Supernatural Fic: "Stop Me if I Ever Get That Far" Dean/Sam. NC-17
Author: shadow_shimmer
Title: Stop Me if I Ever Get That Far
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warning: Incest, language, angst. BRIEF mention of het.
Rating: NC-17
A/N: I hardly know what to say here. This is a long fic and there’s really nothing in it that’s shiny and new. What is here? Gratuitous angst. Sam and Dean fistfights. Smut. Angst. This is set post-"Asylum" and relies heavily on the themes therein. Expect SPOILERS for everything up to the previews of “Faith.” Also, this was begun FOREVER ago as response to a the lyrics challenge on contrelamontre. The lyrics used as a few lines of dialogue in the beginning part of the fic can be found afterwards and under a cut. They are from "Lonely Love," by the Drive by Truckers.
Thanks: To horizon_greene for encouraging me on several occasions (since I finished this on Christmas Eve) to post this. And to slytherinblack for the additional advice.
Teaser: Sam’s not sure, but he thinks he’s at the bottom of their little familial cycle in which he throws a temper tantrum, gets beat, and then rolls over and admits that all of his acting out is just a desperate cry for attention and approval from the men in his life - Dad, Dean, whoever.
Any kind of attention.
Stop Me if I Ever Get That Far
Sam’s holding the bar up and looking deep into his glass of jack and coke wondering if you can read melted ice cubes like tea leaves when he realizes that he’s probably had just about enough. Jack and coke’s not his drink and he, apparently, can’t hold his hard liquor. That’s something he’d never admit to his brother, though, who’s the one that indirectly got him them the drinks after they sat down at the bar and Dean slid over to a girl who was talking to the bartender and told her, “I’ll have two of what you’re having and I’ll take all of what you’ve got.”
Dean shouldn’t be able to pick up lunch with lines like that, but they never seem to fail. Sam figures that it must be the lips. Women are distracted by Dean’s lips - hell, Sam is, sometimes - and they don’t pay any attention to what he’s actually saying.
One of the drinks goes to Sam with a smile and an innocent look and Dean goes to work on the other. And then another. Drinking Jack Daniels (Sam’s always been a beer man) and very flat coke in a dark and dingy bar makes Sam feel rebellious and strangely old fashioned at the same time.
Also, left out.
It’s not just here and now, though. Dean’s been giving him the silent treatment for weeks, ever since Illinois and ever since Dad’s phone call, and buying him a drink and blowing him off isn’t exactly out of character for this new Dean.
Never being a person to attract attention by just, well, being - like Dean - doesn’t mean that Sam’s alright with becoming invisible. But at this place and around these people, other loners and hustlers like Dean, he could get up on the bar and go all Coyote Ugly and not get more than a raised eyebrow and a “Watch the peanuts, son.”
So, Sam - having made what seems to be an honest attempt to drown his sorrows - makes his way to the bathroom to, he supposes, piss them away now.
It’s the smell that really gets to Sam. Urine and smoke and mold. This is the kind of bathroom he remembers having to negotiate when he and Dad and Dean would stop someplace for the night. Dad would nurse a couple of Bud Lights, leaving Dean to play pool with the old, hard men and Sam to eat pretzels and maraschino cherries if the waitresses were nice enough to give him some until he’d have to brave the mens’ room. If he was in the mood, he could make an obstacle course out of it - jumping over puddles and carefully tiptoeing around wads of toilet paper.
Good times.
Getting back to the bar he notices that Dean’s girl is gone, her stool taken by some guy - a very pale guy - in a leather duster talking to Dean.
Sam sits back down, wondering if Dean lost his chance with the girl and has just switched sides for the night - which would be new, but not surprising to Sam - and catches the last bit of their conversation over the wail of the jukebox. Duster Man is telling Dean, “Stop me if you’ve this one before,” sounding foreign to Sam. British, maybe. “A man walks into a bar and leaves before his ashes hit the floor.”
It’s just the senseless rambling of a drunken weirdo with a bad bleach job and a sexy coat but it bothers Sam a little and he can see that it bothers Dean too, because as they watch the other guy leave, Dean turns to Sam - drink in hand - and tells him, “Stop me if I ever get that far.” Then he snorts into his half empty glass and looks up at the mirrors behind the bar. “Shouldn’t be hard,” he says. “Not for you.”
Sam nods; a little slow on the uptake, what with the whole experiment in bottle-crawling-into. But when he gets it, when he hears the sullen undercurrent in Dean’s voice, he backs up that last bit in his mind.
“Still pissed about that, aren’t you?” he asks his brother, watching Dean in the mirror, wondering if they’re gonna finally get this worked out.
“I know. I shouldn’t let a little thing like the fact that you took my gun, pointed it at me and then pulled the fucking trigger upset me.”
At a loss, Sam looks away from Dean’s reflection and, talking down to the bar, says, “You gave me the gun.”
“You think that makes a difference?” Dean asks, getting loud now. Loud enough to attract attention.
“The devil’s in the details,” Sam answers, provoking Dean. He can’t help it. He’s lonely and he’s confused - he doesn’t want Dean’s attention but he gets horribly jealous when he doesn’t have it, which is nothing new; he spent his whole childhood alternately trying to impress and ignore his older brother. And, and, the effects of his encounter with Dr. Ellicot’s version of anger-management haven’t entirely faded. There’s a lot of rage still simmering right under the surface and it’s all directed right at his brother in a very third-grade way. It’s taken every shred of self-control for him not to scream, “You’re not the boss of me!” at every decision Dean’s made without asking him since they left Illinois.
Of course, there’s also the guilt.
“Details, huh?” Dean says, getting up. “How about the little detail where I saved your ass when you were a baby?” He pushes Sam off of the barstool and gets in real close, just like he used to when Sam was shorter than he was and liked to talk down to him. “Or, how about the detail where I kept saving your sorry ass every time you had your nose in a book and didn’t listen to what Dad was trying to tell you and therefore walked right into trouble?”
He’s loud enough that Sam, seeing the way the bartender is looking at them, decides enough is enough and makes a run for the door. Only it’s not a run, it’s more of a stumbling walk, but it serves its purpose because Dean’s right on his heels, still talking.
“Have you ever considered that I tell you what to do because if I didn’t, you’d never survive?”
They stop next to the Impala and Sam wants to say ‘no’ to the last question. He wants to say, ‘No, you tell me what to do because you’re a self-absorbed, manipulative bastard,’ but his much maligned sense of self preservation has kicked in and he keeps his mouth shut.
“Because,” Dean continues, backing Sam up against the car, “You walk around like some goddamned damsel in distress with a sign on your back that reads ‘hey big scary things - fresh meat.’ ”
“Fuck off, Dean,” Sam says, trying to slide along the car and away from his brother.
“I’m just sayin’, Sammy, you must smell real good to the evil critters ‘cause they sure do like you. And I don’t know if the psychic hotline shit you have going has scrambled some wires in here,” and he taps Sam’s head, “or what, but you just can’t seem to take care of yourself.” He quits ranting long enough to grab Sam by the waist. “Stop with the wiggling. You’re gonna scratch the paint.”
Which is just about enough because that car means more to Dean than any hunk of metal ought to and Sam’s as tired of the big, loud, ugly thing as he is of motel rooms and Big Macs.
He would kill for a salad.
So he takes a swing at his brother and, to his surprise, connects, sending Dean sprawling to the pavement.
And then Sam’s down there with him and they’re wresting in the dirt and the oil and trash and Dean’s still talking about family and loyalty and all Sam can think about is school, and the order it brought to his life, and Jess and the love and the light she brought and then Dean and how good it feels to be close to someone again even if it is just Dean and even if Dean’s trying to beat the shit out of him.
I gotta get laid, Sam thinks, because while fighting’s always turned him on a little, it hasn’t ever before with Dean - unless he counts that one time when he was, like, thirteen, but hell. Fighting with the dog likely would have gotten him all hot and bothered then.
Thinking about it, it may have more than just that once. But Sam shuts that down fast because the hero-worship/resentment that he felt for Dean might have been tangled up in some weird kind of desire, but that’s all long gone.
Just the reminder of it, though - of what he might have felt when he was a kid - along with that old, deep jealousy he felt earlier when Dean was talking to that girl, makes him a little frantic to get away from his brother.
But Dean’s always been a better wrestler and Sam isn’t really going anywhere but face first into some mud. Which means, just like when he was younger, Sam’s reduced to biting.
“Ouch! Motherfucker,” Dean yells, rolling off of Sam and rubbing at his arm. He gets up on his knees, and then to his feet, brushing a cigarette butt out of his hair before muttering, “I’m supposed to take care of you, you ungrateful little shit, and I’m doing it the only way I know how.”
