Archive of Our Own ^beta

In the djinn’s dream, he didn’t want Sam.

Everything else was so distracting and all-consuming that it took Dean until he saw Sam in the flesh to notice, but he looked at him in his stupid little polo shirt outside their intact, unburnt childhood home and he felt nothing. His jaw, the bare pit of his throat, nothing. 

Dean felt the absence right away: once he knew to look, there was a perfect room-temperature stillness where he’d only ever known a forest fire. A dentist’s office where he’d always found Mt. Doom.

For six to eight hours, it was heaven.

He always imagined what it would feel like to have it gone. He looked at his little brother with a beautiful girl on his arm and didn’t feel an ounce of guilt or the black, sticky feeling that normally crept between his ribs, jealousy and worse things.

Once the sheen of those first eight hours wore off, it felt like he left the house and forgot to turn off the faucet—aimless, restless anxiety, not the absence of a feeling so much as a yawning hole in the place something else was supposed to be. A stab wound.

He watched Sam across the table in the kind of restaurant they’d never been to and tried to imagine wanting to put his mouth on him, but he couldn’t. He remembered wanting to, but all he felt thinking about it was a vague discomfort, the kind of thing he knew he was supposed to feel at the thought of it. Their mom was at the table, for Christ’s sake. Of course it was part of his wildest fantasy to have that feeling gone.

The other difference was that this Sam didn’t ever look at him, which made him realize how often he caught Sam looking at him in his old life. That made something tight and hot and undefined rise up the back of his throat, like panic but closer and warmer and more embarrassing. 

When he woke up groggy and disoriented to Sam pulling the needle out of his neck, it all came back tenfold.

Sam’s mouth shaping words, his name on his lips and the long sweep of his neck, it burned him up just like it always did and it was a fucking pipe dream to even imagine it could ever be gone. He’d lived with it for so long it was a part of him, his own personal original sin. Protect your brother, then, unspoken, from you specifically.

Sam said, “Let’s get you down.”

Dean was so out of it after being yanked back into reality, he put his hands on Sam’s face once they were free, just to feel him. It was telling that Sam didn’t jump or pull away, not even a twitch. He turned his cheek into Dean’s right palm and it was so sick but Dean missed it, he was already too used to the way polo-shirt-Sam (well-adjusted Sam) politely pulled his arm away from every touch.

Dean thumbed Sam’s cheek, tacky with nervous sweat. Sam let him.

Seeing its absence so recently—the other side of the equation, a normal relationship, what it would look like if their roots hadn’t grown tangled into each other—made it stand out. Made Dean think about it.

“You good?” Sam whispered, voice hoarse.

Dean was staring at his mouth. Sam, remarkably, was also staring at his.

The djinn came up behind Sam and Dean let him go.

On the drive back to the motel, he told Sam haltingly about what he’d seen, in broad strokes only. He skirted around the thing. Sam kept looking at him and it burned a hole in the side of his face.

“You’re freaking out,” Sam said, annoyingly matter-of-fact as they pulled into the parking lot. Dean shook his head.

“It’s over. Nothin’ to freak out about.”

He was lying. He was freaking out and Sam knew it.

Sam tried again as they got out of the car and hauled their stuff into the room.

“How long was it, to you? It must have felt real, right?”

Dean’s mouth was dry. “Kind of.”

His head was pounding with dehydration and blood loss, his shoulders were screaming at him and his wrists were raw. He didn’t know why he insisted on driving, he barely looked at the road the whole way. Sam was there, his Sam, a Sam who looked back.

Was he making it up? Was he freaking out?

He couldn’t remember their room number, it had been days to him. Sam had to lead him to it.

Their motel was a shithole, but a normal shithole, two double beds and a formica table, blood red everything and paneled walls. They went inside and Dean shucked his jacket and left it over a chair. He paced restlessly as Sam came into the room behind him and stood warily by the table, watching him.

“Dean?” Sam tried.

He was still getting used to this new Sam, grown up and technically his brother, but he was his brother in the absence of their father, and that was different—two men and the hollow space of a third, not sons but brothers, period. This was a Sam removed from him by whole years, boundless and angry and grieving and, as of recently, important to people other than him, which was his worst nightmare. It was terrifying. Things were spinning out of control all around him and he didn’t know how to stop it or keep it from getting at Sam. Sam, who always looked at him.

He stood in the middle of the room and boiled over.

“We weren’t friends. I was a scumbag, and you were this preppy asshole, and we only saw each other, like, never, like normal people. We didn’t even like each other.”

He’d said as much in the car but said it again then, as if to solidify it. Sam frowned, but kind of a smirk, like he thought it was funny. Maybe because he couldn’t believe it, or else because he really, really could.

“Wow.”

“You wore this stupid little jacket. You were in my phone as ‘Sam Winchester,’ last name. You looked at me like—like—”

Not like this, Dean thought and didn’t say, as Sam stared at him wide-eyed and serious like he’d never looked at anything else. You didn’t let me touch you.

Then, even more alarming: Why DO you let me touch you?

Dean was right in front of Sam. He could see the flecks of gold in his eyes, his sharp little eyebrows and the worry line between them. He was too young for that. He was too young for all of this.

Sam said, “I thought djinn dreams were supposed to be this perfect fantasy.”

He didn’t put more space between them, he just let Dean look at him from a couple feet away, perfectly still, like he knew it was what Dean needed: confirmation, reality, proof of life.

“Well, it wasn’t,” Dean said quietly.

The fantasy was everything he thought he wanted and it still wasn’t perfect, not without whatever the fuck they were calling this—their bizarre closeness, shared trauma, an adolescence spent hot and hungry in the back seat of a constantly-moving vehicle to make sure they grew into each other and not apart.

Confirmation. Proof of life.

His hands were numb as he reached out and touched Sam’s arm, his hard bicep under the sleeve of his starchy white shirt. He slid it up Sam’s shoulder to his neck and held on, feeling his pulse thump hard.

Sam didn’t move, but his shoulders squared a little.

Dean stared at his hand on Sam’s neck. The other one went up his arm too, groping along his shoulder until both hands were on his neck, and then up to his face, palms on his cheeks like an estranged aunt coming to visit turning him this way and that, Oh, you’ve grown! Let me get a look at you!

Dean had grime under his fingernails, on Sam’s clean face. Sam was breathing with his mouth, slow and even, just looking back. He smelled like sweat and bitter old morning coffee like he hadn’t eaten since then, and all Dean could think about was the inside of his mouth and how soft and warm and wet it had to be in there, and how maybe he could know what that was like, if he wanted to, and all the things he could put in there.

Slowly, Sam’s hands came up and wrapped around Dean’s wrists. He didn’t pull him away, he just held on, Dean locked on Sam and Sam locked on Dean.

Sam gave him a gentle shake, then let go.

“Hey. This is real. You’re back now. It’s me, okay?”

Dean’s eyes searched Sam’s face, desperate, as the last few inches of his metaphorical rope came loose and slithered through his burnt palms.

“I know it’s you,” he said, way too low, and slid his hands back into Sam’s hair.

He missed the smouldering ground fire he’d lived with for so long. He missed it. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him.

He stepped right in and Sam let him, taking a nervous breath as he got right right right in his space and fit his face into the spot where his neck met his shoulder.

Sam went, “Oh,” quietly into the side of Dean’s head, not OH! like he was surprised, just oh, so, we’re doing this. It’s here.

His hands hovered near Dean’s shoulders for a moment before landing there gently. His hair was so soft in Dean’s hands, unwashed and still faintly sweaty at his nape. Dean just put his face against Sam’s neck and held him, breathed, closed his eyes and tried to get his heart to stop beating so hard, it was making him sick.

It was just a hug. A too-intimate hug, but they hugged, sure. That was regular.

Sam’s hands slid over Dean’s shoulder blades and pulled him in so his arms were folded around Dean’s shoulders and their chests were flush.

Still just a hug. Hands in hair and pressed together all the way down, but a hug, full of plausible deniability.

Sam turned so his face was pressed into the side of Dean’s head. Dean felt his mouth move as he spoke, and he laughed, short.

“Shit.”

No kidding. Dean moved his lips against the vulnerable skin of Sam’s neck and slid his fingers through his hair, grasping and digging in, and their deniability slipped a little. Mouth stuff was new. All Sam did in response was rub his cheek against Dean’s buzzed hair.

Dean leaned back until he could look at him and their faces were just a few inches apart. Sam’s eyes were huge and his pupils were dilated, watching, waiting, like a stakeout on a hunt and predatory in the same way.

In the end, he didn’t need to say anything. Sam never needed him to. How could you misunderstand the person who taught you how to talk?

Dean walked Sam back until his thighs hit the edge of the table, and opened his mouth against the side of his throat.

Sam sighed. He tilted his head when Dean fisted his hand in his hair, back and to the side to give him room. Dean slid his tongue over him, then his teeth, sucking gently.

It felt natural. His hands were shaking, but he liked to think that would have been normal if there were an applicable bar for normal, and they stopped shaking when he pulled harder on Sam’s hair. Sam’s fingers dug into the back of his shirt.

“I knew it,” Sam said, just as shaky, almost laughing. “I knew it.”

Dean snorted. “You can be smug about anything, huh?”

