and time can do so much
first part
A Boy Scout troop camping in the backwoods of Tennessee had stumbled on a mass grave. The twenty-four hour news channels stampeded, supplying the nation with breathlessly morbid updates and gruesome reenactments.
Sam and Dean headed in that direction, because disturbing a large number of violently murdered corpses seemed like asking for trouble ("Fuckheads bastards and idiots," Dean remarked as they watched the feds in their dark yellow-writ windbreakers swarming the scene on television).
Once they got there, there wasn't much to do but sit around waiting to see if weird shit would start happening. The town was in a suspended state of hostile shock, hatches battened down. They stayed in a motel down the highway aways; there were too many cops around for Sam and Dean to be comfortable showing their faces in town much.
Bad TV and food that came in cardboard boxes, grease-spotted brown paper bags. Lightning outside, wicked purplish lightning all day long but never any rain. Sam went stir-crazy and started getting really into the competitive ballroom dancing show on PBS, which Dean allowed for about ten minutes, and then announced unilaterally that they were going to a bar before their balls shriveled up and fell off.
Sam agreed without argument. Sometimes the room got too small, and Dean's proximity became overbearing. A change of venue was exactly what he needed
Dean sniffed out some rat trap roadhouse surrounded by well-traveled pick-up trucks that had been dented and gnawed at by rust. Inside it was all post-modern cowboys and bright-smiling women in snakeskin boots. The air was blue from smoke, smearing the neon of the beer signs.
They found a booth near the chime and clang of the pinball machine. There was a special on Natty Light, a redneck touch that seemed just about right, and Dean ordered three for himself right off the bat. Feeling that he'd been implicitly dared, Sam matched him beer for beer.
Too long doing nothing, and now Sam got drunk really fast. Only an hour or two in, and he slumped forward, leaning hard on his elbow on the table. His forehead felt hot to the touch.
"Think I'm runnin' a fever," Sam told his brother, and was vaguely pleased because that was marginally less slurred than he had feared.
Dean grinned, cutting affectionate grin, ah-what-an-idiot-you-are. "I think that you are a ridiculous lightweight."
"Hardly relevant," Sam mumbled. He took another long drink of beer, because Dean was at least two inches deeper into his, and made a face. "This stuff is awful."
"It's Natty Light, awful is part of the appeal."
"That. That does not make any sense at all."
Dean waved that away. "You're just delirious from the fever."
Sam laughed, because that was pretty good. "That was pretty good, Dean."
"Don't sound so surprised." Dean leaned back, tipped his chin at a particularly self-impressed angle. He was smiling at Sam, or not really, the corner of his mouth tugged up into a smirk as if fishhooked, but smiling was how Sam wanted to think about it.
He realized he was gazing. Immediately, he hopped his eyes past Dean and on to something else, anything else. The pinball machine with its bells and whistles. The waitress in her short denim skirt. The neon on the walls. Anything at all.
They drank a little more. Dean's features softened and blurred, and Sam kept wanting to touch him to confirm that he wasn't dissolving. He caught one hand in the other, and kept them both under the table.
Sam went to the bathroom, broke the seal, and then scrubbed his face with cold water and rough brown paper towels. If he could just get past the first layer of skin, just strip off the dangerous ill-fit man that he had become--Sam didn't even know what he was really expecting to come after that. He stared at himself in the mirror and mostly just looked tired.
The waitress was at their table when he got back. Dean was grinning up at her, such a charmer. Sam took his seat and Dean spared him the briefest of glances.
"Edie's got dollar shots, you want a dollar shot, dontcha Sam?"
"Uh, sure," Sam said, his skin prickling. He smiled up at the waitress, who was youngish if not quite young, too much eye makeup and bronze-colored hair. She was giving Dean the particular look of waitresses the world 'round, vaguely intrigued and jaded and impatient.
"Bring us four, would ya darling?" Dean said, all smiles. "It's my brother's birthday."