Getting up is harder than it looks for Sam because his stomach is suddenly protesting the Jack and cokes and Dean must’ve landed a nasty punch to his kidneys, cause his back is aching. Looking up at his brother, he shakes his head. He knows that, about what Dean thinks he has to do. Pretty much. “What if I don’t want to be taken care of?” What if I just want it all to go away - the monsters, the dead people, the dreams . . . and you. He asks Dean’s back, not expecting an answer and not getting one.
“Whatever, Sam,” Dean says, looking back toward the bar. “I need a drink.”
They almost come to blows again over that, because Sam grabs ahold of Dean and tells him he’s had enough. The last thing they need are the cops all over them because the two of them can’t keep their sibling rivalry private.
Dean glares for a minute and Sam’s worried that they’re gonna get into the “who’re you to tell me when I’ve had enough” thing, but Dean just turns and stalks off in the direction of the motel. Maybe he has had enough, Sam doesn’t really know because they drink - when they do - for different reasons. Dean drinks to forget the things he’s killed and Sam drinks to forget the people he loves.
And he just lied to Dean because he hasn’t had enough. Not nearly. Not to kill this fucked up feeling that’s crawling around in his gut and feels like an uneasy mix of guilt and want and old, old, anger.
*
Spending the time that Dean takes to shower on a debate over whether or not to wear socks to bed isn’t particularly productive but it’s damn important. The problem is with the motel room floor and what might or might not be living in the carpeting. Sam is imagining whole colonies of creepy-crawlies hanging out down there amidst the ugly spiral patters, but on the other hand, he hates the idea of sleeping in socks. Boxers and socks is never attractive and while there’s no good reason to care whether or not he looks like a skinny-legged, sock-clad dork in front of his brother, he’s still not going to do it.
Creepy-crawlies be damned.
So, wearing just his blue boxers, he makes his way across the room and into the steamy bathroom without making eye contact with Dean, who didn’t even bother to put a towel on when he came out.
Sam’s not sure, but he thinks he’s at the bottom of their little familial cycle in which he throws a temper tantrum, gets beat, and then rolls over and admits that all of his acting out is just a desperate cry for attention and approval from the men in his life - Dad, Dean, whoever.
Any kind of attention.
“Not bad,” Dean says, from somewhere behind him.
“You’ve seen it before,” Sam tells him, turning on the water and closing the door.
Not sure where he wants to take this, whatever this is, Sam hopes that Dean’s passed out by the time he washes all the parking lot sludge off of himself. Sam’s riding a hell of a streak of bad luck, though, and when he comes back out, Dean’s still up and watching Friends reruns.
“Are we okay?” he asks, sitting down on Dean’s bed, shivering a little because Dean always turns the heat down when he isn’t looking.
“Were we ever?” Dean asks back, looking over at him.
No, Sam thinks, but doesn’t say it because this is an ancient conversation and there’s no need to have it again. He gets the feeling that Dean wants him to move - to get out of his space - but he’s tired now and Dean’s warm and this bed feels softer than his.
Laying down, he shuts out Ross and Rachel’s whining and Dean’s sullen glare and the wheeze in the old radiator and figures he’ll have won something if he can either get Dean to share the bed with him or, and better, kick Dean out of it altogether.
Of course, he’s never won anything when it comes to his brother. Not really; not unless you count running halfway to hell to get away from him as winning some kind of freedom.
*
For the next two days they very rarely speak unless it’s to insult each other and it drives Sam crazy. Usually, he’s the quiet one and that’s how he maintains control: by keeping things to himself, by never saying too much. But now, late on the second day, it just means that they’ve gone about a hundred miles with nothing to break up the monotony of the road but Aerosmith’s Big One’s looping itself over and over in the tape player.
On top of that? Dean’s channeling the ghost of some dead, angry NASCAR driver. And every time they come up on a semi-truck, he floors the Impala which tosses Sam back in his seat and the Big Gulp Sam’s trying to drink back in his face.
Without even really thinking about it, sticky, grumpy and mesmerized by hours of Steven Tyler trying to decipher what, exactly is wrong with the world today and miles and miles of desolate Colorado highway, the next time Dean hits the gas, Sam dumps his coke directly into Dean’s lap.
It’s not on purpose, but it’s not exactly an accident, really, and the yelling and the cussing and the swerving from Dean is a truly welcome tension breaker. Until Dean pulls over onto the shoulder and gets out of the car, still yelling.
Walking away from the car he becomes just another shadow and Sam, finally, shuts off the radio.
And he waits.
Night’s fallen by the time Dean gets back and Sam can tell by the way he’s walking - stomping through the dead grass - the he’s not any less mad.
“Get out of the car,” Dean tells him, pulling open Sam’s door and letting the cold air in.
“No.”
“Get out of the fucking car,” Dean says, pulling on Sam’s coat. “Find another ride.”
Sam can’t get leverage and Dean gets him up and out, even as Sam’s asking “Why?” and then, “Where? A ride to where Dean?” Out of your life? he thinks.
Shoving him around the car and toward the ditch, Dean shrugs one shoulder. “Don’t care. You obviously never wanted to do this. I mean,” and he laughs, “really, really, didn’t want to do this. So here’s your chance to fuck off.”
“Fuck you,” Sam grits out, and then dives at Dean, feeling that funny little snap inside where Dr. Freakshow grabbed and twisted and fried his feelings for his brother. Rolling around in the dead leaves on the dirty ground, Sam takes a couple of good hits before he actually considers getting up, kicking Dean and leaving.
Truly? He’s smarter than Dean; he has the benefit of a college education on top of the crap their dad taught them. And even if he doesn’t have the notebook? He shouldn’t need Dean’s help to find Jess’s killer. And Dad? Sam figures their dad will be found when he’s good and goddamned ready and nothing he or Dean or conveniently placed psychics can do is going to flush him out.
It’s easy to come to conclusions like that. Especially when Dean’s hell-bent on taking out months of frustration on Sam’s body. But, if he left Dean - again - he’d truly be alone and Sam’s not sure he’s ready for that. He’s not sure he’s the type of guy that can just go all lone warrior. He’s always been part of a team. Him and Dean and Dad. Him and Dean. Him and Jess. Maybe if they’d had this conversation without fighting it would have been different. Maybe if Dean had come back from his walk cold and serious and just stood outside of the car and ignored Sam until he left, then Sam would have done it. But Dean made the mistake of fighting with Sam which meant - to Sam - that he still loved him and might someday forgive him.
So, he makes a quick decision about going or staying and about loving or hating his brother. Grabbing onto Dean’s arms to stop him from hitting him any more is easier than it used to be. Sam’s got long arms. And if it shifts from a bear hug meant to settle Dean down to something else, then it’s subtle.
Only Sam knows that he’s not really just holding on to Dean, he’s clinging to him now and that’s part of where his head’s at.
Growing up like he did - with just Dad and Dean - the most physical contact he got was from wrestling with Dean and then, just like now after months without Jess, he’s fucking starved for it.
When he slides a hand under Dean’s shirt and it slips over sweaty, knotted muscles, the rush he gets makes him feel like he’s back in high school groping some girl even after she’s smiled and giggled and said no to him.
There’s no way that Dean can’t notice what that does to Sam.
“Dean, I - “
“Let me up, Sam,” Dean tells him, trying to examine his hand in the dark. It looks bloody. Smells bloody.
“No.”
“Damn it, Sam,” and Dean’s resting his head on the ground next to Sam’s and Sam can feel his breath against his neck and he unconsciously shifts his body away from him.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Dean mumbles, sounding like Sam may have hit him in the mouth. “I don’t know what the hell I did to you to make you want to . . . do what you did. With the gun.” He stops and spits something dark off to the side. “But I never, Sam, I never, did this shit,” he says, shoving his hips against Sam. “I never touched you. If you’re fucked up about that somehow, don’t blame me.” And he makes a move to untangle himself from Sam.
But Sam’s not done. And he’s not letting go.
“Did you want to?” he asks, half expecting a forehead to the face and then unconsciousness. But Dean seems frozen.
“You’re messed up, y’know that? You really should see an actual shrink, man. Take something for that.”
Sam, arms tired and aching, lets him go after that and watches him from the ground as Dean walks back to the car.
“Get up,” Dean tells him, not looking at him. “And Sam? I don’t know how the Miss Cleo shit of yours works? But stay out of my head with it.”
Putting in Iron Maiden is Dean’s one concession to Sam’s little breakdown. No more Aerosmith, apparently, and as they drive on west toward Denver, Sam sings along to the parts about fear of the dark and running for the hills.
