Work Text:
And doesn't know any other kind of life
How could the battle seem so bad
When it's all you've known and all you've had
Nicole Atkins - War Torn
Sam has never once been on a road trip.
He's spent his entire life in a car, moving forward. He can tell you what freshly pumped gas smells like in Oregon, what wide-set tires and pavement sound like smacking together in Louisiana. He can tell you what the dashboard looks like when the sun sets in California, and what the backseat looks like when the sun rises and he wakes up, cheek to leather and folded in half somewhere in Tennessee. He can remember how long it takes to drive from Texas to Illinois and back again, bumper rattling in the wind and his teeth rattling in his skull when he rests his forehead against the window glass.
He can tell you exactly how deep the ache in his knees goes and exactly how shallow the foot-well can be after 300 miles, but Sam has never been on a road trip.
"The hell do you mean," Dean says when Sam tells him this. "We're in a car, we're on a trip, my ass hurts from sitting in one place so long – you do the math."
"Yeah, but it's a job."
"So?"
"So, road trips aren't jobs."
Dean digests this statement for a second, throws down a handful of Doritos as a chaser, chewing slowly. Sam watches his cheek expand and contract, his throat as he swallows.
"Point," Dean finally concedes. He glances at Sam, squinting against the sun. "You're trying to tell me something, aren't you."
Sam sighs. Dean's deliberately making this difficult.
"Nah. Don't worry about it." Sam changes the subject, knows Dean can never resist talking about a case. "So. Trolls, huh?"
Dean's hands tighten, suspicious on the wheel. He draws a breath like he wants to say something, and Sam looks away. Sam knows he's being moody. He can't help it. Dean's going to fucking die, and Sam can't help it.
"Yeah, Sammy. Trolls," Dean says quietly.
:::
Later, when Sam's wiping black, stinking troll guts off of his favorite knife, Dean says, "About this road trip."
Sam looks up. Dean's got a stripe of blood spattered from chin to forehead that makes him look deranged. He's got slime in his hair, matting it down, and it's totally ridiculous that Dean manages to look completely at ease when Sam's pretty sure Dean's got troll phlegm stuck to places he doesn't even want to think about. Sam already misses him.
"Uhuh." Sam glances at the window, at the floor, at the severed head by Dean's left boot – at anything but the speculative expression on Dean's face.
"You were serious?"
Sam nods. Dean should know by now that Sam never brings up anything unless it's serious. Sam's got his priorities when it comes to Dean, and these last few months before Dean's Deal comes due have only heightened Sam's sense of what's important enough to waste their time.
"Sam – we've already been everywhere, man. What's left to see?"
"The Grand Canyon isn't quite the same when you're almost drowned by miners' ghosts, Dean."
Dean chuckles, "Hey, yeah, I remember that, when we were –" he cuts himself off, makes a visual effort to sober himself when he catches the look on Sam's face. "Come on. Dad saved you. Lighten up. You're already dead if you can't joke about death, Sammy – that's what I always say."
Sam hides his reaction, the headache that instantly sinks into the soft flesh behind his eyes, and clenches his hand tighter around the knife handle, snorting, "You have never in your life said that, Dean."
"Have, too!"
Sam pulls his mouth down, trying to force a frown when all he wants to do is laugh. He hates that Dean can do this to him, can joke about the demons on his ass, the heavy hand of Fate resting on his shoulder, when Sam can barely think about an exorcism without flying into a helpless rage. He loves that Dean can do this to him, can make it so easy all it takes is a joke and a beer and a night under the stars.
"You pulled that out of your ass."
Dean's picking splinters out of his hand, grinning into his palm and totally unrepentant. "What's that about my ass, Sam? You jealous?"
"Of what?"
"Its ok, bro. Looking this fine is an art."
"You're so full of shit," Sam says, giving in, huffing out a laugh.
Dean smirks and turns on his heel, pushing his hips into a shimmy as he leaves the room.
Sam watches Dean's ass as they walk down the front steps and thinks What am I going to do, sheathing his knife with a grimace.
:::
Three weeks pass. Sam's convinced he's home free and that Dean's forgotten – and thank Christ. Dean was beginning to scare Sam with all the sidelong looks and indecisive lip biting – not to mention the aborted half-sentences he'd started to insert into all their conversations.
"Maybe if we – nah, never mind."
"If we really did – hey, you gonna eat that?"
"When would you – Sam! Fuck! Nice of you to save me some hot water, ass!"
Anyway, Sam was getting annoyed.
They're in the middle of a swamp, knee-deep in putrid mud, when Dean stops and turns to Sam.
"If I let you drive the car, where would you go?"
It's a simple question. Sam's mind goes blank. Is Dean trying to figure out what Sam will do After? When it's only he and the Impala and the smell of Dean in the upholstery?
"Uh. I dunno. Is this really the best time to talk?" Sam ducks under some spidery Spanish moss, stumbling and pressing a hand to a tree-trunk to steady himself. It comes away covered in green gunk.
Dean steps carefully over a rotting log, only to put his foot directly in a pile of animal crap. Sam snickers.
