Chapter Text
Sam was doing push-ups in the big empty room they set up to use as a workout space by putting down a rubber locking mat and getting a few dumbbells and kettlebells, resistance bands for physio. He was at the tail end of an hour as the interval timer on his phone ticked down, his arms and core aching, shirt wet with sweat. He had music playing quietly, he didn’t recognize the song.
He became aware that Dean was leaning by the door and had no idea how long he’d been there. He twisted his head to look. Dean had his arms crossed, his gaze intent and blatantly appraising.
“Hey,” Sam got out.
“Hey yourself.”
He tried to focus. Dipping all the way down, chest to deck.
“One more—round. Done in a—sec.”
“Don’t let me stop you.” Dean tipped his head to the side. “You gonna do squats? Lunges?”
“Already did.”
“And you didn’t call me?”
Sam huffed a laugh and tried to steady his breathing. He saw movement in his peripheral vision and looked up in time to see Dean adjusting his dick in his jeans, not subtle at all.
“You’re gross,” Sam panted.
“Yeah, well, that makes one of us.” Another palm roll over his crotch. “You free later?”
“I’ll check my schedule.”
“Uh-huh. Pencil me in for an hour. Maybe two.”
Sam stifled another laugh and his pace faltered, sweaty hair sticking to his cheek. He wouldn’t put it past Dean to take his dick out. He tried to remember if Dean had done it before and came up short, which didn’t mean no. A flush that had nothing to do with exertion crept up Sam’s neck, other blood rushing south.
“What are we—gonna do for—two hours?” he managed.
“I’ll think of something.” Dean tipped his head farther to the side. “Take your shirt off, lemme see your back. Or breathe harder. Grunt a little.”
“Did you come in here for a reason?”
“Other than this? No.” Sam could hear the smile in Dean’s voice; nothing made Dean happier than ogling. Dean being a pest was the still point of Sam’s turning world. “We still on for beers later?”
“Yup.”
“Cool. If you need me, I’ll be in my room, knock first. Ignore the noises.”
“I hate you—so much.”
“Yeah, I bet you do. Nice boner.”
Sam’s arms gave out and he almost fell flat on his face, coming threateningly close to breaking said boner.
“Go away,” he panted, laughing. Dean cackled and left the room.
—
Dean pointed at Sam across the pool table and announced: “Winner gets his dick sucked. To completion.”
They were at the dingy bar closest to the bunker, half restaurant and attached to a motel that they thankfully never had to stay at. Sam set his beer on the edge of the table to go find a pool cue. He was on his fourth beer, or fifth. Hard to say. Enough that he stopped looking around to see who could hear them.
“Quit changing the topic,” he said, chalking up. “Do you seriously not think I’m hot?”
Dean wagged his hand back and forth in the air as he dug billiard balls out of the pockets.
“Not really. You’re—” My brother, he didn’t say, always careful to police the narrative in public. “You’re just you,” he finished, with a look that made it clear what he meant.
Sam came around to his side of the table as Dean set up the balls.
“Why are we having sex if you don’t think I’m hot?”
“You’re easy and always around,” Dean said without looking up. Sam whacked him behind the knees with his cue.
“You don’t get to talk about easy, dude, you spread like butter.”
“Then how about because, due to a lifetime of stress, problem drinking, and, let’s be honest, we probably both have CTE, we’ve duped ourselves into thinking it’s an okay idea.”
“Romantic.”
“Hey, you asked.” Dean lined up to break, leaned all the way over. “You’re like a six on a good day, and most of that is the height. Cut your hair and we can talk about a seven or eight.”
“If this is me as a six, you’d be feral if I were an eight. What do you think you are?”
Crack, he broke. Balls scattered. Dean frowned at them, then up at Sam.
“I can’t believe you have to ask. You remember when I made that chick run a red light watching me suck a popsicle?”
“That was ten years ago!”
“And I’ve aged like a fine wine.” Dean paused and straightened up. “Wait, do you think I’m hot?”
“You sleep in my bed most days of the week, of course I think you’re hot.”
Dean grinned. “Gross, Sammy.”
“Says the guy who practically jerked off watching me do push-ups!”
“I said you’re a six, I didn’t say I wouldn’t jerk off to a six!”
“This conversation is over.”
Dean smiled at him, that stupid smile with his tongue behind his teeth that made him look bright like a kid no matter how old he got.
He had a way of making Sam’s head go quiet, and it felt too easy, sometimes, to have something that let him forget like that. It was a delicate thing, kind-of-sort-of dating your own brother, but they made it work.
Dean looked past Sam’s shoulder at something behind him and his face closed up.
Sam turned around. A woman was sitting at one of the small, high tables that ringed the pool table, cut-off T-shirt and straightened blonde hair. She was hiding her smile behind her hand.
“You probably didn’t wanna hear that,” Dean said to her, apologetic without admitting it. It always paid to tread carefully when someone noticed, when they were stupid and several beers deep and forgot other people existed. But this woman just laughed.
“No, no, it’s sweet. You’re cute together.”
Dean grimaced. “Thanks.”
She didn’t seem to notice his mild disdain, which was aimed at himself and Sam more than her. She slid off her chair and came up to the pool table.
“You’ve been together a long time, I guess?”
Sam turned back to the table to take his shot.
“Since we were kids,” he said automatically.
It was their go-to statement when asked, an uncontroversial way to explain the brotherly rapport they weren’t good at hiding. And girls ate up the childhood sweetheart boys-next-door bit: it painted a picture, untrue for them but probably true for someone, of two knock-kneed kids shyly exploring each other’s bodies in middle America against all adversity, a Stand by Me type of thing. Their truth had come later, a lot greasier, more violent and illegal, but no one wanted to hear that story. This is my brother, we almost caused the apocalypse several times and I can’t breathe if I don’t know where he is, but like, in a sexy way.
“Very cute.” The woman leaned forward. It was a low-cut tee. They both stared. “Well… you’re both tens, for the record.”
Dean perked up. He could scent a threesome like a foxhound. “Yeah?”
She clearly knew what he meant. She straightened up.
“Not like that. It, ah… sounds like you two have a real thing going on, I’m not super into being sidelined all night.” She left her empty bottle on the table and adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “Nice chatting, though. Have a good night.”
“Not sidelined!” Dean called after her as she headed through the bar. “Very… first line! Middle line!” He elbowed Sam. “Quick, gimme some sports words.”
“She’s gone, dude.”
“Shit.” Dean scratched his chest and watched her go. “How do we give off less of a ‘married couple’ vibe?”
“We could stop ragging on each other like an old married couple, for starters.”
“That’s just charmingly youthful brother-banter.”
“Shh.”
“Brother-like banter,” Dean corrected dryly. “No one’s listening.”
They finished their game over the course of two more beers; Dean won, and his waggling eyebrows said he wasn’t going to let the blowjob bet slide.
They got another round afterwards and took a table by a window that looked out on the dark parking lot where the Impala shone slick in the lights of the bar. Dean tried to pick seats where he could keep an eye on the car, which Sam felt was, quote, ‘pervert behaviour.’
Sam idly surveyed the bar, and when he looked back, Dean was looking at him. It had taken some getting used to, to be in bars full of people, many of whom were looking at Dean (with lust, jealousy, confusion, pity, annoyance—the list went on) and have Dean looking at him.
They were sitting on the same side of the round table. Dean looked around, then slid his hand and the beer in his hand forwards on the table top until his knuckles touched Sam’s.
Sam didn’t move his hand away, but. “Hey.”
“It’s cool, no one’s looking.”
“You keep saying that.”
Dean’s knee bumped his under the table and stayed there.
“‘Cause it’s true. No one gives a shit about us. When’d you get so vain?”
“When we’re in rural Kansas, where they have ideas about… this.”
Dean snorted. “Mr. Ivory Tower California thinks workin’ class folks can’t handle two guys touching.”
