(no subject)

[whereupon]

Thirty Miles
by whereupon

sam/dean, r, 14,720 words. AU after 3x16.
It's been three months, Sam says.



The day Dean gets out of hell, the sun is shining and the sky is that postcard shade of blue, like maybe it goes on forever and if it doesn't, at least it goes deep, tight and familiar wire around his heart.

He's on a road, side of the road, broken blacktop and weedchoked soil beneath his boots, outside some dusty small town, battered red and white Coke signs in the windows and battered Fords out front, probably pretty straw-blond girls inside. It could be anywhere. Could be anywhere but what matters is that it's here, that he's here, that he's not being torn apart, flesh from bone and choked whimpering noises from somewhere outside his body even though his mouth tastes like copper 'cause he's bitten clean through his lip trying not to make any sound at all.

He remembers Sam screaming, and the dogs, and he doesn't know which one of Sam's spells, which one of his last-ditch attempts, curses or charms or prayers, came through, doesn't know how long he has. If it just transported him, bought him some time and a few miles, there's no telling when they'll catch up.

No telling what they'll have done to Sam in the meantime, either, and that thought's enough to tear the air from his lungs, turn his stomach sharp and hollow, 'cause if Sam's dead (again), if that's the cost of these borrowed minutes, there's no reason to run, after all. No reason to do much of anything but wait and maybe see how many of them he can drag down with him.

Except it doesn't hurt anymore, and there's no blood, no shredded skin, teeth-torn cloth. And he doesn't taste anything and when he looks at his hands, they're clean, no fingernails missing, lost gouging for purchase, for a hold.

There's no way this came cheap. There's no way Sam could have bargained for this with anything but his life, his soul, and he didn't even have the fucking decency to warn Dean, to give him time, a heads-up, maybe not the full year like he had, but a day, something. Anything.

He takes a tentative step forward and when it becomes apparent that his legs aren't going to collapse, send him crashing down all torn denim and skinned knuckles onto busted glass and the fading yellow line on the edge of the road, he takes another.

His pockets are empty, no wallet, no cell phone, not even change for a phone call. He keeps his head down, walking into town, completely nonthreatening, trustworthy, even as his pulse shudders and his hands clench panic-damp and sweaty.

There's a bar to his left, a few cars already in the lot, and it's late enough that the neon's lit. The doorknob leaves his hand greasy and he wipes his palm on his jeans, waits for his eyes to adjust to the safety of the smoke-dim, the tarnished guttering taste at the back of his throat.

Somebody's put money in the jukebox, the bassline like miles-away thunder under his skin, and there's this breathless heartstopping moment where he can't think, can't move, because he can't fucking remember the name of the song. Which on one level is ridiculous and on another is absolutely terrifying, because if he can't remember something so simple, so ingrained, there's no telling what else he's lost.

He looks down at the floor, sticky spills and stains beneath his boots, tells himself to breathe through it, forces oxygen and cigarette smoke through the weird iron-tightness of his chest. This is nothing. He doesn't know for sure. Sam could be fine, this could be, like, anything. Good luck, for once. Never count your money when you're sitting at the--

which is something else entirely and it's Kenny Rogers on the jukebox after all. Yes. He breathes out.

When he looks up he sees his brother.

Sam doesn't see him, not yet, his head bent over the newspaper he's got spread across the table. He's across the room, in the back against the wall where he'd have a good view of the door, if he were paying attention.

Dean doesn't dare look away, like maybe it's a hallucination, like Sam will disappear if he does, he doesn't even blink and he nearly knocks over somebody's barstool on his way. Mutters an apology to some guy with a beard and a feed cap and keeps going.

Sam doesn't look up until Dean rests his hands on the table, leans in, newspaper crinkling beneath his palms. If Sam's gonna play this as nothing, no way he's gonna be the one to be all obvious and uncool about it, sentimental

Sam looks up, expression on his face like he's pushing for a fight, mouth already drawn up, eyes narrow and tight, and then he pales. Glances down, split-second, at his drink, and Dean grins, wide and happy and completely unprepared for Sam's fist crashing into the side of his jaw.

Dean catches himself on the table at the last second, spits blood onto the floor which has seen worse, was probably baptized in it, and slides in across the booth. His ears ring and he blinks away pinpricks like sunspots. "Good to see you, too, jackass."

He snags Sam's beer, uses it to drown out the taste of copper and salt which he thinks will be permanent one of these days, the dust-dryness underneath.

"What the fuck are you?" Sam says, almost a snarl, one hand underneath the table like he's already got a gun aimed at Dean and Dean knows better than to doubt it, how quick he moves, and how desperate.

"I'm the guy who's apparently out of his deal," Dean says, and he's not, like, hurt. Not his jaw and not his pride, either. Just because Sam isn't ecstatic over this, maybe he's still in shock. "How'd you swing that, anyway? Ruby hook you up?"

"Outside," Sam says. "Now."

Dean raises his hands in mock surrender, though he's not sure how much about it is actually mock. Maybe the guy in the corner's a demon, maybe they've gotta put on a show. He can play along. He lets Sam stay behind him all the way out to the parking lot. The bartender stares at them as they pass by and the guy with the feed cap lifts his beer like a salute and maybe grins.

Stepping into the sun feels like being unearthed, the glint of the sunlight on the windshield of the car across from them, with the dents and the scratched paint and the rust and the recognition of which hits him like one more blow to the chest, one more twisted little bullet, because it's his, his baby beneath the dust and the grime, the veneer of dirt and distress, the signs that nobody cared, nobody took care of her. That Sam's running her to the ground, burning her out.

"What is this," Dean says, maybe asks except he doesn't really expect an answer. And maybe he should have asked what to expect, what hell would look like, 'cause who's to say this isn't it after all. He swallows and his fingernails dig crescents into his palms.

"You know how many things I've killed that looked like him?" Sam says, and sure enough he's got a pistol pointed at Dean. Dean recognizes it: it was his favorite. Is his favorite.

"You mean like me? No fuckin' idea, Sammy." One of them's crazy, at least. Sam for holding him at gunpoint in the broad daylight where anybody can see, or maybe him if all of this is in his head to begin with.

"Don't. Call me that."

"You gonna shoot me? That it? This is hell?" His grin is rueful, short-lived. It's so goddamn obvious, he almost can't believe he fell for it. He shoves his hands in his pockets, shrugs. "Do it." Get it over with. He'll be damned if he's gonna flinch, close his eyes or any of that shit. Except for how he already is. Damned.

It's kind of funny. He doesn't laugh, doesn't crack a smile. Waits.

Sam stares at him, dead as a statue, still as a ghost, one too-long moment like sirens in the distance, hope sparring with fear in Dean's stomach, crackling railroad tracks up his spine, and then. And then. Sam lowers the gun.

Dean licks his lips. Sam doesn't move. His hair's too long, longer than it should be for, for a few minutes. For a day, even, a week. He looks like he hasn't slept for a month, haunted insomniac shadows around his mouth, wild paranoid glint in his eyes.

