Summary: Dean knows it can't go on, him and Sam. They're going to get caught and it's fucking them up. Problem is, he can't bring himself to end it. So he thinks up a way to get Sam to end it for him. He's sure it's gonna work. It's bulletproof.

Warnings: underage incest, dubious consent, undernegotiated kink, implied/referenced compulsive behaviors, rough sex

Notes: No, but seriously, heed the warnings and give this one a miss if it's not your sort of thing. This is not fluff.

Great big thank-yous to my betas, themegalosaurus and quickreaver.

:::

This has to stop. Today.

Easy enough to say when his dick's still wet, of course. Easy to make resolutions when the afterglow's dissipating and reality crowds in: bathroom stall, sticky tile floor, and both their shoes plus Dean's belt buckle visible to anyone who comes through the door. Somehow it never seems to matter how grimy or cold these places are before or during, only after.

Sam pushes to his feet, coughing slightly. He's coughing on Dean's jizz. Not for the first time, Dean asks himself, What am I doing?

Sam knuckles at the corner of his mouth and, God, he just looks so young. So young and so gawky, all the sleek seduction over with and so much Dean's little brother that he can't not reach out and crash their mouths together. Sammy makes this surprised little noise and his fingers bunch in the shoulder of Dean's t-shirt, and that noise really shouldn't tug at his groin as much as his heart.

He reaches down to repay the favor (God, what a phrase), and stops. No hard-on through Sam's denim. Dean shoves his hand down behind the waistband and runs into softening little brother junk covered in come. His lips stop moving against Sam's. Sam came from that, on his knees in here. Dean can't see him with their faces smashed together, but for sure Sam's blushing. Dean cups his hand against Sam's cock and the whole mess, and this time he can feel Sam blushing where their faces touch.

A rap on the door and their father's Zip it up has them shoving wads of toilet paper into each other's hands, and they're presentable in under fifteen seconds. But Dean can't let it end like this, not when this is going to be the last time. So he holds Sam's face away from his between his palms, breathing heavily, eyes wide, just trying to take him in—because while this might be the moment when he remembers he's got to end it, it's not like he can end it at a moment like this, you know? How much of a bastard would that make him?

Sam's eyes tilt at the corners when he smiles, a little smug, a little shy, a lot hopeful. This is why he's got to end it and the reason he never does.

Today slides into tomorrow.

Contrary to popular belief and even to his own, Dean is actually very good at resisting temptation. True, he doesn't deny himself the little things, but that's only because he always has to deny himself the big things. No point dwelling on it. He gets to live behind the set dressing of reality, and this is the price.

He has tried to stop it, is the point. He's not quite sure how he let it happen in the first place, whether he temporarily fooled himself that this was going to be one of the little things instead of one of the big things or what, but it's been clear for months now that it's a problem. They've nearly gotten caught more times than he can count, for one thing. It's more than that, though. Sam's always up for it, but it also feels like he's somehow receding. Somewhere in the months (years?) since this started, he stopped coming to Dean with his weird questions and his weird facts and his thousand and one complaints, and Dean was so distracted by what they were doing and by hiding it that for a long time he didn't even notice. Sam starts doing homework a lot, running a lot, reading a lot, doing anything but talking a lot. Sex is a reliable way to switch him on, but he spends more and more time switched off.

So Dean pulled himself together. He stopped fooling around with his kid brother. It's not like it was logistically difficult to do, considering just how much strategy had to go into getting away with it in the first place. He started going through girls like potato chips, which wasn't hard, either; see above re: not denying himself the little things. Not like he ever swore off women in all this. Even Sam gets the occasional side action, Dean's pretty sure. He knows Sam at least gets crushes from time to time.

For a while, Dean really thought that would be enough: smirk and noogie Sam while banging everything else that moved, just like old times. Reset button. Yeah, every once in a while Sam would get this look in his eye and step up into Dean's space, but it was easy to brush past him when Dean had a date to get to. He could feel Sam's confusion and hurt, and he could smell his frustration in the wastebasket every night, but Dean could weather that. They both could.

But it all went wrong.

Dean got in a fight with one of the girls and somehow ended up throwing her out of his car half naked while she called him every name in the book; he drove home mute with shock at himself and then had to share a bed with Sam, because that room didn't have a couch. Sam rolled toward him in his sleep, shifting into Dean's chest. Then he stiffened at the smell there. Dean turned on his side and made his back a wall. Sam didn't eat breakfast in the morning, and he only stopped running the water in the bathroom sink when Dad hammered on the door a third time. Two already meant laps.

Dean chased down the girl and made it up with her somehow. He got her back to the room before Sam got home from school. This was a big, big no-no. They weren't ever supposed to have other people in the room. He'd be a grease spot if Dad knew. But Dad wasn't the one who was going to smell her when he got home and flopped face-first on the rucked-up covers, because that wasn't Dad's bed. The bathroom sink ran. Sammy's knuckles cracked and turned red.

Still, Sam is nothing if not persistent. And when he's really invested, he's got balls. Like most teenagers, however, he's nowhere near as subtle as he thinks. When he left the bathroom door cracked so Dean would see him in there when he got back with the pizza, would see him fisting his cock in the mirror and straining backward with that tight little ass, it was crassly obvious that he was putting on a show. The noises he made while he pretended not to have heard Dean enter didn't even sound like his real ones. It was so cheap. So fake. Maybe that was what made it practically easy for Dean to sneer as he walked past it and say, "You look fucking stupid."

So Sam's ugly little show didn't work. But it was Dean's undoing, anyway, because he caught the look on Sam's face in the mirror.

By morning, they were right back where they started.

Dad's going to miss Sam's sixteenth birthday and Sam's mopey. Dean doesn't point out that Dad missed his sixteenth, too, because Sam's on this whole kick lately about how Dad thinks Dean is perfect and how unfair that is. Dean tried suggesting once that maybe Sam could try doing what he's told, and it didn't go well.

Of course, it's hard to tell if Sam's mopey about that or if he's just mopey in general. When Dean came out and asked, "What're you all mopey about?" Sam replied, monotone, "Nothing, I'm just busy" without once looking up from his textbook. Dean could have pressed him on the issue, but he wouldn't have gotten anywhere and considering that he had a job and two girlfriends, he actually was busy.

So between one thing and another Dean doesn't see a lot of Sam toward the end of Apri. It gets to where he kind of misses the pipsqueak. He drops the less fun of the two girlfriends to free up some nights in his schedule, but Sam is always, always studying and it turns out Dean can miss him when they're right in the same room.

He starts getting up earlier to make breakfast, thinking maybe the smell of pancakes will be enough to get Sam to crack a smile, but apparently Sam runs every morning and Dean's stuck eating the pancakes alone. Definitely not worth getting up at six a.m. for that.

One evening, he gets back from his shift at the auto parts shop and every window in their motel room is fogged. There's steam is leaking from beneath the bathroom door, like, visibly. The moisture is bringing drawing out every stale smell in the place and the bathroom itself must be a swamp. It's on the tip of Dean's tongue to holler at Sam to quit being so wasteful, but he can't quite bring himself to do it. Showers are just about the only thing Sam actually enjoys anymore, it seems like. Apart from the obvious.

So beyond a raised eyebrow, Dean doesn't say anything when Sam emerges, already dressed. He expects Sam to go back to the textbook that's got a notebook and three pencils marking different places, but instead Sam just lies down on his bed with his arm over his face. Dean frowns. He doesn't look sick, but he's still blotchy from the shower so it's hard to tell.

"S'matter with you?"

"Nothing," Sam says into the crook of his elbow.

Dean takes his feet down off the dresser and turns to his brother. "You wanna go get KFC?"

Sam shakes his head.

Not gonna make this easy for him, huh. Dean comes over and plops down on the other bed. "What d'you wanna do for your birthday?" Under his forearm, Sam frowns, then shrugs. Dad's with Martin, so he left Dean the car. "Tell you what. Shop's closed on Sunday, and the Tally Ho just got The Matrix. We can go up to Macbride, do some fishing, then go see it." Sam remains still, but he's clearly listening. Dean plays his trump card. "I'll let you drive."

The arm comes down. Sam cracks a smile as turns his head toward him on the bedspread. "Really?"

Dean musses his hair and pushes to his feet. "Sure."

Dean wavers when Heidi says her parents are going to Dubuque all day, but then he thinks of Sammy, staring into space with his textbook on his knees and nothing on his face, and it's no contest. Dean doesn't need to get laid. He does need to see his kid brother smile.

But then Sam comes home Friday with his left cheek purple and school-nurse gauze around his arm.

"Who did it?" Dean's voice is shaking with anger. Sam's leaning over the sink.

Sam just glares at him in the mirror. "I'm not telling you," he says. "I'm not a child, I can take care of myself."

"So why didn't you?"

"I did."

"And?"

Sam looks at him. "I got in-school suspension."

Dean thinks that through. "Okay," he says, "that's bullshit, obviously, but it's not too bad."

Sam jerks away and shoulders out of the bathroom. "You don't get it."

"Don't worry, Sammy, Dad's not gonna care—"

Sam laughs bitterly. "Of course he isn't."

"I mean, you did the right thing, right? In the fight? So who cares what some dick-monkey in a tie thinks?"

"I do!" Sam flings his arms wide. "I care! Do you know what this is going to do to my transcript?"

All Dean can do is scrunch his forehead in confusion. Transcripts? That's what this is about?

