eyes, his neck hurts and all he can see is blue sky, blue sky and the black, black roof of the car around the edges, the sky like forever and the car the most permanent home he's ever known. He sits up, winces, and the whole unreal night comes crashing back in, the tent and the rain, his frantic noises and Dean's calloused hands and his jeans are still open.
He zips up his jeans, wipes his hands on the crumpled hoodie. He cranes his neck to peer over the front seat, see if Dean's awake yet, and Dean's not there. The front seat is empty and the driver's side door is open like Dean got up and didn't want to wake Sam, which seems almost uncharacteristically considerate. Sam blinks, waits for the rest of the world to seep back in. Details like the minuscule near-invisible clouds scattered across the sky and Dean swearing somewhere close by.
When Sam gets out of the car, he sees Dean surrounded by what he thinks was their tent. Everything Sam can see is drenched in light, the only shade coming from the Impala, and when he takes a step towards Dean, even that slips away. He had sunglasses, he remembers, but he has no idea what happened to them. Maybe Dean burned them with the sheriff's bones in some petty attempt at revenge. That's okay, Sam will just have to steal one of the three thousand pairs Dean keeps rattling around in the glovebox.
"We needed a new one anyway," he says mildly, because he's not sure if the rain destroyed the tent or if Dean did, and Dean whips around to look at him. There's a high flush across Dean's cheeks, splotches of hot color, but it could be harmless sunburn. The marks on his neck, though, marks of possession and need disappearing beneath his collar, those aren't harmless at all, and Sam swallows.
"Whose idea was it to sleep out here," Dean demands. He's wearing the same ruined pair of jeans but Sam thinks his shirt's different, faded in slightly unfamiliar places, which puts him one up on Sam.
"Yours," Sam says.
"I wasn't asking you," Dean snaps. "That was fuckin' rhetorical, genius. Shit, I need coffee, did we pass a gas station on the way out here?"
"Not after we got out of town," Sam says.
"Great," Dean says. "Absolutely perfect. That's awesome, Sam, thanks."
Sam finally places the look on Dean's face, that deadly near-cold expression, and then he takes two steps forward, gets a hand around the side of Dean's neck and tugs him closer, off-balance. Leans down, leans in, and kisses him. Faint mint taste like the mouthwash Sam keeps in his bag for emergencies and he wonders how long Dean's been awake, and then it occurs to him, even as Dean's kissing him back, one hand fisted in the collar of Sam's shirt and the other caught up around the top of Sam's jeans, edging around the curve of Sam's hip, slipping beneath his shirt and singeing his skin, that maybe that's not the issue at all. Maybe Sam was wrong about the whole thing, maybe he misinterpreted the reason for Dean's panic, maybe Dean is only doing this because he, like, feels sorry for Sam or something, feels sorry for his fucked-up little brother, so Sam lets go. He takes a step back, knocked wildly off-kilter by the possibility, and shoves his hands into his pockets like he's guilty, which he surely is.
Dean looks down, looks back up, his eyes the color of worn dollar bills, only brighter, so bright it hurts to look at. "Woulda been better if you brought me coffee first," he says, tentative critique, words like an offering and Sam snatches them up so fast, so incredibly fast.
"Maybe next time," he says.
"Yeah, okay," Dean says, knuckling at his eyes and squinting like he always does when he's trying to pretend he's not relieved, pretend he's unaffected, Joe Cool, above it all. Sam doesn't mind, as long as he's always allowed to see through his brother's defenses.
"Finish playing with your tent and get in the goddamn car," Sam says. "I'm driving. Your shoulder's fucked up."
"You still owe me for that, don't think I'm letting you off easy," Dean says, and then he tosses Sam the keys. Metal jangle and the keys arc high, glint blindingly in the sunlight for one breathtaking instant before Sam catches them.
--
end
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, spoilers through mid-first season, R, 10,043 words.
Trying to ignore Dean is like trying not to breathe or trying to keep his heart from beating.
This is either girlmostlikely's fault, for some very loose definition of fault, or it is for her. Perhaps it is both; that seems likely.
Orange juice and bitter black coffee at the diner with the all-day breakfast menu, the diner down the road from the motel where they slept and Sam can still see the vacancy sign from here, tall signpost in the motel parking lot with half the letters burned out, flashing VA-NA--Y V-CA-CY -ACANCY like a taunt, a reminder that nobody will notice when he and Dean leave town.
Sam spent most of last night poring over maps, maps and newspaper articles so old and poorly preserved that the copies he made with the machine at the library were almost indecipherable. By the time he went to bed, his eyes were burning, his vision blurred, and he had a headache that followed him into sleep, where he dreamed of hot blood dripping slowly from the ceiling, of Jess's eyes cold and white as the empty moon.
The headache was still there this morning, this early-afternoon, when Dean woke him up by throwing a pillow at his head and telling him way too loudly to get his ass out of bed already. Sam was edgy, unnerved, left unsettled by the nightmare and still half-asleep when he dragged into the bathroom, where he discovered that Dean had used up all of the hot water and left all of the towels in a soggy pile by the door. And maybe he snapped at Dean after that, but it hadn't been personal, not until after Dean asked if it was his time of the month or what.
By the time they left the room, they weren't speaking, which Sam wouldn't have minded so much if Dean didn't have this way of making that kind of quiet unbearable, his entire being radiating annoyance with Sam so that Sam couldn't look at him without being confronted with Dean's apparent belief that his life would be so much easier if Sam weren't such a whiny bitch all the time, oh my god, what did Dean ever do to be cursed with such an impossible burden.
Sam's falling asleep at the table, his elbows bumping the edge of his plate and his head drooping down, until his third cup of scalding coffee, and all the while Dean keeps kicking him under the table and making these dumb comments, jokes at Sam's expense, which is stupid because Sam isn't laughing and it's not like there's anybody else paying attention. Dean's only doing it to bother Sam, and Sam knows that, but that doesn't make it any less effective, any less grating.
Sam wants to scream at him, wants to tell Dean to shut the fuck up, please, but instead he's just trying to ignore him, which is hard to do because he grew up in awe of his brother and then spent years watching his brother's back. He's been watching his brother for almost his whole life and it's years too late to break that habit. Trying to ignore Dean is like trying not to breathe or trying to keep his heart from beating, a biological impossibility, the way Sam's hardwired with so many failsafes against the mere idea, so most of the time it's easier to just accept the inevitability of Dean and move on.
