The Third Man

by Lee Stone

SLASH. Sam/Dean. The gloves come off when Sam and Dean compete for a score, with interesting results.

The third man in the ring makes boxing possible. [Joyce Carol Oates]

It's happened half a dozen times en route to Tempe, and it'll happen half a dozen more on the leg South unless Sam puts his foot down. So when the perky-titted redhead slips off to the john, Sam slams his shot and tells Dean, "I am putting my foot down."

"I'll brace myself for the aftershocks," Dean says. "Who peed in your appletini?"

"This is tequila and you're an asshole," Sam says, "asshole. Think I haven't noticed? You are deliberately cockblocking me, dude. Again!"

"Who, me?" Dean's eyebrows shoot up and he can barely smother the grin as he tips back a finger of Black Label. "Ah, that wasn't cockblocking, little brother. Cockblocking's when I tell 'em about the time you wiped your ass with poison oak and spent the summer jacking off with calamine instead of Vaseline-"

"I was fourteen, jerk!"

"-Or how about that little present you got from, what was her name...? Melanie?"

Sam's glaring so hard his eyes feel crossed, but the tequila may be a factor there. "You swore you wouldn't bring her up again."

"Melanieeee," Dean says, low and insinuating. "Melanie from Michigan! Man, I haven't seen that many crabs since we iced the ghoul stalking Baltimore Harbor."

"Damn it, Dean!" Sam socks him hard in the shoulder, but Dean just grins wider, starts to laugh.

"First time I ever had to salt and burn a set of sheets!" says Dean, stool teetering and peanut shells scattering as Sam lunges over the little round table at him. "Whoa, Sammy, I got a beverage here-"

Sam knots his fist into the neckline of Dean's henley. "Seriously, what the hell?" he hisses. "Every girl I've tried to talk up for the last three weeks, you're all over. Crashing our tables, hijacking conversations. I buy a shot, you buy her two. I tell a joke, you're suddenly a one-man freaking stand up routine. And what's with your creepy sex-eyes-making all the time?"

Dean doesn't back down and his smile curls at the corners, turns a little cruel. "Does the trick, though, doesn't it."

"Uh, yeah," Sam says. The sex-eyes do their trick a little too well, as Sam has chewed glass watching his last four conquests slink off with Dean into back rooms (or back alleys, or the backseat of the car). "It works great, Dean. Congratulations. You're the Chick Whisperer. Now why don't you go find your own girl to score with and let me run my game, pathetic and inferior as you may find it? Because in case you haven't noticed, I'm getting a little pent up over here. I mean, goddamn, man," he finishes, a little bitterly, "I remember a time when you couldn't hook me up fast enough."

Dean sinks back down, give his whiskey a swirl. When he looks up again his expression is as challenging, as openly aggressive as Sam's ever seen. "Guess it's like fries," he says, casual. "I could order my own. But why bother when the ones off your plate taste so damn good?"

"Look, maybe you don't get it. I need to get laid-"

"Maybe you don't get it."

Sam's mouth opens, then closes. A pinball machine fires into the silence. "Dean. Is there something you want to say to me?" he manages after a minute.

"Nah, Sam," Dean says. "I'm not in the mood to talk."

They're still staring at each other when the redhead slides back onto her stool and chirps, "Miss me?"

"Yeah," they both snap. Sam grinds his teeth and shoots Dean his best You're-going-down-asshole glare. Dean flashes back his patented Oh-it's-on grin, dials the wattage up to a thousand as he leans in to the girl. "So, Carrie-"

"Carly," she says. Her own smile falters for a second and Sam gives an internal motherfuck. Carrie, Sam's ass. He's watched Dean play a hundred women this way, knows that the more indifferent-bordering-on-rude he comes across, the harder his marks seem compelled to win his attention. Sure enough, her knees tilt towards Dean under the table and she's looking sideways at him, turning ever so slightly pink.

"Carly, yeah." Dean lifts his drink. "You go to BYU?"

"Mm-hm," she says, tugging at the hem of her dark blue tube dress. "For, um, Internet and New Media?"

Dean smiles wider and Sam catalogues potential elements of that smile, which may include (but are not necessarily limited to) WEBCAM GIRLS and MORMON PLURAL SEX. He shudders. "Nice," Dean says. "My buddy Sam here loves him some internet. Just this morning I found a bookmark on his laptop for this really fun inflatable-"

"Come on, Dean," Sam cuts in. His foot connects with Dean's shin under the table. "Carly doesn't want to talk about school tonight, it's Thirsty Thursday!" His voice is a hair too sharp, too tightly wound. His smile feels stapled on. Dean eyes him over the rim of his glass.

