p. 4
It’s no secret that through the majority of Dean’s youth he wanted with every fiber of his being to be his father. However, if there was a runner up, a -somewhat- close second, Dean would be Jack Kerouac. A dog-eared copy of On The Road that smells like blood and coffee stains that’s worn soft on every page from too many readings has taken up permanent residence in the bottom of his duffle. He knows Sam knows about it just like Dean knows about the packet full of film negatives Sam keeps in the bottom of his. They don’t talk about it.
He stole it from a high school library a decade and a half ago and never really looked back. He’d picked it out of a pile for the title and slipped it into his pocket for the blurb, this horrible, wonderful sense of kinship and foreboding building in his mind.
Sal and Dean. On the road.
How was Dean supposed to resist?
The book was devastating and enlightening in every way, and some terrible comfort Dean drew from it was within the highlights and scribbled notes in the margins by some nameless, faceless student of the past who had undertaken the responsibility of circling every significant thought Sal has about Dean, writing ‘obsessive’ and ‘standard of relationship’ and ‘Dean vs. women/responsibilities/domesticity’ and ‘Dean=freedom?’ over and over again, highlighting lines and lines and lines about madness; thirst, hunger, insanity.
He wonders if the person who did all that scribbling and highlighting understood life on the road. He wonders what they found when they read that book.
Hell, he wonders if Jack Kerouac himself ever really understood those concepts he was talking about.
Dean ate up all of his other books, his poetry, swung by that part of the world and stood next to his grave with some vague hope that the bastard was still hunting, still so mad for life that he wouldn’t accept death and Dean would have a chance to look him in the eye, ask him how he dipped a quill in Dean’s blood and wrote a story with it.
Essentially Dean would summarize the story as one about madness. Like those margin notes said. Obsession, thirst, insanity.
Dean wears all that on his sleeve. He’s got a bad habit of indulging in food and drink and women, and a fixation, a preoccupation, an addiction, on, for, to, his brother.
And the damndest thing of it all is that Dean didn’t really realize until now that Sam’s on the road, too.
Where does he put it all?
Dean doesn’t try to hide it, so he had assumed that Sam didn’t either. But that just can’t be true. Ghost girls don’t see things that aren’t there. Grown men who have fractions of the shit Sam’s had buckle under the weight of themselves.
Where does Sam put it all?
Dean eyes his brother from across the table.
The diner is one of those throw-back numbers that’s all bright American colors and smells thick like American food, with waiters in starched shirts and perfect bowties and bright smiles. There’s a jukebox in the corner with neon piping that’s lined up for the next half hour, the tiles are alternating black and whites, and the windows have frosted framing. Dean’s been in this restaurant before. Nothing changes.
Sam’s looking over the thick, laminated menu that could double as a brick under proper circumstances: dishes catering for breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, and subsections thereof for Weight Watchers and vegan and gluten free. Sam reads over each entry, every ingredient and description, pretending that he isn’t going to get just a salad.
“Afternoon,” a scrawny, freckled boy in the restaurant garb sidles up to the side of the table and introduces. “My name’s Cameron and I’ll be your waiter this afternoon. Is there anything I can get either of you to drink?”
Sam looks to Dean.
“Water,” Dean mutters. He has this gross, absolutely correct feeling that if he orders a soda or a beer Sam will too. “And we’re ready to order.”
Between hunts is supposed to be easy. The air is supposed to be clear and the knot under Dean’s left shoulder blade is supposed to ease up a little bit.
Sam sifts through newspapers while they wait for their food, flipping and scanning and reading through one article about a veteran returning home to a dog that missed her dearly that has nothing to do with anything, but it makes Sam smile and Dean wishes that were enough to thaw the bitter chill pumping through his veins.
Cameron arrives again with their waters and Sam thanks him graciously as he set the glasses down. Dean watches Sam’s eyes skip from Cameron’s face to his skinny wrist setting out the glass and back again.
Dean scrubs a hand against his forehead and tries to do some fast math. Best case scenario Dean picked Sam up at twenty-two and there’s been ten years, ten fucking years, of Dean just not noticing the way Sam gives Dean’s burger a small disdainful glance when Cameron sets it in front of him before turning to his salad.
Dean chews methodically, tearing off bites without tasting an ounce of his burger. His jaw works in a mechanical circuit, the cogs of his joint churning as he watches Sam eat - two bites of lettuce, three turns of the plate around, bring the fork up, read something more interesting than the food, lower the fork back down, one stab of chicken, and the pattern repeats.