But Dean's been staring at him for the past three minutes now, his lip curled in that knowing smirk like he's waiting for Sam to do something else, to provide him with more material. Sam wants to punch him, wants to make him look away and wants to see what he would do, wants that instant of contact. He wants to see if Dean would punch him back, blacken his eye and spend the next couple of days looking slightly guilty, or if he would grab Sam's shirt, haul him across the table and Sam would gasp without thinking and the waitress would drop her tray and everyone would stare.
The sun comes out from behind the clouds, light twisting in suddenly through the window behind Dean like it's trying to punish Sam for looking at his brother, for having these thoughts, like it wants to slip behind his eyes and peel back his skin from the inside out so that everyone will know.
"Get the check," Sam says. He rubs his eyes and his chair scrapes loudly across the floor when he stands up. "I'm gonna stretch my legs, I'll meet you by the car."
"Whatever, Stretch," Dean says, seizing that one word like Sam should have known he would, and Sam winces. He hasn't thought about that in years, Dean's nickname for him during one particularly hellish month, when Sam suddenly got taller than Dad, taller than Dean, and kept forgetting, kept walking into things, low-hanging treelimbs, decorative plants and doorframes, until Dean said maybe he was possessed. Dad was away for the weekend, maybe longer, and Dean said maybe he should do an exorcism. Sam was betrayed by his weirdly long limbs and this new center of gravity; he didn't have a chance of escaping when Dean held him down.
Dean was just fucking around, both of them knew that, but until Dean pulled him out of the burning wreck of his Stanford life, that was the last time Sam cried in front of his brother, hot frustrated tears mingling with the holy water Dean poured onto his face.
Dean made Sam's teenage years hell, when he wasn't busy filling in for Dad or teaching Sam how to fight or helping Sam with his math homework, so Sam was surprised to eventually realize that he loved Dean in this awful, worldshattering way, that he couldn't imagine life without Dean anymore, couldn't remember how he'd managed to survive when Dean wasn't there, a constant in his peripheral vision or in the other bed or on the other side of the bar at most. It's a visceral, consuming thing, the way he loves his brother, closer to in love than to love plain-and-simple. It's terrifying, but he's learned to live with it, mostly in peace, keeps it tucked away safe at the back of his mind like the impending onset of a genetic disease (which it kind of is) or the threat of nuclear war.
It doesn't matter, really, because Sam's not ever going to do anything about it and maybe one day he'll grow out of it, but it still burns a little every time Dean does something life-threateningly stupid or thoughtlessly cruel. It burns a little every time Sam tells himself he should get out while he still can, every time Sam tells himself that he should stop, that it's wrong, it's suicidal.
And every time, he realizes that knowing as much doesn't change a goddamn thing.
It's absolutely insane, how much Sam loves his brother, but so is Dean, so it kind of makes sense, as much as anything in Sam's life ever makes sense. It's one of those truths, unchangeable facts, like how Sam was born in Lawrence and got a 174 on his LSAT and once got kicked out of a campus bar for starting a fight (and he's not telling Dean about that, ever).
Sam takes his time walking around the block, his thumbs hitched in his belt loops like if he pretends he's not hurrying, something might change, this bleak black mood might lighten. Like if he's not around Dean for as long as possible, there might be a chance of recovery. Sweat beading on his forehead and if he waits long enough, the sunlight might burn something out of him, might leave him temporarily sane by the time he gets back to Dean.
When Sam gets back to the parking lot, Dean's in the car with his window unrolled and that weary martyr's smirk on his face, like he's prepared to spend the rest of his life waiting here for Sam but that doesn't mean he's happy about it. Sam looks down and almost misses the way Dean's gaze locks onto him for an instant, his eyes narrowed, before he looks away and starts drumming his fingers impatiently on the hot black vinyl of the steering wheel.
"Took you long enough," Dean says, the cut of his mouth curt and annoyed, at odds with his muggy-afternoon drawl. "I was gonna leave without you. Figured somebody picked you up and decided to give you a good home."
"So why didn't you?" Sam says.
Dean shrugs. "If you'd been gone another minute, I would have."
"Sure," Sam says. "Right. You'd make it three blocks and get hopelessly lost."
"Dude, I didn't get lost once the whole time you were at college," Dean says. "I only get lost when you're here fucking with my head and that's only 'cause you give me bad directions and never learned how to read a map."
"Your head's fucked plenty without me," Sam says, his face towards the window and his words half-muttered. "I can read a map a hell of a lot better than you can."
"You've been fucking with my head so long I don't even remember what it was like before," Dean says, rendering Sam speechless. Unexpected honesty, an out of place confession, and how the hell is Sam supposed to respond to that without giving something away? He wonders if Dean knows that, if Dean said it just to fuck with him, but, "Good thing I got used to it," Dean continues without waiting for Sam to reply, like he's only talking to himself, like he thinks maybe Sam's asleep.
Sam closes his eyes. It's worth a try, but it doesn't work. Too much coffee, caffeine jittering in his bloodstream, for sleep to be possible, and the light burning through his closed eyelids is the color of fire, so he opens them again and stares out the window. Lonely interstate with green and white roadsigns like battered oases, promises that civilization is a real thing they can reach again if only they keep going long enough.
Two hours down the interstate, once they get out of town. Use Your Illusion playing the whole time, bleeding back into itself, and normally Dean would sing along until Sam had no choice but to give in, too, but today there's just the music, the tape wearing thin to let the road-hum noise of the tires seep in. Sam sneaks the occasional glance over at his brother. Dean's wearing sunglasses, isn't paying attention to him at all, and every once in awhile he licks his lips or scratches his nose or turns his head a little to check something in the sideview mirror.
He's boring as hell and Sam looks pointedly away, back out the window, like even the glare of the dead wasteland sprawl is more interesting than his brother, and what's Dean going to do about that?
Nothing in particular marks the place where they stop, halfway between two mile-markers. Something's shoving hikers off of cliff-edges and Sam thinks it's the ghost of a murdered sheriff, this ghost whose bones are buried somewhere out beneath that blinding sun and who's gotten territorial with age.
Dean pulls off alongside the road, tires edging off the asphalt, onto slightly softer earth. The engine clicks for a moment, angry beetle noise, but Dean doesn't look alarmed, so it's probably nothing. He rests a hand on the steering wheel, looks almost wistful, and then opens his door.
Nobody around, nobody else for miles, for as far as Sam can see. He slips on his sunglasses, the world rendered flat and grey against the flaying knife of the sun, and goes after his brother.
