never would come to me
first second third fourth fifth
Sam had been running away his whole life.
When he was a kid, it had been a trick he liked to play. How far could he get, and how many supplies and candy bars he could smuggle in his backpack with its broken zipper and safety pins, and if he had summoned the courage to pick the gun cabinet lock with a paperclip like Dean had taught him and also swiped a weapon. Sam was seven, eight years old. He had gone looking for adventure.
Dean brought him back within an hour, usually. Sam was effortless to track, impossible to conceal. Dean had this sense of him, Sam radar. Most of the time, Sam was just holed up somewhere with a secondhand copy of The Count of Monte Cristo or whatever book he'd gotten the idea from, a damp sleeping bag and a dying flashlight and a stomachache from eating a dozen candy bars for dinner. Twice, Sam had made it as far as the highway. Only once, he'd managed to get a ride.
Sam got almost four hundred miles away that time. He got all the way to Sioux Falls, the length of the state separating Dean from his brother for the two days it took John to track him down. John hadn't wanted Dean's help, said there was nothing he could do; Dean only halfway believed him. He rode shotgun and kept his window down so the wind could batter against his face, no more than the least he deserved for letting Sam get a three-hour head start and not being there to stop Sam from getting into the station wagon they were following.
In Sioux Falls, the trail ran cold and John called Bobby from the lit telephone box at a gas station, learned that Bobby had tracked down the partial license plate they'd been working off. He directed them to a quiet street where the station wagon, incongruously painted a pale lavender shade, was parked in front of a squat little house with white shutters and a tricycle on its side on the lawn. It was late, and this was the second night Dean had gone without setting eyes on his brother. He remembered feeling so tired already, like life without Sam took ten times as long and weighed more than he could physically bear.
John wanted to kick in the door, guns blazing and all, but Dean talked him down. He wasn't sure John had fully grasped that Sam had not been kidnapped, he'd run the fuck away. John had been driven by terror and rage and that old favorite vengeance ever since he'd heard that someone had actually picked up his eight year old son from the side of the road and then drove the hell off. It was a killing kind of offense.
But Dean did what he did and got his dad calmed and convinced him to give diplomacy a shot. Dean went up to the house alone, a switchblade in his back pocket just in case, and knocked while smoothing down his hair in a last-ditch effort at respectability.
The woman who opened the door was in her forties, brassy blonde with dark roots and gray coming in at the temples, and she looked exhausted. Her three little daughters crowded behind her in matching nightgowns, huge eyes studying the new boy at the door until their mom shooed them away in a flurry of golden hair and lace edges. The mom didn't seem surprised to see Dean at all, which seemed very weird.
"He's yours?" she asked.
Dean nodded, mouth gone dry. "Brother." He tried out a smile. "Like him back, if you wouldn't mind."
"Sure, saves me that trip to Child Services tomorrow."
She reached behind the door, and pulled Sam out. Best magic trick Dean had ever seen, the first to stop his heart dead. Sam had a huge grin on his face, one front tooth missing that had been loose before Sam had disappeared, and he had rainbow-colored barrettes all over his head, rattling as he moved.
"You found me!" Sam said, completely thrilled with the idea, and he grabbed Dean's shirt and tugged it. Dean locked his hands on Sam's thin shoulders, staring at the joy on his brother's face, almost sick with relief that this was all just a game to Sam.
He couldn't even bring himself to lay into him, knowing their dad would be all over it. Sam deserved a hiding or worse but Dean wasn't interested in that right now. Sam's shoulders felt fragile in his hands, his bones hollow like a bird's, and he hadn't stopped grinning at Dean, poking his tongue into the new gap in his teeth.
There was something wrong with Dean. He wanted to say stupid fuckin' kid, and he wanted to put Sam in a headlock and noogie some sense into him, but he couldn't do anything that would mess with that grin on Sam's face. He couldn't even say never do that again, low and urgent, because then Sam would realize how big he'd fucked up and he'd get all quiet and sad and Dean never knew what to do with himself when Sam was like that.