Ten whole years Sam’s done that same dance around his plate and it never meant anything to Dean.
“You done?” Sam asks and Dean blinks and realizes that his plate is burger free. “Alright then.” Sam smiles a bright white wedge that splits his face and dimples up his cheeks as he stands and pushes his plate away in the universal ‘I’m finished’ gesture as he starts to gather his things. “Let’s hit it. I think I found something in Tulsa that looks like-“
“Sit down, Sam.”
There’s something potentially remarkable about the reflection of that deadened tone Sam used on him to start this whole mess on Dean’s lips, but Dean doesn’t really have the patience to hash it all out in metaphor and detail the way Sam would.
They’re just three flat words to ruin a day.
The corners of Sam’s lips wobble. “What?”
Dean closes his eyes and takes a deep breath and when he opens him again he’s jammed a smile into his mouth so hard his face hurts. “You’re not done eating, man. We don’t have to leave on my account.” The words ring loud and gaudy.
“I’m not that hungry.” Sam shrugs.
Dean’s lips fight against him to twist sourly, but he keeps them in order. “You ate four Twizzlers in the last fourteen hours. You wanna reevaluate?”
Sam licks his lips pink and shiny and shifts nervously on his feet. Dean can practically see the pulse in his neck start to jump and the cold sweat break against his hairline. “We should…” Sam’s voice drops. “We should really get going.”
“Sam.” The fake smile tightens and gets impossibly faker. “You’re not finished eating.”
Dean can’t fathom what taut, frigid expression is clouding up his face but he knows that it isn’t going anywhere in the face of Sam’s defiance, just like Dean isn’t going anywhere. He makes no move to get up from the table.
He sweeps his hand towards the other side of the table and jerks his head in indication for Sam to sit the hell down.
Sam sits slowly, like if he takes his time Dean will change his mind.
The way Dean sees it Sam has two outs here. He can finish his salad and there’s no problem and Dean’s blown this entire situation completely out of proportion, or he can’t and there is and Dean’s been a fucking tool for ten years. Dean’s going to be pissed either way.
Sam stares, bewildered with the sudden change of routine, and Dean shoves the plate of wilting greens forward center.
“You’re a growing boy, Sammy,” Dean says, nickname like a razor off of his tongue. “Eat up.”
Sam’s mouth twitches downwards in a childish, nearly petulant way before he looks up and catches the flint from Dean’s eyes and everything about him firms in stubbornness and suddenly they’re having an old fashioned Western-style face-off over a plate of salad.
This would be the dumbest thing Dean’s ever done except for how it isn’t at all.
Sam grits his teeth around a smile and those long fingers splay in the air and pluck up the fork, make it look slender and delicate in comparison to the broadness of his palm.
Dean slings one arm over the back of the booth and watches with unwavering eyes. It’s not hard, Sam. Just put it in your mouth, chew, and swallow. It’s not fucking difficult.
And Sam does.
He spears through another bite, glances up to see if Dean’s still watching, Dean’s still watching, and Sam puts it in his mouth, chews, swallows, breathes out heavily, and swallows again. And then Sam does it again. And then Sam does it again. Dean doesn’t blink until the tines of Sam’s fork scrapes against cold ceramic.
Dean looks at the smear of dressing and trifling bits of lettuce plastered to the plate and then up at Sam, who’s grinding down so hard on his teeth Dean can hear it across the table, and Dean asks himself if he’s satisfied.
And no.
He’s not.
He throws some money on the table, snorting and shaking his head as he wonders what he expected.
-
Sam’s fidgety the entire ride back to the motel. He’s strung taut, like he’s been fashioned into a violin and Dean’s been twisting the pegs of so hard that his strings don’t even need contact to squeal, to snap.
Dean would feel sympathetic except for how he’s in the same boat.
He’s tempted, so very tempted, to drive right past the Days Inn, damn their shit still stuffed halfway under the beds, and just keep going for hours and hours, trap Sam in the car and make him digest and absorb. That’s a little too petty, even for him, though.
Sam’s out of the car and scratching at their door number 11 even before Dean’s shifted into park.
“Hey,” he says over his shoulder as he jerks the zipper on his duffle. “I’m gonna go for a jog real fast, okay?
“Yeah, great idea,” Dean retorts smartly. “Let’s go for a jog.”
“Wh-what?” Sam’s voice wavers.