"Dude," Dean says, face pulling up into a moue of disgust. Sam stares at Dean's lips and doesn't – can't – think about anything for a blinding, endless second. "Dude," Dean says again, staggering as he tries to wipe his boot on a rock.
"Oh, excellent," Sam starts, grinning, when the creature they're hunting drops out of a tree right in front of him. Its pale moon eyes look out of place in its startlingly human face. Sam's right hand flies up without thinking. He pulls the trigger and watches its forehead give way to a gaping hole and an iron bullet.
Every so often, it really is that easy.
"Nice shot, Sam!" Dean exclaims, eyebrows raised. He looks happy, radiant, covered in mud and shit and pride. Sam feels his body respond, pulled towards Dean like a starving man towards food.
This, Sam realizes, is exactly why he needs a break: A break from hunting, a break from Dean, hell, a break in the case against Dean's Deal. He needs to stop thinking of Dean as all he has left. He needs to stop thinking of Dean as something he could lose any day – something that he will lose, come the end of this year – and maybe then he can stop feeling like he needs to be constantly touching Dean, skin to skin, all the time.
All the time.
Sam reaches out and trails fingers over Dean's wrist – tendons tighten under his nails as Dean turns his hand and grabs Sam's forearm.
"Sam," Dean says. Just that. Sam. Like it's the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up in the morning. Like it rolls easy sweet over his tongue.
"I'd drive to Oklahoma," Sam says. "I'd drive to Oklahoma and I'd wait for it to rain."
Dean blinks. "Okay."
Sam clicks the safety on his gun and sticks it in the waistband of his jeans, cold under the edge of his jacket.
:::
Dean makes Sam pay for gas.
Which is stupid because, one, it's Dean's car. He even uses all those annoying pronouns like 'she' and 'her,' wincing whenever Sam calls it 'the car' like any normal person. Two, paying for gas is kind of this insane point of pride for Dean. He never uses fake credit cards – uses honest hustling money instead, always paying in cash and softly crooning CCR when he pumps. He strokes the car when he twists the gas tank open, shapes the sloped corners with his palm when he thinks Sam's not paying attention.
Sam pulls into a gas station in Jerome, Idaho unsuspecting, kills the engine and slides down in the driver's seat, lacing his fingers over his belly.
Dean's cleaning his fingernails with a knife, "Well?" he says.
"Well what?" Sam responds, genuinely confused. "You gonna pump?"
Dean inspects the cuticle of his thumbnail. Sam wonders if Dean even knows it's called a cuticle.
"I been thinkin'," Dean says.
Sam leaves the gas station plus two bags of chips, a pack of Wrigley's gum, and minus eighty dollars in gas. Dean never gets out of the car. Twenty miles on he strips off his boots and socks and starts cleaning his toenails.
"That," Sam states, "is disgusting. You're disgusting. I'm disgusting just from sitting next to you."
"I don't need to have toe fungus to be a man, Sam."
"Regardless, you don't need to spread it all over the car, either."
"Aw, you're just saying that to be nice." Dean flutters his eyelashes coyly.
Sam presses his lips together and tries not to breathe. Dean's feet are not the sweetest smelling things in the world. Dean chuckles and wipes the flat of his blade on Sam's jeans.
"Holy shit!" Sam exclaims, extremely glad that there are no cars in the oncoming lane. The Impala's riding the double yellow line as Sam hits out wildly at Dean.
"Sam, you've been puked on, pissed on, shit on – and you freak out about this?" Dean says breathlessly, fending off Sam's punches. He starts to laugh.
"It's your feet!" Sam flails helplessly for words.
"I understand, Sam," Dean says gravely. "There are some lines a man can't cross."
Sam grumbles all the way across the Utah border. It's only then, as he glances sideways and notices that Dean's fallen asleep with one shoe on and one shoe off, that he realizes Dean was trying to distract Sam from thinking about all of the gas he'll soon be pumping alone.
:::
Dean lets Sam drive for more than three hours in a row. This in and of itself is a miracle, but the fact that he lets Sam control the radio, too?
"Sam. Stop looking out the window like it's going to start raining fire. It's just the radio, for Christ's sake."
"We're listening to Postal Service," Sam says, "and you're okay with that. I'm just checking for angels, man, because I distinctly remember the words 'long-haired emo shit' and 'my dead body' coming out of your mouth not too long ago."
Dean sucks thoughtfully on his beef jerky. "Did they."
"In the same sentence," Sam clarifies.
"Well, it's your road trip." Dean shrugs, turns his head towards Sam, and Sam catches sight of the earbud in his other ear.
"Dean!" Sam exclaims, punches Dean's upper arm.
Dean grins. He's got jerky in his teeth. "You didn't expect me to go cold turkey, did you?"
Sam can just make out the tinny strains of 'Enter Sandman.' Dean taps out the baseline on his thigh and Sam turns the radio down. He stubbornly ignores the grief pulling at the back of his throat, squinting like he's looking into the sun. Dean promptly hands over his sunglasses.
Sometimes, Dean breaks Sam's heart without even trying. Like now, when he's attempting to give Sam the Impala the best way he knows how before he's even gone.
Sometimes, Dean understands more than Sam gives him credit for, and Sam lets his eyes go wet behind Dean's dark lenses.
