Work Text:
At the bottom of a canyon high up in the Rockies, Dean unwittingly "breaks the first seal" on Sam's big, slow, gay revelation.
It's kind of a perfect moment for Dean, because here they are in the pre-dawn darkness, picking their way over the boulder-strewn outskirts of an honest-to-god Rocky Mountain Gold Rush ghost town. It ain't Tombstone or Dodge City, but once upon a time there were a half-dozen pine-plank buildings standing here in the grass, including a one-room bank and a dirt-floored general store, all afloat on the boomtown tide of dreamers, misfits, miners, drifters, outlaws, gunfighters, and saloon girls.
And cowboys, of course!
So, Dean's happy. He's also punchy from being up all night with a groovy mountain chick he met hustling pool yesterday -- a sun-browned beauty named Luz, heh. She was calloused and reckless and mean in bed, and hot in a way that was nothing at all like Cassie.
Meanwhile, Sammy's rocking Bitchface 19: This time it's really, really personal because Dean refused to drink an extra freaking gallon of water on the way out here "to prevent altitude sickness." Altitude sickness, for chrissake. What're they gonna think up next? Anyway, if Dean was gonna get 'altitude sickness' it would've already happened last night, on the roof deck of Luz's creaky old A-frame cabin that some lunatic back in the 1970's decided to build halfway up a freakin' cliff face.
*****
They walk in a search formation that has served them well in the past -- Sam is in the lead (because it wasn't Dean who spent four hours in the county courthouse yesterday figuring out where they're going). Dean follows ten steps behind and to the right. Both of them sweep their flashlights slowly and systematically from side to side, Sam searching from center to left and Dean searching from center to right with a large area of overlap between them.
The slow, regular back-and-forth movement of their lights is going to put Dean to sleep pretty soon, right there standing in his boots between one step and the next, so he decides to entertain himself with the nearest object of interest.
"Nothing like that Rocky Mountain High, eh, Sammy?" Dean says, knowing full well that his brother does not want to talk to him right now.
Predictably, Sam doesn't answer.
"Oh, c'mon, spill." Dean whines gratingly. "You must've tried some recreational drugs in college, right?"
Still no answer.
The little shit is really puckered up tight this morning. But that doesn't matter to Dean -- in fact, this is Dean's very favorite flavor of Sam for tormenting.
Dean gives it a minute, then:
"Sammy?"
Sam doesn't answer.
"Samster?"
Sam doesn't answer.
"Samsquatch?" he goes on, sing-song and taunting.
"Samderella?"
"Samsparilla?"
"Richie Sambora?"
"Enter Samdman?"
Still no answer.
Dean goes silent then and bides his time, stepping around some rocks, a tall, spiky-looking weed, and a knee-high anthill as it looms out of the dark into the beam of his flashlight. He calculates the exact moment when Sam will have let his guard down, then he puts on his very best Colonel-Sanders-Sipping-Juleps-on-the-Veranda voice and belts out in a slow, emphatic drawl:
"Well, bless mah ahhz if that ain't Li'l Black Sam-bo in his bay-uh feet chasin' chickins in the yaah-ud!"
Sam rewards this performance with a loud, angry squawk and several indignant, multisyllabic-sounding sentences that Dean can't quite make out above the big, quiet sound of a pre-dawn breeze gusting over a hundred square miles of rocky slopes and pine trees.
He thinks maybe Sam uses the words "problematic" and "insensitive."
"Oh, don't pitch a fit, Sammy," Dean growls out, changing tactics. "Just 'cause I had an awesome night of awesomeness and you struck out. Jesus. What were you doing last night, anyway? Trying to hustle darts?"
"Just keep your eyes peeled for the headstone," Sam says through clenched teeth, and he makes a point of shining his flashlight over the ground with extra diligence.
Dean slows his steps and makes a point of shining his flashlight anywhere but at the ground, like he expects to find a gravesite at the top of a tree. In the process, he happens to look straight up -- and stops in his tracks. Above them, the sky is crammed with stars... and holy cow! there's the Milky Way, poured across the starfield just like, uh... milk.
It's dazzling and kinda disorienting.
A few beats later, Sam turns back to see what the hell Dean is doing. Even in the dark, His body silhouetted against the splash of light from his flashlight, Sam manages to convey impatience, annoyance and disapproval.
Made you look, Dean thinks, and instinctively goes back on the offense.
"But seriously, Sammy," he says, moving back into his end of their search pattern. "Darts? I mean, come on -- darts?"
"What's wrong with darts?" Sam yells back, exasperated, and turns halfway around like he's going to have it out with Dean mano a mano right here and now. "I'm good at darts."
