Impossible to Tell

by Candle Beck

Slash, Sam/Dean. In which the Winchesters are more screwed up than even they realize.

Title: Impossible to Tell

Author: Candle Beck

Pairing: Sam/Dean

Rating: R

Spoilers: Pre-series.

Warnings: Fifteen year old Sam, the word is still jailbait.

Summary: In which the Winchesters are more screwed up than even they realize.

Impossible to Tell

By Candle Beck

Tonight Dean almost kills his brother.

They're in this church. It's being ripped apart from the inside out, great seams opening in the stone walls and shattering the stained glass into pieces as small as rain. Their dad left them, telling them they'd be safe here. He might have used the word 'sanctuary.'

Dean will never believe it again. He's crouching behind the fallen altar and he's got a hand on Sam's head, holding him down, belly flat on the floor. Sam is mumbling in Latin, incantation slurred and fucked up by his mouth mashed against the marble. Dean has his gun out but there's nothing corporeal, not yet. Before them, below the altar the marble floor develops fault lines and starts to split, something pushing up from underneath.

Dean's got a pretty good idea, half-mad from fear though he is, he can still put together the pieces. Dean is nineteen now and he's been around. His dad doesn't let him help much on the demon stuff, hides the old books bound in strange pale leather in the wheel well instead of in the footlocker with the rest. John leaves his sons in churches and in the care of men of God, cuffing their faces and making a lump grow in Dean's throat as he watches him drive away. John always takes on the demons alone.

So that's where his dad is, far away somewhere else looking for the evil thing about to break through the floor of the church, this church right here. Dean has a Glock that will be beyond useless and a shotgun full of rock salt that will be only slightly better. Sam twists and shakes under his hand, soft hair at the nape of his neck slightly damp with sweat because Sam is terrified too.

It's so loud. Chunks of stone as big as cars fall from the ceiling, and shafts of clean sunlight stream down in the trembling aftermath. Everything is covered in dust the shade of skin, shards of colored glass. Dean has cuts on the top of his head (ducking over Sam, hunching his body into a shield and screwing his eyes shut against the glittering shower), leaking blood in thin trails down his face.

Dean decides that that's about enough, goddamn it.

He gets his mouth close to Sam's ear and shouts that they're leaving and Sam nods frantically, bumping his chin on the floor. Dean pulls him up, pointing over to the shrine, where a side exit shines in faint incongruous neon. Sam's mouth drops and he shakes his head, yanking at Dean's arm.

"It's gonna collapse, that last pillar," Sam hollers. "The front, Dean, we gotta go out the front!"

Dean looks down the nave and the marble is thrown back in jagged planes, a deep gash opened. Dust and glass and tatters of paper are swirling wildly above it, power building and groaning through the mutilated building. No way in hell are either of them going anywhere near that shit.

Dean doesn't have time for a big discussion, and he hauls his brother over to the shrine, battling to keep his arm around Sam's wrenching shoulders. Sam is stumbling, gaping back at the black cloud forming over the nave, blue electricity crackling.

"Sam, come on," and Dean's got blood in his eyes, stinging too badly to see. Huge pieces of the world crash down around them, pure evil filling the spaces left behind, and it's too much for Dean, it's too fucking scary.

Then the wall falls on them.

Sam barely has time to shout Dean's name.

Blackout.

(break)

Dean awakes awhile later under a pile of stone. It's almost totally dark except for a few wires of white light etched far above him. There's no need for fancy words this time: he feels like he got hit by a ton of bricks.

Later on, it'll turn out that Dean's got a dislocated shoulder and three cracked ribs and broke a couple fingers when his gun got crushed. Not as bad as it has been and will be, but bad enough for now.

He lies in a daze beneath the ruins for some unmarked period of time. He's drifting, free associating and nagged by barbs, pulled astray. Dean thinks that he is alive, someone let the church fall but kept him alive, almost killed him but kept him alive. Add a concussion to the list of injuries, because thought processes like these are not native to him.

Then, like the sunlight through the busted roof: Sam.

Dean remembers all at once, alive means nothing if he can't say the same about his brother.

Adrenaline drags through him, pumps acid into his tired muscles. His various aches and throbs recede for as long as it takes him to get his legs under him and get his good shoulder braced on a broken pillar as long as a man. Dean strives up and the stone hardly moves, crushes back down on him. He pauses, takes a breath. He calls up the picture of Sam pinned, bloody, leeched of color by the moon-like dust, Sam trying to call for him.

Dean gets his second wind. He heaves the pillar up and off and the light slams into him full-bore. It's a lovely day out there beyond the devastated church. Every breath he takes is like sticking a cattle prod between his ribs.

Sam was right next to him when the wall came down. Dean starts hauling pieces of stone away, his left arm clutched to his chest, holding in his lungs. The dust makes him cough and it is one of the more painful things that has ever happened to him. Clawing through the rubble costs Dean two fingernails, peeled back like wet decals.

It's okay. Dean can't feel it.

He sees Sam's hand first, limp and curled and starting to bruise. Dean shouts his name and Sam doesn't answer and Dean goes a little crazy, ripping stones away with his hands blood-slippery. He's crying out in pain, against his will in grunts and hisses, but he doesn't stop.

Sam's face is filthy, his eyes shut and Dean reaches for him as soon as he has room, presses his fingers against Sam's mouth, his throat. Sam is warm. There, right there--Sam is breathing.

Dean goes nerveless with relief for a split second, his chest hitching in little delayed gasps.

"I see ya, Sammy, I'm coming," he mutters, resuming work unearthing his brother.

Dean keeps up some chatter, though it hurts to talk. His eyes keeping flying to Sam's face, hands fumbling over Sam's legs. Dean pulls away one of the last stones and Sam moans, still unconscious, features twisting in drugged agony. Dean says, "Sorry, sorry, fuck," seeing how Sam's foot is bent at a bad angle.

Dean scrubs at his face with his sleeve, a thin mud of blood and tears and dirt on his skin. He needs to get Sam out of here but Sam can't walk and Dean doesn't think he can carry him, not like this. Dean looks around helplessly, praying for his dad and it shouldn't work because Dean doesn't have that kind of faith and anyway, this church isn't hallowed ground anymore.

But out beyond the crumbling remains, the kindling pews, out there in the perfect day Dean's father is screaming his name.

(break)

They tear right the fuck out of town.

Dean is in the backseat with Sam in an endless sprawl across his lap, his head rattling on the door. Sam is cursing, gripping Dean's coat with both hands.

"Hurts, Dean, fuck," Sam hisses, teeth bared and sharply white in the dark.

Dean pushes Sam's sweaty hair back, palms Sam's cheeks and forehead because it seems to soothe him slightly. Sam is in constant motion, this slow excruciating wave against Dean, long shudders and his fists digging into Dean's chest.

"I know, it's gonna be okay," Dean tells him. "Try to quit moving around so much, okay?"

Sam gnashes, arches his back and his shoulder jams against Dean's chin, making him bite his tongue and now he can taste blood. Sam is moaning without end, low uneven thrum of sound as his foot swings sick and oiled at the end of his broken ankle.

"Dad, what the fuck," Dean demands, hugging Sam to him with his good arm.

John meets his eyes briefly in the rearview, pitch fucking black. "It shouldn't have been there. There was no goddamn reason for it to be there."

"Didn't seem to need a fucking reason."

"Those cattle mutilations, I was sure-" John cuts himself off, punches the steering wheel a couple times. He glances back at them every few seconds, compulsive. "Sam? Sammy?"

Sam groans, dragging at Dean's coat and shaking and sweating. "'m okay Dad."

"Hang in there, kid, we're almost home."

