"Blacktop Vagabonds" (Fic, Sam/Dean, PG13)
Title: Blacktop Vagabonds
Author: thehighwaywoman
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 2,937
Rating: Teen/PG-13 (mostly UST)
Spoilers: None post-pilot
Feedback: Will earn you cookies. Lots of them. Freshly baked chocolate chip.
Warnings: Road grime
Beta'd by insomnia_geek; many thanks to them for the great job.
Originally posted at wincest
One of the things people never think about is how hard it is to keep clean on the road. When you never stop driving, life is different.
(Sometimes Sam thinks he's never been still, not once in his life. That Stanford is a vivid dream he's mostly forgotten. He and Dean are twenty-first century gypsies riding ribbons of cracked and crumbling asphalt, traveling open roads gray with broken lines until they circle back around and somehow they're back where they started. Except you can never go home again.)
"Clean" becomes a strange ideal when you've lived on the road a few years. A sort of shining, blinding goal. A Holy Grail made up of soap and soft washcloths.
After a good hunt, the kind that doesn't end in someone dead or dying (the bleeding really can't be avoided and he's stopped trying to care about contusions), Sam lives with an itch under his skin like a burr trying to work its way out from the inside. Sweat and dirt crawls over him from limb to limb. In times like those, he needs a shower like he needs to breathe. Maybe more than he needs Dean. It's debatable when Sam's covered in muck.
Dean thinks he's lost his mind, the one time Sam mentions it, so he doesn't do that anymore. What are you tryin' to do, give me a heart attack? Don't you talk like that, Sammy. If I thought you weren't… really thought…
He stops there, usually, but Sam can hear what goes unsaid as loudly as if Dean had shouted. Except he never says or implies what Sam wants to hear. That dead silence speaks more eloquently than any other kind.
(Don't. I can't. We shouldn't. No, Sammy. I'm sorry, but no.)
So Sam rides in silence with his eyes shut while they hunt for a no-tell motel for the night where they won't ask for ID to go along with their credit card of the week. Sometimes, if he lets his mind wander that far, he finds himself wishing he could remember what Jess' shampoo smelled like. Flowers, some kind of flowers. He doesn't know which ones, only that when he tries to remember he sees patchworked blooms of red and yellow (like bruises, like fire).
They're not having much luck tonight. The sun's long since gone down on their search. Darkness has never bothered Sam, not in the ways it gets to "normal" people. He's used to the night hours and the climate they're traveling through. He's familiar with the way that Southern climes get sticky-hot and the air fills with the cloying scent of hydrangeas and magnolias. That's okay. He's able to shrug it off when that thick, funeral-parlor perfume wraps around him in a murky fog that won't be shaken off.
At least until he finds a shower. And then everything's all right again, or as good as it gets for him. Them.
This night, everything that normally slides right off is eating at his nerves. The sound of cicadas and bullfrogs fill his ears with their raucous scrapes and croaks that drown out the Impala's engine (how that's possible, Sam doesn't know, but stranger things have happened and usually do). He's thirsty for what he can't have, body and heart, and although silence is not his strong point, he's just too damn tired to ask again for what he wants to comfort him and wash his body clean in.
Finally, he picks a tape at random from Dean's crumbling cardboard box and cranks vintage Bon Jovi so loud that after the first chorus, Dean stirs from his stupor and wearily flips Sam off in unspoken complaint. And that's loud.
Sam snaps the music off, and the miles roll past in silence.
"Exit sign," Dean finally says in a monotone, pointing. "Might as well."
Sam nods, although he doesn't need to. No one seems to need to rest while they're driving this stretch somewhere in the Appalachian mountains, or so Sam assumes from the near-total lack of rest stops and absence of billboards. It's eerie, like they're the only people left in a town with a "Croatoan" sign (again). Sam wants to take his cell phone out to dial someone, anyone, just to make sure it's only his imagination making him paranoid. Instead, he twiddles between stations on the radio until Dean, tired as a basset hound in the sun, pushes his fingers off the dial.
Dean seems to be more worn out than usual, a realization that comes up slow as sticky syrup in Sam's thoughts. Sam guesses that Dean's calves are cramping by now from hours on literal hours behind the steering wheel, tapping out a defensive rhythm on the gas, brakes, gas, brakes. It's hypnotic, sometimes.