He unsnapped the barrettes from Sam's hair one by one, and gave the handful back to the woman and then Dean took his brother back. Handed him over to their dad and sat silently in the shotgun seat while John ripped into Sam, residual fear and anger making his voice tremble. Dean only looked back once, got an eyeful of Sam's face all red and screwed up, tears streaming and his mouth wrenched tight. Dean had counted mile markers the rest of the way home.
That was the last time Sam had run away just for fun.
He'd gotten out for real a decade after that. Six years ago.
It had been a bad summer. Sam had just graduated high school and he was moody as shit and prone to destructive urges, no bottle in his hand safe from being flung into the wall. He kept stealing the keys to the Impala, vanishing into the night while Dean slept, and the car came back dusty and smelling like liquor and sex and every time Dean threatened Sam's life and every time he let Sam go on breathing.
Dean was sweating his job, pulling fourteen-hour shifts and still taking a lot of shit for being the sheriff's pet, even though Bobby'd been harder on Dean than a Texas judge since he joined the force. The days melted together, smeary and hot and full of bloodflushed faces, bloodshot eyes, and Dean suffered through like swimming in tar, came home to Sam bitching and sniping and slamming pans around. John passed out drunk on the couch a minute earlier every night.
He and Sam got into a fight in July. Dean had never been able to remember what it was about, exactly, but he assumed it had something to do with the car. Lots of stuff seemed to revolve around the car.
They'd been in the parking lot at the station, the Impala gleaming and impassive. Started just arguing, Dean out there on his fifteen minute and Sam still wearing the wifebeater he slept in last night, and it escalated. Nobody was even drunk, and it was heatstroke hot but that wasn't any kind of excuse. Sam had thrown the first punch, the lone consolation and the one part Dean remembered with crystalline clarity.
It got pretty rough. Sam wound up with a couple cracked ribs, which explained Dean's dislocated knuckle and sprained wrist. Sam, evil little fucker, concentrated much of his attention on Dean's face, blacking both eyes, whipping his elbow into Dean's mouth like he wanted to eradicate it from the earth. Dean could still pick out the flaws in Sam's fighting style, too loose and wild, though it'd been years since they'd sparred and this wasn't anything like sparring. They kept winding up in spaceless clinches, arms thrown tight around each other before they got breath enough to hit again.
Bobby and a couple other officers pried them apart, eventually. Dean had watched how Sam's arms were slick with sweat and how he almost escaped hold, lunging at Dean, snarling like something that belonged on a chain. Dean was panting, sagging in Bobby's grip, his whole body suddenly bright with pain.
Bobby had put them both in the same cell, called in Doc Masters to confirm that they weren't too badly hurt, and then left them locked up for the night.
It was creative parenting, he told Dean later. He'd cleared it with John first.
They hadn't spoken for a few hours and Dean hadn't been looking either, blindfolded by a pair of blue icepacks over his swelling eyes. Sam was breathing shallowly, lying flat on the bunk above him, dim from the painkillers he'd been given for his ribs.
"Dean," Sam had said. "It's no good fighting with you."
Dean got his meaning; Sam honestly enjoyed fights, got something out of it that other men got from sports and sex and church. He'd always scrapped with his friends, dirt yard affairs conducted with savagery but a startling lack of malice, and since he'd gotten too old for that he'd turned to all the enemies the world could present him. It was disconcerting for Dean to find himself among their number.
"Then don't, Sam. Real simple." Dean's whole face was numb, black holes under the ice packs. There was a bone-deep ache in his bandaged wrist, beating along with his pulse.
"Did you let me win?"
"Hey. You did not win."
"Yeah." Sam made a clicking sound that Dean couldn't recognize. The mattress whined above Dean's head, Sam shifting around and Dean felt his heartrate pick up and he wasn't sure why. "Let's, um. Let's not do this again."
"'kay. Don't hit me again."
"You can't hit me either."
"I wouldn't, Sammy, I. I didn't even want to before."
