"Come with me, I said, and no one knew
where, or how my pain throbbed,
no carnations or barcaroles for me,
only a wound that love had opened.

I said it again: Come with me, as if I were dying,
and no one saw the moon that bled in my mouth
or the blood that rose into the silence."

- Neruda, Come with me, I said...

Dean stands on a cliff and looks over the edge, down into the dark abyss. Come, it lures him. Drop the pain and come. Sad poplar trees rustle behind him in two rows. The world is gold and green, except for the nothing below he is staring at. The sun burns through the leaves, too hot. It feels like the end of August. Always that, no reason why. He has been standing on this imaginary cliff since he can remember, sometimes far enough from the voices that he doesn't hear them, sometimes close enough to whisper back his pleas and promises. Sometimes he jumps.

He left Sam dozing in the bed that holds their terrible secret now. Stumbled out from the smothering tangle of those ruined sheets and into the bathroom where he slowly, quietly, slid down to the floor. The tiles are cold and unforgiving - and he gazes at a stain on the shower curtain, trying to kill this memory like the rest of them, the ones he buried somewhere beyond the abyss he's staring at in his thoughts. Sam's hair flowed through the gaps between his fingers like warm sand. Dean combed those locks this way and that, never pushed down, and Sam's too large hands shook where they pinned Dean's hips to the mattress. Please, Dean said then, on the brink, and it didn't mean try harder, but let me go. Sam did not, and their sin spilled onto his lips in white and shiny stripes. Dean shouldn't, mustn't remember how the surprise of that moment looked in Sam's eyes.

Whenever he jumps, he expects the free fall and the thump his body makes in his mind, but never the small hand that holds his soul back, hanging above the fog. Please don't leave me alone, a voice says, a child. The poplars swish in agreement. Don't worry, Dean tells him every single time. The hand around his squeezes, and that's when his body makes contact with the bottom, wherever and whatever that is. He blinks back into the corporeal world then, but it's all wrong - his soul tethered to the cliff, his body submerged in the numbing darkness, disconnected. Dean flutters his lashes again. It doesn't work, never does. The lines go blurry. He is on the outside while everything else is on the inside, he can't touch and can't feel more than ghosts can - it feels like his limbs could pass through concrete.

The light blue walls of this bathroom are suddenly dull and achromatic, the stickiness of his right hand stirs no emotion. Thinking of the dip of Sam's lower back stops making the bile rise. In the fragment of his rational mind that has not shut off yet, he realises he has dissociated again. Lost the connection to his surroundings.

He hits his own thigh with his right fist. Too hard. It doesn't hurt, not when he is in this state, but he twitches in mock-pain three seconds too late, a sluggish reaction when it's already deep red. Dean watches it bruise, presses on it to test how much sensation he's missing. He still doesn't feel pain when he hits that spot a second time, but his toes are tingling. It doesn't look real. His whole body doesn't. It seems like the figment of some almighty creature's imagination, a doll to make its boredom cease. As if that thing thought, 'Let's give this clump of consciousness a skeleton and see if it realises its own lack of materiality.' Dean thinks he did.

He staggers to his feet and looks into the mirror. The sight is alien to him, unrecognisable. He knows it's him, but he knows it's also not. That's not his true face. He tries to claw the bounding mass of skin and flesh away from himself, but his hands are shaking too hard to do more than leaving faint red lines over his cheeks. There's a lump in his throat that makes it hard to breathe. His neck is covered in bite marks that seem to shimmer in and out of focus when he tries to examine them. Sam put them there when Dean touched him where no brother should have. They keep blurring in front of his eyes, as if this was only a dream.

He wants to wake up. Gritting his teeth to ward off some of the shaking, he clambers into the shower and twists one of the knobs. Water rains down on his head and makes a veil in front of his eyes and nose, streaming down from his hair. He can hardly hear its gurgling sounds. Head bowed, he pants through his mouth and imagines he is sunk in the sea and breathing underwater. A part of his conscious mind insists he should take off his underwear. When he tugs at it, the soaked fabric slips down his legs like a peel he flayed off himself. It reveals new patches of bare skin that Sam touched and kissed, another bunch of things that aren't, can't be Dean's. He tries to strip them off with his nails, but only manages to draw a drop of blood beside his hip bone. It looks distorted and ugly. He looks down at the thing between his legs and wants it gone. It feels like it doesn't belong to him any more than his stained skin does.

