Sam was such a cryptic bitch and Dean was kinda shit at handling things. Sam/Dean.

Word count: 8,489

Love and Other Things That Mess People Up

Sam and Dean had been apart for three weeks now.

Sam was fucking pissed, as usual, sniped mouth and slit eyes as he took off in a huff of clanking weapons and shouldered bags. Dean was pissed too, but not like Sam was, never like Sam.

In the days tacking up to The Incident Sam had been touchy, rough around the edges and wound up tighter and tighter, monosyllabic and blunt and tired all the time. Dark bruises bit at his eyes all the time now. He'd nearly broken Dean's wrist that one instant Dean had walked up behind him, laid a hand on his back and Sam had flipped out, running on instincts and exposed nerves.

He had been turned too far or some such shit and Dean guessed he was to blame for that, as he was most things, but Sammy sure did know how to throw a fiery, unreasonable fit and make the other person feel like crap for it.

Sam seemed to have a special talent for being mad, as though he was born to be this concentrated ball of bewildering anger, defiant little bitch and stubborn in the best of situations. Dean just didn't get it. An order was an order, so follow it. Evil things were evil, so kill them. Humans were humans, so save as many as you could.

It was kinda that simple. Except for when Sam didn't think so.

So when they tracked down those vamps that were racking up the victim count like nobody's business, Dean wasn't shy to admit that he had death – and a lot of it – on his mind. Bastards were killing not only to feed, but just for fun. They had to go. It was common sense. Sam needed to see that.

And, like, there was that one crying girl, kinda young and had that look that suggested she'd never fed before, not from a real live human anyway (blood baggies – gag – littered the floor around her), so freaking what. and Dean had been apart for three weeks now. They're killing, Sammy. She's gonna kill too. We gotta take her out.

She begged, though, and Dean swallowed a sigh and clenched his machete-bereft hand because if Sam is a goddamn sucker for anything, it's begging. She insisted, "I haven't killed, I don't want to kill, I didn't ask to be made into this monster, please, please let me go."

Again, Dean isn't shy to admit – still death on his mind. Specifically, hers.

They'd cleared out the rest of the vamps as far as Dean could see, decapitated heads lying at their feet and Sam was giving him this look, compressed and imploring and inching its way toward that puppy shit he pulled when they were playing good-cop bad-cop. He pulled his mouth tight, said through his teeth without really looking at his brother, "Dean, please."

Sam never looked directly at Dean anymore, and Dean figured he was to blame for that as well.

Dean turned away, uncompromisingly sliced through the girl's neck in one smooth motion as she was in the middle of another please, like a hot knife through butter. Her head hit the floor without a bounce. Dean wiped the congealed blood off on his jacket sleeve, disgusting habit that his clean-freak self had never quite reconciled, and sighed with a voice that hinted at an apology, "Sammy."

When Dean turned back around and braced himself for the moral abuse ("innocent, Dean, blah blah higher moral ground than you, blah blah, I'm mildly pretentious in every manner," etc.), Sam was gone from the barn. It was gonna be like that, then.

But when Dean emerged into the day (because fuck attacking a horde of vampires at night), Sam was still gone. And so was the Impala.

"Son of a bitch."

So Dean walked to their motel, if you can believe it, in the omnipresent heat that was just bad enough to be uncomfortable with a jacket on, but didn't constitute taking his jacket off. Stranded at a fucking massacre scene and Dean still had the Impala keys, which meant Sam had ripped open Dean's baby in order to hot wire her engine, gun outta there before Dean had even noticed. Too bust with pity or appeasement or something equally stupid that Dean could never stop himself from doing when Sam was concerned.

Dean's chest burred, anger and disbelief at that goddamn little brother of his condensing the area in his lungs.

Son of a bitch.

When Dean finally made it back to the goddamn motel, Sam was packing his shit. He was flurrying around, snarling under his breath and yanking at his stupid hair and shoving clothes into a grey duffel bag. Dean slammed the door and watched him and Sam didn't react.

Dean didn't let himself panic at the sight of his and Sam's stuff separated: Sam was just getting organized in his surly state, all motivated and what not. They'd been living out of the same two bags of clothes and weapons for a couple weeks now, stealing each other's shirts and using the same toothbrush and crap. Dean was obviously sick of it, so Sam cleaning up was welcomed.

"What the fuck," Dean said first off, thinking it was only appropriate. He crossed his arms over his chest. "Sam, you, you. Fucking hijacked my baby. That's. Like. That's a number one offence, Sam."

Sam, the little bitch, ignored him. He'd accumulated his weapons into a pile on the bed and was now thrusting them unceremoniously into a second bag, had separated his various cell-phones from Dean's and was tossing them in too.

That word stuck in Dean's mind for a moment. Separated.

Then he rubbed a hand over his face and stepped in front of Sam, grabbing his arm. Melodramatic was Sam's middle name.

"What are you, deaf? You stole the-"

"You slaughtered an innocent girl!"

Sam snarled it in Dean's face.

Dean didn't think he had ever seen quite that expression from Sam, such vehement… loathing. It was shockingly, blindingly real, no other way to describe it and covered with a hard sheen of panicked desperation. Sam was shaking with anger, Dean realised, brimming with it and about to overload. He blinked slowly like a fool and Sam tore his arm from Dean's grip, gave him a shove that sent him back a few feet.