But Carly lays a hand on his forearm. "Oh I don't mind," she says, and-hold up, was that a little wink she just tipped him? "I love my major, I could go on about it for hours. What do you think about this WikiLeaks situation?"

Aha. "Well..." Sam takes a breath, tilts his head. "I'd say Assange has a totally valid argument. The legality of the leaks is secondary to the free flow of information, which is really what regulates the law itself and makes democracy possible. Not to mention the role of the site in undermining these dictatorships in China and South Africa. And-well, but Dean actually made a really interesting point about that yesterday. What was it you said again, Dean...?"

Carly and Sam turn to look at Dean, both beaming. Sam mouths Yahtzee! at him.

"Speaking of wicked leaks," Dean says, lazy. He pops off his stool and stretches his arms behind his head, managing to strain the fabric of his shirt across his chest while exposing the barest flash of abs rippling above his waistband. The sweaty hand gripping Sam's drink clenches. "I'ma hit the head and pick us up another round. Then we are changing the subject, kids, 'cause Sam was a hundred percent right about talking shop tonight. If I hear one more word about grades or news I might just have to shoot myself. Darlin'?" He looks her right in the eye, lowers his lashes and catches his lower lip between his teeth for a second. "How you feel about Buttery Nipples?"

Carly says, "Hh. Uhh..."

"Die," Sam says. The other two look over and he clears his throat. "I said, I'm fine."

Dean smirks at him and saunters off in the direction of the bathroom. Sam and Carly trade smiles. The silence is just starting to feel awkward when she asks, "So, you and Dean know each other pretty well, huh?"

Sam shrugs. "We grew up together. Gotten each other out of some scrapes. You could say we're close."

"Yeah, you guys seem real tight." She looks at him thoughtfully. "Like you've shared a lot."

"We've, uh...we've shared tents," he says. "Motel rooms. The occasional ammo," he adds on impulse, just to watch her eyebrows go up. When they do, he smiles and leans in. "We hunt."

Carly's not smiling back, weirdly. "You hunt," she repeats.

"Yeah."

"And you-share."

Sam shrugs.

"Bullets, motel rooms." She slips the stirrer from her glass, plants it between her teeth without breaking eye contact. Her fingers are suddenly on his thigh beneath the table. "Girls?"

A thread of heat is shooting up Sam's spine, flushing his neck and stippling him with sweat. Her voice seems to be coming from far away. "What?"

Now she's smiling. "Sam. You're smart, you know what I mean. Do you guys party? Together...?"

When she says together, a kind of pornographic PowerPoint display fires up behind Sam's eyes. Each image is filthier than the last: Sam, Dean, and this girl folding silently into the bar's grimy unisex. Sam peeling the girl's panties down her damp thighs while Dean kisses her. Dean fucking her, her body suspended between them, together, bouncing her up and down Sam's chest as Sam fondles her tits from behind. Dean going down, working his tongue into the slippery-hot muscles of her cunt, Sam grinding, coming against the small of his brother's back when the girl spasms on his mouth. Dean licking-

Carly clears her throat. The slideshow snuffs out and Sam is left facing her, cheeks still burning with what feels like half-shellshock, half-malaria. Behind her, he catches a glimpse of Dean winding his way back along the bar. Sam realizes he has about 10 seconds to decide where this night will end.

"We've never-" He's finding it hard to talk, confused and overheated like this. "We don't do that."

"Really?" She smiles slowly, brown eyes narrow like she wants to call him on a lie. "That's a damn shame, sexy boys like you. C'mon, Sam, it's so obvious you want this, I can practically smell it. The three of us could have a real good-"

"What am I doing," Sam whispers, desperate to stop the room spinning. His head falls back briefly and he squeezes his eyes shut on a negative image of Dean flashing his stomach again, the girl leaning forward to lathe his navel with her tongue, lips working the hard belly, his pale skin tightening with heavy breath as she sucks lower...

"You can watch," she breathes in his ear. "While he does me, you can-"

"No," Sam says.

"Fine," she tells him, cool now. Already moving on. "Whatever. Your loss." When Dean sidles back up to the table she faces him fully, her own sex-eyes on full blast and her fingers tangling with his as he hands her a shot. Dean registers her touch, the eagerness in her eyes, and his smile is bright and nasty as he turns to Sam.

"Mas tequila, Señor Bitchface," Dean murmurs, plunking a second shot down. "Look like you need it."