It was easier to laugh than to do anything heavier. Sam’s skin felt so good under his mouth and Dean nosed up under his ear, hands uncurling to spread out over the back of Sam’s head and keep him close, the rest of him pressing him into the table.

Sam’s hands pulled into fists in the back of Dean’s denim shirt. Dean could feel the insane thrumming of his heart against his but they both moved syrup-slow, wading through the ether, quiet and careful like all of it was so fragile. Dean kept kissing Sam’s neck, sucking, stroking his hair. Sam pushed Dean’s shirt off and he let go of him long enough to let it fall off his arms, and once his arms were bare, Sam explored those, slipping fingers around the cup of his shoulders, his biceps, the sharp edges of his elbows. It felt almost methodical, like drawing a map. Tracing new, uncharted borders.

Sam turned his face down and Dean’s mouth slid up to his cheek. Then the corner of his mouth. Sam’s breath hitched.

Dean waited for Sam to step back or give him a gentle push, finally too far, but all of Sam’s fingers were tracing the cord of the amulet, fluttering and anxious, and that wasn’t no.

He brushed his lips over Sam’s, feather light, and the dizzy head rush of adrenaline it gave him almost knocked him out. He stalled there. It was Sam who curled a big hand around the back of his neck, pulled him in and crushed their lips together.

Dean grunted in the back of his throat. Sam’s lips slid over his, sure and firm, a little dry but so soft, the edge of his teeth catching on his top lip and his tongue following so careful in their path.

The kiss also felt like mapping things out. It was like a conversation, talking through the final thing they didn’t know about each other, figuring out the worthless cartography of each other’s bodies while standing beaten-up and tired in an ugly kitchen, just because they could, and because they always wanted to, and because in the wake of the djinn’s fantasy, Dean forgot why they hadn’t already.

Sam could kiss. He was thorough and deep and gave just enough tongue, nipped him just hard enough to give him that zing of fear he craved in ways Sam couldn’t possibly know yet. His big hands stroked down Dean’s face, fingers catching on his stubble, holding his chin and tracing his Adam’s apple. Dean slid his arms around his huge shoulders and he felt kind of stupid about it, and short. Sam was a wall under his hands, little brother in title only.

He always thought there would be a big blow-out if it ever happened, thrown punches and broken furniture and a screaming match, rage and denial and accusations and whatever else would make it go down easier, but it wasn’t. It was like sinking into a hot bath, not that Dean remembered what a hot bath felt like. He knew it felt good, quiet and numbing like that, making his skin scream and crawl with heat even as it pulled all the tension out of him.

He thought he’d have more to say, too: ‘sorry,’ maybe, or excuses and explanations, but there was nothing. He pulled Sam’s shirt over his head and neither of them had anything to say about it. Dean’s t-shirt came after, then Sam’s, and Sam ducked his head to kiss him again as he walked him back towards the bed.

He sat down when the mattress hit the backs of his knees and scooted up when Sam knelt on either side of him, drawing him up the bed; it was the bed that had been Sam’s the night before, not that it mattered, but Sam put him onto his back and kissed him and the sheets that flounced around them smelled like him, and then it did matter. 

The touch of their bare skin drove him crazy, Sam’s chest on his and the unbelievable valley of his back under his groping hands, so good he didn’t even care enough to be embarrassed that Sam had him on his back. He wasn’t thinking anymore so much as snatches of concepts and phrases came to him as they moved, Sammy, tongue, jeans, off, God, fuck, shit, look at him, hands, HANDS. If he hadn’t felt like garbage as a reminder of reality, all greasy and malnourished after his time spent captive, he would have pinched himself to double check.

Sam kissed down his chest and his teeth clacked against the amulet. His calloused hands felt huge and rough gripping tight to his ribs, into the soft spot between his ribcage and hip bones, then lower. It wasn’t so slow anymore, Sam was fumbling at his belt and Dean almost slapped him away and did it himself, impatient out of his mind. He lifted his hips when Sam pulled his jeans down. He was so hard even the friction of the denim made him bite the inside of his cheek, and he was only vaguely embarrassed by the wet spot on the front of his boxers.

Sam pulled his jeans off each leg for him and Dean kicked them away. Sam dove back in and kissed his stomach, grabbed his hips in both hands and tipped his forehead against his belly. He went still. He was breathing hard and Dean’s dick was somewhere around his sternum, untouched, and if he wanted Sam even a little less, and was even a little less romantic, he would have started grinding against his chest just to have something.

He found some restraint and slid his hands through Sam’s hair instead. He tipped his chin down to look at the crown of his head and his massive bare shoulders, beautifully unmarred save for a smattering of moles. The sight of his own pale thighs around Sam’s waist farther down the bed was pornographic.

He raked his fingers through his hair again, asking, waiting. Sam’s thumbs stroked the dip of his hips.

“We should probably talk about this,” Sam said, his voice hoarse and so deep.

Dean looked back up at the ceiling. “Why?”

“Because we should probably really, really talk about it.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Another skritch of his fingers against Sam’s scalp; he didn’t think he was imagining the way he lifted into it. “Pretty self-explanatory.”

“Dean.”

“Come on. You know it, I know it. So.”

Sam sighed an annoyed, exasperated sigh that was so familiar to him it might as well have been a sentence.

Sam showered kisses down his stomach and Dean’s eyes fell shut. He kept his hands in Sam’s hair because he always wanted to, and what if he didn’t, and then Sam finally cut it someday, and where would that leave him?

Sam took the elastic waistband of his boxers in his teeth to pull them down and Dean choked on his spit.

“God.”

Sam said, “I thought we weren’t talking,” still biting, and Dean smacked him in the head. Gently.

Sam’s hands followed his teeth and Dean lifted his hips obligingly to get them down; he had to pull the waist way out to get it over Dean’s dick, standing at impudent attention.

He stared up at the ceiling again and felt his dick pulse obviously, suddenly embarrassed, so close to going off he almost wanted to tell Sam to stop except that he never, ever would, he’d take the ridicule, he’d pay him back tenfold, and man, he hoped Sam was just as hard.

Sam slipped Dean’s boxers all the way off for him, just like his jeans. It felt childish and weird to be undressed and he couldn’t remember the last time he was the focus of that kind of attention. Sam took his socks off, too. He’d never been more naked.

Sam kissed his stomach again, then lower to where his pubic hair started. His dick pushed up against Sam’s neck and the front of his throat, teasing, catching on his translucent stubble in a way that didn’t feel great. His breath was hot and he could hear him breathing between kisses, open-mouthed now and so close. He didn’t even have his hand around him, he was just holding his hips and kissing and nosing around the base of his dick and since when was Sam like this, shouldn’t he be freaking out? Crying? Not teasing him, that was for fucking sure.

“I’m getting to it,” Sam mumbled, the mind-reading freak. “Gimme a sec.”

Dean slid restless hands over his shoulders and fought the urge to shove him down or cry or just hump into any hinge of naked skin he could get at, he’d take the crook of his neck or the back of his knee if he had to. 

“You want me to go first?” Dean asked the ceiling.

His voice was so weird in his ears, lost under the rush of blood and sounding all of fourteen years old, desperate and wheedling.

He wouldn’t have minded going first, he just needed someone’s dick in someone’s mouth, he wasn’t picky. But Sam was a stubborn brat, so the offer just made him lick a soft, wet stripe up the underside of his dick.

One of Dean’s knees jerked up and his heel came down on Sam’s lower back. “Jesus—”

Sam licked the head once, twice, tongue wide and wet, and sucked it into his mouth. Dean’s head slammed back into the bed and his mouth fell open in something wordless, too overwhelming to even moan about. Sam’s mouth was on his dick like he’d always imagined, sometimes idly and sometimes with a fervor that scared the shit out of him, a die-if-I-don’t-get-it kind of fervor, and here he was, getting it, the way he never thought he would.

He put his hand on the back of Sam’s head to feel him move as he took him deeper. He got halfway before he gagged and pulled off, covered the rest with his fist and tried again, deeper, and again, deeper, each time letting his throat muscles flutter around the head of his dick when he had to pull back.

Dean couldn’t decide whether Sam had done it before. He was good but unsure, but he was probably unsure for a lot of reasons, all things considered, and ‘good’ didn’t need to mean ‘practiced,’ not with Sam, the stupid little prodigy.

Sam’s other palm was sweaty where it was curled around his hip, stroking his thigh. His head bobbed under Dean’s hand and Dean couldn’t watch him for more than a few seconds at a time, it was too much. He tried to lift his hips in time with his mouth but Sam’s hand spread out over his pelvis to keep him down and that got him so hot that he had to stop anyways.

“Sammy,” he choked out.

Hardly a minute. Sam would never let him live it down.

He was taking him deeper with every suck now, right to the back of his throat but no deeper, and Dean wanted to fuck his throat so bad the thought alone almost got him there. Sam hummed around him and picked up the pace, the wet spit sucking sound of his mouth filling the room, his bangs falling in his eyes. Dean wanted to bury his hands in his hair and drag his head in, wrap his legs around his shoulders and ride his face like a girl.

He settled for less, grabbed his shoulder and squeezed his eyes shut. He whined before he could stop it. His leg curled around Sam’s back, his spine arched, his hips rolled up and he felt it crest, heat and tension and his brother’s wet, waiting mouth.

