there ain't no island left for islanders like me

[candle_beck]

sam/dean! samndean! heroes for the new millennium, and the last millennium, and all the millennia to come.

7787 words, pg-13, written by request for dangomango, who won it in the help_haiti auction of awesomeness. all happy endings are to be blamed on her.

Welcome to Fog City
By Candle Beck

One day towards the end of spring, Sam used the word 'phantasmagoric' in a sentence.

Dean lowered his dad's journal and gave his brother a look that was all eyebrows and smirking mouth, and he said, "You talk real pretty, Sammy."

Rolling his eyes, the customary line of consternation drawn across his forehead, Sam shoved a handful of French fries in his mouth.

"It's sad that ignorance is a point of pride with you," Sam said, mouth stuffed and white. They'd never held much with table manners in this family. "You probably don't even know what it means."

"Spooky," Dean said at once. "It's like ghosts and illusions, like a dream."

A measured blink made Sam look like a particularly slow dog. Then he grinned at Dean, mashed-up potato bits between his teeth.

"That's not bad, Dean. You read that in your Batman comics or something?"

"You know what would be great? You shutting your face."

"I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm really proud that you're indulging in literary pursuits," Sam said, clearly enjoying the fuck out of this. "It's a step up from Hustler, and that's a very important step."

Bereft of practical weapons, Dean threw a pen at him. Sam dodged it easily, his head dipping forward. He was still grinning, hadn't stopped, gleeful and eager as he sat cross-legged on the bed with all his attention on his brother. There were parts of Dean that lived for this, but he was also pretty annoyed.

"Just 'cause you're a show-off," Dean muttered.

The edge rubbed off Sam's smile, and he said, "Yeah, so you should just let me show off. I let you."

Dean started to respond, and then stopped. One hand closed around the leg of the table, just for something to hold on to.

"Whatever," Dean said, not very interested in this conversation anymore, no matter what Sam looked like smart-mouthed and happy. "Are we still going to the gun show, or did you want to run some more vocab flashcards?"

A huff and a glare comprised Sam's immediate reaction, but then he gave it up too. He chomped another handful of fries, then offered the remainder to Dean on his way to the bathroom. Dean took the flimsy cardboard box, weak with grease, and ate quickly, one ear cocked to hear Sam washing his hands and whistling through the open door.

*

They went down the road aways.

Each town looked just like the last; every skeleton Dean burned was the same rotted-gray color, the same anticlimactic degree of insubstantial. Sam was on a nationwide hunt for Mexican Coke in glass bottles, little corner stores and specialty groceries and taco trucks, and Dean counted the days by the red bottlecaps littered on the floor at Sam's feet.

Overall, he was in a pretty good mood. There had been no fun things to kill lately, but it was just the slow season, Dean knew. Once summer set in and the temperatures climbed, the monsters and specters would be crowding for space in the forests and cornfields and abandoned factories, and Dean would be able to spend his time on something useful again. In the meantime he wandered around the endless heart of the country with Sam, looking into hysterical Internet rumors and bogus leads on famous demons, and Dean was okay with that.

They passed the Nebraska state line sign, a golden sun going down over the fields, and Sam said:

"Kool-Aid was invented in Nebraska, you know. In Hastings."

Dean turned a disbelieving look on Sam. "Why do you even know that?"

Sam lifted one shoulder, his mouth curved and something like smug. "Read it somewhere, just remembered."

It probably all came down to that, Dean thought as he pattered his fingers on the wheel and didn't give Sam the validation of an answer. There were different kinds of smart and Sam's was mostly memory and a lucky inclination for books, unabashed geek that he was. Sam read everything he could put his hands on, and everything stuck, this vast underlying sea of stuff that Sam had just picked up along the way. Sometimes Dean thought that after another twenty years like this, Sam would be ready to take over the world.

Dean hadn't ever told his brother about that, because Sam's ego really didn't need the help.

"Damn it," Sam mumbled. "Now I really want some Kool-Aid."

Dean laughed through his nose, an undignified sort of noise. "That's your own fault."