There's a muted pounding sound hammering his brain. It's rhythmic and coming from outside of the static field he seems to be enclosed in.

"Dean!" That's his name, but names don't mean anything. Objects are objects and they are made of the same nonsensical matter as everything else, if they are real at all. "Are you okay in there? Dean!"

Something opens with a pop and the dampened noises come closer, though Dean can't tell which direction they're approaching from. The curtain of fluid in front of his face breaks and tapers off.

Someone exclaims. "Jesus, this is freezing cold." There are tight clasps of pressure around his biceps, forcing him to turn. "What the hell are you doing? Dean, say something, talk to me."

Dean raises his eyes and blinks. It's Sam, or at least, a being that looks like Sam and wears his clothes. Dean knows what it's asking, but his lips can't quite work the words 'waking up' out. He blinks again. Sam looks distressed, so he tries to raise a hand to his face, but it's hard when he is quivering like this and his fingers don't make it above Sam's chest. Another blink.

"Shit, are you dissociating?" Sam blurts out. "What month is it?"

Dean's eyelids close and open slowly. He thinks of the cliff he is hanging from. "August."

"Fuck." Sam curses and pulls him out of the shower stall, wraps something around him and pushes his weak body to sit on the closed lid of the toilet. "Stay here. Don't move. Don't you move, Dean." He says and leaves Dean's line of sight.

Dean's body agrees with that order. He stares ahead at the wall in front of him and keeps blinking, waiting for the second that takes him out of this artificial world and back to the real one. The colours and patterns are still dull and lifeless, but he thinks he's starting to get somewhat used to it, because his trembling seems to get better. The being in Sam's body comes back with those muted, pounding steps, kneels between Dean's legs and forces his jaw open, pushes something inside. Then he rubs something under Dean's nostrils - something sharp that gives him the warning tingles signalling a sneeze - and starts rubbing Dean's fingers. Dean sort of wants to pull away, but he is too slow. The tasteless cube in his mouth melts and spreads a bittersweet flavour over his tongue. Chocolate - it's chocolate.

"Dean, Dean, hey, focus." Sam says and digs his knuckles into the centre of Dean's right hand, then the left. "Say five things that you see in this room."

Dean takes a breath - almost as deep as he wants, but not quite - he can't fill his lungs properly. "Mirror. Shower."

"Good, that's good." Sam encourages and moves on to rub the scratchy thing around Dean's shoulders all over Dean's arms. It takes a moment, then Dean realises what it is just as the smell of the substance under his nose hits his senses. Mint.

"Towel. Toothpaste." He pauses, gaze wandering away from Sam's collarbone to the wall behind. "Tiles."

Sam's hands move to the points under his ears and massage there. "Why are you doing this to yourself?" Sam whispers. He touches his fingertips to the scratches on Dean's cheeks. It stings - God, it stings. It hurts. "Did you do these too?"

Dean blinks again and like magic, the colours come back and seep into the washed-out room around him. He heaves another breath and finally, his chest does expand as it's supposed to. He could cry in relief. The image of that cliff in his mind fades, sinks right back into his unconscious. He looks into Sam's worried eyes and sees him, really sees him at last.

"Had to… fight a bear." He tries, because the last thing he needs is Sam gnawing his lips off in worry because of him. Sam scoffs and sits back on his heels, crossing his arms.

"What month is it?" He asks - demands in that taut tone of his that promises nothing good for the recipient.

"January."

"That's right." Sam's expression relaxes into a faint smile. "Welcome back."

Dean's right thigh, his cheeks and his groin are throbbing with pain. It's evident that he did some pretty stupid shit. He has a vague memory of disowning his dick, which is not okay. Not at all. His dick is precious. Perfect. No sane man would refuse having it as his own. He's gonna have to make sure Little Dean didn't take it to heart, but he doesn't dare look down and check it yet, not while Sammy's here and watching him like a hawk.