That messed with Dean a little. Bitch wasn't supposed to shove his elders around like that. He snapped back like rubber.

"The fuck, Sam? She was a monster!"

"She hadn't ever killed anyone," Sam spat, turning away to heave his bags onto his shoulders. "That was so, so obvious that if you'd paused for one freaking moment and thought you'd have seen it. You. You never see anything, Dean."

Dean angled himself between his brother and the door by instinct, as reflexive as breathing, didn't think about Sam's belongings all packed up and ready to go too much because a man could drive himself to the bottom of the bottle with those kinds of thoughts. He kept on his line of argument because Sam was sounding dangerously close to digressing and Dean was never good at that.

"She would have killed if we let her go!"

"Oh, we, that's cute. Freaking. We'll never know that, will we Dean, because you murdered her." Sam slammed around a little more, stormed forward for the door until their chests were a hand's width apart, bared his teeth in the sunlight slashed over his face. "Move," he said, and Dean jerked hard at Sam's ragged voice, as though he had been slapped.

"Where the hell are you going, Sammy?"

"I can't, Dean. Can't fuckin' be around this. Around. Around you, with you just fucking killing people like it's nothing, getting yourself in these, these situations. Grey areas," Sam said. "Grey areas exist and you pretend they don't and I. I. Jus' get the fuck outta my way."

Dean was appalled, "You don't fuckin' talk to me like that, Sammy-" and then Sam punched him in the face, hard, so he shut up pretty quick.

Sam stepped back almost instantly, taking short harsh breaths and staring at Dean like he'd never seen him before, like he'd be happy to never see him again, and Dean was acutely aware of the collapsing in his chest. He couldn't remember what he'd felt like that morning, when they'd grinned only a tiny bit manically and wrestled on the floor; Dean felt like he'd never be okay again. What were they fighting about again?

Sam. Fucking Sam, he was such a fucking brat with his goddamn authority-figures complex and the way anything with big doe eyes and a trembling voice gave him a migraine and double adrenaline shot set to Defy Older Brother. Goddamn it.

Dean touched his lip and then drew his hand back, found blood smeared thin and watery red over his fingertips. He looked at Sam, who looked like he'd just hung himself with his allotted length of rope and enjoyed it.

"I'm," Sam said, apparently lost, which was just freaking rich. "That was, just. Shit. Dean." His voice strained, flash expression of a child seeing his home burn down; he breathed out roughly, set his shoulders and straightened up and Dean knew that stance, the defensive position he'd take up whenever he was getting ready to butt heads with John and like a fucking light had been switched on, Dean was livid.

He lunged forward and got his hands in Sammy's shirt, brought his head forward sharp and quick and let out a sneering laugh when it came into contact with Sam's nose. He roughed Sam up, slammed at his chest and chipped their ankles together and knocked his bones until they rattled and crunched underneath his hands before tossing Sam away. Toward the door this time.

Toward? Why toward? Dean didn't think he meant that all of a sudden.

"Dean," Sam said, his mouth bright red and dripping and curled, the name being enough said in the dead air. Still so fucking mad. Sam's anger was living, unending ether. It fed Dean's own, because that was justice enough in this sick world.

"What the fuck, Sam," Dean said for the third time, "what the fuck."

"You. You're fuckin', you're so fucked up, Dean." Sam stared, vibrating like he wanted to run away from his own skin, rubbed hard at his mouth while fumbling for the doorknob with his other hand.

Were they still making sense? Dean felt that surely the punchline was nearing, the silver lining or bright side or some bullshit, because Sam was mad but Sam was always mad. It was good for the hunt and they both knew that.

Sam was still leaving. But- they fought all the time: Dean had always been fucked up, so what. They'd established this. Sam. Sam.

Dean suddenly didn't trust his own body.

"So bent on killing, killing everything." Sam's voice wasn't shaking so much as shaken, as though someone had grabbed a hold of it and throttled it for all its worth. "Wouldn't think twice about ganking me of I got changed, I'd be too damaged, too in the way. Collateral. Collateral damage and I-I can't deal with that, Dean. Can't deal with you."

And that sobered Dean up as best as anything could.

"Sam," he said, awash in bright new terror because Sam was leaving, but Sam was out the door and Jesus Dean's head hurt, hands aching and mouth going to be fleshy and full tomorrow, and Sam was fucking gone. There was the sprinkling shattered glass of a car being broken into and a slamming door, guttering engine, squeal of tires and Dean bolted out the door just in time to see Sam tailing it from the car park in some stranger's car. The air stunk of burnt rubber.

Gone. It had been three weeks since.

For week one, Dean slept.

Yes, he could have been out searching for the brat and god, did he know that but Dean was tired, so tired, drained empty and hollow and swimming (drowning) in a Sam-less sea, so yeah, he slept. Being unconscious for nineteen hours straight was a lot easier than the movies made out.

When he was awake, he laughed. Here's how he broke it down to himself:

Sam was gone: fact. Dean didn't have to look after anyone anymore: fact. Dean felt unequivocally, astonishingly purposeless but also like a monkey had been torn off his hunched back: fact.