"Yes I know." Arms crossed over his chest, Sam turned a forlorn look at Dean, numbing scenery at his back all corn and corn and more corn, as changeless as very cheap animation. "Is there a 7-Eleven or supermarket or something coming up?"

"Pawnee City," Dean said, remembering a motel with a crooked red sign and a sunken viridescent pool where his father had taught him how to swim. "'bout twenty miles or so."

"I'm gonna get cherry," Sam said, his fingers dancing on his knees like gleeful spiders. "Or possibly lemonade. If they have juice boxes I'm buying like a case."

There was a smile growing in strength on Sam's face, and Dean felt it slide under his skin, scrape against the raw parts of him. Dean smiled back helplessly, feeling like he was being colonized, occupied by alien forces. He rolled down his window and shoved down on the gas pedal, wanting that essential driving sense of having the whole world held in his hands, all of life once again at his command.

*

It was raining, clattering hollowly against the roof of the bar. There was a deep pan set under a steady leak, tarnished and charred on the bottom, and they were sitting close enough that Dean could hear every drop plink home. It was as regular as a metronome, like the water had developed a heartbeat of its own.

Sam was explaining things with great enthusiasm. He was using his hands and his face and his foot, kicking Dean's ankle and stomping his toe in emphasis. The glass of beer in front of him was down to a swallow or two, and it wasn't his first.

"So, you see what I'm saying, right?" Sam said with his eyebrows making urgent shapes. "How that's fucking insane? I mean, a manticore is like a metaphor, all those mythical medieval creatures were. It was, like, all the stuff people were afraid of and all the things they wished they could be, heart of a lion and wings of an eagle or whatever, or some terrible beast thing with a woman's face--it was a total psychological nightmare, but it's all in their heads, right? It's not something that's gonna randomly turn up on the Carolina coast or wherever the hell this guy called from."

Then he stopped, took a finishing gulp of his beer, as if for strength. Dean was drinking whiskey and watching Sam like he was the Super Bowl. A few quiet burned-out types populated the bar, and Dean kept hearing Sam's voice echo. He wanted to tell Sam to keep it down, but he also kinda didn't. There was a minor war happening in his head.

"Whatever, Sam, we can at least check it out," Dean said. "Like we're so busy right now."

Sam huffed, slumped into his chair. His hands flopped on the little bar table and seemed to take up most of the available space. Dean rubbed his face tiredly, made himself look somewhere else for a second.

"It's like two thousand miles out of our way," Sam said, as sullen as the smaller version he had once been.

"It can't be out of our way because we're not going anywhere," Dean pointed out, and then he thought about it and was a bit surprised: it had been three weeks since their last case and they hadn't done anything except drive around. Even weirder, Dean didn't really mind.

"Nobody's even died," Sam persisted, his teeth set in it now, but Dean knew how to shake him loose. "Dude just claims he saw something. Something that looked 'kinda like a manticore' but he was probably drunk at the time, so."

"Ah, you're drunk right now," Dean said breezily, serving Sam one of the kicks he owed him, nice hard chip right on the anklebone that made Sam's face crunch momentarily in pain. Dean thought out of nowhere: a hit, a palpable hit, and he smiled sweetly at his brother.

Sam scowled, his face flushed and his eyes hot. "It's not gonna come to anything, Dean. I bet you six hundred thousand dollars."

"Your life's not worth six hundred thousand dollars," Dean said, a casual smirk etched on his face. Sam leaned forward and punched his brother pretty hard, trying to dead-arm him, but Dean was expecting it, braced and ready.

"Anyway," Dean continued. "So what if it's nothing? Then we'll be over there for awhile, it's not a bad place to be. It's been a long time since we've seen the ocean, Sammy."

That caught Sam, his mouth open and his hooded eyes blinking slowly at Dean. Dean shifted in his seat, hearing the cane back of the chair creak in protest. Sam shed years when he got drunk, when confusion smoothed his face and softened the dark patches under his eyes. It was difficult for Dean to look at him for longer than a second at a stretch.