That was news to Sam, and he waited until the waitress was out of earshot before saying, "Why couldn't it be your birthday?"
"Because then it looks like I'm trying to get a free drink for myself."
"But--you are trying to get a free drink for yourself."
"Yeah, but she doesn't know that." Dean watched the waitress going back behind the bar, smiling at a good-natured proposition from one of the regulars. "Pretty cute, huh?"
Sam was only looking at Dean. "Yeah."
Something in his tone caught Dean's attention, and he cut a quick look at Sam.
"What, you don't like girls anymore?" Dean asked.
Sam flinched, jarred. For a moment he was caught out, wide-eyed and probably very obvious. Dean looked kinda surprised too, like he hadn't expected his question or Sam's reaction or any of it.
"Course I do," Sam managed. "Don't be a jerk."
Something twisting and dark went through Dean's eyes. "You like it when I'm a jerk."
Another flinch, but Sam covered better this time. He trained his gaze somewhere to the left of Dean.
"No, that's just what you tell yourself," Sam said. "Doesn't make it true, dude."
Dean snorted. He leaned forward, eyes drunk and glassy, the shape of his mouth gone careless, and Sam's pulse kicked up a few notches because what was Dean going to say, what was he going to do now?
Then the waitress returned with their shots, and the moment broke. Dean shut his mouth up around another hey-baby smile. Sam curled his hand around a shot glass, fingertips overlapping.
The shots they took one after another in a short sequence, right hook, uppercut. Sam gasped, his eyes watering, and clapped the glass back down. Dean gnashed and banged his fist on the table and spat out, "Goddamn," as his throat was flayed open.
And five minutes later Sam was worse than drunk. He had lost all feeling in the skin of his face and it felt like his brain was melting. He sank back into the booth, his arms loose and boneless, an unsteady grin smeared on his face.
Dean was less than impressed. "Can't take you anywhere."
Sam attempted a scowl. "'m fine."
"Yeah, and you look it too."
Dean was making fun of him, Sam was distantly aware. He didn't really mind, happy to have Dean across from him, making fun or whatever he wanted to be doing.
They didn't stay much longer after that. Dean said he was embarrassed to even be seen with Sam in the state Sam was in, but that was just more idle trash-talking, and not meant to be taken seriously. Sam was pretty sure, anyway.
Coming out of the bar, Sam's footing was precarious. Uneven bits of concrete spurred out from the ground and tripped him up, and he might have fallen if Dean hadn't been there to grab his elbow.
"Fuckin' mess, aren't you?" Dean said cheerfully.
Sam put his arm around Dean's shoulders, leaning heavily on him to regain his balance. It wasn't strange for a moment, just Dean's regular solid form under his arm, Dean's body beating warmth against Sam's side.
Then Sam realized that Dean was tense, the back of his neck like stone. Sam remembered what had happened in Topeka suddenly, like a slash of ice water, and he yanked himself away from his brother.
Stumbling again, falling steeply, and nothing was going to go right ever again, and then Dean had hold of the back of Sam's shirt and he was hauling him upright.
"For fuck's sake," Dean muttered. His face might have been flushed; it was too dark to tell. "Get it the hell together, Sam."
Sam shook his brother off. He stood on his own but unsteady, swallowing fast. "I'm all right, I told you."
Dean scoffed, shooting Sam an unreadable look, all foggy eyes and hunched eyebrows. Sam followed him to the Impala, only weaving a little bit.
It wasn't until they were sitting in the car that Dean said conversationally, "Goddamn it. I'm drunk."
"Yep," Sam agreed. He spread his fingers out in front of him on the dash, counting them to make sure they still added up to ten.
"Too drunk for driving," Dean said insistently, as if Sam were arguing with him.
"Then don't drive," Sam said, feeling that this was only logical.
Dean gave him a baleful look that snagged and lingered. Sam shifted under the scrutiny, blinking back even though he had a vague sense that it wasn't the right move.
Dean scowled. "I could be making out with that waitress right now."
