Chapter Text
Maybe Sam should have waited to say it until they weren’t lying in bed, chests heaving in post-orgasmic bliss. But something possessed him to say it then, impulse overriding his better judgement that had been winning out in his more sane hours.
“We gotta stop this, Dean.”
His brother jolted up onto his elbow. It had been two years since it started, and Sam wanted to end it? In Dean’s opinion, they were in too deep to stop. That, and he didn’t want to stop.
“Why?” he demanded, trying to keep anger out of his voice.
Sam couldn’t tell him. He was planning to leave for college, leave Dean, but he couldn’t tell him that. Because he wasn’t really leaving Dean specifically, it was more of an unfortunate side effect.
“I, uh-” Sam hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Don’t you think we’re getting a little too old?” was his lame excuse, one that Dean fortunately bought.
“Too old for sex? Come on, Sam,” Dean said, rolling his eyes.
“No, I mean…” well, he was stuck in this lie now. Better think up a better argument. “Shouldn’t we find other partners?”
“What for?" asked Dean. He began to wipe himself down with a Kleenex found on the bedside table. It didn’t feel right to have a serious talk covered in cum.
Sam was quiet for a minute. “I dunno. Forget it.”
Dean tossed the Kleenex at the wastebasket in the corner and missed by about three feet. Sam wrinkled his nose.
“No, you brought it up. What’s wrong?” Dean studied his brother’s face where he laid against the pillow. “Don’t tell me you’re on that religious bull again.”
Well. “I’m not,” Sam lied. He rolled off the bed, back to Dean, searching for his boxers on the floor. He found them and pulled them on with one hand.
"Ya can't lie to me, Sam. I taught you."
Sam heaved a sigh. Maybe it would be better to tell Dean he was getting religious guilt again rather than the truth. Or maybe he should just rip it off like a bandaid. He knew how Dean would react, though. In the past two years of sleeping together, Dean had shown more and more of his... clinginess to Sam (for lack of a better word). If he thought it was bad before, Dean never wanting to go anywhere without him, it got a thousand times worse when Dean started viewing them as a couple. It's not that Sam didn't love his brother, he did, but the guy didn't know anything about boundaries. How could they, growing up like they did?
"I just feel like..." Sam started, then hesitated again, perching on the edge of the bed, back still turned on his brother. "we're getting older. We need to get on with our lives as individuals, maybe." Fuck. He shouldn't have said maybe, now he seemed less sure.
"Well I don't want to," Dean said firmly, in his end-of-discussion voice. Sam's chest twisted. Not like how it used to; in a bad way. He should have known he could never escape.
Dear God, it's me again. Why did you make me like this? I believe less and less that this is a temptation I'm going through, and more that it's just how I am. Please make me not love him so much anymore, I need this to be easier.
"What are you doing?"
Dean's voice jolted through Sam and he jumped up from where he had been kneeling by the bed. "Nothing."
"Really?" Dean's voice took on an accusatory tone, and he took several quick strides towards Sam. "Cuz it looked like you were down there prayin'."
"So what if I was?" Sam asked defensively, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "I do it all the time."
"You don't do it all the time," Dean corrected. "Only when something's really on your mind. This isn't about the other day, is it?" He chewed on the corner of his lip, which was cracked and swollen from getting hit in the face while training with Dad. It was a self destructive habit Sam had observed many times.
"I can't believe you're still stuck on that," Sam huffed, rolling his eyes.
"Damn right I'm stuck on it! You're sounding like you wanna break up with me, sorry if that makes me a little anxious."
Sam threw up his hands. "That's just it, Dean! That shouldn't even be a thing that comes up in conversation between us! I shouldn't have to break up with you because we should never have been together in the first place!"
Sam froze. He hadn't meant to say that. He slowly made eye contact with Dean, who was stopped in his tracks, mouth slightly agape.
"You don't mean that," Dean said, voice cracking. "Sammy, I thought we-"
Shit. Sam really needed to learn when to keep his mouth shut. Seemed like these days every time he opened it he hurt someone's feelings or got in a fight. "I'm sorry, Dean, I didn't mean-"
"No, you meant it," Dean interrupted. He turned away, fishing the car keys out of his inner pocket. "I need some air."
"Dean, wait!" The door slammed behind him. Sam exhaled and rubbed the bridge of his nose between his fingertips. How would he ever break the news? He began to consider leaving without telling anyone; although that would probably be worse, considering his two family members would assume he had been kidnapped and tear the earth apart looking for him.