If he was still in the djinn’s dream, he realized, he’d never recover. Not from this, there was no going back.

He came into Sam’s mouth at first, but Sam choked and pulled back and a spurt hit him on the cheek, one on his chin, one across his nose. He jerked him through it at least, tight and earnest, and Dean’s nails gouged into his shoulder.

Sam said, “Ow.” 

Dean was still coming. “Shh. Shh.”

The static in his ears was deafening, pleasure still pulsing through him. Sam’s hand was so goddamn big it was almost emasculating how much of his dick he could fit in it, but it felt so good to have it there all slick with his spit, wringing him dry.

Sam loosened up when he was done. He coughed and swallowed thickly.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“Shut up.”

There was an embarrassing lack of heat behind it. He pulled on Sam’s shoulder until he crawled back up and Dean got the come off his face, some with his fingers and some with his mouth, then kissed him again and made him taste it. He expected some prissy disgruntlement, but Sam practically ate him alive.

He flipped him onto his back and got an alarmed noise out of him, then a breathy okay yeah yeah when he straddled his legs and started taking off his jeans.

He glanced up at Sam’s face with his hands on his fly, terrified and thrilled by what he’d find there (disgust or worse, obligation) but it was better than he thought: flushed and sweaty and turned on, wet all over with his spit, his mouth red and used. But also, vaguely concerned over being looked at.

“What?” Sam said, eyebrows doing the thing.

Dean shook his head and looked back down at his hands. He got Sam’s jeans around his thighs and didn’t wait, couldn’t, just got his hands into his boxers and pulled them down, then shifted aside while Sam kicked everything off the rest of the way.

He couldn’t remember when he last saw Sam naked, because there had to be a last time but it couldn’t have been of note and it sure as fuck wasn’t like this, not hard, because he would have remembered that.

He frowned. He flicked his eyes up to Sam, who was a lot less worried all of a sudden and a lot more smug.

Dean looked back down. He didn’t have to say it. He was sure Sam heard it enough, the lucky brat.

His fingers fit neatly around his dick and Sam huffed a surprised, pleased sound as he started to stroke him, slow at first, watching. He realized he expected Sam’s dick to look like his, which was maybe the weirdest thing about this so far. A lot of Sam was a lot like him and this shouldn’t have been an exception, but it was; they were both uncut but Sam’s was bigger, a little more curved, and it flushed darker, wine-dark. He intuitively expected them to match. Another thing Sam would never let him live down if he told him.

He shifted down the bed until he was between Sam’s legs and took him in his mouth. He tasted enough like him, which made up for the other stuff. Sam made a garbled sound.

Dean closed his eyes. Sam’s fingers brushed his cheek, curled over his ear and scrubbed through his hair for something to hold onto. He felt good in his mouth, heavy and huge, he liked the stretch of it going in. He wouldn’t call himself practiced, but he also wasn’t unsure. He breathed out slow and steady, swallowed around his gag reflex and let Sam into his throat.

Sam groaned, “Oh, you son of a bitch.”

He folded up, his thighs hugging to Dean’s shoulders as Dean swallowed around him and let him rub at the back of his throat. He gagged and swallowed again and slid up, worked back down, and Sam choked like it was killing him. 

“Not your—first time,” Sam panted out, only a little judgement.

Dean just hummed. Yes and no, not often or with anyone important. He slid his free hand up Sam’s stomach to feel him, down his thigh to slip the pads of his fingers over his hip bone to make him squirm, ticklish.

It was intimate, not just because Sam’s dick was down his throat. Sam kept stroking his hair back just to mess it up again. His hand felt huge and when it covered Dean’s ear he could hear the blood rushing in his head like the ocean. His thighs gripped his sides and shoulders like he wanted to gather him in and he could have stayed between his legs forever, sweating with his aching jaw and tight forearm.

Sam swore, his back curling up off the bed. His dick was all the way in the back of his throat and Dean could feel him shaking, could taste his precome, his nails on his scalp. His breath came fast, both hands in Dean’s hair and holding him there. Dean wanted it, he wanted to hear him, he wanted to get him there.

Sam shoved him down, the fucking asshole, and Dean wished he were madder about it as a point of pride but he wasn’t, he took it like he’d take anything Sam gave him, and Sam came down his throat. Sam was annoyingly quiet about it, just breathy gasps he tried to keep under wraps.

It was bitter and hot and there was a lot of it. Dean swallowed and it wasn’t enough, he gagged and heard Sam laugh about it. He pinched Sam's thigh and Sam ground his foot into his spine in retaliation.

He wished he weren’t glowing with pride over making Sam come. He wasn’t surprised, but still, it did a lot for him. Another way to take care of his brother.

He pulled off once he was done and smushed his face into Sam’s thigh. Sam dropped a hand down onto his head like he didn’t even have to think about it, thumbing his hair back from his temple. It reminded him of being young, like young young, how he’d lay on the couch with his head in Sam’s lap to watch wrestling or Jerry Springer, and Sam would read a book propped up on his head, back before they got too old for it. He wondered if Sam had a book on the go.

He had no idea how long they lay like that, with his face not far from Sam’s half hard dick. Sam kept idly petting his hair. Eventually, Dean's legs went numb where they were hanging off the end of the bed and he sat up and threw himself up the bed to lay down next to Sam.

He had a decision to make, fast: freeze up or talk, run or stay, sweep it under the rug and then throw out the rug, burn the house down and skip town, or—

Sam sighed a guttural, rumbling sigh and put his hands over his face, his elbows up in the air.

“Fuck, dude.”

Dean laughed. He didn’t mean to. “Fair enough.”

Sam shook his head behind his hands. Dean turned to look at him and his heart swooped and dove; Sam, naked and sun-kissed, too-long hair messed up by his hands, too-long legs splayed carelessly on the world’s ugliest red bedspread.

“You do this much?” Sam asked, face still covered by his hands.

“Trade blowies with my brother? Nah, first time.”

Sam sighed, kind of angry. “Don’t fuck with me. Okay? For two minutes. Not about this.”

His hands came off his face. He propped up on an elbow and Dean had to look up at him, serious and frowning and still flushed, hair sweaty at his temples. Dimples and that Winchester jawline. Dean’s eyes skittered over his face.

“Okay,” Dean said quietly, a concession. “Uh, no. Not much.”

Sam nodded. “Okay.”

When he kept staring down at him, Dean sighed and rolled his eyes.

“Would you lie down or something? Just— here.”

He stuck his arm out along the bed. Sam stared at him for another awful second, mouth twisted down like Dean was calling him names, then lay down next to him, kind of on his back, with his head on Dean’s shoulder. Dean folded his arm around his neck.

Dean had never done the pillow talk thing with someone so big. Sam was a wall of heat at his side, heavy and ungainly where his shoulder pushed into him, but—his hair smelled good, motel soap and solvent, achingly familiar. It was soft against his cheek. He didn’t know when he’d turned his head into it, but his face was against him now.

Sam tipped his chin down to rub his mouth on Dean’s forearm, laying across the top of his chest. He tapped his fingers where they were resting in the middle of his chest. The body heat felt good, and the closeness. Proof of life. Sam’s heart beat like a war drum.

Sam turned his head to look down at their bodies, specifically Dean’s. He kept looking for almost a minute. Dean was weirdly flattered.

“What?”

Sam hummed. “Nothing.”

Just his brother, looking at his dick. Nothing for either of them had ever been easy, but Sam kissed him earlier like he was reading his mind. Was he being that obvious, or did Sam just know? He sucked him off like they’d done it a thousand times and Dean didn’t trust that, but it felt so good, almost natural despite all concrete evidence to the contrary. Sam held him down and he didn’t even have to tell him that he wanted him to. 

Sam snorted. “Nice.”

Dean was getting hard again, remembering it. All the times before it when Sam noticing his guilty, furtive hard-on would have meant the end of the world seemed so funny now. Sam not only seeing, but causing—willingly participating in—him getting hard. It couldn’t be real.

His heart was thundering in his ears. He pressed his mouth to Sam’s hair like he meant it, a kiss, and tightened the forearm under his chin. Both of them moved so carefully, like they were stuck, nervous, but Sam turned on his side in the circle of Dean’s arm and Dean leaned down and kissed him on the mouth. Easy as anything.

Sam got up on an elbow and leaned over him, broad and hot against his chest; he clearly liked being on top, which Dean filed away to bug him about later. It was a slow, deep kiss, exploratory again, a low rumble in Dean’s throat and his hand coming up to trace Sam’s arm and up his back. Sam smelled like sex and spit and Sam, and Dean liked it, it made his chest hurt.

Sam rubbed a hand down Dean's stomach, hesitating. Dean tried to make an uh-huh noise into his mouth, let his own hands wander farther down in response.

Sam broke the kiss and tipped his forehead against his.

“Uh. We. This.”

“Shh.”

Dean kissed him again. He shoved his thumb into the hollow of Sam's hip bone and rolled Sam on top of him, made him box him in with those big arms. Sam let him. He slid one of his thighs between his and Dean rocked up into it. He could feel Sam getting hard against his belly.

Sam tried again. “Dean—”

Dean put his hands on his face to stop him from moving back.

“Hey. Listen.” He let his mouth brush Sam’s as he spoke; maybe he’d actually get it if he felt it. “We got a free night, and this big bed, and it’s still early, and—and whatever we do here, maybe we don’t worry about it. Okay?”