A moment of silence followed, belied only by Sam's tortured breathing, and Dean cursed himself a little bit. His mouth hurt whenever he moved it, the bleeding only just stopped.
Then Sam said, "I'm taking off next month," same as he would say, "We're out of orange juice," like some kind of idle problem for Dean to solve.
"Where?" Dean asked. "You can't take my car."
Sam laughed but it sounded really painful, and Dean had to listen to him wheezing and groaning. Dean felt shittier by the minute, the aches in his wrist and head radiating out in waves.
"Kansas City," Sam said. "And I don't want your car, I got my own car."
"What." Dean sat up, groaned. "The fuck are you talking about?"
"Getting out, Dean. Done with this place."
Dean remembered thinking of jumping into the lake in November, the glassy shatter of water so cold it felt knife-sharp, and the way it was like his heart had frozen instantaneously. Like everything in him had just ceased to be.
Sam was breathing so ragged, scraping up and down Dean's spine, and his head was spinning but he didn't know if he could blame that on this moment. Awful sinking feeling happening inside, like falling off a cliff and reaching for something, anything, and coming up with loose dirt and empty air.
"I thought you were over this," Dean had managed, thinking of all the times he'd gone to check on Sam when Sam was small and found him missing. "Too old for this shit."
"Actually," Sam told him, maddeningly easy except that every breath had to be killing him. "I am finally old enough for this shit."
Dean hadn't wanted to listen to it. He knew Sam's reasons, he'd heard them all before. There was nothing to do in Kingston. Sam didn't want to spend the rest of his life in the salvage yard. Their dad would never understand what the fuck Sam was all about. Dean had the police force but Sam didn't have anything.
Dean kept telling him to shut up, but Sam laid it all out anyway. He convinced Dean that it was true.
They spent the rest of their night in jail not sleeping, not talking except a couple times an hour when Sam would ask, "Dean?" and Dean would answer, "Yeah," staring up at Sam's bunk and wondering what was going to happen next.
Sam was as good as his word. He packed up the truck he'd put back together while Dean wasn't paying attention, and made the rounds saying goodbye for a week, and by September he was gone. Dean had thought he'd prepared himself, but the blow still felt like a sucker punch.
Sam lived on the Kansas side of the river, got work at a garage in Missouri, and sent Dean postcards from time to time. There were always black fingerprints in the margins, proof that Sam had once held this in his hands.
Dean got on with his life. He had no other realistic option.
He had his job and his car and his friends, a town full of well-meaning older people just dying to mother him, and it was probably more than he deserved. Dean could smile no matter how lousy he felt, a very old skill, and he tried to be content with what he'd been left.
Sam drunk-dialed him on occasion, usually lit beyond coherence and just mumbling pieces and fragments of words and saying Dean's name a lot. Once, just once that Dean remembered, Sam had tried to explain himself.
"Not like it's not still home," Sam told him.
Dean was in bed, the phone pulled under the covers with him. He liked it dark as possible whenever Sam called him.
"It's late, Sam."
That was just by rote, and Sam didn't pause to acknowledge it. "Not like I'm not, that I don't like the place. 's home, Dean, you know? Love it there."
"Obviously." Dean's eyes were closed, hand laid flat across his face. Talking to Sam always gave him a headache.
"Don', don't you take that tone with me," Sam said, and then started giggling, an uneven hitching sound. "You gotta listen to me, Dean."
"Always, Sam."
"Good, 'cause it ain't, ain't anything to do with you. Important for you to know that."
Sam breathed for a minute, giving Dean a chance to respond but he was in no condition. His ribs felt crushed, throat caved in.
"I just couldn't stay, man, on accounta there's all this other stuff. Whole rest of the fuckin' world, you know? More than one little town. One little family. An' I, I, I don't know, I think some people can stick and some can't and it's nobody's fault."
Dean stayed quiet for a long time, until Sam had asked, hesitant, "Dean?" and Dean had said, "Yeah," before he'd had time to think. Then he said, "Sleep it off, Sammy," and when Sam refused, Dean had hung up on him.