"I, um," Sam said, fumbling for each word. "I still think it's gonna be pointless, but that's. I mean, maybe that's okay for now."

And then he smiled. When Sam smiled like that it meant, right, Dean? Sam smiled like that and Dean said yes every time.

So they finished their beers and staggered out of the bar holding each other up about the shoulders. They slept in the car, both of them saying, "Goodnight John Boy," about four times over the seat, and giggling like idiots with each iteration. Dean pressed his face to the seat, breathing in the homey leather smell and closing his eyes to better hear Sam snorfling and settling slowly into sleep.

They took three days getting to the Carolina coast, and of course there was no manticore. Sam said "I told you so," and then made Dean camp out with him in Hilton Head for a week. Every morning at first light Sam shook Dean awake and dragged him out of his sleeping bag to go swimming in the Atlantic Ocean.

Dean was really really happy, just then.

*

They wandered back inland, and wound up in rural Virginia. Sam was driving because Dean had lost the most crazy eights games the night before, and he'd managed to entrench them in a stretch of hilly nothingness that offered no reprieve. It was very late and they hadn't seen a motel in hours. Sam was yawning behind the wheel, and Dean was getting too tired to even bitch at him properly.

"Fuck it, find a turn-off. We gotta get some sleep," Dean said. He almost broke his jaw on a yawn, which he also wanted to blame on Sam. Just looking at Sam slumped against the door and steering with his wrists sapped the energy out of Dean.

Sam shook his head, stubborn. "I can't sleep in the car again, man, it's killing my back."

"This is all your stupid fault," Dean told him for the tenth or eleventh time, his mind softening by the minute.

"Yes, Dean, we've established that. Still not sleeping in the car."

"Then conjure up a freaking motel, Sam," Dean said, proud of himself for coming up with something half-decent.

Sam exhaled like it was his last breath, and pushed a hand through his hair. Dean kept snatching looks at him, the loose roll of Sam's head on his neck and the shadow on his jaw. Crazy ideas filtered in through the cracks exhaustion made in Dean's brain, and he thought that Sam passing out at the wheel and killing them both in a fiery crash would not be the worst way to go.

"Let's just find a good patch of ground, huh? It's definitely warm enough. Just gotta get the car off the road, that's all. These fields, man, I could sleep in these fields so easy."

Dean turned his gaze out the window to the slow-rolling hills, the few stunted trees scattered about in the general shape of grazing buffalo. It was dark and he couldn't really see that well, but the tone in Sam's voice made it sound pretty appealing.

So they found a utility road that ran along slightly overgrown field, went a mile or two before sheltering the Impala in a copse of trees and setting off through the grass, sleeping bags on their backs, the moonlight casting heavy silver all around them. The patch of ground they found to lie down on felt like thick clover, muffled and soft.

It was a good idea for about seven hours.

Dean woke up from his standard Sam dream, sweating under his clothes and gripping his own hip. His eyes flew open and he was looking at the brightening sky, the rose-colored sprawl of dawn. Dean's mind cleared and Sam slept on, but still in the background, there was that odd groan, that low growling sound.

A general feeling of unease crawled into Dean's stomach. He wriggled out of his sleeping bag and stood barefoot on the damp grass, scanning and listening hard.

He placed the metallic burr, after a minute, as a big-ass tractor, coming from somewhere over the nearest hill. Dean thought, hmm, and then his better senses flipped on and he kicked his brother to wake him up.

"What," Sam said immediately, slurred with his eyes closed, hands twisting in the grass.

"We're about to get arrested for trespassing, or possibly shot, so if you wanna get the fuck up, that'd be cool."

Sam swore, shucked off the sleeping bag and slammed his feet half into his shoes. Sam said, "That tree," and it seemed as viable as anything else, so Dean shoved him and they ran over there. The growl of the tractor was louder by the moment.

They crowded against the tree together, sleeping bags bundled around their hands and arms. It was not a very big tree and they had to stand close to both remain concealed. One of Dean's feet was between Sam's, Sam's chest pressed to his arm, their heads bent towards the trunk. Sam had grass marks on his cheek, a spill of reddened indents like pick-up sticks, and Dean was trying not to stare.