:::
Instead of checking into a motel for the night, Sam rolls into a campground and parks the Impala between two pine trees at the end of a deserted loop.
"I know we don't have a tent," he starts apologetically.
"Ten bucks and stars for a roof? It's cool." Dean waves away Sam's concerns with the flick of a wrist. "We can sleep in the car if it rains."
Dean slips Sam a handgun before he heads out to look for firewood – "Silver bullets, Sammy. You never can tell." – and stuffs the EMF meter guiltily into his pocket when Sam comes back.
"Sorry. No jobs, I know."
"S'okay. I never meant 'drop all precautions.'"
Dean's eyes crinkle as he shakes his head. "Yeah, I know, I just. I don't want you to think about it."
About the Deal. About the hunt. About anything.
A warm wind rattles through the pines. Sam closes his eyes and turns his face into it. "I'm not."
About being left behind. About not being able to save you. About everything we didn't do.
When Sam opens his eyes, Dean is biting his lip, lidded gaze watching Sam's hands. He looks nervous – like he's waiting for something he shouldn't expect – but he looks strangely content, too.
"All right?" Sam asks.
Dean nods.
Sam lights the fire, laying out a careful teepee of logs and kindling just like Dad taught them. Dean finishes his scan of the perimeter and chalks out a circle of protection, plopping their sleeping bags down inside of it.
They eat peanut butter sandwiches and play ten furious hands of poker, pennies changing hands rapidly until Sam is seventy-three cents richer and Dean is sixteen cents, his ring, and the Impala in debt.
"Goddamn, Sam. If you'd just hustle with me –" Dean sulks.
"I'm here to keep your ego under control," Sam gloats. "Little brother privilege."
"Oh yeah?" Dean says, and yanks Sam into a hair-snarling noogie. "Big brother privilege!" He yells, throwing a leg across Sam's thighs to keep him from squirming away.
"Fuck!" Sam yelps, trying to twist out of the headlock. Dean pulls harder, laughing, and manages to pin Sam in the close-quarter scuffle that follows.
"Got you," Dean pants.
"Got me," Sam echoes, hair in his eyes, feels his pulse pounding in his neck, his chest, his wrists under Dean's hands. Dean licks across his teeth. He's straddling Sam. Sam drags his eyes over Dean's face, watches his lips fall open, ripe – Sam can see his tongue reflecting the flicker of the fire.
"I –" Sam says. The air feels heavy. As heavy as Dean on top of him, pressing into his hips.
Dean rolls away, breaks the tension, links his hands behind his head and stares at the sky.
"Check out that Big Dipper. Amazing."
"Yeah. Amazing," Sam whispers, twists to conceal his too-tight jeans. He lies on his belly, cheek to forearms, watching Dean through his bangs.
Not enough time left. Never enough time.
"Safe to sleep?"
"I got you, Sammy. Go to bed."
Sam feels too hot to use his sleeping bag. He drops off where he's lying, fire dying down just out of his line of vision. Dean's the last thing he sees, skin a deep orange-red from the fading flames, darting glances in Sam's direction.
:::
Sam wakes up slow, groggy, eyelids peeling open with what feels like thousand pound weights grinding him down into the dirt. His shoulders ache, his bones ache, and he's forgotten what sleeping on the ground can do to a hunter's body. He's chilly, on the edge of shivering, except for the place hot between his shoulder blades where Dean's face is pressed into his back. Sam smiles, shifts slowly over until Dean's lying curled towards his chest, and watches Dean sleep. He wonders when he stopped being able to ignore Dean's freckles. Dean doesn't tan, but Sam imagines he can see the laugh lines etched beside Dean's eyes in faded, connect-the-dot patterns. Dean's eyelids flicker.
"Fuck. What died in my mouth," Dean mutters. His bottom lip is folded inside of his sleeping bag. His voice sounds muffled and the bag bulges oddly as Dean moves his legs, fighting to get his arms out into the open and ending in a full body stretch, fingertips straining.
"Skunk, probably," Sam answers easily. Dean's face is pale in the weak morning light. There's a leaf caught in his hair and Sam picks it out, crushes it between his fingers. "I can smell it from here."
"Whatever, ass-breath," Dean grumps. Dean rubs his nose and Sam feels his stomach tighten. He props his head up, cheek to palm resting on bent elbow, and looks down at Dean. Dean blinks his eyes open and stares upward, unguarded for a second, and Sam almost falls forward and.
Almost.
Dean scrambles up and away faster than Sam's ever seen him move before 9.30 in the morning. Sam digs a groove into the dirt between their sleeping bags with his thumb, twists his mouth down and considers Dean from the corner of his eye. His brother is standing at the Impala, rubbing a hand over his face and jeans askew. The fly is undone, but the button fastened, material wrenched sideways on Dean's bony hips. Plaid peeks out and abruptly Dean's hand is there, shielding himself and Sam from something neither of them wants to see.
Dean doesn't want to see. Sam thinks that maybe he does, maybe he always has.
"I wasn't going to," he says. I was, I was.
Dean looks washed out, pulled thin across river rocks and bones. "Sam, you already have – everything. I can't– " Dean composes himself, lips of stone and back straight. "Let's keep moving. Got a ways to go before Oklahoma."