It went on like that for four years. Postcards and drunk-dials, Sam taking classes at a community college and meeting people Dean would never know and living by the river in a city Dean had never seen, all of it left up to his imagination. Dean missed him every day, this hard petulant ache in his gut that never went all the way away. It took him awhile, but he had finally made an unstable peace with the fact that this was his life now.
Then their dad got sick.
And Sam came back.
*
On Friday, Dean pelted Sam with a shoe at five o'clock in the morning. Sam woke up foul-mouthed and surly, so, pretty much like normal.
They had Froot Loops and coffee in the murky pre-dawn, and Dean made some sandwiches, wrapped up in wax paper like soft bricks. Sam was monosyllabic, cracking his jaw on yawns, his eyes darting warily. Dean wasn't much better, edgy and feeling bruised.
They were on the road before the sun cleared the low-lying hills to the east, flattened and capped like an egg yolk. It was usually about eleven hours to Lawrence, but Sam was driving (he almost never let Dean drive the Impala anymore, one of his crueler swings of mood) and he didn't care what Bobby had said to Dean about the speed limit. They flew, steel-winged through the badlands where it was too cold to even snow, and into the plains and the fallow cornfields, everything white and gray and motionless, and they made it by early afternoon.
Dean, as uncomfortable as always in the shotgun seat, let his head rest on the window, studying the town where they were supposed to have grown up. Streets cleared and driveways shoveled, so each lawn was delineated, white napkins of snow laid out geometrically and protected by picket fences, roving patchwork dogs lashed to the porch and dancing at the ends of their chains. Kids were playing football in a vacant lot, tires in the endzone, the ball wearing electrician's tape instead of stitches. College kids huddled in coffee shops with textbooks and sheafs of riffling white paper, sporting strange trends in facial hair.
A nice little town, but Kingston made Lawrence look like Vegas and New York City and Tokyo rolled into one. Dean could spend weeks just checking out the girls, having long since memorized every curve back home.
They got food at a diner that Dean thought he might remember; something about blueberry pancakes with candles in them, and milk in a coffee mug because he wanted to be grown up too. There were miniature jukeboxes at every table and Sam wanted to put on Stevie Wonder but Dean wanted candy from the crank-machines up front and the argument over proper dispensation of their change took them through most of the meal.
It was good, trivial and stupid and far removed from their purpose here. Sam made a magic growing worm out of his straw wrapper. He had an unlabeled glass flask in his inside coat pocket, glinting amber as Sam dosed his milkshake so Dean could watch the flush rise on his cheeks, the slow spread of Sam's genuine smile.
It was actively snowing when they left the diner. Bits of it stuck to Sam's hair and eyelashes, froze Dean's ears red and nerveless. Dean got to drive because Sam was a little drunk now and Dean was the one who knew the way to the cemetery.
They parked directly across from the wrought-iron gates, and Dean stared through the fluttering snow at the soaked grass, smooth shaped pieces of stone and marble. He held his hand out to Sam.
"Gimme some of that."
Sam passed him the flask without a word. Dean took a pull that tasted like acid and he hissed, blinking back tears, took another before he could think better of it. It didn't do much for his courage, but at least his hands stopped shaking.
Sam snorted quietly beside him. Dean gave him a sidelong look, vision still blurred. "What in the name of Christ could you be finding funny right now?"
Shaking his head, Sam pressed his fingers into the dashboard, a bitter smirk on his face.
"Two brothers sharing a drink before going to visit the grave of their father, who died of liver disease."
The liquor tried to come back up, Dean's stomach retching. He shoved his wrist against his mouth.
"Jesus, Sam. Was this not morbid enough already?" Spoken against his arm, it came out muffled, but Sam understood, shrugging unrepentantly.
"You're the one who wanted to come. Deal with it."
"Fuckin' hate your scrawny ass, god," Dean said. He felt less like hurling now. Warmer all through his stomach and chest, better able to face the weather and his brother and his father.
"Yeah, Dean, you been saying that for years."
