Checkmate Ends the Game [3/4]
Part Two
Over the next few months, Sam learns to use just about every type of weapon he’s heard of, and some he hasn’t. They do target practice with shotguns as well as handguns, knives and swords and blunt objects, and every time he thinks they’ve worked their way through Dean’s trunk he pulls out another weapon Sam’s never seen before. Crossbows, longbows, and just about anything they can throw.
Hand-to-hand is something he feels he’s going to have learned by heart by the time his training is over, or he’s deemed ready; no matter the weapon they train with on any given day, they always take some time to draw blood from each other with just their hands.
It seems to Sam that it would take longer to develop the kind of muscles Dean has, but it doesn’t; after three months of training what equates to a day a week, he can already feel and see the difference.
He steps out the shower one night and observes himself critically. It’s not like he was flabby before, but now his muscles are starting to define. “How am I gonna explain this?” he mutters to his reflection, poking at his stomach. Now, he just hopes that Jess doesn’t notice.
Dawn is barely breaking when Sam gets up to leave in the morning. His hair is stuck up at odd angles, he feels like shit, and he really, really doesn't want to leave. When he gets out of the shower, his bags are on the couch and Dean has the car running in the driveway.
They don't speak much on these mornings; Dean's not really the sort for goodbyes (long or otherwise) and Sam is paranoid, pacing around the house like he's forgotten to stuff something into one of his bags. He never actually leaves anything, because Dean makes sure to do a second sweep after Sam's done fretting.
The short ride to the hotel is silent. Dean expects it to stay that way until they get where they’re going, but a few minutes down the street, Sam asks, “When are we going?” It throws Dean for a second.
“Hunting? Well, I haven’t found anything… good, yet.”
“You mean ‘easy’,” Sam snorts, and Dean can hear the sulkiness in his voice. He bets Sam was a horrible teenager.
“Yeah, well. Like I said, not letting you get us killed. You wanted to take it slow. This is slow.” And he hates to be stern like this, hates to have to remind Sam that this was his idea and he’s just going along with it. Sam doesn’t say anything until they reach the parking lot.
“I guess I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Yeah.”
As much as Dean doesn’t like goodbyes, Sam likes them even less. He’s got another week before he’s home, and he’s tired of stopping at the same tourist attractions.
He’d much rather be here, in this small, nowhere town because at least here he feels slightly more grounded. Not to mention every time a classic car passes the bus, he sits a little straighter in his seat and tries to look nonchalant as he cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of the driver.
The two days he gets off every two weeks are spent milling around the apartment he shares with Jess. Except that now ‘shared’ is a conditional word, because it’s more hers than it is his. He doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere anymore, like anywhere is truly home. There is this life where he pretends to be happy (because if he’s being completely honest with himself, he hasn’t been happy in a long, long time), and there’s the one that is based on lies, the one where he actually is happy.
But the person he is when he’s out on tours isn’t all bad. Sam’s sure he’s going to hell for the times he wakes in the early hours of the morning, Dean a sleepy weight at his side, and wishes that life with him could be as simple, as easy as it is with Jess.
They’d travel around in Dean’s car, taking down evil things, leaving their mark on a different town every few days. And when they were done being heroes they’d go back to Page, sit on the couch and watch whatever monster movie was on.
He banishes the thought before it even gets started again. They can never have that, because Sam is a bad person. What he wants is not what’s right, and he’s honor-bound to stay with Jess even if he isn’t completely faithful. Even if he can’t stop thinking about Dean.
Early Saturday morning, Sam goes to retrieve his phone from the charger in the kitchen and finds a voicemail blinking at him.
He doesn’t usually even get calls unless it’s Jess, unless he’s out. He frowns at the screen and raises the phone to his ear, curious.
“Sammy, I found something. It’s not close, though. Don’t think we can do it in two days. If you can get some time off-if you want, I mean.” Dean coughs. “Looks pretty simple. Let me know.”
The metallic click leaves him standing there, dumbfounded.
When his brain catches up, he fumbles the phone and deletes the message. He’d like to keep it. He’d like to hear Dean’s voice when he’s not in Page, but he can’t afford to risk it.
Immediately, he starts to turn through plausible ways to get time off.
In the end, he decides to play two against the middle- he doesn’t tell Jess he isn’t going out like usual. He tells the company there’s a funeral he needs time off for, and leaves in their car at the same time he usually does. Sam isn’t even sure the car will make it all the way out to Arizona, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he spends some time broken down on the side of the road.
But the trip goes surprisingly smoothly. He makes it to Page in a day and a half. The car is making a whining noise by the time he pulls into Dean’s driveway, but he can get Dean to look at that, and it doesn’t stop it from being happier than he’s been in a long time.
Dean is surprised to see him. Sam is kind of hurt that Dean would think he wouldn’t come, but it doesn’t really matter, not in the long run. He’s here now.
“So what’s the case, boss?” Sam says, taking his seat at the dining table. The surface is covered with papers, photos, and newspaper clippings; there doesn’t seem to be any organization at all, but Sam doesn’t touch it. He knows by now that Dean’s probably got his own way of doing this.
As it turns out, he does. Dean pulls a sheet of paper from the bottom of the stack and hands it to Sam. It’s an article from an online newspaper archive about a murder that took place twenty years ago in a town called Badger Mound, Montana.
“So, the mayor’s wife-“ Dean points at a woman in a picture next to the article, “goes crazy, kills this guy that works for them. A gardener or something, I’m not sure. Point is, she murdered him. She’s been on death row since.”
“Okay,” Sam says, skimming the article. “Where is she now?”
“You know all the right questions,” Dean answers, happy. “She died last week. Murdered. On death row, in a locked cell. Stabbed to death.”
“Isn’t that the way she killed the guy?” When Sam looks up from the page, there is pride in Dean’s eyes.
“Yeah, actually.”
“So… you think the guy came back to get revenge?”
“That’s exactly what I think. But there’s more.” A stack of papers fall as Dean shifts around for another sheet. He leaves them where they fall. “Read this.”
Sam takes it from him and looks it over. “’Second mysterious murder at Wispy Oaks Retirement Home; police baffled’,” he reads out loud. “’Clara Hill, 76, was stabbed to death in her bed on Thursday night’.”
Dean looks smug. “Locked doors, nurses doing rounds. No way anyone gets in and stabs a woman to death without someone knowing about it.”
For a few seconds, Sam frowns down at the page in his hands, processing. “Are they connected? How could they be connected?”
“That’s your job, Sammy,” Dean says, standing. “Need you to look up the history of the retirement home, and while you’re at it, look a little more into the mayor’s homicidal wife. And what happened to the mayor, because he could be useful.” He goes for his keys, shrugging on his leather jacket.
“Where are you going?” Sam asks, trying to make mental notes of what he’s supposed to be looking into.
Dean grins, happy to be back in his element and it hits Sam like a kick to the gut. “We’re gonna need food. Be back.” The front door slams shut behind him, and Sam situates himself in front of Dean’s laptop and starts searching.
Hours later, Dean’s lounging on the couch, local news on the TV, muted so he doesn’t disturb Sam. Sam is typing away at the laptop like his life depends on it. Periodically, the printer whizzes and clicks and spits out another few pages of pertinent information, but Sam’s been quiet for a long time.
“Doing okay over there?” Dean asks. Sam waves a hand at him, irritated at the interruption, and Dean scowls.
But it’s moments later when Sam says, “Got it!” and his voice sounds loud in the quiet. Immediately, Dean’s on his feet.
“What’d you find?”
Sam smiles as he gathers up the papers and hands them to Dean. “Mayor’s wife, Anita Hardwell, killed their gardener. His name was Matthew Richards. She stabbed him to death, and was found stabbed to death last week, nineteen years after the crime was committed, in her locked cell. She was supposed to be sent to death the next day.
“And since then, three women have been killed in a retirement home in Badger Mound, also in locked rooms. But the retirement home wasn’t always a retirement home - guess what it used to be?” Sam is downright gleeful, and Dean can’t stop himself from smiling right back. God, they’re so morbid.
“I’m gonna guess it used to be the mayor’s house?”
“Right! And the former mayor died about a month ago of natural causes.”
Dean flips through the stack of papers. “It’s too close together to be coincidence.”
“Yep.” Sam sits back in his chair, smug. “You’ve got the property records, life stories of the three women killed so far, the case against Anita twenty years ago, and profiles for her, the gardener, and the mayor.”
“Damn. You’re good.” Dean rearranges the pile, sets it on the table on top of a newspaper and leans down to kiss Sam. For a moment, Sam goes with it, kisses him back hard, but he doesn’t put up with it for long.
He makes a sound and pulls away. “Aren’t you gonna read through those?”
“Mm, later,” Dean says, fingers working at Sam’s belt.
They leave early the next day. Badger Mound is a long drive. It’s not like they’re going to be there before tomorrow no matter how early they leave, but it makes Dean feel better to leave early. And he usually wouldn’t stop, would caffeinate and get to Badger Mound in the early hours of the morning, but he has to think about Sam, and Sam’s not used to long hauls.
The car moves north with relative silence inside; Sam watches the scenery fly by outside the window and Dean taps the wheel, keeping time with the music blaring from the tape deck. It’s comfortable. They’re in their own little bubble here, safe. It’s nice.
After the first album’s done playing, Dean turns the volume down. “You need anything?”
Sam tears his eyes away from the window. “No. Would say something if I did.”
Dean nods, but he doesn’t turn the volume up again. He doesn’t move to change the tape.
“Do you understand what we’re going to do once we get there?”
“Um,” Sam frowns. “No, I don’t, actually.”
“Well, we’re going to have to make a detour to a Kinko’s before we get there. And get you a suit. We’re, uh. Pretending to be FBI investigating the death of Anita Hardwell.” Sam shifts in his seat.
“That is extremely illegal.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t have permits for any of the firearms in the trunk.” Dean gives Sam his best innocent smile.
Sam snorts, but he still looks uneasy. Dean shrugs, “Hey, if you wanna let me do the legwork, that’s fine. But eventually you’re gonna have to learn.”
That’s implying that there will be a next time, which is already presuming too much. “I’ll do it,” Sam says, a bit indignant, because he still thinks he’s got something to prove.
“Okay then.”
