[FIC] Father's Gun (79/?)
Title: Father's Gun
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Dinner is... tense, to say the least. Sam would love to say it's the first time he's sat through a meal counting to ten over and over again in his head just to keep from stabbing Dean with a fork but it's not.
It does crack the top ten, though. Maybe even the top five if the the sick, sullen silence that sticks with them like a storm cloud as they troll the backroads of Jackson for a motel is anything to go by.
Dean pulls off at the first place they come across, a dim, non-committal grey setup whose cracked, flickering sign lists it as the Town House Inn, and even if this isn't exactly what Sam would call a either a town or a house, he's not gonna nitpick about it, not if it gets him out of the front seat and away from this thick, unsubtle silence, every inhale from the driver's side a bomb about to go off, a blow just barely checked, and getting inside, getting a room and beds and having to- Well, actually having to have this fight they've been working up to all damn day? It's not something Sam's looking forward to, not by a long shot, but- but it's something. Anything.
Not matter what it is, it's gotta be better than this.
Of course, his thinking that lasts just about as long as it takes them to pull up and make their way into the office.
“Sorry, boys, we just let out our last double an hour ago,” the aged proprietor smacks through a generous wad of Juicy Fruit. “Only got kings left.”
“Seriously?” Sam nearly explodes, because of course, of course he couldn't be so lucky as for this crappy motel to have just as many beds per room as literally every crappy motel they have stayed at ever.
Of course, just... of course.
He's Sam Winchester. He should it's know by now that whatever he wants, the universe is gonna give him the exact damn opposite.
“They gots fold-out couches in 'em, though,” the man offers, unwrapping another stick and laconically jabbing it in his mouth. “You wanna give it a try.”
“Are there any other-” Sam starts to ask, only for Dean to cut him off, edging ever-so-slightly in front of him at the counter.
“You tryin' to quit?” his brother asks, nodding at the gum wrappers scattered around the innkeep at his desk.
“On day three.” The man nods, fingering another pack of Juicy Fruit with a sour look. “Seems more trouble than it's worth, you ask me, but the wife's gonna give me hell I start up again.”
“Preaching to the choir, buddy.” Dean snorts, digging out a credit card with someone else's name on it and slapping it on the counter.
“Dean,” Sam protests.
“We'll take a king,” his brother cuts him off, and Sam thinks ‘Awesome. Fucking Awesome.’
Of course, it’s not awesome.
It is not awesome to walk into the sole available room of the Town House Inn and just sort of have to freeze. To take in the one bed and the tiny couch and the ancient TV and suddenly realize how small all of these places are, all of these motels and hotels and motor lodges they've spent their lives filtering through. To realize how, no matter where Sam goes in this crabbed, cramped, crappy excuse for a room, Dean is always gonna be right there, and he can hear everything and see everything and no matter where Sam goes, no matter what he does, Dean is gonna be there and it- goddamn it, it would have been the best feeling in the world yesterday, the very best, but now?
Now it's the worst, a constant goddamn reminder that Dean is right there, and he hates Sam for what he did and what he might do and what he's trying to do to fix it all and beneath all of that, beneath everything, there's still something his brother isn't telling him, still some secret awful enough to stay hidden, to sink down deep and stay buried after ‘demon blood’ and ‘Mom's a hunter’ and- and everything.
And when Dean comes in behind him, finishes up parking the Impala and hauling in the last of their things from the back, the first, awkward, awful hiccup hits, because this is the part where they toss their bags on the bed closest to the door. This is the part where they tacitly ignore the fact that they could be normal, be healthy, have that solid, socially acceptable distance between them, but choose not to.
Choose to be themselves instead.
Except that can't happen anymore, mostly because it ends up with Sam violating Dean in his sleep, but just a little bit because his stupid, stubborn, pig-headed brother went and got the only motel room in the history of all crappy motel rooms ever without two goddamn beds in it which, thanks, Dean. Thanks so much.
Dean, for his part, just pauses at the threshold, catches himself, and then tosses their crap on the faded, fraying luggage stand in the corner, the one they never, ever use because it's always too goddamn small for anything, making up for this limitation of dimension by purposefully, pain-in-the-assfully putting Sam's stuff on bottom, then his, then their weapons in a giant, duffle-comprised Leaning Tower of Pisa made up of plaid and ammo.