“Jogging, you and me, man. Let’s go.” Dean jerks his head towards the door. “C’mon.” The word is almost a sneer out of his mouth. He doesn’t own sneakers, he doesn’t own sweats, and he hasn’t run for recreational not-about-to-die reasons ever, but he’ll keep up with Sam step for step today.
A stroke of helplessness passes frantically over Sam’s features and he flexes and clenches his fingers at his side. The smile he finally plasters on his face is shaky. “Yeah. Yeah, sure. Let me use the bathroom first and then we can-”
He makes a step for the bathroom door but Dean puts himself in the space between with wide shoulders and hard eyes.
“What is your problem?” Sam snaps, lips tight so that there’s too much teeth and anxiety in the words. His eyes get wide and start to roll between Dean and the bathroom door.
“What’s my problem?” Dean repeats, eyebrows crawling up his forehead towards his hairline. “I don’t think I’m the one with the problem here, Sam!”
“What are you even talking about?” Sam’s voice goes high and tight and he holds his hands stiff out in front of him in absolute exasperation, like Dean is the one being ridiculous here.
“I’m talking,” Dean snarls and jabs out a countering hand at Sam, Sam’s stomach, “about you pulling a Mary Kate Olsen on me, Sam!”
Dean might as well have hit him.
Every soft tissue of Sam goes rigid and Dean can practically hear that blunt-force-blood-chilled-glass-shattered echo that assaults the senses when all securities and comforts are torn right out from underneath you and you stand, teetering and unbalanced, on the edge of terror and uncertainty.
Sam swallows compulsively, licks his lips, blinks and blinks and blinks again as he tries to stammer out a, “Wh-wh-what d-d-”
Dean’s lip curls. Sam’s still trying to lie to him; Sam’s still trying to play this off like it’s no big deal.
“You didn’t think I’d figure it out sooner or later?” Dean demands.
The tenuous burst of laughter that warbles from Sam’s lips drive him further up the wall.
“What?” he barks. “This is funny to you, Sam?”
Sam stops laughing but not looking fraught. “This is the farthest thing from funny. You’re being ridiculous, Dean. If you could hear yourself-”
“Don’t,” Dean growls warning. “Don’t you dare tell me I’m being ridiculous, or that I’m imagining things, or that I’m making it up. How long did you think I wouldn’t notice, Sam?”
“Notice what, Dean?” Sam hisses, backing up as Dean advances through sludgy thick air that’s hot and dry with tension.
“Your manorexia, or what-the-fuck ever!” The insensitivity falls from Dean’s lips and Sam flinches with his body. Spiteful satisfaction swirls, thick and cold like molasses, deep in his belly.
“I don’t,” Sam starts to sneer.
“You don’t what?” Dean advances again and Sam’s shoulders strike the wall between the bed and the door. “You don’t read while we eat? You don’t think I’m some food sucking fatty? You don’t drink half your beers and set them aside? What, Sam? What is it you don’t do, other than eat?”
“Shut up,” Sam hisses.
“So I guess the real question here is: when were you gonna tell me?” Dean plows right over Sam, voice cutting. “Huh, Sam? When the fuck was this going to come up? When you pass out on a hunt? When you’re too busy not eating to watch my back?”
“Don’t you dare!” Sam snaps, eyes flashing. “Don’t you even dare! I always eat before we go out! I would never-”
Sam’s voice falls out as he realizes that there’s no denial in his voice anymore. The blood drains out of his face all at once and his eyes go glassy and lost.
Dean grits his teeth so hard his jaw aches. He feels like he’s died a thousand miniature deaths in his life and this is just another blow, another funeral that he doesn’t have the time to mourn at.
“Yeah, yeah, okay,” Sam starts talking, too fast, too frantic as he licks his lips and shift on his feet. “You wanna talk about it? Yeah, alright, cool. Dean Winchester never wants to talk about anything but he wants to talk about this. You want to talk about my kidneys and how they look like shrinky dink, Dean?” A harsh bark of laughter bursts from his mouth and Dean flinches. “You want to talk about how my blood pressure is so sad the doctors at the institution asked me if I’ve ever had a stroke? Is this what you wanted to talk about, Dean? Is this where you saw this conversation going? Mr. No-Chick-Flick-Moments over here who didn’t want to talk about Dad or Hell or Benny wants to talk about eating with me, yeah, alright.” He gestures ‘bring it on’ violently, losing coordination as he grows steadily more hysterical. “Come on, Dean, let’s go. Let’s have a brother-to-brother chat about how I haven’t had a full stomach since I was fifteen. Come on. Come on!”