They pull into a good-sized town in Utah just after two. There’s a diner just off the highway; Dean pulls in and Sam gathers up the papers they’d acquired last night, flips through them as they’re ordering from a plump little waitress that’s holding the floor by herself.
There’s no air conditioner in the diner. The windows are thrown open and several fans are running, but it does almost nothing to help with the heat. Sam pushes his hair out of his eyes as he flips through the court reporter’s case detail.
“You’re good at that, you know.”
Sam looks up, surprised. “What?”
“The whole researching thing. You’re good at it.” Dean reaches for the manila folder, pulls it open and grabs the first couple pages. It’s a genuine compliment, and Sam’s not used to it. Dean isn’t heavy-handed with praise; even when they were training with weapons, Sam only received a handful of one-word ego boosters.
“Uh. Thanks.”
Sam takes a moment to study Dean as Dean’s reading through a victim profile. He’s different out here on the road, happier. In his natural habitat; he likes driving day in and day out, likes being free. It must kill him to stay in the same place like he does.
“Dean,” he starts, and Dean looks up. “Why do you stay in Page if you’d rather be on the road?”
A little of the happiness fades from his face. “Four Corners, that’s why.” Dean’s mouth works around the words like they leave a particularly bad taste in his mouth.
“What about it?”
“Remember what you read about crossroads?”
Sam tries to remember. “Demons make deals there, right?”
“Yeah,” Dean nods. “And Four Corners is a big freaking crossroads. Biggest in the world. Also the home of a minor hellmouth, which randomly spits out hellspawn. It’s been acting up lately.”
“So you’re there in case that happens.”
“Well, more like I’m there for when it happens. Hellspawn can get pretty nasty.”
Sam laughs to himself. “Wonder if they’d appreciate me adding that to my tour.” Dean grins.
They don’t leave town right away; Dean finds a suit shop and they spend about an hour getting Sam a suit worthy of a federal agent. Sam does not enjoy being measured and remeasured, poked and prodded and jerked around from one suit to another. However, Dean is thoroughly enjoying himself, wandering around behind him and teasing Sam for his stellar measurements.
When they’re done, Sam throws the shopping bag in the trunk and corners Dean against the driver’s side door. “Never heard you complaining,” he growls, and attacks Dean’s mouth with his own. There might be eyes on them, but Dean doesn’t care; he fists a hand in Sam’s hair and makes an encouraging little sound that Sam eats out of his mouth.
Sam pulls away and walks around to the passenger side without another word. When Dean climbs into the driver’s seat, he can feel the smugness radiating from Sam in waves.
Dinner is in a small town just over the Idaho border. It’s threatening rain, neon signs against steel grey clouds that make the night look murky. Dean decides he doesn’t want to drive any longer and gets them a room at a cheap motel on the edge of town. Sam is more than a little skeptical.
Dean has their stuff out of the backseat and the car locked tight before Sam can do much more than get the key out of the lock. He deposits them on the floor just inside the door and cranks the air conditioner up.
There is one bed in the room. Sam’s stomach jumps a little at this. He’s been half-hard since the suit shop in Utah.
It smells sterile, that strange hotel-smell that Sam never gets used to. Dean takes a deep, satisfied breath and starts stripping off his layers. He makes his way to the bathroom and steps inside the door just as he’s undoing the button on his jeans. “You coming?”
It takes Sam’s brain maybe three seconds to catch up to the offer, past the skin of Dean’s back, tanned from their training sessions in the sun, and then he can’t get this clothes off fast enough.
Hot water sluices over both of them. It won’t last long, not in a place like this, but Dean is more intent on Sam than getting them clean. He licks a path down Sam’s neck, swirls his tongue over the hollow at the base of his throat.
Sam plants his hands on Dean’s shoulders and holds on - he’s learned that when Dean’s tongue is on his skin, it’s best to just surrender his control. He always, always makes it worth it. So he leans back against the tile and rolls his hips lazily against Dean, enjoying the warmth of the water and the pressure of Dean’s mouth.
Dean bites the knob of Sam’s collarbone and sucks the skin into his mouth, rolls it over his tongue, and Sam feels the breath catch in his throat.
“Shh,” Dean says, moving lower, tonguing over one nipple and scraping his nails over the other. Sam doesn’t realize he’s arching off the shower wall until Dean has to push him back against it.
It’s nice like this. It’s always nice, but just now they can take it slow, no rush, no frenzy. It holds its own special kind of rolling intensity that fries his nerve-endings, every inch of his skin sparking with sensation. He makes needy little sounds that don’t mean anything, because they could go like this forever.
Dean spends full minutes on each of his nipples like the first time, rolling the nubs between his teeth, pressing down and licking over them. It creates a layered effect, sensation leading into sensation, snowballing until all previous thought about taking it slow are gone.
Sam’s skin is wet, prickly with attention, and Dean moves lower; he plants kisses all over Sam’s stomach, dips his tongue into his bellybutton and circles the rim. Sam groans, broken and nearly lost in the sounds of water hitting their skin and the tub. Dean smiles wickedly against his skin and grips Sam’s cock, strokes a few times before he lowers his head and swallows it down.
It takes every ounce of self-control he possesses to keep from thrusting forward into Dean’s mouth, slick hot suction and the play of his very talented tongue over and around him. He tries to get a hold in Dean’s hair but it’s too short, so he ends up with one hand on Dean’s neck and the other on his shoulder, fingers digging into the muscle there.
It’s just like this for a while - Sam is holding onto his control by a thread and Dean doesn’t seem content to speed things up, doesn’t want to press the issue like he normally does.
“Please,” Sam groans, soft, and it’s lost in the rush of water. It’s cold now, and feels white-hot on his flushed skin. It’s a nice counterpoint to the things Dean is doing to tease him closer and closer. He feels Dean’s fingers probing at his hole, rubbing over and around it and it drives Sam crazy, Dean knows it does.
Just the tip of one finger dips inside and then back out again. Sam’s head thunks back against the shower wall and Dean starts humming, vibration in his throat and on Sam’s cock, and Sam can’t help it anymore, fucks into Dean’s mouth to get more of that delicious friction, more of anything, he’s so close…
As soon as he realizes what he’s done he goes to babble an apology, but Dean’s finger slides into his ass, finds the place that always gets Sam climbing the damn walls, and Sam doesn’t have a chance to warn Dean before he’s coming down his throat, hips snapping forward and muscles straining. Dean doesn’t pull away, keeps pressure on Sam’s prostate and Sam is completely silent, every muscle locked.
When Sam finally comes down from his orgasm, gasping for breath into the stream of water falling into his open mouth, Dean is looking up at him with pupils so blown his eyes are almost completely devoid of green. He’s fucking his own fist, still kneeling in the tub, and Sam has the presence of mind to try and help him with that.
It takes a bit of maneuvering, a bit more muscle than Sam’s generally used to using just after an orgasm, but he finally gets Dean standing, back plastered against Sam’s chest, and Sam leans his head on Dean’s shoulder as he gets his own hand around Dean’s cock.
And Dean doesn’t beg, not usually, but he’s got his head thrown back onto Sam’s shoulder, gasping out, “God - fuck, fuck, please,” as he thrusts into Sam’s hand. Sam strokes faster, harder, tugging Dean’s orgasm out of him, and it doesn’t take long for Dean to come, biting off a curse and shooting all over the tile.
He sags against Sam when he’s done, legs shaking, and he presses a kiss to the part of Sam’s neck he can reach between pants.
“We’re dirtier than when we started,” Sam teases, shivering a little because the cold water doesn’t feel good anymore.
“S’okay,” Dean says, leaning forward to turn the water off. “Tomorrow morning.” They towel off and collapse into bed, crawl under the sheets and turn the lights off without even touching their bags. At least they’ll get an early start in the morning.
The next day goes by in a similar fashion to the first, only now it’s like a switch has been flipped and Sam can’t keep his hands and eyes off Dean. And Sam has settled into actually enjoying this life. This part of it, at least - riding around the country with the windows down, a noble purpose to fulfill and Dean all to himself at night. It’s the type of romanticizing that other people only get to see in movies.
In the back of his mind, he knows that he’ll never have this. He thinks about Jess and their apartment and how happy she is when she looks at him, and he can’t throw all that away. He can’t go with Dean, be this for Dean, no matter how much he wants to.
They can hardly get through the morning before they’re pulling over to fuck in the backseat. An hour before lunch, Sam blows Dean while he’s driving, and Dean has to steer the car onto the shoulder very carefully to avoid crashing. He can’t even pretend to be angry once he’s got it in park.
Dean wishes he could keep his libido in check long enough to just drive, but it’s totally worth it to have Sam writhing against the seat as the sun goes down, driving carefully with one hand down Sam’s pants.
Badger Mound isn’t a small town, but it’s a far cry from a big city. It’s too late to start work when they get there; they check into a motel and bring all of their stuff in, settle in for as long as it takes to clear this up.
“Relax.” Dean helps Sam do up his tie because his fingers are shaking too much to get it done on his own. “Just act like you know what you’re doing.”
Sam doesn’t look convinced. “This is so illegal.”
“You keep getting hung up on that,” Dean says as he pulls on his suit jacket and checks that he’s got the right ID. He hands Sam the wallet that holds his, and Sam looks at it like it might attack him.
“Do you know how many years in jail we could get for this?” He’s trying not to panic, really he is. But he can’t get over exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.
“Between four and eight, depending on the state. Not sure for Montana exactly. But we’re not going to get caught, and if we do we’ll just blow town. It’s easy. Follow my lead, okay?”
Sam looks like he wants to protest more, something else he wants to say, but Dean cuts him off, exasperated. “I’ll do the legwork if it bothers you that much.”
“No, no, I just.” Sam takes a deep breath. “I can do this.”
Dean shakes his head and goes to start the car. Sam grabs the folder of information and looks over his badge one more time before he follows.
“Where are we going first?” Dean asks as they’re pulling away.
“Um. The prison? It’s closer to the story than the retirement home.”
Dean smiles, and as Sam’s nerves calm he takes a moment to appreciate how sharp Dean looks in his suit. He can’t wait to pull it off of him later.
