white face paint and glass boxes and devil wind

[candle_beck]

into the breach with me, dear friends. i got that job as a canvass director for senator obama, and went door-to-door for four hours yesterday. this is some crazy stuff! there are people who see fresh-faced youngsters with clipboards and say, "honey, give these kids some money," before we can even get into the spiel, and other people who yell at you to get the hell off their property without even opening the door first. i almost got bit by a dog yesterday. it's like i'm a mailman from the '50s.


Speechless
By Candle Beck

They're twenty miles out of town when Sam turns down the tape and asks if they can stop for some frozen custard and Dean doesn't answer him.

Sam is also reading a local newspaper, his fingertips smudged dark gray, so he doesn't notice right away. He finishes the article he's on and then looks up, squinting. It feels like a hundred and seven degrees outside and the sun is pounding, vicious and white splashed across the windshield.

"Dude, seriously," Sam says. "Ice cream or custard, I don't care, but something."

Dean doesn't answer and Sam gets annoyed. They've been getting along fairly well all week and he hasn't done anything remotely warranting the silent treatment, although it's not like Dean is all that beholden to logic and reason. He looks over at his brother with an incipient glare.

"What's your problem?"

Dean's mouth moves but no sound comes out. He glances at Sam and Sam's irritation is gone like blown ash, because Dean's eyes are huge and panicked. He's gripping the steering wheel so tight Sam half-expects the skin over his knuckles to split.

"Dean?"

Dean shakes his head, his mouth still fish-moving. Suddenly his mouth wrenches wide and his throat flushes and Sam gets genuinely scared, because Dean's trying to scream but he's not making any noise at all.

"Pull over," Sam tells him. It scares him even worse the way Dean just does what he says without hesitation.

It's the hottest day of the month so far, just a little past noon. The sun has fried Sam to frayed nerve endings and he briefly entertains the futile hope that he's asleep and dreaming.

But, no. The expression on Dean's face is rather too elaborate even for Sam's markedly twisted subconscious. He's gone pale and his eyes are like searchlights. He keeps trying to talk, Sam can see whole packs of words disintegrate, and he keeps having the disconcerting feeling that he's gone deaf even though he can hear the hums and clicks of the Impala settling, the thrown-water sound of cars going by.

"Quit it, Dean, please." Sam grabs Dean's shoulder. "I can't hear you, what the hell?"

Dean somehow bugs his eyes even more and his mouth spits fuck a bunch of times and Sam can read that pretty clearly.

"If you're messing with me it's not funny, and don't think I won't-"

But Sam cuts himself off. Dean is pitching a full-on fit in perfect silence. He slams his fists on the steering wheel and wrenches his head from side to side and his face is bright red and his mouth is shouting uselessly, the veins in his neck standing out. Sam stares at him in utter fascination. It's like a switch has been thrown somewhere within his brother.

"Calm down, will you," Sam says without thinking, and Dean punches him hard on the arm. "Okay, ow."

Dean's mouth hollers, sammy!

"When did this happen?"

A rough shrug, Dean is shaking his head and his teeth flash, i don't know, and he punches Sam again but not hard, not with any kind of menace. Invisible indistinguishable words come in a torrent, another silent avalanche. Dean's flailing.

Sam grabs Dean's fist, covers it up with both of his hands. "Stop it. Help me out here."

Dean shakes his head again but he's staring at Sam, his gaze locked and green as leaves, terror-bright, and his mouth stays shut.

"I changed the tape and you called me girls' names until I put on Zeppelin and that was what? Ten fifteen minutes ago?"

Dean nods. Badly-concealed fear is rioting behind his eyes. His hand is shuddering like a speaker vibration in Sam's own.

"Nothing happened between then and now." Sam looks over the seats, out the back where the road is baked black and the air is warped from heat. Like any other road, like anywhere else. "I was reading my paper, did anything happen?"

Dean shakes his head. He tries to say something that Sam can't make out, and Sam lifts his eyebrows helplessly. Huffing, Dean makes a scribbling motion on his hand and Sam says, "Of course, duh," and goes rummaging in his bag for some paper and a pen.

Hunching over the wheel, Dean scrawls on the back of the gas station receipt that Sam found, and then holds it up for his brother to see.

HEX?

"Well, yeah, probably. I don't--you were fine like ten minutes ago."

Dean nods forlornly. i know, man, and then something that Sam doesn't make out and when he shakes his head, Dean blows out a pained breath and writes, LAME.

Sam agrees wholeheartedly. "But when did you get hexed?"

Dean writes for a second. WHO'D WANT TO HEX ME? He shows it to Sam, then balls it up furiously between his hands, having filled in most of the available space with his too-big frantic writing. He bounces the little ball off Sam's forehead and orders several times, until Sam gets it, more.

Sam scowls at him but obliges, finding a neon-yellow missing person flyer from several cases ago. He gives Dean a book to write on too.

"No offense or anything," Sam says. "I could probably come up with a couple of people who might want to hex you into shutting your mouth. Or, you know. Couple dozen."

Dean's eyes narrow, and he writes, WAS IT YOU, quickly adds, LITTLE BITCH.

Rolling his eyes so hard he's surprised he doesn't pull anything, Sam says, "No, but before you kick the ass of whoever did, be sure to thank them for me. This is like a mini-vacation."

DO NOT JOKE.

He holds it for Sam to read, and then uses the moment of distraction to whack Sam upside the head with the flat of his free hand.

"Hey!" Sam ducks, pressing his hand down. "You probably shouldn't physically abuse the guy you're totally dependent on."

sam! Dean's mouth shouts. His face is flushed; it looks hot to the touch. He writes swiftly, I AM FREAKIN THE FUCK OUT.

"Okay," Sam says, touching the flyer with his fingers. "Okay."

He swallows. He thinks for just a minute, what if they can't fix it and he never hears Dean say his name again, but that train of thought is unproductive and going nowhere good and so he shoves it away. There's a problem before him and this is where Sam shines.

Sweat crawls like ants down the back of his neck and makes his hair curl darkly. It's getting hard to breathe even though both their windows are open, the heat thick as smoke.

"Let's just retrace for now. Go back to Lincoln and get our room back and figure this out."

Dean nods. His fingers flex on the book, cramped around the pen in a grip that has always looked painful to Sam. Dean's mouth stutters a few times, his lower lip pulling through his teeth, and Sam catches himself staring, immediately cuts his eyes down. He watches Dean's hand writing its crooked capital letters, his silver ring tossing a shard of reflected light into Sam's eyes.

HATE THIS SAMMY.

"Yeah. I can see how you would."

Sam claps Dean on the shoulder, gives him a little shake. Dean shoots him a look that's tight-jawed and slant-eyed and faintly pleading, and Sam's breath might catch just the slightest bit at that.

"We'll figure it out, Dean," Sam says, and Dean sneers, so Sam says, "I'll fix it," and Dean seems to like that better.

He starts the car. The music is louder than Sam remembers, and he jumps, his hand darting to the dial. He's on edge for the next few seconds, and he realizes eventually that he's waiting for Dean to call him Francine or something, and the vast encompassing wrongness of a voiceless Dean finally hits him.