"C-Can't a guy take a shower in peace?" He tries to feign indignance, but his teeth chatter mid-start and ruin his grade-A acting. Faking shit with a stutter is a bitch - all his attempt gets is a thoroughly unimpressed eyebrow raise. Dean clears his throat, fiddles with the edge of his towel and tries not to think of how naked he is right now in every sense of the word. He shoots a rueful look at his soggy boxers, the heap of blue moss in the shower. Not getting those back on any soon. Also, he's kinda cold. And hungry. Which is good, 'cause it means he's no longer desensitised. He should reward his brother or something, right? But first things first.

"Where did you learn that?" This was the first time that Sam brought him out of a dissociative episode and this question keeps bugging him.

"There's this thing called the Internet. You can research stuff on it." Sam tells him in his prissy, patronizing voice. Dean scowls at him. "I found a site about grounding techniques and the importance of the senses. It sounded easy enough to try."

"Good job." Dean pats him on the shoulder. Better not make a big deal out of it, huh? It's bad enough that they will have to sort out the mess that happened in Sam's bed. No need to bother with Dean's dissociation issue. He's used to handling it - pretend nothing happened and life goes on undisturbed. One of his life mottos. "Now, could you, uh…"

"Oh. Sure, sorry." Sam blushes and his eyes scatter away, even though he has been up close and personal with Dean's body less than two hours ago. "I'll just… I'll be there." He gestures at the door, waits for a perfunctory nod, then leaves Dean to lick his wounds in peace for a while.

Dean lets out a breath. This won't be the end of it, he knows. Sam's gonna feel guilty as fuck, which is gonna make Dean twice as guilty in turn, and they are gonna play a nice back-and-forth for the Guiltiest Brother of the Year Award until Jody comes home and breaks out her mother voice (which is scary as hell). Then it's try to act normal time. Goody.

He hopes his cheeks will heal fast enough. Those scratches would be hard to explain as sex marks, but at least he can cover the bigass bruise on his leg. Now that he looks at it, it seems more purple than red on his pale skin. The wounds on his groin are just wounds beside his hipbone, Thank God. No harm done to the jewels. A bit of antiseptic cream and he's good as new. Everything will be fine. Except for the fact that Sam's gonna make him talk and Dean has no idea what's gonna come out of his mouth. Could be anything between 'thank you' to 'please kill me'. More likely some variation of the latter. So. Fine and dandy.

When he's done cleaning up, Dean shuffles into his room and crawls under the blanket on his bed, bundling up in it until he is covered from chin to toes. He knows he should get dressed and find his brother, but he feels too drained to move a muscle and sleep comes faster than the willpower to get up. His dreams are blank and devoid of any feeling. Peaceful.

It's a cool sensation on his cheek that wakes him up, someone tending to his scratches. Tentative fingertips pad up and down the marks, rubbing ointment that smells like maple syrup. It fills Dean's chest with warmth. He reaches out blindly, grabs a slippery hand. There's a loud sniff above him, then a dip in the mattress beside his elbow. "Sammy?"

"I'm so sorry." Sam cries and tries to extract his hand from Dean's grip, smearing Neosporin all over their fingers. "I'm sorry, I love you, I didn't mean to hurt you."

Dean sighs and opens his eyes. It's still dark outside, too cold to even look at. He would have appreciated some respite before this conversation, but if Sam wants to do this with all sorts of slimy stuff on their faces, then they will do it that way. "You didn't hurt me."

Sam's messy tears pour over his face in hot rivulets. "I did. I thought you wanted it too, but you didn't, and I forced -"

"No."

"But -"

"I wanted it." Dean says firmly, sitting up. That's the whole point. He wouldn't feel this terrible if he didn't want it, if he had done that only for Sammy. But he did want it, still does, and it's his sick desire that turns this act of giving into an ugly sort of taking. He's the older brother, he should be the one with his head screwed on the right way, but it looks like he got broken beyond repair somewhere along the way and he's not capable of resistance anymore.

"Don't be stupid. What I did in the bathroom… that wasn't your fault, okay?" Sam sags into his arms and shakes his head, greasy fingers squeezing the back of Dean's neck in despair. His long, lean body folds into Dean's embrace like a child's, highlighting once again how wrong it is that Dean's serpent of a heart needs him as a lover. The thought makes him nauseous. "It has been a long time coming. Come on, you know the score. I have to let off some steam once in a while."

"Normal people don't do it like that."