"I think he'll stay in that next field over," Dean said in a whisper, although noise wasn't going to be the thing that gave them away. It just seemed appropriate. "Give him ten minutes to get headed away from the car and then we'll make a run for it."

Sam flicked a look at Dean from under his eyelashes, nodding silently. Dean thought his brother might still be half-asleep, maybe believing his dream had taken a uniquely vivid turn.

Dean curled his toes in the grass, his feet slick and numb from the cool morning dew. The tractor was huge now, buzzing gnarl filling the air all around them.

"See what trouble you've gotten us into?" Dean said, a roughened tone from keeping his voice lowered. He licked his lips unconsciously, his body subtly straining towards his brother's. He wanted to slip his thumb through one of Sam's empty belt loops.

A strange tight expression fixed on Sam's face, wide-eyed with his mouth shrunk down and lines carved across his forehead, and he just stared at Dean. Sam was pressed against Dean's side, the sleeping bags crushed between them. If Dean tipped forward three inches his mouth would be on Sam's throat. The idea went through him like electroshock, and Dean forcibly wrenched his mind away.

He was maybe still a bit asleep, himself. But there was flat-out terror on Sam's face, and so Dean knew it was no dream.

Dean shifted away from his brother, carefully turning his body to peek around the trunk of the tree. The tractor was heading up the next small rise, the driver's back to them with bulky ear mufflers strapped to his head. It was safe, the moment they'd been waiting for, but Dean didn't move for a long moment.

Sam's chest was against his shoulder, and if Dean concentrated real hard, he could feel his brother's heart going wildly too fast.

*

The funny thing, Dean had always thought, was that as smart as Sam was, he had no idea at all what he was doing to his brother.

The even funnier thing was that Sam also had no idea what Dean was doing to him.

It was Sam's single blind spot, the one thing he could not see. Dean had known at nineteen years old that the way he felt about Sam was not normal, or natural, or okay in any way. There was no great mystery to it, no blackening spate of denial, no more self-loathing than usual. Sam just kept showing up in his head when he was jerking off. Dean really liked having Sam in his head when he was jerking off. It was totally obvious.

It was also mortifying, paralyzing at times, but Dean wasn't even horrified so much as familiarly resigned. Already he'd grown up as a refugee with demons trying to kill his whole family, and now he was irrevocably attracted to his kid brother too. Clearly Dean Winchester's life was a spectacular cosmic joke, a series of rugs to be pulled out from under him, and luckily his sense of humor was dark enough that he could at least appreciate the absurdity of the whole thing. This was just one more ridiculous cross that God had given him to bear.

So Dean went on through the highway world. Radio stations delighted in informing him that the hits would keep right on coming, and Dean didn't know what to expect next. Leprosy, maybe. A plague of locusts. The violent loss of one of his hands.

Instead, Sam left, ran away to California one lovely day in the late summer. It was not the worst thing that could have happened, but it was certainly in the top five. The weight of that particular cross had nearly smashed Dean into the earth.

Sam had been a scab-picker his whole life, tiny pockmark scars on his arms that had started as nothing more permanent than mosquito bites, and so Dean wasn't hugely surprised when his brother began drunk-dialing him three weeks into his freshman year. Dean was going to be a scar of Sam's someday, too. He didn't even really mind, thinking that at least scars stay with you forever.

Dean left his father snoring in motel rooms, slipping out at two or three in the morning to sit in the cold quiet Impala, his brother's voice a vibrant blur in his ear. It was dark, darker still when Dean closed his eyes.

Sam almost never told him anything important. He asked Dean about movies and TV shows from their childhood, some turn of phrase stuck in his head that he couldn't place. He told Dean about the mammoth redwood trees and long stretches of grass with girls laid out everywhere you looked, girls in bright clothes with sunglasses and tanned skin, and smart too, everyone was so smart.

And Dean said something about a nerd army, and Sam laughed too loud, reckless and very far away.