As Sam watches, Dean rubs the heel of his hand over his forehead, moving dried sweat around in tiny colorless rolls that are disgusting but which Sam can't look away from. Dean looks like he's running on sheer stubbornness. He won't stop until his heart gives out or he falls asleep at the wheel. He trusts Sam not to let that happen, so Sam stays awake too, not that the wriggling dirt blanketing his limbs will let him rest.
The exit sign appears to have been a nasty practical joke because it sure as hell doesn't lead anywhere except a lonely stretch of blacktop between thick pine trees crowding in on either side.
He doesn't know how much longer Dean can go on, so he makes the sacrifice he really wanted to avoid. "You can pull over," Sam says very quietly, not taking his eyes away from Dean. It would be easier if he didn't look at his brother when offering him a way out. That's why he doesn't. Dean's worth more than sneaky evasion. "Seriously, man. Pull over. We can crash on the side of the road for an hour, two hours." He swallows down a hidden lump of revulsion at the thought of sleeping in jeans and jacket stiff with dried perspiration and waking up with a taste in his mouth like garbage in July. He can cope. He's better off than Dean, anyway.
Dean shakes his head and makes no verbal response.
"Dean, come on. Driving like this isn't gonna --" Sam stops, riveted by a passing white glimmer out the passenger window. "Oh, hey." He sits forward as far as his long legs will let him and cranes his neck. Did he imagine the brief flicker of red-and-white lettering reflected in the Impala headlights? "Dean?"
"Yeah, Sam. I see it." Dean heaves a heavy sigh and flicks his turn signal on. Sam doesn't know why he bothers; there's not another driver on the road in either direction and hasn't been for miles. He's not going to raise the point for discussion. It's a Dean thing to look out for the things he loves.
The way he's always looking out for Sam.
Love is letting a tired man dig in his heels and stand his ground, Sam thinks, and doesn't know why.
He sits quiet and patient, uncharacteristically wordless, while Dean pulls into an empty parking lot lit by a single, flickering orange street lamp. It's a really empty lot, as in Sam doesn't see anyone else in the parking spaces.
Shit. There aren't any lights in what had been the check-in point, and none in any of the room windows. Which are boarded up. Shit.
"No good," he says, because someone has to say something after all. Dean's just sitting there and staring while the Impala whines because it doesn't like idling, or doesn't want to be here. Anything's possible. "It's abandoned, Dean. We gotta find something else."
Dean rubs his palm over his face. Suddenly, he doesn't just look tired, or even exhausted. He's showing all the miles on his face. Crow's feet and stubble. Every hour of staring out on bleak blacktop and listening to each other breathe, be, need, glows emptily in his eyes. They're more than expressionless. They don't reflect anything back, and it scares Sam a little.
"No," Dean says after a minute. His voice is rusty as water that's been sitting in old plumbing. "No, Sammy. We stop here."
Sam doesn't ask if Dean's lost his mind. That's a foregone conclusion with their kind of life. "You're sure about this?"
"No." Dean exhales through his nose. "C'mon, Sammy. Get the knives, the salt, and load a couple of rifles. Get some candles, too." The speech seems to take the rest of Dean's tiny supply of remaining oomph right out of him. "I'm gonna check and see if any of the rooms still have mattresses."
Even if they don't, Sam knows they'll still be staying there tonight. That's okay. He's slept rougher.
He knows he'll have nightmares from going to sleep this unfulfilled. But he'll deal. No way he'll push Dean into searching maybe all night for an operational motel. This is that kind of road. It's kind of fitting that the only place they can find to rest their heads has been left for the vagabonds and other people without homes to call their own.
We're homeless, Sam realizes, startled by the sudden comprehension. He's never thought of himself that way. It's scary.
Except Dean is his home. So maybe it's not too bad.
"Sammy?"
Sam blinks. He realizes that Dean's probably been trying to get his attention for a while, while he was lost in half-wakeful dreams. Dean's standing outside the Impala with both hands fisted in the frayed pockets of his jeans, his head slumped to one side and his eyes dead black pits bracketing his nose. "Sammy," is all he says.
It's enough. Sam forces his arms and legs, gone stiff from being folded up in the passenger seat where, he doesn't care what Dean says, there just isn't enough room for six-feet-four-inches of man to ride comfortably. Short freak.