Because Sam's brother might be a dick, but he's a dick with priorities.
“There are other motel rooms in this crappy town, Dean.” Sam sighs, stalking over to the luggage rack to excavate his bag.
“I'm not sure that's true,” Dean tosses back idly, jabbing experimentally at the coffee maker perched on the water-stained dresser and picking up the laminated card announcing what skeezy skin flicks are currently playing on pay-per-view.
“Listen, you've made your point, okay?” Sam bursts out, giving up on getting his bag out without toppling the whole damn thing over. “You think I'm being stupid about this.”
“No,” Dean corrects, dropping the pay-per-view card back on the dresser with a plasticky 'thwap'. “I think you're being a hysterical girl and overreacting-”
“No, I am not!” Sam protests, rounding on his brother.
“Bullshit,” Dean dismisses.
“I am not overreacting, Dean!” Sam fires back. “You're- you're underreacting!
“That's not even a thing.” Dean snorts, looking at Sam like he's the one being completely stupid about this.
“Apparently it is! You're just- you're- you're doing what you always do,” Sam rants. “You just sit alone with your fingers in your ears going ‘What are you talking about, Sam? It's fine,’ except it's not fine, Dean! It's never fine!”
“Oh, so something not fine happens, we gotta freak out and make everything more fucked up?” Dean challenges. “You have a good goddamn day today, Sammy? Solve any of the world's problems by sitting in your little emo corner, really doubling down on the man-pain and self loathing?”
“You're saying that to me? Really?” Sam scoffs incredulously. “You're saying that to me?”
“What?” Dean punches back, daring Sam to touch that one with a ten foot fucking pole. “You don't want it to happen again, just don't let it happen again.”
“That's what I'm trying to do, Dean!” Sam cries.
“What, by treating me like I have the plague? Walkin' around all goddamn day lookin' like your dog fucking died?” Dean snaps. “It was one time, Sam. One goddamn time.”
“It was not one goddamn time, and you know it,” Sam accuses, drilling a finger into Dean's chest. “What happened in Manning? Bobby's shower? This morning was just-”
“Whatever,” Dean cuts him off, slapping Sam's hand aside. “Change your fucking tampon, and get over it.”
“Okay, a) fuck you,” Sam snaps, “and b) I can't just get over it! Sorry, but I'm not as adept as you are at aggressively not feeling things I don't wanna feel.”
“Hey, I feel shit all the time,” Dean tosses back. “I'm feeling shit right now. Feelin' pretty annoyed, slightly hungry.”
“You just ate, Dean!” Sam explodes, which is not even the point. “You know what? No. I am not doing this.”
“Great, don't do it,” Dean sneers. “It's Sammy's time of the month, gotta make everyone miserable just 'cause he feels real bad about somethin' else.”
“Go ahead,” Sam challenges, because he always does this, he always does this. “Call me a girl in as many ways you want, Dean, but I am not letting you ignore this.”
“I'm not ignoring it, Sam,” Dean snarls. “I'm moving the fuck on, which is what you do when one thing happened and it's not gonna happen again. If this is supposed to go how you want it to go, then you should be doing what the fuck I'm doing, not lingering over it like some sort of weepy girl.”
God, he's so stupid and stubborn, and if Sam didn't love him so much, he would hate him.
“You say we get over it and never let it happen again,” Dean presses. “So why aren't you getting over it and never letting it happen again? You wanna move on so bad, then why do you have such a problem with me moving on?”
“Because you're not moving on; you're ignoring it, Dean!” Sam tosses back.
“I'm not ignoring it,” Dean declares. “You just can't get over it.”
“No, no, no,” Sam argues, because he knows that look in Dean's eye, that way he sets his jaw when he thinks he's got an argument locked, that the book is closed. “Bullshit, Dean. Total bullshit. Whatever happened, there's something you're not telling me.”
Dean opens his mouth to argue, but Sam keeps going, railroading right over him.
“There is something,” he says. “I know there is, and if you want to ignore it? You want to keep whatever the hell it is under a goddamn bushel basket? Fine. That's your right. God knows I can't stop you. But don't tell me it's fine, and don't act like this is okay, and don't pretend that either of us is handling this well. If you're gonna lie to me, lie to me.”
