(no subject)
Breathing Hard
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, R, no spoilers, 9,049 words.
The day Dean figures it out.
The day Dean figures it out, there's a splotch of mustard marring the tail of Sam's tie and Sam's knuckles are chapped and dry, the same weathered-red echoed in the cut of his eyes. The deepening shadows beneath his eyes catch tight, too, a familiar bruise in the pit of Dean's stomach.
Sam's dreams never bode well; he always wakes shaking from those flawed fortuneteller visions that Dean would take from him if he could, would gladly throw back at the feet of whatever cursed his brother like this. This isn't new, is not the first time Sam's gone sleepless, edgy, and Dean knows exactly what his brother is doing. Lying by omission or pretending that the future doesn't exist; either way, it doesn't matter, because if it's bad enough for him to keep it secret, keep it from Dean, within a week they'll probably be on the run again, their hearts breaking, sick dread of the law on the back of Dean's neck, backroad breakneck panic while sirens scream after them like a warrant for their deaths.
If Sam's keeping that to himself, Dean's gonna kick his ass so hard.
They're in the pediatric ward of this hospital named after some saint or maybe a martyred nun, Blessed Mary Katherine or Beloved Margaret of the Sorrows, something like that, Dean's not sure. The walls have been painted the color of the sky, the way the sky always looks in children's books, that blank depthless blue like somebody's trying to convince the kids that the world outside isn't anything worth dreaming about after all.
This ghost that's meant to be haunting the ward, dead-eyed girl leaving bruises and making sleep an impossibility, hissing out promises of death and hellfire and torment. Finding her should be easy, but it turns out that there have been more fatalities in the ward than the administration wants to make public. The records predating 1977 are in towering waterlogged stacks of boxes stored in the hospital's damp subterranean recesses, so they're trying to get a description from the kids who actually saw the ghost, because Dean's not going to spend the whole night digging up graves and torching bones, not if he can help it.
They're talking to this girl, little blonde girl with pigtails and a teddy bear and a goddamn lisp, and she keeps prevaricating, which is annoying as hell, and smirking, which is only barely less annoying than how Sam is pretending not to notice, how Sam pulled a chair up to her bedside and keeps being all nice and soothing and telling her it's okay, they can wait, whenever she's ready to talk.
"Look, did you see it or not," Dean interrupts, cutting Sam off mid-sentence. The girl recoils, her mouth curling into a pout as her eyes widen, aghast. Dean glances at Sam, because seriously, what the hell, all he did was get to the point, and Sam's mouth is open, his face frozen in that stupid I-can't-believe-you-just-did-that expression, which quickly turns huffy and accusing.
"I need to talk to you for a minute," Sam says, sounding deadly civil, almost harmless. It's all an act, of course. His eyes are narrowed, promising murder as soon as they're out of the girl's sight. Dean raises his eyebrows.
"About what?" he asks, mostly because he wants to see if Sam can glare any harder without exploding.
"We'll be right back," Sam tells the kid, who clutches her teddy bear tighter and nods shakily.
Sam's hand closes around Dean's shoulder and Dean shakes him off, follows him into the hallway with the walls like cold mint and the floor that same speckled linoleum like almost every hospital Dean's ever been in, that floor like if he looks down he could be anywhere, he could be fourteen and waiting to find out if Dad will live or nineteen with Dad shouting at the doctor in the next room and Sam so goddamn pale, his head heavy on Dean's shoulder and his blood splattered across Dean's boots.
"What the fuck," Dean says. "She's a kid, not a grieving widow. She'll get over it."
"Exactly," Sam says. "She's just a kid. She's not a, a suspect."
"All I did was get to the point, Sammy. Just because I'm not, like, flirting with her or whatever-"
"Oh my god, she's ten years old and she's scared out of her mind and she's in the goddamn hospital," Sam says. "I'm not flirting with her, I'm being nice."
"Yeah, whatever, Humbert," Dean says. "That's what they all say."
"Fine," Sam says. "Okay, you know what? Since you're so good with kids, you can go finish with her and I'll talk to the others by myself."
Dean shrugs. Sam looks exasperated. It's a miracle that no one's thrown them out already, Dean thinks, considering how obvious Sam is about everything, standing there with a busted lip, a bullshit story, and a cheap suit that smells of motor oil and Old Spice and everything else that ends up in the backseat of the Impala. He has that inherent undertone of honesty, though, of sincerity, which Dean thinks compensates for some of it. Why else would people believe him when they don't believe Dean?
Sam turns away. He makes it three steps before Dean says, "You're not serious."
Sam glances back at him. "Uh, yeah, I am."
"You're not gonna leave me alone with her."
"Why not?"
"I was joking about the pedophilia thing!"
He means it as an apology, kind of, but Sam's eyes get wide, his nostrils flaring and his eyebrows jolting up. "We are in the children's ward, Dean," he hisses, coming closer. "Do you think you could maybe not go around shouting about pedophilia?"
Which Dean counts as a victory. Because the thing is that Dean loves to rile him up, make him lean in all close and intimidating like he thinks that shit will work on Dean, will work on Dean who's seen Sam broken and wrecked and giddy and drunk, who's put his brother back together more times than he can remember, has tasted Sam's blood and demanded keep breathing damnit with his hands on Sam's chest and Sam's answer rattling out of him like a plea, this shaking thing that Dean felt as Sam's eyes slipped closed, more times than anybody should ever have to and be expected to remain sane.
It makes sense, then, that Dean goes a little crazy whenever Sam's out of his sight.
"I wasn't shouting about pedophilia," he says, which isn't strictly true. "Just, you know, you're much better at talking to her, that's all."
Sam rubs a hand across his face. "Look, man, we've got, what, two hours 'til sunset? You talk to kids all the time and you manage not to scare most of them. Go apologize to her and see if she'll tell you anything."
"I can deal with other kids 'cause they're useful," Dean says. "That one's not. That one's probably the reason the ghost's here. You got the EMF meter?"
Sam looks at him. "I'll be back soon, okay? Just try not to make her cry."
"Dude, I don't make people cry," Dean says, highly offended, because he doesn't. "Except for you, and you cry at everything."
Sam takes a breath, lets it out. "I'll be back soon," he repeats, and he turns around and does not look back. Dean watches him go, waits until he's out of sight before going back into the room.
The kid smirks at him. Dean crosses his arms and lets his head fall back against the wall with an almost inaudible thud. "Hi," he says.
"I'm not talking to you," she says.
"Thank you," he says, not ungratefully, and he goes back out into the hallway to wait for Sam.
He's out in the parking lot, half-dozing in the driver's seat of the car, by the time Sam comes looking for him. The hallway was boring and the nurses kept giving him weird looks, more unsettling than appreciative, and every time he looked down at that floor he remembered some other night he'd lost to hospital waiting, bad coffee and sickly green-tinged lights and somebody, Sam or Dad, maybe dying a few feet away and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing but stare at the floor or the wall or the people on the televisions talking about nothing that mattered, nothing that would ever matter if the doctor came out with that fake sympathetic sorrowful look on her face.
He hears footsteps and opens his eyes just long enough to confirm that it's Sam, that it's Sam slouching towards the car with his hands in his pockets and his head down. Sam opens the passenger's side door, ducks into the car and says, "Hey."
Dean opens his eyes again, yawns. "You get anything?" he asks.
""Apparently the ghost told one of the kids her name was Anna-something," Sam says, loosening his tie.
"That's real helpful."
"Since there's only one Anna-something on our list, yeah, it is," Sam says. "You finish talking to Emily?"
"She's ditching you for a twelve-year-old," Dean says. "Tough luck."
"Funny," Sam says dryly.
Dean starts the engine, looks over his shoulder as he backs the car out. "I coulda come with you."
"I hate to break it to you, man, but no. You freaked one kid out enough. If you'd done that to the others, we'd'a got nothing and you were the one bitching about having to dig up the whole graveyard."
Dean shakes his head. "Look, man, I don't know what her problem was, but it sure as hell wasn't me."
"It's okay," Sam says. "You can't help it."
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
"I mean you're . . . gifted," Sam says. "In intimidation."
"And you're not?" Dean says.
"Well, I try to be more subtle about it," Sam says. "I mean, I don't shout at kids."
"I do not shout at kids," Dean says, his voice too loud and defensive and too goddamn close to a shout. He scowls at Sam.
"Sure," Sam says. "Right. Yeah, my mistake."
Dean considers throttling him, just for a minute, because Dean does not shout at kids, he just likes to get to the point, and what the hell does Sam know anyway, he's back to keeping secrets again and is probably going to get them killed one of these days because he never tells Dean anything important, he just bumbles along and leaves Dean to save their asses.
Dean thinks the fact that, instead of resorting to violence, he merely glares at Sam and turns up the music and only elbows Sam twice on the way from the car to the motel room probably makes him a fucking saint.
The sun's setting by the time they head out to the cemetery. It's on the edge of town, as far away from the center as possible, exiled and outcast. The night's warm enough that Sam unrolls his window, has his arm hanging out the side, and Dean's pushing past the speed limit. A night like this, nobody around and the black road rolling perfect and smooth to the horizon, it's a crime to do anything less than sixty.
Passing wheat fields melting red beneath the setting sun, gold dipping into flame-orange and black in the distance, and this giddy joyful thing kicking in Dean's chest. The thrill of the hunt, he thinks, or something like it, creeping on with nightfall, and he grins over at Sam, who's checking the shotgun again.
"I loaded that myself," Dean says. "You sayin' you don't trust me?"
"I'm saying better safe than sorry," Sam says, shouting over the rush of wind.
"Heresy," Dean says. "You just like loading my gun," which startles a surprised laugh out of Sam, this bright, ridiculous sound that's over far too quickly.
"Let me know if you ever get past being twelve," Sam says.
"Never gonna happen," Dean says, reaching over to slap Sam's leg, and Sam jolts as though shocked, nearly brains Dean with the shotgun in the process.
"Dude, I'm armed," Sam says, his voice pitched high, strained and guilty, and Dean shakes his head.
"What's it come to, a guy's gotta worry about his brother holding him up with his own gun in his own damn car."
"You get yourself into these things all on your own," Sam says, which doesn't quite make sense, but Dean's feeling generous, is willing to let it go.
"Whatever, Samwise," he says, because he hasn't called Sam that in, like, years, and Sam rolls his eyes.
"Weak," Sam says. "That's really weak," and Dean steps hard on the gas, accelerates fast enough to knock Sam back against the seat. He thinks they could go anywhere right now, Sam trying not to laugh, biting back a grin, Sam his partner in crime. They could set the whole wild west on fire if they wanted.