Because Dean asked, Sam gathers knives (and sheaths and whetstones), rifles (and rock salt and gun oil and bullets), candles (and matches), Dad's journal (never leave the Impala without it, even though they've both got the pages memorized) and finally, almost as an afterthought, a little-used duffel bag that he thinks holds a couple pairs of swim trunks (why they even own swim trunks, he has no idea) that'll be cooler than jeans for sleeping in.
One more thing. Sam tries to rummage discreetly for a bottle of lotion he keeps illicitly stashed beneath the driver's seat. Dirty is dirty is crawling skin, but sometimes a guy really can't go to sleep without relieving the tension. And if he has to pretend Dean doesn't hear the slick sounds of Sam's fist knotted around his swollen flesh, or the soft, breathy whines he's given up on ever learning to stifle, that's okay.
It won't be as okay when he's pretending that he's asleep while he listens to Dean make the same noises, with growls in place of whimpers. He doesn't think too long or too hard about why. Down that road lies madness.
Gathering everything takes maybe five, ten minutes, and only that long because his arms don't want to cooperate. He thinks that while he's not as tired as Dean, he can't be too far behind. He doesn't try to bitch Dean into carrying anything, looping straps over both shoulders instead and filling his large hands with as much as they'll hold.
Dean gives the duffle bag a fraction of an odd look and doesn't comment, which works for Sam. Sam will leave the lotion between their beds (or whatever they end up sleeping on) later for Dean to find and use however he likes. After Sam is done. Munificence only goes so far.
"C'mon," Dean grunts, signaling the start to their investigation. Sam lopes behind Dean, who ambles -- it's all about the length of their legs -- as they walk the length of the motel. Sam entertains himself with reading the ill-spelled graffiti spray-painted on the boarded-up windows while Dean rattles each knob with half-hearted interest.
One door gives under the initial shake. Dean's clearly surprised, but also unmistakably relieved not to have to waste energy with breaking in. He nudges the door fully open with the toe of his sneaker (Sam's not going to think about what it's coated with; the sneaker, not the door, although come to look… ugh). The air rushing out smells like mildew but it's surprisingly cool. Sam pulls up short, closing his eyes. He shivers in appreciation.
When he opens his eyes, he sees that Dean closed his, too, and that from the way Dean is weaving ever so slightly, he's half asleep on his feet. It moves Sam to an odd sort of tenderness, not without precedence. "Hey. Dean." He squeezes his brother's shoulder lightly enough not to scare him.
"Mmm," Dean grumbles the way he does when Sam's trying to wake him on a morning-after, the way Sam remembers he used to wake up on the rare mornings when Dad let them sleep in ("sleeping in" meaning "until after sunrise").
"Dean." He presses his brother a little harder. "Inside. I'll put up the wards and you can rest once we're safe."
"Uhn," Dean responds. His eyes open one-quarter of the way, but Sam isn't sure whether he's seeing the abandoned motel or some strange dreamscape. "'Kay, Sammy."
"That's right, Dean." Sam guides Dean with his hand on Dean's shoulder, swerving him away from the doorframe. He fumbles for a light switch before remembering and rolling his eyes in self-disgust. Behold the mighty hunter stalking electric lights in a crack house motel that probably doesn't even have running water.
Oh, fuck. Running water…
Sam shakes off the yearning need and focuses on what matters, like getting Dean lying down somewhere reasonably comfortable, or at least dry, before he goes down like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.
Sam scans the room as best as he can in the non-light, holding Dean upright all the while. Damned if there is a bed. It's been stripped of sheets and pillows, but that's probably better than moldy linens would be. They've taken the carpet, too. Man, they really cleaned this place out. No phone, no lamps, no TV (although there is a faded XXX pay-per-porn advertisement with a cigarette hole burned through one corner, lying crumpled on the dresser).
The ancient ad for sins of the flesh makes Sam want to laugh. His lips quirk in a smile. Dean's less inhibited and chuckles, rusty-weary. "Check it out. Wonder how much this room has seen?"
It's an unusually philosophical rumination for Dean. He must be exhausted. Dean's a lot smarter than he lets on, and Sam's never really understood why.