Eventually Sam mumbled, "'kay, I gotta pass out now, night Dean," and Dean said fast, "Night, Sam," wanting to make sure Sam heard it while he was still conscious.

There had been months of that. Dean and his father split up over the winter, when two hunts caught their attention at the same time, and the solitude made it easier for them both, so they kept it that way. Now when Sam called, Dean was all alone in his single bed, hand often as not cupped around his dick through his shorts but never anything more than that, never anything too creepy. Dean had a very good understanding of the lines he could not cross.

Those drunk-dials clarified things for Dean, brought his brother into surer focus than he'd been when they lived in the same car. There was a new tone in Sam's voice, a forlorn yearning kind of thing that wasn't wholly attributable to the alcohol. When he said one thing, he usually meant something else.

Sam said, "And then the goddamn seat wouldn't go back far enough and my leg's been hurting ever since," and that meant: I miss the car.

Sam said, "I was supposed to meet her for a beer but then I got distracted by this article I found in the library, 'cause, like, have you ever heard that the Golden Gate Bridge might be haunted and that's why there's so many suicides?" and that meant: I miss the hunt.

Sam said, "Almost exactly the same color as your eyes, but not really," and that meant: I miss you the most.

And then one night in the spring, Sam happened to call while Dean was drunk too, and maybe things went a little further than they should have.

The conversation had been a great muddled web, Sam's voice a false beacon, and then he was asking Dean, "You know what I mean? About how it's like the only thing you can think about. Like there's nothing else."

Dean said, "What?" because he was having trouble following. He licked the front of his teeth, whiskey-slick.

"Listen, aren't you listening?"

"Yeah Sam."

"It's like the fog, like, like how it's everywhere but you can't touch it. And it just takes over, it rolls down over the hills and covers up everything, just this huge smothering thing. You know what I mean?"

Dean repeated, "The fog?" and he was almost completely lost.

"No, you," Sam said.

Dean put his hand up over his eyes. "What?" he whispered.

Sam made a strange humming sound, almost a moan. Dean drew up a picture of him, sitting on the floor in his coffin of a dorm room, knees pulled up to his chest and head bowed low. The room would be dark where Sam was, just as it was dark here with Dean.

Sam told him, "I think about you all the time."

And Sam told him, "I can't stop."

A long moment of silence had stretched like taffy between them. Dean was lying on his back on a motel room bed outside Racine, Wisconsin, where the snow was packed almost as high as the windows. Sam was two thousand miles away, in a place where it never got cold.

"It's okay if you--if you think about me," Dean said, his voice little more than a breath. "I mean, I, I. It's okay."

It was beyond okay. It was rollercoasters and fireworks in Dean's head, a battering flood all color and light. He felt like he was sprinting towards the edge of a cliff with his eyes closed, just waiting for the moment his foot would come down on air.

Sam made that same bad moaning sound. Static crackled as he scraped the phone on his face, and Dean's hand clenched uncomfortably tight on his thigh.

"It's not okay," Sam mumbled, heartbroken. "I'm not."

Then he'd hung up, just click and done. Dean was left gutshot on the bed, gasping.

Sam had stopped calling him after that. It was pretty damaging, but at least Dean knew why.

Sam's mind was an astronomical house with labyrinthian staircases and hallways as long as light-years, rooms beyond counting, and in all that space there was only one shut door. Sam had come too close, set his hand on the knob and felt its searing heat, the gnashing fire that awaited him beyond it, and then he had turned tail and ran.

The door was locked now, and boarded up, and barricaded with all the available furniture. Sam had buried it in a lightless wing of his endless brain, and now that hidden room was the one thing Dean knew that his brother didn't.

It was the most important thing, anyway.

*

They still hadn't found a job. They'd been wandering through the Deep South for several weeks now, reddish mutts chasing the wheels of the car in Alabama, Spanish moss waterfalling into the roadway in Georgia, a Little League tournament in Louisiana where the humidity was so pervasive it felt omniscient, sinking into Dean's mind like prying fingers.