It would be painful, but Sam couldn't stay. The vice grip of his father would never let up, and the stifling love of his brother was becoming too much to bear.
The next time they had sex, Sam cried, thinking of leaving Dean. He pressed open-mouth kisses to his brother's chest as he pumped in and out of him slowly, making love for once instead of fast and dirty teenage fucking.
"What is it, Sammy?" Dean asked breathlessly, fingers tangling in Sam's hair, gripping the strands tightly as he tilted his head back in pleasure.
"Nothing," Sam replied tearfully, raising his face to press his lips to Dean's perfect male-model ones. "Just love you."
That was a fact that was getting harder and harder to ignore the more Sam tried to ignore it and think about other things. He couldn't imagine Dean not in his life.
"Knew you'd get over that shit- ah-" Sam performed the favorite move, pushing Dean's thighs up for that perfect angle.
"Fuck, Sammy, gonna-"
At first it was subtle, and Dean wasn't sure if it was a coincidence and Sam had just robbed some poor frat boy, or if it was an intentional style choice. A Stanford t-shirt had made it into the kid's laundry, along with a matching sweatshirt. But then, when he was looking through Sam's bag for a lighter (Dean's own had run out of fluid and he always really needed a smoke these days from all the stressing he'd been doing over their relationship) he found the pamphlets. College mail, addressed to Sam Winchester at a P.O. box in Pennsylvania.
And he really shouldn't have gone to Dad about it first. He should've waited until Sam got back from the gas station down the street. And he didn't really mean to, anyway, Dad just got home first and Dean had just found it and the rage was fresh and he wanted Sam to get in trouble; wanted him to get locked down.
John flung the hotel key onto the little breakfast table and spotted Dean crouching by the bed, not moving.
"Son?"
Dean clenched his fist and stood, spinning on his heel and shoving the paper into his dad's hand. "Found this in Sam's bag," he muttered, then walked to the cooler to grab a beer. He stayed facing the wall, seething, mind going a million miles a minute while he waited for John to say something, anything.
Stanford? Of all the places Sam could go, California? That's where, like, hippies lived... right? They hadn't really spent a lot of time in California, so Dean didn't really know anything about it aside from Hollywood. Maybe that's why Sam wanted to go there. A place where Dad and Dean wouldn't come very often. A new place not tainted by memories with them.
"Sam's bag, you said?" John finally asked quietly. It wasn't a sad sort of quiet, it was the quiet that came before the storm. Suddenly Dean felt a wave of regret. He'd been on the receiving end of that storm more times than he could count. Hell, he spent most of his life trying to keep it away from Sammy. And now he'd just directed it toward his little brother in full force. Shit.
Sam trudged up the sidewalk to their motel room, noting that the Impala was gone from the parking spot in front of their door. Dad's still out. That would make it easier; Sam didn't want to tell Dad and Dean at the same time, because everything with Dad turned into a massive argument these days.
Sam paused outside the door.
Dear God, please help me tell him. I don't wanna hurt him, but I don't wanna let him guilt me into staying. Fuck, if I didn't love him so much this would be so much easier. Sorry for swearing. Amen.
He turned the handle.
Dad went out again (probably to a bar) and Sam came home, and Dean didn't say anything to him about what he'd found. Turned out, Dean didn't need to bring it up, because while they were seated at the wobbly formica table, finishing their wimpy dinner of Kraft mac n' cheese, Sam cleared his throat and said, "Dean?"
"Yeah," Dean answered through a half-chewed bite of cardboardy noodles. He turned over the folded page of newspaper classifieds he was reading.
"I have something to tell you."
Dean's heart flipped in his chest as his eyes flicked up to his brother. Sam was twisting the collar of his t-shirt and chewing on his lip like he always did when he was afraid something he was about to say would upset Dean.
Nodding, Dean gulped, swallowing his bite. "What?"
Sam released his lip from his teeth. "I, uh...." He paused, like he was trying to figure out the right way to say it. There really wasn't any right way to say it, because Dean already knew what was coming, and had time to prepare his reaction. "You know how I like school so much?"
"Yeah, you're a fuckin' nerd." Dean chuckled, trying not to let on that he knew anything. "What about it?"
"I've been thinking," Sam continued, not matching Dean's lightheartedness. "I think I'd like to go to college."
There it was. "What for?" Dean asked perhaps a little too quickly. "Not like you're ever gonna do anything with a degree. Just a fancy piece of paper." That was a bit of a low blow, considering Dean knew how much Sam hated hunting. But he was feeling petty.
Sam took a deep, quiet breath. "I could."