Dean's standing by the trunk, which he's propped open with their second-best shotgun. He looks up when Sam approaches, sneers a little before looking back down and shouldering his bag."You'd better know where we're going," he says.
"Thought you didn't trust me with a map," Sam says.
"I don't, but I swear to god, if we gotta sleep out here because you get us lost, I'm feeding you to the coyotes," Dean says. He contradicts himself all the time, doesn't make any sense, and sometimes it drives Sam insane, because how is he meant to win an argument with someone who doesn't even agree with himself?
Sam rolls his eyes, even though Dean probably won't be able to tell. "They'll go after the weaker members of the pack first," he says conversationally, because nothing annoys Dean faster than when Sam acts like Dean's the one with the issues. "Or the smaller ones, since they're easier to take down."
Dean's mouth opens for a second like he can't believe Sam had the audacity to say that. Sam grins until Dean shoves a backpack at him with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. "Nobody'd better fuck with my car," Dean says, slamming the trunk shut and looking at Sam like he's going to hold Sam personally responsible if someone does. It's an empty threat, the last card Dean always plays before giving up, so Sam ignores it. He entertains himself with the idea of getting lost in the desert with Dean, having to subsist on, like, cactus, and wonders how long it would be before Dean threatened to eat him.
They're stripped down to t-shirts, leaving behind leather and flannel and even Sam's beloved hoodie. It's only temporary, though; they won't be gone for long, should be back just after dark at the latest, and then they'll go somewhere less infernally hot. Sam glances back at the car one last time and then follows Dean out into the expanse, red-edged hills in the distance.
The sun's starting to set by the time they get to the right place, drop their bags. Sam takes his sunglasses off, looks up at the sky, these mingled shades of violet and orange and red. Dean follows his lead, slips his own glasses off and frowns at him. "This is it?" he says.
"I think so," Sam says. Dull-edged rocks piled high beneath their boots and this view, looking out onto miles and miles of carrion nothing.
"That's great," Dean says. "I'm not digging up the entire desert just because you think he's buried somewhere, like, in this general area." He spreads his arms wide to encompass the world, like a man beseeching the sky for rain or pleading with the gods for absolution.
"I didn't ask you to," Sam says. "I narrowed it down to pretty much here, just for you. You're welcome."
Dean unhooks the shovel from his bag and tosses it at Sam's feet. "Start digging," he says. He turns around, raises a hand over his eyes and looks out at the flatness below them. Sam wants to ask what he's looking for, because there's nothing to see, but there's no point because Dean will just make something up.
"No way," Sam says. "I got us here, I think that counts for something."
"It counts for me not kicking your ass all the way back down the hill," Dean says, glancing back at him.
"I think the whole fair division of labor idea means you--" Sam begins. There's a noise like distant radio static, a ringing in his ears, and he looks over in time to see the ghost appear a few yards away, dead-empty eye sockets beneath the brim of his tattered hat and the rusty six-shooter in his hand the color of blood beneath the dying sun. That's an answer to something Sam was wondering, how exactly the ghost shoved the hikers, whether it startled them or what as it's not exactly corporeal, and then the ghost pulls the trigger. Gunshot crack, but decades old, reduced to a noise like paper tearing, and Sam's shout of warning tears out of his throat a half-second too late.
Dean staggers back, takes one step too many, his boots slipping off of the rocks. Sam is too far away, is staring dumbly at the Looney Toons flail, the desperate Icarus swing of Dean's arms in the instant before he plummets over the edge.
Sam blinks. The salt-loaded shotgun fits in his hand, though he's not sure how it got there, doesn't remember drawing it or aiming or any of these automatic-pilot things he does before he pulls the trigger and the ghost flickers apart.
Sam stares at the place where it was and then, very deliberately, he stares at the place where Dean was standing. This rugged, ragged landscape gone silent again and Dean is nowhere in sight and this is not how he loses Dean. It can't be. The jarring fact of Dean's absence is something around which he cannot wrap his head, like finding out that the earth is flat or that Galileo was wrong after all, that the sun orbits the earth as surely and irrevocably as Sam did Dean and now he'll spin out of control, nothing to ground him, to keep him in place, keep him from crashing out into the black.
He can't make himself look over the edge. Can't make it be real, his brother dead on the rocks below, blood turning black beneath the darkling sky because not even Dean could survive that fall, not even Dean who can do anything, and it must be shock, he thinks numbly, shock, the way he can't make himself move at all.
And Dean has the keys. Had the keys. Until Sam looks over the edge, Dean is both alive and dead, so Dean has-had the keys to the car, and Sam's going to have to rifle through his pockets to get them back and he has to cover his mouth to keep from laughing, this desperate hysterical crow's-cry that's going to strangle him and he could have sworn he was breathing but apparently not, because his vision is starting to sparkle and fizz at the edges and maybe he'll pitch over the edge and land next to Dean and they can haunt the desert together.
He sort of killed his brother, he thinks. He was too busy staring at the ghost to tell Dean to move, and how the fuck is that something he can even think about, even comprehend, how can he stand here and put it into words, there's gotta be something wrong with him.
And then Dean's hand reaches back up over the edge of the cliff, the rest of him following a moment later as he hauls himself back up onto solid ground. He wipes the back of his hand across his face, says, "Motherfucking sonuvabitch, what the hell do I keep you around for, are you just gonna fuckin' stand there," and glares at Sam. His arms are scraped to hell and his jeans are torn and dusty and he's alive, he's amazingly incredibly alive.
"Dean," Sam says wonderingly. He loves his brother more than anything, he really does.
"No, the goddamn Easter," Dean begins and then he trails off, frowns at Sam. Sam swallows and knuckles at the salt-trails on his cheeks, hopes Dean won't be able to distinguish them from the sweat and dirt smear. "Bunny," Dean finishes, but the venom's gone out of his voice, and Sam laughs. For real this time, because of course Dean caught himself, of course Dean didn't die, he's too fast for that, too good, reflexes like lightning and he's always two steps ahead of Sam in everything that matters. He's immortal where it counts, a force of nature, a miracle, and he looks slightly worried, so Sam stops laughing.
"Told you you were gonna drive me crazy one of these days," Sam says. His voice is a little strained, cracks on crazy, and he doesn't care at all.
"Yeah, but you lie all the time," Dean says, which isn't true, which is in fact itself a lie, and then he sits down a safe distance from the edge. Sam comes to sit next to him, drops to the ground rather than lowering himself gracefully because all of a sudden his legs won't support him anymore.
"You're okay," Sam says.