"Since when am I normal? I'm a ticking time bomb, Sammy."

"We should have talked about it."

"I suck at talking." Dean loves his brother in every way a human can love another but dissecting their feelings together doesn't have any sort of appeal. He likes Cassie's idea much better. Things get worked out when you really want them to.

Sam draws back, extricates himself from Dean's hold and gives him the fiercest look a man could muster with puffy eyes and a clogged nose. "Dean, you have to… you have to tell me how you feel. We can't go on if you keep driving yourself into stuff like this." He touches Dean's cheek, then pauses, pulls Dean's hands away from his waist. "We should stop."

"Yeah." They shouldn't have even started. Where did it go wrong? At the pool? When Dean came home, when he left, when Sam kissed him for the first time? Or somewhere earlier, in Alastair's cellar, in their first group home, when their parents died? Only the devil knows. It's too fucked up to make heads or tails of its source.

"But I'm not sure I can." Sam whispers and there's nothing to say to that. They are in a stalemate. Wanting against all odds, both of them sick to their cores. Sometimes, in his darkest moments, Dean thinks they weren't meant for this world at all.

He turns and leans back against the wall, eyes fixed on his drawn-up knees. All these unsaid questions and unknown answers make him feel helpless. He waits for Sam to leave or break the tension, but nothing happens, and unease stretches between them like a spider's web, transparent but too strong to ignore. His anxiety filters back in, asking him to drop out of the situation once again. No can do. One episode is one too many for today. To distract himself, he traces the patterns on the blanket that covers his legs, rectangle-triangle-rectangle, tranquil repetition. The silence steals his air, increases the pressure on his lungs. Sam's hand creeps over the covers and finds his ankle, climbs up to his calf. The contact comes as a lifeline that Dean's mind hooks into, something that holds him afloat until he finds solid ground again. Dean crosses his arms over his stomach to stop its churning and closes his eyes. "Don't you feel guilty?" He asks quietly.

Sam's hand travels up and down his shin. The warmth of his palm seeps through the fabric. "I used to, but..." Dean can hear him shrug. It's so easy to guess what's in that gesture, constricted into a pause - Sam reading books and articles at ass o'clock in the morning, scouring message boards about it with bleary eyes in search for a cure or an answer and finding none. "I realised it's not the end of the world. Our biological family is gone and… you know, we can't have screwed up children anyway. If we are careful, I really think we could make it work, Dean. But only if you stop hurting yourself over it."

Dean is not hurting himself. He just… he has special coping mechanisms. They work for him. Help him deal with stress. They aren't that bad if you look at them in the big picture. Some people go beat their kids when things get too much, Dean beats himself – but only a little, until he can feel the difference between real pain and emotional hissy fits. It's not like sitting in a bathtub all emo and slicing at his wrists with a blade, he's not a teenage girl. He dissociates, gets it out of himself one way or another, then comes back with a bruise or a scrape and a tangible relief that lasts a long while. No one's the wiser. They think he gets into bar fights or prefers it rough in bed. It's not self-harm. He's not doing it for attention or a new phone or something, and he's not about to off himself, it's not like that. For him, it works like a valve.

But he is way too exhausted to explain this to his brother tonight. "Let's catch some sleep, alright?" He says as lightly as he can manage. "We will figure things out tomorrow."

"Okay." Sam stands up, but there's a wrinkle between his brows that makes it obvious he doesn't like the way Dean cut this conversation short. "Tell me if you need anything."

Dean rolls his eyes and lies back, slapping at Sam's hands when they try to help him with the blanket. "I'm not a goddamn invalid." He hisses.

"Alright." Sam retreats, palms held up. "Good night."

Dean turns his back to him, waits until the door creaks, then… "Sleep tight, kiddo."

The answering groan comes right on cue and puts a smile on his face. It's comforting to know some things never change, despite the turmoil swirling around them.