*
Denver has a mess of ghosts, but to Sam they all seem to be celebrities and pretty happy just to play their part in the tours. Nothing very sinister about it. Which is good because he’s not exactly up to ghost busting.
In the three nights that they’ve been here, he’s had maybe six hours of sleep. There’s just something in his hindbrain warning him that if he sleeps, he’ll dream and he won’t like what he sees.
Of course, it doesn’t help when he has to share the room with an extra person because, hey, three’s a crowd, but he’ll be damned if he lets Dean drive him out of their hotel room because he has something to prove.
Three o’clock in the morning isn’t a good time for Sam to begin with. Hell, he’s never really been a night person to begin with. Then, he’s got nightmares and the Disappearing Dean Show to deal with. The thing is, Dean’s found a bar he likes, again, within walking distance from the motel, and on the second night in town, he doesn’t come back alone.
This hasn’t happened in a while, not since Sam left for college, and it hasn’t gotten any more bearable. Especially not after Sam hears their whispered conversation involving him.
“Him too?” she asks. “I don’t mind. I can suck and fuck at the same time.”
“Really?” Dean laughs quietly. “He’d like that.”
Sam is shocked and a little offended, although he's not sure that he has a right to be so he gets up and, ignoring the blatant looks that both of them - Dean and his friend - give him (ignoring too, the possibility that this might be the opportunity that he's been waiting for),he leaves.
But he doesn't go far because he realizes he doesn't have a key and he's going to have to get back in when the girl comes out and he thinks that might be an analogy to something bigger in his life - his life with Dean - but he's far too tired to figure that out.
Sliding to the cold, cold cement outside the room, he rests his head in his hands and tries like hell not to imagine what's going on in the room behind him. Instead he listens to traffic noise, wind noise and the music from the bar Dean just came back from.
The juke box sounds like crap and it's playing some kind of country shit that Sam thinks deserves a special place in hell next to hair bands, but at least it's not the porno track that's playing in his head.
Let the night air cool you off, he hears as a group leaves, holding the bar doors open, letting the sound out to echo into the snow. Tilt your head back and try to cough.
Despite the cold and the damp seeping through his pants and his best efforts to the contrary, Sam's eyes shut and he slips into a doze. He doesn't dream, exactly, he just catches fleeting glimpses. Half-formed ideas, as if someone were flipping through the remote control of his subconscious to the beat of the music.
Don't say nothin' ' bout the things you never saw . . .
. . . a shutgun pressed to the back of his neck.
. . . Dean, lying sick and pale in a hospital bed.
I ain't living like I should.
. . . walking alone. The feeling of being cleaved in half.
The horrible song is finished and the bar patrons have moved on to something lighter, something about remembering when we made love and you cried, which is hardly better, when the girl comes out of the room and Sam has to get up on dead legs and fall into the door to keep it from closing on him.
Sam stands in the dark until his legs have stopped prickling and he’s pretty sure that Dean’s passed out before he makes his way to the other bed. Dean blinks open his eyes long enough to see where Sam is before letting them roll back into his head. He ruffles Sam’s hair and mumbles something about wasted opportunities and Sam just nods and turns his face into Dean’s hand. His fingers smell like beer and sex, and Sam - over-tired and strung out on fear and tension - moves before he can stop himself.
There’s no objection from Dean and Sam’s sure he’s dead to the world now. He doesn’t react - doesn’t twitch - when Sam moves the blankets and presses his face to Dean’s belly and then slides lower.
He can smell latex and pussy on Dean’s cock and then he can taste it, his tongue on hot skin. Which snaps him out of his daze and after covering his brother up again, he stumbles back to his bed.
*
In the morning he’s sick from lack of sleep and worry of what he might have seen or not seen while sitting in the snow while Dean fucked a stranger. And Dean sits with him in the bathroom while he pukes up coffee and Mountain Dew and no one mentions the girl or Sam’s little indiscretion.
When Dean comes back to the hotel room that night, he smells only of smoke and snow - no beer and no perfume - and he's carrying a brown bag
The tension between then hasn’t gone away since the roadside brawl, it’s just changed from “my brother wants to kill me” tension to “who the hell knows what my brother wants to do to me.” It’s got a more sexual flavor to it, Sam’s not denying that, but Dean sure as hell is. So, Sam has to assume that the booze in the little brown bag isn’t to get him drunk so Dean can take advantage of him.
And he’s right. Dean uses the bottom of the bottle of vodka to crush a couple of pills that he had hidden in a pocket.
“Xanax,” he tells Sam, when Sam asks.
Mixing the powdered pills with the vodka in the plastic cup, he gives it to Sam with a hard look. “If you don’t drink it, I’ll hold you down and drown you in it,” he says, but his voice is softer than his eyes and Sam, pretty willing to please at this point, just makes a quip about the lack of an olive and downs it.
He tries not to read too much into the relief his sees on Dean’s face and just undresses. All the way down to his skin and climbs into bed. Dean doesn’t look away but he doesn’t look approving either.
And then there’s nothing but warm and happy thoughts for Sam.
He wakes up disoriented, cold and dehydrated but sober. Dean’s sitting at the little table playing solitaire on the laptop.
“Put some clothes on,” he says, and Sam wonders how long Dean’s been looking at him sprawled out on top of the blankets.
“No.”
“I’ll dress you, if I have to,” Dean says, looking back down at his game.
Stupid, Sam thinks. Really stupid.
“You’d like that,” he says, echoing Dean’s slurred words about Sam and the threesome the other night while he stretches and tries not to shiver and spoil the effect.
Shutting his eyes and the laptop, Dean sits back and his chair and sighs. “Are you just fucking with me Sam? Is this just malice? Or is this something you’re doing because you think Dad didn’t love you enough? Or that I didn’t love you enough?”
Taking a sip of his coffee, he stands up and comes over to the bed. He stays standing there, looming over Sam, using the opportunity to be taller than Sam to its fullest.
Putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder he asks, “What are you looking for?” And he moves his hand onto Sam’s back. “An admission that I’d do this? That I’m not perfect and that you’re the better brother? Or do you actually want it? Will that prove something else to you about me? About me and you?”
Obviously, Dean has been thinking about this as much as Sam has, and honestly, Sam hasn’t analyzed himself beyond the childish need for some kind of physical recognition, validation from his hero figure. So he just shrugs a little under Dean’s hand and licks at his lips in what he hopes looks like an invitation.
Dean takes his time, though, and long minutes pass in which Dean just rubs Sam’s back and Sam almost drifts back off to sleep.
“Are you sober?” Dean asks him, leaving the bedside.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Thirsty, though.”
Dean brings him water and Sam expects him to bring a whole lot more, but he doesn’t. He just watches him drink and then, like Sam dared him to, he helps him dress. He pulls Sam’s t-shirt over his head and then helps him with his hoodie. The whole thing is backwards because Sam usually dresses from the bottom up, but he assumes that Dean’s working himself up to the pants and the boxers.
In fact, Sam’s hard by the time they get to the pants and Dean, with only a second’s hesitation, carefully adjusts Sam in his boxers so he can zip up Sam’s jeans.
“I don’t understand,” Sam says, letting Dean tie his shoes. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Dean smiles at him, maybe the first genuine smile since the asylum, and says, “Starting over.”
*
They break up a group of kids in a cemetery trying to summon demons to take their finals for them and Sam gets a pot of chicken innards dumped on his head for his efforts. Dean makes him sit on a trash bag so he doesn’t stain the Impala’s seats on the way back to the motel.
There, Sam calls the shower first and is in the process of chiseling dried chicken blood out of his hair when Dean gets into the shower with him.
It’s crowded since it’s one of those plastic stall things with the slippery floors and the dingy gray walls so there’s nowhere to turn and avoid touching Dean.
Sam doesn’t try.
“Gonna wash me?” he asks, almost rhetorically, because Dean’s already started. Sam’s hard-on hasn’t really gone away since Dean dressed him that morning and then fed him lunch. Which had been excruciating. And in public. Sam will never forget Dean breaking off bits of his ham sandwich and feeding them one by one to him while he had to sit and endure the stares of the few early afternoon patrons.
Before Dean gets there though, he pulls Sam to him and Sam bends down to rest his head on Dean’s shoulder. He can see Dean’s hand between his legs through the tangle of their arms and the way it’s obscured like that takes some of the edge off.
But now, now that it’s really happening, under the arousal and the excitement and, yes, the triumph that he’s won, there’s the guilt.
“Dean . . .” Sam starts. “Dean, I’m sorry.” I’ve got your attention. I know you love me. I know you’ll try your damndest not to leave me. I don’t need you to do this because I think this is wrong but I’m not sure and I’ve tried all my life to be so sure about everything.
