Contains dialogue from the episode 'Hook Man', it belongs to Eric Kripke and John Shiban.

Part of my Deleted Scenes series. Full list of fics in reading order available on my profile page :)

The sound of soft footsteps startles Sam a little – he turns, looking over his shoulder. For a moment, he can't really see her; her small frame gets silhouetted in the light from the house, but then she steps into focus.

"I saw you from upstairs. What are you doing here?" Lori asks, raising an eyebrow.

Sam briefly considers making up some kind of excuse, but he can't think of one fast enough. It wouldn't matter anyway – he's already been caught – so he just comes clean instead. "Um, keeping an eye on the place."

She sort of eyes him up and down; it makes him uncomfortable, like she can see right through him. Usually the only person who can do that is Dean.

"I was worried," he shrugs.

She smiles wryly. "About me?"

"Yeah. Sorry," he mumbles.

"No, it's cool. I already called the cops," she jokes, sitting down beside him.

Sam laughs a little in spite of himself.

"No, seriously, I think you're sweet." Lori considers him for a moment, and then her face falls. "Which is probably why you should run away from me as fast as you can."

Sam frowns. "Why would you say that?"

"It's like I'm cursed or something," she sighs gloomily. "People around me keep dying."

"I think I know how you feel," Sam admits. He doesn't say it out loud anymore, especially not to Dean, but there's still a big part of him that feels like Jessica's death was his fault. Like he should have been able to stop it, should have been able to save her, and he didn't.

"No one will talk to me anymore, except you," she continues bitterly. "The sheriff thinks I'm a suspect. And you know what my Dad'll say? Pray. Have faith. What does he know about faith?"

Sam nods. "I heard you guys fighting before."

Lori glares, but not at Sam. "He's seeing a woman. A married woman, I just found out. She comes to our church with her husband, I know her kids!" she grinds out. "And he talks to me about religion? About morality? It's like on one had, you know, just do what you want and be happy. But he taught me, raised me to believe that if you do something wrong you will get punished! I just don't know what to think anymore," she finishes miserably, her voice wavering a little.

Sam doesn't know what to say. She looks so sad, so confused, but he doesn't know how to help her. He isn't exactly the best person to give someone advice on how to deal with their family. But she takes the choice away from him – she leans into him and wraps her arms around his neck, burying her face into his shoulder. For a moment, Sam's a little stunned; he really wasn't expecting to suddenly have his arms full of a girl he barely even knows, but she's shaking a little and she seems like she really needs to be comforted, so Sam slides his arms around her tiny body and returns the hug. Lori pulls back after just a minute, combing her fingers through his hair, and Sam's heart races, but not in the good way. Before he can say anything, she's kissing him; lips brushing against his with more insistence and confidence than he would've expected from someone like her. She's soft and warm and she smells nice, and for a few moments Sam forgets himself and kisses her back, but then reality pushes its way back to the surface with the force of a ton of bricks, and Sam shakes his head and gently pushes her away.

"Sam?"

"Lori … I can't," he mumbles. The way her hair glints in the moonlight reminds him too much of Jessica, and her bright green eyes remind him way too much of someone else. He can't even let himself think about that. It's too much, it'll break him down, and he needs to keep his head in the game right now.

"That someone you lost?" she asks quietly, and he doesn't answer but she doesn't seem to need him to. She's only half right anyway. It is about Jess, but it's not all about her. "I'm sorry."

"Alright, that bandage is gonna have to stay on for about a week, at least until it starts to scab over," the paramedic instructs, handing Sam a few extra sheets of gauze. "After that, just keep it clean till it heals and you should be fine."

"Thanks," Sam answers, giving the man a small smile. What he doesn't say is that he probably won't have the patience to leave his arm wrapped up for more than a few days, but the EMTs don't need to know that. He might even take it all off later tonight and have Dean redress it for him. Sam didn't get a good look as they were stitching him up, but in his experience Dean's better at dressing a wound than most small-town paramedics are.

Lori finishes talking to the police officer who's been grilling her for the last twenty minutes, and walks toward him. Sam gets out of the back of the ambulance and meets her.

"Are you gonna be okay?" she asks, wincing a little at the sight of the blood-soaked bandages.