Sam leaned over, took the flask out of Dean's hands and then grabbed his shoulder, gave it a shake. Dean shot him an uncertain look, feeling jarred through his whole body. Sam's eyes were big and his hair was damp from the snow, slicked back so his forehead showed clear. There was a weird angle to his eyebrows, kinda scared but not all the way. His hand was real heavy all of a sudden, gripping Dean's shoulder.
Dean thought for a second that Sam was gonna do. Something. He couldn't imagine what, but every muscle he had braced for it.
But Sam only tugged on his arm and told him, "Let's go, sooner we go sooner we can git," and then he was sliding away, opening his door to the swirling white.
Dean exhaled, watched his breath disintegrate when it hit the air.
Sam was already halfway up the hill, boot prints in the carpet of snow, and Dean followed him, surprised Sam remembered where the grave was. He'd been really drunk the other two times they'd been here.
But Sam went right to it without a wrong turn, and he was standing at the foot of his father's grave when Dean caught up with him. Hands buried in his coat pockets, collar flipped up and hiding his mouth, Sam was reading the sparse notations on the military headstone, or anyway staring at it, his dark eyes tracking.
Dean stood at Sam's shoulder. He noticed the way the snow was indistinguishable on the white stone, silver winter weed growing at the base, and he thought, well, okay, dad, here we are.
It was dumb; the same thing he'd thought last year, in fact, and dumber now than it was then. Like they came to Lawrence at John's orders, stood at his grave on the anniversary of his death waiting for him to arise and tell them why they'd come.
Sam coughed, breaking the stillness. "It's not really working for me, man. Don't know what the fuck it's supposed to do, but it's failing."
Irritating little bitch, Dean thought viciously, and he gave Sam the coldest glare he could muster. Sam scoffed, turned his head and spat. He walked away down the row of graves, his boots crunching on the snow. Sam got far enough away that he became a black outline against the pale day.
Dean stared down at the grave. There really wasn't anything remarkable about it at all.
"Well," he said, keeping his voice low and feeling like a jerk. "Guess it's been two years now. I, uh. I still don't really know what to say."
Dean cleared his throat, searching for Sam and finding him down a slope, peering up at a huge granite angel whose up-turned hands were filling with snow. Sam looked small, dwarfed by the angel's wings.
"I don't know if you've been watching," he said to his father. "But things haven't. They haven't gone too well. You remember Jessica? Sam's Jess? She-"
Something stopped him. The palpable nature of words when it was this cold, tangible guilt like scar tissue, and Dean didn't think he had the right to talk about Jessica.
"Each year gets harder," he said instead. "And I don't, I'm not sure how it gets worse than right now, but I got some ideas and we, we can't do this much longer."
He stopped again, pressing his frozen knuckles against his eye and breathing out. Dean didn't know if he was drunk or just fucked-up, figured he was probably at least a little of both. He wanted to see his dad so badly, wishing with all his heart that ghosts were real.
"So. That's what's going on." Dean scuffed his boots in the snow, watched Sam's outline take a long hit off the flask. "You're lucky you're not here to see it."
John didn't answer. He probably wouldn't have even if he were still alive.
Dean loitered at his father's grave for a little longer. Last year he'd had to drag Sam out here stumbling drunk and slurring blasphemy, and Sam had shoved him, said, "What the fuck are you waiting for?" He'd been right; Dean had come to Lawrence expecting something, some kind of redemption waiting for him in Kansas. It was irrational and futile and Dean hated that, hated that Sam had seen it so clearly.
Sam had said, "Just one more chance for him to let you down," and Dean, terrified that if he started hitting Sam he would not be able to stop, had dropped to his knees, punching the icy ground until his knuckles were smeared with blood.
He thought he'd learned better after that, but here he was again, reading his father's name off the stone and feeling a sorrowful disappointment core its way through him.
"Dean!"
Dean jumped half out of his skin. He whipped his head up, no thought in his mind but Sam and trouble. He was two steps towards Sam's voice, hands yanked out of his pockets in fists tight enough to draw blood on his palms, when he saw that Sam was waving, Sam was just calling him over.