“Too late, Sammy.” Dean’s hands don’t stop. They’re soft and persistent, cleaning his cock and then his balls and then further back between his legs.
“No.” And Sam thinks he means a combination of ‘not there,’ and ‘it’s not too late we haven’t done it.’ But he spreads his legs in contradiction to what he’s saying and makes no move to stop Dean as he touches and teases him.
“Yes,” Dean says, into the water and suddenly Sam’s got a lot more than he bargained for because Dean’s stopped playing and is seriously jacking him off and all Sam can do is hang on and try not to freak out.
Then Dean’s got them out of the shower and is manhandling Sam toward the bed. He has to notice that Sam’s reluctant now that it’s real, but he’s got that infuriating ‘so what’ look on his face and he tells Sam, after pushing him down, “Too late,” again.
Waist-level with Dean, Sam’s back to a place he knows. He’s been here once before and it didn’t kill him, even if Dean wasn’t really there. He can do this and maybe this will be enough to exorcize whatever kind of demon’s been riding him since the asylum.
There’s no way he can fit much more than the head in his mouth and he wonders, briefly, if there’s a secret to this - more than just practice - but Dean really doesn’t seem to mind. He tangles his fingers in Sam’s hair and doesn’t hurry him at first, not until Sam’s chin’s wet and his jaw’s getting tired, then Dean begins to move in his mouth and Sam’s never realized - never had a reason to - how fucking erotic that can be. Even when it hurts and even, no, especially, when it gets hard for him to breathe.
Choking and not really minding, Sam’s surprised when Dean finally pulls out and tips Sam’s face up to him, running his thumb over Sam’s lips. “Hey,” he whispers. “Hey, Sam. Alright?”
Nodding against Dean’s hand, Sam lets Dean push him over, face down onto the bed and feels a twinge of fear. He never really thought it would go this far.
He could fight, Sam supposes, but then they might always be fighting and he’s just dead tired of that. So, he goes limp on the bed and reminds himself that this is what he’s been wanting on and off since he was old enough to realize it. He lets Dean mouth the back of his neck and knead the backs of his thighs and he hardly notices the sound of a bottle opening.
Ignoring what comes next, or even just letting it happen, isn’t an option because it’s weird and intrusive and awkward and feels good and bad all at once and that’s just Dean’s fingers.
Trying to wiggle away and get closer all at the same time just means he’s moving around under Dean and probably encouraging him.
“We don’t have to do this,” he tries one last time. “Other brothers have problems and they don’t end up . . . whatever. Y’know?”
Ripping a condom open, Dean makes an angry sound in the back of his throat and then he’s pulling Sam onto his knees. “They don’t end up fucking? Yeah. But most brothers don’t try and shoot each other, either, do they.” And then the fingers are back but not as gently. “Oh wait. That was just you shooting at me. Point fucking blank, Sam. Right in the heart.”
That’s unexpected and Sam’s still trying to process the anger in Dean’s voice when the pain and the pressure start. “Ow!” He tries to jerk away. “That hurts, Dean. Jesus.” And it doesn’t just hurt, it feels a little violating and a little humiliating and what he really wants to do is curl up and hide under a blanket until it’s over but Dean’s never really let him do that before, not except for that one time, and what good did that do him? Or anybody else.
Oh God, Jess. I’m sorry.
“Relax,” Dean tells him, sounding unconcerned, and Sam tries. He tries to focus on Dean’s hand where it’s found his cock again and on the place that Dean keeps hitting inside him that makes him feel a little like screaming.
“Still wanna kill me?” Dean asks, moving harder and faster now.
“No,” Sam answers reflexively, growing a little as Dean strokes him and then stops and circles his fingers like a vice around the base of Sam’s dick.
Moving with Dean now, because he can’t help it, Sam turns his head, trying to catch Dean’s eye. “Let me . . .”
“Come?” Dean asks.
Sam nods.
“No. Wanna kill me now?”
“I hate you,” Sam says into the blanket, breathing in mold and sweat and cheap detergent. “Always have.” He unclenches one hand and then fists it again, repressing the urge to shove it into his mouth and bite. He means it, what he’s saying. And he doesn’t. “I hate that you were always better than me at everyfuckingthing Dad wanted us to do. You can shoot and you can drive fast and you can con people out of their firstborn children and I never, ever could do anything like that.” Briefly, he loses his train of thought, distracted by Dean’s teeth scraping over the bone at the top of his spine.
“I don’t even like guns,” he remembers a minute later. “I don’t like your car. I never liked your girlfriends. You can out drink me and out smoke me and even when you were puking your guts out and getting in accidents and trying to get every girl in every town we stopped in pregnant, you were still Dad’s goddamned golden boy.”
Dean sighs a little, it feels like to Sam. Slumping onto his back, letting Sam hold him up and then letting his hold on Sam go.
“I know,” Dean murmurs, kissing Sam’s neck, waiting for him to turn his head again.
When Sam turns back to look at his brother, Dean kisses him and Dean’s tongue in his mouth is apparently what he wanted all along because that’s what makes him come and come hard, losing his breath and biting into Dean’s lip.
Sam’s still recovering, trusting Dean not to let him fall now, when he feels Dean stiffen and stop moving behind him. A minute later, he’s gone and Sam’s alone on a damp blanket, tired, sore and confused.
A towel hits his legs and he makes a half-assed grab for it without looking over at Dean, leaning in the bathroom doorway.
“Sick?” Dean asks, pulling his pants on.
Throwing the used towel back at Dean, Sam shrugs. “Nah. ‘M okay.” He feels the need to get dressed too and maybe to shower again. “What we just did,” he says, and then stops. Not all of his education or his sensitivity or even his anger can help him express what he wants to now. How awful it was and how wrong and how he should care and that he really, really doesn’t.
“It is what it is,” Dean says, sitting down next to him and kissing his forehead and then his mouth. It’s softer this time, more like a seduction after the fact and Sam’s almost satisfied.
Dean can make a person feel like they’re the center of his world, like they’re the only thing that matters. Which is what Sam remembers from when they were kids and which, honestly, was all that he wanted again.
“Always hated me, huh?”
“Seemed like it,” Sam says, not backing down from that one, figuring he has the less-favored sibling’s right to cling to a certain amount of resentment and bitterness.
“I didn’t always like you either,” Dean admits, seemingly content to just make out with Sam and Sam’s totally not thinking about how much he likes this side of Dean. This casual, sexy, easy side.
“I mean,” Dean goes on, “There was that time you stole my car and then the time that you completely unraveled the Black Album and then threw it out into the rain somewhere in Idaho. Those are pretty unforgivable sins. But you’re family, Sam. Really? You’re all I’ve got.”
Facing the fact that the opposite is true, that Dean’s all that Sam has now, and that while in the past Dean’s played the role of mother and father and brother - not perfectly, of course - he’s also now lover is pretty shocking.
Accepting that means accepting that Sam’s got to give up on a whole lot of dreams; and dreams, especially his, die hard.
But it’s his own fault. He was looking to find a way to relate to his brother outside of their old relationship - outside of the one that led them to a dark place with guns. And he’s got it. He’s got something new and different and maybe just as terrible.
END
A/N: The songs used or mentioned are:
"Lonely Love," Drive By Truckers
I got green and I got blues
and everyday there's a little less difference between the two.
So I belly-up and disappear.
Well I ain't really drowning 'cause I see the beach from here.
I could take a Greyhound home but when I got there it'd be gone
along with everything a home is made up of.
So I'll take two of what you're having and I'll take all of what you got to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.
Sister, listen to what your daddy says.Don't be ashamed of things that hide behind your dress.
Belly-up and arch your back.
Well I ain't really falling asleep; I'm fading to black.
You could come to me by plane, but that wouldn't be the same
as that old motel room in Texarkana was.
So I'll take two of what you're having and I'll take all of what you got
to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.
Stop me if you've heard this one before:
A man walks into a bar and leaves before his ashes hit the floor.
Stop me if I ever get that far.
The sun's a desperate star that burns like every single one before.
And I could find another dream,
one that keeps me warm and clean
but I ain't dreamin' anymore, I'm waking up.
So I'll take two of what you're having and I'll take everything you got to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.
"Livin' On the Edge," Aerosmith
"Run for the Hills" and "Fear of the Dark," Iron Maiden
"Remember When," Alan Jackson
"Danko/Manuel," Drive By Truckers (the song the Sam hears outside of the bar)
Also a brief, blink if you missing it, mention of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," The White Stripes
Title: Stop Me if I Ever Get That Far
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Warning: Incest, language, angst. BRIEF mention of het.