Easy now, Sam had done this a thousand times. He blew out a disbelieving huff of air. "You wish."
"Just 'cause you, you, you don't like girls anymore."
Sam started, inching his fingers around the door handle in case he needed to flee. "Shut up about that stuff."
A quick shake of Dean's head--he was angry for some reason, and Sam's blood ran hot at the idea of it. Dean fisted his hand on the steering wheel, glaring at his brother with this dark impossible thing growing in his eyes. Sam bit the inside of his lip, telling himself it was only the shadows on Dean's face.
"You don't even look at them anymore, you only look at me-"
"Shut up," Sam said, old panic cracking in his voice.
Dean looked like he'd been slapped, but only for an instant, a split second before he was lunging forward. His hand fumbled at Sam's face and then Dean's mouth was on his--Dean was kissing him, clumsy and off-center and unpracticed, like he'd never done this before, like Sam was the very first.
Sam gasped, and shoved his brother away.
"What?" Sam said, a choked breath caught up in it.
Still too close, his leg a long warm press against Sam's own, Dean blinked fast. He licked his lips unconsciously, and visibly forced a smirk.
"Turnabout," Dean said. "'s fair play."
Sam shook his head, short of breath and certain that he must be getting something wrong. His brain was humming, buzzing like there were ricocheting insects inside his skull. His lips felt scalded.
"Don't, don't screw around with me, Dean." It came out hoarse and pleading, and Sam watched a bit of light flash in his brother's eyes, a wild maddening thing.
"You lied," Dean said, rushed and muffled with slurs. "You said it didn't mean anything, but that was a fuckin' lie."
Terrified, Sam shook his head some more, pressed back against the door of the car with his heart a great steel hammer in his chest.
"It's not like that," Sam told him desperately.
Dean's hands slammed into Sam, wrenched in his shirt and jerked him forward.
"Yes it is," Dean insisted, and then he kissed his brother again.
Only being human, Sam kissed him back. He fell into Dean like a pebble into a well, down and down and down. One of Dean's hands slid into his hair, tugged him to a better angle and licked into his mouth. Unbelievable heat rose up from the base of Sam's spine, his body shuddering hard as he clutched at Dean's collar, felt Dean's teeth scrape over his lower lip.
Sam was dizzy, lack of oxygen and the full force of the drunk coming viciously down on him. He wanted to shove Dean back and push his shirt up, get his mouth on him. Sam could picture it so perfectly, lying half-twisted between Dean's legs and mouthing him through his boxer shorts, jeans open just far enough.
He broke away, gasping for breath. Dean pulled Sam's head back with that devastating hand still buried in his hair, and ran his tongue up the line of Sam's throat. Sam moaned, and the ragged sound of it almost shocked him sober.
"Hang on, hang on," Sam said, his hands as weak as fishes on Dean's shoulders.
"What? Don't be lame now." Dean immediately returned to his appointed task of bruising Sam's neck with his mouth. Sam tipped his head back, panting and lost to it for a few seconds.
He dragged Dean away again, half a foot of space separating them and it felt like the distance between stars. Dean's eyes were lidded and dark and annoyed. He kept twitching towards Sam, his mouth a heavy wanting thing, fingers curled around the back of Sam's neck.
"Just, we're really drunk," Sam barely got out. He wanted to bite Dean's lower lip. The muscles in his arms were tense, holding his brother back. "Think we're too drunk for this."
"Oh my god, so lame," Dean breathed out, rocking forward again and Sam (stupid drunken idiot Sam) let him come, let him press their mouths together again, quick snatching kiss. He couldn't help it, no more than a man being violently drowned could hold his breath for the fraction of a second he was allowed above the water.
Sam pushed Dean away once more, hysteria starting to creep along his edges, his stomach roiling and his brain on fire. This wasn't right--it was all going to go to hell.
"Wait, would you just wait a second," Sam said, the words thick on his tongue, tinged with sudden rising nausea.