Sam yanks on his running shoes and is out the door.

Dean doesn't hear a word out of Sam the rest of Friday. Saturday he's got a double shift and then hits a bar to pad his wallet for Sam's birthday, and Sam's already asleep by the time he gets back.

Sunday dawns bright and beautiful, perfect for their plans. Dean tosses back the covers with Happy Birthday on the tip of his tongue—only to find the room silent at nearly 8:00. Sam's an unmoving lump beneath the covers, curled up with his back to Dean. Well, alright. Can't argue if a man wants to sleep in on his birthday.

He's still there an hour later, though, and they ought to get going with their plans. Dean laces up his shoes and packs the cooler before he shakes Sam's shoulder through the covers, which are pulled up so all that's showing is hair. "Up and at 'em, kiddo, daylight's wasting."

Sam stirs, then sits up. The bruise has darkened and is livid on his cheek. He just sits there, staring at the bedspread.

Dean chucks a pair of socks at his head. "C'mon, we still gotta stop for nightcrawlers."

Sam's withdrawn all the way up to the lake. Dean offers him total control over the stereo—driver picks the music, after all—but he just checks his mirrors and tells Dean to pick something.

At the park, Dean steers them over to a picnic area for a road food brunch—Dean has to steer them pretty much everywhere on this thing, it seems like—where Sam keeps his eyes on the table through the whole meal's idle chitchat. It's a gorgeous day. The picnic area is full of families tossing frisbees and frolicking with dogs. Sam loves dogs, but he doesn't relax until they're away from all the people.

They find an inlet with nice clear water and no one to bother them, and Sam finally unbends enough to go swimming. It's an activity he really prefers to fishing, so long after Dean's set up with a rod on a rock out in the middle, Sam's still in the water doing barrel rolls and scaring off all the fish. Dean doesn't mind.

Finally Sam hoists himself up out of the water beside Dean. He stretches out on his front to sunbathe, boneless and content, and closes his eyes with his cheek on the back of his hand.. Kid's like a lizard with the sun. Dean flicks his rod.

When it's late enough the trees on either side of the inlet cast a shadow over them and Dean's caught and released a few carp they don't have a stove to cook, they pack up and get ready to head toward town. Sam seems reluctant to leave, so Dean guesses he must've had a good day even though he hasn't said much. Dean knocks shoulders with him, a towel slung around his neck. "There's a 7:15 showing and one at 9:30," he says as they walk back to the car. "Wanna go straight to the movie or eat first?"

Sam seems to shrink in on himself. Somehow it's when he's doing that it's most apparent just how tall he's getting. "Maybe we could skip the movie?"

Dean frowns. "Skip the movie? You've been dying to see this thing, come on." Sam shrugs. "If it's the money, don't worry about that. We're paid up at the motel and I had a good game last night, we're on velvet." He doesn't ask, You got a test in the morning or something? because he knows Sam doesn't and there's no point bringing up why.

Sam still won't look at him. "I just—don't want to deal with people staring at me."

They continue in silence for a few paces.

They could rent a video and order in a pizza. Dean pictures it: Sam under his arm, Jet Li on the screen, eating Red Vines and extra cheese until they pass out. Sam's drool soaking into the cotton on Dean's arm, smell of sun and river water coming up from his hair. He knows it won't go like that, though. If they go back to the room, Sam's just going to close off again.

"Tell you what," he tells Sam. "Who needs town, I know a spot."

After a quick detour for gas station sandwiches, he gives Sam directions from the passenger seat. There's a campground overlooking the Iowa River that won't open till after Memorial Day, and the gate is a cakewalk. They find a good spot overlooking the river, a secluded bluff with no noise but frogs and crickets. They spread a picnic blanket on the hood—Dad will tan Dean's hide if he finds scratches—and watch the moon come up over the river.

Dean sips his beer, Sam sips his Coke. It's cooling off, and Dean lets Sam burrow under his arm while they play 20 Questions with objects that don't even exist, which is how they always play it; but as the evening wears on, Sam's answers grow listless until he falls silent entirely.

"Hey." Dean ducks his head to get a look at him. "You okay?"

Sam says, "Yeah," but his eyes are dull, and he's thinking about shit, the suspension that's starting in the morning, probably. Shutting down. This is exactly what Dean was afraid of.

This is exactly how Dean can't stand to see him.

He threads a hand into Sam's hair at his temple and makes him look at him. He rubs his thumb gently over the bruise, and Sam's lower lip quivers before he bites it and his eyes cut away.

Can't be having that. Dean bends to kiss him.

It's slow going, but gradually Sam unfolds. Cramped little thing, growing too fast. Dean thumbs over his too-sharp cheekbones and kisses comfort into his sternum. Sam throws his leg over Dean's hips and straddles him. He pulls Dean's shirt off and takes Dean's earlobe between his teeth like he saw it in a movie; the sound he makes is a little high to call it a growl, but it makes Dean's dick throb, anyway.

Dean flips them, pulls down Sam's fly. Sam's hair's spread on the grungy blanket, lips parted, fast breathing easy to see in his skinny frame. His hand splays on Dean's hip. Dean noses where belly scoops down from ribs. Crook of his elbow. Taper of his ankle. Sam's belly button and behind his knee and the hollow of his wrist, Jesus.

Dean didn't bring anything, but he spits in his hand and grips them both, and Sam's oh and the toss of his chin are gorgeous, pimples and all. Dean plants one hand on the hood as he works them with the other. Sam's legs come up around his waist and he raises his hips to meet Dean's energetically.

Dean groans on a particularly tight squeeze from Sam's thighs. He frees his arm from between them and wraps both hands under Sam's back, gathering him up, thrusting through slick they've made together, just the two of them. Spidery fingers comb through Dean's river-stiff hair. He inhales hard against the side of Sam's neck.

They've been doing this long enough Dean doesn't have to ask if Sam's close. He shifts Sam up a little and grinds low so his dick rides along Sam's taint. Sam's face twists slightly like he's about to cry for one, two, three more strokes—and Sam's eyes slam shut. His forehead's knitted up like he's in pain. It's the most beautiful thing. Dean can't believe he gets to see this.

He finishes with a groan just a few strokes later, his dick pushing through the mess on Sam's belly until Sam gasps a little and pushes at his shoulder. Dean gives him one more, then levers off and flops on his back.

He's looking around for something to use to clean up—jizz on the blanket would be hard to explain—when he hears Sam's knees against the hood and looks down to see Sam kneeling over him. There's this microscopic hesitation before Sam's mouth lands right on the biggest streak of white and, oh, fuck.

"C'mon, c'mon man, too sensitive, you're gonna kill me." Sam allows himself to be pulled off with a faint, self-satisfied smile. Dean sacrifices his t-shirt to the greater good and, once they're both clean, pulls Sam in close.

His heart grows heavy looking up at the stars.

Sam's safe and warm along his side, the tension gone from his body, the defeat gone from his face. But morning's gonna come. Dean wasn't thinking about it when he started this, but he's thinking about it now. He's thinking about what he's gonna say when Dad checks in the day after tomorrow and asks what they did for Sam's birthday. It's all he can think about.

He sighs, rubbing his thumb over the inside of Sam's wrist.

They can't keep doing this. He knows that very clearly. It's always very clear during this stage. Dean's like any other addict, his resolve always strongest after a binge.

This isn't even the first time that he's lain here questioning whether his sincerity matters a damn, and he's starting to think he'll never be able to get off this ride. He likes it too much. But it does have to stop. If Dean can't stop it, then he's got to get Sam to stop it. And that means he's got to give him a reason to want to.

That thought perches on the horizon like a particularly ugly raven. Dean's mind throws a brick at it. If the day's coming when he's going to have to do something drastic, at least he can have this.

Beside him, Sam squirms. Dean glances down: Little Sam is back in business. Already. Dean grins at him despite himself. "Yeah?"

Sam blushes furiously. "You're a jerk." Dean laughs and Sam gives him a nipple cripple.

Sam's gangling, and he's got two big red zits in the crease of his nose, but he's relaxed for the first time in weeks and he's hiding a smile behind that scowl. Dean's upstairs brain points out that they just went over this, but the sight still takes his breath away.

Dean kisses down the line of Sam's body, eyes locked on his brother's face. Sam's cock jumps when it bumps against the underside of Dean's chin. It is the kid's birthday, after all.

When Sam's got his hands buried in Dean's hair, it's easy not to notice that his knuckles have stayed raw.

Another state, another school—it's mid-May, so probably the last of the year. Rural Nebraska, this time; Dad's still working with Martin so he's left them the car, which is pretty much the only thing making rural Nebraska tolerable.

Semi-tolerable.

The phone rings Thursday night. It's Dad. He says, "Is Sam home? Let me talk to your brother."

Dean goes to get him with his heart in his throat. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. This level of brusqueness is within tolerance for his father. Nothing more natural than for a father to want to talk to his son. It doesn't necessarily mean that he knows.

Sam follows him back to the kitchen and picks up the phone. "Dad?"

Dean starts washing dishes and waits for… who knows what. For Sam's voice to go strained and ask if he can call Dad back. For Sam to look at Dean nervously and try to trail the phone cord out to the sagging porch. For Sam to turn his face toward the refrigerator, but not quite enough to hide its progression from guilt to fear to relief.