Dean drops his head against Sam's, breathing shallow and ragged against the pain in his chest. His shoulder, just recently relocated by his father as Dean braced himself against the side of the car, is throbbing, feels full of liquid-hot metal. One of Sam's hands works free of Dean's coat and clutches at his face, slides slick through the blood. Dean closes his eyes, whispering against Sam's palm that he's okay, they're all okay and they're getting out.

"Shouldn't have left you alone," John is muttering, mostly to himself. "Never should have--Dean, did you see what form it took?"

"No sir," Dean answers. "It was a cloud, it, it was manifesting and then the wall f-fell."

Dean hears his stutter and hates it, hates that it makes him sound scared when he's not, he's not anymore. He almost killed his brother, forced him under a falling wall even though Sam told him, but Dean's all right now. He's got Sam and he's got his dad and the three of them are traveling at high speeds, nearing escape velocity. If they're banged up some, so it goes. Dean's not scared.

"Okay," John says, strained and hoarse. "Okay, that's okay, we'll figure it out later. We're almost there, boys, you just hold on."

Sam's face is pressed hot against Dean's. They're clinging to each other, lost in their individual pain and not talking about it.

(break)

Three counties away is a man John knows who was a doctor in some previous life. In this life he lives five miles from the nearest streetlight, standing in silhouette in the doorway as the Impala comes up the driveway. His name is Jackson but Dean forgets it almost immediately, occupied with more pressing matters.

Sam is mostly out of it, drunk from pain and shock, head hanging limp between his shoulders. John pulls him away from Dean, drapes Sam's long form over his shoulder in a fireman's carry and Dean slumps against the seat, his chest suddenly unobstructed and rushing full. He's in something like awe, watching his father straighten slowly under Sam's weight, hand gripping Sam's belt and his face heavy and carved and miserable.

"You can make it all right," John says gruffly, half a question and Dean nods, pushes to his feet with every muscle in his body hollering in protest.

John gets Sam inside, laid out on the scuffed dirty carpet, and he orders Dean down on the couch in between running down their injuries for Jackson. Dean is boneless, shivering under his skin where every part of him is sore, and he sinks into the couch with his eyes stuck on Sam, wishing breathing didn't hurt so bad.

His dad has disappeared into the other room and Dean wants him to come back.

He watches Jackson tending to Sam, cutting the sneaker off his swollen foot and slitting his jeans to the knee. Sam's head is rolling on the carpet, slow pendulum with his face in a rictus. Dean can't see him like that, and he crawls off the couch, kneels next to his brother and flattens his hands on Sam's shoulders, the steep curve of his neck.

"He'll be all right," Jackson says, flicking an unreadable look at him. "It's a clean break."

Dean nods. His throat doesn't work, he keeps trying to swallow and it sticks, jams up on him.

John comes back with a blue ice pack in his hands, looming huge over the three of them on the floor.

"What'd I say, Dean, couch."

He takes hold of his son's collar, pulls him up and back. Dean goes willingly enough, his father's hand rough on the back of his neck, immediate and inarguable. Dean falls onto the couch and his dad tugs up his chin, studying his face. Dean stares up at him, frozen in place.

"You look like hell," John tells him plainly. Dean nods; he figured as much. "How're your ribs?"

"Broken," Dean replies. "Useless." He tries to smirk, wanting his dad to see that he's not freaked out by any of this.

John grunts, presses the ice pack to Dean's shoulder until Dean raises a hand to hold it in place. John scratches at Dean's cheek with his thumbnail, flaking dried blood off.

"You need to wash your face."

"Yeah," Dean sighs, goes to haul himself to his feet again but John holds him down, hand on the top of Dean's head.

"Sit. Rest. Do what I tell you."

Dean just blinks, exhausted and confused and not capable of much more. John half-smiles, as much as he ever does. He disappears again and comes back this time with a wet rag that he drops on Dean's upraised face, warm and smothering and biting at the galaxy of cuts on his head. Dean presses hard with the heels of his hands, scrubs the mess off. He feels his dad collapse on the couch next to him, boots scraping the floor.

Dean keeps his face hidden in the rag for as long as he can. John and Jackson talk about Sam for a minute in staccato, and then John says, "Dean's got a couple broken fingers, has he mentioned that yet?"

"Doesn't hurt," Dean mutters. John gives him a look, and Dean smiles, no worries dad, not about me, a lunatic reckless shine to it.

"Got some pieces in my barn that'll do for splints," Jackson says. "Should have everything I need to make the plaster, too, I'll have to check."

"Something for the pain, Jacks."

Jackson hesitates, then nods. "Might have some Demerol 'round here."

"Thought you might," John says under his breath as Jackson leaves, back door clapping behind him. Dean lifts his eyebrows curiously, and John waves it away. "He's a decent man, he just picked up a little habit in the service. Can't judge him."

Dean nods, unsure but it's obviously the response his father is looking for. He twists the rag between his hands, dingy pink now and cooling. They both look over at Sam at the same moment, like they've been programmed in concurrent ways.

Sam's still mostly unconscious, writhing faintly. Dean's throat closes up again when he looks at his brother. His foot and ankle are so swollen and discolored they look fake, and bruises have risen on Sam's face, stealing most of the remaining sweetness from his features. He's only fifteen years old.

"I screwed up," Dean hears himself say, and something yanks sideways and then it's coming out of him in a flood. "He told me, Sammy knew the wall was gonna come down and he told me but I didn't listen to him, I, I, I made him go that way and he was right, it fell, it fucking crushed him-"

"Hey, hey." John has hold of Dean's arm, his voice sharp and Dean's spine snaps, his teeth clicking together. He can't look at his father.

"You got him out alive," his dad tells him. "You're both alive and that is your only priority. You did good."

Dean's eyes jerk up, startled, and John looks kind of surprised himself, his hand feeling huge closed around Dean's arm. He shakes Dean a little bit, the long hours and miles of the day settling on his shoulders, weighting the shadows under his eyes. Dean's dad always looks pretty tired.

"You did just right, Dean," John says, and Dean is certain that he is lying now, though there is no sign of it, that doesn't mean anything.

Lying well is one of his dad's many skills.

(break)

Sam's cast is made of splints and strips of bedsheet and homemade plaster, his lower leg and foot wrapped mummy-like. It's dried by the time he wakes up from his first Demerol-induced coma, and within an hour he's got three different colored pens and is scribbling all over it like a girl.

It hurts Dean's ribs to sit for very long and so he's standing, pacing the short length of Jackson's bedroom and ridiculing Sam absently, just because it's expected of him. Sam snipes back, lazy and opiate-slack, idly drawing a blue Impala on his cast. His hair is a wreck, crashing over his forehead and hiding the worst of his bruises, that purple egg-sized lump just under his hairline.

"How long do we have to stay here?" Sam asks.

"What, you got someplace better to be?"

Sam's lip curls, one of his newer expressions. "Just trying to plan my week, Dean."

Dean smirks, wishing Sam would look up. "Dad wants to give it a few days for my ribs. Also he's gotta find a pharmacy and rip off some crutches for you, so you can be at least a little functional."

Sam glances over at the closed door. "What's the name of that guy whose house this is?"

"Um, Jack, I think."

"Is he okay?"

"Sure. Dad wouldn't bring us someplace that wasn't safe."

Sam snorts quietly, and Dean remembers the last place their father brought them, the church that fell down and almost killed them both. He glares at Sam.

"That wasn't his fault," Dean says. Sam shakes his head, still bowed with the pen scratching on his cast.

"Of course it wasn't."

Dean shoots him a narrow suspicious look, but Sam isn't wearing a sneer, the set of his mouth sincere even if Dean can't see his eyes. Dean scowls at the ground for a minute, listening to the scritch of the pen and the whippoorwills like tiny sirens through the cracked-open window.

"Hey Dean, c'mere."

