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You’re running in circles with the research.
This case was supposed to be a milk run—that’s what Dean said—but somehow in the past 24 hours it has all but dried up. There are no new leads, no new incidents, nothing. Only a vague feeling that if you leave now, people will get hurt. You stretch your arms up and roll your shoulders back. There’s a pop from your spine and, a little surprised, you think, I’m getting older. The chair is too small, the table too low, and you’ve been hunched over it for hours, pouring through newspaper archives on your laptop, trying to find a lead, a scrap of weirdness, anything. You rub a hand over your face, through your hair. The heater in this small motel room is on too high and even a light t-shirt feels like too many layers.
You need to get out. You need some sleep. You need another cup of triple red-eye.
“You need to take a break, Sammy."
Dean has kicked off his shoes and is lounging on the furthest bed. The book he’s supposed to be reading lies face down next to him. He has that expression he gets when he’s remembered that he’s the big brother, the one responsible for your well-being.
On your screen the text blurs and you rub your temples, wincing at the pain that’s beginning to collect behind your eyes. “I need to go through these files again, Dean. I haven’t found anything to—“
“You’re not gonna find squat with a headache. C’mere.”
The bed creaks. You look up to see Dean is now sitting on the edge, his eyebrows lifted expectantly.
“Dean,” you say. “We don’t have time.”
Dean rolls his eyes. “Whatever. Put the laptop on the other bed and pretend to keep reading. Just . . . Get your ass over here.” There’s a note of fond desperation in his voice, and when he adds a quiet, “Please,” you shake your head and do as he asks, because when have you ever been able to refuse him.
The space between the two beds is barely wide enough for you. You prop the laptop on the other bed, pull off your shoes, and fold down between Dean’s legs like the obedient puppy you are. He shifts, his denim-clad knees brushing your bare arms. Then his palms are on your shoulders, just pressing down. The weight is unfamiliar in its familiarity, and you lift your eyes to the screen, force yourself to focus on the words. September 13th, 1921. Local man brutally murdered. Survived by his wife and three children . . .
“Jesus, Sammy,” Dean says. “Are you trying to turn into a statue? Lean back.”
His fingers walk along the tops of your shoulders, from deltoids to your neck, prodding, experimental, like Dean’s trying to find a secret switch that’ll make your muscles unknot. He presses down on something painful.
“Ow,” you say, and Dean laughs.
“Quit whining. You’re a big boy, you can take it.”
But he goes more gently after that, waiting for your reaction before adding more pressure. He finds a sweet spot near your spine and you bite back a moan, breathe out slow and steady. You try to concentrate on the screen—a car crash in 1937, a fire in ’59, and there’s no pattern to it—but the pain-pleasure of Dean’s hands on your aching muscles short-circuits your brain. Dean follows your spine down, then back up to your neck, where he flicks your hair out of the way with an exasperated huff. He’s humming something under his breath, a familiar tune you can’t quite catch, because Dean doesn’t quite hit the right notes. Then his fingers push into your hair, his thumbs finding the back of your skull, and you let your eyes close, only half suppressing a groan that rolls up all the way from your toes.
Dean makes a thoughtful hmmm. He drags his fingertips over your scalp, from the back of your head up to your temples, ten burning pinpoints that leave white-hot trails in their wake. The quiet bristling of your hair as it moves under his fingers sounds like fire kindling.
“Did you forget that barber shops exist?” Dean asks. “Just look at this mop.” He says it like a complaint, but he also says it like he’s pleased. He’s combing his fingers through your hair now, in slow, careful movements, and you add long hair to a mental list of things Dean likes even though he’d never admit it.
It’s been a long time since anyone’s touched your hair like this. Even Amelia didn’t. She said her own curly hair made her too anxious to mess with anyone else’s—made her think of all the troublesome aftercare, and that was the mood ruined. But Dean’s never been afraid of making a mess. Where you will say, hold on Dean, he will insist, come on Sammy, and you will follow him—against your better judgement—and half the time things will turn out just fine. Half the time.
“Hey Sammy.”
“Yeah?”
“I—um,“ Dean says and then stops. His hands have gone still.
Then his left hand is sliding down along your neck, over the sharp line of your collar bone. His fingers dig into the muscles there in small, painful circles. He draws in a breath and it sounds shaky. “I know we haven’t . . .” he says. “You know. Not for years, not really. And—” His other hand has stayed in your hair, and he’s half caressing, half tugging at the long strands. “I don’t know if you’d want to. Ever again, ‘cause—look, I know it’s not normal or healthy . . .”
He trails off. Then you feel the soft press of his nose and lips against your hair.