"You look like shit," Dean says, because that's easier than asking how long. Because he doesn't know what he would do right now with an answer, any answer, if he got one.

"You're gonna have a hell of a bruise tomorrow," Sam says.

"You wish."

Sam throws him the keys and Dean almost fumbles the catch. Almost. "Get in," Sam says, gesturing with the gun at the Impala, and Dean unlocks the door. He wants to think Sam's only returning the keys, that it's because things are good, because this is how they're meant to be, and not because Sam doesn't want his own hands tied up, wants them free, in case.

Dean almost succeeds, too, as long as he doesn't look over at Sam, at the gun and the press of Sam's teeth against his lip like he's just waiting for a reason, a sign.

Sam's motel is a few blocks away, a two-story dive with rickety stairs and a busted vacancy sign. Sam's room is on the second floor with a parking-lot view, a broken lock. Salt across the doorway and two beds beneath somebody's painting of a red ocean. The blinds are drawn but thin lines of sunlight slip between the slats. Half-empty bottle on the bureau and a stack of books on the table, it feels like home. Sam hits the lightswitch and the room's washed in dim orange from the two bulbs that flicker overhead next to their two dead companions.

Sam's still got the gun out, has it aimed at him again. Dean doesn't like the way it looks, the dead expression in Sam's eyes, like he could pull the trigger and not even notice. He doesn't like the way it looks so he looks away, nods at the two beds. "You got company?"

"Can't sleep in a single," Sam says, flat and cold, and Dean swallows.

"Oh." Maybe he should apologize. As far as legacies go, it's not a very good one.

"You got this far," Sam says. "You gonna try to kill me now or what?"

Dean raises his eyebrows. His mouth is dry again, but this time it's dread, not heat. "If that's your come-on, no wonder you don't got company."

Sam closes his eyes like he's choking a laugh or stifling a sob or maybe just like he's very, very tired, like he knows what comes next only because he's lived through it too many times. Resignation in the way he looks at Dean, the way his mouth curves up in a weird half-smile like he's about to say goodbye.

"Christo," Dean says. "Christo, is that what you're waiting for? The name of God, um. Something sacred. Fuck, I don't know. Nineveh, Allah, what the hell else do you want?"

The gun wavers. Sam's hand is shaking. He reaches for the knife on the bureau. "It's silver," he says, explanation or maybe threat.

Dean nods. "Soak it in holy water?"

Sam's brows draw together. "I'm not stupid."

Dean holds his hand out and Sam tosses the knife to him. Which is stupid, reckless and/or suicidal, but he's still got the gun trained on Dean anyway and the way Sam's shaking, he'll accidentally pull the trigger before Dean can even make a move.

Dean pushes up his sleeve, steadies his breathing as he drags the blade across his skin. His eyes water, but it's nothing. Nothing, compared to the dogs. He tosses the bloody knife back to Sam, who catches it with his free hand. "Satisfied?"

The knife hits the floor, buries itself in the cheap carpet as Sam wraps around him, smelling like cigarette smoke, stale beer and dirty skin and crushing his ribs, the gun a dangling cold weight against his back.

"It's been three months," Sam says, muffled, his mouth against Dean's shoulder. Dean takes in the shift of Sam's back beneath his palms, hot and alive, and then Sam pulls away, wiping a hand across his face. "Three fucking months." His eyes cut at Dean like shattered dreams, razorblade stilettos.

"Feels like maybe five minutes," Dean says, and grins, because Sam looks dangerously close to tears, the tremor of his jaw, the thin sharp line of his mouth. The grin falls flat and Sam shakes his head.

"I tried everything," he says like a confession and Dean shrugs.

"I, I guess it worked," he says, his shoulders tight and uncomfortable, the way Sam's staring at him.

"What was it like?" Sam says. "I mean, you're okay, you're not. You're okay," he repeats.

Dean's shoulders twitch again, involuntary, switchblade-sharp and defensive. "It feels like five minutes, Sam. I don't know. We were there with Ruby and then Lilith, and then I was here. Am here."

Sam blinks and looks down at the gun in his hand like he just remembered he was holding it, and maybe he did. He puts it down carefully on the bedside table and lowers himself onto the edge of the bed. "Jesus, Dean."

"Maybe."

Sam looks at him and he rolls his eyes. "Joking, Sam."

Sam swallows. "No shit," he says, wire-taut and wry.

Dean settles across from Sam, wrinkling the unrumpled sheets on the other bed. He cards a hand through his hair and looks up at the moth-shaped stain on the ceiling. "Three months," he says.

"Yeah."

It's an impossible length of time, unfathomable and terrifying. It can't be true except there's nothing but bare-edged truth in the lines of Sam's face, hollows around his eyes. "What'd I miss?" Dean asks.

Long hot backcountry months, drinking beer with their backs against the car and old ladies glaring at them or maybe offering them lemonade, target practice at sunset, bullet holes through old metal cans, allnight drives in the shimmering heat, but right now maybe none of that matters, isn't what he's waiting to hear, all of that will be rendered worthless and stupid depending on what Sam says, wrecked with a word.

Sam opens his mouth, closes it. After a minute, says like a punchline, "The world's still here." He looks down at his hands, looks back up at Dean. "How'd you know where to find me?"

"All the gin joints in the world and I walk into yours," Dean says.

Sam raises his eyebrows, expectant.

"I didn't," Dean adds. "I just, I was on the road, and I started walking." It's a lousy story. There should be more. Something exciting. His dad crawled his way up, fought his way out of hell to take out a demon and save his family, and Dean just . . . got out.

Not that he's complaining.

"You think it's a coincidence?"

"Hell spits me up this close to you?" He scrubs a hand across his face. They've had weirder. "Maybe."

"And you're not worried."

"Should I be? For somebody who spent the last three months on his own you could sound a little happier to see me."

Sam blinks. He looks a little hurt and Dean frowns. "Joking. Again. I'd ask if you lost your sense of humor while I was down under, but it's not like you had one to begin with."

"You're just never funny," Sam says, but there's nothing behind it, no force or emotion. He lets out a breath that is too goddamn shuddering for Dean's liking.

"Shit, we should call Bobby, tell him the good news," Dean says. "Gimme your phone, mine's gone."

"Uh, yeah, I didn't think to bury it with you," Sam says. Dean flinches because, yeah, that might explain it. And he does not want to think about Sam burying him, does not want to imagine what that was like. Got something close enough in the freezing silty mud of Cold Oaks, the long silent hours that came after.

"We, um. Bobby and I. We haven't spoken for awhile," Sam says. He doesn't meet Dean's eyes. "I'm not sure he'll be in the mood for a conversation."

"Dude, I'm back from the dead. That's gotta break the ice."