Sam nods. "Do you need me to–"
"No. Just wait in the car."
Sam's crossed a line he never meant to. He wants to do it again. Instead, he does as he's told.
:::
They don't talk about it.
They stop at a carnival in Utah. Casey's Cavorting Carnival, to be exact, and both Sam and Dean roll their eyes, grinning, before they get out of the car. No ghosts here, the simplicity of the planned evening loosening Dean's limbs. He leaves his leather in the car and tosses the keys from hand to hand before slipping them in his back pocket.
"I don't know about you but I could use some cavorting," Dean says. Sam stuffs his hands in his pockets, focuses all of his considerable willpower on not touching Dean. Instead, he sniffs the air.
"I smell hot dogs."
"Sweetness!" Dean exclaims, rubbing his palms together.
"Shit'll have you in the bathroom for a week straight," Sam laughs, grabbing at his pocket lining, pleading with his hands to just stay put when Dean waves his arm in dismissal, all of the muscles in his shoulder popping and rolling. Begging. Sam. Sam, c'mon.
Dean thinks they split up, but Sam ends up following Dean, watching him over crowds and through drifts of balloons until Dean yells, "Fucking stalker!" and drags him over to the shooting booths. They gun down target after target – ducks in a row, bottles in a pile, balloons pinned to plywood – and give away every stuffed animal they win to the nearest child. When they're banned from the last shooting booth on the midway, Dean drags Sam over to the Tilt-a-Whirl and pays for five consecutive rides. Sam has to stop after three, Dean after four, and they wind their way dizzily between men on stilts and complacent mothers, collapsing onto a bench and trying to make the world stop spinning.
"Carnivals, huh?" Dean says. He bumps Sam's shoulder with his own. His skin is warm, burning through Sam's long-sleeved thermal.
"Exactly," Sam whispers to his feet. Dean snorts and gets up again.
"There's gotta be a roller coaster around here somewhere."
"Do you even know how dangerous that probably is? Big name theme park, this is not."
"Shut it, Yoda," Dean says, and drags Sam to his feet.
Three hours later Dean stands, cotton-candy sticky, ground-bound at last with colored lights scooping out the hollows of his cheeks. His shoulders are slanted and easy, T-shirt stretched tight across his collarbone because it's old and too small and Sam can't stop looking. At some point Dean had a run in with a face painter – a ridiculous red balloon sits high on his cheek, the chunky white-paint string trailing down his jaw. He's watching the Ferris wheel with a mixture of apprehension and delight, face upturned and oblivious to Sam's crooked smile.
"Whaddaya say, Sammy. Wanna take a ride?" His teeth are stained blue, lips a fading color smear. He's beautiful.
Sam moves in, walks Dean backward until his shoulder blades are digging into a wall painting of Santo the Strongman, lifting one thousand pounds with the tips of his fingers.
"Yeah," Sam answers, cups Dean's face and feels grease-paint slip-slide under his thumb. Dean stiffens, drops his cotton candy, and Sam leans down, traces Dean's lips with his tongue. "Question is, do you?" Sam murmurs.
"Sam," Dean whines, whisper quiet and breathless, and Sam can't let him think, can't let him get his feet under him or he'll push Sam away and it'll be worse than before. So he kisses him, chases the sickly sweet taste with his tongue, pushes Dean's lips open and bites at his mouth. Dean's lips are sticky and trembling against Sam's, and Sam can feel the moment he gives up, leans into the kiss. Sam sighs, relaxes his hold and brushes his hands down Dean's arms.
Exactly what Dean's waiting for.
He shoves Sam violently away, plants a palm against Santo's painted-wood chest and refuses to meet Sam's eyes. There's a long line of red that tracks from the middle of the ruined balloon to Dean's ear and Sam flares hot, remembering the slick trail under the pad of his thumb.
"Fuck," Dean grinds out, voice thick. Then again, "Fuck."
Sam tries not to jump him, not to force Dean to string 'fuck' and 'Sam' together and eat the words from Dean's tongue.
"We should go," Dean says, curving his body away from Sam, back forming a wall just as much as the tight space beside his eyes.
"All right," Sam says. He watches Dean scrub a hand across his mouth, savors the way he can still taste cotton candy, memorizes the darker flavor of Dean. He wants to taste it for the rest of his life, and damn Dean for making it so he might not be able to.
"I can't, Sam," Dean repeats, echoes of the campsite. His eyes look bruised in the blue-green light.
"I can," Sam says, and walks away.
Dean slides into the Impala ten minutes later, reaches across to unlock Sam's door, and cranks the ignition. He's washed the balloon off his cheek but a faint blush remains, pinking his skin. The crusted red paint looks like blood under his fingernails.
:::
Sam can't pinpoint exactly when it started. He only knows that one day Dean went out to buy ammunition and when he came back, tossed the bullets on the bed and flicked Sam's nose, Sam realized the coiling in his belly wasn't annoyance – it was want. Sam stared up at Dean with big eyes, mouth dry, until Dean quirked his lips and turned away, dismissed Sam as just-being-weird.