“Shut up, you know what I mean.”
They kept it PG close to home but played it loose on the road when they felt the itch, fake names making it easy to shed their ties and roll with it. It was a toss-up for whether it helped or hindered a case; people occasionally found it sweet, but when they got weird about it, they got weird hard, and they’d each broken more than a few dudes’ noses when the going got tough. Dean loved the nose-breaking part. I’m being an ALLY, he’d say, wiping some guy’s blood off his knuckles with a bar napkin.
Dean said, “You know we’re not actually famous, we’re just hunter-famous.”
“How do you know these guys aren’t hunters?” Sam asked, gesturing with his bottle at the unshaven, jacket-wearing white guys that dotted the bar.
“In-state? We’d know ‘em.”
“Not always.”
“They’d come say hey if they were hunters.”
“One, no, they wouldn’t, because we’re widely hated or at best, feared, and two, they definitely wouldn’t be coming over if they saw us necking first.”
“Necking.”
“I dunno! Flirting! Groping! Whatever you call this.” Sam bumped himself against Dean demonstratively. “They’d know we’re brothers. Being brothers is like, our main thing.”
Dean didn’t move his hand or knee away, which Sam pretty much figured. It used to be a bigger deal, but time had widened their focus: the world wasn’t going to end because you were sleeping with your brother, it was going to end because of some other, even worse choices you were making.
Dean said, “The sides of our hands are touching, I’m not blowing you under the table. Live a little.”
“Why does it matter? Just don’t touch my hand.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dean said defensively. He took a drink and looked away. “But I’ll be damned if these clowns are gonna tell me whose hand to touch.”
Sam laughed and shook his head. He moved his knuckles against the bony ladder of Dean’s, warm, and saw Dean smile out of the corner of his eye.
Dean’s love had always been huge and oppressive, but now that he stopped feeling a suicidal amount of guilt over the boundless nature of that love, it became massive. Dean’s love was an ankle-breaking, thousand-ton love, but Sam thought he carried it pretty well. He could feel it making him a worse person—having that kind of trust and devotion, largely unasked and unearned, no matter what he did or how he tried to get out of it—but Sam forgot how to care.
Everyone else he’d made romantic overtures with felt like a playdate by comparison; he said the right things to girls, lied when needed and shared sparingly when he couldn’t get away with lying, and they deserved better, but he wasn’t even aware he was doing it until he took a step back. There wasn’t any of that with Dean, both because Dean wouldn’t let him and because he had nothing to hide: Dean knew every awful, selfish thing about him, and they were also usually also the most awful, selfish parts of himself, and Dean loved him anyway because he couldn’t help it.
Sam didn’t think anyone deserved that kind of love, least of all him, but he had it, so all he could do was try to meet Dean anywhere even close to halfway. It worked okay most of the time. The trick was that Dean didn’t seem to notice that Sam’s love was just as debilitating. Or if he did, he didn’t seem to mind.
Sam tacked on, “Not that I need you groping me,” for good measure. Best to keep Dean on his toes.
Dean leaned in on some false pretense, adjusting his jacket or getting something out of his pocket, and put his hand way, way up on Sam’s thigh. Pinkie-brushing-shaft high.
“This is groping to you?” A very distinct brush, a push inwards. “This isn’t even my best work.”
“Do not. You’re gonna get us kicked out.”
“Since when are you in charge of who and where I grope?”
“Since I’m the one being groped.”
Sam could feel Dean’s beer breath on the side of his face, half turned towards the bar in an attempt at normalcy, like they were just two guys gossiping in low tones.
“I can see why you’d think that. That it makes you in charge,” Dean mumbled, closer. “You’re wrong, but.”
Sam rolled his eyes. The move was always to fight fire with fire, with Dean. He slid his hand up Dean’s back and put it on his nape, squeezing gently. Then a little less gently. He felt a barely suppressed shudder roll down Dean’s spine.
Dean liked a little manhandling, which was convenient, because Sam liked to manhandle. A lot. He pushed his thumb into the vein on the side of Dean’s neck and held it there. He watched Dean’s hand move on his beer bottle, sliding up. The fingers of his other hand twitched on Sam’s leg.
“Sorry, who’s getting groped?” Sam said, ducking his head close to Dean’s ear.
He slid his thumb up under the corner of Dean’s jaw and curled his fingers around the other side of his neck. Dean held himself very still. Sam pushed and Dean tipped his head slightly, like he was exposing his neck. Sam wanted to chew on his jugular like a dog on rawhide, but they had to draw the line somewhere. It was bad enough that he was a little hard.
Sam drew his hand back and gave Dean a patronizing pat on the cheek. Dean let go of the breath he’d been holding and took his hand off Sam’s leg.
“You and your giant mitts,” Dean grumbled, mostly to himself. He rubbed his neck, a quickly-fading red mark left by Sam’s thumb. Sam smiled and bumped their shoulders together.
“Again—you are so easy, dude.”
“Bitch.”
“Like butter.”
—
The bunker was always the exact same temperature, day or night, like a doctor’s office. It weirded Sam out at first, but he got used to it along with all the other idiosyncrasies of the space, and now he just found everywhere else drafty.
“Coffee?” he asked, clanging down the metal stairs.
Dean, behind him, full of mirth: “Sure. Who needs sleep?”
Sam went down the steps into the kitchen, flicking on lights as he passed. He hung his jacket on a hook and washed his hands at the sink, and when he turned around, Dean was leaning in the kitchen doorway with a funny almost-smile on his face.
“Wow. Look at us.”
“Look at us what?”
Sam got water from the tap and a coffee filter from the basket they kept them in. He scooped out enough coffee for two. Their mugs were still on the table from the morning and he grabbed them, not bothering to rinse.
“Nesting,” Dean said. Sam heard him move around behind him, the shuffle of his jacket hanging next to his own. “I have a mug. We have a home, Sammy.”
Sam looked down at the mugs. Dean did have a mug. It was a hideous novelty mug that said I’LL DO IT TOMORROW, TODAY I’M GOING FISHING. Sam’s mug was goldenrod yellow with a chip on the rim.
“We have a magically-impenetrable pre-war bunker,” Sam said to the mugs.
“A cozy one,” Dean insisted.
Sam chuckled. He flipped the switch on the side of the coffee maker and watched the light come on.
“You think that girl would’ve been fun?” he asked.
“At the pool table?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably not. She had uptight shoes.”
“Please explain ‘uptight shoes.’“
“You know, like… too high. Pinchy. In a shitty dive bar? She’s insecure.”
“You’re so mean. What do you deem a fuckable shoe?”
“Sneakers,” Dean said, right away, like he had it at the ready. “Or boots or something. Chick in a hot outfit, with sneakers? She’s ready to run from the cops.”
“And what’s a fuckable guy shoe?”
Dean came right up behind Sam, warm and solid all up his back, his voice suddenly low.
“Brown Blundstones. Size twelve.” His hands landed on Sam’s hips. “That guy’s down for anything. No self-respect, a real depraved little shit.”
“I can’t believe you know my shoe size.”
“I also know your favourite brand of toilet paper. Take the compliment.”
Then Dean’s mouth was on the back of his neck, so insanely soft, the scrape of his stubble, his warm breath. He kissed Sam once, twice, then nosed up under his hair and stayed there.
Sam laughed. “What’s the occasion?”
Dean didn’t make a habit of such bald-faced tenderness, not with the lights on, or pre-coitus, or when Sam wasn’t half dead. He was nice enough, sure, but only in that backhanded Dean kind of way, love cloaked in a joke and an insult so no one could ever accuse him of being earnest. He didn’t do sweet very well, but Sam couldn’t come up with another way to think about having him kiss the back of his neck like that.
As he tried to parse it out, Dean sagged against him, slid his arms around his waist and pressed them together all the way down.
“Dunno. Weird mood.”