Sam shrugs, fishes his phone out of his pocket and tosses it to Dean. His hands are still shaking. Dean looks away because it shouldn't feel invasive, shouldn't feel so intimate, but it does. He's seen Sam on the edge before, after Jessica, Dad, all the bizarre twisted horrible shit they've been through together, and this. This is something different, something new.

He'd probably be the same way, if it had been Sam. If he'd been the one, failed to save him.

Bobby picks up on the third ring. "Not interested, thanks," he says, distant, final.

"Bob-" Dean begins, but he's too late. He redials, but Bobby rings busy like he took the phone off the hook.

"Like I said," Sam says. "We didn't part on the best of terms." His mouth twists and he works at his ring, twisting it around and around.

His ring. Dean's ring. Which Dean hadn't realized was missing until now. He looks away, away from Sam, the dirty silver glinting between his fingers.

"Okay. Uh. So what's your hunt?"

Sam blinks at him. "My hunt?"

"The newspaper. In the bar. Your hunt."

"You wanna hunt?"

"It's kinda what we do," Dean says.

Sam looks at him like he's weighing his answers, like there's actually more than one answer, and then nods and tells him about something that lives in the trees, that's snatching up kids beneath the hot white coin of moonrise and returning their skins in the morning.

--

Standing at the edge of somebody's farm, the body that was buried beneath the oak tree in flames at their feet, and it starts to rain, not much of a downpour at first until there's this clap of thunder and he thinks, honestly thinks for just one second, that it's somebody calling him back, dragging him back down, and he thinks Sam is laughing, might have finally cracked, and he's standing there leaning against his shovel trying to think of what he should do, reaches out a hand to touch Sam's shoulder and Sam stops abruptly, says, "Sorry, no, I'm good," and heads for the car.

In the safety of the car with the engine running and the headlights on, Dean says they should stop by the bar again, 'cause it's his first hunt back and maybe they're just gonna pick up where things left off like those three months never happened, like all he did was blink, but all the same, it's something worth celebrating.

"Look man, I'm beat," Sam says, and he doesn't look at Dean, and in the black of these unlit roads Dean can't see anything, the curve of his mouth, anything that might help. His damp hair clings heavy across his forehead and Dean can't see his eyes. "Can we just go back to the motel?"

Lying in the dark listening to Sam breathing in the next bed and he wonders. Wonders how long he's got. Wonders what he's forgetting, if there is something he's forgetting, because it's not like his contract came with an expiration date, not like there was meant to be any way out.

He wonders if Sam was right the first time and he's not actually himself, is in fact a demon or a shifter, something like that, but down that road is madness, a gun to the head or the bottom of a bottle, so he stops thinking about it. Mostly. Until dawn is bleeding through the windows and he wakes to Sam staring at him and can't even bring himself to make fun of him because. Because he gets it, because he understands, terrible visceral recognition, how it could have been.

It's okay though. It's good. He's out. He's back, and Sam is alive, and the world hasn't ended and for a long time, maybe always, that's all he's ever asked for.

So he gets out of bed and smacks Sam across the back of the head, Sam's hair slipping between his fingers, and says something lame like take a picture, it'll last longer, and doesn't turn around, because he thinks if he saw Sam right now, the look on his face, it might be a little heartbreaking. And he's not sure what he would do with that right now.

One year of waiting for this, something very close to this, and he has no idea what he would do.

They head west, angle north. Dean drives and Sam alternately sleeps in the passenger seat and looks at him out of the corner of his eye, keeping watch. Dean wears his sunglasses when it gets to be too much and tries not to mind the burn of scrutiny.

Half a day of sunshine and music. A truckstop a hundred miles outside South Dakota. His boots scuff across the gravel. Through the open window Sam yawns and stretches and opens his door. He squints at Dean.

"I was thinking we'd stop by Bobby's in person," Dean says, thumbs hooked in the beltloops of his jeans, the breeze slipping across his skin smelling faintly of diesel, mostly of trees. He leans into it, barely. It's a nice change, though from what he's not sure, because it was just. Five minutes. At most.

From running, maybe. From the countdown.

"We can't," Sam says. He gets out of the car. They stand like desperados and stare at each other from the distance of a few meters. High noon and Dean thinks of showdowns, the old west, who'll flinch first. Or blink. Maybe it's blink.

"What do you mean we can't? What'd you say to him, anyway?"

Sam shakes his head once, warning and slow. "I didn't say anything. It's just," he says, and he sighs. "It's just that the FBI's been watching his place."

It's gotta be a joke. Except Sam's not joking, standing with his back to the car, one hand on the roof like it's grounding, and the pinched regret of his mouth, his eyes narrowed at the sun.

"What? Why?"

"He wouldn't tell me," Sam says. "Just that they were and it wasn't safe anymore."

They've been fugitives all their lives, seems like, and that's one place less, one fewer sanctuary. Family doesn't stop at blood, sure, but apparently at the FBI, manhunts and maybe Death Row.á"He's okay, though," Dean says. "He's not, like, hurt or, or--"

"Yeah," Sam says. "As far as I know, yeah, he's okay."

Bobby's always been too good, too careful, to get caught. He wonders what it was, how he slipped. "The hell'd you make up some bullshit argument for?"

Sam shrugs. "I guess I thought it'd be easier." He's a better liar than Dean gives him credit for, always, slipping beneath the obvious tells, the signs he learned to hide years ago. It made sense, though. Those long years they didn't see Bobby after the fight with Dad, and Sam's more like John than maybe he wants to think.

The wind's picking up. Dean glares into it. The absence of his ring itches empty beneath his skin. He wants it back. "I'm not fragile, Sam."

"I didn't say you were."

The words form hot and angry; it's sheer luck that he manages to turn them flat, disinterested at the last minute. "You don't have to make things easier."

Sam spreads his hands, placating. "Okay."

"So don't."

"I won't."

"Okay," Dean says. "Okay. You, uh, got any other hunts in mind? I wanna keep moving."

Sam shrugs. He looks down at the gravel, sneaks a look back up at Dean, his mouth twitching like he's biting back a smile, contagious laughter. "You wanna just drive?" he asks, and Dean grins.

--

Twenty-some years across the country, retracing backroads, interstates, ley lines. Twenty-some years and he's only ever been to Vegas twice, quick and dirty hunts that ended in back alleys, once in the rain.

Three times, now, but something about the heat and the mania has them cloistered back in the room. Too much, all of the noise, the speed, the lights and walls like a cage and desperation scraping raw at this, at them. Making him twitchy, irritable, and Sam too. He remembers that cities used to be safe, that this used to be fun, the crush of people, the anonymity, the glittering rock and roll thrill, sex and heat jittering in his blood. Instead of the din being grating, the jangle of coins and the scream of machinery jagged and intolerable, the press of skin setting some animal instinct to shudder, hackles raised, equilibrium askew.

It was a bad idea, but maybe it's just too soon. Like he's still recovering from some internal shift, some subconscious twist. And Sam. For Sam, it's been months.