Dean's a radio station in Sam's head, the background music. Everything ties back to him, like all those roads that lead to Rome. Sam sees candy bar wrappers on sidewalks and hears Dean saying, caramel or peanut butter but both at once is just lunacy. The first star of the night, and Dean is saying, I think you just made a wish on a 747, dude. For four years straight, Sam stumbled to his morning class only half-awoken because Dean wasn't there to say, rise and shine, Sammy.

Even when Dean drives Sam crazy, which is invariably, he at least does it in a reassuringly Dean-like manner, following the same well-worn paths until it's almost a litany, almost soothing, and this eerie silence has nothing to do with him. Sam might tell his brother to shut up upwards of a dozen times a day, but they both know it's only a figure of speech.

Back in Lincoln, Dean takes them to the motel they just checked out of, and he stays in the car while Sam gets their room back. Sam makes up an intricate lie for when the clerk asks him why they're checking back in, but the guy barely looks up from the soap opera playing on a little TV. Sam is distracted, unsettled by the thought that if something happens, if something blackhearted comes after Dean as he sits freaked-out and spotlit by the sun, Dean won't be able to shout. Sam won't be able to help.

Sam is suddenly not comfortable with Dean being out of his sight.

He comes out of the office and sees Dean's head bent in the window, and Sam takes a measure of security in the solid black lines of the car, drawn around his brother as a welded shield. Dean looks up as Sam's footsteps crunch, his forehead lined and his eyes thinned almost to nothing. He passes Sam the flyer through the open window.

THAT FORTUNE TELLER ON KNOX. GAVE US TEA. TASTED LIKE SHIT. DEFINITELY COULD HAVE BEEN DOSED.

Sam shakes his head. "I drank it too. Yours was more sugar and milk than tea, anyway."

Dean scowls and flicks the pen at TASTED LIKE SHIT, before catching Sam's eyes and mouthing, room? Sam can read the question in his eyebrows.

"Same one," he says, and Dean pulls out to drive down the length of the motel, Sam walking over past the row of doors with their chipped faded blue paint and numbers hanging askew.

They get back inside, flinching at the unfortunate maritime theme of the room and its disastrous ship-wheels-and-starfish wallpaper. Dean goes into the bathroom and starts gargling, bent at the waist to push his head under the sink faucet. Sam comes to lean in the doorway, arms crossed over the taut feeling in his chest.

"Can you laugh?" Sam asks.

Dean meets his eyes in the mirror, shrugs. Sam shrugs back, raising his eyebrows. Dean looks away, looks at his own reflection, and he smiles, grins. His whole face changes; Dean has an unbelievable grin. Sam can't even tell it's fake without Dean directing it at him.

Dean tries to laugh. It doesn't work. Air jerks out in uneven bursts and it sounds like he's had the wind knocked out of him, hollow soundless coughs. Sam doesn't like it, it looks too much like Dean is unhinged.

"Maybe if you were laughing because something was actually funny," Sam says without any confidence. Dean levels him with a glare in the mirror, plainly demonstrating just how unamusing he's finding the whole situation.

"Does it. It doesn't hurt, right?"

Dean shakes his head, then places his hand against his throat. He tries to speak, and Sam can imagine the stroking press of Dean's Adam's apple as he swallows. Dean shakes his head again, makes an exaggerated confused look.

"Weird?" Sam guesses. "Feels weird?"

Dean shoots him with a finger gun, nodding. He sets his hands on the lip of the sink and looks at himself in the mirror for a frozen quiet moment. Sam studies Dean studying his reflection. It's messing with his head a little bit; he keeps feeling like he's watching Dean without Dean's knowledge, staring the way he used to when he was a kid. Dean can't call him out, can't say, take a fuckin' polaroid, Sam, and Sam keeps reminding himself, he can still see you.

Sam's got to be more careful.

Then Dean leans forward and breathes steam across the mirror and Sam's brain doesn't work for a long second, stuttering on the visual, Dean's mouth wet and open. His hands clench into fists, hidden under his arms. Dean writes with his fingertip in the steam:

PLAN?

Sam blinks. "What?" Dean exhales in impatience and bangs his knuckles on the glass. "Right. Well, lemme look up some stuff just in case it's not a hex."

Dean shakes his head, pressing his lips into a thin line and stomping his foot.

"Dude, did you just stomp your foot at me?"

Dean bares his teeth and shoves past Sam. Sam rubs his chest where Dean's shoulder rammed him and eyes his brother warily as he paces the room, his hands flicking and grasping at nothing.

"Dean, come on."

He doesn't stop, eating up the carpet and feeling his throat compulsively. His expression flips between unholy rage and stark fear, difficult for Sam to see.

"You need to quit freaking out so I don't start."

Pulling up short, Dean glances back at Sam and then the tense line of his shoulders falls and he drops on the bed as if his strings were cut. He makes a feeble writing motion, and Sam gets him the pad of paper and pen by the phone. Dean writes for a second, then stops and stares into space briefly before scratching something out and continuing. Sam sits next to him, seeing how Dean struggles to keep his hand still enough to write legibly.

CAN'T JUST SIT AROUND WATCHING YOU TYPE. GOING OUT OF MY MIND.

Sam nods, bumps his shoulder into Dean's. He kinda feels like he is, too. Dean gives him a plaintive look and writes:

GOT WHAMMIED BY SOMEONE.

"Or maybe you touched an object under a protective curse. Maybe in that junkyard yesterday."

Dean shakes his head tightly, slashes an underline: WHAMMIED

"How can you be sure?"

TOO SUDDEN. NO WARNING.

"Yeah, but that could still be a lot of things."

no, Dean's mouth says forcefully. His eyes are glinting, his face still flushed. His jaw turns to stone when he's writing.

SOMEONE DID THIS TO ME. I'M SURE.

Dean jabs the pen at the last two words, and Sam nods, not sure if he really trusts Dean's judgment but he's willing to pretend for the moment. Dean is very delicately balanced right now, threatened by the slightest disturbances in the air, and Sam isn't going to be the one to tip him over the edge.

"Here, let me see that for a second."

Dean gives Sam the pad, and Sam flips to a fresh page, writes Tuesday at the top.

"Yesterday," Sam says. "You went to get coffee before I woke up, where'd you go?"

Taking the pen out of Sam's hand, Dean uses his brother's knee to write, SCOOTER'S COFFEE INC under the day name.

Sam lifts his eyebrows. "Scooter's? Did you actively look for the silliest name, or what?"

Dean stamps Sam's foot, scowling. Sam kicks him in the ankle and they scuffle for a minute until Sam puts Dean in a headlock. Beating ineffectually at Sam's shoulder, drumming fists on his stomach, Dean is snorting and snuffling and forming curses of air. Sam would give just about anything to hear the concrete bite of motherfucker wrenched out of him.

"Now, Dean," Sam says conversationally. "I know you're upset, but if you hit me or kick me one more time we're gonna find out if screaming in pain is something you can still do."