"Right now, all it's going to see is you crashing out." Sam tries to guide Dean toward the bed. "Try not to breathe through your nose."
"Prissy bitch." Dean yawns, jaw-cracking wide and bobcat-roar loud. "Whatever. Don't forget the salt."
"Like I could." For the fun of it, Sam pushes Dean with one finger. Dean goes down like a falling domino, flat on his back on the bed with his legs sprawled open. He's asleep before the mattress stops bouncing.
Sam wants to climb in next to Dean. Wrap his arms around his brother. Except, worn-out or not, Dean would struggle up out of sleep and demand to know what the hell Sam thought he was doing. He's never liked it when Sam tries to share a bed these days, not since… the time Sam doesn't think about if he can help it. When he asked and he thought Dean was going to say okay; when Dean started to say "yes", not with words but with the suddenly desperate press of his mouth and the urgent rise of his hips; when Dean drew back from the edge and shouted, shoving Sam, trying to buck him off; when Sam saw the horror and disgust in Dean's eyes and knew Dean wasn't feeling those things about Sam, but about himself.
He wants to hold Dean, dirt and all. Might as well match the inside to the outside. Except Dean's crossed that bridge and salted and burned it behind him and Sam knows there's no other way to cross. So he doesn't give in any further than arranging Dean's legs in a position that hopefully won't lead to Charley horses and stripping off his shirt to wad it in a pillow under Dean's head.
He'll lull himself to sleep with the slow strokes of his hand and dream of crystal-clear springs (and the "yes" he wants to see instead of the "no" that's always there).
And in the morning, they'll wake up, bitch at each other about hard floors and dirty clothes (which won't bother Sam half as much by morning light), pointedly not notice the way Sam passed out with his fly open, forget the bottle that's rolled under the sagging bed, and get back on the road. He and Dean will stop at the first McDonald's they see for whatever kind of biscuits are two for two bucks. Soda for Dean, sweet tea for Sam. (No one drinks McDonald's coffee unless they're forced to.)
They'll find a highway and a place to check the latest headlines and look for something to hunt. The brothers will point the Impala toward another thumbtack in the map and do all this all over again.
The road never changes; the blacktop goes on forever.
Author: thehighwaywoman
Pairing: Sam/Dean
Word Count: 2,937
Rating: Teen/PG-13 (mostly UST)
Spoilers: None post-pilot
Feedback: Will earn you cookies. Lots of them. Freshly baked chocolate chip.
Warnings: Road grime
Beta'd by insomnia_geek; many thanks to them for the great job.
Originally posted at wincest
One of the things people never think about is how hard it is to keep clean on the road. When you never stop driving, life is different.
(Sometimes Sam thinks he's never been still, not once in his life. That Stanford is a vivid dream he's mostly forgotten. He and Dean are twenty-first century gypsies riding ribbons of cracked and crumbling asphalt, traveling open roads gray with broken lines until they circle back around and somehow they're back where they started. Except you can never go home again.)
"Clean" becomes a strange ideal when you've lived on the road a few years. A sort of shining, blinding goal. A Holy Grail made up of soap and soft washcloths.
After a good hunt, the kind that doesn't end in someone dead or dying (the bleeding really can't be avoided and he's stopped trying to care about contusions), Sam lives with an itch under his skin like a burr trying to work its way out from the inside. Sweat and dirt crawls over him from limb to limb. In times like those, he needs a shower like he needs to breathe. Maybe more than he needs Dean. It's debatable when Sam's covered in muck.
Dean thinks he's lost his mind, the one time Sam mentions it, so he doesn't do that anymore. What are you tryin' to do, give me a heart attack? Don't you talk like that, Sammy. If I thought you weren't… really thought…
He stops there, usually, but Sam can hear what goes unsaid as loudly as if Dean had shouted. Except he never says or implies what Sam wants to hear. That dead silence speaks more eloquently than any other kind.
(Don't. I can't. We shouldn't. No, Sammy. I'm sorry, but no.)
So Sam rides in silence with his eyes shut while they hunt for a no-tell motel for the night where they won't ask for ID to go along with their credit card of the week. Sometimes, if he lets his mind wander that far, he finds himself wishing he could remember what Jess' shampoo smelled like. Flowers, some kind of flowers. He doesn't know which ones, only that when he tries to remember he sees patchworked blooms of red and yellow (like bruises, like fire).