Sam doesn't sleep more than four hours after leaving Dean's room. He tosses and turns, dreams of finding Dean corpse-pale, bloody and freezing under a sheen of ice that he can't break however hard he pounds with his fists, then he wakes up dry heaving and drenched in sweat. It's a terrible night, so bad that Sam forgets how happy he was less than a day ago. He barricades himself in the library and hangs his head off the arm of a leather chair, bored, tired and terrified of what's coming. They had plans to go see an Ozzy show in Pittsburgh two weeks from Dean's birthday, just the two of them – Sam bought the tickets months before they kissed each other, thought maybe he could make a move there. Then Christmas happened, and he adapted accordingly, decided that the concert would be the perfect chance to try the boyfriend thing in public, a thousand miles from home. Now he's not even sure Dean is able to kiss him without recoiling in paranoia. It's so damn frustrating. Two steps forward, one leap back.

Sam sighs and rolls out of his chair and onto the carpet, sprawls there and presses his face to the leg of the coffee table. In the first weak rays of winter sunshine, he has to squint and shy away from the window like a vampire exposed in its coffin. He can only imagine how he looks like. Death warmed over, probably.

By six-thirty, he's done haunting the furniture and goes to make some breakfast instead. He assembles quite a selection, eggs, toast, tomatoes, sausage, salad and other goodies. And glorious, life-saving coffee. He tosses back a cup in one go, then promptly bends over the counter, coughing while it seems like his heart is going to race straight out of his ribcage. Yeah, he's lame and isn't used to drinking it black. He's not gonna be ashamed of it.

By the time he has recovered, Dean is perched at the table in boxers and a tight shirt, cheeks abnormally chubby. Sam narrows his eyes, counts the sausages. "Dude." He growls when he reaches number five and number six is nothing but a blank space next to it. "Make your own."

Dean grins at him, disgusting in his unique way, and flicks the stalk of a tomato at Sam's head. He's spoiling for a food fight, Sam knows the fucker's way of thinking, but that's not going to happen today. They are unsure and left raw after everything that went over last night. Dean's face is a mess of brown-red scratches, his right thigh looks awful and Sam is ready to keel over from a stronger breeze. No way is he going to let Dean distract him and disregard their issues.

"How are you?" Sam asks and plops down in front of his plate. He's not looking at Dean, but it's still palpable how his brother tenses up and lets the smile slip from his face.

"I'm fine."

And that's when Sam knows he is not. If Dean isn't hurt too bad, he whines about it and moans for Sam to make it better with candies, but when it's something serious, he's gonna swear left and right that he is okay. He is contrary like that. "Dean…"

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't say my name like that." Dean kicks his chair back and stands, angry. Going for a real fight, now that his flight response failed. "I'm not made of glass, get it? Stop looking at me as if I was your pity project."

"I just want to help. You are in pain -"

"I'm not in fucking pain. These –" He gestures at his face wildly. "These are nothing. Nothing. You should know it best." He glares and storms away, tossing back a token "going for a ride" that either means he will be back in two hours or spend his day at the garage. Neither prospect appears to be a good solution.

The hours drag on. Sam tries napping, gives up, texts his brother, writes a half-assed essay for the AP class he hates the most, texts Dean again, breaks a glass by accident and almost calls Jody in desperation. Dean doesn't reply to anything he sends and there's no sign of him even after the sun sets and the city sinks into an envelope of charcoal black. Sam is worried out of his mind. What if Dean had another episode? Collapsed in a bar's restroom? What if he got into a brawl?

Then he hears the crunch of gravel outside, tires rolling into the yard and an engine shutting off. He's on his feet so fast he's seeing stars for a moment, blood pressure in his head decreasing too suddenly, and he has to grasp the kitchen table to keep standing. Dean strolls through the door all cocky swagger and disarming smile, an eerie copy of a painting Sam once saw of a Roman deity, titled Invictus. This is his fail-safe, pretending to be invincible and looking down at everyone as if he was a maven of life itself. Sam does not buy it.

"Where have you been?" He asks, hands on his hips.

"Out." Dean answers and pulls a jug of juice out of the fridge, drinks straight from the plastic. Sam makes a face.

"You didn't answer my messages." He tries to say it in a casual tone, but it comes out petty and jealous.

"Must have slipped my mind." Dean mutters, slamming the juice down on the countertop, a few drops escaping and running down his hand. They stare at each other, the tension going whipcord tight, then Dean leans forward and drops a stack of bills on the table. "Check out what I hustled on pool."