Dean snorted. "Like what, Sam? I don't think I've ever met a hunter who even graduated from high school."
"Have you ever asked? Besides, I'm going to graduate." Sam lifted his chin proudly. Dean felt the anger he was trying to suppress surge up in jealousy. Dean hadn't graduated high school properly, that's why he was working on getting a GED. Just so he could get jobs, anyway; if it was up to him he wouldn't try at all. He hadn't even realized Sam was going to graduate.
"Where do you wanna go? How will you even pay for it?" Dean asked, a lot more bitterly than he meant to. Sam flinched a little at Dean's change in tone.
"I got into Stanford," Sam admitted quietly. "They gave me a lot of scholarship money." He cast his eyes down and began picking at a chip in the tabletop.
That Dean hadn't known. "You already applied? You didn't even tell me." His voice raised in volume with the mix of emotions rising in his chest. "When the hell did you do that?"
"I don't have to tell you everything I do, Dean." Sam looked back up and scowled, finger digging into the chip he was making worse.
"You do when it's this big!" Dean was practically shouting now. "Hell, Sammy, this affects my whole life. Our whole operation! I can't do this shit without you, I can't deal with Dad alone! You know that."
"Nobody's stopping you from leaving him, either!" Sam snapped.
"I'm his blood! I owe him that much," Dean bit back. "When, Sam. When did you do it?"
"Last year. My teachers in Buffalo were helping me with college stuff."
"You've been hiding this shit from me for a year?" Dean rose from his chair angrily, picking up the remainder of his dinner and chucking it in the trash like a baseball.
Sam got up as well, holding out his hands like he wanted to keep Dean at bay. "Yeah, cuz I knew you would react like this! You're lucky I told you at all! I almost left without saying a damn thing!"
"Why would you leave at all?" A lump was growing in Dean's throat, tightening and making it hard to breathe. Tears pricked at his eyes. "Do you hate us that much?" His voice broke.
Sam sighed. "No, it has nothing to do with you, Dean. I just want to get an education. And I really cannot stay with Dad a second longer."
"You can get an education here. You never leave the damn library, just learn stuff on your own!" Dean couldn't really debate the whole Dad point, because he understood. Sam and Dad were constantly at each other's throats, and Dad wasn't exactly a peach any other time.
"I can't learn everything on my own! It'll be way too hard," Sam tried to explain, approaching his brother cautiously. "Besides," he swallowed, "I want to be a lawyer. You gotta go to school for that."
"A lawyer?" Dean asked hoarsely. "Why the fuck-"
"It's the closest I can get to doing what we do without actually doing it, okay?" Sam said exasperatedly. "I could help put human monsters in jail. I want to do good."
"You are doing good! Let normal people take care of humans!"
"I want to be fucking normal, Dean!"
Dean pressed his lips together in a tight line. "So that's why you're leaving me."
He should have known. He heard his brother pray sometimes after they'd spent the night together. Heard him muttering his repentance before fucking Dean six ways from Sunday. Dean was the abomination, the temptation that kept Sam not normal.
"Dean, that's not-" Sam tried, but Dean wasn't going to stick around to hear it. He stormed past Sam, tears finally running down his face, grabbed his leather jacket off the bed and ran out the front door. Once outside, he swung the jacket over his shoulders and reached inside the pocket for his smokes and lighter. Dad pulled up in the Impala just as Dean lit his cigarette and wiped his face of evidence he'd been crying.
Dad definitely still noticed Dean was crying, since he couldn't stop more tears from falling. As he rounded the hood of the car, Dean jabbed his thumb behind him in the general direction of the hotel room. "Kid's home." John just nodded and went inside. Soon, the raised voices of his father and brother rang out into the night air.
"You don't need to know everything, goddammit Sam!"
"Well excuse me for thinking I could maybe have a life and career outside your stupid revenge arc!"
"You watch your mouth, that's your mother you're talking about!"
"I didn't even say her fucking name!"
Dean wiped another round of tears and took a long drag of his cigarette as he pushed himself away from the wall and walked out into the night, the dull sounds of fists hitting flesh echoing behind him.
Sam left the next morning without sparing so much as a look or a word to Dean, striped hoodie drawn up tight around his face, duffel slung over his shoulder in a fist. From his bed, in the half-light of dawn, Dean could see the bruises on Sam's face that he was undoubtedly trying to hide. A tuft of hair stuck out from the hood above his forehead. His pretty lips were puffy and the bottom one was split, like it had been smashed against his teeth. Knowing Dad, it had.
Even like that, even leaving, Dean still thought he was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on.