Whoot! Three reviews! That's three more than I was expecting!

So, I was gonna hold off until tomorrow for this one, but I'm not a patient person, so here it is. Please enjoy.

Chapter 2

Realization

Honestly, Dean hadn't noticed that anything was different until the salt and burn. Apparently, Sam was unable to do anything besides sit in a corner and suck his thumb while some random blonde chick saved his ass, and three of the demons and their hosts had died because of it.

Bobby was the one that had told him. They were digging a shallow grave with Tammi while Sam went inside to fish out the bodies. Dean had laughed, had been forming a response in his head when Sam walked outside, dragging a limp corpse behind him.

The older brother's breath caught in his chest as he laid eyes on the younger man. Something in his mind, in his heart, screamed out to him, telling him that something was wrong, that the wave of emotion that had washed over him wasn't natural. It wasn't right.

It wasn't… he couldn't find the word he wanted as he stood there, watching helplessly as Sam threw the body into the hole and moved back to the house to grab another. It wasn't right, wasn't what he usually felt. Usually, looking at Sam gave him that slight mixture of annoyance and brotherly love, all that mushy stuff that he hated to think about but acknowledged just the same. This, though… this made him think more of one-night stands, of random girls from bars. This wasn't love. This was…

This was lust.

"You really love your brother, don't you?"

Sam walked back into the yard, hefting a dead man up over his shoulder. Dean's heart simultaneously sank and fluttered.

o0o0o0o0o0o

"You all right?"

Words so suddenly like music that he nearly stopped the car and yelled at the other man to get out. Wrong. It was so wrong. And even though every part of his brain, every part of him that was still sane enough, still him enough, to realize what was happening told him so, it didn't stop him.

He wanted his brother and it made him sick.

"Dean?"

"I'm fine," he snapped, eyes on the road, hands clutching the wheel in a death grip to avoid having them stray toward his brother. He could deal with this. He knew he could. What was one year of resisting temptation, right?

Damn, even thinking about trying to stop himself sounded wrong.

"You sure?" Sam asked, "'cause you've been kinda quiet since we left Bobby and Tammi. This isn't about what we talked about, is it?"

Dean finally forced himself to face his brother and instantly turned away. No one was allowed to look that good in the light of the rising sun. Himself excluded, of course. "No. I'm fine. Getting my release, and all that."

And wasn't that the truth? Release from life, from hunting, from always being second-best, from running. Best of all, he was looking at a release from whatever that black-eyed bitch had done to him.

Sam sighed. "What, then?"

Eyes on the road, never straying. Focus. He needed to focus, or else he would never get through it. "Nothing that concerns you." But that wasn't the truth. That was far from the truth. It had everything to do with Sam, everything and then some.

Sam shrugged and turned to look out the window, to watch the scenery, and Dean breathed a silent sigh of relief. With luck, he could keep up a charade of normalcy- or what passed for it in their lives- until the end of the year. He feared, for some illogical reason, that telling Sam the truth would mean the departure of the younger man, and he just couldn't have that. Even the sane part of his brain agreed.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

It only took two hours for Dean to crack. It was eating him up inside, trying to force its way out, that wanting, that longing. He felt like he needed to touch the other man, but his hand recoiled at the thought.

So he sat on his bed and he stared at the television. Clark Kent and Lex Luthor were making goo-goo eyes at each other again, and Dean could relate. He hated it, but he could relate.

He grabbed the remote, turned off the TV, and looked at Sam. "Uh…"

Sam spun around, turning from his laptop to smile at his older brother, all shiny teeth and sparkling eyes. It was disgusting. "Yeah?"

"I, uh…"

The smile faded. Sam's eyes narrowed. The pensive look really worked for him. "What?"

"Today-"

"I knew it," the younger man exclaimed, jumping to his feet, "there's something wrong."

"You don't have to sound so happy about it." Sam's face flushed, and for a moment Dean regretted not being the one to put that color into his cheeks. Then sense took hold again. "We caught Envy first, right?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"Isaac was possessed by Wrath."

"Sure was."

"Bobby said he got Sloth."

"Yep."

"And you…?"

Sam shrugged. "Pride, for sure. No idea about the other two. Why?"

Dean sighed, his body deflating with the exhalation. He fixed his eyes on his feet, careful not to look up, but to summon the courage to say what needed to be said, no matter the outcome. "Lust," he whispered finally, "I got Lust."

"So, Greed and Gluttony for me, then," Sammy deduced, completely missing the point.

"She, uh… it kinda…"

"What?" There was concern in his brother's voice, and Dean was happy to find that that, at least, wasn't a turn-on. Yet.

"You remember what happened to that chick with the shoes? Remember what happened to Isaac?"

Sam nodded, he could hear it, the familiar rustling of hair. He'd been begging Sam to get a haircut for over a year now, and the boy had refused. Now… now it was too tempting, tempting to touch it, to run his fingers though it, to-

"It touched me."

Silence. Then: "What?"

"The demon. Lust. It… it touched me."

"You got violated by one of the Seven Deadly Sins?"

Dean raised his eyes enough to glare at the younger man. "No, dipshit. It touched me."

Sam's eyes went wide, and in that one expression, Dean could see that he had figured it out, had maybe even known at the house, in the car. "What did it… Dean, what did it tell you?"

He sighed, dropping his eyes again. "I can fight it," he muttered, "I've been fighting it ever since the end of the hunt."

"It hung on?"

"We didn't kill it. Maybe… it lingers unless the damn thing's dead. But I can fight it, Sammy."

He heard Sam swallow, heard the audible click in his brother's throat, hated that he'd put it there, knew what was bound to come with confession. "What do you want?" the younger man whispered, and the knowledge in his voice was enough to break his brother.

"You."

o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"There's always a way to beat these things." Sam was pacing, back and forth, across the motel room, freakishly long legs pumping, muscles working under a too-tight t-shirt that hadn't seemed all that bad to Dean only a couple of days before as he gestured wildly.

"Uh, Sammy?"

He stopped, looked at his brother, eyes wary, as if afraid of what the older man might do, of the laws he might violate. "Yeah?"

"I'm getting dizzy. You can think without walking."

Sam sighed, plopping down onto one of the beds and blowing his bangs out of his eyes. "We're screwed."

"We're not screwed," Dean argued, "we've handled worse."

"Yeah, because there's so much out there worse than gay incest." Dean flinched. "Not that it would ever come to that. Right?"

Dean shook his head. "I dunno, man. It's weird. Like, I know it's wrong, right, but I can't help thinking about it. I can fight it, but I can't stop wanting it." Disgust filled his voice as he shuddered on the last two words, prompting big, sympathetic eyes from Sam. "And, dude, you gotta stop that."

"Stop what?"

"The looks. The freakin' adorable stares. I swear, it's like you want it as much as I do."

Sam grimaced, pulling a face that, thankfully, did nothing at all for his brother. "All right, well, how are we gonna deal with this?"

The older man shrugged. "We sent the bitch back to Hell. I guess we could always call her back here and kill her, but with what? The only other options I can see are killing me or trying to live with it."

"Well, we're not gonna kill you-"

"And it's not like I'm long for this world, anyway. Looks like we lucked out, babe."

Sam cleared his throat. "Yeah, you're gonna have to not call me that."

Reviews are appreciated, as always. I really want to know what people think of this one, so don't be shy :)