His neck pops as he jerks his eyes up, and Dean takes two steps reflexively before he stops short. "Why?"

"Want you to sign my cast."

"Oh my god, dork." But Dean comes over, sitting carefully on the edge of the bed with his hand flat on his cracked ribs. Sam sits back, eyes shielded, glinting like lanterns in a forest.

"I'm gonna draw a dirty picture," Dean says, folding his stupid hand around the pen because his good one has broken fingers.

"Your dirty pictures always look retarded."

"Yeah, well, sex looks a little retarded too." Dean pops the pen cap in his teeth, fitting a naked lady stick figure between Sam's squashed pentagrams and Celtic crosses. He takes his time, steadies his wrist to give her a big toothy grin, perfect tits.

"You're nuts, Dean." Sam slumps, eyes Dean's picture as it forms. "I'm gonna tell Dad it was you when he asks, 'cause you know he will."

Dean shrugs. "Dad likes naked ladies too."

"Gross." But Sam doesn't sound it, kinda amused and doped to the gills. He appeals to Dean like this, suggestible and not capable of more than token protests. His good foot is tucked against Dean's hip, bony and warm.

Dean draws a cloud of hearts over the lady's head, the international cartoon symbol of love. He finishes it off with a smiling sun wearing sunglasses, and then scrawls a facsimile of his name like an autograph under the whole thing.

"There you go." He tosses the pen at Sam and it hits his chest, rolls down to hitch up in his shirt.

Dean studies his brother for a second, cataloguing his scratches and contusions for the nine hundredth time since he pulled that last stone off Sam. Sam lies back for it passively, his eyes in slits and tracking over Dean just as intently. Dean reaches out, pushes the hair off Sam's forehead and hisses silently at the huge knot there, lets Sam's hair fall back. He looks away.

"Sorry 'bout all this, Sammy," Dean says quick and low. He picks at the seam of his jeans, biting the inside of his cheek.

Sam kicks him. "You should be, you bastard."

Dean swallows, tries to smile. Sam's not serious. His voice is easy and his foot stays against Dean's hip, his toes curling and prodding at him. Sam doesn't get it, letting Dean slide on this like every other wrong Dean's ever done to him, because Sam is naturally the forgiving type and all of his core traits are multiplied tenfold when it comes to his brother.

"I won't let that happen ever again," Dean says, and they're both surprised, because Dean used to say that all the time when Sam was much younger, spooked by a scary movie or a vicious brawl going on in the parking lot. It never failed to make Sam go quiet, wide-eyed, nodding solemnly like it was a pact Dean was making with him.

Dean stopped saying it once Sam got old enough to realize his brother was not omnipotent and had no power to do the things he promised. Nothing's changed and Dean can't stop the next church from falling down, but Sam sorta smiles like he believes it anyway.

"I know, Dean," Sam says. "You don't think I know that?"

(break)

John is using the last of the day's light to change the car's oil, out back between the house and the barn. Dean has eaten a sandwich and some candy and taken his pain pills and he's feeling okay, foggy and content with small things. He goes out onto the back porch barefoot, heedless of splinters, sits with his legs jackknifed on a low step.

"How you feelin', boy?" John asks from under the car. Dean doesn't know how John knows who came out; the angle seems impossible.

"Good enough," Dean says. He props his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands. "I'm in charge of car maintenance this month, man, won it off you fair and square."

John chuckles. His boots shift on the dust, dirty blue jeans and the glint of his belt buckle just past where the shadows start. Dean's hands itch for a socket wrench and black oil smeared on his fingertips, scowling at his father under the car.

"You took advantage of your old man when he'd had one too many," John corrects him.

"Ah, how to rip off a drunk guy at a poker game, great scam. Who was it taught me that? Memory's all hazy all of a sudden."

John makes an indecipherable sound and his legs bend as he rolls out from under. He gives Dean a look that burns like a reprimand but it's not; his dad's biting back laughter and swiping his wrists at the smears of grease on his forehead.

"You're gettin' a hell of a mouth on you, Dean."

Dean sits up, tips his chin. "It's coming from a place of respect, Dad, trust me." He smiles. "And I spend too much time with your youngest, awful smartass that kid is."

"And who taught him that?"

Dean's smile curls, gets acidic, weird thrill of pride he gets sometimes thinking about how Sam, Sam and all the things he is and will be, is here almost entirely by Dean's effort. He likes seeing the shades of himself in his brother, the echoes. It probably goes both ways.

His dad gets to his feet, gets the white cloth on the roof of the car and cleans up quick and half-assed, missing spots all over. He grabs the open beer by the toolbox and comes to sit on the steps near Dean. Dean gets a strange urge to smooth down his hair or something, fiddle with his shirt collar.

"Anyway," he says, dispelling the thought. "At the end of the day you still changed the oil when it's my month."

Dean thinks about kicking at his father like he would if he were sitting here with Sam, but he decides against. He's aware that there are lines, somewhere.

John hides a smirk with his beer, taking a long drink. He's entirely unrepentant. "You're in no condition."

"Not true." Dean pushes up his shirt sleeve, pops his bicep to show off the muscle like he used to do when he was a kid. "Fit as a fiddle and ready for love. Definitely ready for a basic oil change."

"You can take the next one, how's that."

"Next two," Dean says immediately.

John sighs, rumbling and aggrieved, probably playing it up a little. He says grudgingly, "Fine. "

Dean sits back, happy, grinning at his dad. "Gettin' soft, old man."

"Wouldn't be gloating, now, would you Dean?"

"No sir." Dean shakes his head, holds out his hands blamelessly. "Wouldn't think of it."

John tips him a look of faint disbelief, rough and fond around the edges. The sun is almost gone below the level of the horizon, the light as thick as liquid, gold and fire-colored. Dean feels like he should be pretty secure out here on the outskirts of the middle of nowhere, but he's still antsy, missing the road or waiting for something to happen, he can't quite tell.

"So we're sticking around for a little while?" Dean asks, weaving his fingers between his knees and looking over at his dad reclined on his elbows on the steps, scratching at his beard and half-yawning.

"Good as any other place," his father answers.

"'Cause, I mean, it's a pretty good cast your buddy made for Sam, he could probably travel fine if we get him those crutches. We could leave tomorrow, even."

John doesn't answer for a minute, watching the last elongated smear of the sun sink away. Dean is watching him, trying to read his expression but he's never had much luck at that, and growing most of the way up hasn't changed anything. A good poker face goes along with the lying well.

Dean wants to leave because he doesn't know this house and Jackson is spooky, absolutely silent slipping in and out of rooms, ministering to them faultlessly with sandwiches and painkillers. He wants to leave because he's fine and Sam's fine and when they're fine they're on the road. He wants to leave because he woke up under a pile of rocks a little while ago and sometimes he can feel it still.

"We're here at least through the weekend," John tells him. "Still got a job to do, Dean."

"You're going back after it?" Dean asks, hitting an odd high pitch. He clears his throat, frowning.

His dad doesn't look over at him. "Of course. It's a demon; it's killed. Almost killed you. I'm gonna bury that motherfucker in the bedrock of hell."

There's this look his dad gets sometimes. His eyes are almost always hard but sometimes they go glassy, razor sharp and merciless. Jaw stiff and mouth like a scar, and his shoulders seem bigger, his hands capable of tearing metal. John has been killing things since he was eighteen years old, and sometimes he looks like he was designed for no other purpose.

It never fails to strip Dean of his voice, stop him blinking for long seconds. It's not just him; anyone with a brain in their head goes still when John Winchester's got that look on his face.

John glances at him and there's an imperceptible give in his expression and he's Dean's dad again.

"Anyway," he says, pushing the heel of his hand on some dirt ground into the knee of his jeans. "Don't want you to worry about that. You boys need to get some rest. Get back on your feet."

