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Great Falls, Montana
Sam surveyed the dark, squat trailer cautiously. They’d been renting it since school started a few weeks ago. John had chosen this one because it was at the end of the line, set back from the narrow trailer park road and away from the neighbors. Sam had asked Jimmy to drop him at the trailer park entrance, a good quarter mile away. He’d walked the rest of the way. Dad thought he half-assed his way through training, and maybe he did. Sometimes. But that didn’t mean he didn’t know how to approach a building on foot, silent as a cat, invisible as a ghost.
Dad’s truck was still gone. He’d left Monday with the vague promise of being back “by the end of the week.” Well, it was Friday night, and no truck. No Dad. No surprise, either.
The Impala was there, though, resting on the cracked concrete pad outside the trailer, the prettiest thing for miles around. Dean hadn’t had much to do since they landed in Great Falls except detail the car and drive Sam crazy.
No light came through the sheer curtains covering the tiny trailer windows. Maybe Dean was asleep. Sam had a key to the rickety back door. He toed off his boots, picked them up, and got the key out, preparing to ease open the door and slip inside. All he had to do was make it to his bed and then he could try to fall asleep and forget the past three hours. He’d been trying to forget for the last three days, but everything that had happened was burned on his brain. It felt like it was burned onto his skin, too.
He got the door open and it only squeaked once as he let himself into the miniature kitchen, empty except for a round table, two folding chairs, and the smell of burnt toast. He set his boots down, latched the door behind him, checked the salt. When he turned back around, he was no longer alone. Dean stood there in a T-shirt and boxers. The amulet gleamed against the white cotton shirt. His arms were crossed over his chest like Mr. Clean.
Sam resisted the urge to cave in his shoulders like a chastised puppy. He made himself stand tall, meeting Dean’s stony gaze evenly.
When Dean said nothing, Sam stepped forward a few feet, which in the small space put him within inches of his brother. “I’m going to bed.”
Dean opened his mouth. Sam waited. No words came, and he brushed past, almost out of the kitchen and into the hallway when Dean’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the elbow.
“Hey,” Sam protested, trying to yank his arm free.
“What the hell is that?” Dean growled, as if Sam had suddenly sprouted a tail or a nose piercing.
“What?” Sam asked. What could Dean even see in the dark?
Dean dropped Sam’s elbow and used the same hand to push aside the collar of his thin gray shirt.
“Seriously, what?” Sam asked. He was proud of keeping his voice steady, when the brush of Dean’s fingers against his skin was one of the things he’d been trying so hard to forget.
“You must have had a good night, huh, Sammy?” His voice had an unfamiliar edge. “Coming home with a hickey the size of a hubcap.” Dean let go of his shirt, but he didn’t move away.
Sam put a hand over the spot instinctively, as if he could feel the bruise. He couldn’t. Maybe the spot was a little warmer, a little hot to the touch. He almost didn’t believe Dean, wanted to see for himself in the mirror.
“You sleep with her, too?’ Dean asked, still with a metallic sharpness in his voice. “That why you’re home so late? Did you finally pop your—”
“Stop. Stop.” Sam marched three feet down the dark hall to the bedroom, changed his mind and veered left to the bathroom, flicking on the single bulb over the little rectangular mirror. He yanked aside his shirt and yeah, okay, it was the beginning of a hickey, a mouth-sized red mark that would probably be a little purple tomorrow. Hardly the gargantuan mark of shame that Dean had implied.
He eyed the dingy, narrow shower, then settled for washing his hands and face in the little sink. He brushed his teeth. When he emerged, Dean was still in there, like a sentry in the dark.
Sam used every ounce of willpower he possessed to ignore him and go into the bedroom. But Dean didn’t take the closed door for an answer and barged in as Sam shuffled out of his jeans.
“Dude,” Sam protested, sitting on the edge of the twin bed in his shirt and boxers. He tossed the jeans onto the pile of laundry on the floor.
A look of uncertainty crossed Dean’s face before he came all the way in and sat on the second twin. They were so close together, their knees could have been touching if Sam wasn’t carefully holding his to the side.
“Look, I’m sorry,” Dean said.
Sam shook his head to clear his ears. Dean was apologizing?
“I didn’t know where you were and it was making me a little crazy, and then you come home and you smell like pot and have a giant hickey and what am I supposed to think?”
If it had been three days ago, Sam would have tossed out some line about Dean not being the boss of him or that he had the right to hang out with his friends, never mind the kids he’d been with he’d only met a couple of weeks ago. But everything was different now. Since three days ago, everything had this other layer of meaning. Sam couldn’t always decode it, but he knew it was there.
“I didn’t smoke,” was what he ended up saying. “There were some other kids doing it, but I didn’t.”
“Okay.” Dean didn’t sound worried about the pot. It wasn’t like he was going to tell Dad or anything.