It kinda seemed surreal, that suddenly Dean wasn't being hunted (for someone who craved normalcy with such a vengeance, Sam brought a lot of attention to himself), wasn't being bitched at, wasn't watching after the world's most angst-ridden asshole. He felt lower than flea bitten rats, lower than demons and angels combined each time he laughed, but he kept at it until the ache was background noise.

For week two, Dean womanized. Or rather, he tried.

He could get the women, all right, but he found his game was off… which was mortifying on more levels than one but mostly he figured his reaction was because Sam could be dying at the exact moment Dean was getting his rocks off, which was also messed up in several ways. Two of which being Dean not protecting Sam, and Sam popping into Dean's head when he had a gorgeous drunk woman warm and on top of him.

Which, you know. Just happened because Dean was missing his brother.

For week three, and he'd kill if he ever admitted this to someone, Dean moped.

It was the whole ordeal: drinking too much (not that Dean already had a defined line on his limits there), not going outside enough, not reading, no TV, no socialising. He didn't look for hunts. He didn't call Bobby, didn't talk to anyone and began sleeping a lot again. He sent Cas away with the firm message that seeking out and telling Sam anything about Dean was strictly prohibited, and also Dean didn't want any visitors. Like, ever.

He was kinda just miserable. Dean would wake up in a ratty motel bed and lie there, remember that one punch with crystallized clarity and all the other punches they'd given each other too, and then he'd empty a whiskey bottle and burrow back down into the crappy blanket.

He dreamt too much, too, of Sam twisting out of his grasp and screaming at him, covered in blood and Dean could never, ever get a hand on him.

He was in a bad way.

It was purely by coincidence that Dean found himself in the same bar as Sam three weeks later.

His time away from his brother, in short, had been nightmarish. As was covered he initially whooped in joy, Sam was fuckin' gone and he didn't have to watch his kid brother twenty-four seven, didn't shove off his own fatigue in order to make sure Sammy got a few hours, didn't have to deal with his surly menstrual cycle-esque shit. Could maybe have some peace of mind as he found cases and took out monsters and exorcised demons.

Except suddenly it was evident that if having Sam in his life all the time was a storm, then having him out was a hurricane.

All those little check-ups that used to piss Dean off, well, now not only was his every instinct rendered useless, but they also didn't check anything. He couldn't check on Sam, couldn't put his mind at ease with Sam's wellbeing, because, obviously, Dean was only good to the extent of Sammy being good.

Which was why Sam's last words to Dean were just absurd. Dean, kill him? Dean, not care about him? It was an unfathomable prospect, made Dean tingly with rage all over again because how dare that little college boy accuse him of not being a sentimentalist, of not caring about Sam.

Dean's whole life had been lived as an extension of making sure Sam lived. That was it. That was it. And if the bitch wanted to take off and get himself killed… well, Dean wouldn't stand for it, but he had a few shining words in mind about the whole ordeal.

Anyway, Wendigo, northern Tennessee. Dean had tracked the bastard and its grizzly track record of young campers to a collection of unappealing possible cave-ish sites. He then decided to call it a night, find a bar, down a few (or many) drinks and maybe find a pretty lady to look at while he was at it.

Instead he found Sam.

Dean's gonna be honest (he's a fairly honest guy): he just watched his brother for a moment. FBI suit and everything, loose shoulders, sitting alone and that was a terrible wash of nostalgia but otherwise he looked well, looked healthy enough and okay, not like any of the hellish things Dean's mind had conjured.

Sam's back was to Dean but that was okay too, because Dean was thinking maybe he'd slip away and that would be equally okay, because Sam had been real mad. Real frigging mad, so it would be clever to just leave. Sam would get the Wendigo and they would stay apart and Dean would shoot himself in the kneecap for fun, but it would be okay.

As Dean was thinking this, his body apparently cut off all monitoring of his brain's action (which you know, wasn't all that surprising. The trust between body and mind for Dean was yet to be built back up since he'd accidentally kicked out his little brother).

Instead he stood, walked over to Sam, hovered behind him for a heavy moment because Jesus he was unsure, since when had he been so unsure about his baby brother? But then Sam turned around, instinct or something, and the way his jaw fell slack at the sight of Dean was just astonishing, what it did to Dean's stomach, like a blow in the best possible way.

Sam's hair had grown in around his cheeks, his chin was sharp and rough with five o'clock shadow, his eyes were haunted.

"Dean," Sam breathed.

Dean moved to hug him, thump his shoulder, something to make sure he was solid and real and not one of the hallucinations Dean had been having, but Sam punched him right there and then and stormed out of the bar without saying anything more.

It was, in a word, rude. Dean was suitably shocked and hurried after him with his lip split and bleeding, mumbled apologies to the waitresses and drunken audience.

A small, barbed irritation spiked in Dean's stomach. Dripping blood and left to scamper after his big little brother, like an abused goddamn dog or something. Sam knew how to wind Dean up, all right.

And Sam was still mad. Of course Sam was still mad, no one was as good at holding grudges as Sam. Just fucking perfect.

"We need to talk, Sammy," Dean said as he pursued the silhouette of his little brother, down a back ally and to where his (probably stolen) car was parked. Sam laughed, bitter, put his hands on the roof of his car as if to steady himself.