“No kidding. Are you that drunk?”
“I wish.”
Sam gingerly touched Dean’s arms around him, and Dean didn’t pull them back. He just smushed his face against Sam’s nape.
“Your hair makes me crazy,” Dean mumbled after a second.
“You hate it.”
“Not your hair-cut, your.” He stopped. Another snuffling breath against Sam’s skin, another kiss, open mouth. “Your gray hair. Your fuckin’ hairline.”
“Oh, shut up.”
“I never thought I’d see you get old.”
Sam went still, his heart screeching to a halt. This was suddenly a very different conversation than he thought they were having. “Oh.”
Dean tipped his forehead against the back of Sam’s head and sighed, warmth all down the back of his shirt.
“I dunno how many times now, I never thought we’d. You know. Feels lucky, to see you… live. For so long.”
Sam’s throat went tight. He closed both his hands around Dean’s forearms, still pressed to his stomach, and felt him flex his fingers and dig into his shirt in response.
“Yeah,” Sam said softly. “Yeah, you too.”
And it was true. He had no idea how many times now he’d thought he was looking at Dean for the last time. At least once a week since the age of twelve, probably. Dean at eighteen, it’s just a week, Sammy, there’s money for pizza, you’ll have fun. Dean at thirty-eight, let’s split up, I’m going around the back, if you don’t see me in five minutes, you run. Every time Dean’s phone went to voicemail it took something out of Sam that never came back in full.
Dean snorted against his nape. “Wow. What a sap.”
“You’re the sap.”
The two saps kept holding each other. The coffee maker gurgled. Sam rubbed his thumb back and forth on Dean’s forearm. His thumbs knew Dean’s muscles; maybe the best thing about whatever they had going was massages after hunts, both of them taking turns after a hot shower. Heaven.
Sam thought about that for a while, Dean’s broad back under his hands all spread out on a bed, old scars and new bruises, sticky-hot from a shower and slick with baby oil. Sam leaned back against him and turned his head in, lips against Dean’s cheek.
“Is it time for our appointment?”
“What?”
“In the gym. Your two-hour time slot.”
“Oh. That.” Dean scrubbed his hands over Sam’s shirt, moved his face against his neck. “I don’t actually have two hours in me.”
“Didn’t think so.”
“What about a really, really awesome ten minutes?”
“The Dean Winchester Special.”
“Ouch.” Dean’s hands on him turned him around until they were face to face, his eyes bright and interested. “I mean, I did win that game. So. I think you have something for me.”
“Right. That’s fair.” Sam stooped down to tuck his face against Dean’s neck, under his jaw. He slid a hand around his hip and grabbed his ass, hard. “I could also give you something else, if you’re down.”
Dean laughed, his arms going automatically around Sam’s shoulders.
“So cheesy, dude.”
“Learned from the best,” Sam said against his neck. Dean tipped his head back to give him better access. “Is that a no?”
He turned Dean around and walked him back against the table while he waited, moving his mouth down the long column of his throat as Dean pretended he had to think about it at all.
“Here?” he asked.
“Wherever,” Sam said, like he wasn’t hard instantly at the thought of it. Dean was a fucking genius sometimes.
“What, you got somewhere better to be?”
Sam took Dean’s face in his hands and kissed him in answer, easing him to lean on the edge of the low table, eyes falling shut, swallowing the low groan that came out of Dean’s throat. Sam’s tongue licked slow along his and he tipped his head up to pull him the way he wanted. Dean gave as good as he got. Dean chased kisses, Dean wanted, Dean fell asleep last and woke up first like watching Sam was his job and he was always on the clock, and all of it was like pure heroin, just life-ruiningly good.
“Stay,” Sam said, between kisses, trying to pull back, “I’ll get— one second. Stay.”
Dean made a noise against his mouth and touched his arm.
Sam pulled back in question and Dean stuck his hand in the pocket of his jacket, dug around and pulled out a condom and two packets of lube. He slapped them into Sam’s palm, looking absolutely giddy about it. Sam stared down at them.
“You had these on you.”
“What can I say? I’m a boy scout.”
“Did you think we’d do it in the bathroom? We were like five minutes from home.”
“Yeah, well, you get in your moods.”
They’d done it in a lot of bathrooms, mostly gas stations and truck stops and, yeah, bars, but that wasn’t the point. And maybe he did get in moods—he’d shoved Dean into more than a few stalls, apropos of nothing—but Dean didn’t have to say it.
Sam huffed. “I’ll show you moods.”
He started pulling off Dean’s flannel, feeling his toothy smile against his mouth as he kissed him again. Dean’s hands fumbled with Sam’s buttons at the same time, slipping and awkward in a bid for speed.
Dean had a few of his own moods when it came to this stuff. ‘Sex’ happened in bed, late or early, and was long and sometimes complicated and involved a lot of talking and laughing; ‘making love,’ if they had to call it something, was rare and tantric, crushing, serious and slow; and fucking was quick and brutal and loud, if not public then standing and/or clothed, left bruises or broke furniture (see also: the Dean Winchester Special). They were usually pretty open about which one they were going for.
Dean’s strong hands pulled Sam flush against him and, credit where credit was due, a few years shy of forty and Dean could still get it up like a teenager. A particularly impassioned frown or eye-roll could give him a semi.
It was hard not to grind against him, so Sam did, finding that angle that worked for them both, rough through denim and both of them achingly hard now. Sam always wanted to shove him against the nearest surface and get off on him, rut against him until they both came in their pants. That’s how it was, their very first time, and maybe it twisted something in Sam’s brain forever that he kept wanting it. He liked how it felt in jeans. Dean let him, sometimes; it was immature and weird but it wasn’t like Dean didn’t want it, too.
Sam started on Dean’s jeans. Both of them in T-shirts, Dean pushed Sam’s up to smooth a hand over his abs, making a soft sound into his mouth before pulling at Sam’s jeans, both of them trying to get there first. Sam shoved Dean’s boxers down and pulled him out, the heat and scent of his arousal kicking everything up a few degrees, and Dean stopped doing whatever he was trying to do to push up against his palm.
Sam laughed. “You’re, uh, eager.”
He slid his hand up Dean’s length, the angle and closeness not letting him get a hand around it, but it gave Dean something to rub against. Dean slid his hands over Sam’s shoulders and fisted them in his shirt.
“Got hard when you grabbed me at the bar,” he mumbled, turning his face to kiss and bite at Sam’s jaw, “can’t stop thinking about it, fuck—when’d you get so—”
“I thought I wasn’t hot,” Sam teased, and Dean bit him pretty good for it.
It went quick after that; Dean turned around and braced against the table and Sam tore open a pack of lube with his teeth and slicked up his fingers. He got two inside him easy enough, they’d had a productive week, and Dean was down on his forearms on the table sweating through his shirt. Sam pushed it up with his palm, wanting to see more of his smooth, strong back, then slid his free hand down around Dean’s dick, hanging neglected between his legs. He hadn’t touched him at all but he was rock hard, almost drooling. He jerked forwards when Sam touched him and gasped when he stopped right away.
“Fuckin’ tease—”
Sam crooked the fingers inside him and Dean broke off with almost a snarl, his boots moving against the floor.
“Fine,” Sam said, hardly thinking anymore. He drew his fingers out and gave himself a few strokes, staring, stupid with want, then tore open the condom and rolled it on, and the rest of the lube, slippery between his fingers and up inside Dean.
Sam braced a hand against him, the other around his dick, and started to push inside him, slow and steady.
“Jesus,” Dean gasped, fingers curling into fists against the table. “Fuck, yeah. Yeah—”
It had been years of exploring his body like a cartographer. Sam knew every inch of it, the plush of every vein that ran down his forearms, the thin skin at the crook of his arms and over his hip bones, every spot where tender, vulnerable life shone through. It took a while to slog through the panicky, restrained sex steeped in masculinity and self-loathing to get to a place where they could let go. Sam sometimes still got an intravenous hit of oh God he sang me lullabies when I was five while Dean was inside him, nausea and fear and extremely unwelcome thoughts about their father, but it happened way less than it used to.