"Fucked up my shoulder and you were no fucking help, but I'll live," Dean says grudgingly, like it's nothing, like Sam's the dumbest person in the world for thinking otherwise. Sam looks at him, stares at him, taking in the line of his jaw and the curve of his mouth and the shifting green of his eyes. Dean smirks a little, but he doesn't say anything, like just this once he doesn't mind, like just this once he'll give this to Sam.
"I liked these jeans," Dean says after a minute. He wipes his hands on his thighs, stares down at his palms.
Sam shakes his head. "A sacrifice to the desert gods," he says. "Your jeans for your life, seems fair."
"They were pretty awesome," Dean agrees. "Hey, gimme a little warning next time, okay?"
"Maybe if you weren't deaf from all that shitty music, you'd've heard me," Sam says, gleeful and daring. Dean's eyes go wide and enraged, but there's a smile playing around his mouth like he doesn't mean it. He reaches back and punches Sam sharply on the collarbone. It fucking hurts, but Sam's used to it, used to Dean leaving bruises all over him, usually on the inside where nobody can see, so he grins and knocks his shoulder against his brother's. It's impossible to be angry right now, impossible to be anything but giddy and reckless.
Dean turns to look at him again and Sam's heart stops, stutters, beats panicked in his chest like wings. He's trapped, stone-frozen, caught off-guard by the faint absinthe of Dean's eyes, by Dean's shoulder pressed up close against his. He thinks it has to be obvious, all of his efforts gone to waste as all of his secrets are written across his face, no way Dean can't know, but Dean only says, "We should get moving before it comes back."
"Yeah," Sam says. He gets to his feet, offers Dean a hand up, and Dean accepts, his fingers wrapping tight and strong around Sam's wrist.
The bones are buried just beneath the spot where the ghost appeared, like maybe it was trying to help, like maybe all it wants is peace, but Sam will never believe that because the fucking ghost almost killed his brother.
Sam does most of the work after all, digs up the body while Dean keeps watch. They burn the bones while the sun sinks lower behind the horizon and if Sam's eyes water when he looks over at Dean, it's only because Dean's a goddamn pyromaniac, addicted to flame and danger and excess and sometimes all three at once, and the wind is blowing the smoke in Sam's direction, thick black clouds stinging his eyes.
When the fire finally burns down (and it's a miracle that Dean didn't start a forest fire, even considering that there aren't actually any trees around), Sam wipes at his face and turns around to catch Dean digging through Sam's own bag. "What the hell, Dean," Sam says. Just because Sam's glad that Dean's alive doesn't mean Dean doesn't have to keep his hands to himself, doesn't have to keep his hands off of Sam's stuff.
Dean glances up at him, his teeth pressed sharp and white against his lower lip, and holds up the medkit Sam shoved into his bag like an afterthought, the medkit that wouldn't have done anything, that would have been worse than worthless, insult to injury, if Dean had fallen. "You wanna play doctor, Sammy," he says absently and then he twists the lid off of one of the bottles, shakes a few pills into his hand and washes them down with one of Sam's carefully-hoarded water bottles.
"I thought you were okay," Sam says accusingly. Whatever it is, it's not bad, it's not bad at all compared to how bad it could have been, so he can afford to be a little annoyed.
"I am," Dean says. "Just a little sore from falling off the cliff, you remember, and by the way, thanks for caring." He flings the water bottle at Sam's head and Sam could duck, but the bottle's empty and Sam's feeling kind of nice, so he lets it thwack harmlessly against his forehead, which makes Dean laugh.
"So you can make it back to the car," Sam says.
"Uh, yeah," Dean says, like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "Not that I'm not flattered you wanna camp out with me, but since I ain't even close to dying, don't get your hopes up."
Sam feels himself blushing, but he thinks it's dark enough that Dean won't notice. "I'm not gonna haul your ass all the way back to the road, that's all I'm saying," he says.
"Not even if I asked nicely?" Dean asks. Sam thinks he might be fluttering his eyelashes, but it's too dark to tell.
It seems like something Dean would be doing, though, and even the idea is exasperating, so Sam says, "Okay, that's it, I'm leaving you here," and shoulders Dean's bag because Dean is still messing with Sam's own. He has to stop to adjust the straps, but it only takes a moment, and then he heads for what passes for the trail without looking to see if Dean's following him.
He walks slowly, though, and he stops, pretends to be interested in a rock, pretends he's not waiting for his brother, as soon as he hears Dean scrambling after him.
By the time they make it back to the car, the sky's gone the color of tarnished silver, slipping into smooth obsidian at the horizon, and they're walking side by side, exhausted and punch-drunk, stumbling like landfallen sailors as they near the Impala.
"Hey, it's still here," Sam says. He was sort of expecting the car to be gone, because Dean is okay, despite the shoulder thing, and the ghost didn't come back, and not having to chase down a car thief seems like pushing their luck.
"Of course it's still here, who's gonna fuck with my car," Dean says, narrowing his eyes at Sam as though Sam meant it as an insult. Dean's even more protective of the car than he is of Sam, sometimes, and there are times when Sam thinks Dean likes the car more than he likes his brother, brief moments of insanity that leave Sam reeling, though he thinks that if it ever came down to a choice, Dean would choose him.
Probably.
"Nobody," Sam says. "Nobody's gonna fuck with your car because if they do, you'll hunt them down and make them wish they'd never been born."
"Damn straight," Dean says, smiling crookedly at Sam, dramatic and moonlit. Sam rolls his eyes but can't help smiling back, just a little. Dean pops the trunk and slides the pack he stole from Sam off of his shoulders, cracks his neck. Sam sets his bag next to Dean's, watches as it topples over and knocks Dean's flat. It seems fitting, an apt metaphor, though he's not sure for what. He rubs his eyes, yawns and tries not to think about it.
"No way we're makin' it back to the motel, is there," Dean says. Sam's dead on his feet, but not so much that it counts, so he frowns at Dean.
"I can drive," he says. "I'm not the, the one-armed bandit here."
"Watch who you're calling a bandit, klepto, don't think I don't know what happened to my Metallica shirt," Dean says.
"Oh my god, Dean, for the last time, I did not take your Metallica shirt and that was like ten years ago, man. I think you should probably move on."
"I'm just saying," Dean says. "And no, you're not driving, because you'll wreck my car and then I'll kick your ass and we'll both be stuck haunting this goddamn road until somebody put us out of our misery."
"I thought you didn't want to camp out," Sam says.