"I'm on my feet, Dad," Dean says quietly. "I should be going with you."

John's mouth curves in a not-quite-kind smile, and he leans back on his elbows. "And your plan is for us to leave Sam with a broken ankle and no transportation? Because the last time I went after this son of a bitch it zeroed in on the two of you pretty damn quick."

"That was just the church, that wasn't personal," Dean argues, not sure if it's true but willing to give it his all.

"Not a risk I'm going to take. Not a risk you should even be considering, that's your brother's life."

Dean flinches, a breath catching and sticking in his lungs and making his ribs spike with pain. He drops his head, dull red flush on his cheeks. He counts to ten like he does sometimes when things start moving too fast. His dad waits him out, gazing placidly at the car.

"You should have someone to watch your back," Dean says low and intent. He's still blushing pretty badly, not wanting to think about the reasons why.

"I don't let you come on demon hunts even when you're a hundred percent, Dean, what on earth makes you think I'd take you when your trigger finger is broken?"

Specific warning tone in John's voice, he wants this conversation over, and maybe Dean can see his point. There's no way his dad is going to say yes and Dean knew that going in, weird for it to seem so essential and futile at the same time, but there it is.

Dean gets so frustrated sometimes. It goes without saying that if anything ever happened to Sam, Dean would be rendered instantly worthless, unfit for this earth, and that's just the natural state of things, something Dean's always known. It's harder for him to explain what it would be like if something happened to his dad. He can never focus past the suffocating black dread that seizes him at the very thought.

Dean scratches under his shirt at the bandage wrapped around his shoulder, not looking at his father.

"You can't keep protecting me from this stuff," Dean says carefully, weighing out each word. "You know you can't forever."

There's a long still moment, and then John sighs. "Yeah." He sounds strange. Something like defeated. "Little while longer, though."

Dean heaves a sigh of his own, an echo on time delay. "Yeah."

John presses his beer against his forehead, his cheek, and then takes a drink, passes it back to Dean. It almost slips through his fingers, but he catches it just in time.

(break)

Sam is still sleeping a lot, ten hours every night and long naps in the afternoons, stretched out on the couch in a patch of sunlight. Dean is terrifically bored for interminable lengths of time, muttering to himself and picking things up only to put them down again. He's only getting a few hours a night himself because his dad keeps going out alone, shrugging into his coat at the door, turned back to meet his son's eyes across the room before he leaves without saying goodbye because goodbye is bad luck.

The house is centuries-dead in the middle of the night, so dark out here in the fields that the stars are wedged into the sky. The floorboards under carpet whine like a kid's ghost as he paces, pauses to lean in at the living room, catch the sound of Sam breathing deep and even on the couch. Dean can't be expected to sleep under these conditions.

John usually gets back a couple hours before dawn, stumbling from exhaustion and unbloodied and discontent, struck out again. Dean is always listening for the engine and the key in the door, always waiting right there next to the coat rack when his dad comes in, shifting foot to foot until they're both safe inside.

He and Dean confer in the kitchen, whispering, leaning hard on the counter. The demon is toying with him, false clues and convoluted tracks to follow, and meanwhile a second young man has turned up torn apart like the one who brought them here. John is visibly aging the way he does when a case is going poorly, something in the slump of his shoulders, the almost imperceptible shaking of his hand when he pushes it through his hair.

Dean doesn't ask again to come along, not yet. For now all he cares about is his dad showing up whole every night.

Sam notices the toll it's taking on Dean, this restless half-injured life, and needles at him, tells him he looks like shit and no girl is ever gonna go for him again if he keeps this up. He bitches at Dean for hovering, but won't let him leave unless Dean promises it's to go take a nap. Dean ends up lying down staring at the ceiling a lot. There are dangerous-looking water stains up there, brown and blistered soft.

Sam's concern is pretty bad, but Dean is still annoyed when his brother takes naps of his own, everything mind-numbing and colorless for whole chunks of the afternoon. Dean wanders around trying not to look at any clocks. He spends all his time waiting these days, waiting for his dad to come home and his brother to wake up and his chest to stop hurting so badly.

It's a day like that, and Dean goes out to the barn because he hasn't fully investigated it yet, and he finds Jackson painting a chair.

"Oh," Dean says, caught off-guard. "Sorry, I didn't know you were working in here."

"It's fine," Jackson answers, sounding slightly removed like he always does. He's painting methodically, a fresh-wood rocking chair turned upside down and slowly becoming blue.

"You make that? Is that like your job?"

Jackson nods, smudges of color on his fingers and knuckles and forehead. His concentration on his task appears complete, his eyes not flicking over or anything like that. Dean scratches at the back of his neck, feeling vague and invisible.

"So, uh. You served with my dad, huh?"

Jackson nods again, this time adding, "Yes."

Dean bobs his head, worming his hands into his pockets. "Good of you, helping out an old army buddy like this." He waits, but Jackson gives no indication of having even heard him, and Dean finds himself asking, "He save your life, or what?"

That gets him, a bitter little smile twisting on Jackson's face though he doesn't look up or stop painting.

"On the contrary."

Dean takes a moment, figures that out and still has to ask in disbelief, "You saved his?" Jackson nods, barest tilt of his head, and Dean says, "Oh, that's, um. What. What happened?"

Jackson presses his lips together, eyebrows down. "It was a long time ago. I've worked to forget the whole thing."

Dean starts to say something else, but then stops short. It's discordant, badly out of place. Jackson is hollow-chested, narrow-shouldered, swiftly losing his thin grayish hair. He has big knobby hands and looks twenty years older than John, face eroding with his eyes and mouth sunken. He looks insubstantial, like an afterimage, and Dean can't picture him in the jungle, good enough at it to have at least survived. He can't picture Jackson's hands pressed over the open wound that became the gouged white scar that has always been on Dean's father's chest.

Dean can't get his head around the idea of his father needing someone to save his life.

"Well," he says, proud of his voice for staying mostly even. "Thanks for that, I guess."

Jackson shrugs with one shoulder, doesn't answer but Dean is learning not to expect that. He's wondering, if Jackson is responsible for John, isn't he responsible for Sam and Dean too? How far are these things supposed to go?

It gets a little awkward standing there with his hands in his pockets, wanting to insist on the full story but plainly not welcome. Eventually Dean offers a half-hearted seeya, backing out of the barn. He circumnavigates the house a few times, his shadow thick and black under the sunlight, swinging when he turns each corner. He keeps dreaming up different ways that his dad could have almost died in the war, freaking himself out more with every circuit.

He's got another twelve hours at least before John comes back, and the stretch feels impossible at the moment, unlivable, so he goes inside. Sam is sleeping on the couch and Dean turns on the television just loud enough to wake him up. He sits on the floor, his back to the couch and his neck stiff, waiting for Sam's lazy swat and his huffy "Dean."

All the time these days, just waiting.

(break)

They eat a meal as a family at an actual table for the first time in longer than Dean can remember. It's lunchtime on a Saturday and their dad is going hunting for the demon right after, but for now there's macaroni and cheese and fruit cups with metal ring-tops. Sam kicks at Dean with his good foot because he knows Dean won't kick back for fear of hitting the bad.

John is in a good mood, which Dean doesn't really understand but is willing to go with. He tells them a story about a woman who became a kelpie, which doesn't sound true but has a satisfying arc. He ribs Dean for eating awkwardly with his left hand, stabbing at the food like an ape. Sam is rolling his eyes, smirking across the table at his brother.

"So what do you think, Sammy," John says. "You losing your eye, cooped up like this?"

Sam shakes his head quickly. "No sir, no way."

"Last couple times we went out, you hit damn near everything. Been making us look bad."

Dean watches Sam closely, able to track the color as it travels up his neck and flushes his face. Sam's never done well with compliments.