They're not having much luck tonight. The sun's long since gone down on their search. Darkness has never bothered Sam, not in the ways it gets to "normal" people. He's used to the night hours and the climate they're traveling through. He's familiar with the way that Southern climes get sticky-hot and the air fills with the cloying scent of hydrangeas and magnolias. That's okay. He's able to shrug it off when that thick, funeral-parlor perfume wraps around him in a murky fog that won't be shaken off.
At least until he finds a shower. And then everything's all right again, or as good as it gets for him. Them.
This night, everything that normally slides right off is eating at his nerves. The sound of cicadas and bullfrogs fill his ears with their raucous scrapes and croaks that drown out the Impala's engine (how that's possible, Sam doesn't know, but stranger things have happened and usually do). He's thirsty for what he can't have, body and heart, and although silence is not his strong point, he's just too damn tired to ask again for what he wants to comfort him and wash his body clean in.
Finally, he picks a tape at random from Dean's crumbling cardboard box and cranks vintage Bon Jovi so loud that after the first chorus, Dean stirs from his stupor and wearily flips Sam off in unspoken complaint. And that's loud.
Sam snaps the music off, and the miles roll past in silence.
"Exit sign," Dean finally says in a monotone, pointing. "Might as well."
Sam nods, although he doesn't need to. No one seems to need to rest while they're driving this stretch somewhere in the Appalachian mountains, or so Sam assumes from the near-total lack of rest stops and absence of billboards. It's eerie, like they're the only people left in a town with a "Croatoan" sign (again). Sam wants to take his cell phone out to dial someone, anyone, just to make sure it's only his imagination making him paranoid. Instead, he twiddles between stations on the radio until Dean, tired as a basset hound in the sun, pushes his fingers off the dial.
Dean seems to be more worn out than usual, a realization that comes up slow as sticky syrup in Sam's thoughts. Sam guesses that Dean's calves are cramping by now from hours on literal hours behind the steering wheel, tapping out a defensive rhythm on the gas, brakes, gas, brakes. It's hypnotic, sometimes.
As Sam watches, Dean rubs the heel of his hand over his forehead, moving dried sweat around in tiny colorless rolls that are disgusting but which Sam can't look away from. Dean looks like he's running on sheer stubbornness. He won't stop until his heart gives out or he falls asleep at the wheel. He trusts Sam not to let that happen, so Sam stays awake too, not that the wriggling dirt blanketing his limbs will let him rest.
The exit sign appears to have been a nasty practical joke because it sure as hell doesn't lead anywhere except a lonely stretch of blacktop between thick pine trees crowding in on either side.
He doesn't know how much longer Dean can go on, so he makes the sacrifice he really wanted to avoid. "You can pull over," Sam says very quietly, not taking his eyes away from Dean. It would be easier if he didn't look at his brother when offering him a way out. That's why he doesn't. Dean's worth more than sneaky evasion. "Seriously, man. Pull over. We can crash on the side of the road for an hour, two hours." He swallows down a hidden lump of revulsion at the thought of sleeping in jeans and jacket stiff with dried perspiration and waking up with a taste in his mouth like garbage in July. He can cope. He's better off than Dean, anyway.
Dean shakes his head and makes no verbal response.
"Dean, come on. Driving like this isn't gonna --" Sam stops, riveted by a passing white glimmer out the passenger window. "Oh, hey." He sits forward as far as his long legs will let him and cranes his neck. Did he imagine the brief flicker of red-and-white lettering reflected in the Impala headlights? "Dean?"
"Yeah, Sam. I see it." Dean heaves a heavy sigh and flicks his turn signal on. Sam doesn't know why he bothers; there's not another driver on the road in either direction and hasn't been for miles. He's not going to raise the point for discussion. It's a Dean thing to look out for the things he loves.
The way he's always looking out for Sam.
Love is letting a tired man dig in his heels and stand his ground, Sam thinks, and doesn't know why.
He sits quiet and patient, uncharacteristically wordless, while Dean pulls into an empty parking lot lit by a single, flickering orange street lamp. It's a really empty lot, as in Sam doesn't see anyone else in the parking spaces.