All day of questioning leads them to one conclusion: it’s definitely Matthew Richards’s spirit that killed Anita and the rest of the women. It’s a cut-and-dry issue of finding out where he’s buried so they can get up to a little grave desecration and burn the bones.
Sam is less freaked out about that than he was about impersonating an FBI agent.
Dean changes out of his suit (much to Sam’s disappointment) and Sam does the same as Dean looks up where the guy was buried. He finds it pretty quickly, a cemetery in town, and after midnight they head out with shovels and a map of the cemetery.
When they finally find the graveyard, Dean parks the car out of sight and hands Sam a shovel and takes one for himself, slings it over his shoulder with the bag holding the salt and gasoline. He heads off between the gravestones and Sam follows, trying to step between graves instead of on them. Everytime he missteps and packs down the soft earth even more, he makes a face.
Dean looks behind him and snickers. Sam glares.
“Just wait,” Dean says. “It gets better.”
Just for that, Sam tries to act like it doesn’t bother him when they’re actually digging up the grave. It takes a bit longer than he expects for Dean’s shovel to find the coffin, and as soon as it does he gives up entirely and climbs out.
Ten minutes later, Dean looks so happy to be setting things on fire and Sam watches the flames lick the hole they’ve just dug and wonders if he’ll ever get used to the smell.
“So what do we do now?” Sam asks as he collapses into the passenger seat, dirty and tired.
“I have an idea,” Dean says, voice low and lazily slurring his words. “Blue Earth.”
“Blue Earth?”
“My dad’s got a buddy up there that can teach you about hunting better than I can. The research stuff.” He starts the car and points it back toward the motel.
Sam considers, thinks about the week and a half that he has left out here and shrugs. “Sounds good.”
“I think you’ll like him,” Dean says, lays his arm across the back of the seat, fingers tangling in Sam’s hair. Sam hums his agreement and settles back in the seat.
Two days later, they pull up in front of a church just inside the city limits of Blue Earth, Minnesota. Dean shuts the car off and Sam frowns at him. “Here?” he asks, looking out at the church again, and Dean doesn’t answer before he’s getting out.
Sam waits a moment and follows.
Before he can ask again, Dean’s grabbing their bags out of the backseat. As he closes the door behind him, he gives Sam a pointed look. “You remember what we talked about?”
Sam nods and looks away, takes his bag from Dean and tries not to let his hand linger too long. Even from outside, it feels like the tall steeple is watching him, judging him. His skin itches. He clears his throat, scratches at the back of his neck.
Dean plasters on this big fake grin, like it’s nothing, and walks right up the steps.
The door opens before he gets there. The pastor is shorter than Dean, but not by much, already smiling as he opens the screen wide and gives Dean the sort of one-armed hug that tells Sam they’ve known each other for a long time.
And if this man has connection in the network of hunters… maybe he knows Sam’s father.
If he wasn’t nervous before, he is now. He can tell his face is hot, but he no longer feels dirty; rather, he’s eager to find out what this man knows why they’re here. Anything else becomes background information.
He grips his bag a little tighter and climbs the stairs up to the church.
There’s a moment, standing in the pews of the church, where Sam has a strange urge to go to his knees and pray. For salvation, forgiveness - for what, exactly, he isn’t sure. He just feels like he should.
The odd compulsion goes away almost instantly, but it leaves something deeper than the urge behind - something’s been given to him in that off-beat moment. Something sticks to him.
That night, when he goes to sleep - completely alone on a too-small cot in the parlor - he kneels on the cold stone floor and prays. He isn’t sure how it goes, because he’s never done it before. He’s never heard anyone do it before. He isn’t sure if there’s a secret to getting God to listen, but he kneels there until his knees ache, praying to a silent entity about everything and nothing.
He sleeps better than he thinks he ever has.
Breakfast is strangely stoic. Dean and Pastor Jim exchange stories and small-talk, catch each other up to the past few years, and Sam just picks at his oatmeal and tries not to eavesdrop. He lets his mind drift, and doesn’t hear when he’s actually being spoken to.
“Earth to Sam.” Dean isn’t waving a hand in front of Sam’s face, but he can tell that he’d very much like to.
“Yeah, sorry,” he says, flushing. God, he was never this unsure of himself before he met Dean.
“Dean was just telling me about your first hunt,” Jim says, and Sam smiles politely. “About your research skills.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. If you’d like, I can teach you about the side of… dealing with things that doesn’t consist of setting things on fire.” He smiles wryly at Sam. Dean snorts into his oatmeal and looks up, guilty.
“Yeah, sure. That’d be great.” Sam’s eager about this part, something that won’t feel so foreign to him. Something that won’t make him feeling like he’s stepping on Dean’s toes.
They start with Mythology. Greek, Norse, Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian… Pastor Jim has books on them all. Sam picks through them cautiously, makes notes on the blank pages at the back of his father’s journal. He keeps it open in front of him alongside the book of creatures, trying to suss out what’s important enough to note.
Dean sits in at a desk in the corner, studying his own tome and sipping his coffee.
They’re still sitting there when, hours later, Jim calls Dean out of the room to speak with him. There’s been this mounting tension in the room all day, but Sam’s been too preoccupied to feel it; Dean has been reading the same page for an hour now because he can’t concentrate.
Jim shuts the door behind them and leads Dean away down the hall.
“Dean, sit down,” he says when they reach the nave. Dean frowns and does as he’s told, rests his elbows on his knees and watches as Jim takes the bench next to him. When he speaks again, his voice is cautious. “There’s something I think you should know about Sam.”
For some reason unknown to him, Dean’s stomach plummets. “Yeah?” he asks, barely disguising the concern in his voice.
“The journal he carries… it’s from his father, isn’t it?”
“That’s what he says, yeah. Says someone left it for him when he was eight.”
“I see,” Jim looks down at the floor, and then fixes Dean with his most sincere look. Dean squirms a little. “I might know who that journal belonged to.”
Dean is up off the bench in record time. “Let me go get Sam,” he says, breathless, and is halfway to the hall when Jim calls him back.
“You can tell him after I’ve told you. I think he’d appreciate it more coming from you.”
Jim is silent for a moment, and Dean takes his seat again. He forces himself to be patient and not urge the man into speaking.
“I gave his father that journal when he was starting out, after his wife died. I gave that journal to John Winchester.”
Dean blinks. “Excuse me?” There’s a dangerous glint in his eyes, but Jim takes a deep breath and continues.
“Twenty-two years ago, your father turned up on my doorstep. A psychic in Lawrence had told him where I was and what I could teach him. He was supposed to use that journal to record his experiences, things that would come in handy later. I haven’t seen it again before today, but that’s hardly the point. Your father, Sam’s father, left that for him at the orphanage years after he dropped him off.”
Dean’s up off the pew before Jim can finish his sentence. “My brother is dead,” he hisses, and his words reverberate in the empty space. “He died when he was six months old in the fire that killed my mom.”
Pastor Jim just looks at him sadly.
“It… he can’t be. It’s not - Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“I won’t say a word against John Winchester, but you have to understand the situation he was in at the time-"
“He wouldn’t have lied to me.” Dean’s hands shake at his sides, curled into fists because that’s an automatic response, and he wants to punch Jim just a little for suggesting that John would do this.
Because this isn’t about Sam anymore. This is about Dean; Dean’s fragile faith in his father, Dean’s unquestioning obedience and the values he’s lived by his entire life. It’s about his trust and the things he’s been through and the unshakeable hero-worship that has yet to be toppled.
“He wouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Jim says. “I’m just telling you what I know.”
“Well, don’t.” Dean sets his jaw and walks away. Jim watches him go; for a moment, it seems like he’ll go back to the room they just came from, where Sam is still pouring over texts. At the last moment Dean thinks better of it and goes the other way, down a set of stairs leading down to the rooms they’re occupying during their stay.
The next morning, Sam’s bags are packed and sitting on the chair next to his bed before he even has a chance to blink awake.
He stares at it, eyes hazy, and doesn’t have time to think about what it means before Dean’s pushing open the door to his room. “Morning, sunshine. Car’s leaving in five minutes with or without you.”
And then he’s gone. Sam stares at the place where Dean was seconds ago and wonders what just happened. Maybe his dad needs him for something, and he’s got to drop Sam off first? It’s the first and only thing he can think of as he dresses and gets out to the car. It’s the only thing he can fathom this early in the morning.
He’s still pulling on his belt when he walks out, bag slung over his shoulder, three minutes later. Pastor Jim is standing at the church’s front doors, looking out into the bright morning; Sam can hear the Impala rumbling in the dirt lot next to the building.
“I guess we’re leaving,” Sam says, still confused, and Jim’s smile is a little weak.
“Dean’s got some things he wants to take care of. I’m sorry you couldn’t stay longer.”
They say their goodbyes shortly, because thirty seconds later Dean’s honking the horn and Sam scrambles down the front steps to the passenger door. He waves back at Jim and climbs in, drops his bag over the back of the seat.
“What’s the rush?”
“Stuff I gotta do,” is Dean’s immediate, gruff response. He’s in one of his unapproachable moods; he rarely gets this way around Sam, but something about this morning has set him off. Sam lets it go because he’s too tired to fight it and sinks back into his seat.
Dean still hasn’t said two words when they stop for gas hours later. He throws a bag at Sam when he comes out of the convenience store and still doesn’t say anything, starts the car again and pulls back out onto the highway. Led Zeppelin is at ear-bleed level now, too loud to think or hear anything.
It’s more than a little frustrating. Sam finally reaches out and jerks the dial down, music fading into silence. “I’m not talking over Led Zeppelin, Dean. What’s going on?”
Dean glares at him, honestly glares, heat and anger all welling up to the surface, and Sam shrinks back in his seat. Dean turns the volume back into place and pretends that Sam isn’t there.
And Sam, out of options, watches the scenery out of the window and subjects himself to music he isn’t fond of, tries not to over-think anything and wonders what he did wrong.
In the motel that night, Dean can no longer hide behind loud guitar riffs.
He gets them two queens, sets his own bag on the first as soon as he opens the door. It bothers Sam - why is Dean suddenly so far away from him? Something had to set Dean off like this, but he thinks back and can’t remember anything that might have happened.
“I’m going out,” Dean grunts, when it’s clear the tension in the room isn’t going to clear. The air is stretched thin, tense, so heavy it weighs on Sam’s skin. He just nods his agreement as Dean grabs his coat and the keys and closes the door behind him.
