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Sam doesn’t know where his body wants to be, but it sure as hell isn’t here.
Dean is inside the bar and if he looked for him he probably would be able to spot the brown of his jacket through the glass. He doesn’t really want to be looking though so instead Sam stares at the flickering neon sign outside until he sees spots and when his eyes are drawn to the window again he can’t see Dean, or anything at all.
Sam thinks that he should grab a beer or better, he should take the tin of tobacco out of his bag and ask around for papers just so he can do something with his hands. Instead he finds himself walking toward the edge of the parking lot until he reaches the crude fence surrounding it. HE straddles one of the rough wooden posts and stares up into the hills. They’re burning red with the evening sun and it should be beautiful but it's not. It's just something burning.
A couple walks past him and they're laughing; the woman stumbles into her partner and presses her face against the crook of his neck. She looks happy. He hasn’t allowed himself to think of Jess in a few weeks, but suddenly, he imagines how nice it would be to sink into the soft crook of her arm, to stare at the freckles there until his eyes start to blur. To not have to think.
Sam can’t stop thinking now. It had been a quiet ride up. Dean hadn’t said anything but Sam's brain was loud enough that it had still been unbearable. The image of how Dean had looked saying that John had made him promise to keep Sam safe and to keep him dead if he couldn’t.
He imagines Dean is talking to the prettiest blonde at the pool table now. Sliding his hand up the small of her back and showing her how to aim. He wonders if Dean’s thoughts are loud too. Or if his head is quiet now that the secret is out, pulled from him hand over fist like bloody entrails.
He said that I might have to kill you, Sammy.
Sam knows his brother better than anyone has the right to know anyone. He grew up watching his back so knows every mole on his brother’s neck and the red of his ears when the sun hits them just right. When they were kids Sam had cried after the first few hunts and balled himself up in the back of a motel closet. Dean had sat outside the door for hours telling him all the ways he would learn to get used to it. That Winchesters were born to hunt and so that someday, it wouldn't be scary it would just be nature. It sounded better than when John had said it but that's because Dean had always saw their life as something better than it was. Dean never seemed to mind it much even when it never got better, only more and more terrifying.
Sam always blamed it on the fact that his brother grew up loving western pulps and reading comic books with good guys fighting monsters and kissing pretty girls after they won. Dean loved the smell of the gun store and smiles when he shoots, all cocky nerve, a natural. Sam used to have nightmares about graves. Where he's tossing a match down in a fresh hole just to see his brother twisted into a mass of bones and blood and those pretty gray lips pulled into an empty grin. When Sam had left for Stanford he had wanted them to go together. To keep his brother out of graves. Dean had told him then that they just weren't born to do much else, so he couldn't go and neither should Sam. Sam had left anyway, but the nightmares never did.
Sam still has nothing to do with his hands so he starts picking at the splinters of the fence, digging out slender pieces and flicking them to the dirt. He's never had to be scared of his brother before, it feels strange to know that the undercurrent of fear that prickles inside his ribs is because he knows that Dean is watching him and making sure he isn't straying far not out of cloistering protectiveness but because he's on the other side of the hunt. Sam had never been afraid of his brother before. Dean, who was TV dinners and late night drives, rough hands scrubbing guts out of Sam’s hair and a sharp kick to the shins. He was the warm body next to him that Sam had stared after for months after leaving, that Jess had replaced but only in form. Never in security. Dean wasn’t supposed to be the gun aimed at him because he was always the one behind him, shooting the second shadow that Sam wasn’t quick enough to see. Now Sam was the shadow.
He takes one of the splinters and jams it hard into the bed of his thumb, the bright blood makes him feel something but it's still not enough. At Stanford he tried going on medication; Jess had told him that he had depression, PTSD. A myriad of other diagnoses that she strung together from the little he talked about his childhood, and how much he wouldn’t. The medication had made him drowsier, less aware. It hadn’t mattered much at school really, it wasn't a place he needed good reflexes for but still - Sam had never known how to be a person that wasn't perpetually on edge so he had stopped taking them. It never helped the wrongness anyway. It had only burrowed deeper, deeper than sadness, deeper than rage, so deep that Sam had stopped marking the miles, had started only understanding it through his own revulsion.
Sam had never seen that part of himself in his brother's eyes but now it felt like Dean didn't know how to see anything else and Sam hated that feeling. John and him had never seen eye to eye before sure, but Sam had never thought that it was because his father could see into the center of him, at all the parts that made him too wicked to live. The knowledge felt hollow when it was pitted against the fact that his father had entrusted Dean to be the one to handle it.
Sam thinks of the first deer he ever skinned, the way the knife slipped gently through the meat. How bloody the river was after him and Dean had jumped into it after. It had been a good day; they rested on the bank while John cooked up the venison. Sam remembers closing his eyes and thinking that it hadn’t been that bad, killing things was easier when they weren’t trying to kill him.
