Time Past and Time Present
The safe house in Nyack, New York, is the still point between Sam's past and Sam's future, a fixed point in the tumultuous waters of his life. It is the place of his initiation and the place of his departure.
Sam's battle started here. Whatever he felt for his brother - anxious attachment, hero worship, whatever (he wasn't too concerned with labels) - mutated into a freakish tension. Which he might have outgrown under different circumstances.
But it was inescapable. And it ran deeper than blood.
It was in the sound of wind in the leaves at night, lying in bed awake with Dean asleep on the floor beside him, more feverish after jacking off than when he'd started.
And it was in the long-time pattern of falling in and out of favor with one another, alternating between passionate declarations of guilt and equally heartfelt discussions of why it was far better to keep out of each other's business. All fueled by the shared conceit that they were brothers, doomed to put up with the other's stupidity.
By junior year he should've had at least one relationship to speak of, but there was never any room with Dean surrounding him, plowing through his defenses, and setting up camp in his heart.
So Sam addressed the Winchester-sized elephant in the room.
There were nights in the back of the Impala, tinged with beer and Zeppelin on the radio and the too-real heat between them driving them to dry-fuck in the back seat. Dean opened his legs for him, grinding and moaning, full of some terrifying need, but stopping Sam short of shucking their jeans.
But it didn't matter, really. Sam knew how to get him off anyway, with just the press of his thigh and his tongue in Dean's mouth. Sam marked him with his teeth and his fingers. Worked Dean over until he came arching and groaning and saying Sam's name brokenly into the curve of his neck.
Sam would come afterwards, delaying the moment, wanting to devour his brother. He would bite into his shoulder - feel the flesh give like a pear's - and Sam's mouth would fill with juice, hot and metallic. Afterwards, Sam would lie on top of him, his too-large hands tracing his brother's skin, still slick and damp and smooth like the interior of a seashell, limned pink and warm with satisfaction.
But, Dean didn't have the courage to take the next inevitable step and Sam wouldn't settle for anything less than what he wanted. Sam needed to escape the labyrinth of death and despair his father had built. And Dean couldn't see that they were the unwilling sacrifices. He knew Dean's answer before Dean did. Sam realized too late that although he himself had become an adult, Dean remained oddly child-like - desperate for approval.
Whether spoken or unspoken, the spaces between them choked with the echo of words like the remembered sounds of a lover long dead.
Sam couldn't feel guilty for running, taking nothing, saying no farewells, no money is his pockets and no idea what he was doing except taking flight and landing upon a new love and a new life in sunny California.
But whatever it was holding him to Dean, couldn't be shaken off. It wasn't lost to him that Jess and Dean shared the same birth date, the same outspoken manner, same pornographic smile.
So it makes sense, upon returning to lick their wounds from fighting the Leviathans, that Sam would be the one reliving his past.
And now, when Sam dreams, it has less to do with fantasy than things remembered, colored now by the occasional, although delusional, trip to Hell.
He drifts now in a sea of tall grass and the piercing cries of tiny frogs break the evening's gold. The shadows here are as warm as blood and heavy with expectation.
Holding his breath, Sam hides, waiting for footfalls or the vague whisper of denim, clutching himself in the dark – a graceful wisp little more than a boy.
Then he's on the ground.
"Get off me!" Sam kicks and flails.
But Dean is everywhere, all snaky limbs - tugging and pulling Sam roughly - the cold press of Dean's belt buckle on the small of his back. Sam moves his hands - digging for weaknesses and it occurs to Sam that touching his brother is like finding himself in the dark, oddly intimate and innocent.
Panting, Sam makes another half-hearted attempt to break away. Awareness creeps over him of dreaming, of reliving a stolen moment and he feels small and pale as a candle flame, the air sucked away and replaced by something different: finer, scarcer, and infinitely more precious.
"You win already. Let me go!"
"Not until you say it."
"Do I have to?" Sam turns his head, faced with the visible pulse in Dean's neck. He smells of dampness and earth, hushed voices and secrets buried, no longer sweet with childhood, but pungent like a man, and sharpened by alcohol.