The sky is red, neon apocalypse filtering through the curtains. They're meant to be sharing the fifth but Sam hasn't given it back, slumped easy across the other bed, drunk in the claustrophobic dim of their motel room. Dean is, too, which he realizes as he looks up from the playing cards with the creased edges scattered across the foot of the bed and asks, even though he didn't mean to say it out loud, "You heard from Ruby?"

"What?" Sam sits up straighter and Dean shrugs. The empty bottle on the floor glints like police-car lights in the flare of passing highbeams.

"I was just thinking," he says, because he's this far, he might as well say the rest. "I got out, maybe she did too."

Sam exhales through his nose, a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "She did."

Dean shifts and cards flutter to the floor, land face-up. Red-eyed three, jack of diamonds. It was a lousy hand anyway, and isn't this the sort of thing Sam should have maybe thought to mention before? "No shit, when?"

"A month after," Sam says, his eyes hazy and dark, or maybe that's just Dean, just the light. "It was a bad, bad week."

And he still doesn't get that, how it worked. Losing whole weeks, months, in an instant, while Sam lived through them, excruciating detail of reality. "What happened?"

"I listened to you," Sam says, and he raises the bottle in a salute, takes a swallow. His t-shirt is very white and the set of his shoulders is unfittingly angry. Dean narrows his eyes. "What you said about, about not using my powers, not going darkside. Like you said."

"And?"

Sam's shoulders rise and fall, just a little too fast to be a shrug, more like a flinch. "She said I should."

Dean blinks. Maybe it's the vodka, maybe it's Sam, maybe it's him, forgetting something vital about how to understand Sam, to know what he means. But. But he's missing something and he knows it when he says anyway, "That's good, Sam."

Sam grins, wrecked and mirthless and baring his teeth. "Yeah, and when I said I wouldn't, and Lilith's demons came after me, Ruby stalled 'em. 'Cause I couldn't do it myself, see, and I thought she could, and then she, she stalled them. You wanna know how?"

Somebody screams outside, a terrible shrill sound that spirals into a laugh halfway through and then fades away like footsteps. "Yeah, sure," Dean says, and part of him wonders why Sam's telling him, knows goddamn well that he wouldn't if he weren't drunk, if it were daylight, not any of this, and so maybe this is cheating, somehow.

Sam leans in closer and Dean closes his eyes at the dizzying fall of shadows, wild and dark. "She, um. She tried to fight them, buy me time. It worked, it was a good plan. I got out. And she didn't."

"They sent her back to hell?"

"They killed her," Sam says. "No black smoke, nothing. Just, just a body when I went back and her hands were so fucking cold, I couldn't."

"She was a demon," Dean says, fumbling for words. The right ones fall, slip and trip just out of his reach. "She was evil, she wasn't."

"She died for me," Sam interrupts, low and sharp. "She died to save me, and so did you, and I was thinking, maybe Dad did too, so you could stop me, I mean, and what is it about me that people keep dying?"

He's too close for Dean, bleeding heat like it's grief, so Dean looks down, instead. Away. There's no answer, something wordless, beyond words. He thinks he could maybe answer with action instead, that that might make it true, but the room's too hot. The back of his neck is damp with sweat and his mouth is dry, his words slurred, forced thick and rough as tragedy.

"I don't know, man. Our whole lives, rotten luck. Don't take it personal."

"Yeah," Sam says. "Right." He lets out a breath, shakes his head, and Dean thinks he should say something else, but Sam turns away, turns his head from the window and the world and Dean, and after a little while the bottle slips from his hand to lie amongst the cards like a snake in the weeds in the traffic of Dean's dreams, red-eyed women screaming for help amidst shards of glass and rivers of smoke and daylight like knives hours later, spilling in silent as thieves, and just as quick.

They don't talk about it in the morning. They pack up the car and head north, away from the sunlight and the noise, and it's not until they're stopped for lunch in some quaint little roadside café that Dean brings it up, his elbows on the table and Sam reaching for the salt.

"I'm sorry about Ruby," he says.

Sam stops, puts the salt down, slow and precise. Swallows and looks up at Dean, his expression too blank, too neutral, to be normal.

"What?" Dean says.

"Are you?"

Dean twitches one shoulder. "Sure. She meant a lot to you, I get that."

Sam shakes his head. "Don't," he says, and Dean doesn't know what that means, but he gets enough that he doesn't push, not on that.

"Thought I told you to take care of my car," he says. The light overhead reflects in the pool of ketchup spreading around his fries. It doesn't look anything like blood.
"Uh, yeah," Sam says, blinking, maybe at the abrupt change of subject.

"The dents on the fender, the scratches and the chips, that's what you call taking care of it? What'd you do, run something over?" That and the grinding sound that he notices when they hit sixty-five, like something's come loose, paring down on the way to burning out, and he's not entirely sure what's fueling this line of questioning. Anger, maybe. What Sam's not telling him about Ruby, what Sam doesn't think he'll understand.

"Off the road, actually."

"You're kidding."

"Outside Louisville. I fell asleep, ended up off the side of the road." He says it calmly like they're talking about the weather, like he has no idea what he's actually saying, what it means, the sharp-edged significance.

Dean stares at him. "Sam--"

Sam talks over him, cutting through, something at once cold and boiling in his tone. "And while we're on the topic of uncomfortable truths, you still don't remember how you got out?"

"No," Dean says. "No clue."

Sam raises his eyebrows and picks up the shaker of salt. He doesn't look at Dean, not until the waitress comes by with the check and Dean's fishing money out of his wallet and he says, "We could stay here tonight. You could fix the car. If you want."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Good plan."

They spend a day in the quiet heat, the wind gusting from the south. Dean works under the hood with the tools from the kit in the back and he wonders if Sam even tried, even touched them after he left or if he just drove around with them in the trunk like a curse, stainless steel albatross and rust.

Sam sits in the car, waits, like he's afraid to let Dean out of his sight. He has his head tipped back like maybe he's sleeping, open window with the sun shining in, but he looks away whenever Dean checks. After an hour he stretches out in the back, his feet out the open door, and Dean's not sure if he's asleep or not, but it's okay, the near-empty parking lot and the breeze, greasy black all over his hands and Sam safe in the car like always.

In the end he can't figure out what it is, what combination of mechanics and/or physics is working against him, and he has to give up.

They eat dinner in the same diner where they had lunch. The waitress remembers them and Dean gives her the best tip they can afford, counting ageworn bills worn soft as skin that Sam was keeping in the wallet in his back pocket, that he gave to Dean after the first time he reached for his own out of habit.

He still has the ring, though, and Dean's not gonna comment, not gonna ask for it back.

They spend the night in the little whitewashed motel next door.

Twilight Zone on the television, black and white, about the last man on Earth and how all he wants to do is read. Dean's seen it before and it's fucking depressing, so when Sam comes out of the bathroom trailing steam and heat, he looks over, thinks maybe it's okay now, maybe Sam will want to go out.