"For what?" Dean demanded. "I, I'm telling you it's okay. You and your fuckin'--you put it in my head, you fucker, it was always your fault. Now come here."
But Sam went the other way. His stomach reared up, and he only just got the car door open and tumbled out onto his knees, and then he was getting sick on the asphalt, agonizing burn in his throat, his body turning inside out. The palms of his hands scraped against the ground, sharp-edged pieces of gravel breaking the skin so now there was blood too, now everybody would be able to see.
In the background, behind the debilitating fuzz in Sam's ears, he could just hear Dean hollering, "Goddamn it, Sam!" and that was actually good, that was better than Dean saying it was always your fault, anything would be better than that, and Sam wrapped his arms around his heaving stomach, closed his eyes. He wished himself away to a distant desert star, someplace where no one else had ever been and no one would ever come looking.
*
Sam woke up at dawn.
He was stretched across the backseat of the Impala. His legs were sticking out the open car door, the blocky end of a seat belt jammed under the small of his back. There was a tiny man with a jackhammer inside his frontal lobe. His mouth tasted like something dead that had laid out all summer.
Sam pushed himself slowly up on an elbow. Pain rolled through his body, his empty stomach seizing. He felt like he'd been trampled by horses.
Dean was asleep in the front seat, slumped in his leather jacket against the door. He looked tense and upset, bad dreams probably, probably Sam's fault, but Dean was there, right there on the other side of the seat. Sam couldn't quite recall why, but he knew that was a miracle.
It was just beginning to be morning, gauzy vagueish green light coming in through the trees. The parking lot was deserted but for the Impala and a heap of a Dodge that looked fused with the land, as if human hands hadn't touched it for years. The roadhouse looked grimy and rundown in that specific bar-in-the-daylight way.
Sam lay back down, resting his arm across his face, nose fit into the soft inside bend of his elbow. He breathed slow and careful, remembering everything that had happened last night.
They'd made a mess of things, and that was clear enough. Sam remembered Dean's mouth on his, Dean's hand in his hair. Dean pressing forward every time Sam pushed him back. Dean so drunk, rubbing his face with his hands, slurring and mashing his words together. Anxiety chewed away at Sam, got in under his skin. He scratched compulsively at the abraded places on the palm of his hand, breathing in shallow little huffs.
"Magoo," Dean said from the front seat, and Sam levered up on his elbow again to see his brother stirring, his shoulders shifting and making the leather creak.
Dean's eyes came open and he was looking right at Sam. A breath caught in Sam's throat. They just stared at each other for a second, and then Dean turned his head to the side and groaned, stretching his arms out in front of him and working out the kinks in his neck and back.
Sam sat up, feeling precarious. He leaned forward over his knees and scraped his hands through his hair.
"Feel like hell," he said to the asphalt, deadpan in the way of a massive understatement.
There was a pause. Sam's fingers tightened on his head, elbows on his knees. Dean cleared his throat.
"That sounds like a personal problem," he said, mostly a croak.
Sam smiled, momentary and hidden by his bent arm. That had been an absolutely normal thing for Dean to say.
"You don't look any better, pally," Sam told him.
"You don't know about me," Dean mumbled grumpily. "Is there any fucking water in this car?"
"No, you used the last of the emergency stash to top up the coolant back in Nevada, remember?"
"Dude, we were a hundred miles from anywhere, and it was like a million degrees that day. Get your own damn car if you want to fuck it up that badly."
Sam snorted a laugh, not because it was particularly funny, but just because it was all so regular. He and Dean were only separated by the width of the seat. They were facing different directions.
"There might still be those Gatorades in the trunk," Sam said.
"So what the hell are you waiting for?" Dean reached his elbow over and jammed it into Sam's back. "Fetch, doggy."
"Quit it."
Sam knocked Dean's arm back to his side, and then stood up out of the car, stretching his arms over his head and twisting his back.. There was Gatorade in the trunk, one blue and one orange, as warm as soup but it was wet and it tasted like something other than sick and death, so Sam wasn't about to complain.