Rating: NC-17
A/N: I hardly know what to say here. This is a long fic and there’s really nothing in it that’s shiny and new. What is here? Gratuitous angst. Sam and Dean fistfights. Smut. Angst. This is set post-"Asylum" and relies heavily on the themes therein. Expect SPOILERS for everything up to the previews of “Faith.” Also, this was begun FOREVER ago as response to a the lyrics challenge on contrelamontre. The lyrics used as a few lines of dialogue in the beginning part of the fic can be found afterwards and under a cut. They are from "Lonely Love," by the Drive by Truckers.
Thanks: To horizon_greene for encouraging me on several occasions (since I finished this on Christmas Eve) to post this. And to slytherinblack for the additional advice.
Teaser: Sam’s not sure, but he thinks he’s at the bottom of their little familial cycle in which he throws a temper tantrum, gets beat, and then rolls over and admits that all of his acting out is just a desperate cry for attention and approval from the men in his life - Dad, Dean, whoever.
Any kind of attention.
Stop Me if I Ever Get That Far
Sam’s holding the bar up and looking deep into his glass of jack and coke wondering if you can read melted ice cubes like tea leaves when he realizes that he’s probably had just about enough. Jack and coke’s not his drink and he, apparently, can’t hold his hard liquor. That’s something he’d never admit to his brother, though, who’s the one that indirectly got him them the drinks after they sat down at the bar and Dean slid over to a girl who was talking to the bartender and told her, “I’ll have two of what you’re having and I’ll take all of what you’ve got.”
Dean shouldn’t be able to pick up lunch with lines like that, but they never seem to fail. Sam figures that it must be the lips. Women are distracted by Dean’s lips - hell, Sam is, sometimes - and they don’t pay any attention to what he’s actually saying.
One of the drinks goes to Sam with a smile and an innocent look and Dean goes to work on the other. And then another. Drinking Jack Daniels (Sam’s always been a beer man) and very flat coke in a dark and dingy bar makes Sam feel rebellious and strangely old fashioned at the same time.
Also, left out.
It’s not just here and now, though. Dean’s been giving him the silent treatment for weeks, ever since Illinois and ever since Dad’s phone call, and buying him a drink and blowing him off isn’t exactly out of character for this new Dean.
Never being a person to attract attention by just, well, being - like Dean - doesn’t mean that Sam’s alright with becoming invisible. But at this place and around these people, other loners and hustlers like Dean, he could get up on the bar and go all Coyote Ugly and not get more than a raised eyebrow and a “Watch the peanuts, son.”
So, Sam - having made what seems to be an honest attempt to drown his sorrows - makes his way to the bathroom to, he supposes, piss them away now.
It’s the smell that really gets to Sam. Urine and smoke and mold. This is the kind of bathroom he remembers having to negotiate when he and Dad and Dean would stop someplace for the night. Dad would nurse a couple of Bud Lights, leaving Dean to play pool with the old, hard men and Sam to eat pretzels and maraschino cherries if the waitresses were nice enough to give him some until he’d have to brave the mens’ room. If he was in the mood, he could make an obstacle course out of it - jumping over puddles and carefully tiptoeing around wads of toilet paper.
Good times.
Getting back to the bar he notices that Dean’s girl is gone, her stool taken by some guy - a very pale guy - in a leather duster talking to Dean.
Sam sits back down, wondering if Dean lost his chance with the girl and has just switched sides for the night - which would be new, but not surprising to Sam - and catches the last bit of their conversation over the wail of the jukebox. Duster Man is telling Dean, “Stop me if you’ve this one before,” sounding foreign to Sam. British, maybe. “A man walks into a bar and leaves before his ashes hit the floor.”
It’s just the senseless rambling of a drunken weirdo with a bad bleach job and a sexy coat but it bothers Sam a little and he can see that it bothers Dean too, because as they watch the other guy leave, Dean turns to Sam - drink in hand - and tells him, “Stop me if I ever get that far.” Then he snorts into his half empty glass and looks up at the mirrors behind the bar. “Shouldn’t be hard,” he says. “Not for you.”
Sam nods; a little slow on the uptake, what with the whole experiment in bottle-crawling-into. But when he gets it, when he hears the sullen undercurrent in Dean’s voice, he backs up that last bit in his mind.
“Still pissed about that, aren’t you?” he asks his brother, watching Dean in the mirror, wondering if they’re gonna finally get this worked out.
“I know. I shouldn’t let a little thing like the fact that you took my gun, pointed it at me and then pulled the fucking trigger upset me.”
At a loss, Sam looks away from Dean’s reflection and, talking down to the bar, says, “You gave me the gun.”
“You think that makes a difference?” Dean asks, getting loud now. Loud enough to attract attention.
“The devil’s in the details,” Sam answers, provoking Dean. He can’t help it. He’s lonely and he’s confused - he doesn’t want Dean’s attention but he gets horribly jealous when he doesn’t have it, which is nothing new; he spent his whole childhood alternately trying to impress and ignore his older brother. And, and, the effects of his encounter with Dr. Ellicot’s version of anger-management haven’t entirely faded. There’s a lot of rage still simmering right under the surface and it’s all directed right at his brother in a very third-grade way. It’s taken every shred of self-control for him not to scream, “You’re not the boss of me!” at every decision Dean’s made without asking him since they left Illinois.
Of course, there’s also the guilt.
“Details, huh?” Dean says, getting up. “How about the little detail where I saved your ass when you were a baby?” He pushes Sam off of the barstool and gets in real close, just like he used to when Sam was shorter than he was and liked to talk down to him. “Or, how about the detail where I kept saving your sorry ass every time you had your nose in a book and didn’t listen to what Dad was trying to tell you and therefore walked right into trouble?”
He’s loud enough that Sam, seeing the way the bartender is looking at them, decides enough is enough and makes a run for the door. Only it’s not a run, it’s more of a stumbling walk, but it serves its purpose because Dean’s right on his heels, still talking.
“Have you ever considered that I tell you what to do because if I didn’t, you’d never survive?”
They stop next to the Impala and Sam wants to say ‘no’ to the last question. He wants to say, ‘No, you tell me what to do because you’re a self-absorbed, manipulative bastard,’ but his much maligned sense of self preservation has kicked in and he keeps his mouth shut.
“Because,” Dean continues, backing Sam up against the car, “You walk around like some goddamned damsel in distress with a sign on your back that reads ‘hey big scary things - fresh meat.’ ”
“Fuck off, Dean,” Sam says, trying to slide along the car and away from his brother.
“I’m just sayin’, Sammy, you must smell real good to the evil critters ‘cause they sure do like you. And I don’t know if the psychic hotline shit you have going has scrambled some wires in here,” and he taps Sam’s head, “or what, but you just can’t seem to take care of yourself.” He quits ranting long enough to grab Sam by the waist. “Stop with the wiggling. You’re gonna scratch the paint.”
Which is just about enough because that car means more to Dean than any hunk of metal ought to and Sam’s as tired of the big, loud, ugly thing as he is of motel rooms and Big Macs.
He would kill for a salad.
So he takes a swing at his brother and, to his surprise, connects, sending Dean sprawling to the pavement.
And then Sam’s down there with him and they’re wresting in the dirt and the oil and trash and Dean’s still talking about family and loyalty and all Sam can think about is school, and the order it brought to his life, and Jess and the love and the light she brought and then Dean and how good it feels to be close to someone again even if it is just Dean and even if Dean’s trying to beat the shit out of him.
I gotta get laid, Sam thinks, because while fighting’s always turned him on a little, it hasn’t ever before with Dean - unless he counts that one time when he was, like, thirteen, but hell. Fighting with the dog likely would have gotten him all hot and bothered then.
Thinking about it, it may have more than just that once. But Sam shuts that down fast because the hero-worship/resentment that he felt for Dean might have been tangled up in some weird kind of desire, but that’s all long gone.
Just the reminder of it, though - of what he might have felt when he was a kid - along with that old, deep jealousy he felt earlier when Dean was talking to that girl, makes him a little frantic to get away from his brother.
But Dean’s always been a better wrestler and Sam isn’t really going anywhere but face first into some mud. Which means, just like when he was younger, Sam’s reduced to biting.
“Ouch! Motherfucker,” Dean yells, rolling off of Sam and rubbing at his arm. He gets up on his knees, and then to his feet, brushing a cigarette butt out of his hair before muttering, “I’m supposed to take care of you, you ungrateful little shit, and I’m doing it the only way I know how.”