It lasted, however much Sam tried to squash it and scare it out of himself. It dug in its talons and stayed, clawing hot at Sam's gut every time Dean cracked his knuckles or tilted his head or shaved with the door open. Sam finally settled for ignoring it – never quite accepting it, but accepting the fact that he couldn't get rid of it. If anything, the fact that Dean was so obviously male and interested in everything so obviously female kept Sam in control.
Still, he couldn't help it sometimes if when Dean brought a woman back in the Impala he watched out of the corner of the motel window, curtains drawn close, and craved every swipe of Dean's tongue.
Dean's hands-on approach to being an older sibling both attracted and repelled Sam. He wanted Dean as a brother, but he wanted Dean to bend him and break him open – wanted to be spilled across graying sheets every time Dean sprawled and spread places he had no business spreading. Sam wanted Dean closer than close, so Sam went to college because it was best. He couldn't look Dean in the eye the day he left, but Dean hugged him all the same, pressed money into his numb hands, and joked like Sam's face wasn't drawn and angry.
Sam pretended. He pretended to be happy, to like his classes, to love Jess, but he forgot that after too long the pretending becomes the reality. Two years and Jess was living with him, leaving her panties on the towel rack, her tampons in the cabinet, and sometimes Sam would lick the lipstick off his lips, watch her sleep, and wonder when it all happened. He loved Jess, that much was true, but first, always first, he loved Dean.
He never truly understood how hopelessly Dean loved him back until Dean let him leave a second time. Walking out of the Impala, up the stairs and back into Jess' arms was the hardest thing he'd ever done because he knew this time – he knew how much Dean needed him.
Walking back out again, draped heavy across Dean's shoulders and feet dragging, was the easiest. He's never let himself think about it, never even been brave enough to form the edges of the confession in his mind, but the first and primary emotion he felt upon Jess's death was relief.
He never truly understood how hopelessly (helplessly) he loved Dean until Dean sold his own soul for Sam, just gave it away like he hadn't been living in hell his whole life already, fighting and bleeding and praying in a dead language he didn't believe – and now he'd be dying in hell, too, dying a thousand times over. The least likely martyr the world had ever seen, and all while Heaven should have been rolling out the red carpet, but was instead turning its back. That was on Sam's head – Dean's soul, Sam's guilt, Sam's anger, because what the fuck was Dean thinking? – but all that was on Sam's heart was what he had left: A year with Dean. He had to make the most of it. He had to take everything he could, because there was no guarantee he could fix this. He had to make Dean take everything he could, and that would be the most impossible task of all.
:::
They don't talk about it.
In Colorado, Dean pulls into the parking lot set close to the Grand Canyon and then pulls right back out again.
"Dean?"
"I'm not paying money for something I can climb my own damn self," Dean huffs.
They drive until it's dark and Dean loops back around, cuts the lights on the Impala and parks on the side of the road. They walk in soft and secret, through the desert and less than twenty feet from a drop that brings Sam to his knees.
Dean looks down at Sam, smirks. "Can't handle it?"
"I don't remember it like this," Sam says, stunned. The moonlight paints the rocks pale rose, the river a rushing silver ribbon at the bottom, too far away to have any sound other than that of wind torn through the canyon's craggy walls.
Dean drops a hand on Sam's shoulder, crouches down himself and plants a palm flat against the cracked earth.
"S'okay. I always remember things smaller than what they really are."
Sam traces the far wall with his eyes, tries to count the clinging, ragged foliage – the painted lines of colored stone.
"'Specially you," Dean finishes with a crooked grin, and squeezes Sam's bones once, twice.
Sam tears his eyes away, manages to look at Dean. Dean's staring at Sam like he can't even see the canyon, like Sam's just as deep and just as wide and the river at the bottom is the only water for miles and miles.
"You still can't?" Sam asks, because he can't not ask when Dean's face shutters open like that. Not when this could be the last time.
"Nope," Dean whispers, settling into a crouch. Then he tilts his head to the side and yells, shockingly loud, "Dean Winchester was here!" The sound vibrates off the reddish earth, echoing again and again. Dean's face turns thoughtful as his voice fades away, like he wishes it would stay forever, like he'd be carving his name into the rocks at his feet if he didn't know Sam would stop him, scandalized, and lecture him about "geological treasures!" Sam's lips tug into a smile, imagining, and he cants sideways, his forehead coming to rest against Dean's neck.
"Sam Winchester was here," Sam breathes, so soft, words ricocheting outward through Dean's slopes and valleys, snagging on the hollow of his throat.
Dean doesn't move away, and not for the first time Sam curses his brother and the impenetrable mass of contradictions that make up his flesh and blood.
:::
They don't talk about it.
Kansas is sky-wide and dirt-true, solid and reliable in a way that feels utterly foreign to Sam. He's used to the transient shadows of LA, the rolling waves of New York – he still feels like a city boy, and he doesn't know how he got there when all his life he's been on the road, losing paper clips and pencil stubs in every state.
Dean drives with all the windows down and his sunglasses pushed high up the bridge of his nose – high enough to look awkward and to leave a red mark that Dean rubs absentmindedly with his thumb and index finger.