He rubs his hand across Dean's hair, which is soft and prickly under his palm. He can feel heat through his shirt, Dean breathing angrily on his ribs. Dean's nose presses into him hard, a solitary point in a complicated universe.

Sam lets him go. He's a little shaken. "Okay?"

Dean is ticked, as he usually is when Sam bests him without much effort. He shoves off the bed and stands facing Sam with his arms locked over his chest and his face set in a brilliant death-glare. Sam experiences the sensation of looking up at his brother once again, feeling too-young and put-upon.

Dean's mouth growls something that Sam doesn't make out. Lifting his empty hands, Sam shakes his head and Dean snarls, lip drawn up over white teeth.

He snatches the pad off Sam's knee and gets the pen from where it fell during their tussle, scrawls quickly, FUCKIN HATE YOU.

Sam rolls his eyes, ignoring the pang. "No you don't."

Dean seethes. His hands twitch but he doesn't write anything else, doesn't insist on it. Sam carefully takes the pad back.

"You don't hate me, Dean," he says without thinking, fighting off a sick feeling, and something snags across Dean's face, something open and surprised that is shuttered away almost immediately. Sam tries not to dwell on it.

"All right," he says instead, looking down. "Then we went to that diner. What was it called?"

Dean mimes driving, and Sam gives him a blank look for a moment before he cottons on, his memory clicking. "Hi-Way, right. Hi-Way Diner."

He writes it down. "Then we went to the newspaper office." He writes, Lincoln Journal Star.

Pausing, Sam taps the pen on the pad. Dean pokes his forehead, and Sam looks up to see him mouthing a small word, and Sam stares at his lips for the longest time before he gets it: gas.

Sam nods, remembering, and writes Gas 'n Shop. "And then the victim's neighbors, yeah?" Dean nods, and Sam adds 3026 N 44th St.

"And that was a dead-end so we went back to the library." Bennett Martin Library.

Dean pokes him again, and Sam looks up too quick and Dean's fingers slide across his forehead, through the loose pieces of his hair. Dean snatches his hand back like he touched a stove, and Sam tries to keep his face from falling but he doesn't think he succeeds. Dean looks at him helplessly, and then swallows, holding his hand out for the pad.

7-ELEVEN
FORTUNE TELLER
JUNKYARD
FAMOUS DAVE'S BBQ
MOTEL

He hands it back, ticking his eyebrows at Sam to say, see how easy I remember. Sam reads it over and nods. Yesterday has been fully documented. Sam turns to a new page, writes Wednesday, and they retrace their brief steps from the day so far, everything up to the moment twenty miles out of town when Dean was struck dumb.

This list is shorter than the first, as it's just afternoon and all they've done so far is have danishes and candy bars for breakfast and go on a quick salt-and-burn.

The spirit had been crushing people's hearts from the inside, an iron fist squeezing until there was a gory pop audible to the people bearing horrified witness. A half-dozen deaths in the past decade, poor souls stopped in their tracks, dropped like sacks of flour on the sidewalk. The neighbors of the most recent had been useless, the fortune teller a fraud and the junkyard (rumored to be haunted) a complete bust, and it was only over ribs, determinedly not watching Dean lick sauce off his fingers and instead focusing on the police files he'd hacked into, that Sam worked it out.

A sixteen year old girl had slit her wrists after being jilted, and that had been a decade ago. Sam recognized the charm bracelet around her ankle in the bloody black-and-white photos. Tiny unmatched burns had appeared on the victims' arms, brands as it turned out, a horseshoe, a four-leaf clover, a lucky star that Sam originally took for a pentagram. The witness reports of a disconcerting smell of pink bubblegum suddenly made sense. Hearts exploding in chests like grenades, pulses ticking down as timebombs; the whole thing was so melodramatic it could only have been a teenage girl.

They dug her up this morning and torched her. Dean's face glowed, slick with sweat and the heat of the flames. He'd said to Sam, "Ain't gonna be a heartbreaker no more."

Sam doesn't think the case has anything to do with Dean going mute. They never even encountered the spirit, just the trail of detonated bodies in her wake and her desiccated skeleton in its rotting white dress. It has to have been something or someone they encountered during the investigation, because a good hex--and this one appears masterful; it covers laughter--relies on proximity and can't be put on much of a time-delay.

"Okay," he says once they have a complete list. "I guess the next thing is a list of people you might have pissed off, but, um." Sam trails off into an indelicate cough.

Dean's eyebrows shoot up, and he gets a defensive look on his face, eyes all huge and aggrieved. His mouth demands, what!

Sam clears his throat and folds the two pages into quarters to fit in his pocket. He barely manages to keep from rolling his eyes.

"You're honestly gonna try to tell me that you don't take a perverse pride in getting people riled? Because it kinda looks like your defining character trait from over here."

Dean's mouth opens and Sam waits, staring, but Dean doesn't attempt to say anything, just flaps his hand at his brother dismissively. He looks a little outraged and a little like he's preening (only Dean could take that as a compliment, Sam thinks), but that's fairly standard.

"You talked shit about that junkyard guy's car," Sam notes.

Throwing his hands up, Dean launches into a mute tirade, and Sam is enthralled, working out the meat of it from Dean's fluidly shifting expression and his whipping gestures. Ugliest piece of shit I ever seen, Dean's hands implore. Didn't even deserve to be on the road, Dean's crazy eyes insist.

"All right, all right, I'm just saying, you pissed him off."

Dean's fast exhale sounds more like a scoff, and Sam wonders if he's learning how to express himself with breath alone. Trust Dean to find a way to get his annoyance across.

"And how much did you tip at the diner?"

That stops Dean, and he glances quick at Sam, smiling slight and uneven. It's Dean's guilty look, and Sam sighs.

"Dean, what did we say? Fifteen percent at least, even if we're broke. You're the only one who doesn't care when people spit in your food. And I mean, the only one on the planet. Are you remembering this conversation at all?"

Dean moves his shoulders, shifty-eyed with his chin lowered. Sam says his name in a low warning tone, and Dean twists his mouth up and makes a face. Sam shakes his head, thinking at least he doesn't have to listen to all of Dean's varied excuses for being a cheapskate.

"You're unbelievable, man." Dean grins, tips his head all aw-shucks. Sam rolls his eyes. "Not in a good way, Dean. Really an unbelievable jackass, actually."

Affronted, Dean flips Sam off with both hands.

"Yeah yeah right back atcha." Sam stands, his back popping. "Come on, let's get a move on."

Dean stamps his foot to get Sam's attention and then points at his open mouth. Sam stops as if suddenly nailed to the floor, boggling. Dean is standing there with this bright, demanding look on his face, offering his mouth and it looks like heaven. Sam presses his tongue up against the back of his teeth, desperately trying not to imagine his brother on his knees.

"What?" Sam manages.

Dean huffs, points more forcefully at his mouth as Sam's eyes grow as big as coins, and then Dean rubs his stomach with his other hand and Sam groks on to the obvious.

"Oh, food!" he shouts like a game show answer. He half-smiles self-consciously. "You're hungry."

Dean nods his head with exaggerated care, and then weaves both hands over his stomach and sucks in his gut, slackens his jaw and hollows his cheeks and lets his eyes roll back so he looks gaunt and fragile.