Getting up is harder than it looks for Sam because his stomach is suddenly protesting the Jack and cokes and Dean must’ve landed a nasty punch to his kidneys, cause his back is aching. Looking up at his brother, he shakes his head. He knows that, about what Dean thinks he has to do. Pretty much. “What if I don’t want to be taken care of?” What if I just want it all to go away - the monsters, the dead people, the dreams . . . and you. He asks Dean’s back, not expecting an answer and not getting one.
“Whatever, Sam,” Dean says, looking back toward the bar. “I need a drink.”
They almost come to blows again over that, because Sam grabs ahold of Dean and tells him he’s had enough. The last thing they need are the cops all over them because the two of them can’t keep their sibling rivalry private.
Dean glares for a minute and Sam’s worried that they’re gonna get into the “who’re you to tell me when I’ve had enough” thing, but Dean just turns and stalks off in the direction of the motel. Maybe he has had enough, Sam doesn’t really know because they drink - when they do - for different reasons. Dean drinks to forget the things he’s killed and Sam drinks to forget the people he loves.
And he just lied to Dean because he hasn’t had enough. Not nearly. Not to kill this fucked up feeling that’s crawling around in his gut and feels like an uneasy mix of guilt and want and old, old, anger.
*
Spending the time that Dean takes to shower on a debate over whether or not to wear socks to bed isn’t particularly productive but it’s damn important. The problem is with the motel room floor and what might or might not be living in the carpeting. Sam is imagining whole colonies of creepy-crawlies hanging out down there amidst the ugly spiral patters, but on the other hand, he hates the idea of sleeping in socks. Boxers and socks is never attractive and while there’s no good reason to care whether or not he looks like a skinny-legged, sock-clad dork in front of his brother, he’s still not going to do it.
Creepy-crawlies be damned.
So, wearing just his blue boxers, he makes his way across the room and into the steamy bathroom without making eye contact with Dean, who didn’t even bother to put a towel on when he came out.
Sam’s not sure, but he thinks he’s at the bottom of their little familial cycle in which he throws a temper tantrum, gets beat, and then rolls over and admits that all of his acting out is just a desperate cry for attention and approval from the men in his life - Dad, Dean, whoever.
Any kind of attention.
“Not bad,” Dean says, from somewhere behind him.
“You’ve seen it before,” Sam tells him, turning on the water and closing the door.
Not sure where he wants to take this, whatever this is, Sam hopes that Dean’s passed out by the time he washes all the parking lot sludge off of himself. Sam’s riding a hell of a streak of bad luck, though, and when he comes back out, Dean’s still up and watching Friends reruns.
“Are we okay?” he asks, sitting down on Dean’s bed, shivering a little because Dean always turns the heat down when he isn’t looking.
“Were we ever?” Dean asks back, looking over at him.
No, Sam thinks, but doesn’t say it because this is an ancient conversation and there’s no need to have it again. He gets the feeling that Dean wants him to move - to get out of his space - but he’s tired now and Dean’s warm and this bed feels softer than his.
Laying down, he shuts out Ross and Rachel’s whining and Dean’s sullen glare and the wheeze in the old radiator and figures he’ll have won something if he can either get Dean to share the bed with him or, and better, kick Dean out of it altogether.
Of course, he’s never won anything when it comes to his brother. Not really; not unless you count running halfway to hell to get away from him as winning some kind of freedom.
*
For the next two days they very rarely speak unless it’s to insult each other and it drives Sam crazy. Usually, he’s the quiet one and that’s how he maintains control: by keeping things to himself, by never saying too much. But now, late on the second day, it just means that they’ve gone about a hundred miles with nothing to break up the monotony of the road but Aerosmith’s Big One’s looping itself over and over in the tape player.
On top of that? Dean’s channeling the ghost of some dead, angry NASCAR driver. And every time they come up on a semi-truck, he floors the Impala which tosses Sam back in his seat and the Big Gulp Sam’s trying to drink back in his face.
Without even really thinking about it, sticky, grumpy and mesmerized by hours of Steven Tyler trying to decipher what, exactly is wrong with the world today and miles and miles of desolate Colorado highway, the next time Dean hits the gas, Sam dumps his coke directly into Dean’s lap.
It’s not on purpose, but it’s not exactly an accident, really, and the yelling and the cussing and the swerving from Dean is a truly welcome tension breaker. Until Dean pulls over onto the shoulder and gets out of the car, still yelling.
Walking away from the car he becomes just another shadow and Sam, finally, shuts off the radio.
And he waits.
Night’s fallen by the time Dean gets back and Sam can tell by the way he’s walking - stomping through the dead grass - the he’s not any less mad.
“Get out of the car,” Dean tells him, pulling open Sam’s door and letting the cold air in.
“No.”
“Get out of the fucking car,” Dean says, pulling on Sam’s coat. “Find another ride.”
Sam can’t get leverage and Dean gets him up and out, even as Sam’s asking “Why?” and then, “Where? A ride to where Dean?” Out of your life? he thinks.
Shoving him around the car and toward the ditch, Dean shrugs one shoulder. “Don’t care. You obviously never wanted to do this. I mean,” and he laughs, “really, really, didn’t want to do this. So here’s your chance to fuck off.”
“Fuck you,” Sam grits out, and then dives at Dean, feeling that funny little snap inside where Dr. Freakshow grabbed and twisted and fried his feelings for his brother. Rolling around in the dead leaves on the dirty ground, Sam takes a couple of good hits before he actually considers getting up, kicking Dean and leaving.
Truly? He’s smarter than Dean; he has the benefit of a college education on top of the crap their dad taught them. And even if he doesn’t have the notebook? He shouldn’t need Dean’s help to find Jess’s killer. And Dad? Sam figures their dad will be found when he’s good and goddamned ready and nothing he or Dean or conveniently placed psychics can do is going to flush him out.
It’s easy to come to conclusions like that. Especially when Dean’s hell-bent on taking out months of frustration on Sam’s body. But, if he left Dean - again - he’d truly be alone and Sam’s not sure he’s ready for that. He’s not sure he’s the type of guy that can just go all lone warrior. He’s always been part of a team. Him and Dean and Dad. Him and Dean. Him and Jess. Maybe if they’d had this conversation without fighting it would have been different. Maybe if Dean had come back from his walk cold and serious and just stood outside of the car and ignored Sam until he left, then Sam would have done it. But Dean made the mistake of fighting with Sam which meant - to Sam - that he still loved him and might someday forgive him.
So, he makes a quick decision about going or staying and about loving or hating his brother. Grabbing onto Dean’s arms to stop him from hitting him any more is easier than it used to be. Sam’s got long arms. And if it shifts from a bear hug meant to settle Dean down to something else, then it’s subtle.
Only Sam knows that he’s not really just holding on to Dean, he’s clinging to him now and that’s part of where his head’s at.
Growing up like he did - with just Dad and Dean - the most physical contact he got was from wrestling with Dean and then, just like now after months without Jess, he’s fucking starved for it.
When he slides a hand under Dean’s shirt and it slips over sweaty, knotted muscles, the rush he gets makes him feel like he’s back in high school groping some girl even after she’s smiled and giggled and said no to him.
There’s no way that Dean can’t notice what that does to Sam.
“Dean, I - “
“Let me up, Sam,” Dean tells him, trying to examine his hand in the dark. It looks bloody. Smells bloody.
“No.”
“Damn it, Sam,” and Dean’s resting his head on the ground next to Sam’s and Sam can feel his breath against his neck and he unconsciously shifts his body away from him.
“I don’t know what your problem is,” Dean mumbles, sounding like Sam may have hit him in the mouth. “I don’t know what the hell I did to you to make you want to . . . do what you did. With the gun.” He stops and spits something dark off to the side. “But I never, Sam, I never, did this shit,” he says, shoving his hips against Sam. “I never touched you. If you’re fucked up about that somehow, don’t blame me.” And he makes a move to untangle himself from Sam.
But Sam’s not done. And he’s not letting go.
“Did you want to?” he asks, half expecting a forehead to the face and then unconsciousness. But Dean seems frozen.
“You’re messed up, y’know that? You really should see an actual shrink, man. Take something for that.”
Sam, arms tired and aching, lets him go after that and watches him from the ground as Dean walks back to the car.
“Get up,” Dean tells him, not looking at him. “And Sam? I don’t know how the Miss Cleo shit of yours works? But stay out of my head with it.”
Putting in Iron Maiden is Dean’s one concession to Sam’s little breakdown. No more Aerosmith, apparently, and as they drive on west toward Denver, Sam sings along to the parts about fear of the dark and running for the hills.
