A/N - This would be set very early in the series, before Dean's deal, and is a little cracky. The rating is for suggestive themes and some coarse language. Thanks for reading. :)
XX
XX
"I'm telling you Sam, spanking it just isn't enough."
Sam sighed and squeezed his eyes shut. His brother, in his infinitely annoying ways that never seemed to be exhausted no matter how many years went by, had decided he needed to get laid.
Not date. No, that wouldn't be enough. It had to be all out insane because his brother's own cracked sanity colored his world differently. Sam wondered how Dean saw things, if it was some psychedelic rainbow wave like a bag of skittles had melted over reality or if it was all washed out in block colors. Red for monsters, beige for normals, and – well he wasn't sure what color he would be. Probably pink.
He picked at the fabric of his jeans, all rough and he could see the little fibers starting to get worn. He'd need new ones soon so they didn't just disintegrate while he was chasing something. Being all exposed would make him an easy target for Dean's jokes. He could see his brother saying 'so Sammy, trying a new approach?' with him all half hanging out and mortified and he needed to stop this whole conversation.
Dean was already at cruising speed for both the car and his mouth, though.
"It's just not healthy keeping it unused. Need to clean the plumbing, grease it up from time to time. That doesn't include things named lefty and righty."
"Dude." Sam managed to sound appropriately indignant not looking over because Dean would be all too pleased with himself. Smug smile hung on his face at the pure satisfaction of getting him riled up.
Not that he needed Dean talking about sex because he never needed to hear Dean talk about sex. It did bad things to him, sparked some thin line of heat and pure envy at all the girls that got Dean like that. It threatened to keep sawing away at the inside of him till he split in two.
"Just saying, Sam, you got a lot all bubbling over there. And man, it's tough to live with you when you go on a monk kick."
Sam scowled at the windshield. There was no polite, civilized way to say "Yeah, I want to fuck my brother till he screams my name". In any company. Even Dean wouldn't go that far because somehow his brother still had that boundary like some kind of mockery. Some cruel twist of fate that his brother's one not screwed up point was the one he couldn't iron out of himself. He had been able to love Jess. But Jess was gone and he was here and it was all his fault –
He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes, trying to hold in grief and guilt that spanned so many things at once. The Impala felt claustrophobic, like the dashboard was collapsing in on his knees as his brother drove back to their room.
They could not get there fast enough.
"Can you just not?"
"I just think you'd be less wound up. Wax the pole, feel better."
Sam groaned, eyes still blocked because he knew the look Dean had on his face. The one that didn't need words to say he was girl. He was glad he wasn't born a girl; Dean would have pulled up his skirt on principle in front of all the boys because he was a dick like that.
"Dude, I don't pick up random chicks in bars like some people."
"I got a plan."
Suddenly, Sam was more than afraid. He was downright terrified.
XX
XX
Dean's plan turned out to be a website.
There had to be a way to get the parental locks to never go off ever on the laptop Sam thought as he watched his brother warily from his bed. Dean was gleefully clicking, filling out some profile for him on a meet and fuck website because that was apparently a thing. It wasn't bad enough that his brother filled his computer with hordes of porn that would make Heffner blush. Things that filled Sam's nightmares with terrible moaning and strange tentacles that Sam wished was a kraken he could just stab.
Nope, Dean apparently looked for all things having to do with sex. And now was doing it with the added benefit of throwing his little brother into the mix. They had been sitting around too long in this place after the last job was a bust, he was sure of it now.
"I hate you so much right now."
"This is why you need to get off, Sam. Can't stand you being all bitchy." Dean was still grinning, and somehow seemed to be checking him out.
"What the hell, Dean?"
A terrible want curled in his belly and Sam tried to look at anything that wasn't his brother knowing he had to be more red than he had ever been in his life. Past even when he fell asleep outside in some backwater town in Arizona as a kid and burned through layers of skin. Dean had called him lobster monster for weeks, sneering in disgust as he left little flakes of himself on everything.
"Thinking of how to describe your 'physical attributes'," Dean said, clicking his tongue. "Can't really get away with 'hairy girly bigfoot who cries at sad movies and likes to comb his hair'."
Sam made the ceiling his point of focus.
"This is not helping me not hate you. Do I even want to know what else you said about me?"
"Well, that you work with your hands, hard labor jobs," Dean was scanning whatever terrible paragraph of way too personal and skewed info he had written up. "Oh yeah, that you're in touch with your feelings and able to treat a lady right no matter how many times you see her."
All he could manage was a glare before he got his giant frame to slink off the bed into the bathroom. He splashed cold water onto his face hoping that a hunt came up soon. Then they could get out of here and maybe Dean would forget all about it.
XX
XX
Dean was never going to forget about this.