He stopped for ice cream at least once a day. His new goal for the month was to try all thirty-one flavors Baskin-Robbins had to offer. Sam got the same cone of mint chip every time, predictable and unnaturally green. The ice cream melted faster than they could eat it, so they leaned against the car, racing each other and licking drips off their hands and arms.

Five minutes down the road, Sam started complaining about how he was all sticky now, but Dean was sugar high, sweet-mouthed and content, and he flicked a moisty nap at Sam, no sympathy at all. Every day they reenacted the same scene, variations on a favorite theme.

They traveled several hundred miles farther into the young summer. Everything was differing shades of green and gold, small clapboard houses swallowed by kudzu, pocketed ponds gleaming like coins at sunset.

Bored, Sam was quizzing Dean on the stuff Dean knew best, the sprawling net of the road.

"Phoenix to Tallahassee," Sam said.

"Nineteen hundred miles, unless you gotta go through Dallas for some reason. 'bout a day if it's straight through."

"How many Motel 6s are there in Memphis?"

"Six, but one of them is extended stay only."

"What's the best diner in Nevada?"

"The Silver Star, in Carson City near the railroad tracks."

Sam paused for a second, visibly thinking. Dean steered with the heel of his hand, shooting his brother brief sideways looks. He didn't mind Sam's little trivia contest, although it was never much of a challenge for him. Sam memorized books, and Dean memorized highways, billboards, glowing neon signs. Dean had been pretty much everywhere in this country; the whole place was his own backyard.

"Okay, I got one," Sam said, snapping his fingers on his knee. "How many tolls do you pay from D.C. to Boston?"

Dean hesitated, then said, "Nine."

"Dude, I can tell when you're just guessing."

"Ah, you don't know the answer either."

"Yeah, but that's not the game." Sam tapped his fingers on his knee in time with the tape playing. "This is about the stuff you're supposed to know."

A twinge went through Dean, and he tightened his hand on the wheel. He eyed Sam, wary and skittish. Sam was just watching the scenery, comfortably bent in the seat, drumstick fingers keeping the rhythm.

Dean suffered a flash of blinding frustration--it killed him sometimes that Sam didn't know, that he couldn't see. Every day was a diabolical funhouse for Dean, traps and spooks and disfiguring mirrors, and meanwhile Sam got to gaze out the window and hum along with the tape, oblivious.

"When are we doing the stuff that you're supposed to know?" Dean asked, a knifelike edge to it.

Sam looked at him, eyebrows up. He was smiling a little bit, smirking. "Whenever, man, bring it on."

And for a hysterical second Dean almost did, his throat full and aching to ask, how long have you wanted to fuck me, Sammy? but somehow he throttled that, flung it back down.

He coughed, a weak tearing sound. There seemed to be something missing from his chest, a piece of his lung wrenched out of place.

Sam was watching him, a guarded look keeping his eyebrows low even as that half-smile still itched at his mouth. Dean thought about pulling Sam's shirt over his head, undoing his fly and pushing one hand inside. He thought about his brother moaning into a kiss, and pressing Dean down into the seat with the weight of his body, his huge hands holding Dean's head. Dean thought about getting fucked over the hood of his car with Sam's face hot and skidding against the back of his shoulder. It slammed through his mind, snapped him like a guitar string, the vision lasting half a second at most but that was enough.

The Impala drifted over the center line. The tires thudded over several road reflectors and Dean dragged himself under control, steered carefully back into his lane.

"What's with you?" Sam said, and it sounded like he already knew, or at least, like he thought he did.

Dean shook his head, the corner of his mouth twisting up in a corrupted smile. "Nothing, I'm just done with your stupid game."

Sam scoffed. "Pretty sore loser, aren't you?"

"Shut up, Sam."

And remarkably, Sam did. He just went quiet, turning his attention back to the road, the sun soaking across the fields like oil. Dean mistrusted it, held on edge for the next twenty miles, but Sam appeared to be done with him, too. There was a distant concentrating look on Sam's face, a philosopher expression that made him look older than he was. His tapping fingers had gone rhythmless on his knee.