“You can’t just say that.”

“Watch me.” Another kiss, longer, dragging Sam's top lip between his teeth. “You don’t think we’ve got enough to worry about?”

“I—”

“You know it’s weird. I know it’s weird. What’s there to say?”

Sam dragged a hand through Dean's hair and kissed him with a low groan like he was annoyed, like he couldn’t help it. He put more of his weight on him and pushed that thigh between his legs, and Dean was fully hard now, knees open to let him get between them.

“Weird is an understatement,” Sam grumbled.

“So what?”

“So—”

Dean took his face in his hands and kissed him over and over again, deep, fevered kisses with words in between.

“There’s stuff out there that I don’t want you thinkin’ about—and—stuff in here that I don’t wanna think about—so—we better keep—not thinking, I think.”

“I—”

“Stop thinking, Sammy.”

Sam melted against him. One of his hands came up and grabbed Dean's jaw, mouth open, tongue stroking, and Dean rolled his hips up into his. Sam flexed into him and pushed down. Dean wondered if they’d come like this, grinding like a couple teenagers in the back seat. He wouldn’t hate it; he’d like anything Sam liked, he couldn’t think, he was completely gone.

Sam closed a hand around his hip and leaned back.

“Turn over.”

He shuddered and felt Sam smile against his mouth over it. Sam kissed his neck as he rolled over, his nape and then down his spine, his hands sliding over his sides.

Sam’s face got lower, kisses down the small of his back. Dean stiffened.

“Uh. What—”

“That sounds like thinking,” Sam said. Dean brought his heel up and kicked him in the back.

Sam grabbed his ass, both cheeks in both hands, and spread him open. Dean tucked a pillow into his arms to have something to put his face in and swallowed an agonized groan. He’d never really had anyone mess around back there, maybe a particularly ballsy chick who slipped in half a finger while she went down on him, but never this, never Sam, for Christ’s sake. He knew Sam was just staring at his asshole and he’d never felt so exposed in his entire life. His face burned against the scratchy motel pillowcase.

Sam smoothed a hand over his back and down his thigh, a silent relax. He couldn’t. The bed creaked and he felt Sam’s breath on him, and his arms against the backs of his thighs, and then he really wasn’t relaxing.

“Prude,” Sam said, and licked him. 

Dean dug his hands into the pillow. Sam licked and sucked his asshole and he had definitely, definitely done it before, quick study or not, and when he sucked his finger and slid it inside him, it was pretty fucking clear that he’d done that, too.

“Is this a,” Dean started, stopped, tried to stop his knees from spreading against the mattress, just tried to hold still, “a, a college thing, or.”

“Sure.”

Sam would lick him, spear him with his tongue and then slide a finger in in this insane rhythm that kept him hot and needy and took everything he had not to push back on him. He rubbed the rim with his thumb while he licked him and pressed a slick knuckle against that spot between his balls and his hole that made him want to die. He had no idea how long he did it for, a lifetime, but he was all the way hard again, rubbing unconsciously against the sheets and sweating like an idiot.

Sam wasn’t doing much with his fingers using just spit. Dean tried to remember words.

“I’ve got, uh. In my bag. At the bottom. The, tube shaped thing.”

Another laugh from Sam. He pulled away and Dean felt cold and exposed and just lay there while Sam moved around behind him, found his bag and dug around in it.

“You’re, uh.” Sam was right behind him again, the mattress dipping as he kneeled on and went back between Dean’s legs. “Shy,” he finished, eventually. “For a guy who fucks.”

Dean kept his face in the pillow. It was easier that way. He listened to Sam snap the cap on the lube, felt him brush a dry hand up his leg again like he was soothing a skittish horse.

He wasn’t going to say anything. He wasn’t.

“Not fuckin’ shy,” he bit out. “It’s… you.”

Not every day you had to deal with your little brother eating your ass. He wasn’t new, and not that vanilla, it was just Sam and sue him if it took some getting used to. 

Sam slid a slick thumb over his hole, then two fingers, and pushed them in.

“Yeah,” Sam said softly, ignoring Dean’s hunching shoulders and muffled sputtering. “Yeah, I’m kind of losing it.”

He sounded pretty fucking cool for someone who was losing it, and he wasn’t the one getting fingered, but Dean couldn’t say that because he couldn’t say anything, he just white-knuckled the pillow and bit the inside of his cheek to keep quiet. Sam worked two fingers inside him, his other hand keeping him spread. He knew he was sitting up and watching and it was so fucking embarrassing, it was too much, even the bedside lamp was too much light for this when the darkness would have been a salve.

He couldn’t help it. “Jesus, Sam—”

Sam was pressed up against his side in an instant, arm still hooked back to keep those fingers inside him but now his face was tucked in between Dean’s neck and shoulder. 

“This is crazy,” he whispered, and Dean just groaned at him. “Why are you letting me do this?”

“Why do most people let someone fuck them? You’re so annoying.”

Sam bit him, hard. Dean bent his arm so his hand could come up and twist in Sam’s hair, savage, pulling.

“Is that what we’re doing?” Sam asked, sounding insane. “You want me to—”

“Shut up. Don’t. Yes. Just—”

Sam kissed him so hard their teeth hit, Dean’s face twisted over his shoulder, desperate for mouth, skin, anything. Dean thought to roll over but he didn’t, he couldn’t look at him, and then Sam was dragging his mouth down his back again and he lost his chance. His fingers twisted and scissored inside him and he couldn’t have moved if he wanted, it felt so good and beyond weird, heat and tension pooling in the pit of his stomach. The nails of Sam’s free hand dragged down his back hard enough to leave marks and Sam said something, muffled against his hip, he couldn’t make it out.

“What?”

“You have a… nice back,” Sam said, a reluctant grumble, and sunk his teeth into said back in the fleshy spot above his hip like he meant it.

More lube, Sam added a third finger and it felt huge, Dean regretted that yes, he was so dizzy he had to close his eyes. Sam reached over his head, grabbed the other pillow and shoved it under his hips, and then his heart was really racing, pure panic and adrenaline. It didn’t matter that it was just Sam, it was Sam.

There was no way he’d fit that thing in him, he’d die. He wasn’t as concerned about that as he should have been, not when Sam’s hands were digging into his hips like he was the last thing keeping him from falling overboard, all five fingers dug in so hard it stung and his sweat-tacky thighs were moving in behind him to frame his own.

Sam slid his dick up the cleft of his ass a few times, clearly intentional. He lubed it up and did it again and Dean laughed and buried his face.

“Quit it.”

“It builds anticipation,” Sam said, messing with him. “You’re shitty at romance.”

“You think you’re funny? Stop it.”

“Fine.”

Sam spread him again with his thumbs and started to press in, and Dean instantly missed the playful rutting. There was nothing playful about it now, he was gonna die, and the worst part was that he’d rather die than ask Sam to be gentle with him.

“Fuck,” Dean choked, his hand coming up to curl around the back of his own head like he was protecting himself from something. He couldn’t help it, what pride did he have left, it hurt, “Oh, fuck, easy, easy—”

Sam wasn’t being rough, he was just huge and it was agony. Dean had never felt so vulnerable in his life and Sam’s hand spread out on his back wasn’t as soothing as it was supposed to be, his blood just rushed in his ears and he tried to will himself to relax and not squirm away or kick the shit out of him in retaliation, but it was hard.

Sam made a weird breathy noise and kept pushing in, slow and steady, his hands moving restless over Dean’s back and over his hips, probably trying to be nice. Dean knew pain like the back of his hand but this was beyond invasive, humiliating and hyper vulnerable and also technically good, kind of, good-sick, good-full, he swore he could feel it in his throat.

Every second that passed he wanted to tell Sam it was too much, he wanted to reach back and slap a hand around his thigh and make him stop, but for every throb of pain and every invasive inch of no no no nonono too much it started to get easier and worse all together, pleasure and pain made better by the thought of how good it felt to Sam, that he was doing that for him. It was worse than blowing him, this was giving him his entire body. His brain was so broken.

“You okay?” Sam panted, and Dean wanted to ask God how much is left but that had to be it, he had to be in, and he was beyond speech anyways. He just bucked back and groaned, and Sam grabbed his hip hard and started to thrust in.

Terror gripped him the first time he pulled out, hot pain and that too-good feeling inside him that made his brain fizz over. Sam started off so careful, holding him still with his big hands and working in slow, swallowing quiet grunts of pleasure like he didn’t want Dean to know he liked it. He probably didn’t want Dean to know, knowing him.

“God,” he said, low, holding back, “you’re—fuck—”

Dean groaned and buried his face. He wanted to tell him to shut up, he wanted to tell him to keep talking, he wanted him to tell him exactly how good it felt and how much he loved it and it was killing him, it was too much.

“Harder,” Dean bit out, lost in the pillow. He reached a hand back and dug into Sam’s quad, feeling him flex back. “Come on, fuck, do it—”

Sam made some awful, hungry noise and started hammering into him and Dean was beyond pretending he didn’t like it, not even to himself. He’d never felt so full and tight and helpless, never wanted to come so bad or been so close without a hand on his dick. Pleasure kept crashing over him in waves like he thought he was coming but couldn’t, didn’t, he could hardly breathe, he kept trying to get up on his knees but Sam pinned him and pushed his legs wider to keep him off balance.