"You need to fuck off," he said without pretence, without looking up. "I don't wanna be around you."

Dean swallowed anger, hurt, quivering, his mouth aching sharp and hard. "I don't want to do that."

"I don't care. Move or I'm going to run you over."

"You wouldn't."

Sam's mouth twitched, face angled down and mean-looking and dashed with shadows in the evening. Dean found he could never see Sam properly anymore. "Watch me."

And that was followed with Sam hauling open his car door, climbing in and suddenly the headlights were flaring and engine revving too much to be a bluff, and if Dean ran away from his psychotic little brother that night then it was purely because of the alcohol he'd ingested, no other reason. He'd swear to it.

So Dean went and found his own car, decided two could play at this motherfucking game and he tracked Sammy down easy enough to the grubby motel he was staying in, two shakes out of town and fairly inconspicuous. He was, admittedly, half tempted to hack at it tomorrow, give Sam some time and space to cool off and maybe let Dean sober up but Dean was already itching to see Sam's face again, get his hands on his brother and tug him around a little and feel Sam's pulse under his palms, force of habit. He was like an addict (literally itchy, like a literal addict. It was bad).

No, he was going to do it tonight. What was it, midnight?

The front desk clerk was nowhere to be seen when Dean entered and so he made himself at home in front of the computer for a bit, looked through the recently logged details and found an alias of Sam's that he knew like the back of his hand. Sam had been staying here for weeks, which was weird and warranted some questioning if they ever got back to a space of civil conversations.

Dean didn't let himself think too much about what he was going to do.

Dean smacked the costumer bell and rearranged himself and found his matching ID, told the male clerk with a nice pretty smile that he was here to see his brother, something about an urgent family meeting, you can ask him if you like sir, we're very close me and my brother. Blink just a little; tone it back so it's not overdone, give the quick smile just how Sam taught Dean when Dean bitched that he was never as good at soothing over grieving widows as Sam was.

The guy flicked an eyebrow, told him in a reserved voice which room Sam was staying in and said that if Dean was gonna stay the night he'd have to pay. Dean nodded, saluted, told the man he owed him a solid.

"Hey," the clerk said as Dean began down the hall he'd gestured to. Dean paused and the guy scratched at his neck with a hesitant air. "Just… tell your brother to ease up on the drink, yeah? It smells like a brewery in there, and the maid started refusing to clean because he's such a mess. And rude. Well, I mean, that's just what I've been told."

Dean registered that, nodded shortly and rubbed a hand over his jaw. Jesus, Sammy.

Dean had to tackle Sam once he'd pick-locked open the door. Sam was either waiting for him, guessed he'd be tracked down, or his reactions had doubled in the time he and Dean had been apart. Whichever it was, Dean got him on his back with a grunt and worked on keeping him there.

So Sam started screaming, which was a bit of a predictable move but almost entirely unprecedented between the brothers on account of the fact that Winchester's tended to let their pride get the better of them, second only to their fatal family fidelity. Dean, of course, shoved his fist straight into Sam's mouth and cursed at every savage bite, shook Sam hard until he just shut the hell up and stopped struggling.

"Damn it, Sammy, damn it. Jus' listen to me, would ya?" Dean shook Sam again, pressed his knee harder into Sam chest. Sam bit down once more and Dean felt the panic of when Sam initially left welling up in his chest. "Sam. I can't. Can't do this anymore man. You gotta know I would never kill you. You, you shit, all I've ever done is to keep you here."

Sam looked murderous. The brothers shared a brief air and Dean nodded, pulled his hand away and immediately Sam was ripping into him. "Get the hell off me. Get off. I know you wouldn't, Jesus Dean, but you can't just do this. Turn up outta nowhere and be- I mean, your hair is shaggy and you haven't shaved and you're so, fuckin', and I'm so- you make me so. So." Sam visibly swallowed, twisted around pointlessly. "I don't want to be around you, I said that, I told you it, so leave me alone."

It felt like whiplash, like finely sharpened nails dragging across his skin. Anger whumped down like a particularly vengeful blanket, affecting everything from Dean's vision to that zinging hurt in his muscles. Dean was fuming again along with all of his misery; how did Sam say the perfect things to make Dean see red?

Against the better judgement of maybe, like, ten percent of his brain, Dean punched Sam in the nose.

Blood splotched instantly, spotting their shirts as Sam released a strangled noise and bucked up, tossing Dean to the side in his moment of shock after the punch landed. He hadn't intended to hit Sam again. Sam got on top of his big brother and, for all intents and purposes, roared in his face, bleared with blood and homicidal.

"You're so what, Sam?" Dean felt the words cut from his mouth like acid; suddenly all he wanted was to hurt Sam like Sam had hurt him. "You're so fucking what that you can't be around the only family you have? Thought, thought I was the problem, so what the fuck is wrong with you?"

Sam shook his head, manic, an awful light in his eye and Dean took the opportunity to slam his elbow up at Sam's throat, begin scrambling away with carpet burn at his shoulders and blood on his face. He couldn't tell if it was his. Sam was saying, "I can't, I can't, Jesus, can't," over and over, almost thoughtlessly shambled forward and hooked Dean underneath him again, hit him like he didn't really mean it but still intended injury.