"You're starving," Sam amends. Dean claps him on the arm, and his perfect fucking mouth grins, shapes around the word bingo.

Sam makes Dean let him drive. He needs an excuse not to look at him for a few minutes at least.

This is nothing new.

A long long time ago, Sam came to terms with wanting to sleep with his brother.

It was essential. A survival technique like knowing CPR and how to suture a ten-inch gash with dental floss. Like sensing the creature behind him when it's totally black, recognizing the scent of sulfur in smoke, knowing how to duck and roll and take cover. Sam is very very good at protecting himself (he learned from the best, after all), and it's why he's still alive.

He was just a kid, maybe twelve or thirteen and somehow Dean seeped into him. Got in so deep and for the length of a pyretic summer, Sam was delirious from the heat and dreamt about him night after night, messy tortured dreams where Dean pressed their bodies together and grinned at Sam, that grin of pure stupid delight that only Sam got to see, pushed the hair back out of his kid brother's eyes. Nothing much more than that, just locked together so tight Sam couldn't think, couldn't separate himself out, and Dean telling him it was okay, it was all gonna be great. Those goddamn dreams.

Everything was happening to him so fast. He was growing in agonizing spurts, hated his huge feet and the way he couldn't take three steps without tripping over empty space, how he was dying of hunger all the time and how he felt weak, bony and insubstantial. He wasn't in control. He couldn't stand it, and this, this baseless throb in his stomach when he looked at his brother, this was the straw that would break him.

He knew it even way the hell back then.

So Sam built himself a wall.

Behind the wall go Dean's damaging green eyes and what his hands look like cradling a gun, and the soft scatter of scars on the ribs of his left side, and the pale curve of his shoulders, and his motherfucking freckles and his cocksucking mouth and every single time Sam has brought himself off too tired or drunk or depressed to censor where his mind wants to go.

Sam doesn't know why he didn't grow out of this like all the other trials of his adolescence, why it hasn't faded to some vaguely mortifying memory like when he used to insist Dad leave the radio on for New Kids on the Block songs (he was five, okay?). Everybody talks about the ridiculous embarrassing crushes they had growing up, and maybe Sam secretly hoped other people were hiding massive sibling infatuations, but he's twenty-four years old now and extremely well-read and he knows it's just him.

The wall has been holding up admirably, despite the endless nature of the road and the gaslighting constraints of the Impala. Sam tries to focus on the things Dean does that irritate him, which is most of the things most of the time, and he pushes himself hard so that he can fall asleep right away, and he doesn't let himself look at Dean for long periods of time, and all that was working fine before Dean lost his voice.

Now. Now Sam has to look at Dean.

Dean and his goddamn mouth.

Sam keeps the tape on as he drives back over to the diner, and he doesn't talk and so nobody does.

Their waitress from yesterday sends them a filthy look when they walk in, and Sam elbows Dean, but Dean misses it because Dean's oblivious and only sees what he wants. The waitress is from Ellen's mold, tougher than a trucker and fully cognizant of it, and after a minute of study, Sam dismisses her as a suspect. Broad like that doesn't need black magic; it would only slow her down.

Sam resolves to double the bill, just in case, but they end up getting seated in a different section, manned--well, girled, really. She's dark-haired and dark-eyed and nicely put-together and Dean perks right the fuck up.

His standard grin is in place, his chin tipped up and his eyes scanning gleefully, and Sam watches Dean's mouth form the words hey honey before he remembers and his face just collapses. He looks at Sam distraught, and Sam bites the inside of his lip to hide a smile.

"Hey, honey," he says to the waitress. Dean gapes at him, and Sam gives him a little smirk before turning back to the girl. "How's your day goin'?"

She smiles tiredly, brushing her hair back. "On and on."

Sam laughs a little, and Dean kicks him under the table but Sam doesn't look over. He smiles at the girl and her expression flickers as she really looks at him for the first time, and she smiles back, a truer smile than her first.

"You fellas just passing through?"

Sam glances at Dean and is slightly unnerved to find Dean staring at him fixedly, like there's not a completely justifiable case of statutory rape standing at his elbow. He looks away before his face starts coloring.

"Yeah, sure are. Heard this place had pie to die for." Sam pauses, pushes his foot into Dean's under the table and tells her with his best grin, "Didn't hear nothing about the view, though."

Dean starts coughing violently. The waitress blushes and makes a bell-like giggling sound, giving Sam a playful oh, you! smack on the shoulder. Dean is trodding heavily on his foot and Sam doesn't dare look over at him, honestly afraid he's gonna bust out laughing any second now.

"Anyway," the waitress says, her face softened. "Take your order?"

Sam orders cheeseburgers for them both and makes sure to note Dean's extra onions twice to keep him from banging on the table or something, and the waitress flits away. Sam watches her go deliberately, then turns his eyes on his brother.

Dean is settled back in the booth, his gaze half-lidded and difficult to read. His coughing fit has left a slight flush, a tinge of color high on his cheeks, and the corner of his mouth is twisted in a caustic smirk.

funny, sam.

Sam grins. "You like that?"

Dean scrunches up half his face, makes an 'eh' gesture with his hand. Then he hikes his eyebrows and bangs on his own chest.

"Oh, you think you can do better, huh?"

Dean nods, rolls his eyes, like, of course.

"All right, well, go to it," Sam says, seeing the blue-uniformed girl in the corner of his eye, approaching with their Cokes.

Dean glowers at him, and his expression gets briefly homicidal when Sam throws in a "Thanks, sweetheart," without taking his eyes off his brother. Dean twitches, his hands jittering on the table.

"Oh yeah," Sam says. "You're real smooth."

It's probably good that Dean missed out on the mind-control genes, otherwise Sam thinks it's likely he'd be on fire right now.

Sam can't keep the grin off his face. God help him, he knows Dean's going crazy but this situation kinda has hilarity built in.

Dean slaps the pad of paper on the table and his head bows over it, scritch-scratch lost in the Patsy Cline song playing above them. He flicks it and Sam traps it under his hand.

YOU GONNA ASK HER FOR A TOUR OF THE BATHROOM?

Sam snorts, flicks the pad back. "That's exactly what I'm gonna do."

Dean shrugs, looking away all faux-casually before he writes: YOU COULD. SHE'S DOWN.

Sam reads it and spreads his fingers out on the paper and keeps his eyes lowered for a moment. He doesn't want to talk about the waitress. Every time Dean writes something down, it feels permanent, harder to argue. Sam can usually just ignore his bullshit, but he's feeling jumpy and like he's in over his head, even though it's just Dean, just some stupid little hex that they'll break before the sun goes down.

Dean's hand creeps into his view to take the pad back, and Sam looks up to see a strange calculating look on his brother's face, his eyes narrowed and his mouth thin. Sam attempts a god-you're-annoying smile and it doesn't work.

Leaning forward, Dean captures the straw between his lips and takes a drink, writing. He writes for a long time, sipping sporadically at his Coke, and Sam stares at the hypnotic turns of the ceiling fans, three in a row down the length of this diner shaped like a shoebox, all of them at different speeds.