There is no one in this whole entire universe that Dean wants to punch bloody and broken more than his own brother in this moment, no person or thing he could even imagine wanting to hurt as badly as he wants to hurt this tall man with those long, thin finger and that broad chest that’s hitching and spasm with choppy breaths that barely scrape he edges of his lungs before they’re huffing back out. Dean wants to hurt him. His own failures looking at him right in the face, reflected in his little brother and he wants to beat the stupid out of Sam, hit the wrong right out of him and make him perfect like Dean used to think he was. There is not a thing that is going to put out the inferno building in Dean’s blood, roaring so loudly in his ears that he can barely hear anything outside of his knuckles popping as he clenches his fist against the urge to slam into Sam’s face again and again, beat it black and bloody and smeared until there’s nothing left to hate, nothing left to love.
Sam’s always been prone to fits, ever since he was a baby. Those loud, explosive bursts of everything he’s keeping bottled up flooding out of him violently. He throws things, he hurts things, he shouts things, and then he’s done.
Only, instead of turning it out this time, Sam implodes. He fists his hands into his hair so tight that his knuckles white out and his eyes go glossy, and then he pulls. For one crazy moment Dean is sure, absolutely positive, that Sam is going to start tearing out his hair; cutting and ripping until his scalp is clean and for the one moment Dean is sure, absolutely positive, that Sam’s hair is his last defense. Cutting it all off, tearing it all off, would mean something so much bigger than all of this.
“Sam.” Dean’s voice creaks on the word and that molasses turns into ice.
Sam’s breathing like air is broken glass, pulling harder.
“Sam!”
The tension snaps and so does some of Sam’s hair before Dean gets in there, grabbing Sam’s wrists and pinning him still.
“Stop it!” Dean intones frantically, scared in a way that he hasn’t been since Sam started cracking up with hallucinations of Lucifer. “What the hell, Sam?”
Sam’s sucking in these deep, savage breaths like the air thinned out and there’s not enough in the room, in the world, to fill his lungs. Dean’s fingers are biting into the thin skin on Sam’s wrists, grinding bones. His skin is cold but his cheeks are flushed bright red like mortification and fury that radiates heat, rolls out of him in waves and into the air they’re sharing, into Dean.
“Sam.” His voice comes out the shattered shade of what it used to be. His eyes burn, his head hurts, and he feels old all over. “Sammy, I don’t know what to do here, man,” he admits, words tasting like spoiled pride and fear.
“You don’t know what to do,” Sam repeats, mania bleeding in. “You don’t know what to do. Okay. Okay, Dean.” The words come out quick and choppy. He nods like he’s a bobble head on a bumpy road and wrings his hands out of Dean’s grasp. “You don’t know what to do. Alright.” He shoves Dean, hard and sharp at the shoulder, knocking him backwards.
Sam makes for the door, flighty in a way that defies definition. Dean doesn’t know anything in this situation but he knows that if he lets Sam leave through that door Dean is never going to see his brother again.
Dean lunges frantically with his whole body, slamming into Sam when he’s got his fist clenched round the handle, twisting when Dean’s hand envelops his and the sliver of the outside world seeping in through the wedge Sam’s opened gets cut off with a sharp crack as the momentum of Dean slams them both into the slate of wood.
“Jesus!” Sam coughs, spinning and elbowing. “Get off!” The tears spill as Dean pins him to the door, face going even redder like it used to when he really started to bawl as a child, demanding where their father was, where their mother was, why they couldn’t stay. “Get off of me, Dean!” he screams, winging out with a fist that Dean catches and pins before it clips him.
Sam wrings his hands and shouts a wordless sound, working blindly for whatever freedom he can get so hard that he’s welting his own wrists, bowing his own bones maybe in some muted hope that if Dean knows that he’s hurting Sam he’ll let go.
Dean grips harder, slams Sam’s hand to the door up above his head and presses down so hard his palms start to numb.
Sam shouts, “Dean, get off!” with a cracking voice and struggles with his shoulders.
Dean smashes their chests together with a hollow thunk of empty cavities and ribs clashing, pressing Sam deeper into the door, pinned like a crazy man in a Dean straight jacket, and settles himself to wait the tantrum out, screaming, “You need to calm down!”
And Sam, the stupid son of a bitch, kisses him.
