That night, Dean knows off the bat that no way is he getting any sleep. He pokes round the kitchen awhile, finding a burger in the fridge (which he inhales), a load of different kinds of tomatoes (also inhaled), a box of fake IDs (shoved quickly back onto the shelf so he can pretend it didn't exist), and, uh, an axe. In the sink. With blood on it. Just kind of lying there.
He picks it gingerly up between finger and thumb and carries it through to where Sam is hunched over the table.
'What is this?' he demands.
Sam looks up and shrugs. 'No idea. You probably ditched it there after a hunt.'
Oh, no. Dean isn't doing this. There's an axe, a bloody axe, in his sink, and Dean is so done with this shit, with the black pits inside his brain where memories ought to be, with this stupidly attractive guy with his stupidly attractive ass who claims- claims- to be his kid brother, who for some reason is still living with him at the age of, what, thirty? And is it just him, or does Dean detect a faint whiff of incest? Like, come on, Sam won't tell him anything about them. Like what they're doing together.
It's all looking really fucking fishy.
'An axe, Sam,' he says, enunciating clearly. 'In our sink.'
Sam gives him a bored look and goes back to work.
So Dean walks over to the table and slams the axe down into the wood in front of Sam's hands.
It stays there, quivering.
'A fucking axe,' says Dean, 'in the fucking sink,' and then Sam's getting to his feet and putting his hands on Dean's shoulders and kind of steering him into a chair and then Dean realises he seems to be having some kind of panic attack, and the thought is so ridiculous that it actually makes him laugh and that just makes it worse, and then Sam vanishes and reappears carrying a bottle and five fingers of whisky in a glass.
Dean downs them in one. He's sweating.
After a while, Sam settles into the chair opposite. He looks horrible- pale and shaky- but Dean feels pretty horrible as well, okay, so sorry if he's not anxious to join the pity party.
'Sorry,' he says.
'It's fine,' says Sam.
So, yeah, he doesn't sleep. He goes to his room, looks through his things. Who are you, Dean Winchester? It's all orderly and neat. There's a slice of pie on a plate on the nightstand, and it looks pretty okay so Dean eats it. An antique scimitar and a few guns adorn the walls. There's a box of porn magazines under the bed- alphabetised.
On his desk, a photo of a family.
He turns that face-down without looking.
The next day is when Dean tries to kiss Sam.
This is where it goes really wrong.
Sam's asleep again, head on the table, when Dean comes out the next morning. Clearly it's a habit. He swats him on the back of the head.
'Rise and shine, princess,' he says, once Sam's stopped twitching. His brother rubs blearily at his eyes, peers up through tumbled hair. He looks worse than last night.
'So, tell me, Sam,' says Dean, sitting down. 'You actually have a bedroom? Or is this it?'
Sam blinks. 'No, uh- I have a room. I just... y'know.'
'And one other thing. Where the hell do we get food? I'm guessing there ain't a 7-Eleven nearby?'
Sam shakes his head. 'We drive out. Make a run. Why, are we low?'
'Unless we usually get by on canned beef? Yeah, pretty low.'
He waits for Sam to offer to drive him.
Sam does.
*
'So tell me,' says Dean. 'How'd we get like this?'
He's not expecting the level of reaction the question gets. The car swerves a little, and Sam closes his eyes briefly.
'Long story,' he says at last.
'Come on, man, you gotta give me more than that.'
Sam smiles tightly, keeping his eyes on the road. 'Dean, you wouldn't believe me.'
'Right now I'll believe anything, man. Hell, I'd believe you if you said Paris Hilton's boobs were real.'
'You would not.'
'No,' he admits. 'I wouldn't. But come on, man, try me.'
Sam pulls the car over and sighs.
'What do you believe,' he says, 'about Hell?'
Dean shrugs. 'Fire and brimstone. Small town in Norway. What about it?'
Sam gives him this long, pitying, puppy-eyed gaze, and Dean feels inexplicably irritated. 'Man. Enough of this. Just fucking tell me. I deserve to know.'
And when Sam still doesn't say anything- when he just sits there, biting his lip, looking at Dean, the circles under his eyes making him look tired and sick and sad- that's when Dean leans over and kisses him.
It isn't that he can't hold back. It isn't that he thinks Sam's lying about them being brothers. It's that somewhere, maybe in the past three seconds, maybe from the second he saw him, something in Dean has woken up. Something that remembers and wants and oh God it wants so much, wants Sam's soft dry lips and the wet heat of his mouth, wants to pull Sam to his chest and never ever let go not ever, just wants Sammy to get better oh God-
And then, even though Dean's tongue is pretty much halfway down his throat, Sam does something that Dean should probably have seen coming.
He freaks the fuck out.