He takes a deep breath, scrubs a hand through his hair as he paces away from Dean on the worn motel carpet.
“But don't lie to me about this,” he breathes, worn and weary, quiet but still deafening in this bare, tiny room. “Don't lie to me about this being anything other than what it fucking is.”
“And what's that, Sammy?” Dean rasps behind him. He's closed the distance between them on instinct, and no matter what Sam does, this happens. It always happens.
It's always one step forward and two steps back, always him trying, trying and failing, to outrun what he knows and won't admit and can't escape, and no matter what he does, it always comes back to this, always.
The big fucking I.
And God, you know what? Sam can't keep lying to himself anymore. Can't keep pretending that there's anything he should have done but this the second he laid a hand on Dean. Can't do anything but turn towards his brother, take those last few steps to destroy the distance between them, shoved hot and close and in Dean's orbit like always. Always has and always was and always thought he would be.
And never should have been in the first place.
And it's hot green eyes and firecracker freckles, tanned skin and warm, worn leather and those damn Marlboros Dean sneaks when Sam's not around to slap them out from between his fingers, and this is it, this is what he should have done all along. What he's been heading toward and running from and was too scared, too stupid to do until now.
“Tuscaloosa's about six hours out,” he chokes, words fighting him as he shoves them out, eyes watering as he snags the keys from Dean's jacket, ignores the heat of his brother's side through the lining, the long, lethal line of the Colt safe and secret in the inside pocket.
He forces the keys between Dean's fingers, closes them, numb and uncomprehending, around the ring.
“My laptop's got all Ash's stuff on it,” Sam continues. “That should get you Yellow Eyes, the family-”
“What?” Dean mumbles, dumbstruck, and Sam should pull back, he should, but this is his last chance, his very last, to take in road dust and rock salt, cheap detergent and old leather and the swirling, spiking silver arcs over Dean's pulse, stories spelled out in scars of everything they were, everything they could have been.
Everything they'll never be.
“Wait, what?” Dean repeats, his fingers tightening convulsively around the keys as he jerks back, glares at the keys and Sam in rapid, uncomprehending succession.
“Dean, you have to-” Sam starts, but Dean doesn't let him get far, cuts him off in a whirl of furious motion.
“The hell I have to,” he snarls, wheeling back to spike the keys into Sam's chest and then stepping in after them, getting up close and in Sam's face as he fumes, the place where the keys hit throbbing, burning like a brand. “Are you high? I mean, have you gone totally and completely out of your damn mind? Leaving? Over this? When we got fifteen different kinds of hell riding out asses?”
“I'm serious, Dean!” Sam spits out, not giving an inch as he glares back at Dean, frustrated and furious and seconds away from just, just shaking Dean, shaking him until he realizes that this is happening. Somehow or someway, this has to happen. “I don't know how many ways I gotta say it, but I am not goddamn sleep-fucking you again!”
“What, one awkward handjob and you're gonna ditch me?” Dean spits out, sneers in Sam's face as he refuses to back down, stubborn and solid and the same, just the same as always. “Really. Man, thank god that dream wasn't about oral, or you mighta hot-wired the car and left me on the side of the goddamn road somewhere.”
“Stop trying to make this into a joke, Dean,” Sam snaps, gritting his teeth against the flush he feels rising, the shame and humiliation, the deep, dark tug he feels deep inside at the thought of being on his knees in front of Dean, mouth full, jaw working and those same, strong calloused fingers, tangled and twisting in his hair.
He shoves it down, shoves it all the fuck down.
“We are way the fuck past that,” he grinds out.
“No, what we're way the fuck past is you using every goddamn thing as an excuse to ditch out on your family,” Dean throws back, going back to the book, tossing the same, tired litany at Sam he's heard a hundred times over and a hundred times again.
“That again,” Sam huffs out against a sad, bitter laugh, because is this it? Are they really gonna end it all on the same damn fight that led to Stanford? The same damn words that started it all, dredged up and spit out and spoken, word for word and not remotely what this, what any of this, is about.