He drank the blue one leaning against the hood of the car, watching the sun slip beyond the barbed wire of the tree line. Dean rolled down his window and tipped his head back out of it. Sam snuck glances at Dean out of the corner of his eye, watching the move of his throat, the miserable lines etched across his forehead.
A flash, a consumingly vivid memory--Dean pulling Sam's head back and dragging his tongue up his neck. Goosebumps broke out on Sam's arms, a precursor to real heat curling in his stomach.
Dean finished his Gatorade and tossed the bottle out the window to bounce crazily like a football on the asphalt.
"Litterbug," Sam said.
"People who save lives as their job are allowed to," Dean answered, shameless.
"Where the hell did you hear that?"
"Common Sense, America," Dean retorted, and then snickered, amused with himself.
Sam rolled his eyes, and went to pick up Dean's Gatorade bottle. Dean was back behind the wheel when he turned around, and Sam took the shotgun seat, tossing the two empties into the backseat.
"Food?" Sam asked, though his stomach felt withered and off-center somehow, off-kilter. It was a regular thing to say.
"Fuck that, I need a shower first. My shorts have been stuck to my balls for like three days now."
To everyone's surprise, that made Sam laugh out loud, and then the whole thing kind of collapsed in on him and the laughter took him over like a sudden possession, filling his chest and punching out of his body in gusts. Last night he had made out with his brother a little bit. This morning they had Gatorade for breakfast and Dean was talking about his balls. Mundane things and the impossible all mixed up together, and Sam didn't know what to expect next.
Dean called him a fucking nutjob, and started the car. Sam put both hands over his face, and he couldn't really breathe but for some reason it was okay.
*
Back at the motel, Sam brushed his teeth and tongue for about ten minutes, and then lay back on the bed listening to the water running in the shower and Dean singing AC/DC too fast, mouth guitar and all.
Sam was feeling battered and out of sorts, like he'd just got off a twenty-hour flight and his legs barely worked. The hangover was a thick sweaty fist closed around him. Last night Dean had kissed him. It stuck in Sam's head better than a song; he kept playing it over and over.
It was only the physical, just the sense memories and Dean's hand snagging in his hair, Dean's tongue against his own, his body breathing heat into Sam's. Sam didn't want to think about what this was going to mean, because what if it meant something completely different? Sam wouldn't survive being wrong about this stuff.
The shower snapped off. Sam tensed, and then forcibly relaxed himself. He scowled at the ceiling, not appreciating how like a teenager the whole thing made him feel.
Dean emerged from the bathroom with steam and soap smell. He rummaged around in his bag for clothes, and Sam kept his eyes locked on the ceiling until he heard the snick of Dean zipping his jeans.
"All right, Sammy, hup hup," Dean said, and a pillow came flying out of the air to whump Sam in the face.
Sam knocked it off the bed, and sat up, shooting his brother a mild glare. Dean was wearing a plain black undershirt. There were scattered patches of damp that had bled through the fabric, blacker than black over Dean's collarbone and the curve of his shoulder.
"What?" Sam asked, his mouth very dry.
Dean grinned, but it was his fake one, his conman grin. Apprehension curled around the base of Sam's spine at the sight of it.
"Wild time last night, huh?" Dean said.
Sam stood up immediately, his bad knee popping. "Yeah, I think I'ma take a shower too."
"Sit the fuck down, dude."
The tone in Dean's voice arrested Sam, and he sank back down on the bed. He clasped his hands together between his knees and stared at the thin carpet. It seemed important that he didn't look at Dean, the reasons why not a hundred percent clear.
"Jesus, how bad are you at this?" Dean asked, annoyed more than anything else. "It's not a freakin' Inquisition."
Sam shot him a glare, not interested in hearing Dean mock his perfectly rational lifelong terror of this moment.
"I've never done this before, first of all. Second of all, shut up."
"You're the one who always wants to talk about shit," Dean said. He was lit up, adrenaline plainly running hot under his skin, his eyes a staggering color. "So let's fuckin' talk."