But all he says is, "Oh. Uh, foxes, I think. It was in the Prose Edda, I remember that." Now he does glance at Dean. "Yeah, of course. He's right here." He passes the phone to Dean with an unreadable expression and goes back upstairs.

"Dean?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I want you boys to meet me and Martin in Baltimore on the twenty-fourth. Caleb's coming, too. We'll fill you in on the details when you get here, but I think you'll like it. Gonna be a nice one to bag for all of us."

Dean's heart lifts. Escape is nigh. Well, not exactly nigh, but on the schedule. "Yessir. I'll let Sam know."

When he knocks on Sam's door a minute later, Sam is working on an essay, longhand since Dad's got the only computer. He'll probably need Dean to drive him to the library to type it. "What'd Dad say?" he asks absently.

"We're gonna meet him Baltimore on the twenty-fourth." Dean's face splits in a grin. "Wouldn't say what for, but he said it's gonna be good. Caleb's tagging in, too, sounds like something big."

Sam isn't whooping and leaping around. He's staring at Dean like he's insane. "The twenty-fourth? Of this month?"

"Well, yeah."

"Dean, that's final exams."

Dean flounders. "Maybe you can take 'em early?"

"When I tell them what? My Dad's pulling me out of school to go ghostbusting?" Sam doesn't even look pissed; he looks distraught. "Dean, please. Please, he'll listen to you, you're the only one he listens to, I have to take the tests."

Dean lets out an incredulous laugh. "Sam, it's a hunt. Dad needs us on a hunt."

"Dean, I'm begging you." Those words have rarely left Sam's mouth. "Please, just— This isn't a field trip, or soccer, or—or debate team, this is incompletes in every subject for the entire tenth grade. Call him back, Dean, please."

His desperation is real. This really isn't like the other stuff; Sam is white-faced and trembling. Dean himself is shaken by it. "Okay," he says, wide-eyed. "Okay, just— Hold on."

He's gone from being ecstatic to totally unmoored in the space of five minutes, and now he has to call their father. Dean stares at the phone on the wall and bites his lip, trying to think out how this can go. A pipe clanks as water comes on in the bathroom upstairs. He picks up the phone and dials.

Dad's voice cuts in on the second ring. "Dean? What's wrong?"

"I—" Dean rubs at the back of his neck and exhales, careful to make it soundless. "Can we meet you the week after? Sammy's got finals that week, he's gotta take them."

A pause. Never good. "This hunt is keyed to the calendar. There's a lot of moving parts; it's going to be a month from start to finish. We head out on the twenty-fifth, and we'll need the car. I wanted you both along because this is an incredible educational opportunity, but we can do it with three. You boys can either meet us in Baltimore on the twenty-fourth, or I can swing by to take the car at the end of the week and pick you both up at the end of June. What's it gonna be?"

Dean's heart is beating like he's over an open grave with a ghost. It's not just the draw of the hunt. His father almost never offers him an option. He isn't certain it's a real one or what happens if it isn't.

"Why don't I just come? I can get Sammy set up here and—"

"I don't want him left alone for that long, not the way he's been lately. We can all do it together, or you can stay with Sam."

A month-long hunt with Caleb Blackner, Martin Creaser, and John Winchester? Something major, tied to specific dates, something Dad thought was important enough to secure a place for them in it the way most fathers kiss asses to get their kids into prep school?

Sam will thank him later.

"Understood, sir. Yes, sir. I understand." Dean hangs up the phone.

When he turns around, Sam's standing in the kitchen doorway. He's still pale. "What'd you say?"

Dean tears the sheet he scribbled the info Dad gave him on from the pad, folds it, and pockets it before he faces his brother. "I told him we'd be there."

Sam's face contorts into something horrible. "Of course you did. It's not like I need an education to suck your dick."

Dean's mouth falls open. He takes a step toward Sam—to do what, he doesn't know—but Sam turns and takes off down the hallway. The front door slams.

By the time Dean can even move again, it's way too late to catch Sam. Moving like he's a hundred years old, Dean goes to sit at the kitchen table and think about how he is going to call his father and reverse himself.

Dean's finished his second beer by the time Sam comes back. Only his second, because if Sam had come back seven minutes later Dean was going to have to find him with the car. There are slow steps in the hall. Sam's paler than he was when he begged Dean to call Dad, ghostly on his approach down the dark corridor.

Dean just sits and looks at him, waiting.

"Dean, I didn't mean it."

"You sure about that?"

"Yes!"

Dean watches him expressionlessly. "Go to bed."

Sam's face crumbles. "Dean—"

"Brush your teeth and go to bed."

Dean turns his empty on the table while the bathroom sink runs upstairs. He doesn't want any more beer, after all. It's already sour in his stomach.

But it still happens again.

Dan Lowry's pickup truck jounces along the dirt road. In the back of it, Sam and Dean jounce with it. They're both coated in dust and sweat from eight hours slinging hay bales in the Lowrys' barn, but there'll be no point in showering before they do whatever chores and training their father has outlines for them at home.

Dean wipes his forehead with the tail of his shirt. It's barely June, but it's already hot if you're out in the open like this.

On the other side of the truck bed, Sam tilts his face up to the sky. His eyes are closed against the sunlight. His hair, held back with a rolled-up bandanna, is rank. He's got his arms extended along the side of the truck bed and his ever-lengthening, ever aching legs splayed wide, jeans loose and dirty over the points of his knees. He looks as boneless as Dean feels. There's no intentional seduction in it; Sam doesn't even feel Dean looking. The hollow of his throat goes long when his head tips back, and Dean's pull to put his mouth on it feels like falling into cobalt-blue sky.

It hits him, again: This has to stop. Today.

As many times as he's told himself that, it's with a slight jolt that he realizes that this feels different. It's not like the twist of regret when the taste of each other's still souring in their mouths. Under the sun, in this suspended moment, the thought has less urgency and more possibility. Or maybe the distinction is that it is a thought, whereas before it's always been a feeling masquerading as one. Because this time, he can envision it. Not, admittedly, the details of how he's going to get there, or anything, but the part that counts: the worst moment and the fallout. He can picture the worst-case scenario.

Well. He can picture the essence of it.

He's been kicking the revised stop-fucking-his-brother strategy around since Sam's birthday. Dean can't handle Sam thinking Dean doesn't want him, so Dean's going to have to make Sam think he doesn't want Dean. And it shouldn't be too hard, because Sam doesn't want Dean, not really. This concept is sound. He's certain of it.

What he's let himself get hung up on is trying to hammer out the specifics. He keeps trying to think of a foolproof way to scare Sam off or disgust him or both and every time his brain just blanks. Cowardice again. So then the matter gets deferred while he tells himself that something will come to him eventually, and that's when he'll finally extricate them from this. Now he sees trying to plan too much is his entire problem, and the only way to get this done is on the fly. He'll think of something.

He's good at it. He gets lots of practice.

Mr. Lowry drops them at the structurally unsound farmhouse they're staying in for another month and says he'll pick them up at six-thirty the next morning. While Sam goes to wash his hands, Dean goes to consult the legal pad that is, for the remainder of their time here, their Holy Bible. When he took the car, Dad left minute instructions for each day's training. Like an advent calendar, Dean told Sam's sour face, but for badasses instead of babies. Sam doesn't pretend to like Dad's exercises, but he does them like he's plotting single-minded murder.

Thing is, is it's a lot of review. Dad doesn't want Dean teaching Sam anything for the first time; he only gets to reinforce what they've all done before together, watch and make corrections. Dean knows repetition is important, is the heart of training, really, but it gets boring.

"What's our marching orders?" Sam asks when he joins him in the kitchen.

"Disarming an opponent followed by PT Recipe #7." Dean flips today's sheet over the back of the pad.

"Guns or knives?"

"Handguns. That meet with your approval, princess?"

Sam thinks, shrugs. They each down a couple of glasses of water and head out to the yard.

Here's the thing: Sam hates guns. It's more than fearing them, which he'd be an idiot not to. It's not that he's good at them, either; he's not on Dad's or even Dean's level yet, and he's inconsistent, but every once in a while he'll squeeze something off that makes Dean wonder if one day he won't be better. It's not just that they offend his aesthetics, that he sees blades as having some elegance that guns lack, although Dean sometimes suspects that he does. (Deluded. Once your entrails are on your feet, it doesn't matter how they got there.) There's just something in his expression sometimes when he's looking at a bullet wound that's never there with comparable damage inflicted by knives, blunt impact, or claws. Revulsion, maybe.

Guns are a fact of life, though, and while Sam can be a pain in the ass he's not totally impractical. Guns are tools. Tools exist to be used.

The property they've been staying on is isolated, with plenty of open space but screened with clumps of trees. The sound of target practice wouldn't raise any eyebrows around here, but a couple of kids running at each other with machetes might if anyone happened to see it. Not an issue at this place.

Dean unloads his M1911 and they flip a coin for starting positions. Sam will disarm first. They're required always to start with a realistic skirmish at speed so they don't get caught up trying to think through techniques piecemeal; only after the first encounter do they break things down and rehearse them. Part of that means mixing things up, making sure the other one doesn't know exactly what's coming.

So as he's eyeballing Sam from his hiding spot behind the wood pile, Dean, plans his attack. Frontal? Side? Rear. He breaks for the house to circle around. He can hear Sam pause just a few yards away, inspecting one of the traces Dean left. Dean tenses, relaxes, comes around the corner of the house at Sam's back and raises the gun.