Dean steps on Sam's foot, pushes the pad across to him. Sam notes, "Whole paragraphs, now," just to watch Dean roll his eyes and crook his smile.

ONCE WHEN YOU WERE IN CA I DROVE A CAR INTO A TREE AND BARELY GOT OUT BEFORE IT EXPLODED. LOST MY HEARING FOR 2 DAYS AND I HAD TO DRIVE 2000 MILES TO WHERE DAD WAS. NO MUSIC. ROAD AND SKY AND WIND. FUCKIN SCARED TO DEATH THE RINGING WAS NEVER GONNA STOP. THIS IS LIKE THAT BUT A LITTLE WORSE.

Sam reads it a couple of times. He can picture it so clearly, Dean going a hundred miles an hour and keeping the windows down so the battering wind could counterfeit sound in his hollow ears. Dean panicking and alone in the nowhere middle of the country, talking disjointedly and too-loud in the empty space.

He tears the page off, folds it in half. "It's not worse," he tells Dean, tucking the paper into his jeans pocket without analyzing his motivations. "You got me here. I can do the talking."

Dean smirks at the very idea. He shows his mock-Sammy face, all wide-eyed and goody-goody, his mouth chirping earnestly. He flutters his eyelashes and presses his palms flat together, sighing breathily. Sam kicks him in the shin and Dean yelps, his open expression crunching into a scowl.

"Also, deaf is a slightly bigger handicap than mute in our line of work."

Flapping his hand, Dean dismisses that. He's convinced he could hunt blindfolded and with a minimum of four fingers. He looks away for a moment, out at the drowsy pace of the midday world, and because sunlight is pouring through the window, he's carrying at his edges a scrim of gold.

Sam swallows with a click, and Dean looks back at him and their eyes meet with an electric crack. Sam's stomach bottoms out and his hands jump, rapping the underside of the table. He digs his teeth into the inside of his cheek and by some miracle his face stays under his control. He breathes out real careful.

Just a momentary lapse.

"So," he says, occupying his hands with a silverware tripod. "I don't think you got hexed here. I was thinking the Gaudets next? It's probably got nothing to do with them, but they're closest and then we can hit the junkyard and the palmist."

Dean nods, steepling his fingers contemplatively. His mouth shapes something familiar but Sam can't quite get it and Dean does it again, slow-motion with his mouth moving so careful. Sam recognizes it this time.

it's not my fault.

Biting his tongue, Sam nods, widening his eyes because sometimes that distracts Dean when Sam is lying.

Not this time, though, and the lines of Dean's face fall strict as his mouth says sternly, sammy.

Sam smiles, itching at his forearms under the table. He has heard Dean say his name a million times; he shouldn't have gone into withdrawal this quickly.

"Well, come on, Dean. You didn't deserve it, but you probably did cause it somehow."

Dean scrawls almost hard enough to rip the paper: I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ACTIONS OF CRAZY PEOPLE.

"It's an overreaction, no doubt, but it's still a reaction, Dean."

WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON BITCH.

Rolling his eyes, Sam scuffs at Dean's feet again, tangling desultorily for a moment. "I am on my jackass of a brother's side. He makes it hard sometimes."

Dean scoffs, but his hand hesitates over his response, and Sam is a little shocked when he reads: YOU LOVE IT.

He snaps his eyes up and catches Dean grinning for a split second before he lets his mask of irritation crash back down like a gate. Sam's in bad trouble, pushing his fingers across the wet ink to try and smear it unreadable, but it only adds speed-lines to the letters. Every last thing about Dean is in motion.

The waitress arrives with their food a little while later, and the silence they share as they eat is somehow more companionable than usual.

Dean buys a few handfuls of candy from the crank machines by the door while Sam pays the check, glancing over his shoulder every few seconds just to make sure. He's perfectly nice to their waitress as she chats and counts out his change, but he doesn't flirt without Dean there to wind up, and he can see the vague confusion in her eyes. He doubles the bill for a tip after all, feeling like a cad.

Holding the door open with his body, Dean offers Sam a bright jumble of Runts. Sam picks out the limes and strawberries, sees the colored-sugar smears of coating left on Dean's palm and doesn't think about licking them off for more than a minute, tops.

Once Dean finishes the handful, he licks his palm clean himself. Sam just can't win, and he hunches against the door with his fist against his eye, not looking and thinking on a loop, headache, i've got a headache.

The Gaudets, completely unhelpful neighbors of the most recent victim, live in a big crackerbox house with filthy windows and peeling paint. It smells overwhelmingly of cats inside, but the lawn and garden are fresh and well-tended. There are beds of flowers laid all around the house, almost unnaturally vibrant yellows and pinks and blues.

Yesterday, Sam and Dean spoke with the mother of the family for maybe twenty minutes, disheartened almost immediately when she called the dearly departed Jake instead of the more accurate Jack. She'd only known the man to wave at from across lawns, and Dean was flippant and annoying the way he gets when he knows a subject isn't going to be worth the gas of the trip, and Sam had spent most of the visit smoothing things over.

They'd snuck around the back of the house afterwards in order to hop the fence into Jack's backyard, and looking at the flowers, almost bleeding color they were so bright, replaying the visit in his head, Sam stops short on the path.

"Dean," he says slowly. "You remember Mrs. Gaudet's mother?"

Dean nods, turned back a few steps ahead of Sam. The old woman, her face like crumpled paper and her eyes so dark they looked black, had been introduced and then vanished into the kitchen for the rest of their interview. They could hear her banging around making tea and muttering to herself. Sam had taken her straying eeriness for senility, but hindsight's a bitch.

"You remember how she asked us to mind her flowers as we were leaving?"

Dean nods again, but it's jerky and uncertain and Sam knows he doesn't remember any such thing.

Sam sighs. "Dean. Did you mind the flowers when we went around back?"

Dean's face is blank for a moment, and then it washes over dark and furious.

oh hell no.

"You didn't, did you? She's probably a witch and you trampled the hell out of her flowers."

fuck! Dean's mouth shouts. flowers?

"It had to be something incredibly petty and stupid, man. I mean, it's you."

Dean takes a swing at Sam but Sam's too fast for him. Dean's mouth screeches in outrage, flowers?!?

"Yes, Dean, flowers. Here's a ladder so you can get over it."

Sam gets a full-strength shove for that one, and he goes stumbling back onto the grass. The impact of Dean's hands on his chest seems to jar something loose in him, and a grin plasters across his face. There's something spreading out warm under his ribs, a flare like heat lightning in the pit of his stomach.

He tosses his arm around his brother's shoulders, holding him easily in place when Dean tries to squirm and twist away. There's a great awareness of the structure of Dean's body when Sam's got him like this, the wiry tension in his shoulders and his narrow hip knocking Sam's own.

"You're gonna treat her with nothing but respect, you get me?"

Dean huffs, and Sam presses his arm down on Dean's chest, a hard diagonal line and he can't help wondering if Dean feels how neatly they fit. Dean's face is turned away but the tips of his ears are bright red and Sam can see the flush creeping up his neck.