"I'm a pretty princess."
"And?"
"You're a jerk," but what Sam means is dick.
Dean responds by digging his heels into Sam's groin.
"Fuck!" Sam grunts and smacks his head against the angle of Dean's jaw. "Fine - Sam sucks ass."
"You know, it's pointless to run from me," Dean lets go with a lopsided smirk, pleased with himself, and touching his mouth where Sam painted it bloody. "I'll always find you. Doesn't matter where you go."
Slowly, Dean draws himself up like a cat stretching. His white tee blotched with dirt and grass.
"So you think," Sam hisses, white-faced with indignation, "You really are a jerk." (Dick).
Dean pulls him up by the elbow, brushing the grime from Sam's clothes. "And you're a bitch."
"Whatever." Sam swats away Dean's awkward attempt at maternal devotion. "God, Dean – just stop!"
Dean's smile widens. It annoys the hell out of Sam, if for no other reason than it's coming from Dean: wide and shit-eating and so rapturous it's caught between psychosis and religious ecstasy.
"You busted my lip."
"You deserve it." Sam rubs his bruised arm and gives Dean a sidelong glance, wondering briefly how a face so strange could be so beautiful. "I'm sureAmanda will love it."
"I'm sure she will too," he retorts reflexively with shallow confidence. "Anyway, she dumped –" small shake of the head, "well, she caught me . . ." His hand is on Sam's shoulder, gently thumbing the pressure point in his neck.
"Dude, keep it in your pants." Sam shrugs him off. It bothers Sam that Dean isn't bothered by their overfamiliarity. There're no boundaries between them and Sam's pretty sure there should be. "Seriously."
And truth be told, Sam knows how to kill a lot of things, but he doesn't know how to kill this - a growing apprehension that it's no longer admiration keeping him from looking away.
And Dean at seventeen is a creature unlike any other, less Helen of Troy than Medusa – brutally pretty and harrowing – with eyes of shimmering green veined with gold, like the trajectory of bullets caught in thick glass. And Sam feels he's become both victim and witness to his own crime scene and he resents his brother for it.
"So, what're we doin' out here anyway?" Sam blushes, hooking a finger through a hole in his shirtsleeve, picking threads, then deflects - "Shouldn't you be making me dinner?" He's running just as the words leave his mouth.
Three strides and Dean's on him, jabbing him playfully in the ribs and shoving him forward. "Shut up, dork-face!"
Sam laughs, looking over his shoulder, torn between wanting to kiss Dean or punch him in the face - it's both obnoxious and irresistible. And although the resemblance between them is there - the oddly variegated eyes and cheekbones so high and sharp you'd cut your lip kissing them – most people never see it; clearlybecause Dean got more than his fair share of Mom than Sam had.
Sam remembers being teased for having a brother who looks like a girl. Now, Sam can't listen to the song "Dude Looks Like a Lady," without thinking of Dean. Sam was secretly grateful the day Dean shaved his head.
"So what's the big deal anyway?" Sam rubs the back of his neck. "You're not taking me out to kill me, are you?"
"Naaw," Dean kicks at a pebble. "I'm just gonna cut you up a little." His expression is unreadable and it scares Sam. A little.
"We're making a pact," Dean says.
"What?"
"Like a covenant."
"Am I selling my soul?"
"Only to me."
Sam expects him to go on but he doesn't. Sam may be a freak, but his brother is turning out to be freakier.
They stop at the edge of a clearing. Smooth stones mark the edges of a spring-fed pond with waters so black Sam could see stars floating in it. It smells sweet like jasmine blossoms or a storm about to break.
"Do you trust me?" Dean is tonguing the corner of his mouth, bruised now where Sam elbowed him and in some sick way, Dean's injuries never seem to take away from his beauty, but intensify it.
"Depends." Young as he is, Sam isn't a fool. Dean has gotten him into enough scrapes for Sam to question his motives.
"I'm your brother," Dean says like it's an answer. "Do you trust me or not?"
It takes a moment for Sam to reflect. He peeks at Dean's pendant, the muscles bunching anxiously beneath a too-large shirt, his hands stark white against Sam's tan arms.