“And I’m sorry you worried,” he added, because he really was sorry about that. Ever since Flagstaff, Sam’s guilt and Dean’s worry had become this tangled up thing that was better when left unactivated. “I was just hanging out with some kids from school.”
He felt Dean’s sigh shake the other bed. “I overreacted. Sorry. I—sorry.”
Three sorries in one night? This was uncharted territory. Sam didn’t know what to say and after a beat Dean stood up, his gaze skittering away from Sam’s. “I’ll let you go to bed.” That was another thing that started three days ago, Dean sleeping in Dad’s room instead of in here an arm’s length away from Sam.
He was halfway out the door when Sam realized he didn’t want Dean to leave. Hadn’t that been what tonight’s experiment was all about, anyway? He’d tried something, and it hadn’t worked. Or, it had worked, just not in the way he thought it would.
“I didn’t—” He was about to say “have sex,” but suddenly he couldn’t make the words leave his mouth. “I was just trying—” He stopped, frustrated. Dean walked slowly back into the room and stood by Sam’s knees.
“You were trying to what, Sammy?” Dean said. He’d lost the hard edge to his voice and now he just sounded desperate. Sam knew the feeling.
“I was trying to see if it felt the same with someone else,” Sam whispered.
He knew Dean heard him, because he could hear the little sucked in breath that made him sound like an injured animal.
“I was trying,” he went on, before he could overthink the harm he was doing, “to find out if I could be—if this was only—if maybe it was all in my head and I just needed to do it with someone who—” Sam stopped again, because he wasn’t having much luck filling in the blanks. Then again, Dean didn’t need him to. He knew exactly what Sam wasn’t saying. Sam had wanted to find out if kissing someone who wasn’t his brother would be anywhere close to a suitable replacement.
“So you kissed some sophomore slut and let her give you a hickey?” Dean said, sounding pissed and hurt and curious all at once.
“Not a her,” Sam said quietly. “Jimmy. He’s a junior.”
Dean froze, then sat back down on the other bed as if his legs would no longer support his weight. “You let Jimmy the junior put his hands on you?”
“He’s nice,” Sam said, as if that had anything to do with anything.
Dean chuckled mirthlessly. “He a good kisser?”
“Dean, come on.”
“No, I wanna know. He must have been. He must have been fucking thrilled to have you throw yourself at him. He one of the stoners? Was he high? Did he taste like pot?”
Sam's cheeks were hot, and he felt humiliated tears gather in the corner of his eyes. It was all right for Dean to flirt with every female over the age of sixteen in every small town in America, and Sam wasn’t allowed to kiss a single boy? “You’re an asshole.”
All the fight went out of Dean at Sam’s words. He dropped his head into his hands, spoke to the floor. “I know. Jesus. I know.”
Just like that, Sam wanted to comfort his brother. Because he knew what he was going through. He wasn’t alone. His hand hovered over Dean’s thigh, light hair covering light skin, muscles bunching underneath. But Sam could no longer touch his brother out of concern or comfort. He’d lost the right.
“Look, Dean, we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do.”
Dean looked up. His eyes were dry but there was a word for the expression on his face. Anguish.
“I’m sorry,” Dean said again, like it was some kind of new reflex he’d developed.
“Don’t. It’s not your fault.” Sam knew that much, at least.
“The hell it isn’t. I should never have—I wish Dad had been here and just put a bullet in me to stop it.”
“Don’t say that.” Sam shivered at the idea of Dad finding out, but he felt sick with the idea that Dean thought he deserved to die for what they did.
“Well, I shouldn’t have let it happen,” Dean said stoutly.
“I shouldn’t either,” Sam said, suddenly feeling older than his sixteen years. Feeling older than Dean. Older than Dad. “But I did. And you did. And I’ve spent the last three days trying to figure out a way to stop wanting to do it again. I thought maybe hormones, right? Crazy fucking hormones making me hot for the nearest available guy. So I went to this dumb party and made out with nice guy Jimmy. And it was fine. It was, you know, kissing. But it wasn’t what I wanted.”
“It wasn’t?”
Did Sam detect a hint of hope in those words? He took a deep breath. How much worse could it get?
“I want you, Dean. I always have, and I probably always will. And finally having it didn’t make it better, or worse, it just made it real. Because it’s the last thing either of us is supposed to want and the last thing anyone else will understand, but it’s the only thing that makes sense to my fucked up brain and to my messed up heart and to my stupid body because being with you feels better than anything else in this world.”
Sam sucked in a breath and plowed on with the next thing because if he didn’t say it now who knew if he’d ever have the chance to say it again. “I love you so much. And even if monsters went extinct tomorrow and we moved back to Lawrence and had regular lives and regular jobs, I’d still love you more than I should. I’d still want you. And when I said we’ve got to figure out what we’re going to do, I meant we have to figure out how to be like this and still function. Because I tried giving you up and it’s not going to work. I’m not going to do it.”