He realized distantly that he was moaning into the pillow, involuntary snarls of pleasure as Sam pounded into him. He thought of every girl he’d fucked until she was drooling and felt belated sympathy and solidarity. It would be so much easier if he was just putting up with it for Sam, for whatever the hell this was, but with every minute that passed it felt better and better as the pain filtered back and the unhinged pleasure of being filled up screamed through him instead, wild and uncontrollable and new.

He was dizzy and burning and time was meaningless, Sam already came once and he had no idea how long it would take him a second time, or if he could, and he just twisted his fingers in the sheets and held on, whatever it took.

“Oh, shit—” Sam finally pulled him up and back and let him get up on his knees. The angle changed and he was hitting his prostate like it was his fucking job, and Dean got his hand around his dick because he didn’t know how to not. “Holy shit. Holy shit, Dean, fuck—”

Sam slammed into him once, twice and stayed there, so deep Dean’s mouth was open in a soundless shout of pain and something he didn’t have words for. He felt him pulse inside him and it was fucking obscene, the worse thing he’d ever done, more than he’d ever given him.

Sam bent all the way over until his forehead was pressed to the top of Dean’s back, his breath panting wet. He moved Dean’s hand off his dick and took over jerking him off, quick and relentless. Dean pushed back onto him and shoved his fist in his teeth, unfurled his hand and covered his eyes, sobbed and came into Sam’s hand. It was endless and unbearable and perfect, too-much-just-enough, it felt like his whole body was on fire from the inside out.

All Sam’s weight was on him as they went still and his lungs wheezed. He kind of liked it. His head was empty, swimming, body pounding angrily. Sam’s hand was still around his dick and he was squeezing it gently as it went soft, which was weirdly intimate. Sam rubbed his face on his back. 

When he started to pull out, Dean hissed, “Careful.” It hurt anyways, but maybe not as bad as it could have. He’d never felt anything so weird as that empty feeling inside him, but all things considered (Sam) he was willing to put up with it.

Sam lay down next to him. The pillow under his hips was wet with sweat and come, so Dean shifted the one in his arms so Sam could have half of it. He stayed laying on his front, head turned towards Sam, Sam on his side. Sam was flushed and sweating, his eyes bright and interested. Dean stared—his crooked front teeth, his dimples. It helped him ignore the feeling of his come leaking out of his ass.

Looking him in the eye wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Maybe one more line crossed after their entire fucked up and boundaryless life together wasn’t such a big deal. Sam ate his ass, but he went to parent-teacher conferences as Sam’s guardian when they still went to the same school.

Sam said, “Wow.” Dean managed to laugh.

“Bet you say that to all the girls.”

It was a stupid joke, but what was the protocol for letting your little brother fuck you? His heart was still going crazy, it felt like he ran a marathon.

He watched Sam go to move his hand, stop, think about it, then very carefully move it anyways. He brushed his knuckles against the back of Dean’s arm, folded under their pillow. He looked down at his hand and up at Dean’s face, quiet and pensive.

“You feel okay?” he asked. 

“I’ll survive,” Dean said, and then, stupid, “You’ve got a fuckin’ hammer on you, though, God. I’m gonna walk crooked.”

Sam made a vague gesture downwards. “Runs in the family.”

“Don’t try to butter me up.” Dean turned his face into the pillow again to hide. “And don’t butter me up with family, you sick fuck. You’re bad at this.”

“Should I have practiced on a different brother first?”

“Not helping.”

Sam kept rubbing his knuckles against his arm. It was sweet and he didn’t know what to do with it. He wanted to squirm away and run and also to make sure Sam never looked at anyone else ever again. His hormones were going nuts.

Sam pulled away. “Back in a sec.”

Dean’s eyes flew open. Sam had his feet tucked up to get out of bed, and Dean slapped a hand around his ankle.

“Stay.”

“Whuh?”

“Don’t get up. Stay.”

Sam stared down at him. Dean felt his pulse thunder in the big vein that ran up his ankle. Thin little bones, breakable.

Sam said, “You’re supposed to pee after sex.”

“Piss in a bottle.”

“Dean.”

“Don’t get up,” Dean said again.

If Sam got up, they had to go back to their lives, the spell would break and they’d have to figure out how to be around each other in the wake of this horrible new development, but as long as they stayed in bed, they’d stay in bed. No questions asked.

Sam sighed. “Pass me that bottle.”

When Sam lay down after, Dean turned on his side to face him. He stuck his foot out until it brushed Sam’s calf and Sam slid his forward until their legs were tangled. Sam had one arm folded under his head and the other on the bed between them, dangerously close to Dean’s own.

“Is it because you’re worried about me?” Sam asked suddenly.

“Is what ‘cause I’m worried about you?”

“This. That’s the only thing that’s different lately, all this shit going on, with me. So. I thought maybe it’s related.”

“Why would I bang you because I’m worried about you?”

“I dunno how your brain works. You’ve drawn weirder conclusions.”

He wasn’t wrong. Dean didn’t know why he did it now specifically, not really, not unless you went all the way back to the beginning. There was no single moment where he knew he felt wrong about Sam, no bolt of lightning, just a thousand tiny things over the past decade-plus that got them exactly there. The djinn was a catalyst, but the call was coming from inside the house, and he’d been letting it ring for a very, very long time.

“This isn’t something that just happens,” Dean said slowly. “I didn’t wake up one day and decide to spit in God’s face just ‘cause you grew into your legs. You know how many things have to go wrong, like how big that pile’s gotta get, before you wanna fuck your own brother?”

“Is that a rhetorical question? ‘Cause, obviously I know. Intimately.”

Sam was staring at him, frowning slightly. Dean edged his hand into the space between them until the backs of his knuckles touched Sam’s.

“So, what, do you… think I’m hot?”

Sam wrinkled his nose. “I guess.”

“You guess. You put your tongue up my ass, and you guess.”

“I don’t know! You’re—”

“I know. I get it.”

It was hard to put into words. If he saw a stranger that looked like Sam in a bar, he’d be on him in a second, but it was Sam and it was his brother and it felt narcissistic and weird to say he was hot, it wasn’t that simple. He wanted to touch him and he liked looking at him and he liked making him come, and when you put those together, they only meant one thing, but the components didn’t necessarily fit great.

Sam said, “You think I’m hot.”

Sam’s wasn’t a question, because Dean was worse at it than him; Dean always had a hard time keeping a lid on it, worse impulse control and a more tenuous grip on reality, it was no wonder he knew. Dean stared and found excuses to touch and Sam put up with it, he always had, and it never seemed like he minded.

He always thought of it as a matter of when, not if, with the only unknown being which of them would break first. He kind of thought it’d be Sam.

Dean slid his knuckles against his, rubbed his thumb against his palm.

“It’s… I look at you, and I just…” He blew out a huge breath. “I dunno what’s wrong with me.”

Sam smiled. “Where do you want me to start?”

Dean kicked him. Sam kicked him back and tried to swat at him, and Dean grabbed his arm and pulled and then somehow they were kissing again, crumpled up and warm and close, noses smushed.

“Fuck,” Dean said, right on his mouth, “Sam, this is so bad.”

Sam put his hands on his face, massive and warm. It felt safe. He was so fucked.

Sam said, “We’re not worrying about it, remember?”

“Right. Right. Okay.”

“Okay.”

Sam led the kiss, tilting Dean’s head in his palms, both of them on their sides curled towards each other like so many nights of their youth, whispering after John fell asleep, ghost stories by flashlight.

Dean slid closer and put his thigh between Sam’s. He brushed his hands up his chest and around his back and pulled him in. It was late and his skin was tacky with sweat and the day’s grime and Dean thought about taking him to the bathroom, filling the tub and cramming into it with him. There was no motel bathtub on earth that could fit them both, but he could dream; Sam’s back against his chest, his gangly legs up on the wall or hanging over the side.

Sam kissed slow and deep and it was different than before, less urgent. Dean didn’t think he could come again, but the kissing was nice. He was so out of it, it felt like a dream.

“Why are you letting me do this?” he asked, lips brushing Sam’s, not really expecting an answer. Sam laughed.

“You’re easy and convenient.”

“Shut up, I’m serious.”

“We’re not worrying about it.” He scooted in even closer, until their hips were right together and Dean could feel his growing hard-on against his leg. “That’s tomorrow-Sam’s problem.”

“Sam—”

“C’mon. Kiss me.”

He did. He was quietly horrified by what this meant for their relationship, because Sam already led him around by the nose—he was man enough to admit that, if only to himself, it had been true since Sam was five and had nothing to do with hooking up with him—and it was about to be so much worse if Sam could kiss him to shut him up. He was toast.

Sam’s hands wandered down his back and landed on his hips. He started pulling him into him, rocking with his thigh. Dean laughed against his mouth.

“How are you hard again? Jesus Christ.”

“I’m young and virile.”

“Oh, can it, we’re basically the same age.”

“It’s okay to be jealous.”

Turns out, he could kiss Sam to shut him up, too. That helped level the playing field.