He gets back at three in the morning.
The Burger King bag that Sam’s dinner came in is still on the little dinette table. His dad’s journal is there beside it and the TV is set to M.A.S.H reruns. The ending theme is just playing for the umpteenth time when Dean kicks the door open and stumbles in, automatically rousing Sam.
“Dean?” He asks, fuzzy.
“Go to sleep,” Dean says, and it’s not kind. It’s harsh and sharp-edged and Dean smells like cigarette smoke and alcohol. As he closes the door, the breeze carries in another scent.
Dean smells like perfume.
Sam clenches his fists.
But Dean isn’t his. Dean isn’t anyone’s. He belongs to himself and even though Sam’s killing his own healthy relationship to be here, it doesn’t matter. At least not to Dean, apparently.
Sam grits his teeth and rolls over, even if he doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
The next day is worse. Sam wouldn’t have believed it was possible if he wasn’t there in the passenger seat. He can tell he’s unwanted and doesn’t know exactly what turn of events placed him there; days ago they were happy.
But Dean doesn’t even ask him what he wants to eat or if he wants anything, he just grabs whatever he thinks Sam will like (and that’s crediting him with actually putting thought into it, which Sam is starting to doubt) and brings it to him.
And there’s no music in the tape deck. The silence is awkward, stretched between them like a living, breathing thing. The bad part is that Sam’s not even looking to dissuade Dean from being mad at him. At this point, he’d be happy to be the focus of Dean’s anger if Dean would just tell him what it was he did.
The tires humming on the pavement and the purr of the engine are the only sounds that accompany them that day, and by the time they stop for the night, Sam’s ready to scream just to hear something different.
Pastor Jim can’t be right.
He can’t be.
What are the odds that Sam is his brother, anyway? One in a million? The guy just happens to get a job that puts him through Page every two weeks, they just happen to meet in a bar one night, completely by chance? It isn’t likely. There are lots of leather-bound volumes like that, like the one Jim gave his father.
Dad wouldn’t lie. Not about this, not like this. Of that fact Dean is absolutely certain. His brother died in a house fire when he was six months old, killed by the same thing that killed their mother. John’s entire crusade was about finding the thing that killed them both. He wouldn’t lie to Dean about this, not for so long.
That’s all. Sam just has a similar journal, also from a hunter. He isn’t even sure the guy that left it for him was his father.
Oh god.
Sam couldn’t be his brother. Brothers don’t do the things that they’ve done. There was some sort of holy fire that’d come and strike you down if you tried. Dean has to believe that; he has to cling to that hope because if he doesn’t, he’d have to admit that Jim is right.
His final confirmation comes when they’re on their way back to Page. Sam is asleep, or pretending to sleep. The TV is on, not loud but loud enough, and Dean digs around in Sam’s bag for the journal. He looks at it critically, looks at the handwriting and mentally compares it to his father’s.
And doesn’t know why he didn’t see it before.
Dean spends the rest of the night in the hotel bathroom with the door shut and locked, trying not to throw up.
Sam is his brother. Sam is his brother, and Dean has fucked him. Dean has been fucked by him, has sucked his dick and tasted his come and knows all of his tells, knows what he sounds like and looks like and feels like when he’s seconds away from coming.
And Sam knows all the same things about him.
He is a sick fuck. He is a sick, sick fuck and he can’t stop thinking about how his baby brother feels inside of him.
Dean sneaks the journal back into Sam’s bag and looks at his slack face. Must have fallen asleep for real while he was pretending. Dean is going to hell. Dad lied to him, and Dean can’t stop shaking.
He takes a shower in the morning and can’t scrub himself clean. He wants to call Dad but his hands won’t still and Sam is suddenly glued to his side. The rough edges of the thing that has shattered inside rubs against his insides, makes him feel the gaping hole in the center of his chest.
Every breath aches with it.
His skin is rubbed raw, red and painful by the time he gets finished scrubbing.
It doesn’t help. Dean still feels filthy.
Sam corners Dean in the kitchen when they get settled back in Page.
“Man, what’s wrong with you?” He’s genuinely concerned. Dean’s closed off and Sam can’t get through to him. It scares the hell out of him.
True to form of late, Dean just glares.
“You’ve gotta talk to me,” Sam urges.
“I don’t want to talk to you. Get out of my way.”
Sam doesn’t move. Dean goes to shove him, but despite his experience, he is the one who taught Sam about hand-to-hand. Sam’s got a reach Dean doesn’t, manages to manhandle him back into his corner.
“What did I do?” he asks once Dean is no longer trying to escape.
There’s a solitary moment when the storm clouds that have darkened Dean’s face for the past few days clear. The brilliant green of Dean’s eyes is dulled, and something’s shattered in his gaze.
“You didn’t do anything,” he says, voice nearly breaking. “Please, Sam, don’t make me tell you.”
“I want to know.”
“No,” Dean says, shaking his head. “No, kid, you don’t.”
Sam sighs, frustrated, and reels around, leaving Dean an opportunity to escape. “You can’t keep it all to yourself all the time, Dean.”
“I can. Trust me, man,” and his voice is pleading. “Do not ask me to tell you this. Just… I’m gonna leave, okay? I’m gonna go away and you’ll never have to see me again. Go marry your girl.”
The bottom drops out of Sam’s stomach.
“What?” he says, turning again. He can’t process how fast this has turned against him, and he doesn’t understand why Dean wants to leave.
“I’m gonna step back and let you do your thing. I’m in the way.”
No. No, Dean can’t just do this. He can’t walk in and out of Sam’s life, play merry hell with his mind and his feelings and then just give up. Sam cares for Dean too much to let him do that.
“Why?” he ignores the way his voice breaks, focuses on Dean’s face and the way he won’t look him in the eye.
Dean looks down at the floor, and when he looks back up he’s wearing the most earnest expression Sam’s ever seen. “I can’t do this anymore, Sammy.”
“Can’t do…” Sam trails off, feels his eyes prickle and pushes it away, because the very last thing he needs right now is vulnerability. “Can’t do what, Dean? What happened?”
“This. There’s a girl out there who thinks you’re working right now, and I’m dragging you around the country to hunt ghosts. It’s not right.” Dean clears his throat and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the shutters have fallen closed behind them.
He’s lying. That’s what Dean does when he lies.
“No,” Sam backs up, pushes the hair out of his face. “No, that isn’t the reason. You wouldn’t… Dean, I can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell me.”
“You can’t do anything about it anyway, so stop asking.”
“No.”
“Damnit, Sam.” Dean’s voice is deadly quiet. “Why can’t you just trust me on this? You don’t want to know. Leave it.”
Sam opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. No matter what he says, he isn’t going to get a response out of Dean this way. He’s shut down, closed off, and there is one way Sam knows to get him to open up.
Dean might not want it at the moment, but Sam has a feeling this isn’t about them. It’s about something else, something that happened up at Pastor Jim’s, and he has to know.
Dean’s backed into the corner as it is. Sam plants his hands on either side of Dean’s head and leans in close, lets them breathe the same air for a moment, before he brushes his lips lightly against Dean’s.
He tastes saline, and then something hits him hard in the chest. He stumbles backwards, gasping for air; he doesn’t know if he’s shocked because of the sudden lack of oxygen or that Dean would… he doesn’t know. But it hurts, damnit, in both senses. He grips the countertop with one hand as he tries to catch his breath.
When he looks up, hurt, Dean’s chest is heaving. His hands are clenched into fists and he’s looking at Sam like Sam just killed his puppy.
Sam stays put this time.
They don’t speak, trying to get themselves under control - now that he’s breathing properly, Sam can’t stop himself from crying. At least part of it is frustration, he knows, because he’s about ready to do something drastic to get Dean to tell him what the fuck is actually going on in his head. But when he looks up, Dean is crying too, one single tear rolling down his face, and that’s something Sam’s never seen him do.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Sam gasps.
"It’s better this way.” Dean’s voice is controlled to the point of breaking from the strain, and he closes his eyes, leans against the wall. “Please.”
Sam takes a shaky breath and straightens, leaning against the counter. He hates to do this, hates to see the look on Dean’s face when he says it, but it’s for a good cause.
“I’ll call Pastor Jim,” he says, speaking to the floor so he doesn’t have to see. “I’ll ask him what happened and he’ll tell me. I’d rather hear it from you, but I see you don’t care about that.” Even as he turns to leave, it feels like something critical is being ripped out of his chest. He won’t call, wouldn’t dream of betraying Dean like that, but if this is something small they can overcome… it’s sad to say that he’d rather carry on like this than face these trips every week without Dean to come to.
“Sam,” Dean whispers, and Sam can barely hear him. He stops with his hand resting on the door frame, but doesn’t turn around. Maybe it’s better this way. “Sam, I…”
There’s a long pause, and Sam nearly turns before Dean clears his throat again.
“Pastor Jim saw your father’s journal. He told me… he told me that he gave your father that journal when he was just getting started. Your father…”
All of Sam’s nerves are screaming at him, his skin feels too tight.
“Your father is John Winchester.”
It takes Sam a minute to catch up, to process that, and before he can be more than dumbfounded, Dean speaks again, voice heavy with grief.
“You’re my brother, Sammy.” He isn’t trying to hide that he’s crying now, and Sam…
Sam turns, grips the door frame so hard he can feel the strain in his fingers, and looks at Dean. “No,” he says, quietly. “No, it can’t… that isn’t…”
"I never told you,” Dean says, and now that he’s started he can’t stop. “I never told you about my little brother. He was six months old when my mother died. Dad always told me that he - you - died with her. He must have…” But Dean can’t say it, and Sam can’t speak around the constriction of his lungs, can’t form words out of his thoughts. He wants to run away, wants to curl up in a ball and sink through the floor.
He’s always wanted his birth family. He’s always wanted to know who they are, what they’ve done, who he looks like. Why did he have to find out like this? Why now, why here?
It’s the tip of the iceberg as far as questions are concerned, but he can’t hold it back anymore. The door frame supports him as he puts one hand over his eyes and cries until he can’t breathe.