Sam catches a whiff of him. The stench of cigarettes and alcohol clings to his clothes and obscures all other scents that may be underneath. He should be happy it's not a woman's perfume that he smells, but something about this whole day, the lack of sleep, the worry, ticks him off and has him seething. "You had time to hustle, smoke and fuck around with your buddies, but not for a single reply?"

Dean's eyes flash dangerously. "Really, Sam?" He pulls up the side of his shirt, exposes a strip of skin that rarely anyone gets to see. "You think I would smoke with these on my fucking skin?" He snaps.

Oh God, how could he forget those burns? "No. I'm sorry."

"You better be!"

"But you should have called. Or texted, or sent a goddamn homing pigeon, anything! After last night..."

"You done PMSing, Samantha?"

Sam loses the last bit of his temper too. "Fuck you, Dean. Really, just. Fuck you."

"Not in the mood tonight."

It's a slap in the face. Perhaps it's unreasonable, but that comeback hurts Sam on a level he didn't even consider before. His voice goes cold, inordinately spiteful.

"You know what? I'm done with you. Have fun in Pittsburgh alone." He spits out, stomps out of the room and slams the door after himself.

Dean kinda… messed up. That's not exactly breaking news, it happens every other day or so. But he wants to apologise this time and that sucks, 'cause Sam is able to hold a grudge for weeks and Dean only has about two to set things right. He has been looking forward to that trip to Pittsburgh, he has plans. He can't let a stupid, pointless fight ruin them. So, he takes a long shower, washes out the stink he caught in that dump of a bar (fucking smokers), puts on clean clothes and marches into Sam's room with mule-headed determination.

Sam is in bed, lying on his stomach and scribbling on a stack of papers, a textbook propped open on his pillow (little nerd). Predictably, he doesn't acknowledge Dean's presence. It would be easy to slip into the awkward neck-rubbing mode, but Dean is not yet ready for full-on grovelling, so he ambles around in the room as if he was looking for something. It disguises his indecision about how to approach. He whistles under his breath, putters around with the trinkets Sam accumulated over the years, then pulls a dusty copy of The Grapes of Wrath off the bookshelf. He examines the cover and hums. It looks interesting enough, he has no idea why he didn't try reading it in high school. Probably because it was mandatory? Must have been that. He clicks his tongue and fumbles to open it, but the book slips from his hands and lands on the floor with a heavy thump. The bedsprings creak.

"Dude, seriously." Sam gives him a murderous glare. Its effect is somewhat diminished by the fact that he is talking to Dean. He must not be all that angry anymore. From what he can see of Sam's work, it's obvious that he has just drawn a long line across his writing in fright.

Grinning, Dean flops down on the foot of the bed. Sam kicks at him until he captures both of his feet and secures them in his lap. "Let me go." Sam snarls and throws a pillow at Dean's head.

He is so much fun to tease, Dean can't help himself. There's a tiny hole in his left sock – he must have failed to notice it or just applied Dean's system that basically declares every scrap of cloth a sock if he has at least one toe that's not poking out of it. He sticks a finger in there and starts widening the gap, tickling Sam's heel with unconcealed glee. His mood brightens with every outraged squeak Sam makes. That is, until Sam's right foot escapes, connects with his gut and knocks the breath out of him. It's only a second or five that he is incapacitated, but that's enough for Sam to stand up, turn around and punch him in the face. An actual, jaw-cracking punch. Images of a heroic speech that earns him forgiveness flee right out of Dean's mind. He lives by simple laws, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Sammy thinks he is man enough to hit him? He's gonna hit right back.

They didn't have a real fight in years and it's a confusing, painful mess. They forgot each other's tells or developed new ones, Dean doesn't know, but a split lip is not something he's used to ending up with. At least it's a nice addition to the marks he seems to be collecting this weekend. It takes him by surprise that Sam doesn't back down but holds his own, willing to fight just as dirty as him, pulling hair, kicking shins, thrashing with those freakishly long limbs and big body. It's an unfair advantage that unleashes a red haze on Dean's mind and makes him unrepentant when he tears apart the essay papers Sam throws at his head.

Sam gapes, eyes wide from fury. "Asshole!" He yells and lunges forward, but his shock is just enough distraction to slam him into the wall and pin his arms above his head.