He thinks about the time Dean stole presents for Christmas, and the spring Dean tried to string up a tire swing for his birthday and broke a leg. And how he gets up every morning to make Sam breakfast (and pancakes on Sunday); then walks him to and from school, and the one time Sam left without him and was attacked, but Dean appeared out of nowhere, like an avenging angel.
Sam remembers bits and pieces: a knife pressed into his side, having to stand on tiptoe, the feeling of mortar and brick digging into his jacket. Running home and Dean calling from a hospital, broken and bruised, yet full of jokes and smiles for Sam.
Dean, Dean, Dean.
Is there really any choice?
And it angers Sam, fills him with dread.
"What do you want me to do?" Sam glances up scowling – all furrowed brows and stubborn chin – searching his brother's face for answers but all he sees are those heavy-lidded eyes and that knowing mouth, like a girlish version of Sam's own.
But Dean isn't paying attention to Sam anymore. He tilts his head, listening to a far-off sound and lets go of Sam, reaching behind him and tracing patterns in the air. Symbols both weird and weirdly familiar.
"Dean." Sam takes a step away, but Dean grabs him.
"Things change," Dean's gaze is distant, glassy. "But not us. Never us. It's just you and me, Sammy. You and me. We don't need anybody else. It's easier this way."
Sam's pulse speeds up, spit drying in his mouth. He's drunker than Sam gave him credit for and Sam is scared shitless to see his brother vulnerable. He wants Dean to stop talking, wants him to start teasing, or beating him up, anything but this, this raw unraveling.
"You're drunk, Dean. Let's go home."
"Hey! No – No, not yet and don't look at me like that. Don't you look at me like that," Sam sees a flicker of admonition, or loneliness. "Don't be scared Sam, please. Please." He chokes, but he's looking at Sam now like he's never seen Sam before.
And Sam stares right back, daring him, fucking daring him to see Sam as something other than his little brother.
Looking back, Sam would later think it was nothing like witnessing love at first sight - the two of them etched in deep blue and dead white, so intent upon each other, the atoms of air between them sizzle like drops of water upon a hot skillet. It was more like watching a pair of cars approaching each other at high speed.
Sam swallows, loudly, bones trembling as the world around him bleeds like a Rorschach test gone awry except for Dean, who remains so incredibly, undeniably real.
"This is it for me, Sammy. This life - all of it - for better or worse, but none of it makes sense without you. You know what I mean?" He presses the back of Sam's hand to his cheek. "I think you do. I think you know." He turns Sam's hand over and presses a blade against it, intersecting both life and heart lines.
"I'm sorry," Dean cuts him.
"Fuck!" Sam almost trips pulling his hand away. There're tears in Sam's eyes that have nothing to do with pain and he watches wordlessly as his brother cuts into his own hand.
"Tell me you will never leave, Sam." He lets Dean pull him, palm-to-palm, wound-to-wound, two beating hearts dripping blood on the ground.
"Tell me."
He looks up at Dean with a temple pressed to his shoulder, watching a blush spread over his cheeks and a seam of blood split his lip. Sam's hand (the good one) flexes against his chest, moving the heavy gold pendant aside to feel Dean's heart beat, fast and strong. There's nothing sensual in the way Dean's holding him, but Sam wishes there was.
"You won't leave, right?" Dean insists in a voice so small, it's as if he fears Sam might break. And heat seeps into Sam's skin, muggy and ripe, surrounding him like smoke.
He opens his mouth to reply, but closes it on Dean's throat instead, tasting him, and rubbing his face there, his hair like mist across them both.
Because there's a ghost somewhere in the purple darkness, unsmiling, hair falling across his face like black rain, and eyes blade-shaped, scored blue and green, and sad.
Sam can see him.
And he's pretty sure he knows who it is.
He's pretty sure it's him standing there - himself.
Sam.
Not as he is now but as he will be.
And Sam knows. Absolutely knows he can't make that promise. He closes his eyes and grips Dean closer, tighter, like he never intends to let go.
And hopes that it's enough.