Next
Over the next few months, Sam learns to use just about every type of weapon he’s heard of, and some he hasn’t. They do target practice with shotguns as well as handguns, knives and swords and blunt objects, and every time he thinks they’ve worked their way through Dean’s trunk he pulls out another weapon Sam’s never seen before. Crossbows, longbows, and just about anything they can throw.
Hand-to-hand is something he feels he’s going to have learned by heart by the time his training is over, or he’s deemed ready; no matter the weapon they train with on any given day, they always take some time to draw blood from each other with just their hands.
It seems to Sam that it would take longer to develop the kind of muscles Dean has, but it doesn’t; after three months of training what equates to a day a week, he can already feel and see the difference.
He steps out the shower one night and observes himself critically. It’s not like he was flabby before, but now his muscles are starting to define. “How am I gonna explain this?” he mutters to his reflection, poking at his stomach. Now, he just hopes that Jess doesn’t notice.
Dawn is barely breaking when Sam gets up to leave in the morning. His hair is stuck up at odd angles, he feels like shit, and he really, really doesn't want to leave. When he gets out of the shower, his bags are on the couch and Dean has the car running in the driveway.
They don't speak much on these mornings; Dean's not really the sort for goodbyes (long or otherwise) and Sam is paranoid, pacing around the house like he's forgotten to stuff something into one of his bags. He never actually leaves anything, because Dean makes sure to do a second sweep after Sam's done fretting.
The short ride to the hotel is silent. Dean expects it to stay that way until they get where they’re going, but a few minutes down the street, Sam asks, “When are we going?” It throws Dean for a second.
“Hunting? Well, I haven’t found anything… good, yet.”
“You mean ‘easy’,” Sam snorts, and Dean can hear the sulkiness in his voice. He bets Sam was a horrible teenager.
“Yeah, well. Like I said, not letting you get us killed. You wanted to take it slow. This is slow.” And he hates to be stern like this, hates to have to remind Sam that this was his idea and he’s just going along with it. Sam doesn’t say anything until they reach the parking lot.
“I guess I’ll see you in two weeks.”
“Yeah.”
As much as Dean doesn’t like goodbyes, Sam likes them even less. He’s got another week before he’s home, and he’s tired of stopping at the same tourist attractions.
He’d much rather be here, in this small, nowhere town because at least here he feels slightly more grounded. Not to mention every time a classic car passes the bus, he sits a little straighter in his seat and tries to look nonchalant as he cranes his neck to catch a glimpse of the driver.
The two days he gets off every two weeks are spent milling around the apartment he shares with Jess. Except that now ‘shared’ is a conditional word, because it’s more hers than it is his. He doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere anymore, like anywhere is truly home. There is this life where he pretends to be happy (because if he’s being completely honest with himself, he hasn’t been happy in a long, long time), and there’s the one that is based on lies, the one where he actually is happy.
But the person he is when he’s out on tours isn’t all bad. Sam’s sure he’s going to hell for the times he wakes in the early hours of the morning, Dean a sleepy weight at his side, and wishes that life with him could be as simple, as easy as it is with Jess.
They’d travel around in Dean’s car, taking down evil things, leaving their mark on a different town every few days. And when they were done being heroes they’d go back to Page, sit on the couch and watch whatever monster movie was on.
He banishes the thought before it even gets started again. They can never have that, because Sam is a bad person. What he wants is not what’s right, and he’s honor-bound to stay with Jess even if he isn’t completely faithful. Even if he can’t stop thinking about Dean.
Early Saturday morning, Sam goes to retrieve his phone from the charger in the kitchen and finds a voicemail blinking at him.
He doesn’t usually even get calls unless it’s Jess, unless he’s out. He frowns at the screen and raises the phone to his ear, curious.
“Sammy, I found something. It’s not close, though. Don’t think we can do it in two days. If you can get some time off-if you want, I mean.” Dean coughs. “Looks pretty simple. Let me know.”
The metallic click leaves him standing there, dumbfounded.
When his brain catches up, he fumbles the phone and deletes the message. He’d like to keep it. He’d like to hear Dean’s voice when he’s not in Page, but he can’t afford to risk it.
Immediately, he starts to turn through plausible ways to get time off.
In the end, he decides to play two against the middle- he doesn’t tell Jess he isn’t going out like usual. He tells the company there’s a funeral he needs time off for, and leaves in their car at the same time he usually does. Sam isn’t even sure the car will make it all the way out to Arizona, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he spends some time broken down on the side of the road.
But the trip goes surprisingly smoothly. He makes it to Page in a day and a half. The car is making a whining noise by the time he pulls into Dean’s driveway, but he can get Dean to look at that, and it doesn’t stop it from being happier than he’s been in a long time.
Dean is surprised to see him. Sam is kind of hurt that Dean would think he wouldn’t come, but it doesn’t really matter, not in the long run. He’s here now.
“So what’s the case, boss?” Sam says, taking his seat at the dining table. The surface is covered with papers, photos, and newspaper clippings; there doesn’t seem to be any organization at all, but Sam doesn’t touch it. He knows by now that Dean’s probably got his own way of doing this.
As it turns out, he does. Dean pulls a sheet of paper from the bottom of the stack and hands it to Sam. It’s an article from an online newspaper archive about a murder that took place twenty years ago in a town called Badger Mound, Montana.
“So, the mayor’s wife-“ Dean points at a woman in a picture next to the article, “goes crazy, kills this guy that works for them. A gardener or something, I’m not sure. Point is, she murdered him. She’s been on death row since.”
“Okay,” Sam says, skimming the article. “Where is she now?”
“You know all the right questions,” Dean answers, happy. “She died last week. Murdered. On death row, in a locked cell. Stabbed to death.”
“Isn’t that the way she killed the guy?” When Sam looks up from the page, there is pride in Dean’s eyes.
“Yeah, actually.”
“So… you think the guy came back to get revenge?”
“That’s exactly what I think. But there’s more.” A stack of papers fall as Dean shifts around for another sheet. He leaves them where they fall. “Read this.”
Sam takes it from him and looks it over. “’Second mysterious murder at Wispy Oaks Retirement Home; police baffled’,” he reads out loud. “’Clara Hill, 76, was stabbed to death in her bed on Thursday night’.”
Dean looks smug. “Locked doors, nurses doing rounds. No way anyone gets in and stabs a woman to death without someone knowing about it.”
For a few seconds, Sam frowns down at the page in his hands, processing. “Are they connected? How could they be connected?”
“That’s your job, Sammy,” Dean says, standing. “Need you to look up the history of the retirement home, and while you’re at it, look a little more into the mayor’s homicidal wife. And what happened to the mayor, because he could be useful.” He goes for his keys, shrugging on his leather jacket.
“Where are you going?” Sam asks, trying to make mental notes of what he’s supposed to be looking into.
Dean grins, happy to be back in his element and it hits Sam like a kick to the gut. “We’re gonna need food. Be back.” The front door slams shut behind him, and Sam situates himself in front of Dean’s laptop and starts searching.
Hours later, Dean’s lounging on the couch, local news on the TV, muted so he doesn’t disturb Sam. Sam is typing away at the laptop like his life depends on it. Periodically, the printer whizzes and clicks and spits out another few pages of pertinent information, but Sam’s been quiet for a long time.
“Doing okay over there?” Dean asks. Sam waves a hand at him, irritated at the interruption, and Dean scowls.
But it’s moments later when Sam says, “Got it!” and his voice sounds loud in the quiet. Immediately, Dean’s on his feet.
“What’d you find?”
Sam smiles as he gathers up the papers and hands them to Dean. “Mayor’s wife, Anita Hardwell, killed their gardener. His name was Matthew Richards. She stabbed him to death, and was found stabbed to death last week, nineteen years after the crime was committed, in her locked cell. She was supposed to be sent to death the next day.
“And since then, three women have been killed in a retirement home in Badger Mound, also in locked rooms. But the retirement home wasn’t always a retirement home - guess what it used to be?” Sam is downright gleeful, and Dean can’t stop himself from smiling right back. God, they’re so morbid.
“I’m gonna guess it used to be the mayor’s house?”
“Right! And the former mayor died about a month ago of natural causes.”
Dean flips through the stack of papers. “It’s too close together to be coincidence.”
“Yep.” Sam sits back in his chair, smug. “You’ve got the property records, life stories of the three women killed so far, the case against Anita twenty years ago, and profiles for her, the gardener, and the mayor.”
“Damn. You’re good.” Dean rearranges the pile, sets it on the table on top of a newspaper and leans down to kiss Sam. For a moment, Sam goes with it, kisses him back hard, but he doesn’t put up with it for long.
He makes a sound and pulls away. “Aren’t you gonna read through those?”
“Mm, later,” Dean says, fingers working at Sam’s belt.
They leave early the next day. Badger Mound is a long drive. It’s not like they’re going to be there before tomorrow no matter how early they leave, but it makes Dean feel better to leave early. And he usually wouldn’t stop, would caffeinate and get to Badger Mound in the early hours of the morning, but he has to think about Sam, and Sam’s not used to long hauls.
The car moves north with relative silence inside; Sam watches the scenery fly by outside the window and Dean taps the wheel, keeping time with the music blaring from the tape deck. It’s comfortable. They’re in their own little bubble here, safe. It’s nice.
After the first album’s done playing, Dean turns the volume down. “You need anything?”
Sam tears his eyes away from the window. “No. Would say something if I did.”
Dean nods, but he doesn’t turn the volume up again. He doesn’t move to change the tape.
“Do you understand what we’re going to do once we get there?”
“Um,” Sam frowns. “No, I don’t, actually.”
“Well, we’re going to have to make a detour to a Kinko’s before we get there. And get you a suit. We’re, uh. Pretending to be FBI investigating the death of Anita Hardwell.” Sam shifts in his seat.
“That is extremely illegal.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t have permits for any of the firearms in the trunk.” Dean gives Sam his best innocent smile.
Sam snorts, but he still looks uneasy. Dean shrugs, “Hey, if you wanna let me do the legwork, that’s fine. But eventually you’re gonna have to learn.”
That’s implying that there will be a next time, which is already presuming too much. “I’ll do it,” Sam says, a bit indignant, because he still thinks he’s got something to prove.
“Okay then.”