Dean’s tasted desperation in muted flavors on so many lips in so many bars in his days from women who just need a moment of his time, a moment of his attention and appreciation to keep them over until they can find someone prowling those bars who’s willing to do the job full time. He’s never had the distinct displeasure of tasting it in distilled ferocity until now, with Sam angling his jaw hard and sharp into him with a wet, open mouth like if he makes it really, really filthy Dean’s going to flinch away, scalded and offended that Sam, his brother, would stoop this low, cross this line. He wants Dean to let go and not care what happens to Sam after.
Dean wants Sam to go fuck himself.
Dean wants Sam.
So Dean fights back, bites back, opens up to Sam and sinks his teeth deep into the base of Sam’s lower lip and drags, scraping against tender wet tissue viciously, roughly laying absolute claim to Sam’s mouth and the breathy gasp caught inside of it until he tugs back and runs out of runway to dig his teeth into and Sam’s lip returns to its rightful place with an elastic snap. Dean hopes it swells like a motherfucker.
The air in the room goes stiff and stale, inexplicably thicker and colder than it was fifteen minutes before the Winchesters arrived and Dean feels stupid having to stare through it to look at Sam, who’s looking back, and they’re looking at each other like stupid idiot brothers with sore throats from screaming who just kissed.
Dean blinks.
Sam’s face is flushed and his eyelashes are sticky thick and his lips are wet and red and the whole of him exudes this warm, living heat that Dean soaks up from proximity, every place where they’re still pressed together across their chests and down their thighs, up to where Dean’s still holding Sam’s wrists above their heads.
Sam blinks.
When they kiss again it’s a whirlwind mash of lips and tongues and cutting teeth that neither of them is sure of who initiated.
Sam arches into him and Dean presses his hands higher up the door so that Sam’s just a long bowing line of muscle and bone that wants Dean like no one else ever did. They’re sloppy, uncoordinated, breathing heavily through mouths and noses and pawing blindly once Dean is sure enough that Sam’s going to grab for him instead of the door.
Dean shoves his hands up under Sam’s shirts and gets his hands on the body Sam’s made in fifteen years of hunger pains and obsession.
How did they get here?
Sam tries to push his hands away from further groping but Dean ignores him and burrows deeper until he’s tearing Sam’s shirts and jacket off in a sloppy wad over their heads and Sam’s snarling wordless protest that Dean swallows back down.
What happened to them?
Sam’s fingernails rake over his scalp, maybe drawing blood for how roughly he digs in and Dean returns the favor across the dip of Sam’s lower back, pulling him away from the door and towards the bed.
This isn’t right, a voice in the back of Dean’s mind is screaming at him as Sam drags him down onto the closest mattress. This isn’t how this was supposed to go. When -if- he ever got to take off Sam’s belt he was supposed to do it reverently, not rip it off so roughly the belt loops frayed and blew out. When -if- he ever got to taste the line of Sam’s neck he was supposed to kiss and nuzzle, not bite. They were supposed to taste like whiskey and sunshine in the doorway of death and there was supposed to be no fear. Not like this. Not now, when Dean’s never been more afraid in his life and they’re clawing at each other like desperate, angry animals.
For one crazy moment Dean has the image of a motel manager bursting in on them, called forth by a neighbor for all the yelling and only getting an eyeful for their trouble until his world narrows down to Sam, Sam’s skin, Sam’s ribs and stomach under his hands, and let the manager come, he can sit and watch them for all Dean cares.
Dean grunts out something that sounds vaguely akin to, “Come on,” when he jerks at Sam’s jeans, fumbling the buttons and the zipper and the hardness just underneath the fabric that’s scalding his fingers.
He wants to apologize because he didn’t want to start anything like this, and now he can’t stop.
He burrows his fingernails into Sam’s back and scores a line for every time Sam’s made him scared, one for every time Sam’s made him this hungry and thirsty and wanted, and Sam cuts them right back, reaching under his shirt and carving welts over his shoulders and down his chest like he’s trying to scratch the freckles right out of his skin.
Dean pulls back and takes Sam’s jeans and boxers with him, strips them right off those long legs and watches with hungry eyes as Sam’s suddenly vulnerable, peeled of layers and completely without baggy jeans or t-shirts and over-shirts buttoned up to his neck and jackets to keep him hidden. Dean wants to look his fill, Dean wants to see.