Sam pivots out of the line of the shot and steps in. One of those freakishly long arms wraps around Dean's gun hand, locking the elbow out straight, while his opposite hand shoots out to Dean's shoulder. The arm wrapped around Dean's pulls while the one on his shoulder pushes, taking Dean down to the ground. Textbook.

At least, it is until it's time to actually capture the weapon. Sam's grown so fast in the last few months that he's not used to the extra inches yet, and when he sweeps up to claim the gun there's too much room in the crook of his elbow. Before Sam's free hand can take the Colt, Dean jerks his forearm three inches to the left and puts a bullet in Sam's brain.

Click.

Sam goes rigid for half a second, then shuts his eyes, drops Dean, and spins away, fingers pulling at his own hair in a familiar gesture of frustration. Dean doesn't even have to say anything. Sam allows himself three breaths, then he drops his hands and turns back to Dean, ready for the next stage.

"That was good," Dean says, dusting off his butt. "You were fast, didn't hesitate, put me on my ass fair and square. What went wrong?"

"I let go of your damn arm?" Sam says tonelessly.

"Did you? Come on, let's go again. Try to figure out when you lost me. Turn around, come on." Sam turns, Dean raises the gun. He takes Sam through it, in slow motion.

Old habits die hard. New ones do, too, and the way his body responds when they go through each step, each point of contact like a dance lesson is a little bit of both. The smell from Sam's armpit is strong when he wraps his arm over and under Dean's, his pupils dilated, and when he traps Dean's arm against his middle at the end of the drop, Dean can feel his hard-on. Dean's starting to get hard too when he remembers with a jerk that he's ending this. He's ending this today.

But Sam hasn't lost all focus, yet; if they went straight to rubbing one out every time they sparred, they'd never get anything done. Besides, it's always better when it builds first—and Dean reminds himself again that they're not doing that.

"Too much space with my left arm," Sam says. "My elbow pulls away from my body when I take you down."

"That's the one. Again."

Sam turns. Dean raises the gun to his brother's back, and that's when he knows how he's going to do this.

He starts it just like last time, barely a week ago. Waits for Sam to push in a little too close, then pushes back. Feels Sam's breath warm and damp. Smells him, teen sweat and hay. Lets it build.

There's always a moment during this when they signal clearly that they're not training anymore, usually either right before Sam snaps and goes for him or after. This time it's right before, when Dean shoves the empty .45 in the back of his waistband so he can get both hands on Sam.

Done training doesn't mean done fighting, of course. Dean gets Sam on his front and wrestles his arms behind him, prepares to plant his knee in Sam's back and he's got a higher plan here but God, he knows that Sam will arch so pretty. But the sun's burning strong and they're both slippery with sweat, and Sam breaks his hold and twists to surge up under him, biting at Dean's mouth.

Sam's chanting something in between attacks: "Anything, anything, I can, Dean, I can, I swear."

Dean doesn't know what the fuck that means, but after this he won't have to. He gets both hands under Sam's ass, and Sam gasps when Dean lifts him bodily.

It's a lot harder than it was a few months ago, but Dean can still do it.

Sam's back hits the side of the house. His legs wrap around Dean's waist, and he's already working himself against Dean's lap. The friction's enough to keep Dean's erection from flagging at the clear thought of what he's about to do.

Hard nip to Sam's neck, barn dust on his teeth. "Anything?" he murmurs.

Sam winds his arms around Dean's neck and whimpers. "Mm-hm."

One hand on the wall of the house, Dean reaches back to his waistband. He knows this is going to work by how ill he feels.

He presses the nose of the gun up under Sam's throat.

Sam freezes.

It's hard to say what that expression is, because he just stops. His entire body stops. The only flicker of movement is his eyes, searching Dean's. Dean thought he'd understood how bad he would feel when this worked, but he was wrong.

Then Sam shuts his eyes and bares his neck.

It's a good thing Sam shuts his eyes, too, because otherwise he'd see Dean's face scrunch up where he stares down at his brother in perplexity. This is not how it was supposed to go. Sam was supposed to be flinging him off the minute Dean brought a gun into it, demanding to know if he's lost his mind and what kind of sick freak he is. Because Sam hates guns. Because Sam is sixteen, Jesus.

Sam has to be playing some game of kinky chicken here, is all Dean can think. There's no way he means it. Right?

But if he's serious, and Dean just says "Are you insane?" and walks away, then he can flush all his effort trying not to let Sam think Dean's rejecting him down the toilet.

If he isn't, and this really is Sam trying not to blink in what he thinks is a staring competition—well, hell. It's not like Dean can back down; they are still brothers, after all.

While Dean is deliberating this, Sam tosses his head back, pulls in a breath like a tearing bedsheet, and starts thrusting his hips against Dean's belly in a way that sure feels like they're playing chicken.

Dean digs the gun under his jaw hard enough to bruise. "Yeah?" he breathes in Sam's face. What's wrong with you, say no, he thinks. "You want to play with guns?"

Sam nods frantically and reaches for Dean's dick.

Dean knocks his hand away, partly to sell this, partly because he isn't even sure if he still has an erection. Disbelief is keeping sensation at arm's length. "This get you hot? Thought of somebody pluggin' you and fuckin' you?"

Sam shudders. He tries to get his fingers at Dean's crotch again. "Yes."

Abruptly Dean steps away from the wall and drops him. Sam lands on his ass, head bouncing once against the clapboard.

Dean levels the gun at him. It's unloaded. That has never mattered more, and it has never mattered less. "Prove it," he says.

Hesitantly, Sam brings his knees up and rubs at himself through his jeans. Dean feels a measure of triumph. This ain't even chicken. This is just another of Sam's cheap shows. "Oh, nah, Sammy, not like that. Come on. None of that kid stuff. Lemme see it."

Sam's head bows; his hair falls over his face, but Dean sees him bite his lip. Dean's relief is intense, almost an orgasm in itself. This is where Sam picks himself up and runs.

Sam thumbs open the button on his jeans.

Dean's own breath is coming faster. It's not exactly arousal, but it is fascination. He watches Sam's tongue dart out as the zipper inches down. Sam's hands are big; Dean can't really see anything, not while he leaves his hand there hovering. Sam knows as well as he does that the .45 can't hurt him, but he still shudders when Dean cocks the hammer. Sam reaches in and draws himself out of his boxers.

His dick curves up against his stomach.

"Get on with it, then," Dean gets out. He doesn't recognize his own voice.

Sam works himself slowly at first, fingers stupid-long around his skinny dick. Dean watches the shiny red head appear and disappear in his fist. Peekaboo. I see you.

Sam's breathing gets harsher. His eyes are still shut, and his forehead creases in something like pain as he thunks his head back against the wall, stripping his cock in earnest. Dean's dick doesn't know what it's supposed to do. On the one hand, he's watching Sam fist himself to completion. On the other hand, he's doing it at the end of a gun.

Sam arches against the side of the house as he comes, making a single bitten-off noise at the back of his throat. He flinches when the second, strongest jet of come hits him under his chin.

He works himself through it, pulling in a ragged breath and going silent. Dean feels like his bowels are full of ice water.

Sam opens his eyes, finally. He's got white dripping down his carotid.

He looks right at Dean. "I'm not a kid."

Dean knows he's going to have to fix this. The farmhouse is the ideal place to do it, seeing as how they've got no neighbors and no father and plenty of time, so really he has no idea why he doesn't.

They don't talk about it. Every day after the farm there's always Dad's list waiting for them, but even that can't fill all the waking hours the middle of nowhere has to offer. Sam keeps coming back from from daily PT half an hour, an hour, more than an hour than called for, covered in sweat and ravenous. "You do know the recipe only said five miles, right?" Dean says once.

Sam shrugs, finishes his glass of water, and refills it. "More's better, right?"

Without the car, Dean finds himself cut off from all his favored distractions. No girls. No bars. No bar fights. No broken automobiles. The farmhouse needs help for damn sure, but without materials he can't even work on that. There's no TV in this place. The one and only thing this house does have, apart from the two of them, is books. So Dean reads.

They're pretty good books, he's surprised to discover. Leaving two decades of The Farmer's Almanac to one side. Whoever left these had a particular liking for Kurt Vonnegut, and Dean gets acquainted with his stuff for the first time since a middle school teacher turned him off of this guy by trying to get him to read him.

Slaughterhouse-Five was the book Ms. Fraiman pressed into his hands, so he puts off reading that one for as long as possible. By the time he's read all the others, though, Dean's mellowed on his position enough to pick it up without too much prejudice. He reads the book while Sam is out running. It's weird as a war book, and it's weird as sci-fi. It's weird as philosophy, too, if that's what it's trying to be, and Dean's not sure he's buying it.

When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse, all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition at that particular moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments. Now, when I myself hear that somebody is dead, I simply shrug and say what the Tralfamadorians say about dead people, which is "So it goes."

Dad returns for them punctually at the end of June, and Dean leaves Billy Pilgrim and the Tralfamadorians with the house.

"One thing I want to go over with you boys before we head to the cemetery," Dad says, once they've shown him their prepared weapons and he's satisfied. "This thing has abilities you have haven't encountered. It gets in your head. It defends itself by manipulating any threats that come after it. You're going up against something you've never seen before."

Sam and Dean restrain themselves from exchanging glances. It won't make Dad come to the point any faster.