In fact, he was overly full of himself balancing lunch on his lap in their cheap ass hotel that was probably lucky to have electricity. Sam wasn't even sure they washed the sheets between guests here and had to resist the need to scrub the remains of them off with a Brillo pad. The whole place reeked of cigarettes and lost hope, with nicotine stains turning the top of the wall paper a smudgy brown. Even the carpet had long ago given up its fight, edges curling in an apathetic escape attempt.
He was sure that the universe was gleefully getting off on the fact that a place like this had internet.
"Got another response," Dean crowed. "Actually looks good."
Sam was a bit afraid of what his brother considered good. He had managed to put off the others that had messaged. Found flaws or maybe making a mountain out of some phrase they used that meant they weren't suitable. When he had complained that he felt like a piece of meat and he wasn't sure why so many were interested in him Dean had said, "Of course people would want to do you."
Sam wasn't sure how to take that.
"She sounds sharp, a looker," Dean was going on with a mouthful of burger. As gross as it was it didn't help Sam any. It didn't make that prickling under his skin go away and he carefully kept looking at the paper in front of him. Hoping that maybe, somewhere out there, was a monster who would save him. "Says she wants to meet up at a local diner. Smart too, public, witnesses. Less chance to be dragged off."
"She could be, I dunno, a monster. Ever think about that?"
"Then you put her down. Win-win, Sam."
Dean nodded to himself and Sam didn't know if he could keep fighting this. Maybe if he just went, just did this, his brother would move on and they could get back to their friggin' job.
"What time?"
"Four tomorrow," Dean said, grin widening, a little streak of mayonnaise on his chin that Sam resolutely didn't look at.
"If I go will you get off my back?"
"Oh, Sammy, save it for your date."
He sighed.
XX
XX
It wasn't bad. One of those joints that been there forever so it was part of the landscape but clean. Vintage vinyl that had been carefully fixed over the decades instead of just layers of duct tape like half the places they'd eaten. Stainless steel fixtures polished to high gleam and he considered just bolting and saying he had done this. Somehow Dean would know he decided as he saw her, head ducked down, red scarf and short brown hair. As he drew closer he realized her head was down because she was reading. Or at least trying to look like it, since that's what he would do.
It didn't help him that Dean had given him part of their emergency stash, hustled money saved in case they needed to stave off starvation before he left. When he had complained he got some line about 'in case you need somewhere' with a wink. Sam thought he might have vomited in his mouth a little over that.
"Sandra?"
She looked up, almost jumping then relieved and waved a hand at the seat across from him. So many layers of strange were soaked all into this he didn't even know how to start peeling them back.
"Sam, I take it," she said, placing an old receipt as a bookmark. "We don't have to eat, just wanted, you know."
"Yeah," he said, wishing he was Dean. Dean had that charm factor that he could turn up to fifteen. Radiate across a whole damn room and people just slid right up to him. All he could manage was one big ball of uncomfortable.
She was watching, curious, and he stopped himself from bringing his thumb to his mouth to chew his nail. Her own was opening to say something else when he just blurted it out.
"I can't do this."
There was confusion and hurt in her eyes, something sparking that was close to anger and he realized how bad that had just sounded. Like she was a leper and that wasn't it at all. He was the disease ridden thing, it was him that wasn't right.
"Look, it's not you. I know that sounds, Christ, like a giant load," he breathed and she raised an eyebrow. "I'm in love with – ," came out all tangled and unfinished. He was surprised it had managed to trip out at all.
Those words, he had never said it out loud before about this and it felt strangely right mixed with all the wrongness. That he was never going to be normal and they could never have normal and this was just how the world spun for them. He mentally applauded himself for not doing a flat out sprint to the door.
"And you got here," she said slowly, trying to take it in, her head leaning to one side. "How?"
"I –" Sam stopped. How much to tell, how much explanation did he owe to this terrible messed up plan of help his brother had sent him on? Jesus, he couldn't even make it through five damn minutes. "I can't tell him."
"Oh," she said. Everything else drained right out of her and Sam wasn't sure if he saw pity or compassion when he realized he had said 'him'. He shifted, curling his fist against the table to keep steady.
"I didn't mean to – he's trying to help and I thought maybe I could humor him. I didn't mean to waste your time. I should go."
He was trying to slide out of the both, get himself out of this hell to go sit somewhere for a few hours while deciding what lie to tell his brother. So Dean would shut up and he could keep his secrets all tucked up tight to quietly eat away at him soaked in the rare beer binge like a practical person.
"It's okay," her voice was soft and he looked over, stopping his uncoordinated escape attempt. She shrugged, loosening her scarf. "Needed to eat dinner anyways. Don't know if you're hungry. Been a while since I've been out with someone."