Sam looks up in time to watch Dean suck lime from the crook of his hand. He sees the tip of Dean's tongue peek out, the barest hint of pink lapping salt and juice from his thumb, then from his wrist. And this is the moment when something shorts in Sam's brain, the pop! audible like a light bulb burning out. His eyes narrow, his shoulders drop, and his last discernible thought for some time will be: You'll fucking well see what I need.

"Looks like," Sam agrees. He takes the shot and throws it back, eyes locked on Dean still, then sets the glass down carefully. In the same, seamless motion he pulls his hoodie over his head and drops it to the floor. Sweat has plastered his tee-shirt to his neckline, the sides of his ribs, the muscles bulging sleekly in his sleeves. He crosses his arms, leans back on the stool.

Dean's smile flickers and he shoots a glance at Carly, who hasn't missed a moment of this display.

"Soooo. Anyways," she says, head snapping back to Dean. "What did you say this was? A Buttery Nipple?" She trails a coral-painted fingernail down his sleeve. "Schnapps makes me kinda crazy."

"Yeah?" Dean leans in close, one arm crooked on the table, the other lying lightly across her knee. "Crazy how? Warm crazy...?"

"Oh yeah," she sighs. "Very warm. All over. And kinda...loose and floaty. In fact-" she lays a finger on his lip. "I'm not sure I'll trust myself to drive after drinking this. You may need to take me back to your place."

"Our car is our place," Sam says. His voice is flat, pitched low in a new way. They both turn to look at him. "We practically live in it."

"So?" the girl says, sour.

"So, Carly, you asked what Dean and I share, and that's another thing. Our car."

"Okay, Sam. We got it," Dean says.

"And you know," Sam continues, leaning into her in a mirror of Dean's posture, "there's not a lot of room in the backseat right now, between the ammo and the werewolf carcass."

Dean takes a very long pull on his drink.

Carly's nose wrinkles. "Is this a joke? What are you-"

"Oh, don't worry!" Sam adds, hasty. "A little Goo Gone will get the upholstery cherry in no time. And of course the corpse'll be ash by dawn, that goes without saying. Just your standard salt-and-burn. Nine times out of ten we'd've popped the corpse in the trunk, but it's kinda full at the moment. You know, with our new crossbows and throwing knives and all." He rolls his eyes. "We would have torched it earlier, but there wasn't time for a shower before Happy Hour and Dean here says that burning fur stench is a real buzzkill. What do you think?"

Sam leans in closer still, so close his nose brushes her cheek. She jerks back, her expression confused and a little alarmed.

"Sam-" There's a pleading note in Dean's voice.

"So where I'm going with all this, Carly," Sam cuts him off with a small sigh, "the point I'm trying to make, is that you seem like a peach of a girl. And I'm sure Dean would have enjoyed you. But even if there were room in Dean's backseat, or in Dean's twin bed at the lovely Red Sandy Motor Lodge, this whole hunting-killing-salting-burning-cleanup schedule of ours is off the hook. It's just a constant headache, Carly. And with so many civilian lives at stake...well, I'm afraid it doesn't afford a lot of time for things like cocktails at Happy Hour. Or mingling. Or sharing." He noses at her cheek again, then smiles into the shell of her ear. "Or fucking."

The girl lets out a squeak.

"Yeah." Sam straightens up, and all at once there's nothing flirtatious in his face. "So maybe we'd better just call it an evening. Dean?" He raises an eyebrow.

Carly turns to gape at Dean, who raises his palms in a "well-shucks-he's-got-me-there" gesture. The redhead slides off the stool and backs away slowly. Her gaze volleys between the two and she looks half-scared, half-intrigued as she informs them, "You people are authentic freaks." She starts to go, then turns back abruptly. "But, um. If that schedule ever, you know, opens up-"

"BYE NOW," Sam says.

She vanishes into the crowd. Sam drinks the Buttery Nipple.

There's a long silence. Sam's head is lowered, his legs skewed at a reckless obtuse angle.

"Okay," Dean says. He raises his hands cautiously. "Okay, point taken, Sammy. Tit for tat. Let's not get-"

"She wanted to fuck us both," Sam tells him, tight. "Together. Tonight. Would you have done that?"

"Yeah," Dean says after a moment. His voice is small. "I would. If...if you wanted to, I would. Do you-?"

"Dean!" Sam's head snaps up. "Shut up." Or that's what Sam means to say. What he hears actually coming out of his mouth is "Dean, stand up."

Dean stands. Sam advances, backing him up a few steps before stalking past. "Bathroom," he bites out as he goes. "Now."

It's a dim single-stall at the end of a dim wood-paneled corridor. The redneck anthems twanging out of the juke seem muffled, miles away, and when Sam slides the bolt on the door it ratchets like a gunshot in the semisilence. He looks over his shoulder.