Dean gasped, winded. There was ringing and white-wash noise in his ears. "Can't what?" he demanded, breathless and bruised and pissed right the hell off, Sam and his fucking riddles, Sam and his fucking strength. Why had he had to leave in the first place?

"It kills me, Dean, why can't you see that, it kills me," Sam was saying, fists in Dean's shirt and knee on his stomach. Dean's back slammed against the floor once and he brought his leg up, hard. If it landed anywhere important, Sam didn't show.

"Could you make some fucking sense?" Dean twisted and shoved to no avail, swiped at Sam's jaw and clipped it clean and angled. "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Sam spat blood to the side. "Shit," he said, and kissed Dean.

Dean halted, stunned. Sam notched himself closer.

"You," Sam said, breath hot on Dean's mouth, fingers unhooking from his shirt to fumble at Dean's stomach, "you, you, it's always you, you idiot."

Dean kind of registered his palms weren't restraining Sam's shoulders anymore, not exactly, and he shook with brutal force all the way down his spine. Sam took it in stride and returned the shuddering with equal power. "Sam?" Dean asked, quite plainly dumbfounded, and Sam mustn't have heard him.

"You wouldn't believe," Sam said, kissing Dean again and getting lost for a while, lips moving hard and soft and terrible and his quivering fingers nearly inside Dean's jeans. He eventually surface for air and gasped, "You don't, you can't know what it's like. You're torture Dean, pure torture, such a fucking martyr without even thinking, and when you do it's not, never about you, it's about me."

Dean knew he should be offended at the very least, knocking Sam out and putting forty states between them at the most, but he was finding it exceptionally difficult to do anything but fist his fingers in Sam's hair at the base of his skull and drag him forward until their teeth clacked together. Too much talking, and Sam wasn't saying anything worth hearing anyway.

Dean got a hand in between them and pulled at Sam's jeans.

"Unbelievable, fucking mind-blowing," Sam gasped nevertheless, apparently not getting the memo to just shut the fuck up and kiss Dean, "absolute bullshit, the kind of damage you do, Dean, just by being around, it's fucking unbelievable."

"C'mere," Dean mumbled against Sam's mouth, and there was little talking after that.

Dean's mind came back to him in fragments.

An absent sentence warm against his collarbone. His jeans zipper was down and Sam's bare hip was pressed to his own. A sharp ache in one of his shoulders and his whole face felt bloated, blood hot, his mouth another taste entirely.

The taste of Sam's mouth.

Oh, he thought. Oh.

"Dean?"

Sam's voice was impossibly soft and husky, raised the hairs on the back of Dean's neck. Dean didn't talk. Perchance couldn't. He figured that could work for everyone.

"Dean," Sam said again, slightly feverish this time. Anxious, perhaps, to know if what he'd done was okay and Dean rolled Sam's overbearing weight off of his body and sat up quickly. He put his back between them and felt terribly, terribly exposed.

"What."

Dean couldn't think. Sam was his brother.

"I- um." Sam faltered and Dean could imagine his hands twisting together, mouth tipped downward. "Do you… want a drink?"

Dean curled his top lip without having to think too hard about it and spat over his shoulder, feeling mean. "Isn't it alcohol then sex, Sammy? You've got your order all mixed up."

"Dean, I-"

"You didn't even buy me dinner," Dean barrelled on, clinching the skin of his palm as he fixed his jeans, straightened his shirt with shaking hands. "Appalling, is what that is."

His brother.

"Dean," Sam said quietly, almost reprimanding and was he- did he have the fucking audacity to sound offended right now?

Dean spun around with a vicious noise. He shot up to his feet when he saw Sam had done so, felt something flare lethal in his veins at the broken expression on Sam's face.

Dean felt- he didn't know how he felt. He was livid, terrified, sickened to his stomach and whirling in a dangerous, dangerous tide of seeing his brother's face sweaty and opened totally wide for him alone just a while ago.

Dean opened his mouth, possibly to yell at Sam or just in general at the state of affairs, because shit was pretty fucked up, and instead tore to the kitchen sink before he vomited on the carpet. Acidic nothingness raced up from his gut and left a path of fire in his throat, his eyes stinging and that was just brilliant. He heaved once, twice, and again, and Sam said his name another time from a few feet away.

"Why," Dean spat out, cutting Sam off and wiping his mouth. His lips were swollen. Dean curled his fingers around the edges of the basin and breathed hard. "Why did you leave? What the hell did you think would come of it?"

"I," Sam said and stopped. He raised his palms as though he'd already explained everything, looked at Dean strangely. "I thought, thought that-" he gestured to the floor they'd fought on (among other things), "kind of… shed some light."

"What did you say, before?" Dean asked, almost before Sam was finished speaking; Dean had decided halfway through the cryptic response that he wasn't interested in whatever di Vinci crap his brother was going to come out with next. He was much more interested, however, in the small, mumbled sentence against his shoulder that had brought him back to the present. "When, when we were- on the floor, what did you say?"

Sam looked mildly taken aback, confused enough to be a scolded puppy and was that, did Dean detect a hint of sheepishness?

"I, um, I asked," Sam said, "if you knew the term that was given to that wiped-mind feeling after… after really great sex. It's. It's Transient Global Amnesia, if you care." Sam's shame and embarrassment were palpable, a sour taste in the air even past the general fucked-up-ness of Dean's mouth. Dean balked at the s word.