Sam swallowed. "I don't--I don't know what to say."
"Kinda feeble, aren't you," Dean said on a sigh, and sat down on the other bed, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I mean. Fuck, Sam."
That pretty much summed it up, and Sam nodded, looking down at his fingers all twisted together. He didn't say anything, because all the stuff he considered sounded stupid even inside his own head.
"And for the record, I wasn't even that drunk," Dean said.
Sam jerked his head up. "You didn't want to drive."
"Too drunk to drive and too drunk to fuck around are completely different things."
"It wasn't gonna be regular fucking around, Dean, c'mon."
"Who knows what kinda fucking around it would have been?" Dean replied, a sharp note in it. "Your chicken ass stopped us before we got anywhere."
Sam shook his head, still convinced that this was wrong, this wasn't how it was supposed to go. He was supposed to be begging Dean's forgiveness for screwing things up, for not pushing him away fast enough, for letting this start--
"Did you mean it?" Sam asked, and Dean looked confused so he continued hurriedly, "You, you said I put the idea in your head. Is that--did you ever even think about it before?"
Dean's eyes narrowed, and he studied Sam for a brief second, that tight concentrating look he got when he was deciding whether to tell the truth or lie. Sam didn't know what he wanted to hear from Dean, anyway.
"There were," and Dean cut himself off, looked away. A flush rose on his neck, reddened his ears. "Weird dreams. Just after you left for college. I thought it was just--I was drunk a lot, I don't know what I thought. It was weird. It went away pretty fast, it wasn't some big thing."
Sam stared, because as it turned out he had never expected Dean to say something like that, and he couldn't help imagining what his eighteen year old runaway self would have done if he'd known that Dean was dreaming about him back in the highway world where Sam had left him. Always a reckless little fucker, Sam might have hitchhiked all the way back across the country just for the chance to sleep in the same room as his brother again. And then what would his life look like now?
Dean affected a crooked half-smile. "Foreshadowing, right?"
A silent nod would have to do. Sam was still processing. It was starting to sound like Dean had kissed him on purpose last night.
"Don't get me wrong, it's still definitely your fault," Dean said when Sam didn't speak up. His voice was kinda frayed underneath--with something very much like awe, Sam realized that Dean was dying of nerves too. "I was never gonna do anything, obviously. Who the fuck would? Besides you, I mean."
"Dean," Sam said, his headache rearing back up suddenly. "Why doesn't it bother you?"
"It did," and Dean looked a bit surprised at that himself. "First couple of weeks after Topeka, I, I couldn't--everything was all fucked up."
Sam was back to nodding again. He remembered that feeling pretty well.
Dean cut him a look out of the corner of his eye. "I got over it."
How, Sam wanted to ask, but he didn't. He didn't want to make it seem like he didn't believe Dean. He wanted very much to actually believe Dean.
"And you keep looking at me," Dean said. "You're really, you're kinda terrible about being subtle with that shit, man."
"Only if you're looking for it," Sam said, mostly just as a parry, but Dean sorta smirked and rubbed at his chin, casting his eyes down and to the side.
"I've been looking for it. All the goddamn time, fuckin'--I don't even know anymore, dude."
There was a moment where Sam couldn't quite breathe, which seemed excessive considering the put-upon resignation in Dean's voice, the overwhelming sense that Dean was more annoyed by these strange new feelings than anything else. It shouldn't have affected Sam so intensely.
Sam waited until his lungs were working again, and then said carefully, "It's kind of a bad idea, though, right?"
"Yeah, probably. Why do you keep trying to talk me out of it?"
"Why don't you care that it's a bad idea?" Sam demanded, steamrolling over Dean's question.
"I don't fuckin' know," Dean said, exasperated. "There's something wrong with me--there's something wrong with you. We're cracked in the head. Shit just happens sometimes, Sam."
"And that's cool with you? Just like that?" Sam was aiming for skeptical, but he had a terrible feeling that he'd missed wide into hopeful by about a mile.