Gotcha! Dean thinks.
"The thing is," He starts lecturing, for all the world like Moses bringing the word of God down from Mount Sinai, "you can stand there all night doing that prissy little wrist-flicking dart-throwing thing, and where do you think the ladies will be? All gonna be across the bar watching the real action at the pool tables."
Dean doesn't need to see in the dark to know that he's got Sam's eyes glaring at him and Sam's forehead all twisted up with lame-ass sanctimony. He's torn between wishing Sam would finally wise up enough to stop letting Dean work him over like this, and desperately hoping the kid will never, ever change.
And, as long as he's already got command of Sam's full, resentful attention, he takes the opportunity to lay down one final authoritative line of crap for the kid to choke on: "Anyway, the big money's always gonna be at the pool table, ok? Think you can remember that next time and get with the program?"
The predicted eruption of Mount Sammy fails to materialize, though, because just then Sam catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye, turns and stoops to look closer. He steps over the rust-eaten remains of a low wrought-iron fence and squats down in front of a fallen headstone. Shining his light closer, he rubs encrusted dirt off to reveal the name of the man whose spirit they're here to lay to rest -- a prospector who was murdered, along with his lover, by a claim-jumping, bible-thumping villain over one hundred and fifty years ago.
"Here it is," Sam announces. "Found it!" Then he starts clearing the brush and rockfall from the dig site while word-vomiting all the factoids about frontier justice he ever learned in his life.
Behind Sam's back, Dean rolls his eyes -- and maybe smiles a little bit -- because his dorky brother still manages to sound so excited at moments like this. And he's so goddamn smart!
Dean knows what he knows, and he knows enough to be damn good at his job -- but he can't imagine ever holding that many thoughts and facts, dates and names right there in the front of his brain, just waiting to come out of his mouth all smooth and organized like the voiceover for a National Geographic video.
Nerdgasmic Sammy is pretty much just as entertaining as infuriated Sammy, all things considered -- though Dean would never admit it.
*****
As usual, they start out digging in tandem, back to back. It's slow going in this hard-packed, stony ground, and at 11,000 feet above sea level they are soon panting, then having to pause and lean on their shovels while sucking in unsatisfying lungfuls of the thin, dry air.
When the trench gets too deep and narrow for two shovellers, Sam takes the first solo shift. By now the sky has turned a clear, pale early-morning blue, and the tallest peaks to the west are lit up flaming red-orange, so they know the sun must be rising in the east. Down here in the canyon, though, they are still in shadow and won't be feeling any warmth for hours yet. It's cold, and Dean's undershirt is damp with sweat. Standing by the gravesite with nothing else to do, he needs either a change of clothes (not happening) or a distraction.
Time to piss Sammy off again.
A man has to have a hobby, after all.
He lowers his voice and fake-coughs, bringing one hand up to conceal his mouth. "You do know that one guy was hitting on you last night, right?"
"Uh... What guy?" Sam answers, only half-listening while driving the shovel blade a few inches down into the rock-hard mountain soil.
"The big guy, you know --" says Dean, as Sam stomps on the back end of the shovel blade and rocks the handle back and forth in an attempt to leverage it a little farther down. "--the one with the beard and all the tattoos."
"Dean," Sam says, grunting with effort as he scoops up a discouragingly small pile of pebbly earth and tosses it out of the grave. "half the guys there fit that description."
"And a few of the ladies, too, come to think of it," Dean quips.
Sam stops again to catch his breath and only huffs weakly at the lame joke.
Dean squats down at the edge of the grave and hands Sam his giganticor water bottle. Exaggerating how heavy it is. It's heavy. "C'mon, Sammy," he says, waiting for Sam to take a good long swallow. "You know which guy I'm talking about. The guy built like a utility pole. Like, he was the Lurch to your Sasquatch."
"If you say so," Sam says, handing the water bottle back up to Dean. Now he grips the shovel tightly with both hands, rears up and drives it into the ground with the focused force of his whole 220 pounds. This time the blade strikes a buried boulder, ringing out like a bronze bell and wrenching Sam's wrists with the violent recoil.
"OKAY, okay, Sammy!" Dean yells, scrambling down into the grave next to his brother, who has dropped the shovel and is grimacing and shaking out his wrists. "Don't break the freakin' shovel." He takes one of Sam's hands and pulls his arm out straight to examine the wrist.
"Aw, you're fine," he says, after some careful poking and bending. "Get outta my way and let big brother show you how this is done."