He knocked Dean’s legs wider with his knee. Dean was so tight, so hot, it was hard to stay standing. He fisted a hand in the back of Dean’s shirt and pushed it up again, he wanted to see, the valley of muscle in his back and his bare arms, all flexing as he pushed himself up onto his hands.
“Sam,” Dean said, his voice cracking, head hung between his shoulders. Sam knew that if he waited at all, he got to hear his name in that voice, pissy and hot and don’t-you-dare-make-fun-of-me. Dean always delivered. “Sam.”
His cock throbbed inside him at the sound of it: Dean, who wouldn’t ask for anything, asking for this of all unthinkable things. It was like an aphrodisiac and it never got any less exciting or unbelievable, that this—that Dean—was something he got to have.
He slid out and back in, the whole length of it, and they were gone. He started up a quick rhythm and it felt so good, so easy, he could hardly breathe, zero to sixty as he bucked into him over and over again. Dean didn’t like or appreciate carefulness. Sam slid his fingers down his arms to crush his hands against the table and hold him there, pressed flat to the wood.
Dean shook his head and fought against his grip. “Touch me, I’m close.”
Sam bit his tongue against a bratty already? He gripped his hands harder. He could never tell if Dean was fighting him for real and wasn’t stronger, or if he was pretending to struggle because he liked the feeling. Dean would never admit if it was the former.
“I bet.”
Sam hammered into him in quick, slick thrusts, shaking with the effort of staving off his own orgasm and keeping Dean just unbalanced enough that he couldn’t get up and had to just take it, flat against the table, spitting and swearing.
“No hands,” Sam panted, not letting up. “You can do it, come on.”
Dean twisted and bucked under him, his nails all but digging gouges into the table, his hips shoving mindlessly forward seeking friction he couldn’t find, his body begging for it.
“I can’t—”
Sam could feel him getting tighter, gasping and incoherent, and he sped up, fucked him so hard the table skidded into the wall and banged against it. Dean tried to muffle his mouth against his shoulder without a hand or arm free to cover it and he was close, Sam could hear it, could feel the maddening clench of his body around him, everything going tight.
“Good,” Sam breathed, too quiet to be sure Dean heard, but then Dean was coming with a shout all over the floor, his dick pulsing and jerking untouched, crushing Sam’s fingers between his so hard it hurt.
Sam fucked him through it, hard and slow. Dean slumped forward and thunked his head against the table when it was over, choking to breathe.
“Holy fuck, Sam.”
The coffee maker wasn’t even done. Sam bowed forward and rested his forehead against Dean’s back, chuckling hoarsely. Sam didn’t come, but he was too close to even move. Everywhere their bodies met felt hot to the touch, stuffy and sweating in their clothes.
“Hold on,” he said into Dean’s shirt.
He let go of one of his hands to wrap his fingers around Dean’s spent dick, still hard, and started jerking him off. Dean jolted forward, slapping his newly freed hand around Sam’s wrist.
“No no no nono no—”
They had a safe word; everything else was play. Sam put a forearm across Dean’s back and held him down, jerking him quick and hard with his other hand. His dick was still drooling come, the lines between coming and not coming and already came blurred when they did it like this.
“Son of a bitch,” Dean spat, all but sobbing, trying halfheartedly to buck up against Sam and push him off, twisting away from his hand with nowhere to go. “Fuck, fuck—”
“You can do it,” Sam said again. He knew that coming without being touched never felt like the end, he had another one in him. Dean’s hand around his wrist was starting to hurt, an actual full-strength grab, but he didn’t shake him off. He let him pretend he had any control over the situation and stroked him faster.
The sounds he was making, so far past caring that he sounded desperate and unhinged and the hot, helpless pulse of his body around him finally pushed Sam over the edge before Dean came again, he couldn’t help it. Sam started bucking into him again to get himself through it and it was enough to get Dean there too, falling apart at the seams and very nearly breaking Sam’s wrist.
He let go of Dean’s other hand and let him fold down onto the table and shake out his sore arms. Sam followed in an undignified slump, folded all the way over him and still inside him. Dean took hiccupy breaths like his lungs were broken, his cheek pressed to the lacquered wood.
“Sadist,” he mumbled, laughing weakly. “Freak.”
Sam rubbed his sweaty face against his shirt. “Glass houses.”
He said it with what he belatedly realized was unbearable tenderness. It matched Dean’s.
Sam straightened up after a moment, muscles aching, and carefully pulled out. Dean peeled himself off the table and turned around, leaned on the edge and wiped his face with his arm. He had a red spot on his cheek where his face was pressed to the table. He tucked his dick back into his boxers as Sam threw out the condom, and looked down at his come splattered on the floor, lifting a boot to avoid stepping on it. They would argue over who cleaned it up (it’s YOURS, yeah but it’s your FAULT).
Sam crowded back in towards him, still breathing hard, and let his head drop down on the front of his shoulder. The percolator went quiet, the smell of coffee all around them. Dean slid an arm easily around Sam’s shoulders, all safe and warm.
“Okay,” Dean said quietly, turning his face into Sam’s hair, “I’m willing to bump you up to a seven.”
—
Sam woke up the next morning so early it was almost still late when the weight of Dean’s head left his stomach. Dean had been laying on his front halfway down the bed, his head pillowed on Sam with an arm thrown over his legs. He was now propped up awkwardly on an elbow, his hair all flat on one side, drool dried on his cheek and on Sam’s bare stomach, one leg bent behind Sam’s.
Sam raised his head at the sudden movement, his hand going on autopilot to Dean’s arm as he went through an equally reflexive mental check: no blood, no tears, brother online, all systems go.
“Hm? What?”
“I heard something.”
They both went still and listened. Sam could guess.
“Cas.”
Dean was already vaulting out of bed. “Up, up!”
Cas didn’t know, only because no one knew, so this wasn’t the first or fiftieth time they’d scrambled to get dressed, here or on the road. Sam pulled on his jeans, no underwear, and buttoned his shirt, nothing underneath. Dean managed to put on a t-shirt and jeans and frantically smooth his hair down before launching himself into his desk chair by the time Cas knocked.
“Dean?” Quiet through the door.
Sam sat on the table on the other side of the room, tucking his hair behind his ears. He gave Dean the all-good look, and Dean called back, “Yup, yeah, hey, come in.”
Cas opened the door, stuck his head in and saw Sam.
“Oh. Sam. Hello.”
“Hey, Cas. What’s up?”
Sam knew they looked like idiots, but if Cas ever thought it was weird that they occasionally hung out alone in their bedrooms—with the door closed, clearly just after waking up, the room still stuffy with the smell of sleep—he didn’t mention it. They considered other strategies, namely one of them hiding under the bed or in a closet if available, but they couldn’t figure out whether Cas could sense human presence on an angelic level and never wanted to risk it. Not sharing a bed was ruled out as an option.
Cas looked between the two of them.
“I’m glad you’re both here. I have something I need your help with.”
Dean kicked out his bare feet and crossed his ankles. “Yeah? What’s going on?”
Cas seemed particularly dejected, which was never good. It meant this was a bad one. He leaned in the doorway.
“Are you familiar with conversion therapy?”
Dean said, “What?” at the same time that Sam said, “Oh, God.”
Sam looked at Dean. “Like, ‘pray the gay away’ type stuff. Doing traumatic shit to kids to make them straight. Largely a, uh, Christian thing.”
Sam glanced at Cas. He could never fully trace the connection real-life angels had to the human implementation of Christianity, and didn’t want to step on his toes. It seemed tangential at most, but his own relationship with religion was sticky and weird for obvious reasons and he didn’t like thinking about it much. John raised them with an unhelpful patchwork of performative Christianity and hands-on paganism that had taken some time to grapple with.