"You're gonna, Dean. I can sweet-talk her, you know how old ladies like me, but I don't want to see the slightest smirk outta you, all right?"

Sam's hand is open at the base of Dean's sternum. He can feel the muscles in Dean's stomach fluttering under his fingertips, and the hitch in Dean's breathing, and Sam is getting kinda dizzy but he doesn't think he wants to let go of his brother just yet.

"So much trouble," he says, a bit rough. "You're just a walking disaster area sometimes."

Dean spears Sam with a hard gaze and Sam would like to say it's heated but hell. He knows better than to trust his perception, after the day he's had. Dean's off his game and he's reading too much into stuff, not liking this thought that he might be a burden on his brother, but it's not like Sam minds.

His hand on Dean's chest feels like it weighs a thousand pounds.

"Don't worry." Sam barely recognizes his own voice. "I knew what I signed up for. You just, you gotta promise not to screw it up, all I ask."

Frozen for a moment, and then Dean's head presses back into Sam's arm, his hair damp and like suede on the bare skin where Sam's T-shirt sleeve has ridden up. Split second, Dean stays like that, and then he drops his head forward and digs the pen out of his pocket. He picks Sam's hand up and holds it at an odd angle with their forearms notched together so he can write along the side of Sam's wrist:

promise

Sam lets him go, tasting his heartbeat in his mouth. He's reeling slightly. He has an awful feeling he let that go on way too long.

He doesn't touch his wrist, makes sure to hold it away from his body and keeps it turned into the wind. It's all he can do not to take off to the nearest tattoo parlor.

Mrs. Gaudet opens the door and looks at them through the screen door with surprise.

"Didn't expect to see you boys again," she says cheerfully enough.

Sam is a reassuring and harmless young man. "Hope this isn't a bad time, ma'am."

"Not especially, no."

"It's actually. Well, it's a little embarrassing, but I was describing your, your lovely garden here to our colleague in the Home and Garden section, and she wanted me to ask if you'd ever had any professional photography done of it."

Dean shifts his weight, the porch boards whining, and Sam shoots him a look, but Dean's tongue must be chewed half off because his face is cleanly passive.

Mrs. Gaudet's face brightens, and she pushes the screen door open. "Well! No, never did anything like that. And, you know, it's actually not my garden, my mother does most of the upkeep. It's been her real love ever since my father died."

"Oh, you can tell, ma'am, the, um, the love. Gosh, it would be really great if we could talk to her about it."

Sam is every mother's dream. By all means, invite him and his ominously-silent and well-armed partner in.

Dean knocks Sam on the arm as soon as Mrs. Gaudet's back is turned, and clutches his throat, gagging with his tongue lolling out. Quickly composed, Dean's mouth is telling him, pathetic, sammy, and Sam is mouthing back at him, bite me, and Dean looks surprised for some reason, disclosing half a smile

Sam walks in front even though usually Dean does. They follow Mrs. Gaudet up the stairs and down a hallway carpet the color of new moss, pass the growing ranks of family photographs in neat frames. She knocks on the last door and bustles in.

Dean lurks behind Sam, staying out of the eye-line of the old woman, who is over by the window in a square of natural light. She's knitting something long and twilight-colored, gnarled fingers flying, and Sam thinks, definitely a witch.

"Mother, those gentlemen from the newspaper are back. They want to put your garden in the paper!"

"They want nothing of the sort."

The old woman's voice is brambly, devastatingly alert. She's simply dressed in a print dress, two spots of shine in her wedding ring and the silver chain around her neck, from which hangs a symbol that Sam can't immediately place but recognizes as their kind of thing. She doesn't look up from her knitting as her daughter turns to give Sam and Dean a mildly exasperated look.

"She can be a little prickly," Mrs. Gaudet informs them in a stage whisper. "Get her talking about it, she'll come around."

"Yes, ma'am, thanks so much."

Sam holds the pleasant smile and the high set of his eyebrows, watching Mrs. Gaudet leave, before turning back looking more like himself.

"We need to talk."

She cackles, inches of dark cloth spilling from between her hands. "You and me, perhaps. That other one, he'll have to stand witness."

Sam feels Dean move before he hears his footfall, and he tenses his back, tossing out a warning to his brother that feels like a thumb nudged into his brain, and he feels Dean stop.

"You know why we were here?" Sam asks, crossing his arms over his chest. The old woman is crackling with energy but it's not really malicious, something close but toothless: mischievous, like imp children before they grow up and learn how funny human panic and chaos can be.

"Leeching off that poor man's death, I know."

"Ah ah," Sam tuts. "No, no ma'am we're not reporters. That man, your neighbor, something killed him and we were here trying to figure out what, so we could stop it from killing other people."

The old woman looks up with a disconcertingly sarcastic look on her face. "Heroes, no less."

"Yeah, actually." Sam smiles, a real one this time. "We do what we can."

"And did you vanquish the dastardly fiend, boy?"

"We did. Just this morning. Just before my brother stopped talking to me."

"Your brother." And here she sets her crow-dark eyes on Dean for the first time, staring past Sam's shoulder with this look of utter contempt. Sam shivers just feeling it go by. "Your brother may save lives but he has no respect for the things that make it worth living."

Dean makes an airy sound of protest, stepping up next to Sam but not going any farther.

"I'm sorry, but that's just not true," Sam tells her, keeping his voice mild. "You should see him when the volume's up. Or when the food is free. Give him a highway or a little kid to look after or a, a family to save. His whole life is doing for others, and people like him make it worth living."

Sam doesn't glance at Dean. He can feel the burn of Dean's gaze on the side of his face, and he wonders helplessly if Dean is putting it all together, at long last solving the mystery of his little brother.

He lets out a long breath. The old woman's scrutiny is intense, like being floodlit.

"But we do apologize for your flowers. They are beautiful, and we should have been more careful."

There's a moment of consideration. Sam has this blurry sense of Dean in the corner of his eye, vibrating with palpable tension. Sam wishes he had a hand on his brother, something stable and clear.

The old woman's face relaxes, and her knitting needles resume their too-fast tap-dance. She looks out the window at the firework bursts set in the deep green, and Sam follows her gaze, sees that her view would have been ideal to observe his and Dean's own brand of mischief, and also that the murdered flowers have already been replaced by ones half as bright as their brothers. A small smile creases into place on the woman's face, a grandmother's look.

"Well. They will grow."

Nodding, Sam doesn't dare speak. This is a delicate moment, her piercing gaze slanting over them one more time before she says:

"Your brother speaks so well for you. I think if I keep you like this, the world might appreciate you better."

Dean starts forward and Sam grabs his arm, but the old woman is chuckling, waving him away.

"Just one day, hero."

Sam's fingers tighten in the warm pocket of Dean's elbow. "What?"

"One day. In the futile hope that without a voice, he might learn to listen."

Dean sags back against Sam's hand, relief pouring off him. Sam laughs once, covering his mouth and trying not to find this witch kind of awesome.

"It was noon," Sam realizes suddenly. "It happened at noon."

She tips her head to the side incrementally, ghost of a smile on her face. "And so shall it end."

