A/N: Though in truth, this is really just an excuse to experiment with style and atmosphere, I love AU's that explore where the Winchesters would be without hunting, and all the grim possibilities still of tragedy, even without all the ghosties involved.

My goal is for this to be dark and gritty, but that the essence of the characters stays true. I hope the story will justify having them act so awfully.

Warnings: Incest, implied underage sex, language, drugs, mean!Dean, second-person-POV, brief Dean/OC

Sam looked at you funny and asked were you on speed again?

"No," you lied. You itched your wrist.

He shook his head, his hair shaking out of his eyes. "Right," he said. He spoke slowly, trying hard to get rid of that bad midwest accent over at his hoity-toity school out West. The 't' at the end was crisp and light like ocean salt. A year ago, his words would have been heavy like Oklahoma summer heat and rolling hills. Raihd, he would have said. But a lot was different from a year ago.

You were quiet. Sam didn't say nothing back. His eyes shifted all around and then finally he got up off the sofa and went to the kitchen. "You want a sandwich, Dean?" he yelled from the other room.

"No," you answered. "Get my smokes though. In the top drawer."

You flipped on the TV while you waited. Reception was bad out here and you were still working with rabbit ears, nothing fancy like cable or satellite. Nothing like Sam was probably used to. You stopped on a rerun of Home Improvement on Nick-at-Nite.

"Here," Sam came back. He was rolling an orange in his hand and he tossed you your American Legends and planted down on the other recliner.

You lit up a smoke. "How's school?" you asked.

"Good," he shrugged. He peeled a piece off his orange cleanly. The white meat of the rind got caught under his fingernails.

"Yeah?"

"Business as usual," he said. "LSATs are coming up."

"Hmm?" you scratched your head. "What's that?"

"Just some test," he said. "Not important."

"Oh, OK."

"How 'bout you?"

"Nuthin', really," you shrugged. "Driving U-Hauls this summer. Helping people move n' shit."

Sam popped a piece of orange into his mouth. "Good pay?"

"Yeah, alright," you said. "Good for a temporary gig."

"You got somethin' lined up for after yet or..?"

You shook your head. "Gonna see if Caleb needs a mechanic."

"You're good at that," Sam said. "Cars."

"Yeah, okay," you said. "I need the money."

Sam looked away. What for? He didn't ask.

"It's been a while," he said. "You look good."

You nodded and said, "You too." You weren't lying.

You'd thought maybe he'd come back all tan and different and ugly like a surfer with coarse brown skin, out there in California with all the sun, but he was still skinny as fuck, and he still had his strange sad face that made your mouth burn. When the leg of his shorts rode up you saw his thighs were still pale and white as a choir girl's. You swallowed.

"You got a girl?" you asked.

Sam shook his head. "Naw," he said. "Busy studying."

"Why?" you asked.

Sam shrugged. "Just 'cause. Hafta get good grades if I'mma go to law school."

Lahw skull.

You laughed too loud. Your cigarette fell out of your mouth and you picked it out of your lap and dropped it in the ashtray on top of the orange peels. "You're gonna be a lawyer?"

"Thinkin' 'bout it," Sam said quietly.

"Well," you coughed, sorry. "That's good. Real good."

"Mm-hmm," he said.

"You gonna be a prose- prosecutor? Or defense?" you asked. Yeah, you watched TV - Judge Judy and Law and Order. You knew the words for it.

"Dunno," Sam said. 'Might not even wanna be a criminal lawyer. Not sure yet."

"Oh," you said. "Well, whatever. Lawyer. That's a good fit."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," you said. "I can see that."

"Thanks," Sam said. He brought his hand up to chew his thumbnail and you could see the inside of his wrist, soft and purple and smooth. You took out another cigarette.

"You sure like arguing enough," you muttered in a good-natured way. He smiled back at you and you thought maybe, yeah, it could be like it was when you were kids.

"So," you coughed. "You're doing good?"

He raised his eyebrow at you like you'd grown a second head. The moment: lost. No, never mind.

"Yeah," he said, the corner of his mouth curling up like blue smoke.

"I'm glad," you said and shook your head, but he'd moved on already.

"How about Dad?" Sam he said.

You kicked your leg out at thin air and shrugged. It was hot and wet, summer in Oklahoma. The only thing you could do in this weather was smoke and stew. Sam looked at you expectantly.

"Where is he?" he stared.

"I don't know," you had to admit. "Disappeared last week."

All Sam did was shake his head and thin his mouth, like he'd heard it all. "Of course."