“Gross,” Dean said, almost cheerful. “Irredeemable dicks, got it. What about ‘em?”
Dean had done his grappling a long time ago.
“There’s an angel,” Cas started, and both of them groaned.
“What now?”
Cas sighed. “There is a rogue angel by the name of Suriel who’s running a conversion camp for teenagers in Tennessee.”
Sam said, “That’s fucked up.”
Dean said, “Yeah, since when are angels so diabolical about it? I thought their game was being straight-up murdery.”
“Are they killing these kids?” Sam asked. “What do you mean, running a conversion camp?”
Cas said, “He’s not killing them. It’s my understanding that he’s manipulating their memories, in an attempt to… change their sexuality, by removing their experiences.”
“That’s really fucked up.”
There was a short silence. Dean cleared his throat.
“Uh. Does it work?”
Sam glared at him. Dean gave him a palms-up what? shrug.
“Yes and no,” Cas said slowly. “It looks like it works, to the parents of the children. According to the articles. In practice, I assume the removal of memories is just returning the children to an earlier state.”
“A less gay one.”
“Dean.”
“Okay. Got it.” Dean rubbed his forehead. “Shit. Who lets an angel run a church camp?”
“He’s posing as a youth pastor.”
“Of course he is. Great.”
Sam crossed his arms. “So you want us to go take him out.”
Cas sort of shrugged, like he didn’t like it.
“If it comes to that. I will be with you, but it seems like something worth putting a stop to, if you have time. There’s been chatter, among the angels. Debates.”
“There’s debate?”
Cas looked to the side. “Somewhat.”
“Right. Okay. Sammy?”
“Obviously, dude. Start the car.” Sam slid off the table and ran his hands through his hair. “You wanna ride with us?”
Cas nodded. “The less attention we draw to ourselves, the better. Fewer vehicles.”
“Cool. Give us a sec to shower and pack up.”
—
Ever since Sam could remember, he liked being able to observe Dean unnoticed while he drove. He’d perfected his technique, learned what angle he could hold his head at before Dean knew he was looking at him. It hadn’t changed since he was a kid. He knew the right side of Dean’s face better than he knew anyone else’s whole body.
The right side of Dean’s face was tense on the long drive to Tennessee. Sam could imagine the left side was, too.
It wasn’t a particularly bad drive. Cas was in the back seat and they played twenty questions. They stopped for snacks and Dean got a jerky he liked. So Sam wasn’t sure where the tension was coming from.
Flat, ugly highway scrolled by past Dean’s face, spindly trees verdant in early summer. He obviously wasn’t going to say anything unless prodded.
“You’re thinking loud,” Sam said.
He saw Cas leaned forward to listen. Dean sighed like he’d been expecting it.
“I dunno, man. Just the case.”
They hadn’t talked before they left, no time alone to take stock. Sam wasn’t sure if Dean did the kind of soul-searching necessary to feel uncomfortable about the case, but he apparently did.
“Yeah. I get that. It’s a weird one.”
Dean sucked his teeth and gave a little shake of his head. There was something else he wanted to say.
“Obviously we can’t have angels fucking with people. But I mean, personally.” He tapped his thumb on the wheel. Stalling. “When I was a kid, if I heard someone could… fix it? Damn. I woulda packed my bags for Tennessee.”
Huh. Sam fought the urge to look back at Cas. That was as bold an admission Dean had ever made about that kind of thing, around anyone, as far as Sam knew.
He expected Cas to latch onto it—the guy liked to know things, especially about Dean—but he just leaned back in his seat.
“We all have things we’d like to forget,” Cas said gently. “You two especially, I think.”
It took Sam a second to pull his head out and realize Cas wasn’t talking about their secret, incestuous relationship, but the many, many other atrocities and failures they had to live in the shadow of.
Sam said, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s… I get it.”
The urge to put his hand on Dean’s leg was scalding. Dean had told him sparingly about his sexual awakening, in the interest of sharing notes. He hadn’t dealt with his blossoming attraction to men particularly well under John’s rigid ideas about masculinity, young and overburdened and emotionally unequipped, and he spent a long time ignoring and denying and beating it down. It eventually took a back seat to the even worse horror of being attracted to his own brother, but that didn’t make it easier.
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t gank the guy,” Dean added after a while. “It’s just a weird one.”
Sam looked at Cas over his shoulder. His big blue eyes were fixed on the right side of Dean’s face, watching him thoughtfully.
—
The camp was being hosted on a big, sprawling farm in the countryside, nothing around for miles.
“Culty,” Dean said as they drove by, checking it out.
The property was ringed with trees and back a ways from the road, past a winding dirt drive and behind a foreboding metal gate. There wasn’t much to see. A hanging wooden tile by the gate said ‘Fresh Start Summer Camp.’
“Super culty,” Sam agreed, his neck craned around to watch as it passed. “We’ll park a ways up and go on foot.”
“Now that I think about it, we should’ve brought a kid. Or a chick. Three grown-up dudes investigating a gay camp is, uh.” Dean looked over at Sam. “Sam, you’re the youngest. You’re the kid.”
“Wasn’t Jimmy Novak younger than me? Cas doesn’t age. You look, what, thirty?”
Cas said, “He was thirty-five.”
“Well, no one’s the kid,” Sam griped. “We don’t need a front, the angel’s gonna recognize Cas on sight, they always do. He’ll see his aura or whatever.”
Dean pulled over on the gravel shoulder down the winding road from the farm and parked. Without the deafening rumble of the engine, it was eerily quiet. They hadn’t passed another car going either way in a long while.
“Then we’re just here to fight. We’ve got blades and bullets and holy oil, we just gotta get him away from civilians. Right?”
Cas sighed and shuffled over to get out of the car. “I remember Suriel as being self-important and long winded. He’ll want to talk.”
“Well, we got nothing to say. C’mon.”
It was sweltering out in late afternoon, heat hitting them like a train after the mildly air-conditioned car, hotter than Kansas had been. Sam slid his angel blade up his sleeve, the metal warm on his skin. Hiding it meant he couldn’t take off his jacket to cool down.
“Hey,” Dean said to Cas. “Go on up ahead, see if there’s any warding we gotta deal with.”
Cas nodded and headed off down the road. Dean started to follow, slower to put some space between them, and Sam fell into step next to him.
Sam glanced up at Cas, judged the distance, then slid his hand over the small of Dean’s back.
“You okay?”
Dean shifted against his palm in a way that felt intentional, moving into it. “Mhm.”
Sam dropped his voice and put his face near Dean’s as they walked.
“A little too close to home, huh?”
Dean grimaced. His eyes were also fixed on Cas’ retreating form. Sam took his hand back.
“Yup.”
“If this guy prays the gay away, what the hell could he get out of us?”
“They don’t have a word for whatever we are,” Dean muttered. He tried to laugh a single heh, but it sounded forced. “It’s not like he knows. Nobody knows. You can’t sense that kind of thing.”
Sam wasn’t so sure. They’d never been sure what angels knew and didn’t know. Cas had never been able to put it into words very well, the way he experienced the world. All angels seemed to have a near-omniscient level of understanding, though vague, and Sam thought more than a few times about whether it was something they—maybe even Cas—hid from humans. Watching over humanity, you had to be afforded some perks.
Sam said, “We won’t let him talk.”
Dean was quiet. He wiped his sweating face with the back of his hand.
“It’s not like Cas never lost to another angel. So.”
Sam had nothing to say to that. Cas was strong, but all angels were. He got the sneaking suspicion that they were being naive again.
They met Cas in the dappled shade of the trees outside the gate.
“Nothing,” Cas said. He wasn’t sweating (didn’t, couldn’t). “No angel warding, as you’d imagine. No other apparent traps, for humans or otherwise.”
