Nick held firmly to the opinion that you don't just let some other man drive your car- but if anyone was ever going to be allowed to, it seemed only fitting that it be Sam.

So when Sam offered to drive them back down to Stanford, Nick just handed over the keys. He was fairly certain that he'd end up turning them over in a ditch during the drive if it were left up to him, and really the only good things he still had going for himself at this point was the man beside him and the car that they were sitting so quietly in.

Mile markers rolling past and Nick realized that neither of them had said a word for almost an hour.

"I feel like we missed out on the golden opportunity of having sex in a confessional."

The mood lifted in an instant as Sam laughed, shaking his head with a wide smile. "Absolutely not."

"No, no. You're supposed to offer to turn the car around." Nick instructed, because obviously Sam didn't understand how these things work.

Sam laughed again as he repeated himself, eyes fixed firmly on the road. "Absolutely not."

"You're no fun."

Which got Sam nodding along easily, agreeing.

Nick couldn't help but smile just a touch. It wasn't all as bad as it seemed… right? It couldn't be. He just had to try to stay focused on the few and far between things in his life that weren't complete and utter shit.

There weren't many.

It was a nice, sort, concise list.

"Um…" Sam kind of hesitated. "Is your last name Novak?"

And at first, Nick smiled, then he realized that Sam was actually serious. He tugged at his lip, not sure how to answer that one. It wasn't that he didn't know his own last name- it just seemed so crazy that Sam wouldn't know it by this point.

How long had they been together?

Isn't that supposed to be one of the first things that you ask someone?

Nick Novak? What a horrible name that would have been.

"No. That's Castiel's. He kept his mom's last name even when he came to live with us."

Sam glanced over.

"You… you really don't know my last name, do you?"

"It's never come up."

Well, Nick obviously couldn't argue with that. " 's Shurley."

Sam snorted softly, then glanced at him sideways again. "Are you serious?"

"I changed it to my dad's back when I was changing my first name." Nick smiled as Sam chuckled. "And don't make that face. Nick Shurley is still a better name than Lucifer."

"Yeah," he kind of shrugged, not able to argue, "ok."

"... why didn't you ask that when we first met?" Not that Nick had exactly asked Sam his full name, but he hadn't needed to. Castiel had told him long before that first date so very long ago.

Sam shook his head, and even though it was just in profile, he looked annoyed. "Why don't you ever talk about yourself?"

"I do."

"No. You don't." Sam took a deep breath, and Nick suddenly knew that he was in trouble. "I know how you like your coffee, sure. I know that you won't wear sock to bed even though you've always got cold feet." He tightened his hands on the wheel. "I even know that you actually count while brushing your teeth to make sure you're doing it for long enough-"

"I don't-"

"Which is stupid and I love it." Sam cut him and his protests off. "But I don't even know what college you went to. I don't know why you have these really detailed tattoos over your arms and then you've got that stupid looking… whatever the hell it is on your chest. It looks like a five year old drew it- and it's weirdly cute, don't get me wrong. I just… I don't know who you were before I met you."

"Sam,"

"I don't know who you are now."

Nick wanted to counter that Sam wasn't an open book either- there are just some things that don't bare bringing up because there was nothing good to be found in them. But honestly? They weren't precisely meeting each other halfway here. Sam was almost eager to share just about anything that Nick asked about, just about as talkative as any girl that Nick had ever dated.

And Nick was at the far opposite end of that spectrum.

So it wasn't a perfect relationship.

Nick had never, not even once, pretended that he was even close to a perfect man, much less a perfect boyfriend.

He rubbed a hand over his face, not really emotionally ready for a talk like this. "I knew I shouldn't have left you when I went to talk to Gabriel." Adding on as more of a reminder to himself, "you can't leave people alone in churches."

"What were you talking to Gabriel about?"

Nick tried to get all those sudden thoughts, those terribly fresh wounds, into some kind of order. To sift through and find the ones that he could actually talk about so soon after the fact. But he could feel his throat getting tight.

"Just… stuff." Was all he was able to put together.

"Stuff." Sam repeated rather tightly. "Well, there you go. You guys were talking about… stuff."

Terribly, terribly, fresh wounds.

"Fuck you." He said defensively. He wasn't a child. Curling up wasn't going to keep him safe. But he had his words, those nice harsh words that had always kept him so safe. "I don't have to check in with you whenever I talk to my brother."

"I'm not saying-" Sam took a slow breath like he was counting to a nice high number to calm himself down. "You're important to me. If there's something big going on, something I can help with, I'd like to know."