Sam looks for clouds and can't find any. He looks for telephone wires, railroad tracks, road signs – he looks for mile markers but the only ones he can find are field dividers. One mile of corn, one mile of wheat, one mile of forest – Sam counts them off in his head, touching thumb to palm every five fields.
He looks for farms, towns, shanties – hell, anything – and smiles small and secret when the landscape rolls by unbroken under his nose.
"Man, we might have to sleep in the car tonight," Dean muses. He's gripping the steering wheel one-handed, the other lying loose, palm-up on his thigh. The fabric's worn thin high on the inside of Dean's leg, thickening just as it reaches his inseam before giving way to a small, threaded hole. Sam wants to wiggle his fingers inside, press his nails into Dean's sturdy flesh.
"Nah. Always a motel." Sam never bothers to speak in complete sentences when he's content. Dean's picked up on it over the years, and he smiles every time Sam drops a pronoun or stumbles over a conjunctive phrase. Sometimes, Sam deliberately makes himself sound like a fourth-grader, just to see Dean look like that.
True to Sam's word, a small motel looms up out of nowhere within the next eight minutes. Sam could've sworn he could see for miles and there was nothing but, well, Kansas. Kansas does things to your mind, Sam decides.
Dean gets a room for two – AC, TV and several other acronyms inclusive – and Sam flops down on the first bed he sees.
"Tired. Why does driving make you tired," he muses to the hideously checkered bedspread under his face.
"You weren't even driving, lardass."
Sam opens one eye, narrows it on Dean. "That implies that pumping the gas pedal is some sort of exercise not directly related to ego inflation. Which, wrong."
"That's chick logic," Dean says, pushing his sunglasses to the top of his head in a way he'd never do if he were in public. "What the hell."
Sam watches the way Dean's hair spikes around the dark, plastic lenses. He knows when Dean takes the sunglasses off there'll be a dent in his hair that will make Sam grin every time he sees it.
"Only chick I've been hanging around is you," Sam retorts, "You've checked yourself out in that mirror twenty times since we opened the door."
Dean helplessly eyes himself one more time, smoothing his tee over his chest. He abandoned his unbuttoned flannel way back in Utah, flinging it into the back seat and forcing Sam to flounder in newly released Dean-scent for endless agonizing minutes before it dispersed, leaving him light-headed and dazed, ready to do it all over again.
"Aw, shit," Dean says, deliberately turns his back on the mirror.
"See. You've got nothing to say to that." Sam closes his eye, turns his face deeper into the crook of his elbow. "You know I'm right."
He's totally unprepared for the tickle attack, when it comes, and Dean's got him gasping and winded on the floor in less time than it takes to scream like a little girl.
"Hey, wow, Sam – and here I've mistakenly gone my whole life thinking you were a tenor."
Sam laughs until he's hoarse, rolls onto his elbow, grabs Dean's hand and kisses his wrist. Dean stiffens.
"Relax," Sam soothes, strokes his thumb over the end of Dean's life line. He turns Dean's hand over, studies the fine spattering of hair across knuckle and bone, the blue bumps of veins, close under Dean's skin. "Love you. I never could laugh the way you make me, for anyone else." Sam meets Dean's gaze. "Not even Jess."
Dean pulls against Sam's hold, trying to free his hand. His eyes are nervous, darting here and there around the room, though the rest of him is rock-steady. "You're my brother, of course you love me."
"Wanna be more than that." Sam hums, draws Dean's palm to his chest, middle finger slotted against his sternum. Dean's eyes flicker faster, faster, stop. Dean's transfixed by Sam's hand, huge over his own, tanned skin fading to a cream color around the cuticle. Sam's mesmerized by the rise and fall of Dean's chest, watching it stutter to a halt as Sam knee-walks one step, two, closer.
"Let me. I need you to let me." Sam dips his head, tries to meet Dean's eyes. Dean has to understand that Sam can only push this so far and if Dean says no, then that's no. They'll forget about it, put it behind them like Sam never kissed Dean and Dean never kissed back. They'll forget about it until Dean's dead and it's the only thing Sam can remember.
Sam desperately doesn't want that to happen. "Please," Sam sighs, ripple quiet.
"No," Dean says, practically moans, and Sam starts to back away, shifting his weight to stand. "At least," Dean continues, and suddenly Sam couldn't move if the motel burned down around them. "At least not yet," Dean finishes, quick as a gunshot.
Sam watches Dean chew into his lower lip, watches his cheeks flush a timid pink so unlike the rough-and-ready easy-rider persona Dean's spent his whole life building.
"All right."
Sam releases Dean, ambles into the bathroom and almost collapses against the sink the second the door closes. Dean is – Dean is going to – he can't even think it, but it could be his for the taking.
Sam jerks off twice in the shower, and when he comes out wet and goose-pimpled all he can smell is sex and Dean.
:::
They don't talk about it.
When they finally hit Oklahoma Sam's asleep, folded accordion-style into the front seat forehead-press to the window, white spot where all the blood's been squished out. He wakes up when the car stops moving, blinks groggily at the sun in his eyes and rolls over, directly into the flash of Dean's camera phone.
"Ha. Knew that'd be a good one," Dean says, nodding his approval before stuffing his phone back in his jacket pocket.