The cemetery's crumbling and dark, but there's enough moonlight that flashlights aren't necessary. Annabelle Gregor's grave is in the far corner, high on a slope, overlooking the rest of the shambling grounds. Her headstone reads beloved daughter, taken far too soon, which Dean thinks is stupid because almost everybody he and Sam encounter in their line of work is taken far too soon, so you'd think people would give up already on the idea that there's ever a so-called good time to go.
They dig up the grave together, Sam prattling on again about graverobbing and reselling corpses and the history of medicine or something while Dean tries to ignore him. When that doesn't work, he starts in with the necrophilia jokes until Sam gets the hint and shuts up.
When their shovels finally hit wood, this splintering noise that Dean feels in his chest because it's not unlike the sound ribs make breaking against some old stone wall in the middle of the foggy New England night, Dean slides into the grave to pry open the coffin while Sam stands watch with the shotgun.
"Why's it I always get stuck with this part," Dean grumbles, shaking salt over the long-since-decomposed body, gaping sockets of the skull.
"Same reason your mind always goes to the necrophilia jokes first," Sam says. Dean looks around for something to throw at him, but short of the corpse, there's nothing handy.
"Gimme the damn kerosene," he says, and Sam does, comes close enough to hand it to him. A scuffle ensues, Dean punching at Sam's legs until Sam lunges out of his reach.
"Are you gonna do this already or do you need me to take over?" Sam asks, slouching back against one of the gravestones the same way he does against Dean's car, arms crossed and legs stretched out like the whole damn world was designed to make his life easier, designed with him in mind. It's only indoors that he doesn't fit, like the life designed for everybody else won't ever be enough to contain him.
"I got it," Dean says. "If you'd stop trying to distract me for just a second, it'd go a hell of a lot faster."
Sam leans over to kick dirt at Dean, frowns and straightens up. "We got company," he says. Dean tosses the empty container back up to him, hoists himself up out of the earth in time to see something pale flash at the corner of his vision. He registers it a moment later, when the ghost's hand is already pressed cold and electric against his chest, and by then it's too late. Dean is briefly airborne, sees for an instant Sam's face lit with panic, beautiful in the moonlight glow, and then his head hits the gravestone, the world exploding in a brilliant display of white-noise light before going abruptly dark.
When he opens his eyes, the stars are smeared and he thinks that he has to clean the windshield. It's weird that he doesn't remember why it's so dirty, what happened to it, but he thinks it's probably Sam's fault, Sam fucking with his car, and then he blinks and the world comes back into focus, starting with the cold granite against the back of his neck, the dry dead grass against his cheek, the ghost a few feet away and quickly closing the distance,
The shotgun blast is muffled, noise like a forest of deadfalling leaves, but the ghost flickers apart all the same. It reassembles a moment later and turns on Sam, clawing the shotgun out of his hand and launching herself fingernail-first at his chest, giving Dean enough time to shout Sammy and stagger to his feet, drop his lighter into the open grave before dropping to his knees, a breath of displaced air against his face as the fire catches, as his hands sink into the fresh gravedirt, raw earth smell. It's comforting, the heat and the earth and the downward gravity tug almost soporific, but he wrenches his head up, because Sam, where's Sam, where's the ghost.
The ghost is gone, her absence a glittering, almost tangible thing. The place where she stood and tried to rip Sam apart seems vaguely iridescent, maybe permanently marked by her existence. Sam is still standing, one hand clutched against his chest like some bodice-ripper heroine and the other around the shotgun once more. This is immensely reassuring and Dean blacks out for a moment after that, because then Sam is right next to him and Dean's not sure how that happened.
Sam looks down at him, his shirt hanging in shreds and tatters. He looks so incredibly dumb, Dean thinks, like he was mauled by a pack of preteen girls or something, which makes this, like, the second time today. It's a good thing Dean's not the jealous type.
"Thanks for distracting her," Dean says, climbing to his feet and losing his balance, half-falling back against Sam at the last minute to keep himself from pitching forward into the grave. He covers by slapping Sam across the chest and his palm comes away damp. He wipes his hands on his jeans, but it doesn't help, Sam's blood still tacky on his skin, seeping into the lines of his palm to stain his lifeline forever. His life outlined with Sam's blood, that seems about right.
"You're welcome," Sam says, knocking him in the shoulder hard enough to almost send him back down. Only Sam's hand on his shoulder at the last second keeps him from falling. "You're not gonna pass out on me, are you?"
"Not unless you keep shaking me," Dean says testily. It's not his fault the ghost threw him against the headstone, not his fault the horizon keeps tilting, so Sam should stop making it sound like it is. He shrugs out of Sam's grip and Sam's brows draw together.
"What the hell, Dean, I tell you to keep your head down and you come up?"
"You didn't tell me to keep my head down, you said we had company," Dean says. "Figured it was a fuckin' security guard. Next time how 'bout you get to the goddamn point and say 'ghost,' okay? And she only wanted me outta the way so she could go for you."
Sam groans. "Oh my god," he says, so incredulous that it sounds almost painful.
"No, it's okay," Dean says. "I get it. She wanted a friend and you're obviously a fourteen-year-old girl on the inside."
"At least I know enough to get out of the way when there's a fucking ghost coming at me," Sam says. "Or are you so desperate that you were actually gonna let her molest you?"
"Necrophilia jokes are just tacky, man," Dean says, his tone as close to sanctimonious as he can manage. He picks up his shovel, shoulders his bag. "You gonna wait to see if your girlfriend comes back or are you coming?"
"Like I could let you go off on your own for three minutes," Sam says. "You'd probably pass out before you got to the car. You'd hit your head again and come back to haunt me forever."
"You got no room to talk, you're the one with the kinda literal bleeding heart," Dean says. He realizes that he never checked on Sam, that Sam is too stubborn and prideful to tell him when something's wrong if Dean doesn't ask him first, so he says, "You okay?"
"I'll live," Sam says. Dean stares hard at him for a moment, trying to determine whether he's lying. "Really," Sam says, which will have to do for now, so Dean turns away, heads for the familiar sanctuary of the car.
The moon's bleeding stolen light onto the road when they leave the cemetery. It's a night for thieves, Dean thinks, and they're both so goddamn lucky, lucky to be alive, the scrapes Sam gets them into and then has the fucking audacity to blame all on Dean. The car crests over the hill, the glow from the headlights spilling down before them like the tide, and Sam is bleeding in Dean's shotgun seat, far too quietly for Dean's liking, so Dean says, "How you doin' over there, Sammy?"
Sam grins, a flash of white teeth. "Keep your eyes on the road," he says. "It's not like you've never seen me bleeding before," and Dean has to agree, because Sam's a clumsy motherfucker, it's true. "I am not," Sam protests. "You're the one who got thrown into a tombstone again. What is it with you and getting thrown into things?"
"I'm irresistible," Dean says, grinning crookedly at him.
"Which is why you're always getting flung aside?" Sam asks. "I think there might be a flaw in your logic."
Dean glares at him and unrolls his window, lets the wind whip across the car and silence Sam, who looks so fucking offended that Dean has to laugh. He thinks about accelerating, making this moment stretch out forever, but it's not a serious thought, a vague and unreal flight of fantasy, and anyway Sam is starting to look concerned, so he slows down as they approach the town. He navigates them safely, sedately, through the quiet towards the neon of the tall motel sign gleaming like a beacon among the streetlights. His head's starting to pound by the time he parks, his eyes aching from trying to keep the road in focus.
The streetlights blur at the edge of his vision when he gets out of the car, but the sudden still air helps, searing into his lungs, sharper than nicotine or adrenaline or Sam's wild-eyed look of panic.
In the motel room he shrugs out of his jacket and the bed squeaks beneath him as he sinks down onto the edge. Across the room, Sam strips off his ruined shirt and stares forlornly at the unsalvageable mess. Dean watches Sam's reflection in the smudged mirror hanging over the sink.
"We can stop by the mall on the way out of town," Dean says. "Get you another one, maybe in a nice shade of pink or something."
Sam makes a face at him in the mirror. "Ha," he says. He balls up the fabric, sinks it neatly into the wastebasket and turns around to dig another shirt out of his bag. Dean watches him until he's fairly certain Sam's not going to bleed to death in the next five minutes, and then he lowers himself carefully back onto the bed and stares at the poorly spackled ceiling.
"You sure you don't need stitches?" he says.
"Like I'm letting you near me with a needle," Sam says.
"Fine," Dean says. "Use duct tape, see if I care when it gets infected and scars and you're not pretty anymore." He reaches up, touches the back of his head gingerly. A welter of bruises rising beneath his fingers and the ceiling wavering slightly when he prods them, nausea roiling in his stomach, so he stops.
Sam appears in his vision, looming over him like a messenger from God, be not afraid though my aim is true, I'm deadly with a knife, I'm the smartest person you know and I can bring your world to utter ruin with only a word. "You okay?" he asks.
"I'm probably dying," Dean says. "Thanks for asking."
"Taken down by a fourteen-year-old," Sam says. "I'll be sure to put that on your tombstone." He moves out of Dean's vision and Dean sits up, indignant.
"You wouldn't dare," he says.
Sam's doing something with Dean's jacket. Dean glares suspiciously at him until Sam holds up the keys to the Impala as explanation. "I would," Sam says. "So try not to die while I'm gone."
"You're what I get stuck with for a brother," Dean says. "Where's your sense of loyalty?"
"It would be a nice tombstone," Sam says, zipping up his hoodie.
Dean flips him off. "Bring me back something good," he says, but he's not sure if Sam hears him, because the door's already closing. The room seems smaller when Sam's gone, which Dean isn't sure is logical. Surely it should seem bigger, since Sam takes up so much space, is so impossibly solid and tangible, looming over Dean and pushing into his space and maybe that's why Dean feels off balance right now, because he's not compensating for Sam's boundary issues. That makes sense.
He waits until he hears the Impala's engine start, roar of noise through the ricepaper walls, before getting up. Sam's blood has dried stickily on his hand and it occurs to him rather belatedly that it's probably seeped into the car, too, the seats and the steering wheel, some kind of baptism, but it won't be the first time and the car will forgive him, it always does.
He washes his hands, water running hot across his skin and down the drain, and he wonders how pissed Sam would be if he were asleep when Sam came back. Probably a lot. Probably Sam would shake him and shout at him and attack him with statistics, how much more likely it is to die of a concussion if you fall asleep in the first hour or something like that, and Dean's in no mood for that. Not to mention it's sort of his responsibility to keep Sam in one piece, God knows Sam's pretty much incapable of doing that on his own, and he doesn't want to fall asleep without making sure Sam gets back safely. Sam on his own in the huge black night, the night which suddenly seems epic and timeless, all-encompassing and unmapped. It's a distressing thought, one that makes him shiver. What the hell was he thinking, letting Sam go off on his own?