"It's not camping if we don't got a fire," Dean says seriously, like he genuinely believes he has a winning argument, and Sam heaves a sigh that's mostly for effect.
"Just remember that it was your idea," he says. "You want the front or the back?"
"We got a tent in the trunk," Dean says.
Sam stares at him. "You're serious."
"As a heart attack," Dean says. "And I think I'd know." Which isn't something Sam likes to think about, likes to remember, so he doesn't push, so he glares at Dean and goes to dig the tent out from beneath everything else Dean has jammed in the trunk.
Sam puts up the tent while Dean leans against the hood and heckles him, says c'mon, put your back into it, it ain't rocket science, Sammy, you'd'a made a lousy boy scout.
The tent smells like old fires, clean woodsmoke, and it's smaller than Sam remembered. He takes a step back, frowns at it.
"I can sleep in the car," he says. He doesn't make the offer completely out of the goodness of his heart. He's not sure he's up for sharing such close quarters with Dean right now, or maybe ever. If Sam's not careful, he'll run them both headlong into grief and ruin.
"Nah," Dean says. "You, uh. You might choke in your sleep or something and then who'd save you?"
"You are so stoned," Sam says affectionately, shaking his head at his brother. It's the easiest, safest of all possible explanations and it has the added benefit of being true.
"Yeah," Dean agrees, tipping his head back. The moonlight washes over his face, pale and cold, and Sam bites back a smile.
"Okay," he says, a little too eager, not hesitant enough, giving in too easily because it doesn't count as taking if Dean offers on his own, offers it up all by himself. He shoves his hands into his pockets and goes to stand by Dean, who hands him half of the ham and cheese sandwich left over from yesterday's lunch. It's a little stale and the cheese is melted, slightly congealed, but Sam is suddenly so fucking hungry that he doesn't care at all. They trade a bottle of Jack back and forth while they eat, the whiskey warm in Sam's mouth, settling even warmer in his stomach, and he can't think of anywhere else he'd rather be than right here, sitting on the hood of the Impala with Dean, eating half of a stale sandwich and getting a little buzzed and watching the clouds roll in slowly from the east.
Dean takes a swig from the bottle, swallows and when Sam looks over, there's one drop left clinging to his lower lip. Sam has the sudden self-destructive urge to lean in and lick it away, push Dean back flat onto the hood, but luckily he comes to his senses in time and Dean wipes his mouth a moment later, erasing the opportunity. When Dean hands the bottle back to Sam, his thumb scratches the underside of Sam's wrist and Sam suppresses a shiver and looks away, pretends to be distracted by the faintly audible howl of coyotes.
He remembers reading that coyotes haven't been sighted in the area for something like twenty years, but it's possible that he's remembering wrong. It's possible.
"How many other ghosts you think are out there?" he asks eventually.
"Don't matter, as long as they keep to themselves," Dean says.
Sam shakes his head, makes this noise that's half sigh, half agreement, because Dean's right, after all. The dead are only their business once they start to get violent, once they start to get loud, make trouble. He takes another shot, lowers the bottle and has the unnerving sensation that he's about to fall asleep or pass out, but then he realizes that it really is getting darker, the clouds moving in to cover the stars, blot out the moon.
"Storm's coming," he says, recapping the bottle.
"Always is," Dean says sleepily, and then he blinks, scrubs a hand across his face. Fading moonlight reflects off his ring, makes it wink like a beacon, light guiding Sam home.
Sam snickers. "You're so lucky you got me," he says, though in truth he thinks it might be the other way around. "Otherwise you'd be wandering around the desert right now, philosophizing at, at rocks or something."
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't've been in the desert to begin with," Dean points out.
"If it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here to begin with," Sam says.
"If it weren't for you, neither would I," Dean counters and he's drunk enough that Sam can tell he means it, the way he leans in a little, the way he puts his hands flat on the hood for balance when he does, the way he looks at Sam like Sam's the only clear point in his vision. The words click into Sam like a key, opening the door to something that leaves him flushed and shivery, unsure what do to with his hands. But Dean probably means something completely prosaic by it, only means it in the sense that Sam found them the hunt, so there's no need for Sam to overanalyze, to take it to heart.
And it's a bad sign that Sam was starting to anyway, that he almost did, so he says, "I'm going to bed before the coyotes come looking for us," and pushes off of the car. He doesn't dare look back, because he thinks that what would happen if he did would be a lot worse than turning into a pillar of salt, though maybe not than sending Dean to the underworld. He looks up instead, trying to ground himself, which is a mistake. The stars reel slightly beneath the thick cloud veil and Sam is momentarily lost to vertigo, the ground rising up to meet him, but no, he's still standing, standing tall, his shadow lost to the mess of black spilling across the desert floor.
"Leave me to get eaten, sure, that's real good of you," Dean says and Sam hears his boots hit the ground a moment later, earth-scuffing, scuffling noises as Dean lowers himself to the ground and lurches after Sam.
Sam unzips the tent, unrolls their sleeping bags while Dean fumbles with the laces of his boots. Dean's taking too long, so Sam crawls into his sleeping bag and waits for his brother to stop moving around.
"You got first watch," Dean says, his words slurred ever so slightly.
"Sure," Sam says, even though they haven't had to worry about taking turns in a long time, maybe since they were camping with Dad, because now they keep each other awake most of the time, bullshit stories and caffeine and how Sam doesn't trust Dean not to get bored and do something dumb and juvenile and possibly involving Sam's hair.
Dean's eyes slip shut and Sam is content to watch him, because for once Dean's not running off, for once he doesn't have to worry about Dean getting killed. All the things already trying to kill them, so many evil things that already have the taste of Winchester blood like hot pennies on their tongues, and Dean always has to go find more. And because demons and ghosts and curses aren't enough, he has to fuck around with heart attacks and car accidents and truckers jacked up on god knows what, like maybe there's a victory in it for him if he lets something completely non-supernatural kill him.
"What is it, Sammy?" Dean says without opening his eyes, and Sam's busted, caught red-handed, left grasping for an excuse.
"If it rains, the tent's gonna wash away," he says, which is stupid and statistically improbable.
"No it won't," Dean says promptly.
"Flash floods happen all the time," Sam says, arguing for the sake of arguing, arguing because he doesn't want Dean to go to sleep just yet, selfishly wants him to stay awake and keep Sam company.
Sleeping bag rustle as Dean turns over to look at Sam, his face screwed up with fond exasperation, his face which is almost unbearably close to Sam's, the way they're jammed tight in this painfully small tent. "You're. Such a geek," Dean informs him, breath warm and intimate on Sam's face. He glances down at Sam's mouth and then his gaze darts back to Sam's eyes and Sam's stomach twists, something tight and nervous fluttering against his ribs.