Dean was done. They'd grappled, they'd bled, they'd gotten off – he was officially signed out for the day. He gave Sam a look that was intended to convey as much and spat once more into the sink, rinsed out his mouth in vain.

"I'll be in the Impala," Dean said, and left the motel without another word.

The leather upholstery was warm and glinting dully, smelled familiar and rough and intoxicating enough that Dean almost smiled. He fell onto the backseat and, after locking up and balling his jacket into a makeshift pillow, disappeared into a deep stupor almost instantly. Sam didn't come looking to see if he'd stuck around, for which Dean would have been grateful had he not been busy being heartily unconscious.

Dean was desperate not to dream but, as was common of Life, he didn't get his way.

He dreamt of Sam: twisted, messy, dishevelled Sam, hair everywhere and eyes huge and smudged in a whole other way than sleep deprivation. It was undoing Dean, so similar to that drunken animal look Sam got when he was injured but this was different, this was heated and brilliant and carnal and also pissing Dean off, because apparently that was just a side-effect of Dean's daily dose of his brother, and wait wait wait, wasn't Dean supposed to be mad at Sam?

He certainly wasn't supposed to be overtop Sam this way, hands on skin that he'd never touched before despite the hazards and therefore injuries of the job, rocking with Sam's body like this and hearing Sam say, "Dean Dean Dean," like it was the only word he knew. Wanting to make it the only word Sam knew.

Or was he?

Dean awoke as though he had been doused with icy water; gasping and unknowing and utterly terrified. The world was dim, bordering on sunrise and quiet outside of his car. Must've been the early hours of the morning, five or six. He felt like absolute hell.

Dean stretched out and wondered what exactly would happen if he were to stay right here, forever. Maybe not even sleep – he'd gotten his five hours (or three, whatever) and that was the most he usually required. His favourite jacket, his favourite gun, his baby… what was so bad with that?

Eventually, though, it was the thought of the campers who were being mauled by a Wendigo that got Dean to sit up and rub at his face, wish wistfully for a toothbrush and perhaps a sandwich. His stomach rolled in agreement, legs and back joints rejoiced and cracked at the end of such an uncomfortable position.

Dean's life, despite the customary qualities of the job, was whirling and surprising and terrifying him even worse than usual and it seemed like every goddamn pebble was going to trip him up (sending him keeling face first into the dirt), but damn it all, Dean wanted an awesome fatty burger for breakfast.

Dean was knocking on Sam's room door approximately five minutes later; a quick hand through his hair and a mouthwash from the outside tap around the back of the motel was about the only preparation for any given situation that Dean had ever needed. Dean wondered if Sam was still here. He didn't know which answer he wanted, didn't think about it too much.

He was great at not thinking.

It took Sam an undetermined amount of time to answer the door but it seemed long, too long. So long, in fact, that Dean nearly turned away and left with his teeth crunched together. He was stupid and impulsive, as usual, and Sam was angry and flighty, as freaking usual. Story of his life, thank you pity party, he'll go drink himself to death now.

But Sam pulled the door back just as Dean was wavering and he looked equally shocked to see Dean as Dean felt to see Sam. Sam was wearing a soft cotton shirt that had been Dean's once, now all stretched at the shoulders and unwearable for Dean. Dean couldn't remember exactly why he'd needed to see Sam, but he'd known he did.

They stared at each other for a few moments and Dean noticed a small coin sized bruise forming on Sam's collarbone.

That's from me, he thought dizzily and coughed into the back of his hand.

"Uh, hey," he said, "morning. I was just, um. I was going to get some breakfast."

Sam was silent for a long time. "Okay," he said finally, and Dean gave a loud sigh. Sam stared. Dean coughed again, rolled his eyes, drew away from the doorway with a sweeping gesture.

"What do you want, an official invitation letter from the queen? Come on."

Sam smiled like he didn't think he was allowed to, all slow and sunrise-y, and Dean nearly found himself returning the expression. The bitch.

It's weird.

That was Dean's first thought when they sat down at the booth and made their orders without looking at each other: this is weird. It was a comical kind of weird, though, leaving both parties on the constant verge of inappropriate laughter at nothing and declarations of how they were 'still cool' within each other and themselves, despite how bullshit that may have been. Shut up, Dean hadn't slept enough.

His second though was, Jesus, Sammy looks like shit.

His left eye was bloated and shining, the edge of his jaw puffed and red; remnants of their brawling and the shots Dean actually managed to get in. There was also that bruise just below Sam's neck, too, and Dean had perhaps a harder time thinking about that than he did Sam's actual injuries, which was an interesting development. No matter, though, because Sam was seemingly fine.

"Did you sleep well?" Sam asked, rifling through the napkin dispenser and struggling to keep this shit-eating smile off his face, as though he'd just won the jackpot on a game show. Apparently Dean seeking Sam out this morning had been some sort of victory, or at least a sign of peace. Dean looked away from Sam's mouth.

"It was cramped. You know."

"Yeah. Small."

"Yup."

They stopped talking. Jesus, why had Dean thought bringing Sam along was a good idea? He looked out the window; anything to stop noticing Sam's glances. Sam. Whatever.