"New situations leave you vulnerable to panic. No, you're not inexperienced, either of you. That definitely helps, it's your main protection. But even if you've been in a firefight before, new weapons on the field means new rules. You won't know what they are until you experience them, and that, being in the middle of a fight and realizing the rules have changed, that can be enough to make soldiers plenty more seasoned than you are wig out." Dad's gaze rests on them. "So I want to hear it: what do you do with panic?"

They reply in chorus. "Take hold of the fear."

"Then?"

"Breathe."

"Then?"

"Talk over the voice in your head."

"Then?"

"Picture the worst-case scenario."

"Then?"

"Don't let 'em see you're rattled."

"Then?"

"Return fire."

"Right." John claps them both on the shoulder, one hand on Dean, one hand on Sam. He cracks a smile behind his beard. "Get some rest. We're headed out at midnight."

After that hunt, when they're all beaten up and there's only a couple hours of dark left, they take their showers in order of age, three minutes apiece. It's the first time Dean and Sam will have shared a bed since that day at the farmhouse.

When Sam finishes in the bathroom, Dad's already doused the light. He wants them sleeping, no futzing around. Dean feels the mattress dip. He can't tell if this feeling in his stomach is anticipation or dread.

Sam settles, and for a second it seems like they're going to get the sound sleep they deserve (is that disappointment or relief?). Then Dean feels air stir against his side as Sam's elbow lifts the covers.

Dad's not asleep. Sam knows Dad's not asleep.

He grabs Sam's wrist in a grip that would force him to drop a weapon before it can land wherever it was gonna land. He holds it there for a full count of ten, knowing it hurts plenty. Neither he nor Sam make a sound.

Three feet away, Dad coughs and turns over.

Dean releases Sam's wrist. This has to stop. This really, really has to stop.

He went too soft, is the problem. He knows better; their father's trained them better. If you're gonna do something, do it hard, because if you waffle it's going to go to shit. And Dean is nothing if not a good actor. He can get through to Sam: he doesn't want any of this. He just has to watch for his chance.

He gets it when Dad parks them in Fayetteville, Alabama in a by-the-week rental over a bail bonds office. He's going to check out a lead, should be back in a week. Why aren't they coming? Sam wants to know. Dean's in charge, answers their father. Right, fine, but why aren't they coming? Sam asks again, and anyone would think that he likes nothing better than hunting with John Winchester if they didn't actually have to live with the little shit. Because they're not, Dad tells him, and he doesn't want any backtalk about it. Sam thinks they have a right to know what's so important if he's going to dump them in some random town again. Dad disagrees with the back of his hand.

The argument leaves Dean seething. Sam does it on purpose; he knows exactly how to press Dad's buttons.

Once Dad's headed out and Sam's slammed the door to the apartment's only bedroom, Dean gets the hell out of there. He saw a bar down the street.

Her name is Marilyn. He only has to buy her a couple of drinks before she pulls him through the swinging wooden doors at the back marked "COWGIRLS." She takes her cue from the sign with him seated on the toilet lid, and her perfume is cheap and strong. Not his favorite, but it'll do.

It doesn't, though. Of course he gets off, but instead of it relaxing him he just feels more keyed up, so when she asks him if he wants to get out of here he says that he's going to stay and have a few more drinks. That clearly was not the answer she was looking for, so he's left alone at the bar. Great. Fine.

Except the alcohol isn't doing him any favors, either. He just keeps playing the argument back in his head on a loop, getting angry all over again. Even when he switches to Coke and lets the buzz wear off, it stays fresh in his mind. The words. The slap. The way Sam turned with it like he saw it coming.

Usually the last thing Dean would do right now is initiate something with Sam, but he decides that he can use this feeling.

In the stairwell up to the apartment, Dean drops the clip out of the 1911 and double-checks the chamber. Then he empties the clip and reinserts it.

Sam's gotten the groceries and made what smells like dinner while Dean was out, which could mean he's feeling contrite. It probably does mean that. Sam always ends up feeling contrite, except he never shows that to Dad, so Dean's the only one who gets to see it. Maybe Dean's the one Sam's trying to disarm, anyway. At the moment it doesn't really matter either way, because this isn't about Sam and Dad.

Sam's on the couch with his legs over one arm of it, a paperback open in his hands and Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom fuzzy on the TV. "Heya, Sammy," Dean says.

"Hey," Sam mumbles without looking up.

Dean drops onto the couch beside him. He sprawls out, draping one arm over the back of the couch, using the other to mess up Sam's hair. His brother scowls and pulls his head away. "You're in a good mood," he says, sounding thrilled about it. Dean just laughs and pulls him in anyway, and Sam scrunches his nose. "You reek."

"Yeah?" Dean presses his nose into Sam's jaw by his ear. "Wanna hear what she was like?"

Sam bats the hand sliding over his belly away, but not very hard. "No."

"She wore these Daisy Dukes." She did not. "And had some kind of cowboy fetish. Man, she was wild. You wouldn't even believe half the shit she was asking me to do to her."

"I probably wouldn't," Sam deadpans.

"Mmm." Dean slips a hand up under his tee. The back of his wrist brushes Sam's stiffy. "Couldn't do much of it in the bathroom, though."

Sam's breath catches. "No?"

Dean pinches one of Sam's nipples, a bit harder than he likes. "Nope."

Sam's sixteen; it's never hard to get him going. In no time at all Dean's lost his shirt and Sam's under him in just his boxers, hair stuck to the ugly plush couch arm and pupils blown wide. When he reaches for Dean's belt, Dean pins his wrists on either side of his head. "Keep 'em there," he says, ignoring the pissy look Sam gives him. Instead he palms Sam's erection through the cotton, indexing its size and firmness. A little manhandling, a little bossiness—yeah, Sam can get into this.

Time to see if he can get into what comes next.

On Dean's upward stroke, Sam twists a bit where he lies and his eyes flutter shut with a little sigh, and, fuck. Dean presses his mouth to Sam's neck, his clavicle, his skinny little chest. He slips Sam's underwear down and off and tries not to think, It's the last time, but he does and grief floods up in him.

Why can't they just have this, he thinks in desperation. Why can't they just have this and be alright.

He slides up and lets himself capture Sam's mouth one more time in a soft kiss. Sam melts underneath him returning it, this quiet sound coming out of him that Dean will never forget. He dips his tongue down against Sam's.

Then he trails the Colt's muzzle up his thigh. He's had his eyes open the whole time, so he sees Sam's fly open.

"You like this, right?" Dean murmurs into his mouth.

Sam swallows. The gun glides over his hip. "Yes." His voice cracks. "I like it."

Dean drags the side of the barrel straight up Sam's cock. Sam gasps and arches beneath him.

Dean is caught in a snarl of confusion and anger and arousal. Why won't Sam just cooperate, already? He digs his elbow into the seat back to support himself and jabs two fingers at Sam's bottom lip. "Open up then, if you really want it."

Panting, Sam does.

Dean fucks his fingers in and out of Sam's mouth slowly. "Look so pretty." Sam hates when Dean calls him that. He's supposed to hate it. He closes his lips around Dean's fingers and moans like a porn star.

Dean digs the Colt into Sam's armpit bruisingly hard. "That's it. Yeah. That's what I want." Sam swirls his tongue and gags.

Dean yanks his fingers out and spits in his palm. He jacks Sam's dick once, twice. It's hot like a brand where Dean grips him harder than can be comfortable. Still Sam thrusts up into it, so Dean tightens his grip. He wants to shake his brother and ask, How far are you going to make me take this?

Instead he asks, "You gonna let me?" With the Colt he draws lazy patterns on Sam's torso while his unoccupied fingers wander downward and back. Nickel-plated filigree, mother-of-pearl grips, rose-gold skin. Like something off of a wedding invitation. Gorgeous. "You gonna let me fuck you on the couch with my pretty gun to your pretty head?"

Sam's legs part in answer. "Please, Dean. Please."

"You really want it?" Dean says. He rubs the pads of two fingers over Sam's knot-tight hole. "Dirty little bastard. How does anybody get that kinky at your age? You really want big brother doing sick shit to you?"

Sammy whimpers, not a porn star sound, a little kid sound. "Yeah, Dean, yeah. I want it. I—I want you to do messed up stuff to me, alright? Are you happy?"

Dean stares down at him. "Ecstatic."

He thrusts the fingers inside.

Sam arcs up off the couch with a scream. Dean silences it with the muzzle of his gun.

He makes Sam choke on it while he fingers him. Spit is not lube; Dean already knew that, Sam's figuring it out. Dean kisses the water from the corners of Sam's eyes.

He feels the exact moment Sam's body gives in. He goes slack against the cushions, his hole relaxes around Dean's nearly-dry fingers, he takes a deep breath, and then he presses back. Another breath. Eyes open to find Dean's. Presses back again. Dean hasn't even moved his hand.

When he does, though, to crook and rub, he can see the pain cross Sam's face but Sam spreads for it, anyway, making a noise around the metal in his mouth that sounds like a plea. Dean can only watch, wide-eyed. He has no idea when he lost control of this thing.

Each of Sam's breaths hit Dean's knuckles where he's breathing through his nose. He picks up his chin, taking the gun deeper. Dean draws it back and starts to fuck him with it in the same rhythm as his fingers.

Sam's teenaged cock is red and straining on his belly. He locks eyes with Dean and slowly, deliberately, curls his tongue around the gun.