“Yeah, that again,” Dean snaps, jaw tight, and Sam knows he knows. Knows they both know that this is the only script they've got for leaving. That digging deep into old wounds is the only way he'll have something to say, anything to say. Anything but the truth.
Anything but the awful inescapable fact that Sam is right. He's right, and he's wrong, and if he had any decency in him, any shred of common sense, he'd be out in the parking lot right now, taking Dean's refusal to leave as his cue to go.
“It's one thing that happened one time,” Dean murmurs, catches the cuff of Sam's sleeve as the crest of their argument breaks and crashes in the silence of the motel room like a wave, nothing left but swirling sand and stubborn suds and the dull, monotonous hum of the A/C. “Join the rest of the crowd and get over it.”
“Dean, normal-” Sam tries, tries but fails, because it's this again, just like he always knew it would be. Dean refusing to leave and Sam not being able to just move, to step back and shove off and hot-wire the nearest piece of shit in the parking lot that's not the Impala, that's not the world in a long black body, four wheels and a chassis and a lifetime of memories and Dean, suntanned and smiling and the one thing, the one thing, he just can't back away from.
Not even when he should. Not even when it's as good as damning them both to- to a lifetime of this, and it's wrong and it's right and it's not- it's nowhere near-
“Fuck. Normal,” Dean grits out, cutting him off and locking his fingers around Sam's wrist, a hot iron band shoving aside his sleeve and searing over the scar on his arm, and goddammit if that's not their fucking motto at this point. “Just trust that if it freaked you out that much, it won't fucking happen again.”
“How do you know that, Dean?” Sam demands.
He watches his brother's mouth twists with frustration, grip on Sam's wrist tightening and free hand clenching, raised, poised, and if he hit him, hauled off and just clocked Sam clean in the mouth, Sam'd deserve it. He would. But whatever's in Dean that has him clenching his hand, drawing up a blow that never lands falls, fails as his fist loosens, crashes and catches on Sam's collar, rough, work-worn fingers fisting, twisting as Dean catches himself, and he doesn't say a word. Doesn't say anything.
But he doesn't let Sam go, either.
“How can you possibly know that?” Sam repeats, soft and ragged as Dean holds tight and refuses to let go, gravity drawing, dragging them in like always, and they're too close, they're always too close, plaid and leather and fingers in his hair and Dean, breath hot and huffing, ghosts here and gone against his jaw, his pulse. And this, right here?
This is why Sam can't believe him. Can't trust that this'll all just go away because big brother says so, because it's here. It's here, right here beneath his fingers, and Sam can't- can't, won't, but he wants to. Wants everything he can't want, shouldn't want, every bit as much as he wants to believe Dean.
He just so tired of all this. He's so tired.
“I won't let it,” Dean swears, arms around shoulders and fingers in hair as he says everything Sam wants to hear, needs to hear. “Promise.”
“God, if I could just believe that,” Sam practically begs, gives in just that little bit as he sags forward that last half-breath, head tipping against Dean, and this is everything he wants, everything he can't have, but it's his brother, too. It's Dean, promising to make it all right, to make it all better, and he can have this much, can't he? Just this much?
“You can, Sammy,” Dean murmurs, nodding against him. “You can.”
“Dean,” Sam gets out, and he doesn't know anymore. He doesn't care, because it's hair in fingers and fists in collars, and he's been missing this all day, doesn't know how the hell he got through without it, and Dean is matching him, holding him just as tight and digging in just as deep and for whatever it's worth, for whatever Sam is signing away by refusing to cut and run now, at least, at the very least, Dean is in this with him.
Dean is here with him.
“It's okay, Sammy,” Dean breathes into his collar, breath harsh, hunted ins and outs. “It's okay. I got you.”
Sam doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to, just burrows deeper into his brother's arms. Deeper into everything he can have, everything in his life that's safe and good and worth it, so damn worth it, and shoves the rest of the world, the rest of himself, away, just takes everything that's after them and awful in him and locks it away because this, god this-
This is worth it. This is fucking worth it.
Chapter 80
Authors: diana_lucifera & tersichore
Pairing: Dean/Sam
Rating: Mature
Warnings: minor character death, mentions of torture, the slowest of burns, and excessive bed-sharing
Summary: After the events of "Brother's Blood," Sam and Dean are faced with teaming up with John to hunt the Yellow-Eyed Demon, all while keeping Sam's powers a secret and dodging their dad's questions about just why things between them are so... different.