*
Denver has a mess of ghosts, but to Sam they all seem to be celebrities and pretty happy just to play their part in the tours. Nothing very sinister about it. Which is good because he’s not exactly up to ghost busting.
In the three nights that they’ve been here, he’s had maybe six hours of sleep. There’s just something in his hindbrain warning him that if he sleeps, he’ll dream and he won’t like what he sees.
Of course, it doesn’t help when he has to share the room with an extra person because, hey, three’s a crowd, but he’ll be damned if he lets Dean drive him out of their hotel room because he has something to prove.
Three o’clock in the morning isn’t a good time for Sam to begin with. Hell, he’s never really been a night person to begin with. Then, he’s got nightmares and the Disappearing Dean Show to deal with. The thing is, Dean’s found a bar he likes, again, within walking distance from the motel, and on the second night in town, he doesn’t come back alone.
This hasn’t happened in a while, not since Sam left for college, and it hasn’t gotten any more bearable. Especially not after Sam hears their whispered conversation involving him.
“Him too?” she asks. “I don’t mind. I can suck and fuck at the same time.”
“Really?” Dean laughs quietly. “He’d like that.”
Sam is shocked and a little offended, although he's not sure that he has a right to be so he gets up and, ignoring the blatant looks that both of them - Dean and his friend - give him (ignoring too, the possibility that this might be the opportunity that he's been waiting for),he leaves.
But he doesn't go far because he realizes he doesn't have a key and he's going to have to get back in when the girl comes out and he thinks that might be an analogy to something bigger in his life - his life with Dean - but he's far too tired to figure that out.
Sliding to the cold, cold cement outside the room, he rests his head in his hands and tries like hell not to imagine what's going on in the room behind him. Instead he listens to traffic noise, wind noise and the music from the bar Dean just came back from.
The juke box sounds like crap and it's playing some kind of country shit that Sam thinks deserves a special place in hell next to hair bands, but at least it's not the porno track that's playing in his head.
Let the night air cool you off, he hears as a group leaves, holding the bar doors open, letting the sound out to echo into the snow. Tilt your head back and try to cough.
Despite the cold and the damp seeping through his pants and his best efforts to the contrary, Sam's eyes shut and he slips into a doze. He doesn't dream, exactly, he just catches fleeting glimpses. Half-formed ideas, as if someone were flipping through the remote control of his subconscious to the beat of the music.
Don't say nothin' ' bout the things you never saw . . .
. . . a shutgun pressed to the back of his neck.
. . . Dean, lying sick and pale in a hospital bed.
I ain't living like I should.
. . . walking alone. The feeling of being cleaved in half.
The horrible song is finished and the bar patrons have moved on to something lighter, something about remembering when we made love and you cried, which is hardly better, when the girl comes out of the room and Sam has to get up on dead legs and fall into the door to keep it from closing on him.
Sam stands in the dark until his legs have stopped prickling and he’s pretty sure that Dean’s passed out before he makes his way to the other bed. Dean blinks open his eyes long enough to see where Sam is before letting them roll back into his head. He ruffles Sam’s hair and mumbles something about wasted opportunities and Sam just nods and turns his face into Dean’s hand. His fingers smell like beer and sex, and Sam - over-tired and strung out on fear and tension - moves before he can stop himself.
There’s no objection from Dean and Sam’s sure he’s dead to the world now. He doesn’t react - doesn’t twitch - when Sam moves the blankets and presses his face to Dean’s belly and then slides lower.
He can smell latex and pussy on Dean’s cock and then he can taste it, his tongue on hot skin. Which snaps him out of his daze and after covering his brother up again, he stumbles back to his bed.
*
In the morning he’s sick from lack of sleep and worry of what he might have seen or not seen while sitting in the snow while Dean fucked a stranger. And Dean sits with him in the bathroom while he pukes up coffee and Mountain Dew and no one mentions the girl or Sam’s little indiscretion.
When Dean comes back to the hotel room that night, he smells only of smoke and snow - no beer and no perfume - and he's carrying a brown bag
The tension between then hasn’t gone away since the roadside brawl, it’s just changed from “my brother wants to kill me” tension to “who the hell knows what my brother wants to do to me.” It’s got a more sexual flavor to it, Sam’s not denying that, but Dean sure as hell is. So, Sam has to assume that the booze in the little brown bag isn’t to get him drunk so Dean can take advantage of him.
And he’s right. Dean uses the bottom of the bottle of vodka to crush a couple of pills that he had hidden in a pocket.
“Xanax,” he tells Sam, when Sam asks.
Mixing the powdered pills with the vodka in the plastic cup, he gives it to Sam with a hard look. “If you don’t drink it, I’ll hold you down and drown you in it,” he says, but his voice is softer than his eyes and Sam, pretty willing to please at this point, just makes a quip about the lack of an olive and downs it.
He tries not to read too much into the relief his sees on Dean’s face and just undresses. All the way down to his skin and climbs into bed. Dean doesn’t look away but he doesn’t look approving either.
And then there’s nothing but warm and happy thoughts for Sam.
He wakes up disoriented, cold and dehydrated but sober. Dean’s sitting at the little table playing solitaire on the laptop.
“Put some clothes on,” he says, and Sam wonders how long Dean’s been looking at him sprawled out on top of the blankets.
“No.”
“I’ll dress you, if I have to,” Dean says, looking back down at his game.
Stupid, Sam thinks. Really stupid.
“You’d like that,” he says, echoing Dean’s slurred words about Sam and the threesome the other night while he stretches and tries not to shiver and spoil the effect.
Shutting his eyes and the laptop, Dean sits back and his chair and sighs. “Are you just fucking with me Sam? Is this just malice? Or is this something you’re doing because you think Dad didn’t love you enough? Or that I didn’t love you enough?”
Taking a sip of his coffee, he stands up and comes over to the bed. He stays standing there, looming over Sam, using the opportunity to be taller than Sam to its fullest.
Putting a hand on Sam’s shoulder he asks, “What are you looking for?” And he moves his hand onto Sam’s back. “An admission that I’d do this? That I’m not perfect and that you’re the better brother? Or do you actually want it? Will that prove something else to you about me? About me and you?”
Obviously, Dean has been thinking about this as much as Sam has, and honestly, Sam hasn’t analyzed himself beyond the childish need for some kind of physical recognition, validation from his hero figure. So he just shrugs a little under Dean’s hand and licks at his lips in what he hopes looks like an invitation.
Dean takes his time, though, and long minutes pass in which Dean just rubs Sam’s back and Sam almost drifts back off to sleep.
“Are you sober?” Dean asks him, leaving the bedside.
“Yeah,” Sam says. “Thirsty, though.”
Dean brings him water and Sam expects him to bring a whole lot more, but he doesn’t. He just watches him drink and then, like Sam dared him to, he helps him dress. He pulls Sam’s t-shirt over his head and then helps him with his hoodie. The whole thing is backwards because Sam usually dresses from the bottom up, but he assumes that Dean’s working himself up to the pants and the boxers.
In fact, Sam’s hard by the time they get to the pants and Dean, with only a second’s hesitation, carefully adjusts Sam in his boxers so he can zip up Sam’s jeans.
“I don’t understand,” Sam says, letting Dean tie his shoes. “What the fuck are you doing?”
Dean smiles at him, maybe the first genuine smile since the asylum, and says, “Starting over.”
*
They break up a group of kids in a cemetery trying to summon demons to take their finals for them and Sam gets a pot of chicken innards dumped on his head for his efforts. Dean makes him sit on a trash bag so he doesn’t stain the Impala’s seats on the way back to the motel.
There, Sam calls the shower first and is in the process of chiseling dried chicken blood out of his hair when Dean gets into the shower with him.
It’s crowded since it’s one of those plastic stall things with the slippery floors and the dingy gray walls so there’s nowhere to turn and avoid touching Dean.
Sam doesn’t try.
“Gonna wash me?” he asks, almost rhetorically, because Dean’s already started. Sam’s hard-on hasn’t really gone away since Dean dressed him that morning and then fed him lunch. Which had been excruciating. And in public. Sam will never forget Dean breaking off bits of his ham sandwich and feeding them one by one to him while he had to sit and endure the stares of the few early afternoon patrons.
Before Dean gets there though, he pulls Sam to him and Sam bends down to rest his head on Dean’s shoulder. He can see Dean’s hand between his legs through the tangle of their arms and the way it’s obscured like that takes some of the edge off.
But now, now that it’s really happening, under the arousal and the excitement and, yes, the triumph that he’s won, there’s the guilt.
“Dean . . .” Sam starts. “Dean, I’m sorry.” I’ve got your attention. I know you love me. I know you’ll try your damndest not to leave me. I don’t need you to do this because I think this is wrong but I’m not sure and I’ve tried all my life to be so sure about everything.