Dean dropped his head into his hands. Sam thought maybe he was gathering his courage to tell Sam off, to tell him what a freak he was, how disgusting he was. How he’d been trying to erase three days ago, too, but unlike Sam he’d been successful.
Then he tipped forward, the top of his head resting against Sam’s shoulder. It was an awkward angle, but somehow they fit together, Dean’s short hair tickling Sam’s neck. His brother’s hands came down and rested on the tops of his thighs, half on the fabric of his boxers, half on his bare skin. Dean smoothed his hands over Sam once, twice, all the while keeping his face hidden. Sam didn’t know if this was a prelude to a final break, so he brought his arms up around Dean’s back, wanting to feel him one more time.
Slowly, Dean tipped his head up. “I can’t give you up, either, Sammy,” he said, voice shredded like a blown out tire. “I should do it. I should keep you far away from me, I know that.”
Sam waited.
“I don’t want to give you up,” Dean said again. “I don’t want you going to anyone else, either. No Jimmies, okay?”
“Okay. No waitresses for you?” Sam said, a little floaty with this unreal negotiation.
“Okay,” Dean said, so simply and easily Sam wondered what else he could get away with asking for. Then Dean’s mouth stopped looking so sad. “Unless you wanna share one.”
Sam felt his cheeks heat again, and his dick perked up with interest at the idea. “Uh.”
“Let’s give it some time,” Dean said. Then he winked.
Sam let out a breath of relief. Dean was still Dean, the Dean Sam had fallen in love with, the one he couldn’t live without. They were the same people as they’d been three days ago, before they’d been wrestling over the TV remote in the trailer’s living room, and Dean had ended up practically straddling Sam in an effort to get at it and they’d been half laughing and half arguing and suddenly it was apparent how close their mouths were, and somehow one of them—both of them?—had closed the distance and Sam had been kissing his brother.
Dean had pulled back, shock in his eyes, but then he’d closed them and Sam had kissed him again and dropped the remote to the floor so he could pull his brother’s jeans-clad ass against him more firmly. They’d kissed and ground together and Sam had never known bliss like that.
They both seemed to come to their senses at the same time and Dean had scrambled off the couch and Sam had fled to their room and hadn’t even jerked off to relieve the heavy ache in his dick and balls. A minute later, Dean had left in the Impala. When he came home, he’d slept in Dad’s room and Sam couldn’t even be mad about it. Because he knew this had the potential to ruin everything and he got it into his head that he just needed someone, anyone, who wasn’t his brother.
He’d never love anyone the way he loved Dean, but that didn’t mean he had to drag Dean down with him.
Only it didn’t work. Nothing worked, except this. Them. Together. Touching. Kissing. Making jokes about having three-ways with waitresses.
Sam darted down and kissed Dean, hard, a giddy kind of joy bubbling up from his stomach, through his heart and lungs, infusing his entire body with all the excitement and nerves of the monumentally stupid, epically dangerous, and extraordinarily romantic path they were going down.
They did that for a while, kissed between the two twin beds, then Dean finally pushed Sam back and climbed on top of him. He rucked Sam’s shirt over his slim chest and Sam pulled it all the way off, and then Dean put two fingers on the spot where Jimmy had marked Sam up. He pressed lightly. Sam only felt it a little. Jimmy hadn’t been particularly aggressive.
“He get you off?” Dean asked.
Sam shook his head. He’d wished he could. But it was no use.
“You get him off?” Dean asked.
“I think he came in his jeans,” Sam said, not meanly. It could happen to anyone.
“I bet he did,” Dean muttered. “Look at you. I want—”
“What do you want?” Sam asked, when Dean didn’t continue.
“I fucking want everything, Sammy. Say I can have everything, please. If we’re going to do this, we’re doing it all the way, right?”
There was no use trying to put up limits, put up boundaries. They were already past that point. Sam tried to care, but it was hard with Dean hovering over him, looking like he wanted to eat Sam alive.
“Yeah, Dean. Everything. You can have it all.”
“We can have it all,” Dean corrected. He leaned down and latched his mouth to the hickey, licking and sucking at the spot in an obviously territorial move, worrying the skin until Sam couldn’t tell where he ended and Dean’s mouth began. He felt the amulet’s weight against his chest, connecting him to Dean in another way. He was beginning to wonder if Dean was just going to bite through and taste his blood. He was mildly worried that the notion seemed to make his cock grow harder rather than putting him off. But Dean finished eventually, pulling off and inspecting his handiwork.
“Only hickeys you’ll be getting now on will be from me.”
Sam grunted. “You’re such a macho jerk.”
“And you’re a little bitch,” Dean returned lightly.
Sam had to smile at that, because he’d never felt less like a bitch. He felt surrounded by love. He was with the only person he needed. The only person he’d ever need. He looked in Dean’s eyes and saw that love reflected back at him. Boundless. Complicated, yes. But they’d find a way to live like this—together. They’d make it work. Because this was them. And they were inevitable.
end