“So he’s unprepared. Maybe he doesn’t think—”
“Or he’s confident,” Dean interrupted.
Sam and Cas looked at each other, silent. The howl of bugs seemed to grow around them like a static roar.
“There’s a space where we can clear the fence this way,” Cas said, continuing along the road. “We’ll be found if we go through the gate.”
Sam pushed his hair back from where it stuck to his cheek. It was too early in the year for it to be so oppressively hot. They didn’t say anything else on the way, moving smooth and slow, and all cleared the fence without a boost. The other side was thick with trees before the clearing of the farm. They followed Cas silently; he seemed to know where he was going, honing in.
Sam kept his breathing steady and shifted easily into focus, letting everything else drip away. Dean and Cas, slightly in front of him, keeping formation. The shape of a building appeared between the trees, a massive white farmhouse with a red truck parked outside. His handgun was warm against his skin at the back of his jeans, blade warm on his forearm.
Cas led them towards the end of the tree line, swooping wide around the far side of the building. He gave them a look over his shoulder, a short nod, before stepping out from the shade of the trees.
The sun was scorching out in the open, sizzling Sam’s cheeks. He surveyed the area and saw Dean do the same; no one around, no voices of kids or otherwise, just the big white farmhouse, immaculately clean. A stack of metal pails and hay bales sat up against the outer wall. The edge of a wide porch appeared around the back as they approached. Beyond that, an empty field, nothing growing, stretching endlessly.
Too quiet, he was going to say, when an otherworldly force from nowhere slammed him into the ground like a crushed beer can.
He tried to shout for Dean—he heard the whump of his body falling at the same time—but the weight on his lungs and throat was an ocean of pressure that made him struggle just to breathe.
A man appeared around the edge of the porch, instantly categorized as an angel by his empty eyes and mild expression. He was blond and about their age, handsome and plain-faced like a Sears model, wearing boot cut jeans and a tucked-in t-shirt.
“If you think you have a single adversary left alive not trained to know the racket of that engine, you’ve become even stupider than I thought.” His voice was cold and slippery to the ear. “Hello, Castiel.”
Sam managed to turn his head, pebbles and dirt scraping his cheek. Cas was still standing but with effort, angel blade shaking in his hand.
“Suriel,” Cas said, in a tone like it was a slur.
Suriel walked down the porch and out of sight. He reappeared coming around the side of the house, strolling at a leisurely pace.
“For you of all people, Castiel, to have a problem with what I’m doing here, is laughable. You have been responsible for so much bloodshed, of man and angel alike, and you question my methods?”
“What you’re doing is wrong,” Cas ground out. “Interfering in human lives like this. There’s no excuse for it.”
He came right up to Cas, within reach of his blade, but Cas couldn’t, didn’t, move.
“Your obsessive love of humanity is pathetic,” Suriel sneered. “Mankind needs a firm hand from us. Direction. Not the snotty, simpering support you seem happy to dole out at every possibility.”
“Even if that were true, this isn’t the way.”
“Who are you to say? Many of our brothers and sisters agree with me. Humanity has strayed from the light, and who better than us to reign them in? To use our powers for good, to help them lead righteous lives, and without violence?” Suriel’s eyes slid from Cas down to Sam and Dean, still forcibly sprawled on the ground. “But I can’t expect you, of everyone, to understand. With the company you keep.”
All at once, Sam felt the weight lift from him, at least somewhat, and he gasped for air. A few paces away, Dean sat up at the same time and their eyes met, tried to convey some wordless plan. Sam tested his feet against the dirt but there was still a weight keeping them down and he couldn’t stand, couldn’t raise his arms. He watched Dean try and fail.
Suriel started pacing a slow circle around Cas with his hands clasped behind his back.
“It is fitting that you would bring me the Winchesters,” Suriel said, smiling. “Those vectors of sin.”
Sam’s heart gave a painful lurch against ribs, pure adrenaline. He looked at Dean, all panic, and Dean was looking back, wide-eyed and sweating in the sun. The collar of his shirt was going dark with sweat.
Their guns had angel-bullets in them. If Sam could get his hand back, he could grab it and maybe shoot from the ground. His palms were flat to the dirt, arms down and back at his sides. He managed to unfurl a single finger, but the rest of his hand didn’t move. He kept trying, eyes fixed on Suriel.
Suriel’s mention of ‘sin’ made him nervous, all things considered. Even if he didn’t smite them, if he kept talking, they’d have a situation on their hands. There was only so much Cas could ignore. But did Suriel know? How?
Suriel completed his lap around an immobile Cas and came towards Dean. He crouched down on his haunches in front of him, like he was talking to a kid or a dog.
“Don’t,” Sam snapped, surprised that he could make his jaw move. Suriel didn’t take his eyes off Dean.
“Your lot is an unfortunate one, Dean Winchester. I believe that you are a very righteous man, simply led astray.”
Dean said, “You’re thinking of somebody else. Don’t worry about it, I get it all the time. Got one of those faces.”
Suriel ignored him. His pale eyes slid towards Sam.
“How could you do something like this to your own brother?”
Nervous, blistering heat rose up Sam’s collar. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you? You think he would participate in this sordid thing between you of his own accord? If you weren’t—”
“Shut up,” Sam snarled. Cas had turned around, he could see them, he could hear—
“It’s none of your fucking business,” Dean barked. His voice sounded hoarse and strained under the supernatural weight. “Just like whatever you’re doing to these kids is none of your business.”
Suriel regarded him coolly for a moment. Sam tried again to make his hand inch back towards his gun. He tried his other hand and only succeeded in shaking out the angel blade, its tip hitting the ground by his wrist with a glassy thunk, still caught in his sleeve. Without Suriel’s eyes on him, Sam looked up at Cas, panicked, silent, and was met only with desperation. No evident plan.
“You think these children aren’t happier with their burdens lifted?” Suriel asked Dean. “Wouldn’t you be?”
“No,” Dean said. No hesitation whatsoever, which Sam found time to feel pleased about despite everything.
Suriel tipped his head to the side in an alarmingly Cas-like gesture, and then, quicker than Sam could process, he grabbed Dean and hauled him to his feet.
“We can test that,” Suriel said.
He twisted Dean’s hands behind his back, both his wrists in one hand, then pulled his handgun from the waist of Dean’s jeans and flicked it away. Dean didn’t have a blade on him.
“Don’t you fucking touch him!” Sam shouted, his voice breaking. “Dean!”
“It’s okay,” Dean said, or tried to, but it wasn’t. Suriel put him in a headlock with a forearm across his throat. His vessel wasn’t bigger than Dean, not by a long shot, and it was insane to see Dean struggle and kick with all he had and still not move this clean-cut pastor-looking guy at all.
Suriel said to Sam, “It’s my job to put you on the right path. To free your brother of your corruption. I will leave you as you are, so you see just how happy this makes him. And you know where to find me when you want the same treatment.” He nodded at Cas. “Or you ask your friend here, and he may be kind enough to provide.”
Suriel lifted his chin and that all-consuming weight fell back on Sam, making him fall to the side and crush his cheek into the dirt to save snapping his spine. He couldn’t open his mouth, teeth grinding together, and he heard the terrifying sound of a second body going down, Cas. Suriel kept monologuing.
“With all that being said, family is important. Family ties are a positive influence. That, I can leave you.”
Dean, choking. “Sam!”
All this time and Sam was just frozen, crushed, unable to help or scream or cry or do anything as he watched Dean meet his end. Suriel closed a palm over Dean’s forehead and Sam watched blinding light pour over his brother, finally the end, he thought, and what a worthless way to go.
He had to close his eyes against the brightness and the pain of the weight holding him down.
But when the light faded and Sam expected to see Dean’s dead, fried, angel-burnt face, it was still just Dean. Sweaty and pale and potentially unconscious, but Dean. Suriel’s arm across his throat was the only thing holding him up.