His foot knocks into Dean's under the table, probably unintentional but Dean jumps in anyway. "Hey, speak for yourself."

John gives him a look, smiling only a little. "Don't take it hard, Dean. Your brother's just gonna be better than you at some things, gotta accept that."

Dean glares at Sam, who is bright red at this point and smug as hell. He cocks an eyebrow at Dean, some kind of dare.

"Soon as you can stand again," Dean promises him. "First thing we're doing is seeing who the fuck's a better shot."

"Watch'er mouth," John says in absent reflex. His sons don't bother acknowledging it.

"Anytime, Dean," Sam taunts.

Dean grins sharklike. "Second thing, you and me are gonna go round and round, little brother. Just fair warning."

Sam scoffs, flicking his hair out of his eyes in that way he has that makes Dean want to noogie him so bad. Sam's mouth is pulled up at the corner, twitching against a smile that destroys most of his attempt to appear miles above it all.

"You talk big," Sam says all scorn and sneer. His eyes narrow with malicious glee. "Pipsqueak."

Dean almost gasps, swallows it at the last second. Sam has been officially taller than him for like a month, and it is still too soon.

John is chuckling, leaned back in his chair forking the pineapple pieces out of his fruit cup and over onto Dean's plate. Dean is not appeased, scowling at his dad because it isn't funny. John catches his eyes, refuses to look abashed in any way as he tells Dean:

"He's gonna have you on some things, Dean, what'd I say. Height, for one."

Dean throws up his hands, disgusted. "My own father."

John grins. Actually and completely grins, loses decades in it until he does not look old enough to be their dad. It knocks Dean back, astounds him because it's been so long since he's seen it.

"Who's gonna teach you hard truths if not your father?" John asks.

Dean shakes his head, kinda smiling against his will. He wants to keep this going, this little bantering run they've gotten on, but he can't think suddenly, no idea what to say next.

Sam kicks his ankle. "I'll teach him, Dad."

"Oh, hell no."

Dean, quick as a snake, stomps Sam's foot with both of his own, and Sam jerks, makes an entertaining sound like a squawk. He gets a moronic fake-wounded look on his face, tinged with that embedded petulance of his that Dean knows like a childhood friend, and throws a red cherry at Dean's head. It bounces off his forehead, lands on the table.

"Dude," Dean says as he picks up the cherry and eats it. "Thanks. I only got like two in mine."

His brother manages to scowl harder, and Dean trades amused looks with his dad. John is watching the two of them like a movie, Dean hyperaware of his attention, buzzing under his skin. Sam fingers his cutlery as if considering the ways it could function as a weapon, giving Dean a death glare.

"All right," John says, tossing his fruit cup onto his plate with a tinny clink. "You boys clean this up. I gotta get my stuff together."

He gets to his feet and goes into the living room where their packs are. Dean carries the plates into the kitchen and then props Sam up against the sink, steals his crutches, and tells him to get to work. Sam takes a swing at him and Dean ducks it easily, flattens his hands on Sam's sides to steady him as he teeters. Sam narrows his eyes and bitches until Dean promises him authority over the television for one night with no snide remarks even if he chooses NOVA or some other nerdly shit. Sam flicks on the taps without further argument, smiling to himself as Dean follows their dad.

John is loading salt rounds into a shotgun, the curtains thrown back and the afternoon light pouring in. He lifts his eyebrows at Dean, his hands not faltering.

"You got holy water?" Dean asks, wincing immediately because that's a pretty dumb question. His dad gives him a brusque imploring look, think before you talk, son, and Dean hurries to amend it, saying, "I mean, you want the, um, that squirt gun of Sammy's? We were talking, we think it'd be way more effective than just throwing water at the thing. 'Cause, you know. You can aim, and, like, other stuff like that."

Dean trails off, rubbing at his chin nervously. His dad sheathes the shotgun in his bag, adds some extra shells. He's got a small smile on his face, for once not seeming to mind that Dean is rambling and sounding like an idiot. His dad takes pity on him.

"It's actually not the worst idea I've heard," John says.

Dean grins. "Yeah? Okay." He goes over to Sam's bag and digs through sweatshirts and books and random crap from the road until he feels the familiar square shape, hard plastic under his fingers and he hooks the squirt gun out, presents it to his father with a flourish.

John takes it solemnly, treating it with the respect he treats all weapons. The squirt gun is neon purple and Dean can't help snickering at how it looks swallowed up in his dad's toughened hand. John gives him a little salute, tapping the gun on his temple, and stashes it, shoulders the bag.

"All right," he says, and Dean knows what's coming next, he's heard it a million times. "Watch out for your brother."

"Yeah. Yes sir." Dean trails him to the door, scratching at his arm and trying to hide the faint tremble working under his skin. He scans his father's face feverishly, never able to avoid thinking that this might be the last time, never once in fifteen years.

John hollers a goodbye to Sam and Sam echoes it, and Dean's still standing there, maybe a little too close. The world has narrowed down, and it all seems so basic and insoluble: his dad is going to leave and Dean wants him to stay. These two facts are all he knows right now.

"Take your pills," John tells him. "Want you to get some sleep tonight, hear me?"

Dean nods. He takes a breath, gathering himself together. "I'll try."

"Didn't say I wanted you to try, Dean."

Dean sorta smiles. He straightens his shoulders, crosses his fingers behind his back. "All right, I will."

John hitches his bag, and then reaches out like he's going to ruffle Dean's hair or give him an affectionate cuff, but the move is awkward for some reason--Dean is standing too close to him. The angle is off. John's hand hesitates, falls back down. Dean's stomach drops with it, staring at his father and wondering what he's done wrong.

The corner of John's mouth curves, not much of a smile but Dean will take it, and then he's saying, "I'll see you soon," and opening the front door, the sunlight blasting white like game show lights. Dean is blinded, watching his dad's silhouette vanish into the glare.

He staggers back to the kitchen, dizzy and suffering exploding spots across his vision. He sags in the doorway, hearing the clatter and rush of Sam washing dishes.

"Sam," Dean says. He rests his head, heavy and thick, on the jamb.

"What?"

Dean thinks for a minute, caught up in a baffling and ill-defined fear. "Um. Nevermind."

Sam grunts. "Freak."

"Yeah," Dean sighs without thinking. Sam drops a plate in the sink and it breaks crisp and loud. Dean looks up and Sam is staring at him, almost angry but that's not quite it, crazy desperate shape of his mouth, weariness bleeding out. Dean hikes his eyebrows, startled, but Sam doesn't say anything, just stares at Dean with that wrenching look on his face.

Dean hates being the first one to look away, but right now it's necessary.

(break)

Their father does not come back that night. Dean doesn't sleep. He lies on the floor next to the couch where his brother is, fully dressed and motionless for hours at a time.

You have to be smart about it. Even if he's not going to be able to rest his mind, his body still needs it.

Sam's arm hangs off the side of the couch, his big hand (huge hands, all of a sudden when he was thirteen and Dean should have known then what his kid brother was gonna become) curled on the carpet near to Dean. His face is mashed into the cushion, red hatch marks on his cheek when he rolls over.

When Dean thinks about it, he thinks that he's been conditioned. Watch out for your brother. Keep an eye on him, Dean. Don't let Sam out of your sight. It's an order. It's meant to be done without thought. His dad's voice has a specific timbre to it, an undercurrent, this is the only one that really matters. He could be saying it in German and Dean would understand him.

So yes, Dean watches Sam.

It's become more engrossing as time goes on.

His dad doesn't come home the next day, either.

Dean can't sit still. His knee starts to jog and within five minutes he's up again, living room to kitchen to bathroom, up and down the hall, around and around the outside of the house. Sam tells him to knock it off a few times, pelts shoes and books like Dean has a target on him, but Dean suspects Sam is going equally as crazy without even being able to pace, so he just ignores him, leaves the room for a little while.