He coaxes coffee out of the ancient machine in the corner. He drinks two cups while he waits for Sam to come back and he listens to the ticking of the clock on the opposite wall, that painfully ugly clock shaped like a cat and so goddamn loud that he can imagine it's been here since the beginning of time and maybe it will be here forever, outlasting both of them, counting down seconds until eternity.
He wonders if he should have asked where Sam was going, if Sam's going to take his lack of questioning as permission to take his car across the country or maybe to never come back. He's considering calling Sam, is staring at his cell phone and willing it to ring so he won't have to be the one to give in first, won't have to make the potentially humiliating move that is calling Sam and demanding to know that he's still alive, thereby letting Sam know that Dean's lost without him, when Sam opens the door.
Sam has a brown paper bag in one hand and a plastic one in the other, white plastic with some stylized temple-looking building on the side and the sticky-pungent aroma of sweet and sour sauce, and he frowns. "You're never gonna be able to sleep tonight," he says, looking at the coffee and glaring at Dean like Dean knew he would. Sam is so predictable sometimes.
Sam sets his bags down on the table and goes to put Dean's keys back and Dean pushes off the bed, starts going through the bags. There is indeed Chinese takeout in the one and even better, there are two bottles of whiskey nestled in the other. "I take back what I said before," Dean says. "You're the best brother ever."
Sam rolls his eyes. "I'm gonna remind you you said that," he says.
Dean's got a mouth full of fortune cookie, swallows and says, "It doesn't count, I got a concussion."
"You're meant to eat the fortune cookie last," Sam bitches, yanking the takeout bag away from Dean. Dean flings the other plastic-wrapped cookie at Sam's head. He's standing too close for his aim to be good; the cookie hits Sam in the chest and bounces onto the floor, but it's still a point in Dean's favor.
He rescues his used coffee mug from the bedside table, grabs its untouched mate from its place by the coffee machine while Sam opens up boxes and licks sauce from his fingers.
"What are you, six?" Dean says, as though Sam's mouth is the worst thing he could ever imagine. Sam smirks at him, but he looks flushed, looks unsettled, and Dean looks away, concentrates on pouring whiskey into the coffee mugs without spilling.
They're down to one carton of sticky white rice going cold, the dregs of the first bottle divided between their cups, weighted in Sam's favor because after all, Sam was the one who left the safety of the room. The television's playing on mute, though Dean doesn't remember what they were watching, if they were watching anything at all. It's a good way to end the day, he thinks, a good way to spend the rest of his life.
He drains the contents of his mug, looks over at Sam sprawled content on the other bed, his eyes on the television screen. "You're falling behind," Dean says. "Keep up with me here," and Sam shakes his head.
"I am," he says, rolling over to look at Dean. His hoodie's unzipped and his shirt's risen just above his hips, revealing a line of skin above his jeans, above the grey band of his shorts. He pushes absently at his stomach. His hair's sticking up in the most ridiculous cowlicks and Dean's chest feels warm just looking at him, his stupid ridiculous brother, the best thing in Dean's whole world, maybe composing Dean's entire world all by himself.
"Mine's empty," Dean says. He drapes his arms over his chest and glances sideways at Sam, in the mood to argue. "Yours isn't. Q.E.D."
Sam snorts. "Q.E.D.?" he echoes. He lifts his mug to his mouth, takes a swallow and sets it back down. "You don't even know what that means."
"Sure I do," Dean says. "It's Latin, dumbass. It's, uh, quod era, quod er-uh. Demonstrated." He thinks that's right, thinks it's close enough.
Sam snickers, this choking noise that threatens to turn into full-blown unchecked hysteria and makes Dean reconsider his original premise. Sam is so drunk, the lightweight. Sam wipes at his eyes, shakes his head again. "Yeah," he says. "You totally convinced me."
Dean flings an empty carton at his head and Sam misses the catch. The carton disappears over the side of the bed and Dean takes advantage of Sam's temporary distraction, uses the opportunity to lunge over and tackle him flat onto the bed, get a hand fisted in his shirt and say, low and dangerous and threatening, "Q.E.D. this."
Sam laughs again, his heart jackhammering under Dean's palm, and then he grabs Dean's shoulders and pushes him back, flips him over. He's kneeling over Dean, straddling Dean's legs and trying to pin Dean's hands, but there's no way in hell Dean's going to let him. Sam might have the height and weight advantage, but Dean's always been faster, always known how to make his punches count. He's working on a plan, a really good plan that'll have Sam on the floor, gasping for breath and admitting defeat as soon as he can talk again, when Sam goes still, lets go of Dean's arms and slides off of him, off of the bed.
Dean gets his elbows back under him, pushes himself up into a sitting position and looks up at Sam, wondering what he missed. "What the hell," he says. "Surrendering's such a bitch move."
"Why, um," Sam says, standing awkwardly between the beds with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His face is flushed, alcoholic heat and exertion and he has to be sweltering in that hoodie, that hoodie like his goddamn security blanket. He keeps licking his lips and then biting them, and he looks bruised, he looks used, which kind of makes Dean want to tackle him again, rough him up some more. Which is a weird thought to have right now, Dean thinks, right now or possibly ever.
It occurs to him that he's on Sam's bed, which is another weird thought, but not one that counts, really, because he spends half of his life on Sam's bed, it's just a bed, a place to sit, and it's not even Sam's bed, it's probably been used by thousands of other people before. All the same, he's starting to blush, so he swallows and raises his eyebrows and stares hard at Sam. "What the hell," he repeats, because Sam still hasn't finished his sentence.
"Why don't you like kids," Sam says and then he bites his lip again, like he said something he didn't mean to.
"What?" Dean says, confused.
Sam swallows. He's definitely blushing now. "Is it because I was, you know. Is it because you had to take care of me," he says, making it a statement, looking down at the end like he might be physically incapable of meeting Dean's eyes, of looking at Dean when he hears Dean's answer.
"What?" Dean says dumbly. He works through Sam's words, Sam's line of thought, and says, "Like, did you scar me for life or something? No, moron, you were the only kid I ever liked, sorry to say."
Sam's head snaps up. Dean's unprepared for the sudden force, intensity of his gaze. "Seriously," Sam says.
"Seriously," Dean says. "So yeah, maybe it is your fault," he says, and because Sam looks stricken, he hurries to add, "'Cause you ruined all the other ones for me. They're all, uh, I bet none of 'em could spell Pleistocene, you know?"
Sam stares at him and Dean thinks that maybe he got it wrong, maybe he misremembered, maybe that's not how Sam won that third-grade spelling thing he wouldn't shut up about for a month after, and then Sam laughs. "Oh, man, I can't believe you remember that," he says, sounding more relieved than Dean's heard in a long time. "I can't believe you brought it up, either. You gotta be wasted, you said if I ever mentioned that again you'd break my fingers with a dictionary."
"I am not," Dean denies automatically, because you should never let the other guy know your weaknesses, and then, because it's Sam and Sam's a constant exception to all of his rules, he says, "A little buzzed, maybe." He thinks about mentioning the possible concussion thing, but it would be just like Sam to go all prudish and boring and responsible and decide to drag him to the ER right about now, so he doesn't.
"Right," Sam says, shaking his head.
"Look who's talking," Dean says.
"What are you, six?" Sam says, and then he pauses, looks confused. It's amazing, Dean thinks, it's probably a miracle, how Sam managed to survive for four years without Dean, and he's looking down at Dean again, way too tall for Dean's liking.
Dean reaches out, catches the front of his shirt and tugs, wants to bring Sam back down to his level, wipe that glazed expression from his face. Sam goes down faster than Dean expected, lands unsteadily on the edge of the bed and ends up with one hand on Dean's shoulder and the other cupping his cheek for balance.
Dean blinks at him, at his sudden proximity and the hot black of his pupils. "Hey, Sammy," he says quietly, forgetting what he was supposed to be doing, whether he was meant to be snapping back at Sam or what, abruptly aware of the rise and fall of his chest and his heart pounding, smashing against all of his bruises, against the thin barrier of his skin.
"Hey," Sam says, just as quietly, and he licks his lips again, and then he kisses Dean, his nose bumping against Dean's own and his mouth open and his eyes closed. After a moment's confusion, Dean kisses him back, his hand inching up around Sam's shoulder, because Sam has the fucking best ideas, he really does.
It's just like Sam to put the pieces together first, solve the equation that is them, all of their hits and misses and near-collisions, but that's okay, because Sam's a genius, after all.
Sam pulls away, breaks away, wipes a hand across his mouth and half-scrambles to his feet. He shrugs out of his hoodie, black rush of fabric to the floor like the shedding of wings, and stands there looking like he wants to run. "I, uh," he says. "I just."
"Yeah," Dean says, breathing shallowly, and this is going to get weird fast, he knows it. Neither of them are drunk enough to write it off entirely and oh god, the future is falling fast like a fucking house of cards on fire. "You got a thing for dinosaur words or, or somethin', I."
Sam shakes his head. "Pleistocene's not a dinosaur word," he says morosely, a solemn and truthful confession as his eyes flicker to Dean's. He bites his lip and Dean thinks maybe he was wrong, maybe he jumped to the wrong damn conclusion once again.
"Oh," he says dazedly. "I, uh. That's cool, 'cause I was thinking you could do it again, but I don't, I don't know any other dinosaur words." He tries to grin at Sam, tell him it's okay, it really is, but maybe it isn't working, because Sam's just standing there, Sam's just staring at him like Dean's delivered a death sentence, like Dean's damned him or ripped out his heart. This long godawful minute in which Dean hears the clock again, that goddamned eternity clock, in which he starts to think that maybe he fucked up again, maybe he went too far, and then Sam lets out a breath.
"Oh thank god," he says, words like a last minute reprieve, and Dean realizes that maybe it just took him that long to process what Dean said.
"God's got nothing to do with it, Sammy," Dean says, his hand curling around Sam's belt, fingers twisting around Sam's belt loops, tugging him closer.
"Don't get, uh, Jesus, existential on me," Sam says, his eyes squeezed closed, maybe in concentration. He opens them and grins at Dean, brilliant and blinding. He comes crashing back down onto the bed, his mouth against Dean's again, quick and chaste and infinitely more awkward this time.
Dean swallows. Sam pulls back, pushes himself back against the headboard. Dean glances back at him, moves up to sit next to him, and they both stare at the television, the television screen playing something Dean doesn't recognize, something Dean can't follow. He's having trouble breathing, his hands shaking so badly that he balls them into fists and hopes Sam doesn't notice.
The television screen flickers, fizzes white and goes out. The lamp between the bed goes out at the same time, electricity dying abruptly like a sign, an omen, an epiphany, and in the sudden darkness, Dean's face goes hot, guilty burn spreading all the way down his body.