Sam covers his erection first, no surprise there. Dean barely gets a good look at what Sam’s cock looks like full and flush before big hands are clutching for modesty and knees are being drawn up like Sam can curl in on himself.
Every fiber of Dean screams at him to sit back and take it in, halt the momentum and appreciate for just one second because after all of this slips through his fingers he might not ever get it back and he’s sure, so sure, that no one has ever taken the time to stand back and look at Sam the way he deserves to be looked at like this, but if the way Sam’s breathing is hitching up again is any indicator there’s no time. No time, no time, there was supposed to be more time.
Dean tears off his shirt and lays himself back over Sam, fitting himself right between those knees and trapping Sam’s arms between their stomachs. Sam makes another one of those throaty sounds that Dean eats rights up and puts his hands to good use while they’re down there, jerking the fly open so hard that the worn denim tears down the inner seam and all Dean can do is groan in relief as the strain over his groin dissipates considerably. Sam arches up and digs his fingers into the back of Dean’s neck and under his jaw to hold him pressed close as his knees hitch back up, pressing up behind Dean’s arms as he does them both a favor and kicks Dean’s jeans off for him.
The elastic of his boxers ends up stranded awkwardly over his ass, askew, and Dean has to surrender one hand to the cause of pushing the waistband off and kicking it away and when he gets his fingers back up to Sam’s hair Sam surges up like Dean’s been missing for a year. Like Dean’s been missing for fifteen years.
Sam pulls at him like he’s trying to pull Dean in, into the world where all of this, any of this, makes sense.
Dean rocks his hips,and Sam breaks away to whine. His legs lock, ankles crossed over Dean’s lower back, slipping through the accumulated humidity swamping the air around them. Dean rocks again, rolling his body and Sam’s fingers dig into his back and his mouth moves across his neck, muttering, “Yes, yes, come on,” silently.
“Sammy,” he groans, voice absolutely wrecked from all the not-talking they’ve done and he rolls his body again, Sam arching up into him like they’re puzzle pieces slotted together so tight he can’t unhinge himself. Dean is so okay with that.
They rut and cling like beasts, hands and skin everywhere, grinding into the sensation and no matter how much Dean wants to do this right with fucking candles and flower petals and expensive red wine and shit, this is all they get.
This, Sam flushed and eking out garbled little moans as he flushed and arches when he comes in hot streaks across their combined stomachs, thighs trembling against Dean. Dean’s teeth scrape against the stubble on Sam’s chin as he bites for anything he can get his teeth on and comes right after, earning high, strained gasps as he works himself through each pulse of pleasure by rocking down into Sam’s steadily softening and undoubtedly oversensitive dick.
The fall back into the sloppy, soiled sheets and, for all their panting and sweating and scratching, nothing has changed.
This has been, fundamentally, an exercise in futility.
-
The burn out from the tantrum and then the orgasm leaves Sam more or less useless, leaving Dean to organize their limbs into some semblance of order.
Dean fits himself behind Sam, pressing the scarred knobs of his knees into the tender undermeat of Sam’s and does the opposite with his arms, Sam’s knobby elbows fitting into the softness of his inner arms as he plasters himself to Sam’s back like a shadow. He wishes he could spread himself thinner and coat Sam completely, maybe. Like those moms who joke about wrapping their children up in bubble wrap before sending them out only instead of little plastic pockets of air there’d be only a Dean shield between Sam and the rest of the world, taking the brunt of the damage for him.
He hasn’t felt like that since Sam was a kid. Well, twenty five. Sam was pretty much a kid until Dean went to Hell, only grew up because Dean wasn’t there to be that shield. Then again, Sam said he hasn’t had a full stomach since fifteen, so maybe he hasn’t been a kid a lot longer than Dean thought.
And the real horrible truth of the matter is that, even if Dean could curl so tight around Sam nothing could ever touch him again, he still wouldn’t be able to protect Sam from himself.
Maybe that was the whole point.
He buries his nose into the back of Sam’s neck and squeezes his eyes shut against thick, humid curls and just holds on.
Every breath Sam pulls in telegraphs through Dean, his spine digging into Dean’s stomach as he slowly calms.
Dean wants to break the heavy silence with a joke, maybe something about being the big spoon, but figures that having his limp dick pressed into the cleft of Sam’s ass so tight he’s going to have to peel himself out of a tacky dry film of come and sweat later robs the moment of any plausible humor. Besides, this isn’t his conversation to start.