Dean never seemed to have a preference.
“What are you doing out here?”
Dean’s voice hit him like recoil. He looked up to see him standing there with two beers in his hands, one angled at him.
“Surprised to see you alone.”
Sam says, as he twists the top off, slipping the cap into his pocket to throw away later. Rolling his eyes when Dean flicks his into the nearby bushes.
“Couldn’t get lucky.” Dean shrugs before taking a long drink.
He’s lying; Sam had learned what a woman looked like when she wanted someone by watching other people want Dean. He never couldn't get lucky.
“Sure.” He says.
They stare at each other, Dean’s beer is almost gone and Sam watches him idly swish it around the bottle. Dean isn’t looking at him, just starting at a point past his ear. John told them to watch the ear if they wanted someone to think they were looking back but they couldn’t meet their eyes.
“I’m going to find papers to roll.” Sam says, tapping his bottle against his knee.
Dean makes a face. “Gross.”
“I think I deserve a smoke after today.” Sam responds dryly.
Dean looks sad for a moment, and then he looks like himself.
***
Sam props the papers on the edge of the bed in the motel they’re bunking in for the night. The teenager at the front desk had offered it to him after he asked but hadn’t had anything for filters so he’s rolling them plain. He makes one for Dean too even though he didn’t ask, tucks it in his flannel pocket before walking out the door onto the second floor walkway.
Dean is there, leaning against the white painted railing and nursing another beer, staring out at a dead looking town. It's small; they don’t have enough neon to make a landscape so it looks like the stars do in big cities. Faint, mostly black. Sam can see the little bar from here, the shadow of a cross from the church across the street.
“Kind of a shit hole.” Sam says through the cigarette, lighting it.
“Keep that away from me.” Dean says, but there’s no heat in his words, he leans forward harder, his chin resting on the tops of his hand as looks anywhere but Sam.
Sam blows the smoke in his direction, lips twitching as his brother waves his hand furiously in front of his face. “What did you roll those with? Fuckin’ tar?” Sam shrugs, blows the next cloud into the night.
Dean looks back out at the town. After a minute, he holds out his hand. Sam places the one he rolled for him into it and Dean lights it before taking in a deep drag before choking back a cough.
“Been a minute.” He protests when Sam raises a brow at him, smirking.
“Fuckin’ hard to run from vampires if your lungs don’t work.” Dean continues defensively, tapping the ash off the side.
Sam laughs, his is ashing close to his fingers but instead of stamping it out he lets it burn hot.
“Sam-“ Dean starts, but then stops. Takes another slow drag, the smoke makes him hazy in the low light. He's very pretty like this, but then again, he always is.
“Don’t.” Sam says sharp.
“I’m not.” Dean shrugs into his jacket, his cigarette is only halfway finished but he smashes it against the railing anyway, angry and rough so that the paper rips up the side. He tosses it away in disgust.
“Going to kill me?” Sam doesn’t want to feel bad for saying it, so he doesn’t.
“I don’t want to do that either.” Dean says, and the sick, fucked up part of Sam loves it. The way he looks like he’s being kicked, eyes hooded and voice pinched. He sounds miserable, sounds like he’s been stabbed in the ribs and doesn’t know how to ask for something to stop the bleeding.
Sam thinks back about what he said earlier, that if he wasn’t careful Dean would have to waste him one day. He thinks of how it would taste on his tongue if he said it again, if Dean would choke on that too.
“I don’t want to do this again.” Dean doesn’t like to beg, but he’s good at it. He doesn’t do it much to him, too proud and too busy spending all of his begging on John to waste it on Sam. “It’s fucked up. I know it. But I didn’t ask for this, I wouldn’t – “he stops.
Sam doesn’t let him finish. “You deserve it.” He says, firmly. “You deserve me being mad at you. You don’t get out of this easy.”
Dean white knuckles the railing.
Sam wonders if he pushes hard enough if Dean will say please again, Sam likes it when Dean says please, when Dean is scrambling and unbalanced. When he’s desperate.
The sick terrible thing that curls between Sam’s ribs twitches to life, the part that John knew he had to spit out a bounty on with his last breath. Sam feels the buzz in his head, in his heart. Lighting him bright and hot from the inside. He takes a step toward Dean while slipping the charred remains of his cigarette into his jean pocket.
“I could punch you in the fucking jaw right now.” Sam says, pitching his voice low.
Dean straightens, takes a macho swig from the beer before dropping the bottle on the ground. It doesn’t break, just rolls loudly down the off kilter walkway. He turns his cheek, red with booze flush.
“I deserve that.” He says and it goes straight to Sam’s dick.
“You do.” Sam says and he stands over Dean, he’s taller than him and sometimes he really feels it. Really likes the fact that Dean has to be the one to look up at him. He can’t tell what Dean wants right now, if he actually wants to sink into the punch or if he just wants whatever Sam wants.