Dean thought, figure it out, Sam, a desperate strain in his stomach. And then he thought, hurry up, and then, please.

*

Outside Little Rock, Dean won seven hundred dollars hustling pool in one night, and then got so drunk Sam had to carry him to the car.

Driving them to the motel, Sam kept up a steady tirade aimed at Dean in the backseat, but Dean was watching the upside-down world slip past his window and so wasn't listening. His hands tingled, mind awash with triumph and pockets thick with bills.

It was a beautiful night, Dean decided as Sam pulled into the parking lot. There were stars and satellites and the moon, slow-moving airplanes with blinking red lights. He slumped against the car, gazing rapturously upwards, until Sam grumbled over and slung Dean's arm around his shoulders. Dean was useless in Sam's hold, boneless and heavy because he wanted to put all his weight on his brother; he wanted Sam to feel him everywhere.

Sam grunted, kicked at Dean's feet to get him moving. Dean pushed his head against Sam's and felt the heated damp on the back of his neck, sweat darkening his hair and making the air smell greenly of shampoo.

Dean was dumped unceremoniously on one of the beds, and he squinted at Sam, wishing the room would stop swaying back and forth so upsettingly. His stomach churned, roiled and wrenched. Sam rubbed at his shoulder, scowling down at his brother. Dean scowled right back.

"How come you're not drunk?" Dean asked with an accusatory poke of his finger.

Sam toed off his sneakers, sat down on the other bed. He gave Dean an unnecessarily superior look.

"Because I had three beers, not eight," Sam told him, matter-of-fact. "One of us had to stay sober to carry the other one home, and you were already half-loaded anyway."

"Now fully-loaded," Dean said, and Sam snorted.

"That's for sure. You should drink some water."

Standing, Sam stripped his outer shirt off, standard gray tee underneath looking smooth and soft and dangerously warm. Dean curled his hands under his body, pinning them down.

"In a little bit," Dean said, not up to moving around just yet.

"You're gonna pass out in a little bit." Sam went into the bathroom with an empty water bottle and Dean listened to the white-noise sound of the rushing tap. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut, hoping futilely to black out.

Sam made him sit up and drink most of the bottle, and Dean was only going along with it because he was too drunk to mount a proper defense, and also really thirsty. Hovering nearby, Sam seemed dizzyingly tall, arms crossed over his chest like a shield. Dean wanted to climb him like a tree.

Dean threw the empty bottle at him, and fell back down on the bed. He laid one arm across his eyes, breathing deep and slow through his mouth. Sam huffed, and shifted his weight.

"You're welcome," Sam said, irritated.

Dean waved at him, vaguely apologetic. There were so many things fighting for space in his head right now, the remembered feel of Sam's body against his and the delirious whirl of the drunk and the shattering commonality of every motel room no matter how many miles they'd traveled since the last. There were invasions proceeding from land and sea and sky; he couldn't defend against everything.

"You wanna at least take off your shoes?" Sam said, sounding sorely tried.

"No," Dean answered, a knee-jerk reaction that he couldn't rightly explain.

"Whatever. If you sleep in that shirt you can't wear it again tomorrow, hear me?"

Distracted by the variegated scramble of his mind, Dean latched on to the parental tone in his brother's voice, said sharply, "Quit telling me what to do."

"Well, fuck, Dean, somebody has to," Sam shot back, snide.

Dean took his arm off his face, levered up on an elbow to glare at Sam. "Actually, no one has to."

"Sorry, you were gonna carry yourself home? That woulda worked out real well."

"God, shut up," Dean said. "Just, would you just let me be drunk and quit hounding me? Because motherfuck, that is annoying."

Sam's face closed down, mouth thinning and eyes going hard as tin. He'd never taken well to Dean brushing him off, not since he was a small child swimming in his brother's hand-me-downs, following him everywhere and trotting to keep up with Dean's longer legs.

Sam took a step towards the bed, and Dean unconsciously caught his breath, held it motionless in his lungs.

"You're just really fuckin' dumb when you're lit," Sam told him. "Gotta make sure you don't get yourself killed."