He rolled on top of him and Sam let him. Sam’s arms were heavy where they folded around his neck, hard and smooth, and his legs opened to let him settle between them. Dean was getting hard too; it was a sickness, it was still so unreal, it was in no way hampered by how tired and hungry he was because he couldn’t imagine ever getting up, not while Sam was naked and wanted him. Sam would come to his senses eventually, and when he did, Dean would regret not getting every piece of him he could.

He took Sam’s hands in his, laced their fingers and pinned them to the bed by his head. Sam just stretched languidly and arched into him, tested his grip and let him stay there, satisfied. They kissed until their lips were swollen and used and Dean rolled his hips into Sam’s slow and hard.

“You, uh.” Sam tried to turn his head to talk, his voice rough with disuse. “Seemed like you liked getting fucked.”

Not worth lying about. Sam was there, he heard the sounds he made.

He said, “Don’t even think about a round two, you’re gonna turn me inside out.”

“Not you, me.”

“Oh.” Dean pulled back until they were nose to nose. “Uh. It was…” Horrifying, mind-numbingly good, so humiliating I’m gonna have PTSD, so hot I’m gonna have a hard time getting off to anything else. “Not to shoot myself in the foot, but I think you’ve gotta be a certain kind of fucked up to like it.”

He felt Sam smile. “Only one way to find out.”

Another kiss, torrid, all tongue and teeth and Sam pushing up against Dean’s hands holding him down.

“Nympho,” Dean mumbled. Sam laughed and bit him.

He fumbled around in the sheets for lube and Sam hooked a leg around his hip, spread them, lifted a knee. Dean stared as he brushed soft fingers down his thighs, down the shaft of his dick and over his balls, lower, just watching his hand. Sam was patient enough laying in the pillows with his head back.

Dean wanted to ask him if he’d done this, because the answer was looking like maybe, but he didn’t want to know. It didn’t matter, because whatever he’d done, it wasn’t like this. Sam had a long-term girlfriend, and guys with girlfriends got up to freaky shit, you had to once you trusted someone like that. Or so Dean heard.

He took a finger and then two, as Dean’s other hand played with his dick; he spat on it, slid his slick fingers around the crown, stroked him slowly and stared, stared, stared. He rested his face on Sam’s bent knee, scraped his teeth against him once in a while, kissed him and took his time.

Sam got a little less patient after three fingers. The urge to say gross, soothing shit about how good he was doing was overwhelming but Dean settled for mouthing at his knee instead, petting him with his free hand.

Sam grabbed Dean’s leg, his whole hand palming the top of his thigh.

“Dean.”

He was so hot and smooth and slick inside. Not Dean’s first time being on the giving end, but it wasn’t too different from a girl, really. He was hardly listening, not paying attention. It took a hard squeeze to his thigh for him to remember that Sam said something.

“We’ve been at this for an hour, you’re in a hurry now?”

“No,” Sam said, shifty. “Just, feels—”

He broke off with a sound and Dean leaned in. “Good?” 

He worked his fingers a little faster, curling, seeking. Sam’s back arched.

“Really good or really bad.” Sam wiped at his face. “I dunno. It’s—weird. It’s—”

Faster, deeper, scrubbing at this specific angle that made Sam’s knee come in and whack into his arm. He could feel him getting tight and moving his hips helplessly up, pleasure obvious on his face. He wondered how many people had seen Sam stop thinking so hard. He probably definitely let Jess do this. Dean didn’t want to think about Jess.

“I can stop,” he offered.

Sam’s hand shot out and wrapped around his arm.

“Don’t, I’m gonna come.”

“Seriously?”

“I think. I— don’t stop, fuck. Fuck—”

He shuddered all over and nearly kneed Dean in the chin and came, going so tight around his fingers it almost hurt. Dean jerked him through it, he was barely all the way hard, just wetness dripping over the circle of his fingers and not much of it.

“Now you’re just showing off.”

Dean was audibly impressed, and hard as fucking nails just watching him. Sam had his hands over his face and he was scarlet down his neck, chest heaving, dick dark and wet and he was beautiful, he was a vision, and that was Dean’s hand crooked between his legs, making him feel like that.

“That was borderline unwelcome,” Sam said from behind his hands.

“You still want—”

“Yeah,” right away, zero hesitation, and it went straight to Dean’s head, that and Sam’s hands instantly coming off his face to reach for him, pull on his shoulders and get him closer. “Yeah, if—”

Dean was already stroking lube on his dick and could only hope Sam was too out for it to notice his hands shaking.

“Yeah, fuck, just— just a sec, wait, wait—”

Sam dug his heels into his back and all but dragged himself onto his cock, his hands groping for Dean’s face to pull him in. He crushed their mouths together just as Dean started to ease inside him and Dean lost it. For all Sam’s carefulness earlier, he had none, not anymore, not with Sam. He pressed into him steady and hard and felt him suck in a shaking breath against his mouth, kissed him again, messy, hot and desperate.

Sam tipped his head back. Dean bit at his Adam’s apple and pushed deeper, all the way, curling his back up into Sam’s hands digging into his shoulders.

“Yeah,” Sam breathed, more flattering than he deserved. “That’s, okay, yeah.”

“Good?”

“Yeah. Fuck, yeah, oh my God.”

Sam took it way better than he did, Dean thought, or else he hid it well. Dean put his hand behind his thigh and levered his knee up and Sam just groaned into his mouth and curled his hand around the back of Dean’s neck, relaxed and lazy after coming.

He was so tight and good Dean was sweating, thighs shaking with exhaustion, head spinning with the devastating intimacy of it: Sam’s breath in his ear and his tongue in his mouth and his legs around him, so much closer than when he’d been on his front. He kept it slow and deep, lazy rolls of his hips, he didn’t want to lean back the way he’d need to to pick up the pace.

Sam folded a heavy arm around his neck and Dean tipped forward and tucked his face against him. He could fall asleep like that, all wrapped up in him, slowly pushing into him again and again.

“You remember,” Sam started, quiet and rough in his ear, “you’d’ve been seventeen, eighteen, and we were in that place above the garage and you—you were working on the car, in the driveway, and there was a girl hanging around, and you fucked her in the back seat.”

It was as vague as a memory could be, but it was there: some Midwestern state, a scorching summer spent in a musty attic above some guy’s garage, some blonde teenager’s ass sticking to the vinyl seat. And Sam, apparently. 

“I watched from upstairs,” Sam said, arm tightening around his neck, “and I realized I was looking at you, not her, and I. That’s when.”

Dean groaned and pushed his face into his neck. “Jesus, don’t tell me that.”

“What, you didn’t? Back then?”

More vague memories, no more notable than that summer above the garage: swimming with Sam in some backwater swimming hole, his twiggy teenaged legs in the emerald green; increasingly broad shoulders seen from behind in the bathroom mirror, speckled with acne, rutted with stretch marks; soft hair curling against his cheek from the head tucked under his chin in the back seat. It was no single thing. It had always been there.

“I mean… Yeah, but I wasn’t gonna tell you.”

Sam laughed into his hair. Dean let go of his leg and Sam folded it around his back, brought his other arm up around his neck until he was completely wrapped around him, sweat wet between them everywhere they touched, not an inch free anywhere. Sam was so hot and slick and Dean was so hard but he didn’t think he could come again. He didn’t think it mattered. He wanted to fall asleep, he’d never been so content.

He turned his head and mouthed at Sam’s neck, kissed up his jaw.

“Sammy,” he breathed, and kissed him. The noise Sam made was the same confused, sleepy grumble he made when he got woken up. “Sam.”

Sam kissed him back, lips soft and tired. He slid his arm back until he could scrub his fingers through the soft hair at Dean’s nape, play with the cord of the amulet.

“Are you…?”

“Probably not. Sorry.”

Dean went to pull out, but Sam held onto him all over and shook his head.

“It’s cool. Stay.” He kissed his cheek, up by his nose. “Just a while.”

Dean kissed him again, again, sinking into it, his tongue soft on the inside of Sam’s lip. He wasn’t moving much anymore, just staying inside him, feeling the grip of his body and the weight of his limbs, his unbearable heat of life. 

Sam sighed. Dean felt his chest expand and collapse under him, making the amulet dig in.

“What are we gonna do?” Sam mumbled.

Dean sighed back at him, breaking the kiss to dip his head and press his face to Sam’s shoulder. His skin was sticky and warm and the pillow under him smelled like his hair.

“That sounds like tomorrow-Dean’s problem.”

“Dean…”

“I know.”

It seemed too naive to say it would be okay, even if he was thinking it. He wanted to tell Sam he loved him because he was crazy and tired, but he wasn’t great with that. He wanted to knit their bones together, tie their veins off into each other and stare at him until they both wasted away, until the building fell down around them.

He settled for falling asleep inside him, wrapped around each other the way they did when they were kids with not enough space.

They hit the road late the next day, trading goofy God-we’re-dumb smiles and stolen glances, brushed hands and shoulders. They didn’t say much; better to leave it, Dean thought, let things work themselves out organically. They had time, he thought.

They were on some flat, nowhere stretch of highway, late afternoon. Sam kept biting his cheek to keep from smiling, he had been all day. His knees were jammed against the dash and he wasn’t reading, he was just looking out the window.

“We should—” He started, but they hadn’t said anything for a while and he cleared his throat. “We should stop for the night at the next place.”

Dean glanced at his watch. It was only four. “Yeah?”