You have moments like these catalogued in your head.
Touching the tip of your tongue against Dean’s when you were kids, both of you giggling at how strange it felt. A Truth or Dare that went just a little too far when you were teenagers and drunk and horny. Climbing into Dean’s bed the night before you left for Stanford, fully expecting to be thrown off and surprised that you weren’t, curling your longer body around his, drawing hearts over his heart and not falling asleep. And then after—somewhere between Jess and dad dying—Dean looking at you and asking without asking, and you saying yes without so many words, and that was the first time you had sex with your brother, and it wasn’t the last. Twice more before you died, once more before Dean was dragged into the pit. And then once when you had no soul, and that one you wish you could take back.
You grab his hand, press his palm flat against your chest and just breathe and then breathe some more. Dean keeps gently tugging at your hair, and for a moment everything is frozen still, save for those small movements.
Finally you let out a tiny puff of a laugh. “Don’t you think you and I are a little past worrying about healthy or normal?”
Dean snorts. “Truer words, Sammy,” he says.
Then he’s gripping your hair, yanking your head back and smiling down at you, all those new wrinkles around his eyes fanning out in a halo of his miseries and joys, and your breath catches in your throat. He’s an ocean and you’re drowning—but it’s okay. It’s safe. It’s familiar. You’ve been lost in him since you learned how to walk.
You open your mouth to say something, but Dean cuts you off. “Okay, Doogie Howser,” he says. “Finish your homework so we can hit the sack.” He lets go of your hair and pats your shoulder. His hand lingers there, thumb stroking the bare skin above your collar.
You realize you’re still clutching his other hand against your chest like you’re a toddler and his hand a transitional object. You think you should probably let go.
You don’t.
The laptop’s screen is too bright. The light scratches you paper-dry eyes. You rub your fingers over them, pinch the bridge of your nose. You know you won’t get anything more out of these files tonight. But you could pretend to keep reading. You could—if you wanted to avoid admitting what it is you really want. Maybe you should.
“I think I’ll call it a night,” you say, and it feels like letting go of a safety rope.
“Alright.” Dean disentangles his hand from your grasp and slaps the laptop shut. “Go brush your teeth, then.”
“Dude, I’m not eight.”
“So? Adults need their teeth brushed, too. Now get.”
He gives your arm a painful tap with his knuckles. You retaliate by using his knees as leverage to push yourself up from the floor. Dean remains sitting on the bed. He leans back on his hands and looks up at you. He’s smiling, but it’s small and wistful, the kind of smile you’ve seen him give to old girlfriends when he’s about to walk out of their lives. Sorry I’m such a mess, the smile says, and suddenly you’re annoyed.
“What?” Dean says.
“What’s that look for?”
He tries to give you an innocent blink. “What look?”
You reach out to touch his forehead and Dean flinches ever so slightly when your fingers make contact. That hurts, but you let yourself ignore it. You run the pad of your thumb over the furrows between his brows. “That look,” you say. You linger on the lines around his eyes, watch them smooth out as something like caution settles over Dean’s features.
“Um . . .” he says. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Of course you don’t.”
He’s so stupid. You want to kiss him.
There are a lot of unspoken rules about how things work between you. Everyday rituals that are observed religiously, not because either of you enforces them, but because they’ve become automatic. You’ve built a kind of a private language out of glances and gestures and half-spoken sentences. On a hunt, you know without asking what the other is about to do. You know your roles. You know when it’s safe to proceed. But this thing. It’s always been awkward. You’ve never established a framework around it. There are no guidelines for how something like this is supposed to happen, because it’s not supposed to happen at all. Every time you do it, it feels like you’re doing it for the first time. It feels like you’re going to break something.
Dean is looking up at you, waiting. His expression wavers somewhere between wary and terribly earnest, and with a twist in your stomach you realize you’ve already taken a step across the police line. You’re at the crime scene. The only thing missing is the crime. It feels like surrender when you bend down to kiss him. Dean reaches up to meet you with parted lips and hands in your hair, and if you intended the kiss to be chaste enough to still go back from, that kind of makes excuses irrelevant. A shiver runs down your spine. You don’t know if you’re terrified that this is happening or relieved that you can now stop pretending like you haven’t been dancing around this for weeks.
“What about brushing my teeth?” you ask against his mouth.
“To hell with that,” Dean says and runs his tongue along the edge of them. “You think I care?” He tries to drag you closer, but then he makes a small pained sound and lets go, pulling back. “Fuck,” he says and cracks his neck with a sound like branches snapping. “Now I got a crick. Why’d you have to grow so tall?”