So Dean settles, weaving his fingers through Sam’s and curling his toes up into the arches of Sam’s feet just to get all of the coverage he can for as long as he can, in case this is the only moment they get.
There are a few close calls; the wet crackle of Sam opening his mouth after a jump in his ribs signaling the sharp intake of a breath against Dean’s bicep and across his own chest, only to be cut off again and again.
Dean waits him out.
He doesn’t so much kiss at Sam’s shoulders as he rubs his lips against them for the sensation, soaking up the moment for all that its worth because it exists between ‘never end’ and ‘couldn’t be over fast enough’. Sam doesn’t feel malnourished in his arms. He doesn’t feel fragile, like if Dean squeezed a little bit tighter he’d crumple in on himself, snap in half.
No, not bubble wrap, he thinks, picking up the train of thought where he dropped it. An oyster. An oyster holding a pearl under its shell, between the squishy, meaty, vulnerable folds of its actual substance. A pearl with a coarse, ugly grain of sand in the very, very center of it.
When Sam finally breaks the silence it takes less than four seconds for Dean to wish he hadn’t.
“I don’t know how to explain it so that you’ll understand, but it’s not… it’s not something that I do just for fun or penance or whatever it is you’re thinking. It stopped being something that I just do a long time ago and just sorta became me. You don’t have to worry or anything, okay? I’ve got it under control.”
Control, control, control.
The negative connotation Dean has for the word in association with Sam rears its ugly head and grind at Dean’s molars for him, forces, “Control, Sam? Control like the control you told me you had over the demon blood? Or how about the hallucinations?” off his tongue in a flat, tight tone. “’Cause, from where I’m sitting, Sam, you’re not exactly batting a thousand.”
Sam twists out of his arms, tearing open a rift between their two bodies; his movements heavy and addled by exhaustion and distress, but so much so that he can’t put space between them. He flops on the opposite side of the mattress, groping for the sheets to pull up around his body.
“You don’t get it,” he mutters as he jerks at the bedclothes roughly, tearing the elastic from the edge of the mattress and bundling it up around his hips like he can’t stand being naked a second longer. “I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
“I’m trying, Sam!” Dean snaps, reaching for Sam’s shoulder and yanking him back towards the center of the bed as he makes to break for the bathroom.
“You’re really not!” Sam rounds on him as he rolls to his feet, all frowns and furrowed brows as he rips the top sheet and quilt off the mattress, leaving Dean exposed to the harsh exposition of the air. “I don’t want a gold star from you, Dean! I don’t need your approval and I sure as hell don’t need you to sign off on my fucking eating disorder.”
Dean recoils bodily. Shit, fuck, he said the words. They’re out in the air now, undeniable; nearly physical in their absolute presence.
“You know what, Dean?” Sam says with too much teeth, mouth forming too broadly over the words. “I don’t like eating. I hate it. If I didn’t have to look out for you, if I didn’t have to be there for you, I don’t think I’d even do it.”
“Don’t make this about me!” Dean snaps.
“It is about you!” Sam screams back. “It’s always been about you, Dean! I don’t eat because of you, I eat because you, I want to be better because you! Because you, because this,” he gestures to the room, the bed, their life, “And if I didn’t have that I’d be back where I was when I was twenty and the first time I ever took my shirt off in front of another person she cried because she was so horrified by my body. But I do eat, Dean. I eat for you. Do you know what that means to me?”
Sam’s got the sheets gripped in drapes around his narrow hips, bustled in encompassing folds of fabric that follow the trail down his legs and pool slightly around his bare feet in excess. Bruises are blooming in roses in violets in lines and ovals from nails and teeth up his naked chest and over the broadness of his back. He’s standing still, wearing them all over his skin, waiting for Dean to give some response.
When Dean opens his mouth, “Sam,” comes out and nothing else.
Sam nods like he hadn’t been expecting anything else and turns for the bathroom.
-
In the end it takes a little over three weeks for Dean to thaw. They roam the nation aimlessly, not speaking to each other as the world passes them in blurs and smears as they jump from state to state, motel to motel, and barely look at each other the entire time. The bruises fade completely after about a week and a half and Dean’s first instinct is to bite them back into Sam’s skin and score his name into Sam’s back with his fingernails so that they don’t lose that -them- to the silence of the car and the repetitive scenery of the United States of America. But he’s not allowed to touch right now. Maybe not ever again if they don’t’ get this settled.
He yearns for a honeymoon period that they never could have had.
Whatever.