Sam was turned very intentionally towards his window.

“If you want. Gotta stop somewhere.”

Dean was glad Sam couldn’t see his dorky smile. He drummed his fingers on the wheel.

“Slut.”

Sam reached over and smacked him in the back of the head. He laughed an awful, genuine laugh, spiky and loud and embarrassed.

“Shut up and drive.”

“Sure you wouldn’t settle for a particularly secluded gravel shoulder?”

“You fucking wish.”

It was no use trying not to smile after that. He cranked the stereo as a cheap distraction and Sam didn’t even fight him on it. When he turned to look back out his window, Dean could see that his ears were red.

Maybe he’d get them a single at whatever motel they stopped at, see how Sam felt about that. Testing the waters, letting this new thing between them take shape.

Before they got to any motel, they stopped at a diner for burgers, extra onions. Sam went in and didn’t come out.

The first thing Dean did after him and Bobby got Sam’s body into that bed was arrange his hands; it was too grotesque to leave his limp arms sprawled at his sides. Dean folded them over his stomach like he was in a coffin, it was the only thing that felt appropriate. It was like he was sleeping. He thought about rearranging him the way he actually slept, on his stomach with his hands under his pillow, but that was just a different kind of grotesque.

That night, only days ago now, after they woke up and rearranged themselves (unstuck, pulled out), Sam slept with an arm thrown over Dean’s waist. Dean had been surprised by how heavy his dead weight was. He was surprised by it again, carrying him in there. In his head, Sam was still eighty pounds, bony knees and growing pains.

The abandoned house reeked of dust and dirt and rot. Bobby had been gone for some time, Dean didn’t know how long, but he kept checking in. He didn’t know how long it had been, period; he hadn’t gone outside or slept and the vague colourless light coming in the boarded-up windows did nothing to mark the passing of time.

Sam still just looked dead. He hadn’t started to look any worse than that, yet, but he would.

Dean could smell his own tears dried on his face. His whole chest hurt from crying and his head throbbed with it, his face ached. All the physical markers of grief were so startlingly apparent with nothing else to focus on. He’d never cried so much or so helplessly in his life, ugly, wrenched-up sobs that caught in his throat. 

That was earlier. He was out of tears now, shaking with exhaustion and too drunk and dehydrated for his body to give him any more.

The silence was worse than anything, so he talked, or tried to. His throat was raw, his mouth sticky and swollen with beer and whiskey.

“This is what I get, huh?” His voice sounded tinny in his ears. “My whole life, I keep it inside, and one time—one night—I fuck up, and I let it out, and this is what I get. What we get.”

He laughed jaggedly. 

“You’d laugh, but— well, hell, you’re the one who bought into all that God shit, so maybe this is up your alley, I just—it’s no fuckin’ coincidence, you know? I never thought it before, but this, this makes me think there’s a big guy upstairs, and he fucking hates us. This is cause and effect. The next day? It’s gotta be.”

He rubbed his hands over his face. His skin was greasy, unwashed and crackly in the creases with salt.

“I’m sorry,” he said into his hands. The first few hours (days?) he repeated it like a mantra. He hadn’t said it much since then, he was sick of hearing it, his own empty platitudes. What the hell did Sam care if he was sorry now?

He took his hands down and was assaulted again with the sight of Sam’s cool, dead face. Dean had seen more dead bodies than most, and it did get easier, but that didn’t help now. The stillness of it was the worst, the absence of breath in his chest and colour in his skin. Sickly and still, unnatural.

“I shouldn’t have done it. I dunno what I thought would… I dunno what I was thinking. I just… I want you. Any way that’s on the table.” A horrible, sharp pause. “Want-ed, I guess. But.”

But the wanting hadn’t stopped. All that was different now was that he wanted a guy who was dead. Like a widow.

“How the hell did we think it was gonna go, anyways? We date, like a couple of fuckin’ kids? Hold hands and braid each other’s hair? Keep it from Bobby, and the Roadhouse folks, and God only knows who else? That’s not… It doesn’t work like that. We’re so fucking stupid.”

He liked to think it was inevitable, but he still made a choice. A lifetime spent dancing around it and he let it happen exactly then. He knew Sam was in danger, he knew things were going on, and it hadn’t been enough to warrant putting on the brakes. Fucking selfish.

“You always let me… be weird with you. You never said anything. I thought you were just putting up with me, or like, worse, that I—I fucked you up so bad you didn’t know any better. And maybe that’s how it was, I dunno, but you woulda told me to cut it out, I think. You don’t put up with shit. So. I guess you wanted it, too.”

Sam’s watch was too big on his wrist. Dean stared at it then, thinking, was it always that big on him? Is he wasting away? Is it starting already? He wore a digital one when he left for Stanford, where’d he get this one? Was it a gift? How come I never asked?

Sam had kept the watch on, that night. The metal was cool against his back when he put his arms around his neck, sharp on the inside of his thigh when he jerked him off and went down on him.

“Dad being gone,” Dean started, and had to stop for a second, “that fucking hurt. Hurts. All the way down. But you… There’s no… no after, for me. I can’t—I’ve been trying to think about it, and picture it, but what? What fucking good is it, without you?”

John’s death left a hole, but Sam’s was a wall at the end of a tunnel, the end of the line and the end of all things. It would have been easier to live without his lungs. No one would ask him to do that. How could anyone expect him to do this?

“Dad always said pills were for pussies. That a real man blew his head off, or a, a fuckin’ samurai, on his sword. You remember that? Maybe not, that was early.” He rubbed a hand over his face again. “He thought about it. I dunno if I told you that. I dunno if he even remembered that he told me, I was so young. He’d get drunk and just fucking sob, and I couldn’t have been more than like, five or six. It was still fresh, you know? And he’d go on and on about, just… not doing it anymore. Not without her.”

He wallowed in those early memories after the fire, pulling a blanket over John’s shuddering shoulders when he was so small he had to get up on the couch to do it. Too young to fully understand the ‘why’ but only the action of it, that he had to give comfort and love and protection to the giant man who did everything for him.

“I swear to God, he was one bad week from leaving us outside a fire station and driving off a pier for a while there.” He chewed the inside of his cheek, remembering. It felt like a lifetime ago, it was. “I think I’ve thought everything a person could think about that. Scared to shit of losing him, at first. And then I was so pissed off when I got older and thought back on it, like how could he even think about leaving us, we were his family, but.” He laughed. It sounded like he was coughing something up. “Fucking look at me now. Took long enough, but I finally get it. I wish I could tell him, I get it. I shoulda cut him some slack.”

He let his eyes wander over Sam’s face again. He saw himself there, and their mom. Only a little of John, in the chin and his strong neck, the way his hair curled at the back.

“I’m so fucked up. Comparing us to Mom and Dad. Our mom and dad. Jesus.” He bent all the way over in his chair until his forehead touched the mattress. Being bent over made his voice go quiet. “But it’s like that, you know? I thought I could play like it’s not, but… it was always like that. You and me. Even when it wasn’t.”

Pills were so tempting. The idea of getting on the bed and curling up into Sam’s side felt perfect, going to sleep with him and never waking up. A gun would be loud, that wasn’t right. As if it would wake Sam. And there’d be a mess for Bobby.

They used to sleep together as kids, there wasn’t enough space to do anything else. When Sam was really young, he’d sleep curled up in his arms, and would whine if Dean tried to pull away; Dean remembered a few mornings where he’d wake up to John looking at them, and he’d give Dean a slow, reproachful shake of his head. He’s just a kid, Dean would say to him later, like he wasn’t also just a kid. He didn’t feel like it.

The reproachful head-shakes got a little more forceful when Sam climbed up into thirteen and fourteen, way too old for it. Cots were purchased from the motel front desk, couches were slept on. They still slept better together when they could, nothing raunchy, just ankles knocking under the sheets and faces pressed into arms, closeness and comfort. They learned to keep it to themselves, and hardly even that—it didn’t need talking about, not even in private.

But that sweet, clingy little kid was dead now. He died on his knees in the mud and now Dean was staring at his body. His body. It wasn’t even him anymore.

A gun would be too loud. It would be violent, and Sam had had enough violence. Dean thought they had enough painkillers to do it, if he put all their half empty bottles of different stuff together. It had been a while since they got their hands on some, but put together, it should have been enough.

He heard it felt heavy and warm when you went under, like sinking into a bath. Sinking into his brother’s arms one last time.

“Where are you, Sammy?” he whispered, wonder and terror all together, thinking of whatever unimaginable thing followed life—either nothing or something, but somewhere, that’s where Sam was.

Dean stood on aching legs and sat on the edge of the bed, stumbling drunk and uncoordinated and nearly missing it with his hip.

Sam was beautiful. There was something all-American in him that wasn’t in Dean, an action hero to Dean’s supermodel, strength and solidity in every inch of him. A sturdy home, a brother. And Dean loved him. He loved him when he was two and ten and thirteen, and still at eighteen when he ruined his life, and again at twenty-two when he saved it, and now, at twenty-three, when he was so fucking selfish as to get himself killed. Every Sam that Sam had ever been, Dean loved him. Even the dead one.

Dean reached out and ran a hand up Sam’s chest. Unyielding and perfectly room temperature. His dirty jacket was scratchy against his palm.