“Just to piss you off,” you say, and suddenly you feel self-conscious, overwhelmed by Dean’s presence. “I’m . . . I’m actually going to go brush my teeth now,” you say, and then do just that.
The bathroom has a dim overhead light, made dimmer by the corpses of hundreds of unfortunate bugs. You take your time brushing your teeth. It feels like you’re hiding, but you tell yourself firmly that taking a small break is the adult thing to do. It’s good that you can collect your thoughts. Make sure you’ve thought this through—like there’s anything remotely adult about contemplating the merits and demerits of fucking your brother. You stare at your reflection in the mirror and try to see if the twisted mess you are shows on the outside. Can strangers sense this thing about you? What about those you call family? Do they know and simply choose to look past it? Or maybe they actually do see you as innocent little Sammy, the puppy dog younger brother who by all rights should have had a shot at a normal life.
Dean is waiting for you when you come out, and right away you can see that you’ve been gone too long. He’s had too much time to think. Standing in the middle of the room, eyes watchful, body on high alert, he’s like a wild animal poised between attack and flight. You drift closer and then closer still, until Dean stops you with a hand on your chest.
“You sure about this?” he asks.
“No,” you say, mouth dry. “But I want to, anyway.”
Dean’s lips quirk. “Like the idiot you are.”
“Look who’s talking.”
“Sammy . . .” His expression turns serious. “Let’s agree on something.”
“Okay,” you say, an automatic response you’ve failed to train yourself out of. “What?”
“Let’s keep this thing separate. From . . .” Dean taps your breastbone, a quick double-tap. “You know. Everything else. Because our—our normal life, relatively speaking. It’s already eleven kinds of fucked up as is. Let’s not over-complicate it.”
“So you want us to pretend that this—this—doesn’t exist?”
“No.” Dean rolls his eyes, frustration clear on his face. “I don’t want to pretend it doesn’t exist. I just don’t want to have to think about it when—”
“When there’s other crap to think about,” you finish his sentence for him. “I get it. It’s . . . Sensible, I guess.” You’ve never talked about this so plainly. You’ve never taken things so slow before. It’s honestly a little alarming. Until now, it’s always been almost accidental, quick and desperate and messy, and you’re pretty sure every time at least one of you has been drunk. You’ve never had to think about it this much, and it’s starting to freak you out.
Dean notices—of course he does. “Okay,” he says. “Enough talking. C’mere.” He doesn’t wait for your response, just tangles his fingers in your hair and pulls you down for a kiss. His stubble scrapes against your bottom lip. He tastes surprisingly of breath mints, and it’s such a Dean thing to do, to say he doesn’t care about something and then care anyway. The thought slashes something open behind your breastbone, a quicksilver ache shooting down the nerves that connect your head to your groin, and you gasp, or maybe sob, it’s hard to know for sure. Dean’s hand tightens in your hair. He drags his lips over your jaw and crowds into you, and your bodies fit together in ways they should not.
It’s a blessing you don’t have to try to explain to anyone the things you’re feeling right now. A little hysterically, you marvel at what a master of compartmentalization you’ve become. You can take everything that makes this complicated and shove it clean out of sight.
It’s almost like you’re splitting your perception of Dean in half.
There’s the Dean who is your stupid big brother. The only constant in your life, the other half of you, the extra limb you sometimes wish you could cut off without bleeding to death. This Dean is scarred and angry and bitter, and he would die for you, but he doesn’t trust you. There are rivers of bad blood between you, but even so, you might try to kid yourself, but you know there is nothing you wouldn’t do for him. The kind of love you feel for him is almost too frightening to contemplate.
But then there’s this other Dean. This stupidly attractive man whose teeth are now scraping against your collarbone, who is pushing calloused fingers under the hem of your t-shirt, confident and inexplicably gentle. A version of Dean who is warm and solid and painfully sincere in how much he wants this, now, with you.
And almost ruins it all by growling a breathless Sammy against your neck.
“Dean,” you say, “don’t.”
He’s backing away so quickly that you panic a little. “No, wait,” you say, scrabbling in vain to hold onto him. “I didn’t mean—I meant, don’t call me Sammy. Not—not now. Please.”
Dean lets out a breath and laughs, lifting his arms in mock surrender. “Okay,” he says. Then he gets that gleam in his eye that usually spells trouble. “Is Sam still fine, or would you like to use an alias? Maybe try a little FBI roleplay, hm?” He steps closer, hands reaching for the waistband of your jeans. “Agent Bonham.”
“Shut up.” You grab his waist, walk him backwards to the bed. “Just stop talking.”