For the first time since three weeks ago, Dean pondered what he actually, legitimately wanted… Which was Sam, obviously: he sucked at existing in a full way when Sam wasn't around. But this new… thing was the concern. The question now, perhaps, was how did he want Sam. Which, again, you know… Jesus. How was Dean supposed to know?

The whole thing was probably not worth ignoring, though. Not at all. Dean at least knew that much.

He opened the conversation in his usual style – Dean wasn't really sure how else to go about it, anyway.

"So… you left because you wanted to jump my bones, huh Sammy?"

Sam choked on his purified double carbonated sparkling lemon water, or whatever that bullshit he drank was, and Dean felt a certain satisfaction in catching Sam so entirely off guard and also ribbing on the shit that Sam did without thought, as though this were just another normal day between them.

Dean smirked and felt his teeth press into his lip, realised he was staring at that bruise again.

"I, um," Sam said, clearing his throat with a wince. He eyed Dean's hands, discerning whether this was headed somewhere violent or just perpetuating the awkwardness, and eventually decided it was the latter. "In a manner of speaking, I guess. I mean. That, and you're a suicidal bastard, which is hard to be around when. When I like you… alive. Yeah." His voice dropped, eyes cut to the people around them. "Jesus, Dean, would a little tact kill you."

Dean ignored him and nodded, curt. The waitress arrived with Dean's massive burger, dripping grease and all sorts of other unhealthy deliciousness, and Sam's modest hash browns and raisin-bran toast, placed the plates down in front of them with a quick smile. Dean tipped her 80% because he was feeling generous.

They ate leisurely and without speaking, and Dean felt either seriously high from sleep deprivation or drunk on cooking oil because Sam looked, like, appealing. Legitimately appealing; fresh home-baked cookies or newly glossed Impala appealing and Dean wanted to rub his face over the shirt Sam was wearing like a freaking cat. Lack of sleep was just shit for Dean.

Dean's gaze stuck on Sam's mouth, fingers, neck, and he caught Sam looking back a few times and it was weird.

The whole thing was so fantastically weird. But hey. Burger.

They dealt with the Wendigo after breakfast. An extra person made it a lot easier to cover ground, to cover your back, all that lovely teamwork nonsense and so after they had finished eating they recuperated in Sam's motel room and stocked up on their flare guns. They talked, kind of, but not really; idle chatter and thoughtless comments that didn't make anything worse but definitively didn't appease anything either.

Dean figured that was fine. The job, the hunt came first, like it always did and then they'd figure this thing out. That was what they did. Sam and Dean figured a lot of things out, they were master Figure Outers, and this would be no different.

The whole appealing thing didn't let up either and Dean did his best to ignore it. It was possible Dean polished off his flask of brandy when they stopped the car, to take the edge off of his whole cat behaviour thing that had suddenly overcome his every other normal urge he had around his brother, but what business is it to anyone.

Interestingly, Sam let Dean choose the music during the ride, which was remarkable and also never really happened, so Dean treated it delicately and played a Metallica song that he remembered Sam humming all the time when he was a kid and did nothing but hover at Dean's elbow. Sam seemed pleased with that, or at least not ticked off, which made Dean steal a smile when he thought Sam wasn't looking.

So they spread out and trenched through Dean's and Sam's lists of places combined, combed the areas for empty hours and came across the monster entirely by accident, in an open field way off any important trekking tracks. Sam shot at it, right for the head as Dean got a clip into its stomach. It went smoothly, which was probably another grandiose first and Dean was going to get a head spin if all these weird firsts didn't stop happening so rapidly, and in such proximity to each other.

It was dark by the time they got out of the unpleasant area and tossed their crap in the boot. Dean stripped out of his leather jacket and beat at it a bit, thick with dust and nasty Wendigo muck that he didn't care to study in detail, unlike the nerd next to him. Adrenaline skittered under his skin.

Dean couldn't look directly at Sam so he got into the driver's seat instead of waiting and lay onto the horn half-heartedly, ignored the amused (and somewhat unsure) chuckle that Sam offered as he swung down into his seat.

"Good hunt," Sam said and Dean nodded, rubbed a hand over his jaw.

"Yeah, yeah. Neither of us even got hurt. Ha. Good."

The brothers were quiet for a moment. Dean closed his eyes and tilted his head back, thinking about how the silence only served to emphasise to gawkiness piercing their relationship. Sam sighed and Dean could just imagine him pushing his hair out of his face with one hand, mouth twisting as he contemplated saying something serious or making a joke or just sitting there until Dean started up the engine.

Dean knew Sam so well, yet he hadn't seen this. How had he not seen this?

"Sam," Dean said without opening his eyes. Sam made a soft noise. "C'mere."

"Where?"

Dean couldn't help himself. "Sharp for a college boy, aren't ya? Here, Sam, come here." Dean reached over and felt around blindly, hooking his hand in Sam's shirt and tugging without force, but enough to make his intent clear. If Sam had any qualms, they were swallowed when Dean swung toward him and pressed his mouth swiftly to Sam's.

Sam's response was instantaneous, a devastated noise escaping onto Dean's open lips and warm breath on Dean's tongue, and when Sam twisted his head away to breathe a few minutes later Dean simply shifted to the edge of his mouth and kept going. Sam was panting and shifting sporadically underneath Dean's looming body.