Jackson makes them sloppy joes for dinner. They don't talk much, everyone sneaking glances at the front door.

Sam reads and complains about his ankle and Dean gives him an extra pill, takes two himself because he can't do this anymore, can't sustain the damage it's causing. He hopes it'll knock him out, and it does eventually, near dawn, but not before he's walked another ten miles of carpet, stepped out on the front step three dozen times to check the drive, the empty nighttime world.

Dean falls onto the sleeping bag rolled out next to the couch, loses consciousness almost immediately. He wakes up at dusk, no longer on the floor, having been hauled up at some point.

He's badly disoriented, his legs aching in deep waves, all that fucking pacing. He can barely move he's so stiff, and he calls weakly for his brother, hears Sam crutching from the kitchen.

"Jesus, finally. You've been asleep for like three days." At Dean's immediate look of alarm, Sam hastens to assure, "Or fourteen hours. Probably more like fourteen hours."

"Where's Dad?"

Sam shakes his head, mouth tight, leaning hard on his crutches. "Not back yet."

"No word?"

Sam just keeps shaking his head.

They have dry cereal and flat Coca-Cola for dinner, and Dean throws it up in the bushes outside so that Sam won't hear him and get more worried. He brushes his teeth for fifteen minutes, can't get rid of the taste.

Dean will not sleep tonight. He's not even going to bother trying.

Instead he hikes out to the highway, burns four clips into a speed limit sign from twenty paces, left-handed. It's something relatively easy to destroy. His dad is always saying, special circumstances, Dean, something's gonna happen that you don't expect and what will you do if there's a wall at your back, what will you do with a knife buried in your stomach, what will you do if your good hand is broken. Everything his father teaches him eventually comes into play.

Helplessly, he gets to thinking about the in-case scenarios, if his dad doesn't come back by Sunday or in a week or in a month or whatever it is this time. When Dean was a kid, it was always, call Pastor Jim. Take this money and buy bus tickets to Bobby's. But John stopped giving him those kinds of instructions awhile ago, and Dean figures that's because what he's meant to do is implicit now: get a car, get Sam, continue as you were.

Dean tries to imagine it, hunting all alone with Sam and feeling nothing but the absence in the car, getting lost everywhere they go because their dad has always been the best with maps. Just Sam, all day long, in the rolling sunlight.

Dean stops himself, forcibly taking his mind elsewhere. It's no good trying to think about this stuff when in a state of emotional distress; nothing has proper proportion right now.

He walks back to the house slowly, his ribs throbbing as bad as they have in a couple of days. Dean has done too much, stayed awake too long. He's on the long driveway and he keeps closing his eyes, picturing headlights flooding him from behind, his shadow cut out huge on the house and Dean all lit up around the edges. It's literally the only thing he wants at this moment, his lesser concerns and epic desires briefly dismissed.

Dean opens his eyes, tips his face up. He's looking for shooting stars. He needs a wish.

Back in Jackson's little house, Sam is awake.

He's got one of their father's files spread out on the floor and Sam is sitting cross-legged before it, paging through. Dean can see etchings and sketches of demons, the unfamiliar letter shapes of a cursed dead language.

"What are you doing?" Dean asks in a hiss, dropping to his knees and scooping the papers together. "Dad doesn't want you looking at his stuff and getting it all out of order, man."

Sam is under the window in the gray moonlight, just enough to read by, and there are trapped bits of dim in his angles, under his jaw. His hair is finger-wrecked.

"They were still in order until you grabbed them," Sam says, same kinda coarse whisper. Sam's voice is different now too; sometimes Dean doesn't hear him calling in crowds because his baby brother doesn't sound like that.

"You're still not allowed," Dean says, tucking the pages back in their folder and feeling a bite, a papercut right over the ridge of his knuckle. He swears, sticks his finger in his mouth. "Look what you made me do."

Sam's eyes flash white, rolling. "Pinning this on me too?"

"Everything's your fault, Sam. Everything." Dean glowers at him, his knees starting to ache. "What were you looking for, anyway?"

Sam lifts a shoulder, looking away. "Some reason he's not back yet. Something we could do to help even if it's from afar."

Dean sucks on his papercut, eyeing his brother. He doesn't want to ask but it's like a physical reaction. "And?"

Sam shakes his head. "This is just general demon lore. He took everything specific to the case with him. This. It was a waste of time."

Dean looks at him sharply, but Sam's face is lowered and caught up in shadow and he thinks maybe that was the point. Dean gets up, joints popping like he's decades older, and puts the folder over by the bags, comes back to grab Sam's wrist and pull him to his feet (foot). Sam wavers, listing towards Dean and Dean leans back, unbalanced by Sam's proximity.

Sam yawns, rubs at his face with his fist. Dean smiles. "You should go back to sleep."

Sam nods, eyes most of the way closed already as he fumbles for his crutches. "Wanna be all cool an' tortured like you and never sleep at night, but fuck I'm tired."

It speaks to Dean's disconnected frame of mind that he actually finds that funny, huffing a laugh and trying to hide it behind a cough but Sam's answering grin is clear despite the dimness. He lowers himself onto the couch carefully, leaning his crutches against the arm.

Dean hovers above him, feeling out of place. Sam doesn't seem to mind, looking up at Dean as his eyelids drag down heavily, and Dean wonders, if you fall asleep looking at someone, are they the first thing you'll dream about? The one world running seamlessly into the next, the distinction too fine to see.

Dean tears himself away from his brother, takes another couple of painkillers, hoping for sleep but knowing there's no chance. He's weak, typical, too doped up to properly keep guard and normally that wouldn't stand, but Dean's had a stressful week.

A length of time passes. Dean is not able to gauge it, playing solitaire in the moonlight, his head packed with ether-soaked cotton. He feels muffled, smothered, creeped out because the papercut on his knuckle has not stopped bleeding, it's been however long it's been and his mouth still tastes like copper.

When the light grows around the curtained front windows, Dean thinks it must be dawn. There's always that moment of disappointment, the let-down: the night is gone and with it all the best places to hide.

But the glowing outline vanishes abruptly, leaving the room dark again, and Dean realizes, of course: headlights.

He climbs the wall, gets to his feet and they're asleep but he doesn't care. Tromps across the room somehow without waking Sam up, staggering and numb all over. Dean has a hand pressed to his chest, his default position these days and nothing short of necessary; his heart is going so fast it's sparking against his fractured ribs.

Dean makes the front step, and he sees the car first, hard-used and covered in grit, minor dents and scratches that they'll be able to fix no problem, and then his eyes skid over to his father, a solid shape in the shadows of the trees.

"Dad," he says on an exhale and it probably isn't loud enough to hear. Dean goes to him, gets close enough to see dark streaks on his father's face but he can't tell if it's blood or dirt or soot.

"Hey, Dean," John says. He's not visibly hurt. He's standing like he hasn't stopped moving since Dean saw him last.

"Are you all right? Did you get it?" Dean grabs his arm, as much as he's allowed.

John smiles. "Yes."

Dean stops, tightens his grip. His fingers dig into his dad's elbow and he can feel a hard staccato pulse beating there.

"Yes to both?" A slight tilt of John's head, the barest confirmation, and Dean almost whoops, catches himself at the last minute. "Dude!"

His dad nods, tossing his arm around Dean's shoulders and Dean goes still. "It was the squirt gun. Fucker never saw it coming."

Dean laughs, too loud for the hour, destructive-sounding like a thousand wine glasses breaking at once. He grins, fisting his hand in the back of his dad's coat.

"That was all me. Sam's gonna try and say it was mostly his idea, but you can't listen to him, okay?"