Ragged twisted scars across Sam's shoulders, snarling across his stomach and disappearing beneath the band of his shorts. Dean's skin prickles. It looks like he tried to stitch himself up and didn't care so much about the results, or like he was drunk when he did it. Or both.

"What?" Sam says.

"You take up bear wrestling while I was gone?"

Sam's forehead furrows in confusion and Dean raises his eyebrows. Sam gets it, shrugs and turns away. "It's nothing," he says, dismissive and distant.

Dean looks back at the television. Broken glasses in hand, Henry Bemis starts to cry, and Dean reaches for the remote. The screen goes black and Sam turns off the lights, gets into the other bed and says, "Night."

"Night, John Boy," Dean says, staring at the blank screen, until it becomes obvious that Sam's not going to rise to the bait, is either asleep or pretending. Dean's hands curl in fists, his heartbeat ragged, and he makes himself breathe, makes himself stay in the quiet, choke back his words.

Three months on his own, after that hellish desperation of that year, all those bloody-knuckled promises and the guillotine horizon, fear sandpapering his stomach and grinding steel down his skin. Dean figures he can cut Sam some slack after that, give him some time. He owes him that much, he's earned it.

And he wonders what he's missing, himself. What he's lost, or forgotten. And what else Sam isn't telling him.

Standing on the edge of the parking lot, where the pavement runs out. The road behind him is silent and empty and the lights in the diner are off. There might be headlights in the distance, miles and miles away, but they could just as easily be fireflies, and the stars are thrown like dice across the sky. The moon hangs like a scarecrow and the wind rushes past in the dark and he stands with his feet apart and his head up, palms out, waiting.

Nothing happens. He's not sure he expected anything to. Something to come crashing out, a cloud of smoke to drag him under, the end of the world.

Still. When he goes inside, he locks the door and slides the deadbolt, salts the doorway. Sam has a hand across his face like he's shielding his eyes in his sleep and he frowns at the noise but doesn't stir, doesn't wake up. And so he doesn't ask and doesn't comment on how long it takes Dean to fall asleep, on the way the wind peels like fingers at the window and how long it takes for the night to slump bleary-eyed into morning.

--

In the morning there's a new waitress at the diner and Dean spills maple syrup across his pancakes while Sam finds an article about a series of electrical storms a few states away and slides it across the table, wordless, his hand across the lede and his eyes narrow and dark.

So after breakfast, they go towards it.

They go towards it and Dean waits for Sam to say something, but he doesn't, just keeps shooting these glances at Dean when he thinks Dean can't see, like he's not going to be the one to say maybe we shouldn't, maybe for once we shouldn't go towards trouble, maybe we've got enough right now, right here.

Which is pretty much always true and so this is life as usual, as it always has been, Winchesters running towards death and destruction, asking to lose more than they already have, too stupid or addicted to adrenaline and heroism or the wicked slash of courage to turn the other way.

Like he's not going to say it, but he's thinking it all the same.

It's fine, though. Absolutely fine, almost too easy. The source is obvious and they track it easily, follow it to the barn where the bodies are stored, hitchhikers mostly, and Sam's got the knife, the one Dean lifted from Ruby. Ruby who died saving Sam, but he won't think about that now.

They've got the demon cornered, its back to the wall and the people it's killed, when it smiles with the face of the farmer it's wearing and says, "Hi, Dean. How you been?"

And it's hardly anything, nothing compared to what they've said before, to the things they've done, stars bursting supernova across his eyes as the room flickered grey and blood welled up in his throat as Sam stood over their father's body with the Colt in his hand and murder hot in his eyes. It's nothing, but it makes the back of his neck go cold and his hands go white and it's just. It's just.

It recognizes him. And something stirring at the back of his mind, something buried and shadowed and awful, recognizes it.

It bares its teeth and screams as Sam shoves the knife into its chest, and when Sam steps back, the body crumples, light and thin as the cornhusks that broke beneath their feet as they crept through the fields on the way in.

"Dean," Sam says.

"See if anyone's alive," Dean says, even though he knows no one will be, empty eyes and the clean precise shapes of the runes twisted into their own cold white skin, and his words are choked and grating so he doesn't say any more.

Sam comes to find him a few minutes later. He's outside, next to the car. Crouched beside it, metal at his back. Holding still, like if he doesn't move they won't see him, won't find him. And it's stupid but his knees are locked all the same and he thinks if he moves now he might not be able to stop, frantic and blind through the cornfields, so he doesn't. Doesn't say anything, just looks up at Sam.

The moon bleeds light out onto the field, but Sam's standing in front of it, blocking it out, his own little eclipse. If there's pity on his face, or sympathy, it's too dark to tell.

"It knew you," Sam says. Neutral, like he knows better than to imply anything. Walk it off, pretend like nothing happened. "Did you know it?"

"I thought maybe I did," Dean says, more honest than he expected. He tips his head back, looks past Sam. "I don't know. Not anymore. Like I did and then I didn't."

Sam settles down next to him, easing down carefully like maybe it hurts. He doesn't say anything. Dean tastes graveyard dirt at the back of his throat.

"It knew I'm out," Dean says. "It knew already, I mean. It wasn't surprised."

Sam glances at him out of the corner of his eye, doesn't turn his head. "It's not gonna tell anyone," he says, a little dry, and Dean shrugs.

"What if it's not the only one, Sammy?" he says, looking down at his hands, the scar across his palm that some girl once mistook for his lifeline.

Sam swallows. "If that were true, why haven't they . . ."

"Tossed me back in?" he says. Sam doesn't respond, shifts a little, his shoulder brushing against Dean's for half a second. "Maybe they couldn't find me."

"You think this was a trap?" Sam asks, and Dean's mouth is dry. Sam bites his lip, the line of his teeth sharp and white and cruel, and then climbs to his feet, resting a hand on the hood of the car for balance. "Come on. If it was, we gotta go."

Dean almost says no, almost says, why bother, but Sam's looking down at him, impatient worried lines across his forehead, three lonely months and the look on his face when he saw Dean in Cold Oaks, right before that sonofabitch motherfucker Jake stabbed him in the back, crashing behind his eyes, so instead Dean nods and gets to his feet and they do, the tires spitting gravel and dirt as Sam cranes his neck to make sure they aren't being followed and the headlights blot out the road ahead.

The jittery cardiac pulse of blind fear runs them all the way into daylight.

Sam jerks awake when Dean pulls off the road into the wide sweep of the parking lot. He clutches for the door and for his gun and then looks at Dean and says, "What is it?"

Dean cuts the engine. "We need gas. I need coffee. You got Dad's journal?"

Sam opens the glove compartment, pulls it out. For an instant it could almost be four years ago and he's looking for a clue, something to explain why John left, where he might have gone. An instant, maybe, but they're both too old for that, have lost too much.

"Anybody close by? Psychics, fortunetellers, I'll take a damn palm reader."