Dean is laughing as you push him onto it, a genuine helpless wheeze you haven’t heard in ages. He pulls you down with him, and for a minute you give in to a puerile scuffle for dominance, like it actually matters whose body ends up where. You win. Or maybe Dean lets you win. Panting, you look down on him through curtains of hair.
“Really impractical,” Dean observes. He tries to push the hair behind your ear and tuts when it just falls back down. “But then, you always were such a girl.”
“Just admit that you like it.”
Dean scoffs, but his eyes crinkle, and then he’s rolling his hips against yours. Even through thick denim his erection is unmistakeable. You feel giddy, tipsy with nerves as you bend down to kiss him again. There’s a part of you that wants to speed things up. Ruck up a shirt, pull down a fly barely enough to shove a hand inside, make it quick and dirty and desperate and over before you have to think about it too much. You grab his hip, thumb pressing against the jut of bone.
“Hey,” Dean says, like he can read your mind. “Let’s just take it—”
“Yeah. I know.”
“Okay. Good. There’s no hurry.” He slips his hands under your shirt, drags blunt nails over your sides, raising goosebumps. With a confusing mix of lust and jealousy you wonder if he’s done the same to all those nameless women picked up from dive bars and gas station diners. Have they straddled his thighs like this? Pushed up his shirt until his nipples show? Has he looked up at them with the same naked adoration?
Slowly, piece by piece, your clothes get peeled off to reveal the constellations of scars that trail over your bodies like maps of your misadventures. Dean keeps stopping to trace these mementos with his fingertips, trying to recall where you got them. Was this one from a werewolf? No, it looks more recent, but hey this one I know. It’s from when you fell from a tree at sixteen. He’s breaking his own rules with this reminiscing, blurring the lines and making it impossible to pretend that you are anything but brothers. Even so, you can’t help but join in. You mouth at a gnarly scar on Dean’s ribs—a ghoul in Minnesota—and laugh at the way he squirms.
It’s all kinds of amazing to realize that this slow and unhurried thing, too, is something that can exist between you. That you’re allowed to take your time and watch him, that you can press your palm flat on his stomach and revel in the way his mouth falls open in anticipation. This knowledge is intoxicating. It twists through your insides and leaves you trembling with desire.
“I want to taste you,” you say into the hollow of his navel. “Dean—I want to—”
“Please,” Dean says, voice raspy.
His cock jumps when you wrap your hand around it, precum slick under your thumb. The metallic scent of him is strong enough to taste. Dean chokes on a moan when you sweep your tongue over the head, and for a few seconds you think you might come just from this—Dean’s fingers twisting in your hair, the salt of his skin sharp on your tongue, the way his voice trembles when he breathes out your name, only just remembering to swallow the second syllable.
Slow and unhurried be damned. You want to see him break apart, knowing that it’s because of you.
The blowjobs you’ve given in your life can be counted with the fingers of one hand. But there’s nothing you can’t do well when you put your mind to it, so it doesn’t take long until Dean is fucking your mouth with desperate tiny thrusts, gripping your hair so tightly it hurts. You imagine you can almost taste his approaching orgasm—
—and then he’s pulling you away, voice high and desperate when he says, “Okay, stop.”
“What—?“
“Okay,” he repeats, panting. “Okay. That’s enough.” He takes a deep breath and then gives your hair a gentle tug. “Come on. Up. My turn.”
It doesn’t make an ounce of sense. “What? Dean—why would you not want to come?”
“I told you,” Dean says, all big eyes and breathless innocence. “There’s no hurry.” That’s a bullshit answer if you’ve ever heard one. You know there’s bound to be an actual reason, so you crawl up and plant your hands on either side of his head, and glare at him until he surrenders. “Fine,” he says, a little embarrassed. “I tend to lose interest when I come first.” He reaches up to smooth your hair back, the gesture far more gentle than it has any right to be. “And I didn’t want that to happen now.”
All you can come up with is, “Oh.”
“So are you gonna just hover there,” Dean asks, “or are you gonna let me blow you?” His smile is mischievous, his lips bitten red and glistening with saliva.
“Yeah,” you say stupidly, and Dean laughs at you.
“Don’t strain yourself trying to be so eloquent.”
“Okay, how’s ‘fuck yes’ sound?”
“I don’t know, was that for the hovering or—“
“For fuck’s sake, Dean.” You push two fingers into his mouth to shut him up. “Yes, I want your mouth on my cock. Happy?”