Shit. There aren't any lights in what had been the check-in point, and none in any of the room windows. Which are boarded up. Shit.
"No good," he says, because someone has to say something after all. Dean's just sitting there and staring while the Impala whines because it doesn't like idling, or doesn't want to be here. Anything's possible. "It's abandoned, Dean. We gotta find something else."
Dean rubs his palm over his face. Suddenly, he doesn't just look tired, or even exhausted. He's showing all the miles on his face. Crow's feet and stubble. Every hour of staring out on bleak blacktop and listening to each other breathe, be, need, glows emptily in his eyes. They're more than expressionless. They don't reflect anything back, and it scares Sam a little.
"No," Dean says after a minute. His voice is rusty as water that's been sitting in old plumbing. "No, Sammy. We stop here."
Sam doesn't ask if Dean's lost his mind. That's a foregone conclusion with their kind of life. "You're sure about this?"
"No." Dean exhales through his nose. "C'mon, Sammy. Get the knives, the salt, and load a couple of rifles. Get some candles, too." The speech seems to take the rest of Dean's tiny supply of remaining oomph right out of him. "I'm gonna check and see if any of the rooms still have mattresses."
Even if they don't, Sam knows they'll still be staying there tonight. That's okay. He's slept rougher.
He knows he'll have nightmares from going to sleep this unfulfilled. But he'll deal. No way he'll push Dean into searching maybe all night for an operational motel. This is that kind of road. It's kind of fitting that the only place they can find to rest their heads has been left for the vagabonds and other people without homes to call their own.
We're homeless, Sam realizes, startled by the sudden comprehension. He's never thought of himself that way. It's scary.
Except Dean is his home. So maybe it's not too bad.
"Sammy?"
Sam blinks. He realizes that Dean's probably been trying to get his attention for a while, while he was lost in half-wakeful dreams. Dean's standing outside the Impala with both hands fisted in the frayed pockets of his jeans, his head slumped to one side and his eyes dead black pits bracketing his nose. "Sammy," is all he says.
It's enough. Sam forces his arms and legs, gone stiff from being folded up in the passenger seat where, he doesn't care what Dean says, there just isn't enough room for six-feet-four-inches of man to ride comfortably. Short freak.
Because Dean asked, Sam gathers knives (and sheaths and whetstones), rifles (and rock salt and gun oil and bullets), candles (and matches), Dad's journal (never leave the Impala without it, even though they've both got the pages memorized) and finally, almost as an afterthought, a little-used duffel bag that he thinks holds a couple pairs of swim trunks (why they even own swim trunks, he has no idea) that'll be cooler than jeans for sleeping in.
One more thing. Sam tries to rummage discreetly for a bottle of lotion he keeps illicitly stashed beneath the driver's seat. Dirty is dirty is crawling skin, but sometimes a guy really can't go to sleep without relieving the tension. And if he has to pretend Dean doesn't hear the slick sounds of Sam's fist knotted around his swollen flesh, or the soft, breathy whines he's given up on ever learning to stifle, that's okay.
It won't be as okay when he's pretending that he's asleep while he listens to Dean make the same noises, with growls in place of whimpers. He doesn't think too long or too hard about why. Down that road lies madness.
Gathering everything takes maybe five, ten minutes, and only that long because his arms don't want to cooperate. He thinks that while he's not as tired as Dean, he can't be too far behind. He doesn't try to bitch Dean into carrying anything, looping straps over both shoulders instead and filling his large hands with as much as they'll hold.
Dean gives the duffle bag a fraction of an odd look and doesn't comment, which works for Sam. Sam will leave the lotion between their beds (or whatever they end up sleeping on) later for Dean to find and use however he likes. After Sam is done. Munificence only goes so far.
"C'mon," Dean grunts, signaling the start to their investigation. Sam lopes behind Dean, who ambles -- it's all about the length of their legs -- as they walk the length of the motel. Sam entertains himself with reading the ill-spelled graffiti spray-painted on the boarded-up windows while Dean rattles each knob with half-hearted interest.
One door gives under the initial shake. Dean's clearly surprised, but also unmistakably relieved not to have to waste energy with breaking in. He nudges the door fully open with the toe of his sneaker (Sam's not going to think about what it's coated with; the sneaker, not the door, although come to look… ugh). The air rushing out smells like mildew but it's surprisingly cool. Sam pulls up short, closing his eyes. He shivers in appreciation.