"Yeah," he nods. "I've had worse."

She smiles at him, and then she reaches down and takes his hand in both of her smaller ones. "I still don't know what happened, but I do know you saved my life. My father's too. Thank you."

Sam tries to smile back, but he can't. Her face is too open and kind, her eyes too understanding. She's the sort of person he could let himself really care about if he wanted to, but he can't do that either. It hurts too much. So he just mumbles a lame "See you around", and walks away.

"We could stay," Dean suggests nonchalantly when Sam joins him in the car; like he means it, like he wants Sam to get the chance to be with Lori, like it would actually be okay with him to stick around for a while so Sam can get to know some girl. Sam's not entirely sure why, but that makes everything hurt even more. He shakes his head shortly, not looking Dean in the eye, and Dean shrugs and pulls the Impala onto the highway.

Sam's bad; he's just a bad person, rotten on the inside. That's the only explanation for why he keeps messing everything up so badly, why everybody else keeps having to pay for his mistakes. Jessica paid with her life, Sam doesn't think he's ever going to stop hating himself for that. He wishes he'd never met her. Even the good memories he has of her – her smile and her flutey laugh, how beautiful she looked first thing in the morning when her hair was all tangled and her eyes were puffy, how amazing she made him feel when she told him how much she loved him – they're all tainted by the horrible ending. He's barely able to remember anything happy about her anymore; all he has left is the terrified expression on her face right before she burned.

And Dean … Sam doesn't know what to do about the man sitting next to him, pretending to be fiddling with the radio but really using it as an excuse to shoot wary glances in Sam's direction while playing it off like he isn't. Sam ruined everything. He should never have kissed Dean, and he certainly shouldn't have done – everything else. He has no idea what he could possibly have been thinking. In the moment, he couldn't stop himself; being around Dean again after so much time apart had slowly been driving Sam crazy. Still is; Dean's the only other person in the world Sam's ever been in love with. It's his smell that's harder to handle than anything else. Leather and gunpowder and Old Spice; it used to mean so many wonderful things to Sam. Love and safety and home. And Dean was right there, worrying about him and caring about him and making him feel all warm and special and important like he used to, and Sam couldn't hold back anymore. But he just made everything so much worse. They were doing fine, good even. It was weird at first but Sam had been starting to feel like he was getting his brother back. And then he wrecked it, just like he does everything.

The terrible truth of it all, is even now Sam feels it – that pull to Dean he's felt his whole life. It wasn't always sexual; all of his strongest memories from early in life revolve completely around Dean – Dean's gap-toothed smile, Dean's eyes, Dean's hands, guiding him and teaching him and keeping him safe. Dean's like a magnet, always has been, and Sam's never been good at staying away. When he's really honest with himself, he knows he's been in love with Dean since before he was even old enough to understand what it meant. It was inevitable, really, that they crashed into each other like that again. Sam's almost surprised he managed to hold out for as long as he did. He ran all the way to California but he could never run away from what was inside his own head, his own heart. He's a tiny asteroid and Dean's a planet – Sam can resist all he wants but he'll always get pulled in by Dean's gravity. He loves Dean, always has.

But he shouldn't. He shouldn't because of what they are, he shouldn't because it's only been a few mere weeks since Jessica died, he shouldn't because he's not even sure Dean feels the same way anymore. Sam should've tried harder to fight it, he should've been stronger. It kills him to think he hurt his brother, but it kills him even more that he still wants Dean, even after everything. It's still all he can do sometimes not to grab him and kiss him and get lost in him like they used to. Those few brief moments, having Dean's lips against his and having Dean's hands on him again after so long; that was the most complete Sam's felt in a really long time. They were happy, once. They were good together. And god help him, but Sam wants it back, even though he's resigned to the fact that it'll never happen.

All in all, Sam supposes not talking about it and awkwardly pretending it didn't happen is the best he can hope for in this situation. Sam doesn't know where Dean went when he left that night, but he came back in the morning with coffee in his hands and a smile on his face, and when Sam tried to apologize, to explain himself, Dean cut him off about a new case he'd found, and that was the end of it. Sam usually hates it when Dean does that – when he shuts down and resets and then acts like everything's the same as it was – but this time he isn't complaining. It's not like he actually could explain himself even if Dean was willing to listen. What could he possibly say to make what he did okay? It's stupid, both of them sitting here pretending they don't know exactly what the other's thinking about, but it works. It allows them to carry on, even if it makes Sam ache inside.