He put a fist against his heart, breathed out. Muttering, "Fuckin' hell, Sam," he made his way to where his brother was.
"What's the matter with you?" Dean smacked him hard; Sam didn't duck or retaliate, just winced. "It's a graveyard, Sam, do not yell in the fuckin' graveyard."
Sam shrugged, devoid of remorse. "You were way over there."
Dean went to smack him again but Sam caught his wrist, the bone of Dean's arm thwacking into the palm of Sam's hand, and held him.
"Look what I found."
Distracted by Sam's grip and the fucking endless snow slowly covering them both, Dean glanced at the family plot Sam had indicated and grunted, not knowing why the hell he should care, and then he read Campbell carved in every stone but one and he froze.
"Did you know she was here?" Sam asked, sounding sincerely curious.
"I." Dean shook his head, staring at the simple pink marble headstone like it had sprung fully-formed from the earth. "Don't think I did."
"You don't remember?"
"I was four, I, I had other things to worry about."
Dean took a step forward, and Sam let his arm go. Dean wanted to touch the stone, press his fingers to the carved name and learn it by feel. He held back, hyperaware of his brother behind him.
"Grandparents," Sam said, his voice kinda rough but mostly even. "Samuel and Deanna." He paused. "That's gonna be funny later."
Dean made a complicated sound, strangled cough like regret and loneliness, fighting a borderless ache that he remembered from when he was little.
"They died before Mom and Dad got married," Sam noted. "Same day, look. What d'ya think happened?"
Not answering, really kinda wishing Sam would keep his goddamn mouth shut, Dean took another half-step towards his mother's grave. He shook the snow out of his hair, knocked his shoulders clean, and tiny crystals of ice slid under his collars and went down his backbone, making him jerk and tremble.
"Broken heart, is my guess." Sam sounded old, jaded. "One followed the other just 'cause life wasn't worth it anymore."
"Jesus Christ, Sam, shut up."
Sam did, lapsing into a silence that felt sullen at Dean's back. Dean didn't really want to think about how his grandparents had died; they'd each only been at the edge of fifty and Dean knew what kind of story probably explained it.
Dean stared at the family plot for a little while longer, searing Mary Winchester into his mind and realizing belatedly that he'd let her go, he'd forced her out of his thoughts a quarter century ago and now here he was, stuck trying to remember what it had felt like to have a mom.
He didn't have a whole lot of luck. When he turned back to Sam, his brother was hunched up in his coat, wreathed in snow and shivering hard. Black and white world, the snow and Sam's soaked hair and his pale face, his eyes big and effortlessly dark. Sam was watching him, waiting for Dean's next move.
Dean brushed the snow off Sam's shoulders, then put his hands on Sam's chest for just a second, under his coat where Sam was only wearing a plain white undershirt because they'd been in the car all day and Sam had never really minded the cold, anyway. Dean pressed his palms flat, like a shove but no force behind it, and Sam's heart thudded once incredibly hard against his fingers and then Dean took his hands away.
"Come on," he said, hearing the torn note in his voice and taking it for the shock. He'd only come prepared to see one parent's tombstone today.
He brushed past Sam and followed his own footprints back. Sam loped up alongside and they walked shoulder to shoulder back to the car. Dean still had the keys and he got behind the wheel without asking. He expected some static from Sam but he just slid into shotgun without a word. They sat there for a minute, watching the storm build.
"Neither of you ever talked about this place," Sam said. "Or her."
Dean eyed him, weary and on his guard. "It's kind of a sore subject."
"Do you remember anything?"
"No. Not really." Pale gold, Dean couldn't help but think. Blowing soap bubbles in the bath. Being carried around with the clothes in the laundry basket. Getting kissed on each eyelid.
"C'mon, man, anything?"
Sam was turned to face him, arm up along the seat and a look on his face kinda like desperation. Dean held the bottom of the wheel, trying not to make eye contact.