Dean is by the sink, arms strutted tense on porcelain. His eyes are bright in the low light and they flash like an animal's in headlights when he starts to say something like, "About fuckin' time-"

But he never finishes his thought because Sam's already on him. One hand tangles in Dean's hair, throwing him long enough for Sam to swing him around and sweep his feet out from under him. It's that fast-one second he's upright, the next he's on his back with the wind slammed from his lungs. Sam lays him out hard, straddles his chest and pins Dean's arms to his side with his knees.

"Was it fun? You love it?" Sam's saying, hands already dropped to pop his own button-fly. His hands are shaking slightly so it takes him a minute. "Watching me walk around half-hard, weeks on end, you screwing like a slut just to get me like this? You love doing it to me, Dean, come on, tell me how much you fuckin' love it-you-oh, oh fuck-"

He's losing words, falling forward, pants at his thighs and cock shoving past Dean's open lips. Then the mouth tightens and Sam's sliding in and out of that incredible suctioning heat, struggling to spread his legs, to scrabble for purchase on the damp penny-tile, hips speeding his strokes. He thrusts deep and smooth, groans loud in time with the pistoning fucks into Dean's throat. Dean has wormed his hands free and is kneading at Sam's bare ass with the heels of his hands as he sucks harder, loosens his throat, works his tongue. It's all Sam wants, as much as he can stand, using Dean like this, Dean letting him-

"Gonna come so hard," he whines, pumping faster, head knocked back. "You're gonna take it, Dean, gonna fuckin' take it all-"

Dean's hand moves up, closes on Sam's forearm. Sam has that one second to feel suddenly, irrationally afraid of the size of it. Then he's got something else to feel: His hips stutter, jerking once, twice more, when Dean pushes him up an inch or so and swallows, the muscles rippling around Sam's dick as it starts its hard spurting. And it is hard, brutal and absolutely huge, bliss beyond anything he can remember feeling, unspooling and rolling up through him in pulverizing wave after wave. His hips still and then move again, arms buckling so that he sprawls half on the tile and half on Dean's head where his dick is still twitching, unloading into the warm wet hollow of his brother's mouth.

A few more moments of this, then they're sprawled on their sides, facing each other and panting hard. "Oh fuckin'-a," Dean says, faint, voice hoarse to breaking. He buries his face in the crook of his arm, screws his eyes shut on a tiny moan. It's enough to wake Sam up. He stands, jerks his pants and shorts up without bothering to fasten himself, and hoists Dean off the floor. He leans into Sam briefly, his whole body slack except for the line of his cock against Sam's thigh like a brand. Dean grinds there once, then again, his sweaty head lolling forward onto Sam's shoulder. His mouth is open on Sam's neck. "Fuck, Sam," he whimpers, and Sam hears that he's close to shooting in his pants.

In a flash Sam peels him off, spins him back over to the sink. Dean grips its rim like it's all that's holding him up, which may actually be true; then Sam's hand is working his zipper and sliding down his stomach, down into the thatch of hair beneath the waist of his briefs, down and over the erection pulsing there. He withdraws long enough to make Dean whimper, which makes Sam smile at their reflection in the mirror. "So fuckin' sweet," Sam murmurs into his ear, and Dean's apparently too far gone to ask whether Sam means revenge or getting laid. They're the same in any case, Sam thinks, slapping at the soap dispenser on the wall. When he shoves his hand back down Dean's pants, it's dripping pink and slippery-good.

Sam hooks Dean's leather belt, canting his hips back with one hand as he jerks him with the other. Dean thrusts and slides, fucking Sam's fist in rougher strokes than Sam used to fuck his throat. His head is hanging forward, tossing lightly like a horse's. "Shit," Dean chokes, on the verge after maybe ten seconds of this treatment. "Oh shit, yeah-yeah, do it-fuckin' do it-nn! Ah!" As he orgasms, jets of spunk a little warmer than the soap on Sam's palm, he grinds his ass into Sam's groin where Sam is already firm, ready to go again. Sam strokes his thigh as he shudders, gentling him through it.

When it's over Sam sighs, curls forward a little, covering Dean as they stand. "Ah Dean," he says. "Man, how do you make me so crazy."

"Me and butterscotch Schnapps," Dean says, soft.

His head's still down but Sam can hear the smile in his voice. He wants to tell Dean to look up, to watch them pieced together in the calm dark. Show him what they share. Sam knows Dean never will, though, can't stand a long square look in the mirror. It's all right. For five quiet minutes it'll be all right, and Sam will look for both of them.