Sam takes hold of Dean with both hands, one fisted on his back and one on his shoulder, not really sure why but it seems like the thing to do, tugging him back to the door and not noticing how willingly Dean follows where Sam leads.

"Thank you," Sam says sincerely. "Really, this all could have gone a lot worse."

The old woman shoos them with her knitting, one last admonition to watch their step, and Sam and Dean tumble out into the hall.

"Dude!" Sam gives Dean a happy shove. "Only until noon tomorrow. She was just messing with you."

Dean's head bobs, his eyes bright and an itchy smile working on his mouth. He's shaking just a little from the adrenaline rush of relief, though there are still pinched lines of frustration on his face from not being able to celebrate properly, as in out loud.

At the top of the stairs, Dean stops Sam with a hand on his arm and cuts his eyes away when Sam looks at him inquisitively. His throat ducks as he swallows, and he angles his head back at the old woman's room, glancing at Sam almost nervously as his mouth moves but doesn't speak.

Sam gets him.

He smiles at Dean. "Yeah, anytime, man. Although I could kinda see her point."

He's braced for Dean to hit him, but Dean catches him totally off-guard and instead nearly blinds Sam with a full-tilt grin.

Quickly bidding their goodbyes to Mrs. Gaudet, who is pretty obviously clueless as to the kickass witch living in her back room, they make for the front door and Dean snags a piece of junk mail off the stilt-legged table, writes with the flat of his hand for a surface:

NOW WE CAN GET DRUNK.

Sam laughs, squinting against the blast of the sun. "Sounds good to me, Harpo."

Dean's face twists, mouth complaining, don't call me that, and Sam says, "Whatever you say, Teller."

dude!

"Oh man, and you're short too! I'm totally going with Teller. My little magician's assistant."

Dean tackles him. That is kinda exactly what Sam was going for.

They tussle for a couple of minutes, until Dean's arms are slick with sweat and Sam can't get a grip on him. Dean has a grass stain on his chin, a hunk of dirt and sod shoved down the front of his shirt and he makes these absurd breathfilled groans when Sam leans his elbow on the middle of his back. Dean's mouth is laughing throughout, his eyes lit up like sparklers.

Eventually, Mrs. Gaudet sticks her head out the front door with a concerned call, and Sam scrambles off Dean.

"He's my brother," Sam says idiotically, standing there with filthy hands and knees. "Um, we work together at the paper but we're also brothers."

He offers Dean his hand and they grab each other's wrists and Sam hauls him up, smiling at Mrs. Gaudet as they walk backwards towards the car. Sam is completely trustworthy.

There were boys in the hallway pictures, and so Mrs. Gaudet gives them an indulgent smile and sends them off with a wave. Sam is pretty sure they gave two different last names yesterday, but she doesn't remember, or she probably does, but not in the next ten seconds.

Dean takes the wheel and Sam cinches his belt buckle tight because he knows how Dean gets in moments of triumph, invincible and like no restrictions apply to him, certainly not speed limits. He lets the tape blast and Sam rolls down his window so the wind blows his hair back, rides with his elbow out, feeling pretty great.

They pull into a liquor store, and Sam asks, "No bar?"

Dean writes on the pad: DON'T WANNA LOOK AT GIRLS I CAN'T HIT ON. LIKE TORTURE.

Sam laughs through his nose. "Pig."

Dean shrugs. HONEST.

"You know, I'll give you that."

They buy enough alcohol to get the whole Roadhouse drunk, and get started on the tallboys on the short drive back to the motel. It's that kind of night, Sam thinks, and then remembers that it's the middle of the afternoon. Doesn't matter, he can taste it in the air already.

They drink and play cards and Sam tells long rambling stories that he's never bothered to share before because they have no point or moral and aren't that interesting, just some random stuff that's happened to him, and he is amazed to have Dean's attention on him the whole time. Dean doesn't interrupt and it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the fact that he can't.

Sam finds himself laughing a lot, thinking it should be weird that Dean is still funny, maybe even funnier without a voice, robbed of his scores of bad jokes and tired movie quotes, left only with facial expression and timing. Dean makes faces at him like they're four and eight again, dancing in front of a funhouse mirror in one of Sam's very first memories.

They drink down the sun, and order a couple pizzas for dinner and Sam is muzzy-headed, wearily content, this obscure feeling he has that it was a good day.

Dean wins handily at every game they pick while his mouth spits trashtalk, and Sam eventually gets bored and goes to lie down for a second, his head spinning. They've got the television on for background noise, and it's showing some COPS knockoff, drunk people in wifebeaters chased down by micced officers panting and clanking.

Dean comes over to sit on the other bed, glassy-eyed and happy. He scribbles out a note for Sam and crumples it into a ball, tosses it to his brother. It hits Sam's side and bounces off, and he has to smooth it out on his stomach to read Dean's handwriting, which is starting to go spidery.

WE SHOULD DIAL UP A PORNO.

Sam rolls his head to the side, his neck feeling loose and oiled, and meets Dean's expectant gaze with a heaved sigh. "No freakin' way."

Dean nods urgently, a slow sloppy drunk smile spreading on his face. He scribbles against his knees, his face in coin-like profile, before throwing another little paper ball at Sam. Sam catches it out of the air this time and doesn't read it because he knows what it says, something along the lines of, THOUGHT YOU LIKED PORN, SAMMY.

"Okay, I am not really enjoying this, with the little balls and the throwing them at me. Also it's a waste of paper."

Dean lifts his eyebrows, like, what do you want me to do about it?

"Just come sit over here, why don't you."

Dean doesn't move for a second, and Sam thinks, fuck. He's drunk and he's not a hundred percent sure what he just did. Wasn't that okay? Doesn't it make sense for Dean to be over here so he can pass notes easier? Dean thinks it's weird, he's not doing anything so he must think Sam's being weird.

But then Dean gets to his feet and walks around to the far side of the bed, climbing up to sit against the headboard. Sam blinks up at him from where he's lying down. He feels petrified, something living that has become stone. Dean glances at him, strange sideways angle with his eyes in slits, and then back at the television and Sam watches his throat move.

After an excruciatingly long moment, Dean writes and then holds the pad over Sam's face so he can read without moving.

DID GOOD SAM. FIXED IT.

Sam smiles. "Told you I would."

APRECIATE IT. Dean tousles Sam's hair and Sam doesn't say anything about how he spelled it. He grins up at his brother feeling so drunk and so stupid and so irrevocably young.

Dean leaves his hand in Sam's hair for a moment that might have been longer than normal but Sam can't tell. Dean's fingers card through and it seems deliberate but Sam can't really tell that either.

There's a quiet moment, Dean idly watching TV and Sam staring up at him from a bizarre angle. Color rises on Dean's face like he knows Sam's looking, and Sam watches it come, dry-mouthed and fascinated.

Eventually Dean clears his throat, and draws up the leg closest to Sam so he can write on his knee.

YOU THINK PEOPLE WOULD LIKE ME BETTER IF I COULDN'T TALK?

Sam blinks at the hovering white square, taking too long to work out what's written there, and then he says, "You'd probably not piss everybody off so much."