So he stayed and it wasn't bad talking to someone who wasn't Dean about regular things. Didn't mean he still didn't slip holy water into her coffee, weave 'christo' into the conversation, or swap her coffee spoon with real silver. Didn't mean he wasn't careful to never say the words 'my brother'.
XX
XX
"Well, look who's back."
Dean was flopped out on the bed like a satisfied starfish, all long limbs and knowing smirk. Some random program was on that Sam was fairly certain was attempting to hawk a device to shock fat off. There was that glint, something promising way too many questions and the story that Sam had spent hours forming vanished. Hours wandering, aimlessly talking to himself like a lunatic to get it straight, wasted.
"Nothing happened," he said flatly, walking to his bag. The dirt of the city clung to him and the room was rapidly adding its own special flavor.
"Nothing happened?" Bedsprings squeaked an ancient protest as his brother righted himself some. "Dude, you've been gone forever. Was about to go hunting you."
Sam just shrugged, getting some clothes. He really didn't want to have this conversation. In fact he didn't want to sleep in this room and was seriously contemplating the too small backseat of the Impala.
"What, was she a hag or something?" Dean was getting himself up to come take a closer inspection. Inventory Sam to see what had gone wrong. Sam wasn't sure where to start with that list. "Dude, don't tell me she was an eater."
"No, she was pretty. Very nice."
Sam was trying to get himself to the bathroom but his feet seemed to be uncooperative, all sticky and slow and he couldn't get up speed. There was a feeling of hopeless fury in him, something promising to snap clean through.
"I mean," his brother kept on, completely oblivious, "she went there for that reason. So I don't get it man, doesn't seem like there was a problem."
"Just leave it, Dean."
"No," and his brother was turning him, his hot hand on his shoulder and Sam's breath caught because he was so on the edge of everything that it might as well be falling. "You're all bent out of shape so spit it out."
Dean's free hand was all twitchy at his side, closed fist and he could feel everything fraying, the room spinning just out of reach.
"What is your fascination with me getting laid?" he asked, voice cold trying to retain the last fragments of control he had. Trying to keep words in that were getting more determined to just shove themselves from him. Like it admitting out loud once made it suddenly dangerously simple to say again.
"Man, I don't know what's eating you. I mean Jesus Sam, living with you is like living with an angry nun, except less of a turn on. So why the hell are you like this?"
Narrowed eyes glinted like coals in the poor room lighting staring at him, demanding. His body tense and tight, fingernails biting into his palm and he thought he felt the wet slickness of blood. That final tiny thread that kept Sam together for so many years gave and he just couldn't do it anymore.
"Because I love you."
The words were just out with no denial free to skew what they really meant. It was like they had come from the ether and shoved themselves into his mouth to just tumble free seconds later. He could have said anything, anything else but that and it would have stopped this mad sliding progression into the one thing he never wanted outed. Even if the fight had drug on or Dean had been all sullen and pissy that his grand scheme had failed he'd at least still have that.
Dean's face fell to blankness, hand ripped off his shoulder as his brother took a step back. Sam wanted to say it was just a joke, that he hadn't meant it like that. That he wasn't that sick.
The door was already slamming behind his brother before he realized Dean had moved.
XX
XX
Somehow he had fallen asleep despite all that, pressed up in a strange, pain inducing way against the bed's headboard. It had to be close to morning, there was a glow seeping in that wasn't just a fuzzy orange from the security light outside. The other bed still had the comforter in place, all ruffled from where his brother had been laying on it but otherwise untouched.
Sam couldn't look outside to see the Impala missing yet.
So he got himself up to answer his bladder, the bathroom always reeking like piss no matter what. Pale face with strung out hair and bloodshot eyes stared back from the mirror that was forever misty. Just as rundown as this bathroom, all patch jobs and grim hinting that it was on the verge of a breakdown. He managed to get things under control, rinsed his face with palms complete with swollen gouges and tamped his hair to something that wasn't wild frizz.
He went back out, sitting on the edge of the bed waiting like he still had something to wait for.
It shouldn't have been this bad. Being with Dean again shouldn't have been that big of a deal. He had lived with this for years, so long that he lost track of when it had started. It had come slowly, in little ways that his brain had been trying to process at the time. Craving being touched when Dean patted him on the shoulder. Wanting to be closer when they watched TV in some rundown home of the month dad left them in. Till it hit like a brick in the face and he immediately shoved it all back, pushed behind a door that was labeled 'never open again'.
So he had fled, ran to California to be free of dad and Dean. He almost turned back when he saw Dean's eyes bright and grieving but it was better that way. Better he didn't hurt his brother in new and interesting ways. Jess hadn't made him forget but she had been someone else to love.
Now she was dead. Dean was gone. He was just that fucked up that he ruined, hurt, destroyed everything he touched.