He just kissed his brother. He just kissed his brother again and it was awkward as fuck but it didn't feel like it would be the last time, Dean's not going to let it be the last time, and what the hell is wrong with him? It's Sam's fault, he decides, just like everything else. Because right and wrong have never mattered when Sam is at stake and surely it's Sam making him feel drunker than he's been in a long time, drunker than he actually is, goddamn Sam with his mouth and his hands and the way he keeps looking at Dean, oh fuck.
Sam shifts his weight, pushes off of the bed, and Dean's breath catches. He wonders if he'll be able to get to the door before Sam does, if he'll be able to make it without falling, and if he does, if Sam will only shove him aside and go sleep in the car and shuffle back in the morning, stand around like an awkward ghost until they both manage to convince themselves that this never happened or until they go crazy trying. But Sam's only going to the table, only getting the other bottle of whiskey and making his way back to the bed, only stumbling once. Dean is absurdly proud of him, thinks that Sam would be a hell of a guy to have by his side in a foxhole, but since they already spend most of their lives under enemy fire anyway, maybe that's not such a revelation.
Sam gives the bottle to Dean, lets him have the first shot, but it goes down like water and doesn't help at all with the way Sam keeps looking at him. Sneaking glances when he thinks Dean's not looking, like he thinks Dean won't notice in the dark, pressed up against Dean like they're kids again, kids again, huddled up close together against the night and everything that crept therein. It's a comforting feeling, trading the bottle back and forth and listening to the weirdly quiet night, the ragged rhythm of their breath and the distant noise of cars downshifting, and Dean has to remind himself that there's something at stake here. Possibly their entire lives are at stake here.
Sam hands the bottle back to him and Dean swallows. He closes his eyes and reaches down to set the bottle on the floor, out of the way. He needs his head clear, he needs his hands free, and he faces his brother. "What were your dreams about?" he asks.
"What?" Sam says.
"Your, uh. Your dreams," Dean says. "Your nightmares, what the fuck ever. You're not sleeping, I know you're not sleeping, don't fuckin' lie to me, Sammy." He takes a breath. This is coming out all wrong, he thinks, but he pushes ahead, too goddamn stupid to stop and too goddamn stubborn to take anything back. His hands are cold, his stomach turned to lead and his skittering frenetic heart to steel, but he has to know. "I wanna know what you saw, what you, I mean. If that's why you're doing this, I won't be mad, I just, I gotta know. I gotta know."
There's just enough light coming in through the window for Dean to see the line of Sam's neck when he swallows, the rise and fall of his adam's apple. "What I saw?" Sam says blearily. Faint movement when he shakes his head. "I didn't see anything, man. You lost me."
"Goddamn it," Dean begins, because he might be drunk, he might be concussed, but he's not an idiot. If Sam knows what's coming, if Sam is so sure as to risk everything, if he knows that they're going to die in any day now, that life will either stop after that or will be so brutally lonely as to not be worth continuing, he's not going have to carry that knowledge all by himself. He's not going to go around with that terrible future in his head and Dean oblivious and making it worse, no way in hell.
And just because Sam had a vision doesn't mean that it will come true, doesn't mean they can't once more avert destiny.
"Dean," Sam says. Dean doesn't like the tone of his voice, that tone that means he knows something Dean doesn't and Christ, isn't it obvious, how is it possible that Dean doesn't know what he's talking about, Dean is such an idiot. It's a tone Dean wants to blame on college, on Sam's time away, but no, Sam had it down to an art long before he left.
Sam leans closer, his hands braced on the bed for balance, and he's in the shadows again, rendered in shades of grey and Dean can't see his eyes, Dean cannot see his fucking eyes, how the hell is he meant to know if Sam's lying if he can't look him in the eyes. "It's. It's you, okay," Sam says.
It's strange to hear it confirmed, to hear Sam say it, to hear it aloud, to know. It's not entirely surprising, though; he always suspected that this would end bloody and cruel and part of him is so selfishly grateful that it's not the other way around, that he won't have to live on after Sam, after. When Sam doesn't.
Dean wishes he hadn't put the bottle down, because he feels suddenly painfully sober, sober in all the wrong ways, his mouth wracked dry, but he doesn't trust himself to reach for it, doesn't trust his sense of balance. "You saw me die," he says and the words are heavy, cinder and ash on his tongue. He wonders if Sam knows how, if Sam knows exactly when it will happen. How much Sam had to see.
"What?" Sam says. "No. No, no, no, it's you, it's your fault, I can't fucking sleep because I'm in love with you, you idiot, oh my god."
"What?" Dean echoes. "You're in love with me?" And oh, that is just like Sam, just like his brother to love like that, painfully, suicidally, this desperate soul-wrenching kind of love that makes it look like he's dying, that makes it look like Dean's killing him.
Dean's the same way, though, that self-destructive bent familiar as iron in his blood, and he's going to kill Sam, because it was hard enough thinking that he was bearing witness to Sam's destruction. Being the cause of said destruction isn't something Dean's ever sure he'll be able to comprehend.
"Oh my god," Sam says, covering his face with his hands. "No, Dean, I just, I kissed you because you said, uh. Pleistocene. What the hell do you think?" He lowers his hands slowly. He looks stricken. "Oh, fuck," he says, a whisper that would have been reverent if it weren't so broken, such a damaged revelation, if it didn't sound torn out of him, sound like his whole world was collapsing around him.
"What is it?" Dean asks, terrified, the look on Sam's face hitting him like a punch to the jaw, a kick to the chest.
"I'm sorry," Sam says, and he sounds so lost. "I'm so sorry, I swear I won't ever do it again, I'm just, I'm really drunk and I didn't mean it. It won't change anything, I swear." His words are shrapnel, bullet shards, and Dean's skin is paper, is tearing through.
"Sam," Dean says, and his heart is not breaking, he swears, because there's still this chance, this one chance. "You wanna do it again, right?"
"It doesn't matter," Sam says, dead quiet and so rough. "I won't ever, I'm sorry. I. Yes."
And there is light, there is elation, relief sweet as oxygen, and Dean closes his eyes for a moment against the way they seem to be brimming, the way the room is shivering, but he's only drunk, he's not so desperate, so grateful. It's not tears that blur his vision, it's something much more heroic and manly. Maybe the roof is leaking. "Okay," he says steadily. "Good."
"Good?" Sam echoes.
"Yeah," Dean says. "That, yes. Yes. If you're not doing it because you're gonna die or I'm gonna die, if you fucking mean it, then yes, and if you don't and you kiss me again anyway I swear to god I will kill you Sam, I really fucking will."
Sam stares at him. Sam stares at him, frozen, immobile, maybe not even breathing, and that is so like him, leaving it up to Dean to do everything, and they're both drunk, both so far beyond saving, and maybe this is what in love really means, this blind panic, this crushing, consuming idea that he can make everything okay if he can only kiss Sam again, can only work his hands around his brother, can only touch him one more time, even as his heart threatens to tear out of his chest and he knows that if he kisses Sam this time, if he does it again, everything will change. Once more will never be enough.
But nobody ever accused him of being sane, of being any different than Sam, of loving Sam with anything less than his whole life, so he leans in, and he does it, he kisses his brother. Opens his mouth against Sam's and feels Sam shift to accommodate him, shift so they're facing each other, and pull Dean closer, into his lap, Sam's hand twisted hot around Dean's forearm, his fingers worked up against the crease of Dean's elbow. Dean fists a hand in his hair, half on top of Sam as he licks his way into Sam's mouth and Sam shivers underneath him.
Dean loses track of time, thinks it's entirely possible that he loses hours to this, to making out with Sam. His brother pushed up against the headboard, his arm hooked behind Dean's neck, the air between them hazy and thick, and then Dean moves, then Dean slides a hand down Sam's chest and Sam flinches back, his head slamming against the headboard for an instant before his mouth finds Dean's again.
And there's something hot on Dean's hand, so he looks down, even as Sam's tongue slicks at the side of his neck. Sam's blood on his hand again, Sam's blood black in the dark, and it seems like they could die like this, seems like they would die like this, holed up in some motel room trying to recover from their injuries, lying to each other with blood in their mouths, telling each other they'll be okay. Dean has to put a hand on Sam's neck, thumb his pulse, to make sure that he wasn't lying before.
And Sam's pulse is steady and his other hand is around Dean's jaw, forcing Dean to look up, to meet his eyes, before kissing him again, and after that, Dean is too busy leaving marks on Sam's neck, pressing the ridge of his teeth against Sam's skin and marveling at Sam so close, Sam all around, Sam slurring curses in his ear, Sam's thumb scraping the soft place under his jaw.
"Fuck, Sam," Dean moans, and there's no need to say more than that before he pushes up Sam's shirt, carefully this time. They're sprawled across the bed, their jeans open, and Dean has one hand between Sam's legs, Sam shaking against him, Sam's shirt rucked up and his jeans hanging askew, hanging off of his hips as he swears at Dean and makes the most dangerous promises, the kind of promises that would surely destroy the world if he kept them.
And then Sam flips them over, the flat of his hand scraping hot across Dean's hip and Dean's eyes on his bitten mouth the whole time.
The bed is a mess, is ruined, the sheets untucked and scattered and the blankets on the floor, but Dean is too goddamn tired to drag Sam into the other one. Sam's passed out, breathing deep, his face is pressed against the side of Dean's neck, his head heavy on Dean's shoulder, and Dean has no idea what time it is. His eyes won't focus anymore, won't let him see the clock on the other side of the room, much less make out the minuscule hands on his watch.
He thinks this might have been the best night of his life, but only so far.
"Hey," Sam says, drowsy and slow and muffled, and then he lifts his head, just enough to speak. "Go to sleep, we gotta make it to Vermont by tonight."
"Vermont?" Dean says, confused, half-asleep, or maybe he's already entirely asleep, maybe this is a dream. He looks down at his hand, traces of Sam's blood still smeared across his palm like they might be permanent, might have been there all along. Sam mumbles something else, a word that might be vampires, and trails off into silence, his breathing evening out instantly, and Dean squints at the clock one more time.
The light seeping in around the curtains is the honey-orange slide of dawn and he closes his eyes and throws his arm across Sam so that Sam will still be there when he wakes up. Because Dean could die like this, die happy like this, but he won't, neither of them will.
They'll wake up in a few hours and the sun will be shining, stabbing at his eyes, and Sam will look at him and something in Dean's chest will tighten, will fall loose only when Sam kisses him again in the full undeniable light of morning. They will head for the horizon, they will head to Vermont, maybe, and to Florida and to Kansas at least once more, they will keep moving, keep running, they will be alive for a little longer. They will be alive for long enough, long enough for everything Dean's going to do to Sam, everything they have left to see, long enough for the rest of the world to fall away, no matter what destiny says, no matter what Sam might see, no matter what, Dean will let himself believe.