He's joking, he thinks he's joking, he's really drunk but he thinks he can still joke okay, but Dean's mouth tightens a little bit and he looks up at the television for a moment, watching some punk with two full sleeves of black tattoos get dragged from under his trailer and handcuffed face-down in the dirt. Sam studies the lines of Dean's face like he's majoring in it, and thinks sickly that the joking didn't really go so well.

"But, um." Sam pushes up on his elbows. "I wouldn't like it at all. If you couldn't talk. I mean, you can't, but--you know what I mean. I would hate it, Dean, and I would go crazy. Like how you went kinda crazy? Except more. Because, like, I can't hear you if you're in trouble and I can't wake up all the way without it and nobody says my name right except you. So."

He's looking at Dean while he says it, or at least, Dean's mouth, and Dean's right on cue, breathing out sammy.

"Yep." Sam flops back down, grinning so big he's blinking back tears. "Just like that."

There's a pause. A tick-tick-tock, and then suddenly Dean's hand is pushing back through Sam's hair, hard this time and wonderful, and Sam cranes back, hissing between his teeth with his eyes stuck on his brother's. A bolt of heat rips down Sam's spine, because Dean is licking his lips. Dean is leaning down with his hand heavy and warm tangled in Sam's hair, and Sam can't figure out what he's doing until Dean's mouth is on his.

Dean's kissing him, for some impossible reason Dean is sucking on Sam's lower lip and curving his hand over Sam's jaw. Something panics inside Sam, and something almost explodes with excitement and he is too drunk to pretend that this is not the only thing he wants.

He pushes up into Dean, kisses him harder. Dean kinda gasps against Sam's mouth, and Sam licks inside, wraps his hand around Dean's upper arm. Dean tastes like candy and liquor and fire and other things that are dangerous in high doses, and Sam could do this for days.

Dean wants to, Sam keeps thinking in a fog of disbelief. Dean wants to kiss Sam and press his palm against Sam's throat and feel how out of control his heartbeat has gotten. Dean wants to strip Sam's shirt off so quick it leaves tingling burns on his arms, and he wants to put his rough hands all over, scuff up his brother and leave some marks. Dean wants Sam to roll them over fast and gracelessly and pin Dean by his shoulders, jesus christ does Dean want that.

It's looking down at Dean, Dean who is panting and shameless and rocking up against Sam's thigh, looking down and seeing him bite his lip, seeing the sheen over his eyes and suddenly like a bucketful of cold water Sam realizes just how drunk his brother is, so drunk he doesn't talk because he can't, and Sam is terrified, just that quick.

He tries to shove off Dean but Dean's got their legs hooked and he won't let Sam go, his hands slick and hot tugging on Sam's arms and shoulders. Dean's mouth keeps saying, sam, sammy, a chant or a beg and Sam doesn't know, Sam can't hear him. Sam feels like his head is coming apart at the seams.

"I can't," and Sam is almost hyperventilating, turned on beyond reason. Dean's eyes widen in shock and fear, immediate self-recrimination corroding the green. It kills Sam to see it, it rips him the fuck open, but he pleads, "You can't say yes, Dean, how can I if you can't say yes."

And Dean's mouth drops open, his whole body shivering and Sam can't help it, his eyes flutter closed and he moans. Dean takes that moment to flip them, slamming Sam flat on the bed and straddling his hips. Sam's breath is gone at once, sucked out of him, because he's harder than he can ever remember being and so's Dean, and now everybody knows it. Their hips are notched together and Dean's hands are spread out on Sam's bare chest and Sam will never be able to breathe again.

"Dean," Sam barely manages. "Please."

Dean nods, his mouth whispering sammy again, another tiny barb hooked into Sam's heart, and he smooths his hand across Sam's skin before using his fingernail to trace a word onto Sam's chest. Sam looks down at Dean's hands, pale and strong, and the word blooming, materializing in faint red scratches:

YES

Sam jerks his eyes up to Dean's face, and Dean is grinning down at him. That joyful grin that Sam has been tracking down his whole life, and Dean scratches another word into Sam, and then another and another.

YES YES YES

They fade into view like magic, like the words were always there, trapped under Sam's skin until Dean chose to draw them out.

Sam's mind stutters and falters. He wraps a hand around the back of Dean's neck and grinds his hips up and his brother falls on him like storm.

They're most of the night like that, fucking around and passing out and waking up and fucking around some more. Sam sobers up slowly and things come into focus piece by piece, moment by moment. That's his brother, mouthing across Sam's shoulderblades, one hand open on the flat of Sam's hip. That's Dean tangibly falling asleep at Sam's back, little jerks of muscle and the expanding press of each breath he takes.

Sam wakes up once and he's in an empty bed and he snatches himself upright, adrenaline and unreal terror wrecking through him. Dean's gone, Dean woke up sober and was appalled to find Sam bruised and used and bitten beside him, and Dean took off, Dean left.

Dean throws a pillow at Sam from the other bed, whumping against him and making him start. Sam's head whips around and Dean's eyes are open in the dark, somehow glittering even though there's no light. He lifts his hand to Sam and Sam takes it so carefully, sliding out of the destroyed first bed. Dean pulls him down, shifting to make room, and once Sam is settled, Dean sighs, knocks his forehead into his brother's shoulder. This bed is fresh and cool and Sam is trembling with relief, feeling Dean's hand curl into a fist against his side.

The sun is starting to come up when they finish for the last time. Sam thinks it might have been the best so far, dusty pastel color starting to creep in and tint the angles of Dean's body, giving Sam paths to follow with his hands and mouth. Dean keeps smiling at him, looking really truly happy for the first time Sam can remember since Dean dropped him off at a bus station six years ago.

They fall asleep in distorted patches of sunlight, hot as hands on skin, and Sam wakes up first. There is a white field surrounding him and his mind is soft and tattered and his throat aches. He's motionless and at peace, staring at the dim impression of Dean's mouth on his wrist, Dean's promise almost licked away.

There is a muffled rustle and then Dean puts his hand on Sam's back. Sam squeezes his eyes shut, his voice caught and gone and his whole world narrowed down to Dean's hand.

"Sam?"

Sam twitches, presses his face into the bed for a long second. A ridiculous grin takes up his face, flooded through with a crazy joy. Dean doesn't sound rusty or unsure, and his fingertips are points of heat, blistering scars that no one else will be able to see.

Sam turns to face his brother. Dean's hand slides over his side and sticks to Sam's hip and Sam tries not to shake too bad.

"Hey Dean," he says in a whisper too low to be heard.

He doesn't meet Dean's eyes, staring at his mouth and suspecting that it's a habit that won't be broken. He wants to put his hands on Dean but he doesn't. He can't speak and almost can't move, every muscle strung tight.

"You're okay, Sammy, right?"

And Dean touches Sam's face, touches his cheekbone and the corner of his mouth and Sam kinda folds into him. Dean makes a small sound, a coarse give in his throat as Sam's hand presses flat on his stomach.

Sam kisses his brother. He scratches a single word onto Dean's skin, and tells him without voice:

yes.

THE END