"He'll be back," you said.

"Not worried 'bout that," he said.

You rolled your eyes. "Don't get your panties in a bunch over it, Samantha."

His eyes narrowed. You avoided his gaze and put your smoke out on the couch arm. You stared at your fingers and grinded the butt into the upholstery for a long time.

Finally Sam sighed. "Fine," he said.

You looked up. "Fine."

On the buzzing TV, Jill asked: What causes sibling rivalry?

Big smile, Tim Allen shot back: Having more than one kid! The studio audience howled.

It was never going to work out anyways.

Sam heated up Hot Pockets for dinner and you drank beer and watched football. Neither of you had a team, but same as when you were young, you rooted for whoever was winning.

"You seeing anybody, Dean?" Sam asked once, during commercial break. He said it like he knew the answer.

You laughed and answered, "No, not really." For sex, as it'd always been, you picked up girls at the unfamiliar bars up in the city, or bought tricks if you were on the road, but all those women you fucked you only ever thought of Sam. Not in a homo way, but you loved the kid too much it was hard to separate and then the image filled your head - Sam all those years ago curled on your bed like a question mark, in just his shorts and ratty gray socks. His pink mouth, his soft shoulders, the backs of his knees, and the smooth slope of his back: you could never recover from it.

(And yeah maybe that was a little homo but still you weren't like that.)

"Ah," the Sam in now nodded.

You didn't say nothing else back and after that he didn't either. You got another beer and then you got up again and got more, and you kept getting up 'til you were good buzzed by the end of the game. Sam, always a lightweight, had already started dozing off on the couch after two cans. The light from the TV flickered across his face and made him look dark and pointy. The tips of your fingers hurt with how bad you wanted to slide over and touch him, peel back the shadows and press the palm of your hand to his chest, underneath.

At that moment, his eyelids fluttered half-open and you held your breath and stayed frozen like a wild animal. His pupils, blown open and black and wet, followed you.

"Dean," he said, quiet.

You licked your lips and dug your fingernails into your palm.

The sound of both of you inhaling and exhaling too loud filled the room. You closed your eyes and pinched yourself in the thigh. And that jolted through you and you were up and moving.

The room got tiny and it felt like you were breathing through wet cheesecloth. You sank into the couch next to Sam and even the creak of the springs grated your ears.

"Hey," you said. "Hey."

When he didn't answer, you dead stopped.

"Are you asleep?" you asked. A tiny scratching noise came from the back of his throat. A snore, you realized, and you had to clap your hands over your mouth to stop the hysterical laugh from bubbling up.

Of course. How could you have really thought? You shook your head and pushed up to your feet. Sam hummed and shifted. His chest was rising and falling evenly and there was a thin spot of drool at the corner of his mouth. Maybe you'd imagined the whole thing. You wanted to kick yourself.

You left the TV on and stumbled back to your room where you crumpled facedown onto the bed. The sheets smelled like cigarettes and spilled beer and you didn't bother getting under the covers, you were just so damn tired, especially of your brother, again.

The last time you'd seen Sam was in that parking lot in Arkansas.

The sick neon glow of the vacancy sign threw his long skinny shadow across the gravel. You watched the shadow hold its hands palms up and open its mouth and say, "So what? So what now?"

This was the end. You were certain. Still, you tried to hold onto him. It hurt. It hurt the both of you.

You stood in that doorway and yelled that he was a traitor, that he was a faggot, that he was a pussy and a liar and a cocksucking piece of shit. Your heart was falling out of your chest and your eyes were burning but he just looked at you and shook his head. Jim Beam and Cuervo had always made you do cruel things.

In truth, you wanted, more than anything, for him to stay, but you didn't know how to put it into words so you heard yourself saying instead, "Just go."

Saying, "Fuck you."

Saying, "Don't come back."

He was silent for a moment. Then you watched his face turn away, out of the harsh beam of the light.

It was a split-second tragedy; you blinked and the rest of him melted away and he was gone. The soft flapping of the rubber soles of his sneakers against the pavement was the last you ever had of him. It'd only been a moment.

It was cold, but August and the weatherman that morning'd said there was a heat wave coming to knock all you out, just you wait.

The heat wave never came. Liar. In fact, that year - that long year Sam was gone - it was always cold. An eternal winter.

You were twenty-two and Dad was gone all the time. You drank too much and got a job working the graveyard shift at a video rental. Your boss was a Puerto Rican chick named Margaret. Margaret was a fat cunt. She thought you stole, so instead of being allowed to work the register, she made you sort videos in the back room, which smelled like shit.