"Heard that one before," Sam says, hardly louder than a whisper, but that's okay because Dean's so close, it makes sense for him to be whispering. Dean doesn't have to know it's because there's suddenly no oxygen left in his lungs, no oxygen left at all.
"Yeah?" Dean says. His pupils are huge, his eyes pitch-dark.
"Yeah," Sam says. "Gonna have to find another way to shut me up."
Dean looks at him and Sam's heart is shaking and he's sure Dean can hear the terrified rhythm of his breath and he shouldn't have said that, oh god. He shouldn't have said it, he got sloppy and careless in the wake of this good night, this good fortune, and it's too late to take anything back because Dean's mouth presses against his, closed and warm and insistent, forceful and only slightly less destructive than his knuckles would have been, bruising Sam to the bone. Sam opens his mouth, just to, to, to say what or dean or oh god, not to escalate this, he swears, and Dean pulls away.
His eyes are half open, crescent-moon glints in the dim, dim light, and Sam is petrified. He considers going after the rest of whiskey in order to burn this potential humiliation, this epic fuck-up, from his brain, but he probably wouldn't pass out, would probably only get drunker and do something awful and unforgivable like try to kiss Dean, and anyway he doesn't trust himself to move without knocking into something, tripping over Dean or bringing the tent down around them.
He's pretty sure he has the advantage here, is the one closest to being in his right state of mind and all, so it doesn't make sense that Dean's the one who looks so calm.
Dean licks his lips. Still this close to Sam's face, and then he says, "Go to sleep, Sam, we're not gonna drown," and rolls over to face the wall of the tent.
Sam tells himself that this suffocating sensation in his chest isn't the feeling of his world imploding. It's something much less important, like his lungs collapsing or gravity turning against him.
He tries to console himself with the idea that Dean might not even remember in the morning, that even if he does, he won't bring it up or that if he does, maybe Sam can pass it off as some drunken hallucination or something. And it's not like Dean can say anything without damning himself, too, because after all, he's the one who kissed Sam, even though Sam practically told him to, and Sam is such a bad person, he's probably ruined everything, Dean's going to hate him forever, Dean is never going to look at him again.
This miserable litany of condemnation and panic runs him eventually into sleep, long after Dean's breathing evens out, runs him into this dream about hot blood dripping onto his face, so that when he opens his eyes again, he's confused as to whether he's actually awake. It's rain, though, not blood, clean water splattering against the walls of the tent.
Dean has his face wedged up against Sam's shoulder, his mouth open just above the hem of Sam's sleeve. Sam lifts his head a little to look at him, marvels at the improbability of waking up before Dean could move away, because this is something Dean would never do if he were anything close to conscious and as such it's something to be savored for as long as possible. "Go back t' sleep," Dean mumbles, his words muffled by Sam's shoulder, shaking like an earthquake across Sam's skin. "You're keeping me 'wake."
"Yeah, obviously," Sam says, or tries to say. Thinks he tries to say. His mouth is dry, his tongue thick, and if he closed his eyes again, he'd be asleep instantly. He feels something wet on his face just then, needle-sharp like a tear, like maybe he's still asleep after all or maybe his dream is leaking into reality, which seems plausible.
It's only the tent, though, only the tent roof leaking, not his subconscious. He stares up at the torn plastic for a few seconds, trying to work out what that means. Another raindrop hits him squarely in the forehead and he reaches one arm out of his sleeping bag to shake Dean awake.
"Fuck off," Dean says, a little more coherent this time, but his eyes are still closed when he rolls back over.
"The tent's leaking, man," Sam says. "You wanna sleep in here, be my guest, but gimme the keys first."
He thinks Dean might already be asleep again, because for one long moment, Dean doesn't respond, but maybe it just takes him that long to process Sam's words, because he sits up suddenly, his hair matted flat on one side of his head, standing straight up on the other, his eyes wide and confused, and if Sam weren't being rained on, he would laugh at the absurdity of his brother, but as his brother has the keys, maybe he'll do that some other time.
They scramble out of their sleeping bags, stumble for their boots. The tent zipper sticks and Dean swears at Sam while Sam tries to tug it loose, until he finally manages to work it open and the rain comes pouring, pooling inside.
Ten feet at most to the car and they run, tumbling together, tripping over untied laces and over nothing at all. Dean fumbles to get the keys out of his pocket and Sam is being drenched, towering over Dean and inadvertently sheltering him from the worst of the rain and Dean so owes him for this. Sam's freezing and he can hear thunder in the distance, but he grins, even as his teeth start to chatter and he hisses hurry the fuck up Dean, hurry the fuck up. It's the kind of exhilarated alive he feels when they're being chased or when they're chasing, when the night spins like a coin around them, head or tails and it could go either way, but tonight the worst possibilities, the ones that end with Dean bleeding or Sam alone, have already been ruled out.
Black satin gleam of the car and the chrome glinting and Dean gets the door open, falls inside. Sam crushes in after him, forgetting momentarily about Dean's shoulder, until Dean recoils on the other side of the backseat, says, "Ow fuck you asshole."
"Sorry, sorry," Sam says, pulling the door shut behind himself.
"No, you're not," Dean says. "You like hurting me because you're a sadistic bastard. I'm so on to you, Sammy."
Sam rolls his eyes. "That's exactly it," he says.
"Knew it," Dean mutters. "Good thing I'm used to you."
"What if the car gets hit by lightning?" Sam asks, staring out at the storm, his face plastered against the glass like he's four years old, but it's not like Dean's going to tell him to stop. Or if he does, it's not like Sam's going to listen, not like Dean's actually going to do anything about it.
"Then we'll die," Dean says. "And then at least you'll be quiet." He sounds mad, but he isn't really. He's got so many tells, the way his mouth quirks and the undertone in his voice like he's trying to keep from laughing and the way he can't look directly at Sam, and he's not fooling Sam in the slightest. Sam punches him, brief press of his knuckles against Dean's (uninjured) shoulder.
"One of us has to do the smart thinking," Sam tells him.
"Knock yourself out," Dean says. "Just do it quietly and on your side of the goddamn car."
"I get a side now?" Sam asks.