His father chuckles, his side vibrating against Dean's and something weird is happening. Dean is warm at the places where they meet, John's arm heavy but no kind of burden around his shoulders, his dad's hand rough and welcome scruffing through his hair. Dean is so fucked up, pharmacologically and now wrecked on adrenaline and relief, the tangible reality of his father's return. He's not processing any of this properly.

"Couldn't have done it without you, son." He's still kinda laughing, but Dean knows that's just the moment.

They get to the front door and John stops, slides his arm back until his hand is hooked on Dean's shoulder, thumb hitting skin at his collar. "You boys did all right while I was gone?"

Dean nods automatically, but hears himself saying, "We got scared."

John's mouth thins, his eyebrows falling. He nods. "It's not a sin."

Dean twists his hand in his dad's coat, pulling and pressing knuckles into his back. He's staring up at his father and a terrible suspicion is growing in him.

"We'll get out of here tomorrow," John says. "I need to get some sleep, and you look like you do too, but then we can go. I don't know where, but we'll find something."

He's got this tired smile on his face, clean through the grime, and his hand slides from Dean's shoulder to the back of his neck, fingers hard and coarse on the bare skin and a shock of arousal jerks down Dean's spine. His dad says something about Dean needing a haircut but he can barely hear it, his ears rushing with static.

Dean gets it, suddenly. He has a perfect image of what he would do at this moment if he were allowed to do whatever he wanted.

He pulls away from his father immediately. Dean is flushed, trembling slightly but managing a little grin as he reaches for the door. He lets himself in first so that his dad won't see his face, the terror-struck grimace he can feel wrenched across his features. His skin is burning, shame and half-hearted disgust and god knows what else. Dean can sense his dad just behind him, this maddening heat buzzing through his mind.

This can't be true. Dean cannot be this kind of fucked up. He's already every other kind; it hardly seems fair.

But he watches John check on Sam, crouching by the couch and patting Sam's head a few times with painstaking care. Looking at them both actually makes it worse, and Dean has to turn away.

He escapes into the kitchen, running the water ice cold and washing his face quickly, trying to convince himself that it's just the pills, just the fact that sleeping all day means he has not seen the sun in dozens of hours and it has adversely affected his brain. There's got to be an excuse.

His dad comes in when Dean is bent against the counter, his head in his hands. John's boots scrape on the linoleum and he says, "What is it?" and Dean jerks up, wide-eyed.

"Nothing." He attempts a smile. "I'm fine."

John gives him a disbelieving look but doesn't push it. He comes over to the sink, Dean skittering away, and washes his hands and face, revealing a few bruises and one nasty-looking scratch on the underside of his jaw, but nothing too bad. Dean can only stare at him, refusing to think about the slow grinding thing happening in the pit of his stomach.

John swipes his hands through his hair to dry them, and says, "There's an army cot in the barn. Keep me from gettin' woke up by Sam burning breakfast."

Dean smirks, doesn't answer. He's clutching at the kitchen counter, bones dug in like spurs. His eyes snag on his dad's hands and for a second he can see it, big hand cupped around his jaw, thumbing his mouth open, and Dean bites down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood. No, and for awhile that's all he lets himself think, no no no.

"You go get some sleep, Dean," his dad says, low-voiced and fond and it's brutal. "You're no good to anyone dead on your feet."

And Dean nods because he has no other options, obeys his father because it's hardwired into him. When he passes his dad, John gives his shoulder a knock and it jars through Dean, touches him more deeply than it should have.

Dean goes back and lies down on the floor next to the couch again. He listens to the sounds of his father eating an apple and drinking some water, then his boot thuds on the whining floorboards, the snick of the back door opening and closing and then it's quiet, just Dean and his thoughts.

It's another definition of hell.

(break)

"Dean."

A flick to his forehead. It's still part of a dream.

"Hey Dean."

Another flick, and then fingers poking his cheek, tugging on his nose. Dean goes tense as he wakes up all the way, and he grabs Sam's wrist without opening his eyes, a pretty neat trick.

"What are you doing," Dean asks flatly. Sam tests his grip, trying to pull away but no luck.

"Time to get up. Face the day and all."

Dean looks up at him, Sam sitting on the edge of the couch, his hip against Dean's and his face smooth, hovering over him. Dean doesn't want to get up, doesn't want his mind to clear any further. He doesn't want to see his dad drinking coffee in the kitchen and have that smell be a trigger for the rest of his life.

Dean lets his brother's arm go. Sam look surprised, his hand hanging uncertain for a moment before he lets it fall. Dean rubs his face, digs the sleep out of the corners of his eyes.

"I fell asleep on the floor," Dean says. "Last two times, in fact, I fell asleep on the floor and woke up on the couch."

Sam shrugs, guiltless. "It's not good for you, sleeping on the floor."

"Dude, don't be moving me around when I'm asleep. 's creepy."

A grin breaks on Sam's face, and he punches Dean's shoulder, down across his chest, weightless and without malice. Dean bats at him, but doesn't try very hard to get him to stop.

"Welcome to my world, Dean. How many times did you carry me to bed after I fell asleep in front of the TV? How many times did Dad bring me in from the car? Did you know I was like eight before I figured out what was going on? I thought it happened to everybody sometimes, falling asleep in one place and waking up in another. I thought it was just one of those things."

Dean shakes his head, brightly aware of the way Sam's hand has stopped just above his broken ribs, resting there as if in anticipation. "You were a weird little kid, that's true."

Sam dims slightly, his grin hitching into a smile. Dean would worry that he's said the wrong thing again, but Sam's fingers are rubbing absently on his chest and it's occupying most of his attention.

"Dad's asleep in the barn," Sam tells him. Dean nods.

"I saw him when he came in. He's fine. He killed it."

Sam exhales, and something drops off him, his shoulders slumping and his hand pressing harder for a second. He ducks his head, looking away, Sam's way of saying good good thank god without having to hear his voice crack.

Dean studies his brother while Sam's eyes are off him, the easing lines of worry around his mouth and the fine structure of his face, and sometimes in certain light Dean can see effortlessly what Sam will look like when he's done growing up. It's a strange second brother, a Sam who is older than Dean is now, stronger and taller and broader, having lived up to the promise of his hands and relocated his boyish looks in a man's face. Dean can see him so clearly sometimes, almost misses him when he blinks and Sam is just his skinny doofus self again.

Sam doesn't look like their dad at all. It's sick, how grateful Dean is for that fact.

"So," Sam says eventually. He's down in that new lower register of his, his fingers twisting on Dean's chest and Dean suspects that Sam has honestly forgotten his hand is even there. "Did he say where we're going next?"

"Far far away."

Mouth curving faintly, Sam nods. "Sounds good."

Dean raps his fingers on Sam's bent knee, pressing at the seam of his jeans. "Somewhere new and exciting, Sammy. And who knows what'll happen, it's impossible to tell."

Sam glances at Dean, darts his eyes to his brother's face and there is something shatteringly nervous in Sam's expression, his throat bobbing crazily. Dean pushes up on his elbow, saying, "Hey-" but Sam just pushes him back down, gentle and easy. Sam is shaking his head, biting his lip, looking so freaked out.

Dean tries to think what it could be, wanting to get that look off his brother's face. "Dad's really okay, man, I saw him my-"

"No." Sam scratches at Dean's chest, staring down at his hand. "It's not about Dad."

And Sam carefully places his hand on Dean's face, trembling with his thumb stuttering across Dean's cheekbone, just for a second, a breath, but still too long to be misinterpreted.

"Sam," Dean whispers, profoundly stunned.

Sam colors, twisting his hands together and looking away. Dean can't get the right angle on his eyes, can't read him at all. Something is collapsing on Sam's face, and he bites his lip, stupid stubborn kid who never learned when to keep his mouth shut.