There was a sound and the door was being pushed open. Dean was there balancing a paper bag and two coffees in one of those little trays. He still wore that same terrible not giving away a thing face he had when Sam had last seen him. Eyes flicked towards him only for the briefest second.
Sam choked back a scream of relief.
"Good, you're up. Get your ass in gear, got a hunt."
There wasn't any tone, Dean's voice was colorless and it chilled Sam because Dean never talked like that. He tried to open his mouth to say something, anything but his brother seemed to have forgotten he was there. Those eyes refused to see anything that didn't come as part of the room. Dean put the stuff down and went to the bathroom, shutting the door.
Sam told himself he had to keep breathing.
XX
XX
It was a ghost, some spook that had gotten roused they thought because of construction and workers started dying in unnerving and graphic ways. Steel beam through the gut here, an electric drill through the eye there. That was easy, that wasn't a problem.
The problem came from them, that awkward silence that just filled every single space between the molecules until it felt like the air was so thick he couldn't pull it in.
Dean had been stoic, silent. He didn't even listen to music as they had flown down the highways. They had been like some little black insect skittering by larger predators, Dean's foot on the floor as he barely took in the semis or smears of cars. Sam had tried to say he was sorry, wanting to play those words off as something else but Dean's jaw twitched every time he opened his mouth and he snapped his own shut instantly.
There had even been a hysterical thought that Dean had been going this fast so Sam wouldn't try to throw himself out of the car. Keep him locked up in their own little hell that Sam was sure he was never escaping till he died. Even if he got away from Dean, he'd never get Dean out of him.
At least the whole 'I can't stand you' vibe they had going on had been useful when questioning people. Apparently people fully accepted that partners should be like that when forced into sharing the same space. Like not having good rapport and being able to talk to each other was some kind of bonus.
The rain picked up, causing a racket as it struck the corrugated roof. They were trapped all pent up till dark and that was at least two more hours. A better room, one that didn't smell like several things had died under the floor but it didn't help. His skin wanted to crawl off and go curl up in the corner. Everything in him vibrated and he thought the whole core of him would shake loose until it was scattered pieces.
There was a weird brief flash of an image in his mind of Dean triumphantly shouting 'Jenga' if that happened.
"Dean."
His brother had been turning up the volume on the show, and just started mashing the button harder like it personally offended him. Sam pushed his head back against the wall, digging his fingers into his jeans not knowing what to do. If he should leave because this, well this was never getting better.
"Can't do anything right," he thought he heard Dean mutter but it was hard with the blare of noise he had cranked the TV up to.
Sam decided to go hid in the bathroom for a while under the guise of a shower.
XX
XX
They were digging up the grave in the asscrack of nowhere. Broken headstones, forgotten and pushed away as time moved on. Sam tried not to think of snakes hiding in the knee high grass as they dug, ground saturated and too heavy from the monumental deluge that had come down earlier. His boots sank into it, Dean still silent. His eyes were locked in on the dirt, flinging shovelfuls to the side in a steady thump, thump, thump.
"I can leave," Sam said quietly, finally, not even sure how he got the words out.
Dean looked like Sam had up and stuck him in the face with his shovel. Something so violently confused and devastated in the weak light that it twisted everything there. Like he had never considered this to be an option.
"What?"
"I mean after, you know after this," Sam stuttered, wiping his grimy hands on his equally grimy clothes so that probably hadn't gotten him very far. "If you want me to."
His brother swayed slightly, shovel still paused in mid-fling, staring like Sam had just told him that he had a tail. There was a flash in those eyes, something almost wild before the hiss came.
"Goddamn it, Sam."
"Dean, it's –"
"Shut your pie hole."
Sam swallowed, ran his hand through his hair before he remembered all that mud so he had probably just caked it together better. Those eyes were staring him down, some sort of hunter assessing his prey and for a brief finite moment Sam actually felt pity for the monsters that saw that before they died.
A hand grabbed his shirt, dragging him, his boots scrapping against the wall of the grave they had half dug out. Dean was kissing him. Not kissing him to placate in that 'I'll give you anything even if it makes me nauseous' way he had feared. No it was open mouthed, hard, like if Dean didn't do this he was going to just die; going to become his own ghost haunting Sam for being so damn stupid.
When his brother pulled back Sam realized he was clutching at his shovel like it was the only piece of reality left. His face must have worn that disbelief because there was a smirk plastered all cocky and wide. Even in the weak light that barely managed to crawl out of the camp lantern by them he could make it out. All sharp lines and just Dean.
"Dean –"
"Shut up, Sam. Dig the hole before the spook comes back and I gotta save your ass."
He knew he was frowning, pissed from that implication as Dean went back to shoveling.
"But –"
"Son-of-a-bitch Sam, not everything needs a three hour cry fest and hugging it out. Just dig the damn hole."
So Sam dug the damn hole, unable to keep from smiling.