"Thought," he said, a little too loud and Dean grumbled inherently at Sam speaking, because that tended not to assist in situations like this, "thought you were gonna chuck me, ditch me after the hunt. Too weird, too sick for you or something, Dean. Dean, Dean."

Dean nosed against Sam's collarbone and tucked his thumbs underneath Sam's jaw, tilted him up for better access to all that warm skin and Dean felt drunker than he had in years, overrun with everything Sam and why had he never done this with his little brother before?

And yeah, little brother probably should have been a bucket of icy water on this whole thing, Dean knew that, but it kinda just made it all the more surreal and fantastic, which was a considerable feat, what with the delirious noises that were pouring out of Sam and kinda switching off all of Dean's cognitive abilities. Sam. Sam and noises. Sam's noises. Why weren't they kissing?

"Dean," Sam breathed, knees bracketing Dean's torso at a side angle, not totally comfortable but Dean was beyond noticing things like that. Sam twisted away again when Dean went for his mouth and Dean wasn't derailed in the slightest, instead focusing on getting that bruise a little darker and shoving away the jacket Sam still had on for some ungodly reason. "Gotta, I gotta know Dean. You're okay? This is, is this okay?"

Better, Dean thought, fucking grand, goddamn pinnacle of okay, and snagged the fingers of his left hand deep in Sam's hair. "Sam," he responded, impatient, and finally Sam kissed him back. It was smooth and sweet and a little bitey, like whiskey in sunshine or the clean feel of polishing his favourite blade. Sam made Dean feel stunted in every way.

They were at it for a while, too, before the colossal idiot felt like talking again. No wonder he never got laid. "What, why, Dean, why? So good, oh, Jesus, w-why? What changed?"

Dean groaned loudly and pulled back, hitched himself up against the door and breathed out for an eternity. He felt high, like he was falling off a cliff and it was terrifying, exhilarating. Sam looked unruly, wonderful, eyes ablaze and mouth red.

"Damn it, Sammy, way to kill a man's libido," Dean said. He moved forward again without thinking, getting his hands on Sam. "Nothing changed, just, you, you put it in my head, you fiend, and now it's there in my mind and I can't think about you without it and it without you and you and it are just up here, together, and it's got me messed up. Come here."

Sam allowed himself to be dragged back into a kiss and just as Dean thought they were going to truly go at it, Sam made a noise into his mouth and inched back, seemed to have no problem with Dean keeping his lips on Sam's skin. Sam curled his fingers where Dean's neck flowed into his head and pushed up a tiny fraction, arched his body into Dean's body and that was just fucking brilliant.

"So is this, Jesus, you're good?" Sam gasped and Dean pulled back just enough to smack Sam upside his head without much force.

"You're the one that keeps pulling away," Dean pointed out, breathing hard while also feeling like he wasn't getting any oxygen at all. He spread his palm across Sam's collarbone for no real reason and got the other underneath his shirt, against the small of his back. "Can't believe you left without, without even trying this, Jesus, Sammy, shoulda just gone for it."

"'F it makes you feel better," Sam said, hooking his fingers into Dean's shirt collar and hauling him in, doing that arching thing another time and Dean was going to lose his mind any second now. "Sucked without you. Zero out of ten. Hell, negative ten out of ten. God, do that again."

Dean rocked forward a second time, adjusted Sam's legs on either side of him and then they were fit snug to each other, moulded like they were built to make out in the front seat of this car.

Dean said as he lifted the material of Sam's shirt, "Don't pull that crap again, 'kay, Sammy? I've always been shit at the whole disappearing act. Lost- lost you once at a carnival when you were, like, ten and was out 'til dawn looking. Losing my goddamn mind." Dean laughed against the muscle of Sam's chest, shucked his shirt up a little further. "Dad called me, pissed as hell, said you were curled up on the backseat of baby, asleep. Wanted to be mad at you, but god, I was just happy you were okay."

Sam slid his fingers into place on Dean's neck, warm beneath his jaw, pulled him back up for a breathless kiss. "Guess I'm just gonna have to stick around then, you know, to make sure you're happy. All, all self-sacrificing and what not." Sam grinned against Dean's mouth, giddy and stupid. Dean could barely contain it himself. He felt like a teenager drunk on stolen sherry.

"You're a picturesque giver, Sammy," Dean laughed. "Besides, someone's gotta be around to get mad at me, it's, it's really for the greater good that we stay together. Good thinking. College boy, being clever."

"Jesus," Sam said, smoothing his fingers out across the skin of Dean's throat, his eyes on Dean's face and all flippant teasing dropped. His gaze was huge, consuming, beholding. "Lucky," he breathed, "Christ, so fuckin' lucky. Everything else everywhere in the world might be shit but this, right here, you looking just fucking amazing- I am so lucky, Dean."

Sam did something that messed with Dean's function to move his mouth and make coherent sounds, and that didn't really matter because Sam's mouth was on Dean's in an instant anyway, but if Dean could have talked, he would've said he was the lucky one: absurdly so.

But that was okay. He figured he had the next day to tell Sam that. And the next and the next and the next.

THE END