Previous Chapter | Master Post
Dinner is... tense, to say the least. Sam would love to say it's the first time he's sat through a meal counting to ten over and over again in his head just to keep from stabbing Dean with a fork but it's not.
It does crack the top ten, though. Maybe even the top five if the the sick, sullen silence that sticks with them like a storm cloud as they troll the backroads of Jackson for a motel is anything to go by.
Dean pulls off at the first place they come across, a dim, non-committal grey setup whose cracked, flickering sign lists it as the Town House Inn, and even if this isn't exactly what Sam would call a either a town or a house, he's not gonna nitpick about it, not if it gets him out of the front seat and away from this thick, unsubtle silence, every inhale from the driver's side a bomb about to go off, a blow just barely checked, and getting inside, getting a room and beds and having to- Well, actually having to have this fight they've been working up to all damn day? It's not something Sam's looking forward to, not by a long shot, but- but it's something. Anything.
Not matter what it is, it's gotta be better than this.
Of course, his thinking that lasts just about as long as it takes them to pull up and make their way into the office.
“Sorry, boys, we just let out our last double an hour ago,” the aged proprietor smacks through a generous wad of Juicy Fruit. “Only got kings left.”
“Seriously?” Sam nearly explodes, because of course, of course he couldn't be so lucky as for this crappy motel to have just as many beds per room as literally every crappy motel they have stayed at ever.
Of course, just... of course.
He's Sam Winchester. He should it's know by now that whatever he wants, the universe is gonna give him the exact damn opposite.
“They gots fold-out couches in 'em, though,” the man offers, unwrapping another stick and laconically jabbing it in his mouth. “You wanna give it a try.”
“Are there any other-” Sam starts to ask, only for Dean to cut him off, edging ever-so-slightly in front of him at the counter.
“You tryin' to quit?” his brother asks, nodding at the gum wrappers scattered around the innkeep at his desk.
“On day three.” The man nods, fingering another pack of Juicy Fruit with a sour look. “Seems more trouble than it's worth, you ask me, but the wife's gonna give me hell I start up again.”
“Preaching to the choir, buddy.” Dean snorts, digging out a credit card with someone else's name on it and slapping it on the counter.
“Dean,” Sam protests.
“We'll take a king,” his brother cuts him off, and Sam thinks ‘Awesome. Fucking Awesome.’
Of course, it’s not awesome.
It is not awesome to walk into the sole available room of the Town House Inn and just sort of have to freeze. To take in the one bed and the tiny couch and the ancient TV and suddenly realize how small all of these places are, all of these motels and hotels and motor lodges they've spent their lives filtering through. To realize how, no matter where Sam goes in this crabbed, cramped, crappy excuse for a room, Dean is always gonna be right there, and he can hear everything and see everything and no matter where Sam goes, no matter what he does, Dean is gonna be there and it- goddamn it, it would have been the best feeling in the world yesterday, the very best, but now?
Now it's the worst, a constant goddamn reminder that Dean is right there, and he hates Sam for what he did and what he might do and what he's trying to do to fix it all and beneath all of that, beneath everything, there's still something his brother isn't telling him, still some secret awful enough to stay hidden, to sink down deep and stay buried after ‘demon blood’ and ‘Mom's a hunter’ and- and everything.
And when Dean comes in behind him, finishes up parking the Impala and hauling in the last of their things from the back, the first, awkward, awful hiccup hits, because this is the part where they toss their bags on the bed closest to the door. This is the part where they tacitly ignore the fact that they could be normal, be healthy, have that solid, socially acceptable distance between them, but choose not to.
Choose to be themselves instead.
Except that can't happen anymore, mostly because it ends up with Sam violating Dean in his sleep, but just a little bit because his stupid, stubborn, pig-headed brother went and got the only motel room in the history of all crappy motel rooms ever without two goddamn beds in it which, thanks, Dean. Thanks so much.