Which was probably a very honest offer, but it sounded very rehearsed. Like this wasn't the first time that he'd had to tell someone this.

And in a weird way, Nick wanted to. He kind of… almost… wanted to talk to Sam about this. Not because any of these things were any of Sam's damn business. But because it's something that Sam wanted from him and so Nick wanted more than anything in the world to give it to him.

Simple, and stupid and just the way that he'd been for months now.

If he didn't feel like he'd been hit by a truck, then maybe this wouldn't be so difficult. He rubbed at his chest and the heavy feeling that he was having such a hard time breathing past.

"It's… it's the monster that used to live under June's bed." It wasn't really on the list of his current problems. The tattoo was old and little faded, but it was the only thing on the list of his faults that he thought he could actually talk about with an even tone. But the monster that sat over his heart inevitably lead him fast and unavoidably to June, who was sitting pretty down there in the eye of this storm.

Nick did his best. Talking in a slow even tone right up until he heard his voice crack. Then he just turned in his seat to look out the window, watching the houses scroll past. Apparently at some point they'd gotten off the freeway.

They pulled into the driveway and Sam let the engine run. Didn't even put the car in park.

"Dean's home. Sam's voice was soft, like he didn't want to interrupt the sound of the rain hitting the windshield.

He glanced up to see the hearse-like vehicle sleeping along side them. "I'll just get going."

"No. You can come in." Sam sounded like he really meant it too.

"Your brother actively hates me." Nick tried to smile and realized he was in way over his head at this point.

The keys jingled as Sam twisted them slowly. "He thinks you're using me." And like everything else that he'd said since they got in this car, his words sounded so honest, and sincere, and… bitter.

Nick slunk a little lower in his seat. He felt like he was finally starting to settle down into the bedrock of misery. "Well, I am. I mean- that's why we started this in the first place, isn't it? We were using each other quite openly." Maybe it was supposed to be a kind of a joke, but unfortunately with those words he'd started scratching at an itch that he'd never been able to really satisfy. "I needed to keep Gabriel off my back and you..."

He realized that he didn't want to finish that thought.

That list, that list of good things?

It was still only two lines long.

Admitting that he was still convinced and down right terrified that as some point Sam was going to get tired of him… it would knock that list down to one whole thing.

Sam had turned in his seat to look over at him. A rather blank expression that didn't go with the edge that bit into his question. "And I what?"

"And you were just a bit lonely."

"Excuse me?"

He couldn't really go any further down, right? "Well, that's why Dean set you up with me, wasn't it? Your friend had gone and gotten married, you were moping around for months and your brother thought a quick fuck would cheer you up."

Because there wasn't any good left in him right now, and that's all he was to Sam. Just a rebound. That's how it had started, and that's probably how it would end too. And-

No.

No that wasn't right.

Nick pushed those thoughts as far away as he could. Now was not a good time for them.

He'd just worn himself down (and Gabriel and Lilith certainly hadn't helped), a little too much these past few days.

"No." Sam looked at him like he'd gone crazy. "No. I was just tired of getting set up on dates all the time. Same as you." A little anger starting to creep in, because apparently he couldn't let Nick be the only one prickling. "What the actual hell, Nick?"

"Well, that's what I said, isn't it?" Rephrasing didn't change it or make it any less true.

"No. It wasn't." Sam folded his arms, then unfolded them again. "You're making it sound like I was hanging around hoping for sex because I couldn't get it anywhere else."

Sam had told Nick that he never talked about himself. Never 'shared'. So Nick went and said what he was thinking and didn't immediately regret it. "I'm sure that you could have gotten it just about anywhere else. I don't know why you settled for me."

"Because I love you, you asshole."

"Do you?"

It took almost five whole seconds before he realized that he should have kept his mouth shut.

Sam threw his hands up. "Seriously, Nick! What the hell?"

And he tried to say something, but he'd gone empty. Carved out and hollowed by this acidic, self preserving anger that had no place here.

He dragged his hands through his hair and closed his eyes.

It wasn't like he could just get out of the car and leave, and go some place quiet to collect himself.

This wasn't his house and Dean wasn't likely to just let him on in.

He needed to calm down though or he was going to start a fight- and it was going to be with the man sitting beside him, who incidentally was pretty much the only person that Nick had ever met that he didn't want to physically injure at some point.

The car suddenly felt too small.

So he looked beyond the rain, up at the grey sky, taking slow, even breaths through slightly parted lips. "How did my dad look?" He heard himself ask in a stiff voice.