"She called me her Dean," Dean said, surprising himself a little. "'How's my Dean.' I. I remember that."
Sam let a moment pass, then sat back. "My Dean," he repeated, shaping the words and seeing how they tasted.
Dean glanced at him. Snow was melting in Sam's hair. There were spots of windburned color high on his cheeks, and he was chewing on his lip, and Dean felt something close like a fist in his stomach. He jerked his eyes forward, swallowing and wondering what the fuck was wrong with him now.
"All right," Sam said. "Can we leave the most depressing place in the wide world now?"
For once, Dean had no argument.
*
There was no chance Dean was letting either of them risk the drive back to Kingston overnight and in the middle of a snowstorm, and so they hid out in a bar until nightfall, then got a motel room with two beds.
They were both drunk by then.
Dean hadn't bothered fighting it. Sam's flask had run dry shortly after leaving the cemetery, and he'd sniffed out the nearest bar in the manner of an addict finding dealers in city parks. Dean had gone where Sam wanted, feeling wrung out and turned around and awkward in this town that was not his own. Sam had said, drink this, and Dean had lifted his hand obediently.
It had been a stressful day.
Dean didn't remember a whole lot that they'd talked about in the bar, old Tales from the Crypt episodes and something about Jack Nicholson, but it had nothing to do with all the dead people they knew and he counted that victory enough. He'd had enough feeling like an orphan to last the rest of his goddamn life, and it'd only been two years, which was of course the tragedy of the whole thing.
But Sam told filthy jokes and beat Dean at pool a bunch of times and shark-grinned over green felt, slouched against the wall with his hips cocked out, cue stick cradled in the pocket formed by his woven fingers, a constant dare on his lips. He made Dean dizzy, got him so drunk.
Sam drove them back to the motel, because "if we're both drunk, then I have more experience," and that made a certain amount of convoluted sense to Dean in the state that he was in. He fell asleep against the door anyway, hypnotized by streetlights, and got woken up by Sam's giant hands curving over his shoulders, tugging him up and out.
"Hey Sammy," Dean mumbled, stumbling and leaning into him, latched onto Sam's forearms. "Whoa."
"C'mon, cowboy, on your feet." Sam hooked an arm around Dean's shoulders, hugging him for a second as Sam reached over to swing the car door shut. Dean had his face against Sam's neck, tucked warm and rough, and he snuffed, finding it disconcerting to be this close to his brother, to pick out the scent of the shampoo they shared and the gin and beers and jalapeno poppers he'd had at the bar and the good underneath Sam smell of sweat and dust.
Sam pushed him an arm's length away, spun him and steered Dean to the motel room. Dean normally wouldn't tolerate this kind of behavior from his kid brother, but Sam was much much better at being drunk. Dean felt only distantly related to his extremities, mistrusting his feet and hands, but Sam was snickering and that was good to hear.
"Not snowing anymore," Dean observed. He pointed at the sky so Sam would know where to look.
"Nothin' gets by you, huh, copper?"
Dean frowned, slumping against Sam's shoulder as Sam got the door open. All things being equal he'd prefer Sam call him cowboy.
"Don't be a smartass," he told his brother, but it was hard to make out because his mouth was somehow jammed against Sam's coat. Dean lifted his head, spat out some lint. They were in the room now, seemingly by magic.
Sam deposited him on the closest bed, and Dean's stomach pitched and rolled at the movement and so he lay down, hands laid flat above his belt.
"Hoo," Sam said, grinning sardonically and stretching his drawl as he did when he was lit. "Sorry fuckin' sight, you are. Call yourself a Winchester."
"Who taught you how to drink, bitch? Who bought you your first beer?" Dean challenged without moving. He was gazing at the ceiling, the fire sprinkler a stationary point for him to focus on to stop the room rocking.
"Student's become the master, Dean. I seen ya, I doubled you all night."
"Was it a race?" Dean asked with a smirk.
"Ain't everything?"
"Ooh," Dean said sarcastically. "Fuckin' deep, Sammy."