Suriel shoved Dean forward and he fell heavy into the dirt and stayed there, face down. Sam watched with wide, desperate eyes and he could see Dean breathing. He almost sobbed with relief.
Suriel said, “Unlike you three, I have no blood on my hands. I’d like to keep it that way. But if I see you again, I may change my mind.”
Sam could hear Suriel’s shoes on gravel as he left, but he couldn’t move or look around or speak. He tried to keep his breathing even and listen for anything, a twitch of Dean’s fingers, anything. He had no idea how much time passed before the weight lifted from him all at once.
He gasped like he was surfacing from underwater and heard Cas do this same. His muscles ached and groaned but he shot up and scrambled for Dean’s prone body, turned him over onto his back.
“Dean,” Sam panted, his hands on Dean’s sweat-wet neck. Dean’s face was slack, eyes closed. “Dean, hey, come on, get up, get—”
Dean’s eyes flickered open. They looked extra green in the sun.
“Sammy?”
Relief surged through every inch of Sam with love, terror and gratitude. He heard Cas get to his feet and come closer but he couldn’t take his eyes off Dean. He helped him sit up, hands fisted in his jacket, and once he was up, Sam yanked him into a crushing hug. He smelled like dirt and sweat and he hugged Sam back, choking out a grateful breath.
“All good, man,” Dean said into his shoulder, hands in fists at Sam’s back. “I’m okay.”
Two boys who never got to be kids became two men whose only love language was worry, and when Sam pulled back, he cupped Dean’s face in his hands and took stock. He rubbed a thumb over Dean’s lips, just quick, nothing he hadn’t done a thousand times before. He’d had his fingers on and in Dean’s mouth more times than he could even start to count.
Dean jerked back out of Sam’s grip, his hand coming up to slap Sam’s politely yet firmly off his face, off his mouth.
“Woah, hey, easy there.”
He said it laughing and joking and uncomfortable, and some quiet, barely-there alarm went off in Sam. Something was off. All the furniture moved two inches to the right, a deadbolt that locked to the left.
“Dean?”
Cas was there, he heard all of that, ‘corruption’ and ‘sordid’ and ‘sin.’ Dean was just panicking, he had to be. He was more cagey about Cas knowing than Sam was on any given day.
“We have to go,” Cas interrupted, his hand landing on Dean’s shoulder. “We’re outmatched. I’m sorry. We need to leave.”
“Can you walk?” Sam asked Dean, climbing to his feet. He offered him a hand up, which he took, nodding.
They took off for the tree line at a fast clip and Sam’s entire body ached, his pride was wounded and his head obsessively pored over Suriel’s pompous words. Wouldn’t you be happier—let’s test that—find me when you want the same treatment. What treatment?
“I’m sorry,” Cas said again as they reached the car, glowering aimlessly downwards. “I misjudged his strength. We can return, I can—”
“Don’t worry about it, Cas.” Dean unlocked his door and got in, leaning across to unlock for Sam and Cas. “We’re all in one piece. We’ll come back for the son of a bitch.”
Sam swung in. The interior was an oven, so hot he could feel it in his lungs. He watched Dean start the car, and if Dean’s hands were a little unsteady, Sam wasn’t going to call him on it.
Dean got back on the highway and they both rolled their windows down all the way. Sam took off his jacket and threw it in the back. He saw Cas staring moodily out the window, no doubt flagellating himself in his head.
Sam looked back at Dean. His hairline was wet with sweat, one arm hanging out the window, brow furrowed in God only knew what; shame, probably, at being beat by an angel, disappointment, pent-up aggression he didn’t get to spend. Sam could think of a few ways to get that out later.
He reached over, careful not to telegraph the movement to Cas, and brushed his knuckles against Dean’s thigh.
Dean jerked his leg away and laughed again, kind of thin. He shot Sam a glance before looking back at the road.
“I’m fine, man, limbs intact. What’s up with you?”
It was wrong. Something was wrong.
Free your brother of corruption, Suriel said. That light, which, apparently, wasn’t a smiting.
“You feel okay?”
Dean rolled a shoulder. “Stiff as hell from getting crushed like a bug, but yeah, alright. Didn’t get my bell rung, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
“What’s your name?”
Dean sighed. “Dean Winchester.”
“What’s my name?”
“You’re Sam Winchester, and, lemme just cut to the chase here, your birthday’s May 2nd, 1982 or ‘83, when you were in third grade you had one line in the school play and you forgot it, last week you spent forty-eight straight hours reading some dry-ass book about the Yugoslav wars that for some reason you kept trying to talk to me about, and I’m fine. Would you calm down? I’m me. No angel mojo.”
Maybe it was nothing. Maybe it was because Cas was there, they were good about that, Dean was just being careful. It was Sam who was shaken up, wheedling for comfort and head-pats from his big brother like he was five. He had to get it together.
“Sure. Sorry, I—yeah. All good.”
“Damn straight. Now pass me that jerky.”
—
They drove all the way back to the bunker through the day and into the night and it felt like a full retreat, which felt awful, but they needed more of a regroup than a motel room would allow. Suriel made it clear that they posed so little of a threat that he wasn’t going anywhere, they had time.
Cas left, saying he’d ‘fix this,’ which could have meant any number of things. They let him go, and Dean genuinely didn’t seem mad at him, so that was good. He could go either way.
Sam showered off the grimy summer car sweat, slow and hazy in the steamy heat. He didn’t know where Dean had gone after they came home, but he’d find him. After a particularly successful or ballsy hunt, they fucked like animals, high on adrenaline and self-importance. After failures, it was sweet and deep, one of them on their front, laced fingers and metaphorically-licked wounds, and that’s what he wanted now, Dean warm and heavy on top of him and inside him, proof of life. There was rarely a post-hunt outcome where they didn’t do it at all.
Sam went down to his room to get clean clothes. He was standing naked at his dresser when Dean knocked on the half-closed door.
“You decent?”
“Come in,” Sam said, still digging for boxers. They needed to do a shop, half his had holes or were worn almost through, so he couldn’t imagine what state Dean’s were in, except he could, because he’d seen them, and it was abysmal. He was still rummaging when Dean came in.
“Do you w— woah, Jesus, what do you think decent means?”
Sam looked up. Dean was standing in the doorway half turned around with his eyes averted to the ceiling.
“What?” Sam looked down. “Oh.” Wait. “What?”
“De-cent, Sammy, as in clothed. You deaf?”
Sam stared at him for a second, waiting for him to crack up. He didn’t.
Not sure what else to do, Sam said, “Sorry,” and pulled on boxers and a shirt. Dean didn’t turn around until Sam had jeans on, too.
Dean said, “I know you never really had a bedroom before, but, pro tip, this little guy on the knob is the lock.”
Dean had seen Sam naked more than anyone else had seen him clothed. Dean had seen him on the receiving end of things that were illegal in some states and frowned upon in all the others.
“What year is it?” Sam asked.
Dean gave him a bemused smile.
“2017, but thanks for the vote of confidence. I told you, brain good.” He knocked on the side of his head. “Are you gonna be around for dinner? I was thinking wings.”
“What did you do last night?”
“Uh, I didn’t eat chicken wings, so how about we stay on topic for a second here, hey?”
“We went to that bar, right? Played pool? You remember that?”
“I was there, yeah.” Dean’s smile shifted into concern. “You hit your head or something? Are you losing time?”
“No. No, just—I think maybe you are.”
Sam wasn’t sure if that was what he meant, but it was as good a place as any to start. It didn’t help Dean’s face much.
“Nnnno, I’m all here. We were at our haunt in town. There was a blonde chick making eyes.” Wearing uptight shoes, Dean didn’t add. “We had, what, four, five beers? Pilsners? Is that good enough?”
“What about after the bar?”
“Uh… We came back here.”
“And?”