--
end
by whereupon
Sam/Dean, R, no spoilers, 9,049 words.
The day Dean figures it out.
The day Dean figures it out, there's a splotch of mustard marring the tail of Sam's tie and Sam's knuckles are chapped and dry, the same weathered-red echoed in the cut of his eyes. The deepening shadows beneath his eyes catch tight, too, a familiar bruise in the pit of Dean's stomach.
Sam's dreams never bode well; he always wakes shaking from those flawed fortuneteller visions that Dean would take from him if he could, would gladly throw back at the feet of whatever cursed his brother like this. This isn't new, is not the first time Sam's gone sleepless, edgy, and Dean knows exactly what his brother is doing. Lying by omission or pretending that the future doesn't exist; either way, it doesn't matter, because if it's bad enough for him to keep it secret, keep it from Dean, within a week they'll probably be on the run again, their hearts breaking, sick dread of the law on the back of Dean's neck, backroad breakneck panic while sirens scream after them like a warrant for their deaths.
If Sam's keeping that to himself, Dean's gonna kick his ass so hard.
They're in the pediatric ward of this hospital named after some saint or maybe a martyred nun, Blessed Mary Katherine or Beloved Margaret of the Sorrows, something like that, Dean's not sure. The walls have been painted the color of the sky, the way the sky always looks in children's books, that blank depthless blue like somebody's trying to convince the kids that the world outside isn't anything worth dreaming about after all.
This ghost that's meant to be haunting the ward, dead-eyed girl leaving bruises and making sleep an impossibility, hissing out promises of death and hellfire and torment. Finding her should be easy, but it turns out that there have been more fatalities in the ward than the administration wants to make public. The records predating 1977 are in towering waterlogged stacks of boxes stored in the hospital's damp subterranean recesses, so they're trying to get a description from the kids who actually saw the ghost, because Dean's not going to spend the whole night digging up graves and torching bones, not if he can help it.
They're talking to this girl, little blonde girl with pigtails and a teddy bear and a goddamn lisp, and she keeps prevaricating, which is annoying as hell, and smirking, which is only barely less annoying than how Sam is pretending not to notice, how Sam pulled a chair up to her bedside and keeps being all nice and soothing and telling her it's okay, they can wait, whenever she's ready to talk.
"Look, did you see it or not," Dean interrupts, cutting Sam off mid-sentence. The girl recoils, her mouth curling into a pout as her eyes widen, aghast. Dean glances at Sam, because seriously, what the hell, all he did was get to the point, and Sam's mouth is open, his face frozen in that stupid I-can't-believe-you-just-did-that expression, which quickly turns huffy and accusing.
"I need to talk to you for a minute," Sam says, sounding deadly civil, almost harmless. It's all an act, of course. His eyes are narrowed, promising murder as soon as they're out of the girl's sight. Dean raises his eyebrows.
"About what?" he asks, mostly because he wants to see if Sam can glare any harder without exploding.
"We'll be right back," Sam tells the kid, who clutches her teddy bear tighter and nods shakily.
Sam's hand closes around Dean's shoulder and Dean shakes him off, follows him into the hallway with the walls like cold mint and the floor that same speckled linoleum like almost every hospital Dean's ever been in, that floor like if he looks down he could be anywhere, he could be fourteen and waiting to find out if Dad will live or nineteen with Dad shouting at the doctor in the next room and Sam so goddamn pale, his head heavy on Dean's shoulder and his blood splattered across Dean's boots.
"What the fuck," Dean says. "She's a kid, not a grieving widow. She'll get over it."
"Exactly," Sam says. "She's just a kid. She's not a, a suspect."
"All I did was get to the point, Sammy. Just because I'm not, like, flirting with her or whatever-"
"Oh my god, she's ten years old and she's scared out of her mind and she's in the goddamn hospital," Sam says. "I'm not flirting with her, I'm being nice."
"Yeah, whatever, Humbert," Dean says. "That's what they all say."
"Fine," Sam says. "Okay, you know what? Since you're so good with kids, you can go finish with her and I'll talk to the others by myself."
Dean shrugs. Sam looks exasperated. It's a miracle that no one's thrown them out already, Dean thinks, considering how obvious Sam is about everything, standing there with a busted lip, a bullshit story, and a cheap suit that smells of motor oil and Old Spice and everything else that ends up in the backseat of the Impala. He has that inherent undertone of honesty, though, of sincerity, which Dean thinks compensates for some of it. Why else would people believe him when they don't believe Dean?
Sam turns away. He makes it three steps before Dean says, "You're not serious."
Sam glances back at him. "Uh, yeah, I am."
"You're not gonna leave me alone with her."
"Why not?"
"I was joking about the pedophilia thing!"
He means it as an apology, kind of, but Sam's eyes get wide, his nostrils flaring and his eyebrows jolting up. "We are in the children's ward, Dean," he hisses, coming closer. "Do you think you could maybe not go around shouting about pedophilia?"
Which Dean counts as a victory. Because the thing is that Dean loves to rile him up, make him lean in all close and intimidating like he thinks that shit will work on Dean, will work on Dean who's seen Sam broken and wrecked and giddy and drunk, who's put his brother back together more times than he can remember, has tasted Sam's blood and demanded keep breathing damnit with his hands on Sam's chest and Sam's answer rattling out of him like a plea, this shaking thing that Dean felt as Sam's eyes slipped closed, more times than anybody should ever have to and be expected to remain sane.
It makes sense, then, that Dean goes a little crazy whenever Sam's out of his sight.
"I wasn't shouting about pedophilia," he says, which isn't strictly true. "Just, you know, you're much better at talking to her, that's all."
Sam rubs a hand across his face. "Look, man, we've got, what, two hours 'til sunset? You talk to kids all the time and you manage not to scare most of them. Go apologize to her and see if she'll tell you anything."
"I can deal with other kids 'cause they're useful," Dean says. "That one's not. That one's probably the reason the ghost's here. You got the EMF meter?"
Sam looks at him. "I'll be back soon, okay? Just try not to make her cry."
"Dude, I don't make people cry," Dean says, highly offended, because he doesn't. "Except for you, and you cry at everything."
Sam takes a breath, lets it out. "I'll be back soon," he repeats, and he turns around and does not look back. Dean watches him go, waits until he's out of sight before going back into the room.
The kid smirks at him. Dean crosses his arms and lets his head fall back against the wall with an almost inaudible thud. "Hi," he says.
"I'm not talking to you," she says.
"Thank you," he says, not ungratefully, and he goes back out into the hallway to wait for Sam.
He's out in the parking lot, half-dozing in the driver's seat of the car, by the time Sam comes looking for him. The hallway was boring and the nurses kept giving him weird looks, more unsettling than appreciative, and every time he looked down at that floor he remembered some other night he'd lost to hospital waiting, bad coffee and sickly green-tinged lights and somebody, Sam or Dad, maybe dying a few feet away and there was nothing he could do about it, nothing but stare at the floor or the wall or the people on the televisions talking about nothing that mattered, nothing that would ever matter if the doctor came out with that fake sympathetic sorrowful look on her face.
He hears footsteps and opens his eyes just long enough to confirm that it's Sam, that it's Sam slouching towards the car with his hands in his pockets and his head down. Sam opens the passenger's side door, ducks into the car and says, "Hey."
Dean opens his eyes again, yawns. "You get anything?" he asks.
""Apparently the ghost told one of the kids her name was Anna-something," Sam says, loosening his tie.
"That's real helpful."
"Since there's only one Anna-something on our list, yeah, it is," Sam says. "You finish talking to Emily?"
"She's ditching you for a twelve-year-old," Dean says. "Tough luck."
"Funny," Sam says dryly.
Dean starts the engine, looks over his shoulder as he backs the car out. "I coulda come with you."
"I hate to break it to you, man, but no. You freaked one kid out enough. If you'd done that to the others, we'd'a got nothing and you were the one bitching about having to dig up the whole graveyard."
Dean shakes his head. "Look, man, I don't know what her problem was, but it sure as hell wasn't me."
"It's okay," Sam says. "You can't help it."
"What the hell do you mean by that?"
"I mean you're . . . gifted," Sam says. "In intimidation."
"And you're not?" Dean says.
"Well, I try to be more subtle about it," Sam says. "I mean, I don't shout at kids."
"I do not shout at kids," Dean says, his voice too loud and defensive and too goddamn close to a shout. He scowls at Sam.
"Sure," Sam says. "Right. Yeah, my mistake."
Dean considers throttling him, just for a minute, because Dean does not shout at kids, he just likes to get to the point, and what the hell does Sam know anyway, he's back to keeping secrets again and is probably going to get them killed one of these days because he never tells Dean anything important, he just bumbles along and leaves Dean to save their asses.
Dean thinks the fact that, instead of resorting to violence, he merely glares at Sam and turns up the music and only elbows Sam twice on the way from the car to the motel room probably makes him a fucking saint.
The sun's setting by the time they head out to the cemetery. It's on the edge of town, as far away from the center as possible, exiled and outcast. The night's warm enough that Sam unrolls his window, has his arm hanging out the side, and Dean's pushing past the speed limit. A night like this, nobody around and the black road rolling perfect and smooth to the horizon, it's a crime to do anything less than sixty.
Passing wheat fields melting red beneath the setting sun, gold dipping into flame-orange and black in the distance, and this giddy joyful thing kicking in Dean's chest. The thrill of the hunt, he thinks, or something like it, creeping on with nightfall, and he grins over at Sam, who's checking the shotgun again.
"I loaded that myself," Dean says. "You sayin' you don't trust me?"
"I'm saying better safe than sorry," Sam says, shouting over the rush of wind.
"Heresy," Dean says. "You just like loading my gun," which startles a surprised laugh out of Sam, this bright, ridiculous sound that's over far too quickly.
"Let me know if you ever get past being twelve," Sam says.
"Never gonna happen," Dean says, reaching over to slap Sam's leg, and Sam jolts as though shocked, nearly brains Dean with the shotgun in the process.
"Dude, I'm armed," Sam says, his voice pitched high, strained and guilty, and Dean shakes his head.
"What's it come to, a guy's gotta worry about his brother holding him up with his own gun in his own damn car."
"You get yourself into these things all on your own," Sam says, which doesn't quite make sense, but Dean's feeling generous, is willing to let it go.
"Whatever, Samwise," he says, because he hasn't called Sam that in, like, years, and Sam rolls his eyes.
"Weak," Sam says. "That's really weak," and Dean steps hard on the gas, accelerates fast enough to knock Sam back against the seat. He thinks they could go anywhere right now, Sam trying not to laugh, biting back a grin, Sam his partner in crime. They could set the whole wild west on fire if they wanted.