“Mmm-mm,” he says around your fingers, and then, when you draw them out and let him push you onto your back, he elaborates, “I’m all about enthusiastic consent, you know.” He slides a purposeful hand down your chest, over your stomach. The back of his hand brushes against your cock and you’re so hard you feel lightheaded. You watch him press his mouth on your hipbone, watch him lick his lips, and you have to close your eyes then or risk embarrassing yourself by shooting prematurely like a fifteen-year-old boy. You feel the tip of his tongue, a little hesitant, and then the wet heat of his mouth, and sparks run up your spine. You grab the sheets with both hands and sob.
“Fuck I’ve missed this,” you say, voice breaking. It might be an embarrassing admission, but you’re past caring.
It could be the last time in a long while you get to have this—or the last time ever, you never know—so you try to make it last. And for a precious couple of minutes you do manage to hang on. But then you make the mistake of looking at him. It’s not even the sight of your cock in Dean’s mouth that tips you over. It’s that he looks so pleased. He glances up and fucking winks at you, and you lose it so suddenly you take him by surprise as well. Dean chokes on it a little, come running down the side of his mouth. He sits up and wipes it off with the back of his hand, and in that moment he’s so beautiful you fear your heart might burst.
“A little warning would have been nice,” he says conversationally.
“Sorry,” you manage, still panting.
“It’s fine. Actually makes me feel kinda awesome.” Dean clambers up the bed and catches you staring at his lips. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kiss you with this mouth. That would be disgusting.”
“Yeah,” you agree, and pull him into a kiss, open-mouthed and hungry. It is disgusting—and glorious, the way you can taste yourself on him, how Dean groans into your mouth and takes his time pulling away.
“Man,” he says, dropping back on the pillows. “You’re one sick puppy.”
You grin at him. “Says the guy who just blew his little brother.”
Dean’s expression goes from satisfied to wary so quickly you can hear the shutters rattling down.
“Shit.” You reach for him. “Dean. I didn’t mean to—“
“I know,” he cuts you off, catching your wrist before you can touch him. He gives you an contemplative sidelong stare, and you get the sinking feeling that you’ve crossed one line too many and ruined everything. Then something in Dean’s expression softens and turns playful. With a quick yank he pulls your hand to his mouth and licks your palm, a disgusting wet stripe from your wrist to your fingertips.
“Ew.” You try to pull away. “Dean, what the—”
“Shh, relax,” he says, steering your hand towards his crotch. “Let me show you how to give a proper handjob.”
And just like that everything is okay again.
Dean’s cock is solid and hot in your hand. He guides your fingers and bites back a moan when you do something right, and you’re having a hard time remembering how to breathe. The whole thing is almost unbearably intimate. Dean lets go of your hand and launches into a breathless string of instructions and encouragement—that’s it Sam, a bit tighter, and use your thumb, yeah like that, faster, that’s right, fuck keep doing that—and all the while he keeps glancing at you, like he’s making sure you’re paying attention. He’s flushed and happy, and you can only watch in helpless awe as he unravels before your eyes.
He’s looking at you when he comes, eyes bright, mouth beautifully slack, and you wish you had photographic memory.
“Whooh,” Dean says when he gets his breath back. “Not bad.”
You laugh, incredulous. “Not bad? That’s it?”
“Take the compliment, Sammy,” he says, then looks down at himself. “Man, I’m completely covered in jizz. Couldn’t you have put a hand in front?” He grabs the corner of a sheet and uses it to wipe himself down.
“Okay, that. That just made this your bed.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
Seeing as the sheets are already ruined, you wipe your hand on the bit now draped across Dean’s stomach. That earns you a half-hearted hey, but when you look up, Dean has his eyes closed, like he’s half asleep already. Something petty and dark unfurls in your stomach.
“Gonna use the bathroom,” you say, unnecessarily, clambering up.
“You do that,” Dean says with a slight sleepy slur.
It’s not like you were expecting cuddles or pillow talk—or gentle declarations of undying love. The mere thought is ridiculous. Nothing even close has ever happened before, so why should it be any different now. Or did you honestly think that just because you took the sex itself more slowly, anything else has changed between you? Dean loves you—you know he does—but it has nothing to do with this physical thing. It’s separate. It means nothing. Staring at your reflection in the grimy mirror, you unconvincingly but firmly tell yourself that it’s fine. You chose this. You chose all of this—over Amelia, over a house and a dog and a regular job. Over everything that is normal and simple.
Dean’s familiar, quiet snores fill the room when you re-emerge. You kill the lights and climb naked into your own, clean bed, and valiantly resist the urge to accidentally wake him up. Curling on your side, you stare at the vague outline of Dean’s sleeping form, and think about how much you love him and how much you hate him, and how much of a field day a therapist would have with it all.
You’re running in circles, alright. You wish you knew how to stop.