“Too late, Sammy.” Dean’s hands don’t stop. They’re soft and persistent, cleaning his cock and then his balls and then further back between his legs.
“No.” And Sam thinks he means a combination of ‘not there,’ and ‘it’s not too late we haven’t done it.’ But he spreads his legs in contradiction to what he’s saying and makes no move to stop Dean as he touches and teases him.
“Yes,” Dean says, into the water and suddenly Sam’s got a lot more than he bargained for because Dean’s stopped playing and is seriously jacking him off and all Sam can do is hang on and try not to freak out.
Then Dean’s got them out of the shower and is manhandling Sam toward the bed. He has to notice that Sam’s reluctant now that it’s real, but he’s got that infuriating ‘so what’ look on his face and he tells Sam, after pushing him down, “Too late,” again.
Waist-level with Dean, Sam’s back to a place he knows. He’s been here once before and it didn’t kill him, even if Dean wasn’t really there. He can do this and maybe this will be enough to exorcize whatever kind of demon’s been riding him since the asylum.
There’s no way he can fit much more than the head in his mouth and he wonders, briefly, if there’s a secret to this - more than just practice - but Dean really doesn’t seem to mind. He tangles his fingers in Sam’s hair and doesn’t hurry him at first, not until Sam’s chin’s wet and his jaw’s getting tired, then Dean begins to move in his mouth and Sam’s never realized - never had a reason to - how fucking erotic that can be. Even when it hurts and even, no, especially, when it gets hard for him to breathe.
Choking and not really minding, Sam’s surprised when Dean finally pulls out and tips Sam’s face up to him, running his thumb over Sam’s lips. “Hey,” he whispers. “Hey, Sam. Alright?”
Nodding against Dean’s hand, Sam lets Dean push him over, face down onto the bed and feels a twinge of fear. He never really thought it would go this far.
He could fight, Sam supposes, but then they might always be fighting and he’s just dead tired of that. So, he goes limp on the bed and reminds himself that this is what he’s been wanting on and off since he was old enough to realize it. He lets Dean mouth the back of his neck and knead the backs of his thighs and he hardly notices the sound of a bottle opening.
Ignoring what comes next, or even just letting it happen, isn’t an option because it’s weird and intrusive and awkward and feels good and bad all at once and that’s just Dean’s fingers.
Trying to wiggle away and get closer all at the same time just means he’s moving around under Dean and probably encouraging him.
“We don’t have to do this,” he tries one last time. “Other brothers have problems and they don’t end up . . . whatever. Y’know?”
Ripping a condom open, Dean makes an angry sound in the back of his throat and then he’s pulling Sam onto his knees. “They don’t end up fucking? Yeah. But most brothers don’t try and shoot each other, either, do they.” And then the fingers are back but not as gently. “Oh wait. That was just you shooting at me. Point fucking blank, Sam. Right in the heart.”
That’s unexpected and Sam’s still trying to process the anger in Dean’s voice when the pain and the pressure start. “Ow!” He tries to jerk away. “That hurts, Dean. Jesus.” And it doesn’t just hurt, it feels a little violating and a little humiliating and what he really wants to do is curl up and hide under a blanket until it’s over but Dean’s never really let him do that before, not except for that one time, and what good did that do him? Or anybody else.
Oh God, Jess. I’m sorry.
“Relax,” Dean tells him, sounding unconcerned, and Sam tries. He tries to focus on Dean’s hand where it’s found his cock again and on the place that Dean keeps hitting inside him that makes him feel a little like screaming.
“Still wanna kill me?” Dean asks, moving harder and faster now.
“No,” Sam answers reflexively, growing a little as Dean strokes him and then stops and circles his fingers like a vice around the base of Sam’s dick.
Moving with Dean now, because he can’t help it, Sam turns his head, trying to catch Dean’s eye. “Let me . . .”
“Come?” Dean asks.
Sam nods.
“No. Wanna kill me now?”
“I hate you,” Sam says into the blanket, breathing in mold and sweat and cheap detergent. “Always have.” He unclenches one hand and then fists it again, repressing the urge to shove it into his mouth and bite. He means it, what he’s saying. And he doesn’t. “I hate that you were always better than me at everyfuckingthing Dad wanted us to do. You can shoot and you can drive fast and you can con people out of their firstborn children and I never, ever could do anything like that.” Briefly, he loses his train of thought, distracted by Dean’s teeth scraping over the bone at the top of his spine.
“I don’t even like guns,” he remembers a minute later. “I don’t like your car. I never liked your girlfriends. You can out drink me and out smoke me and even when you were puking your guts out and getting in accidents and trying to get every girl in every town we stopped in pregnant, you were still Dad’s goddamned golden boy.”
Dean sighs a little, it feels like to Sam. Slumping onto his back, letting Sam hold him up and then letting his hold on Sam go.
“I know,” Dean murmurs, kissing Sam’s neck, waiting for him to turn his head again.
When Sam turns back to look at his brother, Dean kisses him and Dean’s tongue in his mouth is apparently what he wanted all along because that’s what makes him come and come hard, losing his breath and biting into Dean’s lip.
Sam’s still recovering, trusting Dean not to let him fall now, when he feels Dean stiffen and stop moving behind him. A minute later, he’s gone and Sam’s alone on a damp blanket, tired, sore and confused.
A towel hits his legs and he makes a half-assed grab for it without looking over at Dean, leaning in the bathroom doorway.
“Sick?” Dean asks, pulling his pants on.
Throwing the used towel back at Dean, Sam shrugs. “Nah. ‘M okay.” He feels the need to get dressed too and maybe to shower again. “What we just did,” he says, and then stops. Not all of his education or his sensitivity or even his anger can help him express what he wants to now. How awful it was and how wrong and how he should care and that he really, really doesn’t.
“It is what it is,” Dean says, sitting down next to him and kissing his forehead and then his mouth. It’s softer this time, more like a seduction after the fact and Sam’s almost satisfied.
Dean can make a person feel like they’re the center of his world, like they’re the only thing that matters. Which is what Sam remembers from when they were kids and which, honestly, was all that he wanted again.
“Always hated me, huh?”
“Seemed like it,” Sam says, not backing down from that one, figuring he has the less-favored sibling’s right to cling to a certain amount of resentment and bitterness.
“I didn’t always like you either,” Dean admits, seemingly content to just make out with Sam and Sam’s totally not thinking about how much he likes this side of Dean. This casual, sexy, easy side.
“I mean,” Dean goes on, “There was that time you stole my car and then the time that you completely unraveled the Black Album and then threw it out into the rain somewhere in Idaho. Those are pretty unforgivable sins. But you’re family, Sam. Really? You’re all I’ve got.”
Facing the fact that the opposite is true, that Dean’s all that Sam has now, and that while in the past Dean’s played the role of mother and father and brother - not perfectly, of course - he’s also now lover is pretty shocking.
Accepting that means accepting that Sam’s got to give up on a whole lot of dreams; and dreams, especially his, die hard.
But it’s his own fault. He was looking to find a way to relate to his brother outside of their old relationship - outside of the one that led them to a dark place with guns. And he’s got it. He’s got something new and different and maybe just as terrible.
END
A/N: The songs used or mentioned are:
"Lonely Love," Drive By Truckers
I got green and I got blues
and everyday there's a little less difference between the two.
So I belly-up and disappear.
Well I ain't really drowning 'cause I see the beach from here.
I could take a Greyhound home but when I got there it'd be gone
along with everything a home is made up of.
So I'll take two of what you're having and I'll take all of what you got to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.
Sister, listen to what your daddy says.Don't be ashamed of things that hide behind your dress.
Belly-up and arch your back.
Well I ain't really falling asleep; I'm fading to black.
You could come to me by plane, but that wouldn't be the same
as that old motel room in Texarkana was.
So I'll take two of what you're having and I'll take all of what you got
to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.
Stop me if you've heard this one before:
A man walks into a bar and leaves before his ashes hit the floor.
Stop me if I ever get that far.
The sun's a desperate star that burns like every single one before.
And I could find another dream,
one that keeps me warm and clean
but I ain't dreamin' anymore, I'm waking up.
So I'll take two of what you're having and I'll take everything you got to kill this goddamn lonely, goddamn lonely love.
"Livin' On the Edge," Aerosmith
"Run for the Hills" and "Fear of the Dark," Iron Maiden
"Remember When," Alan Jackson
"Danko/Manuel," Drive By Truckers (the song the Sam hears outside of the bar)
Also a brief, blink if you missing it, mention of "Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground," The White Stripes