Dean, for his part, just pauses at the threshold, catches himself, and then tosses their crap on the faded, fraying luggage stand in the corner, the one they never, ever use because it's always too goddamn small for anything, making up for this limitation of dimension by purposefully, pain-in-the-assfully putting Sam's stuff on bottom, then his, then their weapons in a giant, duffle-comprised Leaning Tower of Pisa made up of plaid and ammo.
Because Sam's brother might be a dick, but he's a dick with priorities.
“There are other motel rooms in this crappy town, Dean.” Sam sighs, stalking over to the luggage rack to excavate his bag.
“I'm not sure that's true,” Dean tosses back idly, jabbing experimentally at the coffee maker perched on the water-stained dresser and picking up the laminated card announcing what skeezy skin flicks are currently playing on pay-per-view.
“Listen, you've made your point, okay?” Sam bursts out, giving up on getting his bag out without toppling the whole damn thing over. “You think I'm being stupid about this.”
“No,” Dean corrects, dropping the pay-per-view card back on the dresser with a plasticky 'thwap'. “I think you're being a hysterical girl and overreacting-”
“No, I am not!” Sam protests, rounding on his brother.
“Bullshit,” Dean dismisses.
“I am not overreacting, Dean!” Sam fires back. “You're- you're underreacting!
“That's not even a thing.” Dean snorts, looking at Sam like he's the one being completely stupid about this.
“Apparently it is! You're just- you're- you're doing what you always do,” Sam rants. “You just sit alone with your fingers in your ears going ‘What are you talking about, Sam? It's fine,’ except it's not fine, Dean! It's never fine!”
“Oh, so something not fine happens, we gotta freak out and make everything more fucked up?” Dean challenges. “You have a good goddamn day today, Sammy? Solve any of the world's problems by sitting in your little emo corner, really doubling down on the man-pain and self loathing?”
“You're saying that to me? Really?” Sam scoffs incredulously. “You're saying that to me?”
“What?” Dean punches back, daring Sam to touch that one with a ten foot fucking pole. “You don't want it to happen again, just don't let it happen again.”
“That's what I'm trying to do, Dean!” Sam cries.
“What, by treating me like I have the plague? Walkin' around all goddamn day lookin' like your dog fucking died?” Dean snaps. “It was one time, Sam. One goddamn time.”
“It was not one goddamn time, and you know it,” Sam accuses, drilling a finger into Dean's chest. “What happened in Manning? Bobby's shower? This morning was just-”
“Whatever,” Dean cuts him off, slapping Sam's hand aside. “Change your fucking tampon, and get over it.”
“Okay, a) fuck you,” Sam snaps, “and b) I can't just get over it! Sorry, but I'm not as adept as you are at aggressively not feeling things I don't wanna feel.”
“Hey, I feel shit all the time,” Dean tosses back. “I'm feeling shit right now. Feelin' pretty annoyed, slightly hungry.”
“You just ate, Dean!” Sam explodes, which is not even the point. “You know what? No. I am not doing this.”
“Great, don't do it,” Dean sneers. “It's Sammy's time of the month, gotta make everyone miserable just 'cause he feels real bad about somethin' else.”
“Go ahead,” Sam challenges, because he always does this, he always does this. “Call me a girl in as many ways you want, Dean, but I am not letting you ignore this.”
“I'm not ignoring it, Sam,” Dean snarls. “I'm moving the fuck on, which is what you do when one thing happened and it's not gonna happen again. If this is supposed to go how you want it to go, then you should be doing what the fuck I'm doing, not lingering over it like some sort of weepy girl.”
God, he's so stupid and stubborn, and if Sam didn't love him so much, he would hate him.
“You say we get over it and never let it happen again,” Dean presses. “So why aren't you getting over it and never letting it happen again? You wanna move on so bad, then why do you have such a problem with me moving on?”
“Because you're not moving on; you're ignoring it, Dean!” Sam tosses back.
“I'm not ignoring it,” Dean declares. “You just can't get over it.”
“No, no, no,” Sam argues, because he knows that look in Dean's eye, that way he sets his jaw when he thinks he's got an argument locked, that the book is closed. “Bullshit, Dean. Total bullshit. Whatever happened, there's something you're not telling me.”
Dean opens his mouth to argue, but Sam keeps going, railroading right over him.