"No," Dean says. "If you're lucky, I might give you a ride back to town, though." He glares at Sam and Sam smiles widely back at him. Being angry at Dean is a distant memory; right now, Dean could do just about anything and Sam would forgive him, would be overwhelmingly glad that Dean's willing to put up with him. Rain dapples the window behind Dean, smashes into the glass, rain all around and Sam's here with Dean in the middle of it.
"Hey, Dean," Sam says.
"Yeah, Sam."
"Good idea you had, camping out."
"I said it wasn't camping out," Dean protests. "I told you that."
"Yeah, I forgot how your logic works," Sam says dryly and Dean's forehead creases.
"What'm I gonna do with you, man," he says, shaking his head, and Sam doesn't remember the car being this small a minute ago, could have sworn Dean was pushed up closer to the other door. He swallows. His heart's pounding, louder than the rain, and his mouth is dry again and he just remembered the last thought he had before he fell asleep, which was that even if Dean could ever look at him again, there was no way Sam would be able to meet his eyes.
"I don't know," Sam says. "You tell me."
"You gotta promise not to freak out if I do," Dean says. He's looking at the ceiling like the secrets to the universe are written in up there, written in ink or maybe blood, written somewhere just out of Sam's range of vision.
Sam feels like he's missing something vital, like he's got a head injury and maybe just hasn't noticed yet, the way none of his thoughts are working, are disintegrating before he can grasp them, the way he can't look away from Dean's sleep-swollen mouth. "Okay," he says, a little dizzy, and Dean nods.
"Okay," he echoes and then he leans in, his mouth fitting against Sam's again, but this time it's open, his tongue pressing between Sam's lips. Sam forgets how to breathe for a second, Dean kissing him full and rough and sloppy, pushing him back against the door, the storm raging on the other side of the glass but it's not anything so loud, so violent, as the noise in Sam's head making it so difficult for him to think, so difficult for him to do anything but kiss Dean back.
It's more like a collision than like any perfect movie kiss, which is in and of itself perfect, the wet sound Sam's mouth makes when he sucks at Dean's lower lip and the way the stubble on Dean's chin scratches across his nose.
"You're not freaking out, are you," Dean says, mumbles against Sam's cheek, and Sam draws in a breath shaky with laughter and these other crackling dark things, how he's half-hard already off of that one kiss.
"Does it," he says, and he opens his mouth against Dean's neck, holds it there for a second, Dean's adam's apple stuttering beneath his tongue. "Look like I'm freaking out," he finishes.
Dean shrugs, one hand tangled in Sam's hair so he couldn't pull away even if he wanted to. "Never know with you," he says, the sharp edge of his teeth against Sam's throat, leaving Sam gasping, breathless, twisting beneath his mouth. "You've always been a weird kid."
"Fuck you," Sam spits out, shivering because he needs Dean to keep touching him, needs Dean in such a vital way that he'd never thought he could need anything, ever. And Dean does, Dean puts his hands all over Sam, so sure and steady like he's meant to be doing this. Sam is delirious, deliriously happy, that Dean is doing these things to him, that maybe sometimes Dean lies awake all night trying not to think about his brother, just like Sam does, that Dean wants this, too.
"You're, uh. Real eloquent when you're hot," Dean says, drawing back far enough to grin at him. Sam's hand scrapes across the back of Dean's neck, short hair bristle against his palm, and then Dean says, "I take it back, oh fuck, I take it back," into Sam's mouth as Sam closes the distance between them, runs his tongue over Dean's lips and slides a hand up under Dean's rainsoaked shirt. Heel of his hand against the flat of Dean's stomach, damp skin and his brother's pulse reverberating through Sam's body.
Brief flare of Dean's cheekbones, illuminated hollow and curve, when lightning splits the sky, leaves Sam blinking and blind. His hand is still on Dean's face, his fingers brushing the scar on Dean's forehead that's been there for as long as Sam can remember, the scar Sam has memorized, so he knows exactly where it is even when it's too dark to see anything.
Dean cups Sam's face in his hands, his thumb curling behind Sam's ear. He tastes like Martian dreams cut with whiskey, this raw red-dust landscape and cruel metallic rain. He grins at Sam as he pulls back, shifts position, brings his legs up onto the seat so that he can lean over Sam without losing his balance. All the leverage in the world on his side, working against Sam so that Sam is helpless, one hand tangled in the leather cord of Dean's necklace as Dean's knee digs into his thigh, as Dean tugs Sam's shirt up and over his head, scrapes kisses all down Sam's chest.
Eventually they have to stop to breathe, all Sam's half-formed plans set back by the dumb necessity of oxygen, and because he's not sure how much longer he can do this before he pushes it one step further. The windows are clouded, steamed up, and he says, a little shaky, "I'm sorry I didn't warn you about the ghost."
"Yeah, you owe me big time for that," Dean says. "Good thing I'm feeling nice." Sam smiles a little and Dean grins back at him again, works a hand around Sam's belt and starts messing with the buckle.
"What," Sam squeaks. "What are you doing."
"What's it look like," Dean says. Sam's not sure how out of it is he is, his eyes sharp and quick in the dark and maybe he's been faking this whole time. Sam can never trust him about this kind of thing, can't trust him about anything but the most vital life and death kind of things, but either way, he sure as hell can't let Dean do this if Dean doesn't mean it, if there is any chance at all that he doesn't mean it.
"How out of it are you?" Sam asks. It comes out flatter, blunter than he intended, and maybe there was a better way to ask, a better way to phrase it, because Dean stops, stares at Sam, flare of panic in his eyes before they narrow defensively and his mouth snaps shut into one thin flat line. He looks petrified, Sam thinks, and then no, that's not it at all. He looks pissed off and humiliated, like he thinks Sam just rejected him, which is the stupidest thing Dean's ever thought in his life (and Sam would know, as he's an expert on the topic).
Maybe Sam will go to hell for taking advantage of the situation, but right now there's no better way for him to call Dean an idiot than to unbuckle his belt himself, to push Dean's hand back down onto his lap, and Dean lets out a breath. It might be a relieved breath, but Sam could be projecting.
"You okay," Dean says.
"Yeah," Sam says. "Yes," and Dean nods, unzips Sam's jeans, his fingers slipping, pushing across the front of Sam's shorts.
"You do things like that, you're making me crazy all the time," Dean says, pressed up flat against Sam, the line of his chest flush against Sam's. Sam bites at his neck in response as Dean's hand slips beneath the band of Sam's shorts. They're both going to be bruised all over in a few hours, the way this is going, and no way any of it will look like an accident. "Wanna know a secret, Sammy," Dean says, his voice hopelessly jagged, dragging across Sam's skin like all the best kinds of torture.