They pull into a good-sized town in Utah just after two. There’s a diner just off the highway; Dean pulls in and Sam gathers up the papers they’d acquired last night, flips through them as they’re ordering from a plump little waitress that’s holding the floor by herself.
There’s no air conditioner in the diner. The windows are thrown open and several fans are running, but it does almost nothing to help with the heat. Sam pushes his hair out of his eyes as he flips through the court reporter’s case detail.
“You’re good at that, you know.”
Sam looks up, surprised. “What?”
“The whole researching thing. You’re good at it.” Dean reaches for the manila folder, pulls it open and grabs the first couple pages. It’s a genuine compliment, and Sam’s not used to it. Dean isn’t heavy-handed with praise; even when they were training with weapons, Sam only received a handful of one-word ego boosters.
“Uh. Thanks.”
Sam takes a moment to study Dean as Dean’s reading through a victim profile. He’s different out here on the road, happier. In his natural habitat; he likes driving day in and day out, likes being free. It must kill him to stay in the same place like he does.
“Dean,” he starts, and Dean looks up. “Why do you stay in Page if you’d rather be on the road?”
A little of the happiness fades from his face. “Four Corners, that’s why.” Dean’s mouth works around the words like they leave a particularly bad taste in his mouth.
“What about it?”
“Remember what you read about crossroads?”
Sam tries to remember. “Demons make deals there, right?”
“Yeah,” Dean nods. “And Four Corners is a big freaking crossroads. Biggest in the world. Also the home of a minor hellmouth, which randomly spits out hellspawn. It’s been acting up lately.”
“So you’re there in case that happens.”
“Well, more like I’m there for when it happens. Hellspawn can get pretty nasty.”
Sam laughs to himself. “Wonder if they’d appreciate me adding that to my tour.” Dean grins.
They don’t leave town right away; Dean finds a suit shop and they spend about an hour getting Sam a suit worthy of a federal agent. Sam does not enjoy being measured and remeasured, poked and prodded and jerked around from one suit to another. However, Dean is thoroughly enjoying himself, wandering around behind him and teasing Sam for his stellar measurements.
When they’re done, Sam throws the shopping bag in the trunk and corners Dean against the driver’s side door. “Never heard you complaining,” he growls, and attacks Dean’s mouth with his own. There might be eyes on them, but Dean doesn’t care; he fists a hand in Sam’s hair and makes an encouraging little sound that Sam eats out of his mouth.
Sam pulls away and walks around to the passenger side without another word. When Dean climbs into the driver’s seat, he can feel the smugness radiating from Sam in waves.
Dinner is in a small town just over the Idaho border. It’s threatening rain, neon signs against steel grey clouds that make the night look murky. Dean decides he doesn’t want to drive any longer and gets them a room at a cheap motel on the edge of town. Sam is more than a little skeptical.
Dean has their stuff out of the backseat and the car locked tight before Sam can do much more than get the key out of the lock. He deposits them on the floor just inside the door and cranks the air conditioner up.
There is one bed in the room. Sam’s stomach jumps a little at this. He’s been half-hard since the suit shop in Utah.
It smells sterile, that strange hotel-smell that Sam never gets used to. Dean takes a deep, satisfied breath and starts stripping off his layers. He makes his way to the bathroom and steps inside the door just as he’s undoing the button on his jeans. “You coming?”
It takes Sam’s brain maybe three seconds to catch up to the offer, past the skin of Dean’s back, tanned from their training sessions in the sun, and then he can’t get this clothes off fast enough.
Hot water sluices over both of them. It won’t last long, not in a place like this, but Dean is more intent on Sam than getting them clean. He licks a path down Sam’s neck, swirls his tongue over the hollow at the base of his throat.
Sam plants his hands on Dean’s shoulders and holds on - he’s learned that when Dean’s tongue is on his skin, it’s best to just surrender his control. He always, always makes it worth it. So he leans back against the tile and rolls his hips lazily against Dean, enjoying the warmth of the water and the pressure of Dean’s mouth.
Dean bites the knob of Sam’s collarbone and sucks the skin into his mouth, rolls it over his tongue, and Sam feels the breath catch in his throat.
“Shh,” Dean says, moving lower, tonguing over one nipple and scraping his nails over the other. Sam doesn’t realize he’s arching off the shower wall until Dean has to push him back against it.
It’s nice like this. It’s always nice, but just now they can take it slow, no rush, no frenzy. It holds its own special kind of rolling intensity that fries his nerve-endings, every inch of his skin sparking with sensation. He makes needy little sounds that don’t mean anything, because they could go like this forever.
Dean spends full minutes on each of his nipples like the first time, rolling the nubs between his teeth, pressing down and licking over them. It creates a layered effect, sensation leading into sensation, snowballing until all previous thought about taking it slow are gone.
Sam’s skin is wet, prickly with attention, and Dean moves lower; he plants kisses all over Sam’s stomach, dips his tongue into his bellybutton and circles the rim. Sam groans, broken and nearly lost in the sounds of water hitting their skin and the tub. Dean smiles wickedly against his skin and grips Sam’s cock, strokes a few times before he lowers his head and swallows it down.
It takes every ounce of self-control he possesses to keep from thrusting forward into Dean’s mouth, slick hot suction and the play of his very talented tongue over and around him. He tries to get a hold in Dean’s hair but it’s too short, so he ends up with one hand on Dean’s neck and the other on his shoulder, fingers digging into the muscle there.
It’s just like this for a while - Sam is holding onto his control by a thread and Dean doesn’t seem content to speed things up, doesn’t want to press the issue like he normally does.
“Please,” Sam groans, soft, and it’s lost in the rush of water. It’s cold now, and feels white-hot on his flushed skin. It’s a nice counterpoint to the things Dean is doing to tease him closer and closer. He feels Dean’s fingers probing at his hole, rubbing over and around it and it drives Sam crazy, Dean knows it does.
Just the tip of one finger dips inside and then back out again. Sam’s head thunks back against the shower wall and Dean starts humming, vibration in his throat and on Sam’s cock, and Sam can’t help it anymore, fucks into Dean’s mouth to get more of that delicious friction, more of anything, he’s so close…
As soon as he realizes what he’s done he goes to babble an apology, but Dean’s finger slides into his ass, finds the place that always gets Sam climbing the damn walls, and Sam doesn’t have a chance to warn Dean before he’s coming down his throat, hips snapping forward and muscles straining. Dean doesn’t pull away, keeps pressure on Sam’s prostate and Sam is completely silent, every muscle locked.
When Sam finally comes down from his orgasm, gasping for breath into the stream of water falling into his open mouth, Dean is looking up at him with pupils so blown his eyes are almost completely devoid of green. He’s fucking his own fist, still kneeling in the tub, and Sam has the presence of mind to try and help him with that.
It takes a bit of maneuvering, a bit more muscle than Sam’s generally used to using just after an orgasm, but he finally gets Dean standing, back plastered against Sam’s chest, and Sam leans his head on Dean’s shoulder as he gets his own hand around Dean’s cock.
And Dean doesn’t beg, not usually, but he’s got his head thrown back onto Sam’s shoulder, gasping out, “God - fuck, fuck, please,” as he thrusts into Sam’s hand. Sam strokes faster, harder, tugging Dean’s orgasm out of him, and it doesn’t take long for Dean to come, biting off a curse and shooting all over the tile.
He sags against Sam when he’s done, legs shaking, and he presses a kiss to the part of Sam’s neck he can reach between pants.
“We’re dirtier than when we started,” Sam teases, shivering a little because the cold water doesn’t feel good anymore.
“S’okay,” Dean says, leaning forward to turn the water off. “Tomorrow morning.” They towel off and collapse into bed, crawl under the sheets and turn the lights off without even touching their bags. At least they’ll get an early start in the morning.
The next day goes by in a similar fashion to the first, only now it’s like a switch has been flipped and Sam can’t keep his hands and eyes off Dean. And Sam has settled into actually enjoying this life. This part of it, at least - riding around the country with the windows down, a noble purpose to fulfill and Dean all to himself at night. It’s the type of romanticizing that other people only get to see in movies.
In the back of his mind, he knows that he’ll never have this. He thinks about Jess and their apartment and how happy she is when she looks at him, and he can’t throw all that away. He can’t go with Dean, be this for Dean, no matter how much he wants to.
They can hardly get through the morning before they’re pulling over to fuck in the backseat. An hour before lunch, Sam blows Dean while he’s driving, and Dean has to steer the car onto the shoulder very carefully to avoid crashing. He can’t even pretend to be angry once he’s got it in park.
Dean wishes he could keep his libido in check long enough to just drive, but it’s totally worth it to have Sam writhing against the seat as the sun goes down, driving carefully with one hand down Sam’s pants.
Badger Mound isn’t a small town, but it’s a far cry from a big city. It’s too late to start work when they get there; they check into a motel and bring all of their stuff in, settle in for as long as it takes to clear this up.
“Relax.” Dean helps Sam do up his tie because his fingers are shaking too much to get it done on his own. “Just act like you know what you’re doing.”
Sam doesn’t look convinced. “This is so illegal.”
“You keep getting hung up on that,” Dean says as he pulls on his suit jacket and checks that he’s got the right ID. He hands Sam the wallet that holds his, and Sam looks at it like it might attack him.
“Do you know how many years in jail we could get for this?” He’s trying not to panic, really he is. But he can’t get over exactly what he’s supposed to be doing.
“Between four and eight, depending on the state. Not sure for Montana exactly. But we’re not going to get caught, and if we do we’ll just blow town. It’s easy. Follow my lead, okay?”
Sam looks like he wants to protest more, something else he wants to say, but Dean cuts him off, exasperated. “I’ll do the legwork if it bothers you that much.”
“No, no, I just.” Sam takes a deep breath. “I can do this.”
Dean shakes his head and goes to start the car. Sam grabs the folder of information and looks over his badge one more time before he follows.
“Where are we going first?” Dean asks as they’re pulling away.
“Um. The prison? It’s closer to the story than the retirement home.”
Dean smiles, and as Sam’s nerves calm he takes a moment to appreciate how sharp Dean looks in his suit. He can’t wait to pull it off of him later.
All day of questioning leads them to one conclusion: it’s definitely Matthew Richards’s spirit that killed Anita and the rest of the women. It’s a cut-and-dry issue of finding out where he’s buried so they can get up to a little grave desecration and burn the bones.