"He… looked… fine." Sam answered haltingly.

"I haven't seen him in almost ten years, Sam." Nick ground his teeth, never taking his eyes off the sky. "Try and be a bit more descriptive."

And Nick could have asked about the weather, or football. It didn't really matter all that much. He just needed to think about something else, something that seemed safe, and he'd gone with the first asinine thing that had come to mind.

Sam was watching him.

Nick could actually feel the weight of it.

Doing nothing at all to settle his nerves.

"He was a little gray at the temples… hadn't shaved recently. He also might have been a bit drunk." Sam added on in a disapproving kind of way. "But like father like son, I guess."

Which, was actually the wrong kind of thing to say to a man who was struggling in that moment to not start yelling.

"I haven't had a drink since we started having sex, so fuck you, you-" Nick caught himself, biting his lip and trying to look over at Sam, to offer an apology. But that was asking a bit much for his body to comply with right then. "God damn it. These past few weeks have been a fucking nightmare and I can't- I didn't mean to… sorry." He swore his way through an apology in the gentlest way that he knew how. "I'm gunna go now. I need a few hours to just not be here."

He had tried.

He had made a stunning effort.

And he would have been so damn proud of himself if it had worked.

Because he'd never really been mad at Sam.

But Lilith was hundreds of miles away behind a restraining order, and Gabriel had been protected by the virtue of being in a church. Almost every aspect of his world felt completely beyond his control and he was lost. Lost and angry and just really, really not keeping it together all that well right now.

Nick didn't want to see Sam as an easy target. It was either him or the car though, and unfortunately, Sam was the first one to say something.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Christ. No. I thought that by dating a guy I'd be spared this touchy feely crap for once." He unbuckled his seatbelt, wanting to get out of the car because even under all of this there was still a small part of him that valued self preservation. "I'm not going to talk about it because it's got nothing to do with you."

"Oh. Real nice."

"Look, you wanna' talk? Fine." He didn't need Sam's sarcasm right now. And it's odd how something about someone can be so endearing at one time, and set your teeth on edge another. "Ask me questions. I'll tell you all the dumb ass stuff that you want to know for some fucking reason that I'm never going to understand. It's not important, and that's why I don't bring it up."

Apparently Sam either didn't know a landmine when he saw one, or simply didn't care. "What's going on with your ex?"

So casual, like a slap to the face.

His ex.

Sam had never once asked before. Much like Nick's full name. Apparently it hadn't been all that important to him before right now.

And Nick wanted to keep it that way.

You don't let someone, even if it's someone you love, jab at your open injuries with a sharp stick.

It just isn't done.

"None of your damn business."

Sam's eyes narrowed and he got out of the car, leaving Nick no choice other than to join him in the drizzling rain.

"You're right." Sam slammed the door. "It's none of my damn business."

Nick came around to his side and held his hand out for the keys, not trusting himself to say anything at all right then.

"I'm sorry you didn't get to see your dad." No apology in his tone whatsoever. "He seemed nice."

Nick grabbed the keys from Sam's hand a little harder than necessary, and watched as the younger man winced slightly.

"Fuck you." And this is why he'd been trying (with really, really poor success) to keep his fat mouth shut. "Maybe he didn't stick around like yours did, and he wouldn't win any awards- but I don't need your sympathy."

Sam got stiff, real and true anger on his face, because if nothing else, Nick was really good at picking fights when he wanted one.

"Did you really just compare your mousey, polite dad to the monster I grew up with?"

"Oh, right. I forgot. You're an expert on terrible fathers! You obviously know how to classify them so much better than me."

"I know enough to say that you'd make a pretty fucking terrible one."

The rain kept falling. If you could even call it that. Just a steady drip drip drip that was plastering his shirt to his back and chest. And Nick was shaking.

It was probably the temperature.

But that was probably a lie.

Gabriel had already made his stance fairly obvious. And Nick hadn't even brought it up to Rekha because he'd known how she felt about him having a kid ten years ago when Lilith first showed up pregnant. The rest of his family had never really been all that subtle on the subject either.

And Nick felt like he'd just been abandoned on the edge of the world and left to fend for himself.

His whole life, since his mom packed him up a backpack and put him on a bus without really even saying goodbye, he'd been trying to drown out that awful feeling.

He just hadn't realized how completely justified it was until Sam said those words.

What did Sam know though?

What did any of them?

Nick had only been looking for some sympathy.

Some company.

He didn't need it though.

He didn't.

He didn't.