"Oh god, yes," Sam says, one hand smoothed against Dean's collarbone and the other digging into the back of Dean's neck and yes, yes, a thousand times yes, yes to everything Dean might ever ask.
"I've wanted to do this for a really long time," Dean says, low, almost a whisper into Sam's ear.
"Me, too," Sam says, fingers twisted tight in Dean's shirt. Any minute now the fabric's going to tear, he'll rip Dean's shirt and Dean will never let him live that down.
"That's good," Dean says. "That's really good, because otherwise this would be awkward." Sam's laugh is choked and desperate and the whole car smells like Old Spice and the gunpowder edge of sweat, skin-salt. Dean's half on top of him, shivering and breathing hard, leaning across his lap and nearly straddling him, and Sam's jeans are spread open like a confession. He's never been more exposed in his whole life as his hips jerk and Dean falls against him, wet slide of his tongue beneath Sam's jawline as Sam comes.
"Good," Dean says, breath-quiet, pulse-quiet, his chin hooked over Sam's shoulder. "Good, that's good," and after a moment he pushes off of Sam. His eyes shine in the dark as he wipes his hands on Sam's jeans, which seems only fair and it's not like Sam is in any mood to tell him to knock it off. "You're gonna sleep now, right," he says.
"Yeah," Sam agrees. A little dazed, he reaches up to touch his mouth, confirm that this is real, that this happened, is still happening.
"Good," Dean says again, his eyes hazy and dark. "Don't go anywhere," like he thinks Sam might go stand by the road in the hopes of hitching a ride or like he's going run off with gypsies or something, Sam doesn't even know with his brother. Dean pushes Sam's hand aside, traps it with his own, thumb moving back and forth against Sam's palm as he opens his mouth against Sam's again, kisses him hard, sealing Sam's fate. He sighs against Sam's cheek, looking weirdly happy, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and then he opens the door and gets out of the car. Sam panics, has this image of Dean wandering away in the storm and how dark it is and Sam will never be able to find him again, and then Dean opens the door on the other side of the car and slides into the driver's seat.
Sam lets out a breath and pulls his shirt back on because the desert gets cold at night. He waits for Dean to settle in, listens to him shifting and stretching out and sighing, before he kicks the back of Dean's seat. "Jerk," he says.
"Don't fuck up my car, bitch," Dean mumbles, sounding half-asleep already, sounding like his face is mashed against the intersection-angle of the seat, and Sam grins silently up at the roof. He reaches onto the floor for something he can use as a pillow, comes up with the hoodie he thought was missing, thought had been left behind when they were run out of this small town near Jackson. One more piece of good luck, and Sam balls it up, shoves it beneath his head and stops listening to the rain for a little while.
When Sam opens his eyes, his neck hurts and all he can see is blue sky, blue sky and the black, black roof of the car around the edges, the sky like forever and the car the most permanent home he's ever known. He sits up, winces, and the whole unreal night comes crashing back in, the tent and the rain, his frantic noises and Dean's calloused hands and his jeans are still open.
He zips up his jeans, wipes his hands on the crumpled hoodie. He cranes his neck to peer over the front seat, see if Dean's awake yet, and Dean's not there. The front seat is empty and the driver's side door is open like Dean got up and didn't want to wake Sam, which seems almost uncharacteristically considerate. Sam blinks, waits for the rest of the world to seep back in. Details like the minuscule near-invisible clouds scattered across the sky and Dean swearing somewhere close by.
When Sam gets out of the car, he sees Dean surrounded by what he thinks was their tent. Everything Sam can see is drenched in light, the only shade coming from the Impala, and when he takes a step towards Dean, even that slips away. He had sunglasses, he remembers, but he has no idea what happened to them. Maybe Dean burned them with the sheriff's bones in some petty attempt at revenge. That's okay, Sam will just have to steal one of the three thousand pairs Dean keeps rattling around in the glovebox.
"We needed a new one anyway," he says mildly, because he's not sure if the rain destroyed the tent or if Dean did, and Dean whips around to look at him. There's a high flush across Dean's cheeks, splotches of hot color, but it could be harmless sunburn. The marks on his neck, though, marks of possession and need disappearing beneath his collar, those aren't harmless at all, and Sam swallows.
"Whose idea was it to sleep out here," Dean demands. He's wearing the same ruined pair of jeans but Sam thinks his shirt's different, faded in slightly unfamiliar places, which puts him one up on Sam.
"Yours," Sam says.
"I wasn't asking you," Dean snaps. "That was fuckin' rhetorical, genius. Shit, I need coffee, did we pass a gas station on the way out here?"
"Not after we got out of town," Sam says.
"Great," Dean says. "Absolutely perfect. That's awesome, Sam, thanks."
Sam finally places the look on Dean's face, that deadly near-cold expression, and then he takes two steps forward, gets a hand around the side of Dean's neck and tugs him closer, off-balance. Leans down, leans in, and kisses him. Faint mint taste like the mouthwash Sam keeps in his bag for emergencies and he wonders how long Dean's been awake, and then it occurs to him, even as Dean's kissing him back, one hand fisted in the collar of Sam's shirt and the other caught up around the top of Sam's jeans, edging around the curve of Sam's hip, slipping beneath his shirt and singeing his skin, that maybe that's not the issue at all. Maybe Sam was wrong about the whole thing, maybe he misinterpreted the reason for Dean's panic, maybe Dean is only doing this because he, like, feels sorry for Sam or something, feels sorry for his fucked-up little brother, so Sam lets go. He takes a step back, knocked wildly off-kilter by the possibility, and shoves his hands into his pockets like he's guilty, which he surely is.
Dean looks down, looks back up, his eyes the color of worn dollar bills, only brighter, so bright it hurts to look at. "Woulda been better if you brought me coffee first," he says, tentative critique, words like an offering and Sam snatches them up so fast, so incredibly fast.
"Maybe next time," he says.
"Yeah, okay," Dean says, knuckling at his eyes and squinting like he always does when he's trying to pretend he's not relieved, pretend he's unaffected, Joe Cool, above it all. Sam doesn't mind, as long as he's always allowed to see through his brother's defenses.
"Finish playing with your tent and get in the goddamn car," Sam says. "I'm driving. Your shoulder's fucked up."
"You still owe me for that, don't think I'm letting you off easy," Dean says, and then he tosses Sam the keys. Metal jangle and the keys arc high, glint blindingly in the sunlight for one breathtaking instant before Sam catches them.
--
end