"I thought you should know," Sam tells him, his gaze locked on the far wall. "I, I thought maybe we were the same, but it's not--it's okay if we're not. It's all right."

He rubs the heel of his hand fast on his leg, glances down at Dean like he can't help it and Dean is gaping back, a huge hole blown in his perception. Sam's expression warps, curdles, and he sorta smiles, reaches for his crutches and pulls himself up shakily.

"Sorry," Sam mumbles, his head down and his eyes in slits. Dean watches, blank with disbelief, as Sam crutches over to the front door and works it open, disappears into the full light of day.

Dean lies there on the couch for a long while, fingers on his cheek searching for the exact placement, trying to replicate the feel. It isn't like when his dad touched him the night before, that sudden tearing jolt of lust, something different with Sam, sneakier. Sam has infiltrated Dean, slid under his skin and played at sabotage. Dean doesn't know any other explanation for how he went so wrong. These short circuits in Dean's mind, these perverse reactions--the dryness in his mouth at the thought of his father's hands, the ache in his jaw at the picture of Sam's narrow body--maybe he came by them honestly. Maybe it's just a family thing.

He gets up. His legs don't want to hold him but Dean insists on it.

The sunlight is staggering, takes his breath away. It bounces off the Impala, gleams slick and black and makes Dean sneeze. His head throbs with pain, too much dysfunction in him for there to be room for anything else. The back door of the car is open, Sam's cast sticking out.

Dean keeps the car door between him and his brother, peers down the length of Sam on the backseat. Sam has both arms crossed over his face, elbows pointed and sticking up. Dean curls his fingers over metal, says his brother's name.

Sam twitches. "Go away."

Dean shakes his head even though Sam can't see him. Staring at Sam, feverishly trying to comprehend him, find a place where this fits. Sam looks thin but not fragile anymore, the knife-edge of his hip showing where his T-shirt is rucked, and the skin pulled taut at the backs of his arms looks insanely smooth. Dean thinks maybe he could do this.

"It's not just you, Sam," and Dean is lying to him, only by omission but it probably still counts. He hears his dad telling him, it's not a sin, and because Dean is sick, because he is fucked up, he thinks that makes it okay.

Sam's breathing slows, gets tense and speculative. When he speaks it's muffled by his arms. "Don't fuck around with me."

"I'm not. I wouldn't."

"I'll never forgive you, never talk to you again-"

"Sam."

Sam falls quiet. Dean is holding on to the car so tight he can feel bruises forming impossibly on the palms of his hands. He's breathing unsteadily, his chest brought flush to the door, and he wishes he could blame the pressure on his injuries, and trust that in time it will heal.

Dean moves around the door, hands on the roof, and sets his knee between Sam's leg and the back of the seat. He ducks in, leans forward over his brother. Sam's arms come down and he stares at Dean down the length of his body, his eyes

glittering with fear and mistrust. Dean tries to smile, it's okay it's gonna be okay, but it doesn't work, his mouth no longer under his control.

"What are you doing?" Sam whispers, awed in a detached way.

Dean shakes his head. "I don't know, why would you think I know." He's captivated, watching his own hand as it slowly pushes Sam's shirt up. His fingertips ice across skin and Sam gasps, jags to the side. Dean pulls back hastily, swallowing hard.

"Sorry," Dean says, hears his voice crack. Sam is shaking under him, frightening Dean and it's his own fault. He can't do this, it's too hard.

Sam grabs his wrist. "No," he says, and his gaze gets intensely dark. "You're gonna."

He presses Dean's hand to his stomach and Dean hisses like a burn, tries to yank away but Sam holds him in place, forces Dean's fingers flat. Sam's skin is heated and sleek but that's not what gets Dean. It's Sam sitting up, reaching for him and folding a hand behind Dean's head, drawing him close to say into his ear, deep and sure:

"You're going to, Dean."

It's an order. Dean's good at those.

He drops his head into the crook of Sam's shoulder, bears him down until Sam is flat again, his pulse hammering against Dean's mouth. Dean bites at Sam's throat, feels the hum when he groans. Dean sits up, pushes both hands until Sam's shirt and Sam kinda writhes, cursing and pressing his head into the door. His eyes are open, blazing, tracking every move Dean makes.

It's better this way, Dean is desperate to believe. Sam doesn't look like John but there are still flashes of him, hints and red herrings. Sam's eyes narrow in the same way, same fierce set to his mouth when he's got his mind stuck on something, and his low voice rasping in Dean's ear, his big hands curled around Dean's head, it's all Dean really needs.

Dean pushes his hand into Sam's shorts and Sam's back arches, his mouth falling slack on a gravelly moan. Dean buries his face in Sam's throat, murmuring, "just like that," and keeps his eyes shut as tight as they will go.

(break)

They leave at sunset. Jackson has made them sandwiches for the road, and been given a bottle of Scotch by John as thanks for the week. He and John shake hands on the front step, then Dean, then Sam, and Jackson smiles, says they all shake exactly the same.

Dean gets in the shotgun seat because Sam needs room for his leg, and he's happy with the distance, the buffer between the two of them. A few hours ago he jerked Sam off back there, let Sam return the favor with Dean's hand twisted in his hair, maybe too tight but Sam didn't say anything, breathing in ragged pants and blinking back tears as he stared up at his brother.

Sam can't look at him without blushing now, secret wicked smile working at the corners of his mouth. Dean isn't having the same trouble. It's weird, it's probably not right, but Dean doesn't really want to look at Sam at all.

The highway opens up before them, drenched in the late-summer dusk. Dean keeps thinking on a loop, far far away far far away, believing on a fundamental level that anything can be outrun, anything can be killed. Dean doesn't have to accept being like this; he can fight it.

His dad scrolls up and down the radio band, stopping for heavy guitar riffs and pounding drum solos. His fingers rattle on the steering wheel, keeping time, and Dean is miserable, hunched up against the door with his face on the window, blindly watching the country fly by. He can feel the sickness in him deepening, metastasizing, a cancer of the heart. Dean wants to cut it from his body, carve out the whole fucking thing.

From the back, Sam asks where they're going.

"South, for the moment," John answers.

"Helpful, Dad."

Dean can hear the smile in his father's voice. "Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise, Sammy."

A huffed sardonic laugh. "You don't even know where we're going, do you?"

John chuckles, a blade slipped neatly between Dean's ribs. "You gotta have faith, son."

"In what, exactly?"

Dean counts mile markers half-hidden in wild brush, his forehead flattened and numb on the window, thinking that it's a good question.

"The road," John says. "It takes you wherever you're going next. Whether you know the place or not, it gets you there."

They're quiet for a minute, considering that. It's too simplistic, like a riddle with a hidden catch, and Dean doesn't trust it. You can't just set out without an idea where you're going, because there are black places in the world, pits and cellars and abattoirs, just off lit roads, right at the edge of normal. Getting lost takes no effort at all, and it's not about getting there, it's about getting back.

Dean sits up, rubbing at the mark on his forehead. His dad glances over at him, and Dean tries a smile. He can do this. He can be what his father needs and what Sam needs, the son and brother they both deserve. Dean can be a soldier worthy of demons, the only friend Sam has, the glue that holds this family together, all the right things because that's his job, what he's meant for. He wants to be exactly this fucked up and no further, find some kind of peace in his tragic flaws.

He meets Sam's eyes in the rearview and Sam gives him a hesitant little smile that doesn't quite touch Dean, though it might just be the reflection. Dean doesn't understand Sam, not like he understands their father, who is defined by a lost cause, and maybe Dean knows something about that now.

"You all right, Dean?" John asks.

Dean says yeah without looking at him, keeping his eyes trained on the road.

THE END