The cemetery's crumbling and dark, but there's enough moonlight that flashlights aren't necessary. Annabelle Gregor's grave is in the far corner, high on a slope, overlooking the rest of the shambling grounds. Her headstone reads beloved daughter, taken far too soon, which Dean thinks is stupid because almost everybody he and Sam encounter in their line of work is taken far too soon, so you'd think people would give up already on the idea that there's ever a so-called good time to go.
They dig up the grave together, Sam prattling on again about graverobbing and reselling corpses and the history of medicine or something while Dean tries to ignore him. When that doesn't work, he starts in with the necrophilia jokes until Sam gets the hint and shuts up.
When their shovels finally hit wood, this splintering noise that Dean feels in his chest because it's not unlike the sound ribs make breaking against some old stone wall in the middle of the foggy New England night, Dean slides into the grave to pry open the coffin while Sam stands watch with the shotgun.
"Why's it I always get stuck with this part," Dean grumbles, shaking salt over the long-since-decomposed body, gaping sockets of the skull.
"Same reason your mind always goes to the necrophilia jokes first," Sam says. Dean looks around for something to throw at him, but short of the corpse, there's nothing handy.
"Gimme the damn kerosene," he says, and Sam does, comes close enough to hand it to him. A scuffle ensues, Dean punching at Sam's legs until Sam lunges out of his reach.
"Are you gonna do this already or do you need me to take over?" Sam asks, slouching back against one of the gravestones the same way he does against Dean's car, arms crossed and legs stretched out like the whole damn world was designed to make his life easier, designed with him in mind. It's only indoors that he doesn't fit, like the life designed for everybody else won't ever be enough to contain him.
"I got it," Dean says. "If you'd stop trying to distract me for just a second, it'd go a hell of a lot faster."
Sam leans over to kick dirt at Dean, frowns and straightens up. "We got company," he says. Dean tosses the empty container back up to him, hoists himself up out of the earth in time to see something pale flash at the corner of his vision. He registers it a moment later, when the ghost's hand is already pressed cold and electric against his chest, and by then it's too late. Dean is briefly airborne, sees for an instant Sam's face lit with panic, beautiful in the moonlight glow, and then his head hits the gravestone, the world exploding in a brilliant display of white-noise light before going abruptly dark.
When he opens his eyes, the stars are smeared and he thinks that he has to clean the windshield. It's weird that he doesn't remember why it's so dirty, what happened to it, but he thinks it's probably Sam's fault, Sam fucking with his car, and then he blinks and the world comes back into focus, starting with the cold granite against the back of his neck, the dry dead grass against his cheek, the ghost a few feet away and quickly closing the distance,
The shotgun blast is muffled, noise like a forest of deadfalling leaves, but the ghost flickers apart all the same. It reassembles a moment later and turns on Sam, clawing the shotgun out of his hand and launching herself fingernail-first at his chest, giving Dean enough time to shout Sammy and stagger to his feet, drop his lighter into the open grave before dropping to his knees, a breath of displaced air against his face as the fire catches, as his hands sink into the fresh gravedirt, raw earth smell. It's comforting, the heat and the earth and the downward gravity tug almost soporific, but he wrenches his head up, because Sam, where's Sam, where's the ghost.
The ghost is gone, her absence a glittering, almost tangible thing. The place where she stood and tried to rip Sam apart seems vaguely iridescent, maybe permanently marked by her existence. Sam is still standing, one hand clutched against his chest like some bodice-ripper heroine and the other around the shotgun once more. This is immensely reassuring and Dean blacks out for a moment after that, because then Sam is right next to him and Dean's not sure how that happened.
Sam looks down at him, his shirt hanging in shreds and tatters. He looks so incredibly dumb, Dean thinks, like he was mauled by a pack of preteen girls or something, which makes this, like, the second time today. It's a good thing Dean's not the jealous type.
"Thanks for distracting her," Dean says, climbing to his feet and losing his balance, half-falling back against Sam at the last minute to keep himself from pitching forward into the grave. He covers by slapping Sam across the chest and his palm comes away damp. He wipes his hands on his jeans, but it doesn't help, Sam's blood still tacky on his skin, seeping into the lines of his palm to stain his lifeline forever. His life outlined with Sam's blood, that seems about right.
"You're welcome," Sam says, knocking him in the shoulder hard enough to almost send him back down. Only Sam's hand on his shoulder at the last second keeps him from falling. "You're not gonna pass out on me, are you?"
"Not unless you keep shaking me," Dean says testily. It's not his fault the ghost threw him against the headstone, not his fault the horizon keeps tilting, so Sam should stop making it sound like it is. He shrugs out of Sam's grip and Sam's brows draw together.
"What the hell, Dean, I tell you to keep your head down and you come up?"
"You didn't tell me to keep my head down, you said we had company," Dean says. "Figured it was a fuckin' security guard. Next time how 'bout you get to the goddamn point and say 'ghost,' okay? And she only wanted me outta the way so she could go for you."
Sam groans. "Oh my god," he says, so incredulous that it sounds almost painful.
"No, it's okay," Dean says. "I get it. She wanted a friend and you're obviously a fourteen-year-old girl on the inside."
"At least I know enough to get out of the way when there's a fucking ghost coming at me," Sam says. "Or are you so desperate that you were actually gonna let her molest you?"
"Necrophilia jokes are just tacky, man," Dean says, his tone as close to sanctimonious as he can manage. He picks up his shovel, shoulders his bag. "You gonna wait to see if your girlfriend comes back or are you coming?"
"Like I could let you go off on your own for three minutes," Sam says. "You'd probably pass out before you got to the car. You'd hit your head again and come back to haunt me forever."
"You got no room to talk, you're the one with the kinda literal bleeding heart," Dean says. He realizes that he never checked on Sam, that Sam is too stubborn and prideful to tell him when something's wrong if Dean doesn't ask him first, so he says, "You okay?"
"I'll live," Sam says. Dean stares hard at him for a moment, trying to determine whether he's lying. "Really," Sam says, which will have to do for now, so Dean turns away, heads for the familiar sanctuary of the car.
The moon's bleeding stolen light onto the road when they leave the cemetery. It's a night for thieves, Dean thinks, and they're both so goddamn lucky, lucky to be alive, the scrapes Sam gets them into and then has the fucking audacity to blame all on Dean. The car crests over the hill, the glow from the headlights spilling down before them like the tide, and Sam is bleeding in Dean's shotgun seat, far too quietly for Dean's liking, so Dean says, "How you doin' over there, Sammy?"
Sam grins, a flash of white teeth. "Keep your eyes on the road," he says. "It's not like you've never seen me bleeding before," and Dean has to agree, because Sam's a clumsy motherfucker, it's true. "I am not," Sam protests. "You're the one who got thrown into a tombstone again. What is it with you and getting thrown into things?"
"I'm irresistible," Dean says, grinning crookedly at him.
"Which is why you're always getting flung aside?" Sam asks. "I think there might be a flaw in your logic."
Dean glares at him and unrolls his window, lets the wind whip across the car and silence Sam, who looks so fucking offended that Dean has to laugh. He thinks about accelerating, making this moment stretch out forever, but it's not a serious thought, a vague and unreal flight of fantasy, and anyway Sam is starting to look concerned, so he slows down as they approach the town. He navigates them safely, sedately, through the quiet towards the neon of the tall motel sign gleaming like a beacon among the streetlights. His head's starting to pound by the time he parks, his eyes aching from trying to keep the road in focus.
The streetlights blur at the edge of his vision when he gets out of the car, but the sudden still air helps, searing into his lungs, sharper than nicotine or adrenaline or Sam's wild-eyed look of panic.
In the motel room he shrugs out of his jacket and the bed squeaks beneath him as he sinks down onto the edge. Across the room, Sam strips off his ruined shirt and stares forlornly at the unsalvageable mess. Dean watches Sam's reflection in the smudged mirror hanging over the sink.
"We can stop by the mall on the way out of town," Dean says. "Get you another one, maybe in a nice shade of pink or something."
Sam makes a face at him in the mirror. "Ha," he says. He balls up the fabric, sinks it neatly into the wastebasket and turns around to dig another shirt out of his bag. Dean watches him until he's fairly certain Sam's not going to bleed to death in the next five minutes, and then he lowers himself carefully back onto the bed and stares at the poorly spackled ceiling.
"You sure you don't need stitches?" he says.
"Like I'm letting you near me with a needle," Sam says.
"Fine," Dean says. "Use duct tape, see if I care when it gets infected and scars and you're not pretty anymore." He reaches up, touches the back of his head gingerly. A welter of bruises rising beneath his fingers and the ceiling wavering slightly when he prods them, nausea roiling in his stomach, so he stops.
Sam appears in his vision, looming over him like a messenger from God, be not afraid though my aim is true, I'm deadly with a knife, I'm the smartest person you know and I can bring your world to utter ruin with only a word. "You okay?" he asks.
"I'm probably dying," Dean says. "Thanks for asking."
"Taken down by a fourteen-year-old," Sam says. "I'll be sure to put that on your tombstone." He moves out of Dean's vision and Dean sits up, indignant.
"You wouldn't dare," he says.
Sam's doing something with Dean's jacket. Dean glares suspiciously at him until Sam holds up the keys to the Impala as explanation. "I would," Sam says. "So try not to die while I'm gone."
"You're what I get stuck with for a brother," Dean says. "Where's your sense of loyalty?"
"It would be a nice tombstone," Sam says, zipping up his hoodie.
Dean flips him off. "Bring me back something good," he says, but he's not sure if Sam hears him, because the door's already closing. The room seems smaller when Sam's gone, which Dean isn't sure is logical. Surely it should seem bigger, since Sam takes up so much space, is so impossibly solid and tangible, looming over Dean and pushing into his space and maybe that's why Dean feels off balance right now, because he's not compensating for Sam's boundary issues. That makes sense.
He waits until he hears the Impala's engine start, roar of noise through the ricepaper walls, before getting up. Sam's blood has dried stickily on his hand and it occurs to him rather belatedly that it's probably seeped into the car, too, the seats and the steering wheel, some kind of baptism, but it won't be the first time and the car will forgive him, it always does.
He washes his hands, water running hot across his skin and down the drain, and he wonders how pissed Sam would be if he were asleep when Sam came back. Probably a lot. Probably Sam would shake him and shout at him and attack him with statistics, how much more likely it is to die of a concussion if you fall asleep in the first hour or something like that, and Dean's in no mood for that. Not to mention it's sort of his responsibility to keep Sam in one piece, God knows Sam's pretty much incapable of doing that on his own, and he doesn't want to fall asleep without making sure Sam gets back safely. Sam on his own in the huge black night, the night which suddenly seems epic and timeless, all-encompassing and unmapped. It's a distressing thought, one that makes him shiver. What the hell was he thinking, letting Sam go off on his own?