"You sure this is a good idea?" Sam asks, the journal cradled between his palms. "Going to somebody who could be connected?"

"It's not the fucking mafia," Dean says, irritable and scared and sleep-deprived, and then, "Sorry. No. I just, we're not gonna run again." He can't. He won't. He won't do that to Sam, not again. Manic fear worse than bloodshed, clutching at straws and goodbyes at the last minute, trying to shove things into words when there really aren't words at all.

"Okay," Sam says, and he shoves his hair out of his eyes, opens the journal. The spine's cracked, the leather torn, and Dean doesn't remember when that happened. "I'll see what I can find," he says, and by the time Dean comes back, paper cups of coffee burning his hands, and by the time they have enough gas to make it across the state line, he's got a name.

He's got the window rolled down and he's wearing sunglasses, tinted black, new ones that Dean doesn't remember. "Illinois," he says, as Dean approaches.

It's not as close as he'd wanted, but it's close enough, especially if it's somebody John trusted.

"You want me to drive?" Sam asks.

"And end up off the side of the road again?" Dean says. "Nah, I got it."

He thinks Sam might be staring at him, which isn't fair since Dean can't see his eyes, so he shoves Sam's coffee at him and walks around to the other side of the car, and by the time he gets there, Sam's looking at the journal again, so he doesn't say anything about it.

He considers taking Sam up on the offer, once, but then he considers waking up screaming in the backseat, the jagged dread of dreams, and the way Sam will look at him, after, so he grips the wheel tighter and accelerates and if Sam notices, if Sam understands, he keeps quiet. He just turns the tape over, skittering guitar and feedback as they start to get close, trace the toll roads.

And Dean doesn't want to think that maybe it's because Sam does understand it, because something happened during those three months that broke him, maybe permanently, damaged something deep and intrinsic, because no matter how many times he thought Sam was going to leave, no matter how much he would have done (anything) to get Sam to stay, that --

he never wanted that.

The house is in the suburbs and the woman who answers the door is both hotter and younger than he expected. She doesn't look surprised to see them, which is a good sign, he thinks, though he wonders how old she was when Dad met her, if she's actually the daughter or caretaker or something. Apprentice, psychic in training.

"Sam," she says, and Dean doesn't like the way she looks at his brother, like she knows Sam, like they've already met. "I'd say I was surprised to see you, but, you know. Psychic and all."

"Pamela," Sam says, his shoulders hunched and his hands in his pockets, awkward and strange. "Hi."

"And you're Dean, of course," she says, turning her gaze on him. He wonders if she's looking at him the same way, too knowing. If it's a side-effect of knowing the future, knowing too much.

"Uh, yeah," he says. "You know why we're here?"

"Right down to business, huh?" She steps out of the way to let them in. Her house is cool and dim. Dean looks at Sam, but Sam's looking at the floor, maybe deliberately away from him.

"I meant what I said," Pamela says, and Sam looks up. "I am sorry about your girlfriend."

"She wasn't my girlfriend," Sam says.

"Yeah, but I hate the word 'lover,'" Pamela says, and she laughs, cigarette-dark and dry. "It sounds so sentimental. Looks like you're doing better, though. Probably having your brother back from the dead helps with that, huh?"

"So you two know each other?" Dean says before Sam can answer. Pamela raises her eyebrows, her mouth curving into something like a smirk, dangerous and amused, and Sam flushes a little.

"Pamela helped me after you, uh. After Ruby, to see if there was anything I could do," he says.

"So you didn't find her name in the journal," Dean says, and it's nothing, one more small betrayal and he's just tired, that's all. Nothing to get angry about, and shoving Sam against the wall won't help anything. He blinks.

"First of all, standing right here, second of all, what the hell journal?" Pamela says. "Bobby Singer gave the kid my name."

"Bobby?" Dean echoes. The floor shivers beneath him and he shoves his hands into his pockets for balance.

"Owns a salvage yard, always wears the same damn hat?"

"Yeah, I know him, thanks," Dean says.

"Okay," Pamela says. "So are we done with the intros or do you guys wanna keep going to the secret handshake? Because I've got other things to do."

"We're done," Sam says. "We need to know why Dean's out."

Pamela looks at Dean, her gaze shifting and unreadable, and then says, "Gimme your palm." Dean holds his hand out and she runs a finger down the center, rests her fingertip on his wrist, over the echo of his pulse.

"Anything?" Dean asks. Her skin is cool, soft against his, and he wonders if she did this to Sam, too. The first time he was here.

She shrugs. "You think maybe they just got sick of you?" He frowns and she releases his hand. "Beats me, kiddo. Sorry."

"Can you tell if we're being followed?" Sam asks, taking a step closer. Intense rather than threatening.

"You couldn't have thought about that before you decided to come here?" she asks, crossing her arms. "But no. As far as I can tell, you're clean."

"And how far is that, exactly?" Dean asks.

"Pretty damn far," Pamela says. "How was Vegas? Hot this time of year, if I remember right."

"Thanks," Dean says, and he doesn't mean for the sarcasm to bleed through, saturate everything. "You've been very helpful."

"You're a lot more charming in the stories," Pamela says. "You might wanna work on that."

Sam grins, finally, and Pamela pauses.

"That rumor I told you about last time," she says. "It's still going around."

Sam swallows, his grin fading all too quickly. "Is that what you see?"

"No," Pamela says, and Dean can't tell if she's lying. He wonders if Sam can, if Sam knows her well enough. "I just thought you might wanna know. Some people might be gunning for you."

"What else is new," Dean says, and then says, "What rumor?" Pamela looks at Sam, doesn't answer.

"Apparently I'm gonna end the world," Sam says, and he turns away, towards the door. Dean starts after him and then looks back at Pamela.

"Thanks," he says, and this time maybe he means it. "See you around."

Pamela smiles. She doesn't reply.

"What the fuck," Dean asks when they're outside, his tone remarkably hushed considering that he wants to shout. The sky hangs over them like an eggshell, threatening to break. It's nothing, leftover adrenaline and fear and caffeine burnout rattling against his ribcage. "Why didn't you tell me you knew her, not Dad?"

"I didn't think it mattered," Sam says. He shrugs. "I trust her."

And Dean's not sure what that means right now. He's not sure about a lot of things. Sam's judgment, for one. "And who the hell did she think was your girlfriend?"

Sam works his jaw, looks at something just over Dean's shoulder and then says, "Ruby." When Dean doesn't respond he turns away, heads for the car.

Dean stares after him and then jogs to catch up. "Any other anvils you wanna drop while we're here?"

"No, I'm good," Sam says. He sighs, which Dean hates because it means there are more things Sam's not telling him and because Dean knows he'll let him, let Sam get away with it, because if he knows everything he'll be compelled to do something about it, to argue or put up a fight or call Sam a fucking idiot, at least, and right now he doesn't want that, doesn't want to talk, wants to hold Sam down and shut him up and wring all of the secrets from his body, hot skin beneath Dean's mouth and he has no idea where that thought came from.