"It's because we used to keep it boarded up," Tracey, Margaret's niece, explained to you once. Tracey worked at the store once in a while, just to help out her aunt, and she was just as fat as Margaret and had long stringy hair and smoked lots of pot.

Tracey was really fucking weird. She was also sort of a celebrity in Tremolo, which was west of you by twenty miles of flat red sand and nothing, because her dad was an ax murderer who killed hookers in Oklahoma City. It was even on the national news with Peter Jennings. The whole thing was nuts, and Tracey enjoyed some sort of privilege 'cause of it, being the most famous person probably in the whole damn county, so she bragged about it all the fucking time.

"You kept it boarded it up?" you asked, just 'cause you were bored and she had a bit of a crush on you and maybe you were awful but you kind of enjoyed the attention and the way she came in nearly every day now to flutter around you.

"Yeah," she nodded, "And last summer a hobo snuck in and lived there for a while."

"What?" you said.

"Yeah," Tracey continued. "He'd watch Steel Magnolias and jack off, like, every night. It ruined the tape."

"What?" you said again.

"It's okay though," she shrugged. "A box fell on top of him a couple weeks later and he died. They cops came and got his body after we noticed the smell."

"Shit." What else could you say? You had to tell Sam. But then you remembered - Sam, the wan smudge of his face chased away into the dark that night by your words, by your jagged fists. The wound was still raw, and you could almost feel it throbbing red and hurt underneath your fugly blue video store smock. You almost choked.

You were still angry but it was getting harder to tell at who.

But then Tracey offered you pot and you took it and smoked it together in the back room, mourning the nameless hobo who jerked it to Steel Magnolias. You thought somebody'd have to be really sad to do that, but then again, you were pretty damn miserable yourself. Sam would say something about glass houses, but you were trying not to think of him.

You and Tracey found a copy of Steel Magnolias - not the one the hobo had ruined last summer, obviously - and watched it on the TV in the back. She cried, and you heckled and yelled for Dolly Parton to show her tits.

"Shut up," Tracey said, her eyes red both from crying and the weed. You flicked her ear and said, "Fucking bitch," but she didn't think you meant it so she just pushed your finger away and shushed you again. But you did mean it. Really. You did.

When the movie was over and the credits started playing, Tracey flopped back and sprawled over the floor on her stomach.

"Hey," she said, wriggling closer to you.

"Truth or Dare?" she asked.

You paused. Then:

"Dare," you said. Then you amended, "Long as I don't have to get up."

Tracey giggled. "Okay. Fuck me."

You thought that it was a bad idea, really you did. But what the fuck: you shrugged and Tracey, red-eyed and clumsy, clambered on top of you.

She was a nice girl. She shared drugs. She was ugly, but you were ugly too on the inside, so did it really matter?

You missed Sam.

Afterwards, Tracey zipped her jeans up and looked at you, glowing. Her face was pink and happy. You felt flat, like a rope that'd been cut.

"Call me?" she said.

"Maybe," you said.

You didn't but you did hear she was asking around for you a lot. And when you bumped into her at the video store next time you were working and she was down visiting-

"Hey Dean," she smiled at you, leaning close. She was wearing makeup and a sundress and sandals in sixty-degree weather; desperation came off her in waves. Mostly, you thought, she could use a Tic-Tac.

Tracey'd been nice to you, but you just wanted to ruin her. You wondered where this specific destructive impulse came from.

Maybe you were a psychopath.

"What?" you said.

"Oh," she looked away. "Just want to know what's up?"

"Nothing," you said.

"Really?" she brightened. "Do you want to go out later or something?"

"I'm busy," you lied. "I've got a date."

Her face crumpled for a moment, but then she pulled it up again. Her smile looked like it was being stretched with fishing line.

"Really? Some ugly bitch, huh?" she said with false bravado. "Who is it?"

You glared up at her. "Why do you want to know?"

"Um-"

"Fuck off, ugly cunt," you said, the words pouring out of you.

She stared at you, her mouth hanging open. You met her stare and she looked away. Finally you heard her walk away, her cheap sandals flapping against the floor.

She got you fired that day. Fucking Tracey and Fat Cunt Margaret, collaborating to make your life even more of a sick joke than it already was.

Then, later that night, curled up in your bed and smashed out your mind:

"You're a bad person," you said to yourself.

"I know," you said back.

You still missed Sam.