Dean knows the gun's not loaded. But Sam doesn't.

Dean had no idea it was possible to be this hard and still feel like he's going to vomit.

He makes it maybe two more minutes before he rips his fingers out of his brother's ass and drops his head down to his lap. He shoves the gun into the back of Sam's throat harder as he swallows him down, sucking for all he's worth and grinding against Sam's razor-sharp shin. Sam comes with a muffled squeal around the .45, and Dean loses it as he swallows it down.

So he had a plan to get Sam to rethink this whole fucking his big brother thing. The principle was straightforward: just make him think that Dean's into some truly sick shit, and watch the doors slam shut in his face. Probably not fast enough to get out of having to see the horror on Sam's, but still. It was a good plan.

Problem is, Sam turns out to be really into it.

Dean's not sure how to come to terms with this side of Sam. He's not sure he can. Sex isn't generally a domain where he gets judgmental; even when he doesn't see the appeal in something, he's not going to get all worked up about other people who do. He wouldn't even get worked up about this if it were anybody else. If some random suburban kid who plays varsity soccer and has never annihilated anything that wasn't on a computer wanted to get fucked with an unloaded pistol in their mouth, that might make Dean raise an eyebrow, but it wouldn't hollow out his insides.

He's played with some chicks who like handcuffs. There was Rhonda Hurley, too, and Suzie "spank me, Daddy" Addams, and even the time he let Sam blindfold him.

This is not the same.

The phone rings.

It is the loudest phone Dean's ever heard, easily. This one is a 1970s wall-mount in pea green with a rotary interface and a mechanical bell. The bell is not contained in the case but sits on top. When someone calls, the metal tongue jackhammers against the side of it until it's picked up, at which point the hammering snaps off but the vibration in the bell itself remains audible for about a second as it wanes. It's more like a fire alarm than a phone.

Dad's only calling to give them his contact number for the next week. Dean knew this call was coming. It's fine.

He has instructions for them, as well, of course, which Dean takes down on a pad with a pencil. His father has him read them back to him, at which point Dean expects him to hang up but he doesn't.

Instead he says, "I can always rely on you, Dean. Not just to look out for your brother no matter how annoying he gets, but to understand what's important. That might be the most important thing in our line of work." John Winchester sighs, and Dean recognizes the sound of him scratching his cheek through his beard. "At least there's one of you I never have to worry about stepping out of line."

Dean stares at the bell. It's polished steel, a little metal dome. In it, his nose and lips are spread wide, his eyes pulled back toward the edges of his face like they're trying to escape around the back of it. "Thank you, sir."

Dad's back when he said he would be, but they still hang around for another week. Logistics, resupply. Most of the time, they've still got the apartment to themselves, though, and Dean doesn't know if this is heaven or hell.

Maybe just purgatory, he decides sourly one morning after Sam tells their father he's going to take AP courses starting in the fall. Does he really have time for that? asks Dad. He's going to have time, says Sam. This crap wouldn't escalate the way it always does if Sam didn't keep delivering his wants as ultimatums.

Dean gets caught in the blast radius, which is so unfair. But he's not an immature brat, so he takes the list John hands him and leaves Sam to cry about the book John confiscated like the drama queen he is.

He's on foot because Dad had to be somewhere, so it takes a while. When he gets back, three boxes of ammunition of dubious legality the richer, he can smell the mac 'n' cheese out in the hallway and his anger dissolves. Suddenly he feels tired, instead. Why can't anything be easy between them? Why can't things just be like they were before?

What does he have to do to make things like they were before?

Dean keys his way in. Sam's stirring the dented pot at the stove in a t-shirt and boxers and shower-damp hair. Dean can smell that there's Montreal steak seasoning in there, which is Dean's favorite way to gussy up a pot of Kraft and something Sam must've gone out to get. He takes a deep, appreciative sniff, then wrinkles his nose. Bleach under the smell of cooking. Dad must've told him to clean the place.

"Hey," Sam tosses over his shoulder, scraping the pasta into two bowls. His eyes are still a little red, but the shower erased most of it.

"Hey," Dean says back. "Smells good." We're good, is what it means.

They eat their macaroni side-by-side on the couch watching The Simpsons until they're both full and starch-sluggish. Dean rubs his thumb up and down Sam's arm, nothing sexual in it, just to let him know he's there.

Dean does the dishes since Sam cooked, and moving around wakes him up a little. When he gets back, Sam's watching the news with a faraway look in his eyes. He glances up at Dean. "You get the stuff Dad wanted okay?" His left hand plucks at the cuff of his sock, cuticles pink and raw.

"Yeah, wasn't that big a deal." It took Dean the entire day.

Sam makes some sound of acknowledgment and burrows into the couch cushions. He doesn't fight Dean for the remote when he flips the channel to Law & Order.

Dean's not really watching it, he's just letting his mind drift. It's Alabama in summer, so warm and humid is a given, yet at the moment it's not oppressive. There's a scent of rain coming in from the window down the hall, and the spiced-up Kraft has an odor that lingers. It would smell great in here, if not for whatever it is that Sam bleached.

Sam's hand is hesitant when it lands on Dean's chest. When Dean doesn't push him off, the palm flattens and slides up to his shoulder. Dean tilts his face up for a kiss when Sam straddles him.

There's a black dog sighting outside Tucson, Arizona. That's a three-day haul, and the temperature in the Impala is approximately three million degrees. It takes less than twelve hours for Sam to start getting into it with Dad.

"Use your turn signal," Dad says as Sam starts to turn onto the second-to-last road before their planned stop for the night.

"I was going to."

"Drop the attitude," Dad snaps, which of course has never once in their lives produced an improvement in Sam's behavior.

Sam grips the wheel till his knuckles are white and says nothing, but maneuvers the car in fast, jerky movements. The stupidity takes Dean's breath away. Sam mouthing off is nothing new, but expressing his displeasure through something as actually, physically dangerous as intentionally fucking around behind the wheel? Jesus. He stares straight ahead in the backseat and keeps silent.

Dad does, too, which is how Dean knows Sam's really fucked.

Sam cools down over the hour it takes them to reach the motel. Dad still hasn't said a word that's not directions since the turn signal thing, but Dean's bracing himself. Sam is too if he's smart. Dad comes back from the office with the key, and they follow him in as he flips on the light. Dean's stomach is tight.

Dad surveys the room until his eyes fall on a red and pink plastic duck that is—who knows why—the finial holding the lampshade in place. His face creases in momentary disbelief. Then he goes over, unscrews the duck (the lampshade rocks slightly), and turns it over in his hands.

"You know that sign we passed five miles out of town? The 'food, gas, lodging' one?" he asks Sam.

Reckoned from the motel, the distance is closer to six miles. Sam's jaw clenches. "Yes, sir."

"You have seventy minutes to drop this there and be back in this room." A muscle ticks in Sam's cheek. He glares at their father. "Starting now," Dad adds pointedly.

Sam snatches the duck and goes.

Dad waits until the door slams behind him before he sighs and rubs a hand over the back of his neck. His shoulders slump. "I don't understand him anymore."

Dean fiddles with the handles of his duffel. "Me, either."

"It's just— Why does everything have to be a struggle with him? It's like he wants to be angry, or something."

Dean doesn't know how to answer that, so he doesn't.

John sighs again as he sits on the bed. "Something's eating him. I know that. I know there's something he's keeping from us, I just don't see what the hell it could be. Other teenagers, you worry about drugs or bad company, but I know it can't be anything like that. When he's not with me, he's with you."

Dean swallows. His mouth remains dry.

Sam makes it back with four minutes and thirty-eight seconds to spare. Kid must've hauled ass. Dad left Dean to time it on his wristwatch when he went out to hustle a game or two in the town they passed before this one. When Sam gets back and Dad's not even there, his nostrils flare and it has nothing to do with the sweat slicking him like someone poured it on him.

"Where is he?" Sam asks.

"Rounding up some venture capital."

Sam turns and bangs out of the room.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Dean chucks his Autoweek to one side and goes after him. Dusk was falling halfway into Sam's first run; it's nearly full dark by now. Sam's halfway down the motor court by the time Dean gets out there.

Of the two of them, Dean's fresher and considering what their father will do to him if he lets Sam get his melodrama marathon on in the dark, more motivated. He catches up to Sam before he makes it to the road.

Dean yanks back on the neck of Sam's shirt and spins him to face him. "Are you stupid? What's the matter with you, get back in the room!"

"Leave me alone!"

That's it. Dean takes his arm and starts frog-marching him

Predictably, Sam throws a punch. It's sloppy and Dean saw it coming, but he was really hoping not to do this out here. He ducks it, grabs Sam again, releases him when Sam twists in his hold. There's not enough violence in it to say that he means it; the run really took it out of him. "C'mon," Dean says, somewhere between long-suffering and annoyed.

Sam slams both of his hands against Dean's chest. "Why don't you go screw some slut or something?"

"What, meaning you?"

Sam's bitten-off sound of outrage really is worthy of a teenaged girl. Dean feels embarrassed for and by him. Dean feels sick.

"Get in the room or don't," he says. "See if I give a shit."

He's back behind his Autoweek when Sam comes in; he watched Sam's progress across the lot through a gap where one of the Venetian blinds is bent, so he knew when to raise the magazine. The door opens and closes. Dean turns a page. Sam pauses infinitesimally before going straight to the bathroom. The door clicks shut. The shower turns on. After a few seconds, the pitch of it changes as a body enters the stall. It stays perfectly constant after that.