*****
Later, when they're in the Impala winding back down the canyon, their ears popping with the altitude change, Dean gets going again about Sam's tall, tattooed "boyfriend" from the night before. "Maybe you want to go back and play more darts tonight, eh, Sammy?" he says, drowsily, from the passenger seat. "See if maybe your admirer shows up again?"
Oh, great -- this again, Sam thinks. He hates this childish little routine -- the lowered voice, the nudge, nudge, wink, wink of it, like a punchline from "Three's Company."
Maybe Sam could shut Dean down right now with a macho shudder of disgust, or an emphatic "Dude!" Maybe that would get Dean off his back, at least for a little while -- and after all, what's a little companionable homophobia between friends? Just a little mild, companionable, insidious, hateful, dehumanizing homophobia?
The fact is, Sam does remember that guy from the bar, knows exactly who Dean's teasing him about -- and he was… a cool guy. Had a quiet, easy laugh and smiling eyes. Took it in stride when Sam humiliated him at the dart board and rolled him for a buck-fifty.
And Dean isn't wrong -- there was definitely more on offer last night than darts and chatting. Sam knew it, and the guy knew that Sam knew it, but he never pushed the issue -- seemed content to just enjoy Sam's company and take advantage of the fact that Sam didn't mind being looked at with appreciation now and again.
It was actually kind of nice, having that gentle, observant attention focused on him all night -- so unlike the rough, hard, authoritative masculinity that came so naturally to Dad and Dean.
So instead of trying to shut Dean down, Sam starts extemporizing.
"I mean, sure -- I'd hit that," he says.
"You'd "hit that??""
"Yeah. Definitely."
"So why didn't you?" Dean asks. He sounds like he's trying to sound bored, and opens his mouth in a dramatic yawn.
"Ha. I can just imagine how many gaskets you would blow if I said 'Don't wait up for me,' and took off with some guy."
And here comes Dean's Master and Commander voice again, setting the world back in its place with incontrovertible sarcasm. "If you took off with some guy it'd be because he wanted to play 3D chess, or practice conversational Aramaic, or because you'd discovered a common obsession with serial killers and wanted to play Trivial Pursuits: the Psychopath Edition."
"Sure," Sam says, hijacking Dean's premise with a mock-conversational bluff. "Then maybe wind down by trading blowjobs in the shower afterwards."
"Jesus, Sammy," Dean yelps, grossed out and caught off guard.
Sam doesn't exactly know where the words are coming from that are sliding out of his mouth right now, but apparently he's not ready to stop yet. "No, no -- you're right. Shower bjs are a bad idea unless you have some kind of waterboarding kink."
"I dunno," Dean says, smoothly -- right back in the game. "Shower bjs have always been pretty relaxing for me."
Sam laughs, thinking back to his college friends, and wonders what the hell any of them would think of Dean if they met him somehow.
But those people -- like Becky and Zack, know nothing about family. Sam would rather have his flesh and blood brother, caveman attitudes and all, standing between him and the rest of the world, than have access to the bottomless bank account of someone who shares your name but doesn't feel the need to spend time on the same continent with you.
Dean is… Dean is a hero. Sam's hero. Just look at the asshole. How could he ever be anything but a hero?
He just needs a little strategic consciousness-raising is all.
Right now isn't the time, though. Right now Sam is feeling too mellow. The canyon road has a gorgeous, giddy rhythm to it -- all switchbacks, vistas and drop-offs -- and Baby drives it like a song. In this moment Sam almost, almost feels like there's nowhere else he'd rather be and no one else he'd rather be here with.
*****
After that it's a thing, all because of one guy in a grimy bar in a tiny mountain town in Colorado. A recurring conversation topic that happens whenever Dean is bored or annoyed or anxious or hungry or half-baked. It goes like this: Dean goads Sam into confessing his "secret gay desires," and Sam feeds Dean increasingly outrageous gay straight lines so Dean can come up with smartass ways to shut him down. It's a classic bit of preemptive ridicule that makes it safe to say gay shit because gay shit is always forevermore going to come out sounding like the set-up for a punchline.
It's a strange sort of two-way street, though, because while it allows Dean to continually reassert his butch heteronormativity, at the same time it allows Sam to roleplay himself as… as a gay man. A man who has sex with men. Who likes having sex with men.
He finds it surprisingly easy to play the part.
Sam has an imagination, after all.
It gets him thinking… about that bad-at-darts guy, about hands and dicks and mouths and dicks and (because Sam is Sam) about love and respect and friendship and caring. And Jessica, of course -- those intense, amazing, overwhelming nights when there was time and she would worship his body, caress and nuzzle and kiss and squeeze and suck and tease and work her way to the shameful sensory center of Sam’s being.