"Wha?" Sam says, realizing he's drooling and wipes his sleeve across his mouth.
"So," Dean gestures expansively out the window, "We're here."
Sam sits up straighter and looks around. Dean's chosen a rest stop with one rickety picnic table and a rusted trashcan, fallen on its side. Sam twists his head and spots a squat concrete building that must be bathrooms.
"Fantastic," Sam says, "But maybe we could pick a motel or something?"
"Or something." Dean sticks his head out the window, gapes up at the sky. "'Til it rains, you said?"
Sam scans the sky himself. Aside from one low-lying wisp of cloud on the horizon, there's nothing. "Hm. Might be longer than I thought."
"No shit," Dean snorts. He taps his fingers on the wheel. Sam listens to the rat-a-tat rhythm for as long as he can stand before he pushes open the door, swings his legs out and stretches his arms to the sky. The creak of the other car door signals Dean standing, watching.
Sam turns, leans his forearms on the car. Dean crooks a smile in his direction before presenting his back. Sam can tell by the roll of Dean's shoulders that he's shoved his hands in his pockets, by the bob of movement that he's rocking back on his heels. He watches the back of Dean's head, stares at the winding hair pattern and the way Dean's collar stands – half up and half down – against the paint-splatter of freckles on his neck. The line of a scar disrupts the skin under Dean's right ear – hellhound in Mexico, Sam remembers. Nearly ripped Dean's throat out.
"Stop staring at me."
Sam barks a laugh, startled. Of course Dean can feel it. Sam knows the accompanying prickle of a heavy stare, the shiver down his spine followed by pinpoints of sweat under his arms and across his forehead.
"Don't want to."
"Bitch," Dean mutters vehemently.
Sam rests his chin on his knuckles. "Jerk," he says complacently. It's a ritual, just like everything else they do.
Dean spins abruptly, copies Sam's position, forearm-braced, chin-to-knuckles. "Wanna find a motel?"
"Change your mind?" Sam says.
"Sam." Dean's voice is a warning, but there's something in Dean's eyes that has Sam's blood pounding at his temples.
"Just checking."
Dean rubs the heel of his hand against his nose, rests his cheek against his arm and stares at the listing picnic table. Sam straightens up slowly, shuffles around the front of the car, never taking his eyes off of Dean.
"What if I changed my mind?"
Dean jerks upright, neck pulled taut from the weight of his surprise. "What?"
Sam can read it all over his face: the disappointment in the droop of his full lips, the shame at being disappointed when his ears redden, the confusion tightening his jaw. Sometimes Sam wonders if Dean would ever look at Sam again if he knew how much he gave away with his expressions.
Most of all Sam looks at the way Dean curls towards him, the restrained need in the way Dean's shoulders slope forward, the way his hips pull at just the right angle to get closer to Sam without moving his entire body.
"Oh, not about that," Sam says with a chuckle, stepping forward again, "But about waiting."
Dean's face floods with understanding (his eyes widen), relief (his mouth drops open), guilt (he looks to the side), and Sam steps into his space. Dean doesn't recoil when Sam slips a broad hand around bony hip, pulls Dean closer until their thighs are flush.
"Waiting for the rain?" Dean murmurs, and Sam watches the way the blood rises up his neck like a flood, thinks that Dean might drown in it.
"Something like that," Sam says, and presses his nose to the join of Dean's neck and jaw. Dean sucks in a breath, hands flying up to anxiously grip at Sam's elbows.
"Sam," Dean whispers," You know once we do this – it won't be the same. It'll be harder when I – and I won't be able to give this up."
Sam says nothing about how he'll have to give everything up – two for one, Dean and his heart in one fell swoop – no matter what kind of promises they make to each other. He says nothing about how he doesn't give a good goddamn; how even if it makes losing Dean harder to bear, having Dean like this before he goes will just make him that much more Sam's. He says nothing about Dean making this deal in the first place, when he knew Sam would object (cry, fight, hold on) even if it ended up killing both of them; when he knew he was as good as bartering both their souls, not just his own.
Instead, Sam flattens a palm against Dean's back, draws him closer. Dean's hard against him, trembling. Sam revels in the fact that he's the only one who can get Dean to respond like this, to clutch and shiver in his arms.
"You can't ever leave me again, Sam. That second time – I can't do it again. And when you died, fuck, I – If you don't think you can stay, walk away right now." Dean tries to pull back, to meet Sam's eyes, "Right the fuck now." Again it remains unspoken: Dean won't have to walk away – he'll be taken.
Sam kisses him, bites at the peach of Dean's mouth and runs his tongue along the seam of Dean's lips. Dean moans, falls forward, and they're making out like Sam's only dreamed about because Dean's kissing back and Dean wants this just as badly. Sam runs his hands down Dean's spine, cups his ass, hauls Dean hungrily against him, and then cries out sharply as Dean stumbles and he's shoved painfully into the Impala. Dean breaks away, breathing heavily.
"Motel." His pupils are huge, freckles standing out against the blush of his cheeks.
"If we don't find one in the next twenty minutes, we do this in the back seat," Sam growls, and greedily drinks in the way Dean slants toward him like he can't help himself.
"All right," Dean slurs, "All right."
Sam drives.