Sick.
Sam doesn’t hit him, but when he walks past him Dean flinches like he did. Sam unlocks their door a crack and kicks open it the rest of the way, stalking inside and slamming the door behind him. He stares at his unmade bed, then Deans. He sits in the middle of them, pulling in his right knee to rest his chin on. Stares at the twisting pattern of the carpet like it’ll make his brain stop burning.
Dean doesn’t come back for a while; Sam isn’t sure how long though cause he isn’t counting. After a few minutes he isn’t hard anymore but he still wants. He doesn’t have a name for it, never has. Just knows the shape of it, how it fits him well even when it shouldn’t. It’s easy to not feel it when he’s focusing on something else, but now there’s nothing else.
When Dean does come back he does so quiet; if Sam wasn’t up he wouldn’t have heard him at all. He doesn’t sound drunk, doesn’t sound much like anything. He slumps onto his bed, boots still on the floor. Sam stares at his back.
“What.” Dean’s voice is flat.
Sam doesn’t really feel like Sam right now, he just feels. He wants. He wonders about what Dean’s eyes look like right now, the set of his mouth.
“I get that you’re pissed, but you’re being fucking freaky.” Dean falls out onto the bed; legs sprawled out on either side. He lets out a tired groan, throwing an arm over his face.
Sam stands up and walks over to the edge of Dean’s bed.
Dean stares up at him, the light is faint but Sam can see his eyes are blown out. Sam leans over, placing his hands on either side of Dean’s torso.
“Why– “Dean begins to ask but then he stops, just stares instead. He looks fragile. Like he did on the bridge earlier, when he was begging Sam to not leave. Sam wants to hear it again. There’s nothing in his mind now, it’s quiet because everything else inside him is just so deafening with the want.
“Say it again.” Sam says.
“What-.” Dean swallows. “What?”
“That you want to waste me.” Sam smiles.
“Sammy – “
“That you want to kill me.” Sam’s knees knock Dean’s to the side, he’s fully on top of him now. Pinning him down on all sides.
“Please.” Dean chokes. “Man – I don’t. I don’t.”
“Yeah you do.” Sam says, because he knows he doesn’t. Because Dean looks like a caged animal. Because it’s hot and it's sick.
“You want to kill me so bad.” Sam know he sounds angry, but he’s not. He was never really angry at Dean. He just doesn’t know how to say it without sounding like he is. “I’m wrong, and Dad knew it. He wanted you to kill me before I got too wrong.”
“Sammy – “Dean sounds breathless. He’s tenting, Sam doesn’t know what to look at, his want or the way his eyes are so wet and wide. How if he stares hard enough he can see the parts of Dean that he shouldn’t be looking for.
“I’m wrong.” Sam hisses, wrapping his hands around Dean’s wrists tight and hard. “Fucked up. No good. Time to take me out to pasture. Sick, fucking Sam.”
“You’re not.” Dean doesn’t resist him physically but the strain in his voice betrays him.
“You think I’m evil Dean?” Sam tucks his chin in, staring down at Dean’s clothed dick.
“No.” Dean sounds like he’s about to cry. “I don’t.”
Sam shakes his head before ducking it down to press the corner of his cheek roughly against Dean’s trapped want, forcing a gasp out of him. He presses harder, watches his brother’s hands grip the sheets like he’s trying to force himself to stay still.
“I am.” Sam says, voice muffled by the fabric growing wet with spit and something that’s all Dean. “I am. I am.”
Dean tangles his fingers in Sam’s hair and pulls like he’s trying to bring him upward but Sam won’t let him, doesn’t feel like leaving. The sharp pain of resistance makes his eyes roll back and he moans, soft and low mouthing hungrily at Dean.
“Stop. Stop it.” Dean begs, but he isn’t moving. Sam licks his lips and pushes his head up and stares right into Dean’s naked expression, he looks the same way he did at the bridge, like he doesn’t know how to hide himself.
“You’re not bad.” Dean cradles his face gently, swiping a rough thumb against Sam’s wet lips. “You’re not. I know it. There's nothing wrong with you.” His voice is soft, soothing. Sam thinks of the closet, the way Dean had felt from the other side of the door, like nothing bad could happen if his brother was there. This is where Sam’s body wants to be. This is where it always wants to be.
“Yeah there is.” Sam feels his eyelids slip downward, his brain hazy from the physicality of being touched. He closes his eyes fully, flicking out his tongue and resting it against his brother’s finger. Dean doesn’t pull away, doesn’t say anything. Sam takes the silence as permission to pull the finger deeper into his mouth, sucking on it gently. Dean strokes his hair again tentatively. Sam blinks his eyes open with resistance and realizes that he’s been crying.
“You’re not.” Dean says in a voice so firm and certain that Sam feels like a child again. “You’re perfect Sammy. You’re always going to be perfect.”