Sam is less freaked out about that than he was about impersonating an FBI agent.
Dean changes out of his suit (much to Sam’s disappointment) and Sam does the same as Dean looks up where the guy was buried. He finds it pretty quickly, a cemetery in town, and after midnight they head out with shovels and a map of the cemetery.
When they finally find the graveyard, Dean parks the car out of sight and hands Sam a shovel and takes one for himself, slings it over his shoulder with the bag holding the salt and gasoline. He heads off between the gravestones and Sam follows, trying to step between graves instead of on them. Everytime he missteps and packs down the soft earth even more, he makes a face.
Dean looks behind him and snickers. Sam glares.
“Just wait,” Dean says. “It gets better.”
Just for that, Sam tries to act like it doesn’t bother him when they’re actually digging up the grave. It takes a bit longer than he expects for Dean’s shovel to find the coffin, and as soon as it does he gives up entirely and climbs out.
Ten minutes later, Dean looks so happy to be setting things on fire and Sam watches the flames lick the hole they’ve just dug and wonders if he’ll ever get used to the smell.
“So what do we do now?” Sam asks as he collapses into the passenger seat, dirty and tired.
“I have an idea,” Dean says, voice low and lazily slurring his words. “Blue Earth.”
“Blue Earth?”
“My dad’s got a buddy up there that can teach you about hunting better than I can. The research stuff.” He starts the car and points it back toward the motel.
Sam considers, thinks about the week and a half that he has left out here and shrugs. “Sounds good.”
“I think you’ll like him,” Dean says, lays his arm across the back of the seat, fingers tangling in Sam’s hair. Sam hums his agreement and settles back in the seat.
Two days later, they pull up in front of a church just inside the city limits of Blue Earth, Minnesota. Dean shuts the car off and Sam frowns at him. “Here?” he asks, looking out at the church again, and Dean doesn’t answer before he’s getting out.
Sam waits a moment and follows.
Before he can ask again, Dean’s grabbing their bags out of the backseat. As he closes the door behind him, he gives Sam a pointed look. “You remember what we talked about?”
Sam nods and looks away, takes his bag from Dean and tries not to let his hand linger too long. Even from outside, it feels like the tall steeple is watching him, judging him. His skin itches. He clears his throat, scratches at the back of his neck.
Dean plasters on this big fake grin, like it’s nothing, and walks right up the steps.
The door opens before he gets there. The pastor is shorter than Dean, but not by much, already smiling as he opens the screen wide and gives Dean the sort of one-armed hug that tells Sam they’ve known each other for a long time.
And if this man has connection in the network of hunters… maybe he knows Sam’s father.
If he wasn’t nervous before, he is now. He can tell his face is hot, but he no longer feels dirty; rather, he’s eager to find out what this man knows why they’re here. Anything else becomes background information.
He grips his bag a little tighter and climbs the stairs up to the church.
There’s a moment, standing in the pews of the church, where Sam has a strange urge to go to his knees and pray. For salvation, forgiveness - for what, exactly, he isn’t sure. He just feels like he should.
The odd compulsion goes away almost instantly, but it leaves something deeper than the urge behind - something’s been given to him in that off-beat moment. Something sticks to him.
That night, when he goes to sleep - completely alone on a too-small cot in the parlor - he kneels on the cold stone floor and prays. He isn’t sure how it goes, because he’s never done it before. He’s never heard anyone do it before. He isn’t sure if there’s a secret to getting God to listen, but he kneels there until his knees ache, praying to a silent entity about everything and nothing.
He sleeps better than he thinks he ever has.
Breakfast is strangely stoic. Dean and Pastor Jim exchange stories and small-talk, catch each other up to the past few years, and Sam just picks at his oatmeal and tries not to eavesdrop. He lets his mind drift, and doesn’t hear when he’s actually being spoken to.
“Earth to Sam.” Dean isn’t waving a hand in front of Sam’s face, but he can tell that he’d very much like to.
“Yeah, sorry,” he says, flushing. God, he was never this unsure of himself before he met Dean.
“Dean was just telling me about your first hunt,” Jim says, and Sam smiles politely. “About your research skills.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. If you’d like, I can teach you about the side of… dealing with things that doesn’t consist of setting things on fire.” He smiles wryly at Sam. Dean snorts into his oatmeal and looks up, guilty.
“Yeah, sure. That’d be great.” Sam’s eager about this part, something that won’t feel so foreign to him. Something that won’t make him feeling like he’s stepping on Dean’s toes.
They start with Mythology. Greek, Norse, Roman, Egyptian, Sumerian… Pastor Jim has books on them all. Sam picks through them cautiously, makes notes on the blank pages at the back of his father’s journal. He keeps it open in front of him alongside the book of creatures, trying to suss out what’s important enough to note.
Dean sits in at a desk in the corner, studying his own tome and sipping his coffee.
They’re still sitting there when, hours later, Jim calls Dean out of the room to speak with him. There’s been this mounting tension in the room all day, but Sam’s been too preoccupied to feel it; Dean has been reading the same page for an hour now because he can’t concentrate.
Jim shuts the door behind them and leads Dean away down the hall.
“Dean, sit down,” he says when they reach the nave. Dean frowns and does as he’s told, rests his elbows on his knees and watches as Jim takes the bench next to him. When he speaks again, his voice is cautious. “There’s something I think you should know about Sam.”
For some reason unknown to him, Dean’s stomach plummets. “Yeah?” he asks, barely disguising the concern in his voice.
“The journal he carries… it’s from his father, isn’t it?”
“That’s what he says, yeah. Says someone left it for him when he was eight.”
“I see,” Jim looks down at the floor, and then fixes Dean with his most sincere look. Dean squirms a little. “I might know who that journal belonged to.”
Dean is up off the bench in record time. “Let me go get Sam,” he says, breathless, and is halfway to the hall when Jim calls him back.
“You can tell him after I’ve told you. I think he’d appreciate it more coming from you.”
Jim is silent for a moment, and Dean takes his seat again. He forces himself to be patient and not urge the man into speaking.
“I gave his father that journal when he was starting out, after his wife died. I gave that journal to John Winchester.”
Dean blinks. “Excuse me?” There’s a dangerous glint in his eyes, but Jim takes a deep breath and continues.
“Twenty-two years ago, your father turned up on my doorstep. A psychic in Lawrence had told him where I was and what I could teach him. He was supposed to use that journal to record his experiences, things that would come in handy later. I haven’t seen it again before today, but that’s hardly the point. Your father, Sam’s father, left that for him at the orphanage years after he dropped him off.”
Dean’s up off the pew before Jim can finish his sentence. “My brother is dead,” he hisses, and his words reverberate in the empty space. “He died when he was six months old in the fire that killed my mom.”
Pastor Jim just looks at him sadly.
“It… he can’t be. It’s not - Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“I won’t say a word against John Winchester, but you have to understand the situation he was in at the time-"
“He wouldn’t have lied to me.” Dean’s hands shake at his sides, curled into fists because that’s an automatic response, and he wants to punch Jim just a little for suggesting that John would do this.
Because this isn’t about Sam anymore. This is about Dean; Dean’s fragile faith in his father, Dean’s unquestioning obedience and the values he’s lived by his entire life. It’s about his trust and the things he’s been through and the unshakeable hero-worship that has yet to be toppled.
“He wouldn’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Jim says. “I’m just telling you what I know.”
“Well, don’t.” Dean sets his jaw and walks away. Jim watches him go; for a moment, it seems like he’ll go back to the room they just came from, where Sam is still pouring over texts. At the last moment Dean thinks better of it and goes the other way, down a set of stairs leading down to the rooms they’re occupying during their stay.
The next morning, Sam’s bags are packed and sitting on the chair next to his bed before he even has a chance to blink awake.
He stares at it, eyes hazy, and doesn’t have time to think about what it means before Dean’s pushing open the door to his room. “Morning, sunshine. Car’s leaving in five minutes with or without you.”
And then he’s gone. Sam stares at the place where Dean was seconds ago and wonders what just happened. Maybe his dad needs him for something, and he’s got to drop Sam off first? It’s the first and only thing he can think of as he dresses and gets out to the car. It’s the only thing he can fathom this early in the morning.
He’s still pulling on his belt when he walks out, bag slung over his shoulder, three minutes later. Pastor Jim is standing at the church’s front doors, looking out into the bright morning; Sam can hear the Impala rumbling in the dirt lot next to the building.
“I guess we’re leaving,” Sam says, still confused, and Jim’s smile is a little weak.
“Dean’s got some things he wants to take care of. I’m sorry you couldn’t stay longer.”
They say their goodbyes shortly, because thirty seconds later Dean’s honking the horn and Sam scrambles down the front steps to the passenger door. He waves back at Jim and climbs in, drops his bag over the back of the seat.
“What’s the rush?”
“Stuff I gotta do,” is Dean’s immediate, gruff response. He’s in one of his unapproachable moods; he rarely gets this way around Sam, but something about this morning has set him off. Sam lets it go because he’s too tired to fight it and sinks back into his seat.
Dean still hasn’t said two words when they stop for gas hours later. He throws a bag at Sam when he comes out of the convenience store and still doesn’t say anything, starts the car again and pulls back out onto the highway. Led Zeppelin is at ear-bleed level now, too loud to think or hear anything.
It’s more than a little frustrating. Sam finally reaches out and jerks the dial down, music fading into silence. “I’m not talking over Led Zeppelin, Dean. What’s going on?”
Dean glares at him, honestly glares, heat and anger all welling up to the surface, and Sam shrinks back in his seat. Dean turns the volume back into place and pretends that Sam isn’t there.
And Sam, out of options, watches the scenery out of the window and subjects himself to music he isn’t fond of, tries not to over-think anything and wonders what he did wrong.
In the motel that night, Dean can no longer hide behind loud guitar riffs.
He gets them two queens, sets his own bag on the first as soon as he opens the door. It bothers Sam - why is Dean suddenly so far away from him? Something had to set Dean off like this, but he thinks back and can’t remember anything that might have happened.
“I’m going out,” Dean grunts, when it’s clear the tension in the room isn’t going to clear. The air is stretched thin, tense, so heavy it weighs on Sam’s skin. He just nods his agreement as Dean grabs his coat and the keys and closes the door behind him.