Dean's face twisted into a snarl, and as if from a great distance away he heard himself saying in a careless mumble:

"You're really fuckin' dumb all the time, I let you get away with that,"

and Sam laughed, high with disbelief. A flush rose to his face but Dean didn't know what to think of it.

"I'm dumb?" Sam repeated, just trying to clarify, the very idea completely foreign to him. "That's pretty funny coming from you, brother mine."

Red washed across Dean's vision, twin bolts of heat and anger going up his spine. He shoved himself to sit up and then to his feet, tottering faintly and doubtful for a moment, beset with horrific second guesses. The tense intractable look on Sam's face called him onwards.

"It's not just dumb, Sam," Dean told him, proud because he wasn't hardly slurring. "I mean, that's not even close to what you are, that's like a tiny speck compared to it. There isn't a word for how dumb you are, we need to invent a new one."

Sam's eyes widened, and his mouth contorted into an ugly shape. "The fuck?" he demanded, so loud Dean's ears rang.

But he didn't care, electricity pumping through him and icing his skin, frying his brain. They had been moving without destination for almost two months now and a guide wire had snapped inside Dean, a fatal dislocation.

Dean pushed Sam, stumbled him back a step. "You don't know," Dean said. "It's so fucking obvious and you can't see."

Something snagged across Sam's face and Dean recognized it, fear, his heart clenching in sympathy, but then Sam tipped his chin up, closed his hands into fists.

"Tell me," Sam said.

Dean swallowed hard. He stared at Sam, the steel underlying his jaw and the terrified light leaping in his eyes. Somewhere in the world there were the right words, but they weren't here, and so Dean took hold of the back of Sam's neck and pulled him into a fierce kiss.

Sam's mouth opened against his, mostly shock but Dean could roll with that. His tongue slid along Sam's and when he pressed his body against his brother's, Sam's gasp took the breath from his lungs. Sam mumbled his name, teeth glancing off Dean's lower lip and panic riding high in his voice.

"Hey," Dean said inanely, twisting his fingers in Sam's hair. Sam was shaking, his hands clenched too tight on Dean's shoulders. "You see now?"

Sam shuffled back, putting some space between them but not letting go of Dean. His face was bright red, his mouth damp, and Dean didn't bother to hide how he was staring.

"Dean," Sam said, trembling. "How. How did you know?"

Dean shook his head, his brain gibbering and thoughtless because Sam was so close and warm; it had been an experience beyond joy to be pressed flush against him.

"I know you," Dean said. "You--you're what I know best."

There was a moment, a fragile span of seconds hanging in the air. Sam's fingers flexed on Dean's shoulders, his gaze running furiously over Dean's face. Dean looked at Sam's mouth, the perfect line of his throat, the searching plea in his eyes, and Dean tore down the walls, let every bloody piece of his heart show cleanly through.

Sam breathed out his name, a different kind of light growing in him. He touched Dean's face and Dean closed his eyes.

The moment broke when Sam kissed him again. He pulled Dean against him, but Dean had a better idea than that and brought them both down to the floor. Sam laughed as his back hit the carpet, airless and amazed, and palmed Dean's head, drawing his face back to kiss him over and over again. Dean got lost for long minutes, licking the inside of Sam's mouth and sucking on his tongue. He was lying half on top of his brother, Sam's body shivering and arching beneath him, Sam's hands spread out wide on his back.

Dean pulled back for a second to get a look at Sam's face, greedy for it, and found Sam panting, grinding up against him. His eyes were strips of black, his used mouth full of his brother's name, and an erasing fog settled over Dean's mind, stealing away every thought he'd ever had that wasn't this.

THE END

Endnotes: You know what would have been a great title for this story? Smart People Who Do Dumb Things. Bad timing, that.

Also, I haven't yet seen any of Season 5 (I know, I know, bad fan), so please keep me spoiler-free. Cheers!

Also, MY BRAIN SPEAKS WITH A BRITISH ACCENT NOW. goddamn you, sherlock holmes!