“There is something,” he says. “I know there is, and if you want to ignore it? You want to keep whatever the hell it is under a goddamn bushel basket? Fine. That's your right. God knows I can't stop you. But don't tell me it's fine, and don't act like this is okay, and don't pretend that either of us is handling this well. If you're gonna lie to me, lie to me.”
He takes a deep breath, scrubs a hand through his hair as he paces away from Dean on the worn motel carpet.
“But don't lie to me about this,” he breathes, worn and weary, quiet but still deafening in this bare, tiny room. “Don't lie to me about this being anything other than what it fucking is.”
“And what's that, Sammy?” Dean rasps behind him. He's closed the distance between them on instinct, and no matter what Sam does, this happens. It always happens.
It's always one step forward and two steps back, always him trying, trying and failing, to outrun what he knows and won't admit and can't escape, and no matter what he does, it always comes back to this, always.
The big fucking I.
And God, you know what? Sam can't keep lying to himself anymore. Can't keep pretending that there's anything he should have done but this the second he laid a hand on Dean. Can't do anything but turn towards his brother, take those last few steps to destroy the distance between them, shoved hot and close and in Dean's orbit like always. Always has and always was and always thought he would be.
And never should have been in the first place.
And it's hot green eyes and firecracker freckles, tanned skin and warm, worn leather and those damn Marlboros Dean sneaks when Sam's not around to slap them out from between his fingers, and this is it, this is what he should have done all along. What he's been heading toward and running from and was too scared, too stupid to do until now.
“Tuscaloosa's about six hours out,” he chokes, words fighting him as he shoves them out, eyes watering as he snags the keys from Dean's jacket, ignores the heat of his brother's side through the lining, the long, lethal line of the Colt safe and secret in the inside pocket.
He forces the keys between Dean's fingers, closes them, numb and uncomprehending, around the ring.
“My laptop's got all Ash's stuff on it,” Sam continues. “That should get you Yellow Eyes, the family-”
“What?” Dean mumbles, dumbstruck, and Sam should pull back, he should, but this is his last chance, his very last, to take in road dust and rock salt, cheap detergent and old leather and the swirling, spiking silver arcs over Dean's pulse, stories spelled out in scars of everything they were, everything they could have been.
Everything they'll never be.
“Wait, what?” Dean repeats, his fingers tightening convulsively around the keys as he jerks back, glares at the keys and Sam in rapid, uncomprehending succession.
“Dean, you have to-” Sam starts, but Dean doesn't let him get far, cuts him off in a whirl of furious motion.
“The hell I have to,” he snarls, wheeling back to spike the keys into Sam's chest and then stepping in after them, getting up close and in Sam's face as he fumes, the place where the keys hit throbbing, burning like a brand. “Are you high? I mean, have you gone totally and completely out of your damn mind? Leaving? Over this? When we got fifteen different kinds of hell riding out asses?”
“I'm serious, Dean!” Sam spits out, not giving an inch as he glares back at Dean, frustrated and furious and seconds away from just, just shaking Dean, shaking him until he realizes that this is happening. Somehow or someway, this has to happen. “I don't know how many ways I gotta say it, but I am not goddamn sleep-fucking you again!”
“What, one awkward handjob and you're gonna ditch me?” Dean spits out, sneers in Sam's face as he refuses to back down, stubborn and solid and the same, just the same as always. “Really. Man, thank god that dream wasn't about oral, or you mighta hot-wired the car and left me on the side of the goddamn road somewhere.”
“Stop trying to make this into a joke, Dean,” Sam snaps, gritting his teeth against the flush he feels rising, the shame and humiliation, the deep, dark tug he feels deep inside at the thought of being on his knees in front of Dean, mouth full, jaw working and those same, strong calloused fingers, tangled and twisting in his hair.
He shoves it down, shoves it all the fuck down.
“We are way the fuck past that,” he grinds out.
“No, what we're way the fuck past is you using every goddamn thing as an excuse to ditch out on your family,” Dean throws back, going back to the book, tossing the same, tired litany at Sam he's heard a hundred times over and a hundred times again.