He's too tired, that's all. For any of this, and it's fucking with his wiring, with his thinking, with everything.

"Look, man, we've been driving all night and we're both exhausted," Sam is saying, his tone reasonable and placating so that Dean doesn't have any choice but to agree. "Since at least we're not being followed, you wanna get a room and crash for a few hours before we have this fight?"

"Exhausted and driving all night and I'd still win," Dean says automatically. "But sure, okay."

A shabby motel on the edge of town and he's standing in the doorway for a few minutes, staring at the wallpaper, before he realizes what he's doing, before he gives up and crashes onto his bed. Sam is still outside, getting the bags, and when he comes in he doesn't look at Dean, manages to make avoidance look casual, almost accidental, and Dean hates him a little for that, stares daggers at the back of his neck until his vision goes blurry.

He thinks maybe he's not going to be able to sleep, that he's too tired even for that, but when he opens his eyes, it's dark out and the windows are speckled with rain.

"You awake?" he says, his eyes on the glass, blurred outside world, and he hears Sam roll over.

"Yeah," Sam says. He doesn't sound like he was sleeping and Dean wonders how long he's been awake. If he was doing that staring thing again.

Dean's head's killing him, some kind of payback, leftover chemicals twisting around in his brain and an overdose of sleep on top of that. "Wanna get some, what time is it, dinner? Bar across the street might do food."

It does, greasy burgers in a crowded room with dim corners and neon signs that tinge the air, cast flickering rave light across the tables.

"You and Ruby, huh," Dean says, and it's not that he can't look at Sam, it's that when he does, he feels something hot rising beneath his skin. So he doesn't.

"You really wanna have this conversation?"

"God no."

"So don't."

"Fine by me," he says, and he takes a bite of his burger, works at his beer. He needs to not think about it, to not think about his brother fucking a demon in the cold blue desolation with which Dean is so familiar, about the three months he lost and what it might mean that he's back, what he recognized in the demon in the barn and what that, too, might imply. Because there's no way to tell, not right now, and thinking about it will only make it worse.

So he finishes his beer and offers to get another round, and when he goes up to the bar to order, he strikes up a conversation with one of the girls drinking something strange and unnaturally colored, maybe flavored like some kind of tropical fruit. He feels Sam watching, but he doesn't turn around, not until he gets her name, until he gets a smile and a promise.

"Her name's Lindsay," he tells Sam when he brings the beers back to their table. "She's got a friend."

Sam rolls his eyes. "Go," he says, and Dean grins.

Sometimes Sam's not so hard to play, after all.

He's got a hand on Lindsay's arm after a few minutes and her mouth tastes like cheap alcohol cut with fake fruit, a drink which doesn't taste so bad after the first few, and when she invites him home with her, it's easy to nod, mumble something cliche in her ear to make her laugh, keep a hand on her waist all the way back.

She lives within walking distance, a student's apartment or an artist's, and she lets him talk, weave a story of something better. When his lies tangle and snare, she lets him lay her across her unmade bed, push up her short yellow skirt and lose something to the pitch of her cries and the moans vibrating low in her throat. She lets him rest a hand across the curve of her stomach until he's almost asleep, until a revelation on the verge of falling wakes him up like putting his tongue to a battery, like touching a live wire.

It's a shard of dream and a shred of memory and some sparking half-realized connection spanning the two. She doesn't ask him to stay when he stumbles to his feet and reaches for his jeans.

The air's cold but not cold enough, and it's dark but the yellow streetlights hang like minor planets all along the way, entire blurry galaxies overhead, cartography of the night. He fumbles with the door which Sam left unlocked and he'll give Sam hell about that in the morning, anything could have gotten in, muggers and demons and God knows what. He's feeling his way along the wall in the deep-sea blindness of the room when Sam sits up and flicks on the bedside lamp and says, sleep-rough and startled, "Thought you were spending the night."

Dean blinks, lets go of the wall and rocks back on his heels. "Came back from hell for you," he says. "'m not going anywhere." He laughs, because it's so fucking obvious, so incredibly true that it should go without saying.

Sam sighs again, weary and maybe sad, and it makes him sound unbearably old. He gets out of bed and Dean reaches out a hand, his palm colliding with his brother's chest.

"I figured it out," Dean says, and even as he says it something's lurching inside of him, something's breaking, maybe remembering. How easily he can be broken. How easily anyone can be broken, really.

"Figured what out," Sam says, guiding him towards the bed. He forgets to move his feet and he staggers as Sam pushes him down, Sam's knees popping as he kneels down to undo the laces of Dean's boots. Dean doesn't remember when that happened, when Sam got old enough for his joints to start aching, if it happened while he was gone or if this life of violence and anger just made him age sooner, grow up faster than he should have.

Tangentially he wonders if Sam loved Ruby, if it was like Jessica all over again but without Dean to try to put him back together, but he thinks that's probably something he'd regret asking, maybe 'cause Sam would hit him or go angry and silent again, so he doesn't.

"You're the egg," he says, and Sam stands up, puts a hand on his shoulder, pushing him down until his head touches the pillow. "You're the fuckin' egg and I gotta put you back together."

"Uh-huh," Sam says. "You sure you're not gonna regret telling me this in the morning?"

Dean's still considering the implications of the question when Sam turns out the light and gets into the other bed. Dean turns over to face him in the dark, across a few feet of blackness, a wicked abyss, and he should know, all the unforgivable luminous things that live on the bottom where the light can't reach.

"I figured it out," he says. "Sam, that's it, that's why I'm out, you gotta listen, man."

"Go to sleep," Sam says. "You can tell me about it tomorrow, okay." Dean frowns at him, but Sam doesn't say anything else and after awhile, Dean forgets to listen.

The blinds are drawn when he wakes up but daylight filters in around them. His head hurts but there's aspirin and water on the bedside table, so he sits up gingerly and says, "Lock the fucking door next time."

He downs the pills and when there's no answer, when Sam doesn't bitch about it or about him or about any countless number of things, he looks around.

He's alone in the room. He's alone in the room, but Sam's stuff is still here, a jacket over the back of a chair, his laptop on the table.

He's coming back.

Dean's still in bed when he does, is half-awake, having dozed into a dream about Sam and Pamela and how at the last minute Pamela's eyes flash yellow and she sinks sharp teeth into the side of Sam's neck. Dean's watching it from the couch like it's a television show and when Sam starts to bleed, Dean throws popcorn at him, kernels melting like snowflakes in the pool of blood spreading out around his body, the ruined crucifix of his throat.

It's a nightmare but in slow motion and distanced like it's happening out of time. He wakes up when real-Sam opens the door.

"Took you long enough," Dean says. Sleep-slow, it comes out almost like a whine.