He was a good kid. Sensitive and tough and haunted, troubled, bitchy, noble to a fault. A good kisser and pushy in bed. Dead now, because of Dean.

Dean sighed his name, heavy in his mouth. He slid his hand up Sam’s neck, too cold, and over his cheek. He swiped his hair off his forehead, thumbed a sideburn.

He leaned down and pressed his lips to Sam’s.

He closed his eyes and held his breath. He curled Sam’s hair behind his ear and left his fingers there for a moment, hunched over him. The kiss was closed-mouth and soft and still. The stillness was awful. Sam’s chilled skin was faintly clammy. Dean missed his rushing breath on his cheek, his teeth clacking against his when he smiled.

There was a sound in the doorway and Dean shot up and whipped around.

Bobby was standing there, wide-eyed and motionless, nearly as pale as Sam.

They just stared at each other. Dean opened his mouth but nothing came out.

Bobby spoke slowly and carefully.

“Why don’t you come with me into the other room.”

It was only a second, he swore it was only a second. He didn’t know why he didn’t hear Bobby coming or why he had such shit timing, but it was only a second.

“I—didn’t—”

“Come with me, Dean.”

He didn’t have the capacity to be embarrassed in any meaningful way, but it felt like his guts were on fire. He stood and refrained from giving a forlorn look at Sam’s body. Despite everything, he felt a childish pang of betrayal. Dude, a little help here?

He followed Bobby out into the kitchen on numb feet. Bobby instantly got a beer and cracked it open, didn’t offer him one, which Dean found space to resent even though the edge of the sink was already lined with his empties, and he’d thrown most of it up in the bathroom an hour ago. He hadn’t been able to keep much of anything down.

He thought about sitting at the table and didn’t. He went to the window and looked out, grayish light some indeterminate time of day. He rolled ‘sorry’ around in his head, but it didn’t feel right. He wasn’t sorry. ‘Sorry you saw that’ was closer, but also not worth saying.

He heard Bobby take a long drink behind him, the glug and swallow and then the glassy sound of the bottle on the table. He closed his eyes.

“I don’t…” Bobby aborted the sentence and cleared his throat. “I’m not gonna sit here and act like I know what you boys been through. I don’t know that. I don’t know how it is.”

Dean’s stomach flipped. His brain, two days behind, said: Jesus Sam, would you get out here already? Don’t make me do this alone.

He said, “Okay,” which he thought would be fine, but he could hear the tremor in his voice. If he could hear it, so could Bobby.

Another round of beer-sounds, and Dean turned around. Bobby looked horrible. He hadn’t changed his clothes from the last time Dean saw him and his face was waxy and sweaty, a thousand years old. Dean could only imagine how he looked; he hadn’t seen a mirror in days.

“The way I see it, we got two options here,” Bobby said. His tone was like how they talked to suicide jumpers in cop movies. “Either I shut my mouth, and we never talk about what happened in there.” He paused for a while, maybe hoping Dean would take him up on option one before he got to option two. “Or, if there’s anything you wanna… get off your chest. I’m…”

He trailed off, thank Christ. Dean knew it didn’t matter what he said, there was no long-run scenario to consider. Sam would have said something diplomatic and careful, but Dean didn’t have the brain for that, it had been carved out like a melon, he was empty and raw.

He gripped the counter behind him. He swallowed hard, compulsive, dry and awful, and his whole head hurt like someone was driving a spike through it. He found the words, or tried to.

“When you… you live your whole life, in, in one place, how are you supposed to know anything else?”

He knew he wasn’t making sense, the words were tumbling out of his mouth. His nails dug into the underside of the countertop, so hard he felt pricks of pain as they bent back. 

He’d never spent much time in one place, physically. Bobby knew that.

“Okay,” Bobby said slowly, wincing again.

He was clearly waiting for something more, and dreading it. Dean kept talking and only realized halfway through that the voice in his ears was his.

“He’s it for me, Bobby. That’s all. It’s not—it wasn’t—anything else. Whatever you’re thinking, it’s not—” He stopped. “I mean. It was, kind of. I guess.”

Still not making sense. Bobby squinted at him with kind, sad brows, confusion and pity and the crumpled frown of an old man’s discomfort.

“So it’s… like that.”

Dean nodded slowly, for a long time.

“Not always, but. Yeah.” Another awful swallow and he couldn’t breathe for a second and had to put his hand over his face and squeeze his temples, hot pain pricking at his eyes. “Not that it fucking matters now.”

Sam wasn’t going to help him with this. Sam wouldn’t have to talk to Bobby and it was a moot point, nothing more than a fact Bobby would have to store in his head for the rest of his life. John Winchester’s boys were sticking it to each other, before they went all Romeo and Juliet about it, those poor kids.

Bobby finished his beer in another long pull. Dean just stood there with his head turned towards the bedroom door. He could only see Sam’s calves and feet. Horrible, his feet pointed upright like that. Like a morgue corpse. Dean was wrong to not turn him on his front like he was sleeping.

“Dean,” Bobby said, not for the first time. He was at the close side of the table now. “It’s time to let him go.”

Burn him, Bobby meant, a hunter’s funeral. Dean almost threw up, picturing it in graphic technicolor. He shut his eyes.

“Gimme a sec.”

“It’s—”

“Just a half hour, Bobby, I swear. Go— go get the stuff, and just let me—”

Let me look at him a while longer. Let me say goodbye. Let me figure out if the pills are in my duffel or the trunk or glove box.

Bobby said, “Uh. I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

Dean grimaced. He’d finally found rock bottom, and it was ‘I’m not gonna fuck my brother’s dead body, if that’s what you’re asking.’

He didn’t feel bad about what he was going to do. Bobby would know it wasn’t about him, there was nothing he could have done. Dean was broken in a way that couldn’t be fixed by him or anyone, and he’d get that.

“Please,” Dean tried, still looking at the doorway. “Just a few minutes.”

Bobby scratched his beard and the back of his neck. Then, eventually: “I’ll be back. Soon. But we’ve gotta do this, alright?”

“I know,” Dean lied.

He went back into the bedroom after Bobby left. Sam hadn’t moved. He stood over him instead of sitting down, he wouldn’t be long.

“I know you’d probably be pissed at me,” he told Sam, doing his best to smile even though he knew it was all watery and sad, “but if it helps, I was already on borrowed time. So, you know. Thank Dad for that.”

He froze. He held his breath for a second, tapped his teeth together, moved his mouth to the side.

“Oh,” he said aloud.

He was at the crossroads by the time Bobby got back. He closed his eyes when he kissed her so he could pretend it was Sam.

He heard him before he saw him, movement back in the bedroom when he banged in the front door, his skull ringing, blood boiling under his skin as each countdown beat of his heart went Sam-my, Sam-my, Sam-my.

When he saw Sam standing, it almost took him out. There was a symphony behind his eyes, bliss, disbelief, pure miracle happiness. Zero regrets.

He charged through the room and crushed him into a hug, he couldn’t do anything else. Sam was chilled like he’d been outside but he was soft and real in Dean’s arms, his hair in his face and his neck against his cheek. His pained hissing didn’t matter, he could suck it up. 

“Fuck, Dean, that hurts, stop—are you okay?”

Sam tried to ease him back and Dean let him, if only so he could look at him again. He gripped both Sam’s shoulders and held him at arms’ length and he had to actively try not to scream or sob in joy and terror and the whiplash shock of suddenly not falling anymore, not hitting the ground.

“Yes. No. I— It was touch and go for a while there, man, I’ve been…” He swallowed hard and tried to school his face into something normal, trying to look like anything but a guy who’d been staring down the barrel at oblivion and was still currently doing so, just down a longer barrel. “Stressed.”

Sam smiled. He smiled and it was all dimples, his bright hazel eyes were open, the colour was coming back to his cheeks and Dean’s heart was racing and thundering, pounding the pavement. 

“You were worried about me? You?” Sam said, light and goofy like it was a joke. “That can’t be right.”

Dean had a second chance he didn’t deserve and he’d do it right, he’d fix it. Sam was alive and breathing, a year was a year and actions had consequences, but all that was secondary, because Sam’s eyes were open.

And staring at his mouth.

Sam leaned in, smiling, letting his fingers curl in the collar of Dean’s shirt.

Dean stepped back.

He wanted Sam any way he could get him, but mostly, he wanted him alive.

Sam furrowed his brow with a confused little smile. He looked like he was going to call him on it, but seconds ticked by and he didn’t. His hand moved to Dean’s shoulder, gave him a very brotherly squeeze-and-pat, and let go.

Sam would find a way to forgive him. One night was more than some people ever got, and sure as shit more than Dean thought he’d get. He wiped his sweating hands on his jeans. 

“You— you’ve been out for a while, man, I gotta catch you up. C’mon.”

He had to get out of that bedroom. He turned to leave, but Sam snagged his sleeve. His heart thudded hard, Jesus, the guy could never let anything go.

“Hey. I thought—”

Dean shut his eyes because Sam couldn’t see him. Maybe they were cursed, or maybe it was just Sam, but whatever it was, he couldn’t risk it, not again. He’d take that mulligan.

“Let it breathe, alright?” He kept his eyes closed. “We’ve got time.”

A lie by omission wasn’t technically a lie. Right then, he didn’t really care.