Dean shrugged casual-like, but his eyes were hot on Sam, something tense and eager in the green because he knew that he was winning. Sam dug a thumbnail into the inside of his wrist, crystalline point of pain to keep his mind focused.
"I fight actual monsters all day, I'm not gonna fight my own dick too. Man's gotta have some downtime."
Sam smiled involuntarily. He almost covered his mouth with his hand, going to fake a yawn or something because he couldn't be caught beaming soppily at Dean, but that was only instinct. Dean was grinning back at him, never happier than when he'd amused Sam in some way, earned a reluctant smile, and Sam thought that it had always been that way, always that very particular grin on Dean's face, and maybe Sam was kinda dumb.
"Meanwhile," Dean said. "Why the hell are you against it all of a sudden?"
"I'm not," Sam answered swiftly. "I just--I could see it ending really badly."
"The whole world is going to end badly," Dean said, sounding absolutely certain, almost looking forward to it. "What's one more thing?"
They were both so ridiculously fucked up--Dean saying that was what won Sam over at last.
It felt like a bomb the size of a marble going off under his ribs. Sam said hoarsely, "This is crazy."
Dean's eyebrows ticked up, the tip of his tongue darting across his lips. "Yeah, what's your point?"
"No point," Sam said, and then because he couldn't help it, "Come here," and in the space of a breath, Dean had crossed the distance, sinking one knee into the bed and covering Sam's mouth with his own.
Sam tipped his head back and slid his hands inside Dean's T-shirt. Warm smooth skin under his palms and Dean making a low needful sound into their kiss, and Sam pulled his brother closer, wanting to feel all of his weight and never breathe easily again.
*
The first time they tried to have actual sex, it was a complete farce.
Two weeks they'd been necking in front of reruns and rubbing each other off inside their shorts at the end of the night, hidden under one sheet with the lights off, breathing hot and close together. Screwing around like middle schoolers drunk on cooking sherry, and it was surreal, never less than surreal, details so specific that they occurred dreamlike: the hard metal line of Dean's ring catching on the underside of Sam's cock, the whitish taste of the scar on his chest from that time Sam had almost killed him, the shape of a collarbone that had been broken a dozen years ago in a fall from a tree, a fall that Sam had been there to witness.
It shouldn't have been so astonishing to realize that Dean's body could serve as such a good history of Sam's own life, this second map of the world. Sam kept thinking that he'd never get lost now, but that was probably only the endorphins talking.
They were heading west. Dean was obnoxious by day, stealing half of Sam's candy bar in one bite, pouring salt in his Coke, stupid kid stuff, all the same dumb little pranks he'd been pulling for twenty years now. Sam was giddy and irritated and kinda freaked out, but that was only his default setting at this point, a mild overlay of freaked out like wax on supermarket fruit. He was mostly doing okay.
Somewhere outside Albuquerque, Dean turned off the lights and slid into bed beside his brother. Sam moved towards him, but Dean put a hand on his hip and kept him turned away, pressed up against Sam's back and set his mouth as a brand on the side of his neck.
Sam curled his hand under the pillow, feeling his pulse run thick and fast under Dean's lips. Dean breathed out, his chest rolling against Sam's back.
"Think it's time to kick it up a notch, what do you say," Dean said, soft rough ruined voice.
His hand slipped from Sam's hip into his shorts, just kinda checking out the situation. Sam shivered, pushing back against him.
"Yeah all right," Sam said, having a pretty good idea what Dean was suggesting. Sparks in his stomach, heat spreading out to the tips of his fingers, the flush on his face.
Dean grinned tangibly against Sam's neck, and mouthed the edge of his jaw until Sam was breathing raggedly and only vaguely aware of his shorts being tugged down. Dean's hand went away for a moment, and came back wet. He wasn't breathing so great either, uneven and shocky and too-excited, pressing up against Sam like he couldn't wait.