Dean listens carefully for a minute, then gets up.

A lock on a motel bathroom is more a gesture than anything else. One jiggle, and the door swings in under Dean's hand. Sam must hear it, but he doesn't outwardly react.

Dean surveys the scene impassively. Sam's sitting on the shower floor, his arms wrapped around his knees, bony shoulders shaking under the spray. Dean can see from here it's on the coldest setting.

What is Sam's malfunction? Dean was never like this at his age. He had his own issues and emotions, but he never put Dad through this. He never made Sam come and tend to him in misery of his own creation. He never refused to be salved by the tending. What's Sam's excuse?

He stands there watching a while. Sam never moves, of course. He knows he's being watched.

Finally Dean reaches out and kills the water. Sam keeps his head between his knees while Dean towels him off, shivering.

The room does have a couch, and after this evening's earlier display, there'll be hell to pay from Dad if Dean offers the bed to Sam, so there's no question about the sleeping arrangements. Dad's got the bed nearest the door, Dean's got the one beside it, Sam's got the sofa in the corner. Dean helps him make it up in silence and Sam climbs in without complaint.

He's asleep in seconds. His fingers uncurl into the gap between his bed and Dean's.

Dean tries to read for a while, for real this time, but it's not happening. He feels like he ran a half-marathon today, too. He switches off the lamp and wads the pillow under his head. A few minutes later, he flips it over and repositions it. A few minutes after that, he tosses onto his other side and makes himself be still, counting his breaths. Sam's physical absence feels like a wound. Dean falls asleep to the ache.

The duck's back on the lampshade when they wake up.

Dean is thrusting into something warm and soft. It feels amazing. He's never known anything quite like it.

He looks down. It's Sammy beneath him. Of course it is. Dean touches his face, and his heart lights up and breaks.

"I got you. I got you." Kisses to his eyebrows, his cheekbones. Gentle rocking. "You're okay. I got you."

Whatever it is is so, so soft.

Sam lies curiously inert beneath him, arms bent beside his head, starfish. His lips are parted, and his eyes are open, searching Dean's. They're the only part of him that's moving, actually.

Dean looks down.

There's a hole in Sam's stomach. It blooms shiny red around the edges, but somehow none of the red spills. The rest of his belly is smooth and white. Dean's cock is moving in and out.

He looks up, past Sam's head. His father is there.

"I tried to tell you: watch out for Sammy."

He raises a sawed-off right as Dean comes.

Dean sits bolt upright in bed. Cold sweat slicks his forehead. He presses a hand to his groin. It comes away wet.

They are in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, eight hours out of Tucson.

When they get where they're going, Dad gets two rooms instead of one. "I need you both fresh tomorrow," he says when he's handing over the key. "And I need to be, too. So no drama, alright? Get some space, and get some rest."

Dean looks at the key fob he's holding. The scratched white lettering welcomes them to the Si– S––oter –otel.

A separate room on the road is rare, and usually Dean would call it a treat. Dean grabs the pay-per-view menu off the top of the TV on their way in, prompting a snort from Sam. There is nothing on here Dean wants to see. He'll pay $7.99 for the thing with the longest runtime, though.

There's a knock on the door. It's Dad, holding the weapons duffel. "Clean and prep everything, will you two?" He catches sight of the pay-per-view menu in Dean's hand. "Don't even think about it."

Dean sets the duffel on the table. Once you account for not just weapons but things like gun oil and whetstones, it's a heavy sucker. After checking that the window's fully blinded he starts pulling items out: machete. Machete. Bowie knife. His hand stops a foot above the sawed-off.

Sam's hand takes it instead. "I'll take the guns if you take the blades," he says. He puts the twelve-gauge on his pillow and reaches in for the Smith & Wesson, when Dean's hand on his wrist stops him.

Sam stares him down, something in his eyes that makes Dean's skin prickle. "I know how to prep a gun, Dean. What, you don't trust me?"

The guns go on Sam's bed one after another. The shotgun. The Smith & Wesson. The Glock. The Taurus. The Colt 1911. Dean gets out the Arkansas stone and tries not to watch.

Sam deals with the shotgun first, which is how Dean would probably do it, too. Get the odd man out out of the way. Cinnamon and a smell indefinably warm hit Dean's nose as Sam swabs FP-10 over the assembly.

Once that's out of the way, the handguns can be done almost on an assembly line. Sam removes magazines and sweeps the chambers first, one weapon after another. Only then does he disassemble. Close slide. Pull trigger to release firing pin. Remove slide from frame. Remove recoil assembly from barrel. Remove barrel from slide. Clean. Reassemble, leaving magazine where it is for later loading. Weapon in condition 4: chamber empty, hammer down, no magazine.

S&W. Glock. Taurus.

Dean has put almost an entirely new edge on a machete that did not need it.

Sam reaches for the Colt. His hands are like the rest of him: the bones have got long before the rest can catch up, sinews and blue veins on display. They look deceptively delicate. Like mother-of-pearl, like nickel-plated filigree.

Long fingers flex along the frame of the weapon as Sam angles it downward despite the absence of ammunition, ingrained habit. Left hand eases back the slide, draws out the link pin. Removes slide, separates recoil assembly, brushes and swabs barrel.

Sam takes up the slide again in his right as his left moves to the pile of tools obscured by his torso. It's a thin metal rod: a punch. Sam is removing the firing pin, pin stop, and extractor, taking the slide down to parts. There's really no need to do this; these weapons are well maintained. If he's going to do it, he could do it on the order of thirty, forty seconds. But he does it slowly, like he's considering each part as he removes it.

Strip tease, Dean thinks with an edge of hysteria.

Out comes the FP-10. There's that punch of cinnamon and warmth. Sam oils Dean's Colt with precise drops of the lube, touching the excess from its rails with a cotton swab. Then he rebuilds it, as slowly as he took it apart.

It's not Dean's, of course, not fully. It came from his father. But then, the same could be said of Sam.

Sam holds the Colt in his palm. It looks almost small there. Then he places it on the bedspread before him and starts filling the magazine.

The standard magazine capacity is seven. Sam thumbs rounds into it one after another and slides the clip home. Chamber empty, hammer down, magazine charged: condition 3.

Dean hasn't touched a knife in quite some time. Sam gets up and comes over to where he sits paralyzed, shedding his shirt along the way. The Colt looks good in his hand.

"What are you doing?"

Sam ignores him in favor of straddling him on the chair, winding one arm around Dean's neck, then the other. Dean shuts his eyes.

When he opens them, Sam's watching him, face inches from his own. Only someone who knows Sam well would see that he's apprehensive, and for some reason it's that which unlocks a flood of want in Dean, not the sophisticated advance. He reaches out and tucks Sam's hair behind his ear before he can think to stop himself. Sam bends and kisses him.

It's soft, almost fragile. Dean can hear the mutter of a TV set somewhere and the connection of their own lips. Dean's hands come up to rest along the faint fluting of Sam's ribcage, and for a moment he gets lost in the sweet sting of cherishing him.

This is really very simple, so he doesn't see what's so hard to understand. Dean needs to take care of his brother. Why won't Sammy let him?

He slides his hands beneath Sam's ass to lift him, carry him the two steps to Sam's bed to prove he still can. Sam holds on just like he always used to. Only the weight of the gun in his hand spoils the effect. Dean tips him sideways across the foot of the bed and kisses him like he does every time he wants to sweep Sam's troubles out of his mind.

Sam lets him press his wrists to the bed to either side of his head. Dean pulls back to look at him. Long, tapered torso, jeans slung low. Hair spread on the comforter, stringy from hours in the car. Silver colt in his right, arms bent up over his head. Starfish, just like he dreamed. Sam licks his lips.

Dean flicks open the button on Sam's Levis and barely has to lower the zipper to tug them off, his hips are so skinny. He's wearing nothing underneath. Jesus. Jesus. Dean presses his mouth to his femoral, the inward sweep of quads, shinbone blade, ankle. Sam tosses his head. Dean spends some time down there, cradling this impossibly slender thing that's borne Sam for miles and miles and miles; sucks in a breath through his nose pressed into the joint, doesn't give a shit how much those runner's feet smell if he can make Sam forget what he's holding.

He can't, though. Sam drags the Colt up himself and flexes his belly into the flat of it, and he's panting. His cock is gorgeous. Sam raises his head to look down at Dean, chest heaving, gun heaving with it, mouth open stupid and desperate. "Dean," he says, dazed. Dean's got nothin'; Sam's a force of nature right now, a raw ball of want and need, and all Dean can do is hold on and look at it. Sam flings his free hand out searching for a moment. He finds the bottle of FP-10, thumbs the cap off and squeezes a small puddle of it onto his belly. Swallowing, he keeps his eyes on Dean as he smears his fingers through it.

Oh, fuck.

The smell is overwhelming, cinnamon and silicone and solvents. This is an astonishingly bad idea. Sam raises the knee of the leg Dean's not holding and circles his opening with his fingertips.

He whimpers when he works one in, in and out just to the first knuckle, and Dean doesn't know if it's because he's so turned on or because it stings. Maybe both. Either way, he can't take this anymore; he squirts more oil on Sam's stomach and slicks his fingers, pressing two in around the tip of Sam's. Sam bites his lip and cants his hips, cradling the Colt against his pectoral.