Later, after they've found a motel and Dean almost broke the door trying to get it open, Sam plastered against his back, hands everywhere and Dean gasping, "Wait, Sammy, wait–" while Sam made it impossible to slow down. Later, after Sam stripped Dean down and spread him out, took his time licking his way up Dean's thigh, enjoying the way Dean's hands clenched at the sheets when Sam sucked him down, the way his head rolled back when Sam swallowed around him and eased a finger into his ass. Later, after Sam slid into Dean – slow, so slow – and Dean clenched around him, beneath him, lifted up his bitten-red lips to be kissed and came with Sam's tongue in his mouth, sweet little gasping breaths against Sam's lips, Dean says, "Why?"
Sam tries to think around the haze of orgasm, tries to make his legs stop feeling like rubber and his lips work. "Why what?"
"We are brothers, Sam. Far as I know, this never happens."
Sam rolls to his side, studies Dean's profile. They didn't bother to turn on the light and the weak sunlight through the cloudy window picks out Dean's stubble in pinpricks of gold. Sam remembers the rough sting of it against his face, the sheer maleness – the sheer Dean – of it, and savors the trickle of well-fucked contentment in his belly.
"Dunno."
Dean looks at Sam sharply. "I need a reason. If you were ever unhappy because of this, or stayed just because I told you you had to. I'd rather have nothing. I'd rather face this alone."
Sam knows that's a lie, remembering the distracted way Dean held him at the rest stop, begged him never to leave with his mouth and hands. But he also knows that Dean would let him go again, though Dean gave up everything to keep him, and Dean would keep letting him go – over and over, dying a little more each time – because Sam is Sam and Dean is Dean and would do anything for someone he loves.
Which is exactly why Sam wants, more than anything, to stay.
Instead he says, "Trust me, Dean," and meets Dean's eyes until Dean blinks and looks away. "I can't even tell you how it started," Sam continues, "only that I mean it."
"How long, then?"
"Feels like forever," Sam laughs, thinking back. "It might have been the day you taught me how to throw a knife when I actually realized why I got turned on every time you hit the bulls-eye."
"Oh," Dean murmurs, bumps his fingertips over the backs of Sam's knuckles. Sam captures Dean's hand under his own, uses it to pull Dean closer.
Dean sighs and Sam wisely does not inform him that he's snuggling.
"So," Dean says after a while, "Do you always shriek like that when you come?"
Sam jerks out of his doze, stares down at Dean. "You making fun of me?"
"Maybe." Dean gives Sam a sly look, traces his bellybutton with his thumb.
"Hate you," Sam says amiably, presses his face into Dean's sex-crazed hair.
"I know you do," Dean murmurs cheerfully against Sam's shoulder.
:::
They don't talk about it.
Sam thinks about it all the time – he watches Dean hold doors open for grandmothers, ogle co-eds in short skirts, carry soccer-moms' groceries to their cars. He watches Dean flirt with bartenders, drink beers women buy him, and get phone number after phone number shoved into his hand. He watches Dean throw them away, leaving a trail of crumpled napkins in every motel they visit, and he knows Dean is his.
Dean thinks about it all the time, too – Sam can tell. He catches Dean staring at his ass when he's changing clothes, licking his lips every time Sam orders a drink with a straw, glancing repeatedly at Sam's hands when he writes in Dad's journal. He knows Dean watches him while he sleeps sometimes, elbows to knees and a soft smile on his face, and Sam knows that Dean wouldn't be Dean if he didn't collect phone numbers like he collects bruises.
Sam's the one who says I love you, because he thinks Dean needs to hear it to believe it. Dean's the one who presses the words into Sam's skin with his tongue, drawing the letters out slow and hot with his rough, calloused fingers. Sam's the one who refuses to accept that he can't get Dean out of this demon Deal. Dean's the one who nags when Sam stays up late, laptop lighting the hollows of Sam's eye sockets, and pulls Sam into bed at exactly one o'clock, ignoring his protests, kissing him so breathlessly, so hopefully, that Sam's chest aches.
They don't talk about it, but they make it work.
:::
Down in Texas one time Sam sticks his key in the door, pushes, and watches the goddamn thing fall off its hinges like a firing squad victim. Dean laughs and laughs at him for that one, "Your face Sammy, your face–" but Sam doesn't mind. Dean laughs at a lot of things that Sam doesn't mind anymore.
They slot the door back into place like a puzzle piece once they're inside and Dean fucks Sam in the shower, holds his hands tight against the wall and whispers words into Sam's nape.
"Pretty. God, Sam, so beautiful. So goddamn beautiful when I fuck you," and Dean's chest is slick against Sam's back. Sam pants, tries to open his eyes through the water running down his face, and comes when Dean fists his cock.
Sam's sprawled still damp on the bed, watching Dean rummage naked through his duffle, when he says, "I'm happy, Dean." One month left – he spends every night online now, every day he can in the nearest library, searching – and he's never been happier.
Sam long ago resigned himself to the fact that irony's got a killer nutshot.
Dean freezes, remembering, if you were ever unhappy because of this, before pulling out a pair of boxers, triumphant.
"I am, too," he says, and Sam closes his eyes and smiles.
END