"So you get any action on your little stakeout?" Dean asks, his voice lilting; Sam can tell he's got a shit-eating grin all over his face without looking at him.

He sighs and rolls his eyes. "Yeah, because after she went on and on about faith and morals and people being punished by avenging angels, I turned around and hit that."

Dean snickers. "Oh come on! She's a preacher's daughter, dude! Usually this shit only happens in porn!"

Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. Sometimes Dean is exhausting. "Regardless of what you might think, my life isn't actually a letter to Penthouse Forum."

He wants to ask Dean if they're really going to do this, if they're seriously just going to keep ignoring the huge elephant in the room, but he doesn't. As confused as he is in his own head, he knows exactly what Dean would say. It's the reason Dean made all those jokes about sorority girls the other day; it's the reason he pushed Lori on Sam so much, it's the reason he's still pushing her even after she's already miles behind them. He's overcompensating; he's trying like hell to convince himself that nothing's different between them. Sam doesn't like it, but he doesn't think he can tell Dean how to react. This is Sam's fault, Sam's mess. If Dean needs to pretend it never happened, Sam's not sure he has any right to argue.

Dean sort of huffs exasperatedly and laughs at the same time. "Prude," he jokes, reaching over and poking Sam's thigh. "So then what was with the teary goodbye back there? What the hell did you do all night?"

"We just … talked."

"Talked," Dean repeats disbelievingly.

"Yeah, we – I don't know." Sam shrugs. "She talked about everything that was going on, asked me about Jess, stuff like that."

Dean pauses for a moment, long enough that Sam looks over at him to see what the problem is. Dean's frowning deeply, his eyes focused intently on the road in front of him. "You … you talked about Jess?" he asks after a minute.

"Not really," Sam answers. "That was right before her dad got attacked, so."

"But you talked about her a little?" Dean pushes.

"I guess so." Sam's eyebrows scrunch together. "Why?"

"So you won't talk about her to me, the guy you've known your entire life, but you'll talk about her with some chick you've known for five minutes?" Dean asks quietly; angrily.

"No, I – look, she just …" Sam exhales heavily. "I just liked talking to her. Her boyfriend got murdered right in front of her, she … it was just nice to talk to someone who understands what I'm feeling right now."

"What, you mean like I don't?"

"No, I mean like you can't. It's not like it's your fault or something, there's just some things that are easier to say to someone who's been though the same thing!" Sam insists. "I'm sorry, I … I don't know what to say."

"Well that's comforting," Dean mutters bitterly. "Good to know all I have to do to get you to talk to me is go out and get myself a dead girlfriend."

"That's not fair," Sam protests weakly. "And I do talk to you about her, I have tons of times."

"Just … never mind," Dean grumbles. "Forget I said anything."

"Dean," Sam starts, but Dean turns the radio way up and ignores him.

Sam sighs again and slumps down in his seat, letting his head fall back against the top of the bench-seat. Part of him wants to point out that it's grossly unfair for Dean to be giving him a hard time about keeping his feelings bottled up when Dean himself is absolutely refusing to talk about the fact that Sam jerked him off less than a week ago, refusing to even acknowledge that it happened, but Sam knows it wouldn't help so he keeps his mouth shut. He can't do anything right lately, no matter what he tries or which direction he chooses he always seems to end up here – with a hundred mistakes in the rearview mirror and Dean pissed at him and an ache in his chest so powerful it's hard to imagine it'll ever go away. Sometimes Sam doesn't know why he bothers trying. He can see Dean watching him out of the corner of his eye, but at this point Sam doesn't have the energy to care. He slouches down a little more, resting his head against the door, and lets his eyes fall closed. He probably won't sleep, he's too wound up, but he can't look at Dean anymore either so he tunes out the obnoxiously loud music and tries to let the gentle rumble of the Impala lull him into unconsciousness.