He coaxes coffee out of the ancient machine in the corner. He drinks two cups while he waits for Sam to come back and he listens to the ticking of the clock on the opposite wall, that painfully ugly clock shaped like a cat and so goddamn loud that he can imagine it's been here since the beginning of time and maybe it will be here forever, outlasting both of them, counting down seconds until eternity.
He wonders if he should have asked where Sam was going, if Sam's going to take his lack of questioning as permission to take his car across the country or maybe to never come back. He's considering calling Sam, is staring at his cell phone and willing it to ring so he won't have to be the one to give in first, won't have to make the potentially humiliating move that is calling Sam and demanding to know that he's still alive, thereby letting Sam know that Dean's lost without him, when Sam opens the door.
Sam has a brown paper bag in one hand and a plastic one in the other, white plastic with some stylized temple-looking building on the side and the sticky-pungent aroma of sweet and sour sauce, and he frowns. "You're never gonna be able to sleep tonight," he says, looking at the coffee and glaring at Dean like Dean knew he would. Sam is so predictable sometimes.
Sam sets his bags down on the table and goes to put Dean's keys back and Dean pushes off the bed, starts going through the bags. There is indeed Chinese takeout in the one and even better, there are two bottles of whiskey nestled in the other. "I take back what I said before," Dean says. "You're the best brother ever."
Sam rolls his eyes. "I'm gonna remind you you said that," he says.
Dean's got a mouth full of fortune cookie, swallows and says, "It doesn't count, I got a concussion."
"You're meant to eat the fortune cookie last," Sam bitches, yanking the takeout bag away from Dean. Dean flings the other plastic-wrapped cookie at Sam's head. He's standing too close for his aim to be good; the cookie hits Sam in the chest and bounces onto the floor, but it's still a point in Dean's favor.
He rescues his used coffee mug from the bedside table, grabs its untouched mate from its place by the coffee machine while Sam opens up boxes and licks sauce from his fingers.
"What are you, six?" Dean says, as though Sam's mouth is the worst thing he could ever imagine. Sam smirks at him, but he looks flushed, looks unsettled, and Dean looks away, concentrates on pouring whiskey into the coffee mugs without spilling.
They're down to one carton of sticky white rice going cold, the dregs of the first bottle divided between their cups, weighted in Sam's favor because after all, Sam was the one who left the safety of the room. The television's playing on mute, though Dean doesn't remember what they were watching, if they were watching anything at all. It's a good way to end the day, he thinks, a good way to spend the rest of his life.
He drains the contents of his mug, looks over at Sam sprawled content on the other bed, his eyes on the television screen. "You're falling behind," Dean says. "Keep up with me here," and Sam shakes his head.
"I am," he says, rolling over to look at Dean. His hoodie's unzipped and his shirt's risen just above his hips, revealing a line of skin above his jeans, above the grey band of his shorts. He pushes absently at his stomach. His hair's sticking up in the most ridiculous cowlicks and Dean's chest feels warm just looking at him, his stupid ridiculous brother, the best thing in Dean's whole world, maybe composing Dean's entire world all by himself.
"Mine's empty," Dean says. He drapes his arms over his chest and glances sideways at Sam, in the mood to argue. "Yours isn't. Q.E.D."
Sam snorts. "Q.E.D.?" he echoes. He lifts his mug to his mouth, takes a swallow and sets it back down. "You don't even know what that means."
"Sure I do," Dean says. "It's Latin, dumbass. It's, uh, quod era, quod er-uh. Demonstrated." He thinks that's right, thinks it's close enough.
Sam snickers, this choking noise that threatens to turn into full-blown unchecked hysteria and makes Dean reconsider his original premise. Sam is so drunk, the lightweight. Sam wipes at his eyes, shakes his head again. "Yeah," he says. "You totally convinced me."
Dean flings an empty carton at his head and Sam misses the catch. The carton disappears over the side of the bed and Dean takes advantage of Sam's temporary distraction, uses the opportunity to lunge over and tackle him flat onto the bed, get a hand fisted in his shirt and say, low and dangerous and threatening, "Q.E.D. this."
Sam laughs again, his heart jackhammering under Dean's palm, and then he grabs Dean's shoulders and pushes him back, flips him over. He's kneeling over Dean, straddling Dean's legs and trying to pin Dean's hands, but there's no way in hell Dean's going to let him. Sam might have the height and weight advantage, but Dean's always been faster, always known how to make his punches count. He's working on a plan, a really good plan that'll have Sam on the floor, gasping for breath and admitting defeat as soon as he can talk again, when Sam goes still, lets go of Dean's arms and slides off of him, off of the bed.
Dean gets his elbows back under him, pushes himself up into a sitting position and looks up at Sam, wondering what he missed. "What the hell," he says. "Surrendering's such a bitch move."
"Why, um," Sam says, standing awkwardly between the beds with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. His face is flushed, alcoholic heat and exertion and he has to be sweltering in that hoodie, that hoodie like his goddamn security blanket. He keeps licking his lips and then biting them, and he looks bruised, he looks used, which kind of makes Dean want to tackle him again, rough him up some more. Which is a weird thought to have right now, Dean thinks, right now or possibly ever.
It occurs to him that he's on Sam's bed, which is another weird thought, but not one that counts, really, because he spends half of his life on Sam's bed, it's just a bed, a place to sit, and it's not even Sam's bed, it's probably been used by thousands of other people before. All the same, he's starting to blush, so he swallows and raises his eyebrows and stares hard at Sam. "What the hell," he repeats, because Sam still hasn't finished his sentence.
"Why don't you like kids," Sam says and then he bites his lip again, like he said something he didn't mean to.
"What?" Dean says, confused.
Sam swallows. He's definitely blushing now. "Is it because I was, you know. Is it because you had to take care of me," he says, making it a statement, looking down at the end like he might be physically incapable of meeting Dean's eyes, of looking at Dean when he hears Dean's answer.
"What?" Dean says dumbly. He works through Sam's words, Sam's line of thought, and says, "Like, did you scar me for life or something? No, moron, you were the only kid I ever liked, sorry to say."
Sam's head snaps up. Dean's unprepared for the sudden force, intensity of his gaze. "Seriously," Sam says.
"Seriously," Dean says. "So yeah, maybe it is your fault," he says, and because Sam looks stricken, he hurries to add, "'Cause you ruined all the other ones for me. They're all, uh, I bet none of 'em could spell Pleistocene, you know?"
Sam stares at him and Dean thinks that maybe he got it wrong, maybe he misremembered, maybe that's not how Sam won that third-grade spelling thing he wouldn't shut up about for a month after, and then Sam laughs. "Oh, man, I can't believe you remember that," he says, sounding more relieved than Dean's heard in a long time. "I can't believe you brought it up, either. You gotta be wasted, you said if I ever mentioned that again you'd break my fingers with a dictionary."
"I am not," Dean denies automatically, because you should never let the other guy know your weaknesses, and then, because it's Sam and Sam's a constant exception to all of his rules, he says, "A little buzzed, maybe." He thinks about mentioning the possible concussion thing, but it would be just like Sam to go all prudish and boring and responsible and decide to drag him to the ER right about now, so he doesn't.
"Right," Sam says, shaking his head.
"Look who's talking," Dean says.
"What are you, six?" Sam says, and then he pauses, looks confused. It's amazing, Dean thinks, it's probably a miracle, how Sam managed to survive for four years without Dean, and he's looking down at Dean again, way too tall for Dean's liking.
Dean reaches out, catches the front of his shirt and tugs, wants to bring Sam back down to his level, wipe that glazed expression from his face. Sam goes down faster than Dean expected, lands unsteadily on the edge of the bed and ends up with one hand on Dean's shoulder and the other cupping his cheek for balance.
Dean blinks at him, at his sudden proximity and the hot black of his pupils. "Hey, Sammy," he says quietly, forgetting what he was supposed to be doing, whether he was meant to be snapping back at Sam or what, abruptly aware of the rise and fall of his chest and his heart pounding, smashing against all of his bruises, against the thin barrier of his skin.
"Hey," Sam says, just as quietly, and he licks his lips again, and then he kisses Dean, his nose bumping against Dean's own and his mouth open and his eyes closed. After a moment's confusion, Dean kisses him back, his hand inching up around Sam's shoulder, because Sam has the fucking best ideas, he really does.
It's just like Sam to put the pieces together first, solve the equation that is them, all of their hits and misses and near-collisions, but that's okay, because Sam's a genius, after all.
Sam pulls away, breaks away, wipes a hand across his mouth and half-scrambles to his feet. He shrugs out of his hoodie, black rush of fabric to the floor like the shedding of wings, and stands there looking like he wants to run. "I, uh," he says. "I just."
"Yeah," Dean says, breathing shallowly, and this is going to get weird fast, he knows it. Neither of them are drunk enough to write it off entirely and oh god, the future is falling fast like a fucking house of cards on fire. "You got a thing for dinosaur words or, or somethin', I."
Sam shakes his head. "Pleistocene's not a dinosaur word," he says morosely, a solemn and truthful confession as his eyes flicker to Dean's. He bites his lip and Dean thinks maybe he was wrong, maybe he jumped to the wrong damn conclusion once again.
"Oh," he says dazedly. "I, uh. That's cool, 'cause I was thinking you could do it again, but I don't, I don't know any other dinosaur words." He tries to grin at Sam, tell him it's okay, it really is, but maybe it isn't working, because Sam's just standing there, Sam's just staring at him like Dean's delivered a death sentence, like Dean's damned him or ripped out his heart. This long godawful minute in which Dean hears the clock again, that goddamned eternity clock, in which he starts to think that maybe he fucked up again, maybe he went too far, and then Sam lets out a breath.
"Oh thank god," he says, words like a last minute reprieve, and Dean realizes that maybe it just took him that long to process what Dean said.
"God's got nothing to do with it, Sammy," Dean says, his hand curling around Sam's belt, fingers twisting around Sam's belt loops, tugging him closer.
"Don't get, uh, Jesus, existential on me," Sam says, his eyes squeezed closed, maybe in concentration. He opens them and grins at Dean, brilliant and blinding. He comes crashing back down onto the bed, his mouth against Dean's again, quick and chaste and infinitely more awkward this time.
Dean swallows. Sam pulls back, pushes himself back against the headboard. Dean glances back at him, moves up to sit next to him, and they both stare at the television, the television screen playing something Dean doesn't recognize, something Dean can't follow. He's having trouble breathing, his hands shaking so badly that he balls them into fists and hopes Sam doesn't notice.
The television screen flickers, fizzes white and goes out. The lamp between the bed goes out at the same time, electricity dying abruptly like a sign, an omen, an epiphany, and in the sudden darkness, Dean's face goes hot, guilty burn spreading all the way down his body.