“And what? And, I dunno, I watched TV, had another beer and hit the sack? What do you want me to say?”
That you said you like seeing me get old. That I fucked your brains out on the kitchen table. But Dean just kept looking at him like he didn’t get it, and a horror dawned on Sam, creeping up and up until his whole scalp was tingling.
Happier with their burdens lifted. We can test that.
Dean didn’t remember. Suriel had taken something from him, broken his memories or written new ones—enough that seeing Sam naked was embarrassing to him, and now this. How far did it go?
Sam asked, “Do you not know? About us?”
He had no idea how to phrase it, but he had to try. He knew he got it wrong when Dean just frowned.
“What do you mean ‘us’, what did we do? I told you, I’m all here— I’m Dean, you’re Sam, this is the magical dead-guy bunker we live in, what else do you want?”
“What am I to you?” Sam asked, taking a real fucking leap, no idea where to even begin to start.
“Is this a trick question?” Dean asked, then waited. When Sam just stared at him, he said, “My… brother?”
“Yeah. And?”
“And what?”
“And what else am I?”
Dean should have ragged on him: gee I dunno Sammy we haven’t had the girlfriend-boyfriend talk yet come on dude what are you twelve?
After a beat, Dean offered, “Tall?”
Sam’s palms were sweating. It was right there but he couldn’t believe it, he couldn’t look at it, he had to—
“I mean, what are we?”
Are you looking for an answer other than ‘morally bankrupt enough to fuck our own brother’? Dean could say.
Or: are you getting philosophical about this shit again ‘cause I told you I’m not saying ‘bi,’ all due respect but that’s not my jam.
Or: both tens, if you’re still fishing for that compliment.
Dean just squinted at him. “Family?”
Sam stared, heart racing, nausea swelling, and he didn’t know what other conclusion to draw or what else he could do other than just ask, he wasn’t getting anywhere beating around the bush.
“Have we had sex?”
Dean’s eyes got big for a second, not shocked like scandalized but shocked like upset, horrified, confused. He started to walk slowly towards the door.
“Uh, I lost my v-card before you had your first beer, and I’m gonna assume you—”
“With each other,” Sam clarified, and watched Dean implode.
All the colour drained from his face. He stopped inching away from Sam and his shoulders came up, tension running through every inch of him. He looked at Sam, and then away, and when he looked back, he was furious.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at, but it’s not funny.”
Pure vitriol, all nerves. Sam took a step closer.
“I’m not trying to be funny! Are you—”
“Are you fucked up? What are you on? Who do you think you’re talking to right now? This is Dean.”
“I’m not on anything! Just let me think, I—something happened, you’re not—”
“Sleep it off, Sam,” Dean barked. “Forget wings, I’m going out.”
He spun and stormed out the door. Sam chased him without thinking. “Dean!”
“I said leave it!” Dean shouted over his shoulder. “If you’re, I dunno, hexed or cursed or fucked up, I—”
“Last night! You don’t remember? In the kitchen, after the bar, we—”
Down at the end of the hall, Dean whipped around, and Sam was close enough behind him that Dean’s arm caught him across the chest. Sam was going a mile a minute, panicking, not used to seeing this kind of anger in Dean for a long time. He didn’t know what to do with it anymore.
“Back off,” Dean snarled again. He looked upset enough that it wasn’t just anger, but the same panic and confusion that was coursing through Sam. “I swear to God, I don’t know what’s going on with you, but leave me the fuck alone ‘til you figure it out, don’t— don’t you say that shit to me, I don’t know what you’re—”
“You don’t remember.” Sam reached for Dean’s face without thinking and tried to touch his cheek. “Holy shit, you really don’t know.”
Dean batted Sam’s hand away and backed up.
“What the hell are you talking about? Was it— something’s not right, someone messed you up, this isn’t—”
“He messed you up,” Sam breathed. Then he said it before he could think about having tact or proof or easing him into it: “Dean, we have sex. All the time.”
Dean looked mortified, slapped in the face, sputtering. He went red. He froze, terrified and still, and they stared at each other like that for an awful moment.
“No the fuck we do not,” Dean croaked. “Jesus, Sammy, you don’t know what you’re saying, just— just take it easy, you’re messed up.”
“You’re messed up!” Sam said again. His brain whirred overtime; it was real, of course it was real, he could prove it. If Dean thought something was wrong with him, God only knew what he’d do. Sam had to make him understand. “Listen to me, all that stuff Suriel said about us living in sin and me corrupting you, do you remember that? Do you know what he meant?”
“The hell are you talking about, corrupting me?”
“You don’t— the angel, the youth pastor, Suriel?”
It was too much for Sam to even start to unpack that gap, Dean’s horrified face and furious lack of comprehension, mouth open like he wanted to say something, anything, but nothing came out. Sam went on.
“It’s been years, okay, you’ve gotta believe me. You’re forgetting stuff. Last night, at the bar, we were talking about whether we care if people see us together, like, out—”
“What?”
“—and we got back here and we— God, the condom’s probably still in the trash.”
He was trying not to be graphic, but he slipped up. Dean dove at him, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him back against the wall. Sam could have fought back but didn’t, staring stunned into Dean’s panicky face, flushed with anger or maybe just good old-fashioned embarrassment.
“Don’t you fucking say that to me,” Dean hissed, shaking his fist and Sam’s shirt under his chin. “I don’t do that. Ever. Not with you, or anyone, or—or you—so don’t you dare— don’t—”
He was losing it. Sam wondered with horror how deep it went, whether Dean even remembered liking guys, which predated their thing by a whole magnitude. There had to be something Sam could say to get it back, a memory to jog, anything, he had to prove that he knew. He wasn’t thinking straight anymore.
“Listen, okay, you—you told me once, the first time you were attracted to a guy, you were fifteen, and it was the older brother of a girl you were hooking up with. Do you remember that?”
He felt Dean’s hand on his shirt tense so hard and fast he thought he heard his bones creak. Dean knew, he had to know.
“You told me,” Sam started again, fighting to keep his voice low and level, “the first time you were attracted to me, I was fifteen—”
Dean let him go and shoved him back against the wall so hard it took the wind out of him.
“Holy fuck, shut up!”
“—and you were watching me buck up firewood at that shitty cabin Dad made us stay in after that thing in Colorado—”
Dean stalked off and Sam followed, raising his voice.
“—and you said you were so mad about it you didn’t talk to me for a week, and I thought you were pissed ‘cause you found out I had a crush on your girlfriend, that tall girl—”
“I’m not gonna listen to this shit, you’re fucking delusional.”
Sam caught up to Dean in the war room, grabbed him by the arm and wrenched him in at the foot of the stairs. They were close, too close, Sam could feel his breath.
“—and I know all this,” Sam went on, dropping his voice to an incensed hiss, “because you told me years ago, when you were wasted, and then you said I was ‘beautiful like a nice house’ and puked on my shoes, and when I told you about it the next morning you tried to tell me I heard you wrong.”
Sam closed his mouth and set his jaw and tried to get his breathing under control, so close to hyperventilating out of sheer panic. One second ticked by, two, and he tightened his hand around Dean’s arm.
Something changed in Dean’s face: anger replaced by stunned, broken pity.
“Oh, shit. You seriously believe that,” Dean said slowly. “You think that actually happened.”
“I had to throw the shoes out. It happened.”
“You’re fucking delusional,” Dean spat again, twisting his arm away from Sam. He started climbing the stairs. “I don’t know who did this to you, but we’re gonna get you fixed, and until we do, don’t you ever say that shit to me again.”
Sam watched him go, practically vibrating out of his bones.
“I’m not wrong!” Sam shouted. Dean kept storming off.
“I’d know if I were fucking you, Sammy!”
He said it kind of mocking, which stung more than it should have. He didn’t look back and the giant metal door slammed shut behind him, leaving Sam alone to grapple with being the only person alive who knew a secret meant for two.