Dean expects Sam to grey and wilt under the onslaught of silence and momentum, never one for travelling truly extended periods without stability and even less for prolonged isolation.
Dean hasn’t pulled out all the stops on ignoring Sam since he was twelve and Sam broke down two hours into Dean watching the television instead of him, heaving his warm little eight-year-old body right up into Dean’s lap, bawling and apologizing for something Dean can’t even remember what. Maybe it’s childish that Dean’s employing the tactic now, at thirty-six, in hopes of similar results.
Whatever his hopes were, though, it’s not working.
Miles get eaten up by their wheels and Sam ignores him right back.
That white hot rage he felt so acutely three weeks ago mellows out slowly with time and miles and meals.
In the twenty three days since they fought and fucked and stopped talking Sam’s just stopped pretending for Dean’s sake. When Dean orders beers Sam orders water, when Dean gets pizza Sam rips the crust off and eats half of it, when Dean blatantly refused to order anything at all to see if he could starve Sam out like some sort of ill thought-out barricade Sam had simply stepped out and returned bearing what must have been half of the organic markets in Oregon and then proceeded to cook kale.
Dean hadn’t even known what the hell kale was three weeks ago. He’s a little bit bitter about the fact that it hadn’t even been half bad.
All kale aside, though, whatever meltdown Dean was expecting, whatever faltering or failing or psychotic break he thought was on the horizon just… doesn’t… come. In fact, if anything, some of the tension has leaked out of Sam’s shoulders and his smile is less stiff around the edges.
The cab of the impala feels less like a pressure cooker than it has in years and Sam sprawls more, smiles more, sleeps easier in the passenger seat than Dean can remember in recent history.
Or at all. Ever.
Dean feels like, in some strange way, in his absolute failure to comprehend Sam’s problems the simple act of holding on to his brother through the thick of it and coming out on the other side still determined to not let go, no matter how messy this might end, has been their saving grace.
They make a big loop around the east coast and end up in Michigan when Dean finally, begrudgingly, extends the olive branch.
And by ‘olive branch’ he of course means ‘bag of butterless, saltless popcorn he picked up from one of those hippie grocery stores that he thinks Sam wouldn’t be opposed to’.
The hotel they’ve setup in for the night is water-front and after Dean plucks the bag out of the microwave and tears it open to vent the swirls of steam he finds Sam sitting out on the balcony, arms crossed and braced against the lattice work of the rail as he looks out over the dying sun hitting the lake, loud kids screaming and drinking and trying to absorb the last bit of youth and summer into their skin on the shoreline before it gets too dark and too cold and they’re forced back inside.
Dean sidles up on the right side of Sam -the opposite of where he’s used to being on a day to day basis, but he’s not driving right now- and delves into the bag with one hand without speaking up. He chews over the blandness of the unseasoned kernels. The back of Sam’s arm radiates body warmth that touches at the back of Dean’s and this is the closest they’ve been outside of the car in nearly a month. He tilts the bag towards Sam but Sam shrugs and shakes his head. They stand there together and watch the sun spark and die off the water and the youths shimmy back into their clothes as the temperature drops.
“I was thinking,” Dean starts, staring into the darkness.
“Did it hurt?” Sam retorts.
“Shut up, we’re about to have a moment.”
Sam laughs, bright and soft, and when he turns to give Dean his full attention the sun catches deep in the trenches of his dimples.
“I was thinking,” Dean starts again, picking slightly at the edge of the bag. “I don’t… I don’t want you to cut me out anymore.” He glances up, fixes Sam with a solid stare. “If this is a big deal for you then it’s a big deal for me, too. I wanna… I want to help, I guess. I can’t ignore it. I won’t, Sammy. If it’s coming down to all or nothing with you, I’m picking ‘all’.”
Sam eyes him for a moment, gauging how serious Dean actually is about this, about them. “You sure you’re ready for that?”
Dean swallows around his dry throat, but doesn’t break eye contact.
The smile that touches at the corners of Sam’s lips is vaguely cutting when he leans forward into Dean’s personal space like he’s about to share a secret, testing the waters. “You know, Lucifer used to tell me that no one would ever love me like he did because no one would ever know me like he did.”
Dean flinches and grinds his teeth, irritated to the core that anyone -even the devil himself- would challenge Dean or that, in some twisted way, Sam believed him, but if Sam’s waiting for him to run he’s in for a rude awakening because Dean isn’t going anywhere. The moment ends.
Sam reaches for the popcorn.