“That again,” Sam huffs out against a sad, bitter laugh, because is this it? Are they really gonna end it all on the same damn fight that led to Stanford? The same damn words that started it all, dredged up and spit out and spoken, word for word and not remotely what this, what any of this, is about.
“Yeah, that again,” Dean snaps, jaw tight, and Sam knows he knows. Knows they both know that this is the only script they've got for leaving. That digging deep into old wounds is the only way he'll have something to say, anything to say. Anything but the truth.
Anything but the awful inescapable fact that Sam is right. He's right, and he's wrong, and if he had any decency in him, any shred of common sense, he'd be out in the parking lot right now, taking Dean's refusal to leave as his cue to go.
“It's one thing that happened one time,” Dean murmurs, catches the cuff of Sam's sleeve as the crest of their argument breaks and crashes in the silence of the motel room like a wave, nothing left but swirling sand and stubborn suds and the dull, monotonous hum of the A/C. “Join the rest of the crowd and get over it.”
“Dean, normal-” Sam tries, tries but fails, because it's this again, just like he always knew it would be. Dean refusing to leave and Sam not being able to just move, to step back and shove off and hot-wire the nearest piece of shit in the parking lot that's not the Impala, that's not the world in a long black body, four wheels and a chassis and a lifetime of memories and Dean, suntanned and smiling and the one thing, the one thing, he just can't back away from.
Not even when he should. Not even when it's as good as damning them both to- to a lifetime of this, and it's wrong and it's right and it's not- it's nowhere near-
“Fuck. Normal,” Dean grits out, cutting him off and locking his fingers around Sam's wrist, a hot iron band shoving aside his sleeve and searing over the scar on his arm, and goddammit if that's not their fucking motto at this point. “Just trust that if it freaked you out that much, it won't fucking happen again.”
“How do you know that, Dean?” Sam demands.
He watches his brother's mouth twists with frustration, grip on Sam's wrist tightening and free hand clenching, raised, poised, and if he hit him, hauled off and just clocked Sam clean in the mouth, Sam'd deserve it. He would. But whatever's in Dean that has him clenching his hand, drawing up a blow that never lands falls, fails as his fist loosens, crashes and catches on Sam's collar, rough, work-worn fingers fisting, twisting as Dean catches himself, and he doesn't say a word. Doesn't say anything.
But he doesn't let Sam go, either.
“How can you possibly know that?” Sam repeats, soft and ragged as Dean holds tight and refuses to let go, gravity drawing, dragging them in like always, and they're too close, they're always too close, plaid and leather and fingers in his hair and Dean, breath hot and huffing, ghosts here and gone against his jaw, his pulse. And this, right here?
This is why Sam can't believe him. Can't trust that this'll all just go away because big brother says so, because it's here. It's here, right here beneath his fingers, and Sam can't- can't, won't, but he wants to. Wants everything he can't want, shouldn't want, every bit as much as he wants to believe Dean.
He just so tired of all this. He's so tired.
“I won't let it,” Dean swears, arms around shoulders and fingers in hair as he says everything Sam wants to hear, needs to hear. “Promise.”
“God, if I could just believe that,” Sam practically begs, gives in just that little bit as he sags forward that last half-breath, head tipping against Dean, and this is everything he wants, everything he can't have, but it's his brother, too. It's Dean, promising to make it all right, to make it all better, and he can have this much, can't he? Just this much?
“You can, Sammy,” Dean murmurs, nodding against him. “You can.”
“Dean,” Sam gets out, and he doesn't know anymore. He doesn't care, because it's hair in fingers and fists in collars, and he's been missing this all day, doesn't know how the hell he got through without it, and Dean is matching him, holding him just as tight and digging in just as deep and for whatever it's worth, for whatever Sam is signing away by refusing to cut and run now, at least, at the very least, Dean is in this with him.
Dean is here with him.
“It's okay, Sammy,” Dean breathes into his collar, breath harsh, hunted ins and outs. “It's okay. I got you.”
Sam doesn't say anything. Doesn't have to, just burrows deeper into his brother's arms. Deeper into everything he can have, everything in his life that's safe and good and worth it, so damn worth it, and shoves the rest of the world, the rest of himself, away, just takes everything that's after them and awful in him and locks it away because this, god this-
This is worth it. This is fucking worth it.
Chapter 80