And then, with two of Dean's fingers inside of him, as Sam gasped and hid his face in the pillow, cotton against his teeth, he thought with perfect clarity, your brother is going to fuck you now, and then Sam was laughing.
He couldn't have said why. It was just that particular moment, that particular neon thought lighting up his mind. It was funny for no good reason, a dirty joke in church or a knock-knock joke in the middle of an orgy, and Sam's whole body shook with it.
Dean's fingers came out, leaving a space behind. "What the fuck?" he said, understandably miffed.
"It, it's okay, Dean," Sam managed through hiccuping laughter. He reached back for Dean's hand, tugging at him. "C'mon, fuck me."
Dean twisted his hand free and pushed Sam into the bed, huffing angrily against his neck. "Dude, what the hell is so funny?"
Sam couldn't properly explain it, it was like stars exploding in his chest, and he buried his face in the pillow, his shoulders trembling. Dean bit the back of Sam's neck, and Sam kinda groaned in the middle of his laughing.
"Whole fuckin' thing," Sam said, muffled and broken up. "Everything."
"Not so helpful," Dean muttered. He sounded irritated and raspy and turned on, the line of his body flush to his brother's.
"Sorry," Sam said, grinning into the dark. "You can try again, I'll behave."
"Like hell."
Dean turned Sam onto his back, sticky hand tight around the slope of his hipbone, and straddled his chest. Sam's hands latched onto Dean's thighs, looking up at him with a breath caught in his throat, his heart stopped. Dean had his cock held in one hand and he touched the tip carefully to Sam's cheek, his jaw, his lower lip, watching raptly.
"Not laughing now, are ya," Dean said, impossibly low, and a moan vibrated through Sam, but he stoppered it just long enough to say, "Ha," before Dean was cupping the back of his head and pressing forward, and Sam opened his mouth, let him in.
That worked really well for both of them, as it turned out. Dean fucked Sam's mouth in quick shallow thrusts, gasps snatched out of him. He stared down the line of his body to Sam's face, a revelatory expression and a hiss in the shape of his brother's name. Sam had never had anyone look at him like that before, like he knew every answer, every next right thing.
It was kind of amazing. Afterwards, they lay in a sprawl, breathing heavily at the ceiling. Euphoria hummed under Sam's skin, his mouth swollen and his jaw sore and his head aching a little bit where Dean had yanked his hair at the end. He kept thinking that he'd never been this happy, and that couldn't be right, but it still sounded so good. It got stuck in his head.
"So's you know," Dean said into the hyperventilative quiet. "It's pretty rude to laugh when somebody's trying to fuck you."
Sam smiled. He wrapped his hand around Dean's wrist. "Yeah, sorry about that."
"Try to keep your shit together next time, huh?" Dean twisted his arm in Sam's loose grip, but didn't pull away. His pulse was skimming along under Sam's fingertips, the needle hovering somewhere near one hundred.
"No promises," Sam said, and rolled to touch his head to Dean's shoulder, their legs together. He slung an arm across Dean's stomach, dragged him closer.
Dean huffed. "Fuckin' spider monkey."
"Yeah," Sam said contentedly. Dean wouldn't put up with this for very long, maybe five minutes at the outside, and Sam would probably start to get self-conscious around then too, but for now it was all right.
Outside, trucks were passing and the moon was on the rise. Tomorrow they'd drive to California, as far as they could go. Sam closed his eyes and imagined black roads and blue ocean, a place somewhere out there in the highway world that would look like home.
"Hey, Sam?" Dean touched Sam's arm, fingertips inside his elbow.
"Mm."
There was a pause, an indrawn breath that Dean never seemed to let out. Sam shifted the half an inch required to set his mouth on his brother's skin, exhaling against his body as if oxygen could travel that way.
"Don't fall asleep yet," Dean told him, his voice hushed and solemn so that it sounded like something else entirely.
Sam pressed his smile into Dean's shoulder. "I won't," he said, and then, "I swear," because that meant something else too.
THE END