He just kissed his brother. He just kissed his brother again and it was awkward as fuck but it didn't feel like it would be the last time, Dean's not going to let it be the last time, and what the hell is wrong with him? It's Sam's fault, he decides, just like everything else. Because right and wrong have never mattered when Sam is at stake and surely it's Sam making him feel drunker than he's been in a long time, drunker than he actually is, goddamn Sam with his mouth and his hands and the way he keeps looking at Dean, oh fuck.
Sam shifts his weight, pushes off of the bed, and Dean's breath catches. He wonders if he'll be able to get to the door before Sam does, if he'll be able to make it without falling, and if he does, if Sam will only shove him aside and go sleep in the car and shuffle back in the morning, stand around like an awkward ghost until they both manage to convince themselves that this never happened or until they go crazy trying. But Sam's only going to the table, only getting the other bottle of whiskey and making his way back to the bed, only stumbling once. Dean is absurdly proud of him, thinks that Sam would be a hell of a guy to have by his side in a foxhole, but since they already spend most of their lives under enemy fire anyway, maybe that's not such a revelation.
Sam gives the bottle to Dean, lets him have the first shot, but it goes down like water and doesn't help at all with the way Sam keeps looking at him. Sneaking glances when he thinks Dean's not looking, like he thinks Dean won't notice in the dark, pressed up against Dean like they're kids again, kids again, huddled up close together against the night and everything that crept therein. It's a comforting feeling, trading the bottle back and forth and listening to the weirdly quiet night, the ragged rhythm of their breath and the distant noise of cars downshifting, and Dean has to remind himself that there's something at stake here. Possibly their entire lives are at stake here.
Sam hands the bottle back to him and Dean swallows. He closes his eyes and reaches down to set the bottle on the floor, out of the way. He needs his head clear, he needs his hands free, and he faces his brother. "What were your dreams about?" he asks.
"What?" Sam says.
"Your, uh. Your dreams," Dean says. "Your nightmares, what the fuck ever. You're not sleeping, I know you're not sleeping, don't fuckin' lie to me, Sammy." He takes a breath. This is coming out all wrong, he thinks, but he pushes ahead, too goddamn stupid to stop and too goddamn stubborn to take anything back. His hands are cold, his stomach turned to lead and his skittering frenetic heart to steel, but he has to know. "I wanna know what you saw, what you, I mean. If that's why you're doing this, I won't be mad, I just, I gotta know. I gotta know."
There's just enough light coming in through the window for Dean to see the line of Sam's neck when he swallows, the rise and fall of his adam's apple. "What I saw?" Sam says blearily. Faint movement when he shakes his head. "I didn't see anything, man. You lost me."
"Goddamn it," Dean begins, because he might be drunk, he might be concussed, but he's not an idiot. If Sam knows what's coming, if Sam is so sure as to risk everything, if he knows that they're going to die in any day now, that life will either stop after that or will be so brutally lonely as to not be worth continuing, he's not going have to carry that knowledge all by himself. He's not going to go around with that terrible future in his head and Dean oblivious and making it worse, no way in hell.
And just because Sam had a vision doesn't mean that it will come true, doesn't mean they can't once more avert destiny.
"Dean," Sam says. Dean doesn't like the tone of his voice, that tone that means he knows something Dean doesn't and Christ, isn't it obvious, how is it possible that Dean doesn't know what he's talking about, Dean is such an idiot. It's a tone Dean wants to blame on college, on Sam's time away, but no, Sam had it down to an art long before he left.
Sam leans closer, his hands braced on the bed for balance, and he's in the shadows again, rendered in shades of grey and Dean can't see his eyes, Dean cannot see his fucking eyes, how the hell is he meant to know if Sam's lying if he can't look him in the eyes. "It's. It's you, okay," Sam says.
It's strange to hear it confirmed, to hear Sam say it, to hear it aloud, to know. It's not entirely surprising, though; he always suspected that this would end bloody and cruel and part of him is so selfishly grateful that it's not the other way around, that he won't have to live on after Sam, after. When Sam doesn't.
Dean wishes he hadn't put the bottle down, because he feels suddenly painfully sober, sober in all the wrong ways, his mouth wracked dry, but he doesn't trust himself to reach for it, doesn't trust his sense of balance. "You saw me die," he says and the words are heavy, cinder and ash on his tongue. He wonders if Sam knows how, if Sam knows exactly when it will happen. How much Sam had to see.
"What?" Sam says. "No. No, no, no, it's you, it's your fault, I can't fucking sleep because I'm in love with you, you idiot, oh my god."
"What?" Dean echoes. "You're in love with me?" And oh, that is just like Sam, just like his brother to love like that, painfully, suicidally, this desperate soul-wrenching kind of love that makes it look like he's dying, that makes it look like Dean's killing him.
Dean's the same way, though, that self-destructive bent familiar as iron in his blood, and he's going to kill Sam, because it was hard enough thinking that he was bearing witness to Sam's destruction. Being the cause of said destruction isn't something Dean's ever sure he'll be able to comprehend.
"Oh my god," Sam says, covering his face with his hands. "No, Dean, I just, I kissed you because you said, uh. Pleistocene. What the hell do you think?" He lowers his hands slowly. He looks stricken. "Oh, fuck," he says, a whisper that would have been reverent if it weren't so broken, such a damaged revelation, if it didn't sound torn out of him, sound like his whole world was collapsing around him.
"What is it?" Dean asks, terrified, the look on Sam's face hitting him like a punch to the jaw, a kick to the chest.
"I'm sorry," Sam says, and he sounds so lost. "I'm so sorry, I swear I won't ever do it again, I'm just, I'm really drunk and I didn't mean it. It won't change anything, I swear." His words are shrapnel, bullet shards, and Dean's skin is paper, is tearing through.
"Sam," Dean says, and his heart is not breaking, he swears, because there's still this chance, this one chance. "You wanna do it again, right?"
"It doesn't matter," Sam says, dead quiet and so rough. "I won't ever, I'm sorry. I. Yes."
And there is light, there is elation, relief sweet as oxygen, and Dean closes his eyes for a moment against the way they seem to be brimming, the way the room is shivering, but he's only drunk, he's not so desperate, so grateful. It's not tears that blur his vision, it's something much more heroic and manly. Maybe the roof is leaking. "Okay," he says steadily. "Good."
"Good?" Sam echoes.
"Yeah," Dean says. "That, yes. Yes. If you're not doing it because you're gonna die or I'm gonna die, if you fucking mean it, then yes, and if you don't and you kiss me again anyway I swear to god I will kill you Sam, I really fucking will."
Sam stares at him. Sam stares at him, frozen, immobile, maybe not even breathing, and that is so like him, leaving it up to Dean to do everything, and they're both drunk, both so far beyond saving, and maybe this is what in love really means, this blind panic, this crushing, consuming idea that he can make everything okay if he can only kiss Sam again, can only work his hands around his brother, can only touch him one more time, even as his heart threatens to tear out of his chest and he knows that if he kisses Sam this time, if he does it again, everything will change. Once more will never be enough.
But nobody ever accused him of being sane, of being any different than Sam, of loving Sam with anything less than his whole life, so he leans in, and he does it, he kisses his brother. Opens his mouth against Sam's and feels Sam shift to accommodate him, shift so they're facing each other, and pull Dean closer, into his lap, Sam's hand twisted hot around Dean's forearm, his fingers worked up against the crease of Dean's elbow. Dean fists a hand in his hair, half on top of Sam as he licks his way into Sam's mouth and Sam shivers underneath him.
Dean loses track of time, thinks it's entirely possible that he loses hours to this, to making out with Sam. His brother pushed up against the headboard, his arm hooked behind Dean's neck, the air between them hazy and thick, and then Dean moves, then Dean slides a hand down Sam's chest and Sam flinches back, his head slamming against the headboard for an instant before his mouth finds Dean's again.
And there's something hot on Dean's hand, so he looks down, even as Sam's tongue slicks at the side of his neck. Sam's blood on his hand again, Sam's blood black in the dark, and it seems like they could die like this, seems like they would die like this, holed up in some motel room trying to recover from their injuries, lying to each other with blood in their mouths, telling each other they'll be okay. Dean has to put a hand on Sam's neck, thumb his pulse, to make sure that he wasn't lying before.
And Sam's pulse is steady and his other hand is around Dean's jaw, forcing Dean to look up, to meet his eyes, before kissing him again, and after that, Dean is too busy leaving marks on Sam's neck, pressing the ridge of his teeth against Sam's skin and marveling at Sam so close, Sam all around, Sam slurring curses in his ear, Sam's thumb scraping the soft place under his jaw.
"Fuck, Sam," Dean moans, and there's no need to say more than that before he pushes up Sam's shirt, carefully this time. They're sprawled across the bed, their jeans open, and Dean has one hand between Sam's legs, Sam shaking against him, Sam's shirt rucked up and his jeans hanging askew, hanging off of his hips as he swears at Dean and makes the most dangerous promises, the kind of promises that would surely destroy the world if he kept them.
And then Sam flips them over, the flat of his hand scraping hot across Dean's hip and Dean's eyes on his bitten mouth the whole time.
The bed is a mess, is ruined, the sheets untucked and scattered and the blankets on the floor, but Dean is too goddamn tired to drag Sam into the other one. Sam's passed out, breathing deep, his face is pressed against the side of Dean's neck, his head heavy on Dean's shoulder, and Dean has no idea what time it is. His eyes won't focus anymore, won't let him see the clock on the other side of the room, much less make out the minuscule hands on his watch.
He thinks this might have been the best night of his life, but only so far.
"Hey," Sam says, drowsy and slow and muffled, and then he lifts his head, just enough to speak. "Go to sleep, we gotta make it to Vermont by tonight."
"Vermont?" Dean says, confused, half-asleep, or maybe he's already entirely asleep, maybe this is a dream. He looks down at his hand, traces of Sam's blood still smeared across his palm like they might be permanent, might have been there all along. Sam mumbles something else, a word that might be vampires, and trails off into silence, his breathing evening out instantly, and Dean squints at the clock one more time.
The light seeping in around the curtains is the honey-orange slide of dawn and he closes his eyes and throws his arm across Sam so that Sam will still be there when he wakes up. Because Dean could die like this, die happy like this, but he won't, neither of them will.
They'll wake up in a few hours and the sun will be shining, stabbing at his eyes, and Sam will look at him and something in Dean's chest will tighten, will fall loose only when Sam kisses him again in the full undeniable light of morning. They will head for the horizon, they will head to Vermont, maybe, and to Florida and to Kansas at least once more, they will keep moving, keep running, they will be alive for a little longer. They will be alive for long enough, long enough for everything Dean's going to do to Sam, everything they have left to see, long enough for the rest of the world to fall away, no matter what destiny says, no matter what Sam might see, no matter what, Dean will let himself believe.
--
end