"How's your head?" Sam says, louder than necessary, but fair's fair. He comes over to sit on the edge of the bed, his hip flush against Dean's knee. The bed's too narrow for this and Sam's too warm. Dean thinks about pushing him off, doesn't have the energy. He remembers he was mad at Sam, but he can't remember why.

Sam's staring at him, too intense for this early in the morning, or this late, or whatever the hell time it is. A fragment of the night before, Sam staring at him as he left the bar, the expression on his face. Which is impossible, because he was too far away for Dean to have seen him. Dean raises his eyebrows, feels himself starting to blush, and Sam looks away.

"Something you said last night," Sam says. "About why you're back, I don't know if it's still important."

"Hell if I know," Dean says. He looks past Sam at the ceiling like he might find the answer etched within the water stains. "I think our equilibrium's fucked." And he thinks that might be the understatement of the century, or at least a contender.

"Our equilibrium's been fucked for a long time," Sam says, a little wry. He rests his hands on either side of him, gripping onto the edge of the bed. He looks sort of like a stranger, not like the skinny kid Dean stole from Stanford for the weekend, conned into his car by the ever-present scythe of family tragedy hanging over their lives.

"So what do we do," Dean says, and it's rhetorical, spoken aloud half by accident anyway. He's not really paying attention, focusing on the ceiling and his heartbeat and the angle of Sam's back.

Sam shakes his head. "Damned if I know."

"Ha," Dean says flatly and Sam chokes on a laugh. He glances sideways at Dean and Dean hasn't have time to figure out what that means before Sam rests a hand against his shoulder, the heel of his hand digging in hot above Dean's heart. Dean blinks, his thoughts stuttering and wrecked by the touch, immobilized. Sam's other thumb skids against his cheek. He's looking at Dean like he's terrified and enthralled at the same time, the bite of his eyes like it hurts to look but would hurt more to look away.

Dean thinks he should be drunk for this, should at least have that as an excuse. Maybe he still is, because he doesn't pull away, doesn't push Sam back. It could be another dream, same slow motion as his nightmare, fever clarity.

When Sam stops, suddenly freezes like he's just realized what he's doing, his shoulders tightening and his breath stopping, Dean tilts his head back, bares his throat and presses up into Sam's grip.

Sam exhales and crawls up onto the bed to straddle him, mouths at his neck. Dean rolls into it, clutching stupidly at Sam's arms, at the folds of his shirt, at the blankets beneath him when Sam bites down, and it's not fair, what Sam's doing to him, what Sam knows. His tongue presses flat against Dean's throat and Dean groans, one hand ripping free to push at Sam's hair, to push it back from his eyes because no way is it Sam doing this, no way would Sam. Know any of this, much less want it.

He wonders how long it's been. He thinks he'd shoot Sam if he said something stupid like always.

Sam's hand curls over the buckle of Dean's belt and Dean realizes he's looking at him with a question, waiting for Dean to say yes, to say no. He nods, not trusting himself to speak, rendered senseless with this, this newness, rendered senseless by Sam, this desperate highrise plunge. Sam almost looks grateful, a split-second of relief as his knuckles press against Dean's stomach and then his hand is down Dean's pants, the other on Dean's chest, sweaty and damp as Dean shudders and bites down to keep from falling apart, from doing this in front of Sam.

Sam, who hasn't taken his eyes off of him, like he's the only clear thing, the only point of focus in the world.

When Sam gets up off the bed, his shirt's pulled up, the scar across his stomach vivid and white, and Dean still doesn't know what caused it, what ripped him open and maybe left him to die. He's not sure he wants to.

He's not sure Sam would tell him, if he asked.

He thinks this might be final and incontrovertible proof that he's fucked up, that they both are. That he should never have left Sam alone, as if he didn't already know.

He's too vulnerable, now, tousled on the bed with his jeans undone and Sam looking at him like he sees more of him, like something's been revealed, like he's trying to memorize this, like there might be salvation burnt in the shape of Dean's body and he can see it if he tries hard enough. Too vulnerable, even though there are things Dean now knows, strange and intimate things, like the taste of the skin just above the collar of Sam's shirt and the angle of his neck when his back arches and the shape of his fingers clutching at Dean's shoulder.

Sam turns away, disappears into the bathroom, the door clicking shut like the safety on a gun. Dean falls back against the pillows and tries to remember how to breath normally, tries to remember that there are words for this, that they should come easily, that it's not the end of the world, that denial's been run into them maybe since birth.

He thinks he should do something, should get up or run. Maybe run. Which would be kind of a bitch move, but probably better in the end.

He's still there, he's almost thinking he could get used to this, maybe, grimy motel ceilings and cheap sheets and Sam and why the fuck does he feel like crying, when Sam comes out of the bathroom, gun in hand, and aims it at Dean.

"The hell, Sam," Dean says, because Sam's always been oversensitive, always had a lousy sense of humor, but this is just -- fucked, in some new and deeply disturbing way.

"I was thinking," Sam says, the twin bruises of his eyes unreadable.

"Obviously not too well." His voice holds steady and it's been, it's been a week. A week and they're here again, and maybe he wasn't so wrong the first time. Maybe hell's what comes next. And it's terrible and maybe inevitable, some sense of retribution, righting some incredible wrong.

"Dean wouldn't have let me," Sam says, and there's something harsh and brittle in his voice, cracks spiderwebbing across ice. "Dean wouldn't have."

"Damn fine reasoning skills you got there," Dean says. He can't believe he fell for it. Can't believe that it was a test, that Sam was just. Just. Because he wasn't. He wouldn't. "You know that 'cause, what, you asked?"

There's a gun in the drawer of the nightstand and a knife beneath his pillow, but he's not gonna give Sam another reason, not gonna make his last action spilling his brother's blood. Take care of your brother ingrained too deeply for him to even think about it.

Sam swallows.

"You gotta stop pulling a gun on me, 's getting old," Dean says. "You wanna shoot me, you could just say something."

Sam lowers the gun and wipes the back of his hand across his face. His shoulders are shaking, adrenaline comedown, and Dean thinks freaking out a little is probably warranted. He's not sure what it means that he's not. If he is and just doesn't know it yet or if it'll hit later.

If it hit a long time ago and this dead calm is the aftermath. If maybe something died at the crossroads and he's spent the past year trying to compensate for it, trying not to notice, to make it make sense.

"How long?" Sam says. "How long have you--"

"Does it matter?" Dean asks, low and sharp and angry. He's not in the mood for this, for a discussion. After that. Sex and violence in the space of thirty minutes, maybe less, and that's not new, but the part where it's Sam, that's something else entirely.

He gets up, finally. Turns his back to Sam and straightens his shirt, levels his shoulders and says, "Come on. We should get outta here before they charge us another night. Wouldn't want you to get all worried about credit card fraud."

"We already committed the fraud," Sam says and he sounds hysterical, hurricanes beneath the surface of his voice. "We'd be compounding it, is all."

"What the fuck ever," Dean says. "Get your shit and let's hit the road."

--

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