It's game over. Dean remains undefeated. Sam puts up a struggle and tries to knee him in the junk, but he has more bulk than the lanky little shit and he knows how to use it. Adrenaline pumps through his veins and it's a split-second decision, rash and instinctive - he presses Sam harder into the wall and goes for his mouth, kisses him, rough and deep and unrelenting. Sam stomps on his toes and swallows his yelp of pain, hands spasming in Dean's grip. They bite at each other without finesse, Sam writhing for freedom but attacking Dean's lips with matching violence. Metallic blood spills on their tongues and paints their chins red. Dean's mouth is one big sore but he battles for more, knocks Sam's head back against the wall with his fervor. He has never given anyone such an angry kiss before. They weren't worth the effort of that sort of emotional investment, but this, with Sam… it's fucking thrilling.

"I punched you." Sam gasps into the kiss.

"Hit you right back." Dean replies, punch-drunk words brushing Sam's skin. Kissing is good. He has made his peace with it. He likes it. What he wasnot fine with was Sam licking his way down his abdomen and crawling back up ten minutes later tasting like salt. But right now, he thinks, he would take even that, fuck rules and consequences. He can regret it, he can punish himself over it, but there's no denying how much he yearns for it.

Sam licks the wound on Dean's bottom lip, makes him hiss. "I'm not sorry." He's wriggling with different intents now, aiming to connect their hips and find friction. His wrists are twisting in Dean's grasp and he is baring that lovely neck of his, offers it up like bait. "I'm not."

"Me neither." Dean huffs and knows he's caught hook, line and sinker. He leans back for Sam's blood-smeared lips and lets him go. Right away, Sam's thin fingers shimmy through his fists and down to his ass, pull at him until Sam's cock is a hard line next to his, rubbing up and down in circles. Dean remembers how it felt to touch him last night, how wet and warm he was, and his palms, now flat on the wall above them, tremble and slip. Sam watches him with a hint of a smile in his hazel eyes and Dean hates himself with unforgiving bitterness, but he's gonna have this (again). He's gonna take this pleasure.

"I'm still mad." Sam moans and gropes him harder, their zippers dragging over each other, rustle-pause-rustle. The pace speeds up. "So mad at you, Dean."

His voice, God, his voice is liquid fire trickling down Dean's body, whatever he says, however he means it. Dean's hips stutter forward, Sam's hands glide into his back pockets. Floppy brown locks of hair fall into Sam's tired face and his pointed nose is all red from a hit it took in their grapple. Dean has seen prettier people, has fucked more than his fair share of them, but nothing compares to how dazzling Sam is in his eyes right now as he thrusts and gets himself off against Dean's body. He's the best goddamn thing in the world.

Dean pants through his nose, shudders and leans in to mouth at Sam's clean-shaven chin. He's tempted to place a love bite under it, on that vulnerable place, but the last thing he wants is blemishing Sam's unmarred skin in any way. He flattens himself to the wall instead to cage Sam in tighter, rolling to his tiptoes and grunting softly in delight. He's so close his tongue tingles. Sam makes a frustrated sound and raises a hand to Dean's throat, wipes away the sweat with his thumb. He holds his fingertips at the point where Dean traps his noises, where his skin vibrates however quiet he is, and groans in sudden, overwhelming satisfaction. "Oh yeah…"

Bliss slams into Dean so hard he chokes on the whimpers he's trying to swallow. His trousers fill with sticky wetness that soaks through the denim, and his hands give up on him, fall into Sam's hair instead of holding him up. Sam shakes apart in his arms. They start making out again, trade sloppy little touches until the fringes of sweetness disappear and leave the bitter-familiar feeling from last night behind. Thoughts of dissociation raise their ugly heads. Offer a painless way out that Dean refuses to take again.

He pulls back and drops his forehead to Sam's sternum, crushes Sam while his guilt begins crushing him and he gulps down tears that would be too beautiful for this sinful afterglow, he knows. He doesn't deserve to cry and find solace in them. He has done the deed, he should bear its weight too. Sam's thumb, resting gently in the hollow between his collarbones, tap-tap in time with his pulse. "Shh." Sam shushes. "It's okay."

It is not. And it will never be.

...

A/N: And now we have caught up to AO3. The tenth chapter will be completely new, and I hope to post it tomorrow. After that, there will be an update every week or so.