"Aw." There were two hollow thumps as Sam got rid of his boots. "Don't be jealous, man."
"Ha. That's funny, you're a real funny guy."
In his peripheral vision, Dean could see the blur of Sam moving around, stripping off his coat and peeling off his wet jeans to hang them up in the bathroom. He came back in his shorts and undershirt, came hovering over Dean and Dean blinked up at him. Sam's face was softened by the drunk, his eyes half-lidded and shadowy.
"You sleepin' in your boots?"
Dean stared at the wreck of Sam's hair, curled damp in some places and dried unevenly, falling in his eyes again and Dean itched to push it back but there was something wrong with that thought.
"Maybe I like sleepin' in my boots," he mumbled. Sam rolled his eyes.
"Maybe I just leave you like this, then, huh?"
And Sam made as if to go and Dean misinterpreted it, missed the joke and read it as Sam leaving, and he shoved up, shot his hand out and grabbed hold of Sam's wrist.
"Don't."
Sam looked down at Dean's hand wrapped around his wrist, then up at his brother. His eyebrows were pinched together, his mouth contorting silently. Wary, like Dean was playing some trick, but it wasn't like that.
"What're." Sam stopped himself. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and Dean was staring for some reason. "I was just messin' around."
He twisted his arm, testing Dean's grip, and Dean held on. There was a pulse in his thumb and a pulse in Sam's wrist and Dean couldn't tell one from the other. Sam's long fingers closed around Dean's forearm, locked them together tight. Heat flared all through Dean, staggering him.
"Sam," Dean said, hearing his voice crack hatefully. "So fucked up right now."
Sam nodded slow, licking his lips absently and Dean's grip tightened and a millisecond later he felt the answering flex of Sam's fingers. Sam was staring at him with his pupils blown, a flush rising on his neck, and Dean thought nonsensically, this is what my brother looks like. Whosever heartbeat he held in his hand, it was going terrifyingly fast.
"I gotcha, Dean," Sam said in a whisper, and then he was kneeling on the bed, pressing Dean back down with the flat of his hand, and Dean went because he'd been taking direction from Sam all night and he didn't know what the fuck else to do anyway.
Sam's hand, solid through the fabric, slid down and tripped up against his belt buckle. Dean sucked in a painful gasp, drawing his stomach away but Sam was pushing up his shirts to get at bare skin and when he found it he dragged the callused edges of his fingers across the flickering muscles of Dean's stomach.
"'s okay," Sam murmured, scratching around Dean's belly button and making him groan through his teeth. "Know what I'm doing. 'm like this all the time."
Dean shuddered, shocked speechless by the feel of his little brother's hands on him and how much he was getting off on it, and then Sam was pulling his jeans open and pushing a hand in and Dean arched almost off the bed. Regained his voice on a ground-out plea that sounded a lot like his brother's name. Dean was chilled from his damp jeans but Sam's hand was so warm, big and rough and insanely good, working him hard.
Not okay, Dean knew, recognized the man above him even if he didn't know that intent hungry look on Sam's face. Little brother, impossible to mistake or forget, and it wasn't okay for Dean to be letting him do this, for Dean to be writhing and biting his lip bloody to keep from begging. His little brother Sam with his hand buried in Dean's shorts, jerking him off fast and messy and raw, and Dean grabbed for Sam's wrist again, felt Sam's hand still and Dean thought that he would pull him off, end this right now before it was too late, but instead he pressed down because he couldn't say harder like he wanted to.
Sam got it. His mouth was open, panting slightly, his eyes glazed, and he got it perfect, half-merciless just the way Dean liked. Sam stared at Dean the whole time.
After, Dean's mind was efficiently blown and he lay gasping at air, vaguely aware that Sam was finishing himself off with his free hand spread out on Dean's stomach, smearing in the slick. Dean wished distantly that he could see that, but his eyes were glued shut and the black-out was sinking into him, smothering and dragging him down.
His last thought was for the car, hoping that it would be all right, all alone out there in this strange town.
*
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