"Dean, Dean, Dean."

Tightest fucking thing, he's not loosening up at all. Dean looks up. Sam's rubbing the gun into his cheek as if to cool himself with the metal, but it's for Dean. Sam's head's turned away, his eyes closed. He angles his knee out. "This is what you want, right?"

Dean doesn't know how to say, What I want is you. Not so Sam will believe him. Dean fucked that up.

Sam's slow writhing, the flutter of his eyelashes, his sigh of pleasure—that's all fake. But his cock leaking precome on top of gun oil, that's real. The need just under the seduction, that's real. And Sam in need will always do it for him. This isn't want he wants, but apparently it's what Sam wants, and if it's the only way Dean can have him, he'll take it.

Sam removes his finger from between Dean's; Dean spears two deeper and scissors. He has to fight to spread them. If he didn't know better, he'd think Sam wasn't up for it.

Sam's chest rises and falls once, twice, three times, deliberately. Breathing through it.

The Colt M1911 has a semiautomatic mechanism configured such that when the slide moves to permit the magazine to feed, the hammer is raised and the safety is disengaged. Sam racks the slide. Round in the chamber, hammer cocked, safety off. Condition 0. Sam presses the gun into Dean's grip, wraps his hand around Dean's, and guides the muzzle to his hole.

Dean wants his hands to shake right now, but they can't. It's been trained out of him. With their hands laced together, he penetrates his brother with the gun.

The 1911's barrel has such a nice shape. It's compact and smooth. The sight is a low bump of metal, nothing sharp; the barrel gets wider where the frontal recoil mechanism bumps into the frame, but the front of the rail only sticks out a couple of millimeters. It's enough to catch on Sam's rim and probably hurts, but Sam turns his wrist and Dean's a few degrees till the gun's on its side and it fits in. There's about three inches Dean can fuck Sam with before the trigger guard meets his body.

Licking his bottom lip, Sam lets go of Dean's hand. Dean pulls the Colt back, thrusts it in again, carefully, carefully. Sam's rim is so pink around the silver of the barrel.

Dean presses a kiss to Sam's belly.

He feels the moment Sam's body gives in and actually accepts the gun. Hears it, in Sam's gasp. The muzzle sinks in another few millimeters and bumps up against the spot inside. Sam lets out a little wail.

Dean clambers up over him, wrist jammed at a dangerous angle between his brother's legs, fully clothed. Sam hands clench and flex in empty air at his sides, and his brow knits, pinched in fear and maybe pain. Then his eyes find Dean's, and it smooths out.

Dean watches his baby brother raise his hips to take the worst promises of their life into his body, over and over. Either there is no God or he's looking at it.

He rubs the side of the barrel over that spot inside Sam, pressing up. His other arm circles behind Sam's neck, and he buries his face in there; murmurs, Sammy, Sammy, Sammy and squeezes him like when he found Sam after he got lost in the supermarket. Sam chokes a little when he comes.

Dean works him inside till he's through it, then past it, then sobbing, the sound pushed down to fit inside thin walls. Only after Sam's face is broken does Dean's wrist stop moving, and then he draws the Colt out more carefully than laying explosive tripwire. He safeties the gun and drops it out of the way. Finally his hands can shake.

Now. Now is the moment.

He takes his bandanna from his back pocket and unzips his jeans. His cock aches at the base like he got pummeled there. Sam's face scrunches and his legs turn in toward each other, but Dean takes a knee in each hand and holds them open. He spits on the handkerchief. He jerks himself with his left, never his favored grip, but he needs his right to clean up Sam's face, then the white streaks on his chest, then the amber on his stomach, then, spit again, between his legs, tight pink furl so swollen and raw. Sam hiccoughs, but he relaxes, thighs unbending and breathing in deep under Dean's care. Dean spills all over his fist.

White drips onto Sam's body. Dean wipes his fingers on the bandanna and then cleans that off him, too. Perfect.

Sam's trembling faintly all over; he's clearly not at all sleepy but he's got his eyes closed so he doesn't have to look at his brother. Dean has the presence of mind to set an alarm for early enough to deal with the unusable gun, then he pulls up his jeans without bothering to zip the fly and lays down over Sam's naked skin, caging his body in his completely.

Black dogs are simple. They're dogs, and they're big, and they're black. They give people nightmares and it takes consecrated iron rounds to kill them, yes, but still: big black dogs.

Big, black, very fast dogs.

It still shouldn't be a problem. Not for people like them, not for a unit like them. They know how to stow their family drama and work together. Dad gives his directives as clear as ever, verbal or non-verbal, and he depends on Sam and Dean to communicate with each other because they always do. They always have.

For all that he's forever on Sam to think through his mistakes to find the when of them, the moment he went wrong rather than the moment the failure became apparent, Dean will never figure out what that moment is for them this time. Maybe it's somewhere back when they're bent over maps at the motel, before they ever duck under barbed wire fence and strike out into the desert. Maybe it's when he misses something because he's watching the set of Sam's shoulders, or Dad's, too busy trying to read their moods rather than their tactics or surroundings. Maybe it's when Sam glances toward him, and Dean throws them out of rhythm with an unnecessary "follow left" signal just to feel the contact.

Or maybe it all really is fine up until the moment they find the dog, who knows.

Dad stops ten feet ahead up the arroyo, reading something in the sand. He throws two silent commands without looking back or lowering his weapon: Break right, circle around.

Dean communicates the signal backwards and moves to obey, moving back toward the lower side of the arroyo while facing the one Dad's watching. The moon breaks out of the clouds.

And the dog is right there, leaping from the embankment. Dad's clearly anticipated it, because his weapon pans to intersect the shadow plunging down before the first pebble falls, which is the only sound.

Except that Dean thinks he sees Sam start to move in the wrong direction. For half a second, his mind can't compute the angles, can't tell if the dog's going to hit him or not, and it bursts out of his mouth: "Sam!"

It doesn't distract Dad, but it does distract the dog. And at the speed it's moving, that's just as bad.

Dad's shot clips it. The dog twists in midair, but it wasn't a kill shot and it snarls as it lands on John.

Dad's shout of agony reverberates from the arroyo walls. Dean hears a round from Dad's .38 Special thock into the embankment as he's disarmed. But he doesn't see it, because the dog's still coming and Sam's in the way.

Sam freezes. It's only for an instant, less than an instant, but it's so total Dean thinks it must be time that cuts out. His entire body stops. The moon ghosts over his face and shows his expression, and recognition knifes through Dean like something serrated.

He can name that expression, this time. It's panic.

Picture the worst-case scenario.

Then Sam has his gun up and he squeezes off three rounds center-mass.

The dog hits the sand with a yelp. Even Sam looks a little stunned. Dean, who barely managed to abort the charge in front of his brother that he was not ever supposed to make, skids to his knees, breathing hard with the awareness of how close he just came to killing himself. On the other side of the dry creek bed, John groans.

"Sam?" Dean says urgently. Their father's wounded, he needs to go to him, Sam needs to hurry up and look at him so that he can. "Sammy?"

Sam blinks, and then he lowers his gun and turns to Dean. His face is tight with fear, but it's the fear Dean's used to seeing on hunts like this, not that expression. That one's gone and hidden behind this other. He holsters his weapon and they run to Dad's side.

Don't let them see you rattled.

Getting Dad back is messy, and it only gets messier from there. His leg has a long, deep tear, and black dogs are no cleaner than the regular kind. They irrigate the hell out of it when they get back to the motel, but Dean knows it's already infected.

Sam's the one who takes the lead on the medical, Dean assisting, because that's their default until Dad deems Sam seasoned enough. John takes the saline and alcohol down in deep tissues like the leatherneck he is, but it's not possible to conceal how much it hurts when all three of them already know from personal experience. Sam gets through three sutures before he breaks off because his hands are shaking. Propped up against the pillows, Dad puts one hand on the top of Sam's head and smiles. Sam sniffs once, long and loud, and bails out of the way for Dean to take over.

The shower comes on while Dean finishes.

By the time Dean joins him in the bathroom, snapping the latex gloves off and scrubbing the blood off his wrists at the sink while Sam towels and redresses behind him, Dad's out, a low-grade fever confirming the infection. Dean washes his hands once, twice, three times even though they didn't even get blood on them. If he keeps this up, they're going to chafe like Sam's.

When he glances up, Sam's watching him in the mirror. He looks and sounds very young when he asks, "Did I get it right?"

Dean feels himself pale with a wave of nausea. He swallows it down. "Yeah, Sammy. Looked perfect."

Sam's brow creases faintly in confusion. He scans Dean's face in the mirror for a second before he goes out into the main room behind him.

The mirror is the door to a medicine cabinet; Dean opens it and starts putting their toiletries away. They'll probably be here a couple of days with Dad in his condition.

He goes to shut the cabinet door and stops. In its angled surface, he watches Sam approach the cramped table where their recently used weapons are spread. Sam takes out the cleaning kit and sits. As he reaches for his Taurus where it lies beside Dean's Colt, Dean sees his hand hesitate for a bare moment. Then he picks it up, strips it, and starts cleaning.

Dean shuts the cabinet without meeting his own eyes in the mirror. This has to stop.

Tomorrow.

:::

Notes: FP-10 is no more lube than saliva is. What are generally called gun oils often contain solvents, as well. Do not do this.

(I mean, don't put a loaded pistol in your ass either, I guess)