When he opens his eyes, he sees that Dean closed his, too, and that from the way Dean is weaving ever so slightly, he's half asleep on his feet. It moves Sam to an odd sort of tenderness, not without precedence. "Hey. Dean." He squeezes his brother's shoulder lightly enough not to scare him.
"Mmm," Dean grumbles the way he does when Sam's trying to wake him on a morning-after, the way Sam remembers he used to wake up on the rare mornings when Dad let them sleep in ("sleeping in" meaning "until after sunrise").
"Dean." He presses his brother a little harder. "Inside. I'll put up the wards and you can rest once we're safe."
"Uhn," Dean responds. His eyes open one-quarter of the way, but Sam isn't sure whether he's seeing the abandoned motel or some strange dreamscape. "'Kay, Sammy."
"That's right, Dean." Sam guides Dean with his hand on Dean's shoulder, swerving him away from the doorframe. He fumbles for a light switch before remembering and rolling his eyes in self-disgust. Behold the mighty hunter stalking electric lights in a crack house motel that probably doesn't even have running water.
Oh, fuck. Running water…
Sam shakes off the yearning need and focuses on what matters, like getting Dean lying down somewhere reasonably comfortable, or at least dry, before he goes down like a puppet whose strings have just been cut.
Sam scans the room as best as he can in the non-light, holding Dean upright all the while. Damned if there is a bed. It's been stripped of sheets and pillows, but that's probably better than moldy linens would be. They've taken the carpet, too. Man, they really cleaned this place out. No phone, no lamps, no TV (although there is a faded XXX pay-per-porn advertisement with a cigarette hole burned through one corner, lying crumpled on the dresser).
The ancient ad for sins of the flesh makes Sam want to laugh. His lips quirk in a smile. Dean's less inhibited and chuckles, rusty-weary. "Check it out. Wonder how much this room has seen?"
It's an unusually philosophical rumination for Dean. He must be exhausted. Dean's a lot smarter than he lets on, and Sam's never really understood why.
"Right now, all it's going to see is you crashing out." Sam tries to guide Dean toward the bed. "Try not to breathe through your nose."
"Prissy bitch." Dean yawns, jaw-cracking wide and bobcat-roar loud. "Whatever. Don't forget the salt."
"Like I could." For the fun of it, Sam pushes Dean with one finger. Dean goes down like a falling domino, flat on his back on the bed with his legs sprawled open. He's asleep before the mattress stops bouncing.
Sam wants to climb in next to Dean. Wrap his arms around his brother. Except, worn-out or not, Dean would struggle up out of sleep and demand to know what the hell Sam thought he was doing. He's never liked it when Sam tries to share a bed these days, not since… the time Sam doesn't think about if he can help it. When he asked and he thought Dean was going to say okay; when Dean started to say "yes", not with words but with the suddenly desperate press of his mouth and the urgent rise of his hips; when Dean drew back from the edge and shouted, shoving Sam, trying to buck him off; when Sam saw the horror and disgust in Dean's eyes and knew Dean wasn't feeling those things about Sam, but about himself.
He wants to hold Dean, dirt and all. Might as well match the inside to the outside. Except Dean's crossed that bridge and salted and burned it behind him and Sam knows there's no other way to cross. So he doesn't give in any further than arranging Dean's legs in a position that hopefully won't lead to Charley horses and stripping off his shirt to wad it in a pillow under Dean's head.
He'll lull himself to sleep with the slow strokes of his hand and dream of crystal-clear springs (and the "yes" he wants to see instead of the "no" that's always there).
And in the morning, they'll wake up, bitch at each other about hard floors and dirty clothes (which won't bother Sam half as much by morning light), pointedly not notice the way Sam passed out with his fly open, forget the bottle that's rolled under the sagging bed, and get back on the road. He and Dean will stop at the first McDonald's they see for whatever kind of biscuits are two for two bucks. Soda for Dean, sweet tea for Sam. (No one drinks McDonald's coffee unless they're forced to.)
They'll find a highway and a place to check the latest headlines and look for something to hunt. The brothers will point the Impala toward another thumbtack in the map and do all this all over again.
The road never changes; the blacktop goes on forever.