He gets back at three in the morning.
The Burger King bag that Sam’s dinner came in is still on the little dinette table. His dad’s journal is there beside it and the TV is set to M.A.S.H reruns. The ending theme is just playing for the umpteenth time when Dean kicks the door open and stumbles in, automatically rousing Sam.
“Dean?” He asks, fuzzy.
“Go to sleep,” Dean says, and it’s not kind. It’s harsh and sharp-edged and Dean smells like cigarette smoke and alcohol. As he closes the door, the breeze carries in another scent.
Dean smells like perfume.
Sam clenches his fists.
But Dean isn’t his. Dean isn’t anyone’s. He belongs to himself and even though Sam’s killing his own healthy relationship to be here, it doesn’t matter. At least not to Dean, apparently.
Sam grits his teeth and rolls over, even if he doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
The next day is worse. Sam wouldn’t have believed it was possible if he wasn’t there in the passenger seat. He can tell he’s unwanted and doesn’t know exactly what turn of events placed him there; days ago they were happy.
But Dean doesn’t even ask him what he wants to eat or if he wants anything, he just grabs whatever he thinks Sam will like (and that’s crediting him with actually putting thought into it, which Sam is starting to doubt) and brings it to him.
And there’s no music in the tape deck. The silence is awkward, stretched between them like a living, breathing thing. The bad part is that Sam’s not even looking to dissuade Dean from being mad at him. At this point, he’d be happy to be the focus of Dean’s anger if Dean would just tell him what it was he did.
The tires humming on the pavement and the purr of the engine are the only sounds that accompany them that day, and by the time they stop for the night, Sam’s ready to scream just to hear something different.
Pastor Jim can’t be right.
He can’t be.
What are the odds that Sam is his brother, anyway? One in a million? The guy just happens to get a job that puts him through Page every two weeks, they just happen to meet in a bar one night, completely by chance? It isn’t likely. There are lots of leather-bound volumes like that, like the one Jim gave his father.
Dad wouldn’t lie. Not about this, not like this. Of that fact Dean is absolutely certain. His brother died in a house fire when he was six months old, killed by the same thing that killed their mother. John’s entire crusade was about finding the thing that killed them both. He wouldn’t lie to Dean about this, not for so long.
That’s all. Sam just has a similar journal, also from a hunter. He isn’t even sure the guy that left it for him was his father.
Oh god.
Sam couldn’t be his brother. Brothers don’t do the things that they’ve done. There was some sort of holy fire that’d come and strike you down if you tried. Dean has to believe that; he has to cling to that hope because if he doesn’t, he’d have to admit that Jim is right.
His final confirmation comes when they’re on their way back to Page. Sam is asleep, or pretending to sleep. The TV is on, not loud but loud enough, and Dean digs around in Sam’s bag for the journal. He looks at it critically, looks at the handwriting and mentally compares it to his father’s.
And doesn’t know why he didn’t see it before.
Dean spends the rest of the night in the hotel bathroom with the door shut and locked, trying not to throw up.
Sam is his brother. Sam is his brother, and Dean has fucked him. Dean has been fucked by him, has sucked his dick and tasted his come and knows all of his tells, knows what he sounds like and looks like and feels like when he’s seconds away from coming.
And Sam knows all the same things about him.
He is a sick fuck. He is a sick, sick fuck and he can’t stop thinking about how his baby brother feels inside of him.
Dean sneaks the journal back into Sam’s bag and looks at his slack face. Must have fallen asleep for real while he was pretending. Dean is going to hell. Dad lied to him, and Dean can’t stop shaking.
He takes a shower in the morning and can’t scrub himself clean. He wants to call Dad but his hands won’t still and Sam is suddenly glued to his side. The rough edges of the thing that has shattered inside rubs against his insides, makes him feel the gaping hole in the center of his chest.
Every breath aches with it.
His skin is rubbed raw, red and painful by the time he gets finished scrubbing.
It doesn’t help. Dean still feels filthy.
Sam corners Dean in the kitchen when they get settled back in Page.
“Man, what’s wrong with you?” He’s genuinely concerned. Dean’s closed off and Sam can’t get through to him. It scares the hell out of him.
True to form of late, Dean just glares.
“You’ve gotta talk to me,” Sam urges.
“I don’t want to talk to you. Get out of my way.”
Sam doesn’t move. Dean goes to shove him, but despite his experience, he is the one who taught Sam about hand-to-hand. Sam’s got a reach Dean doesn’t, manages to manhandle him back into his corner.
“What did I do?” he asks once Dean is no longer trying to escape.
There’s a solitary moment when the storm clouds that have darkened Dean’s face for the past few days clear. The brilliant green of Dean’s eyes is dulled, and something’s shattered in his gaze.
“You didn’t do anything,” he says, voice nearly breaking. “Please, Sam, don’t make me tell you.”
“I want to know.”
“No,” Dean says, shaking his head. “No, kid, you don’t.”
Sam sighs, frustrated, and reels around, leaving Dean an opportunity to escape. “You can’t keep it all to yourself all the time, Dean.”
“I can. Trust me, man,” and his voice is pleading. “Do not ask me to tell you this. Just… I’m gonna leave, okay? I’m gonna go away and you’ll never have to see me again. Go marry your girl.”
The bottom drops out of Sam’s stomach.
“What?” he says, turning again. He can’t process how fast this has turned against him, and he doesn’t understand why Dean wants to leave.
“I’m gonna step back and let you do your thing. I’m in the way.”
No. No, Dean can’t just do this. He can’t walk in and out of Sam’s life, play merry hell with his mind and his feelings and then just give up. Sam cares for Dean too much to let him do that.
“Why?” he ignores the way his voice breaks, focuses on Dean’s face and the way he won’t look him in the eye.
Dean looks down at the floor, and when he looks back up he’s wearing the most earnest expression Sam’s ever seen. “I can’t do this anymore, Sammy.”
“Can’t do…” Sam trails off, feels his eyes prickle and pushes it away, because the very last thing he needs right now is vulnerability. “Can’t do what, Dean? What happened?”
“This. There’s a girl out there who thinks you’re working right now, and I’m dragging you around the country to hunt ghosts. It’s not right.” Dean clears his throat and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the shutters have fallen closed behind them.
He’s lying. That’s what Dean does when he lies.
“No,” Sam backs up, pushes the hair out of his face. “No, that isn’t the reason. You wouldn’t… Dean, I can’t do anything about it if you don’t tell me.”
“You can’t do anything about it anyway, so stop asking.”
“No.”
“Damnit, Sam.” Dean’s voice is deadly quiet. “Why can’t you just trust me on this? You don’t want to know. Leave it.”
Sam opens his mouth, but doesn’t say anything. No matter what he says, he isn’t going to get a response out of Dean this way. He’s shut down, closed off, and there is one way Sam knows to get him to open up.
Dean might not want it at the moment, but Sam has a feeling this isn’t about them. It’s about something else, something that happened up at Pastor Jim’s, and he has to know.
Dean’s backed into the corner as it is. Sam plants his hands on either side of Dean’s head and leans in close, lets them breathe the same air for a moment, before he brushes his lips lightly against Dean’s.
He tastes saline, and then something hits him hard in the chest. He stumbles backwards, gasping for air; he doesn’t know if he’s shocked because of the sudden lack of oxygen or that Dean would… he doesn’t know. But it hurts, damnit, in both senses. He grips the countertop with one hand as he tries to catch his breath.
When he looks up, hurt, Dean’s chest is heaving. His hands are clenched into fists and he’s looking at Sam like Sam just killed his puppy.
Sam stays put this time.
They don’t speak, trying to get themselves under control - now that he’s breathing properly, Sam can’t stop himself from crying. At least part of it is frustration, he knows, because he’s about ready to do something drastic to get Dean to tell him what the fuck is actually going on in his head. But when he looks up, Dean is crying too, one single tear rolling down his face, and that’s something Sam’s never seen him do.
“I don’t… I don’t understand.” Sam gasps.
"It’s better this way.” Dean’s voice is controlled to the point of breaking from the strain, and he closes his eyes, leans against the wall. “Please.”
Sam takes a shaky breath and straightens, leaning against the counter. He hates to do this, hates to see the look on Dean’s face when he says it, but it’s for a good cause.
“I’ll call Pastor Jim,” he says, speaking to the floor so he doesn’t have to see. “I’ll ask him what happened and he’ll tell me. I’d rather hear it from you, but I see you don’t care about that.” Even as he turns to leave, it feels like something critical is being ripped out of his chest. He won’t call, wouldn’t dream of betraying Dean like that, but if this is something small they can overcome… it’s sad to say that he’d rather carry on like this than face these trips every week without Dean to come to.
“Sam,” Dean whispers, and Sam can barely hear him. He stops with his hand resting on the door frame, but doesn’t turn around. Maybe it’s better this way. “Sam, I…”
There’s a long pause, and Sam nearly turns before Dean clears his throat again.
“Pastor Jim saw your father’s journal. He told me… he told me that he gave your father that journal when he was just getting started. Your father…”
All of Sam’s nerves are screaming at him, his skin feels too tight.
“Your father is John Winchester.”
It takes Sam a minute to catch up, to process that, and before he can be more than dumbfounded, Dean speaks again, voice heavy with grief.
“You’re my brother, Sammy.” He isn’t trying to hide that he’s crying now, and Sam…
Sam turns, grips the door frame so hard he can feel the strain in his fingers, and looks at Dean. “No,” he says, quietly. “No, it can’t… that isn’t…”
"I never told you,” Dean says, and now that he’s started he can’t stop. “I never told you about my little brother. He was six months old when my mother died. Dad always told me that he - you - died with her. He must have…” But Dean can’t say it, and Sam can’t speak around the constriction of his lungs, can’t form words out of his thoughts. He wants to run away, wants to curl up in a ball and sink through the floor.
He’s always wanted his birth family. He’s always wanted to know who they are, what they’ve done, who he looks like. Why did he have to find out like this? Why now, why here?
It’s the tip of the iceberg as far as questions are concerned, but he can’t hold it back anymore. The door frame supports him as he puts one hand over his eyes and cries until he can’t breathe.
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