He was outrageously drunk. Sam had come to pick him up after a garbled and unintelligible phone call, cut short with shouting in the background. The bar was just a three block stroll from the Motel 6 and Sam walked it quickly, pushing the door open and feeling his heart lurch to see Dean mixing it up with two figures. Not demons, two young businessmen from the looks of it. Sam waded into the brawl, swinging, reaching for Dean, and hauling him back with a handful of collar, pushing him to a staggering standstill.

Dean bent over, hands on his knees, breathing hard, then he straightened. "Thanks for nothing!" he shouted at all three of them, Sam and the two disheveled men.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Dean?" Sam hissed. Then turned and motioned apologetically to the two men. "I don't know what the deal is. I'm sorry. I'm taking him home now."

"You should take him home. Your friend's a real asshole," one of them spit out, pressing tenderly at the corner of his bleeding mouth.

Sam shrugged. "I guess."

"And a serious creep to boot. Get him the hell out of here," said the other, using a napkin on the first man's face.

"Hey," Sam held up a hand, "I got it. We're leaving."

He turned back to Dean who was trying to wave the bartender's attention to himself. Sam rolled his eyes and grabbed his elbow. "C'mon, Dean. So not funny. We're going home."

"Home?" Dean slurred. "I wanta go home, Sam. Jesus, take me home."

And something in his voice enraged Sam to the point of broken tears, something in the way he rolled the words in his mouth, acknowledging that if anyone could take him home it was his brother. He breathed deeply and deflected. "What the hell did you do to those two guys?"

"Nothing. Just asked them what the gay sex was all about, you know, if it's better or worse than the straight sex."

They were outside now and Sam shook Dean by the sleeve, hard. "What?!"

"Oh, dude, don't shake me like that. Shit." Dean moved quickly to the edge of the sidewalk and bent, retching, towards the gutter.

Sam ducked quickly back into the bar, grabbing a stack of cocktail napkins and returned to the street. Dean was still bent and heaving. "Here, here," Sam murmured to him. One strong hand holding tight around the ball of his shoulder, he pressed half the stack of paper napkins against Dean's mouth.

"Fuck," Dean moaned, drawing the word out in one long exhaled syllable.

"You done?"

Dean nodded and moved up against Sam's side, his body tense and uncomfortable.

"Relax, Dean, we're going." Sam wrapped a long arm around his shoulders and propelled them both back to the motel.

Once inside the room, he fumbled his hand along the wall, looking for the light switch, and suddenly Dean was on him, kicking the door shut, pushing him hard against the wall, forcing his body up into Sam, knee to shoulder. Then he had his head tight between his palms and was kissing him and Sam kissed back, wondering, wondering, wondering.

But Dean pulled away, panting against Sam's collarbone. "This what you want, little brother?"

Sam licked at his lips, feeling an aching loss that started somewhere in the vicinity of the center of his chest. "I don't know. I don't think so. I really don't want anything, Dean."

"Now, that's not true. I thought you wanted me to kiss you."

"Dude, you were just throwing up in the gutter."

Dean slowly reared back, still trapping Sam with his thighs, the press of his knees; he swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "Forgot about that. I am drunk drunk drunk."

"Yep. Don't apologize or anything."

Even in the dark of the room, Sam could see the dark blush move across Dean's face. "I gotta piss," he said and stumbled away, towards the bathroom.

Sam flicked the light on. He moved over to Dean's bed and pulled back the covers, plumped the pillow and sat heavily, hands between his knees, trying to find his way back from the strange kiss.

Dean was wearing only boxers when he walked out of the bathroom, veering towards the bed. Sam stood, moving out of his way, watching as he fell sprawled onto the mattress. He reached down and pulled the covers up over him, resisting the urge to tuck him in, letting the material float down and outline his body. "Sleep now, Dean," he said softly.

Dean rolled over onto his back. "Sammy?" he called to him and Sam leaned down into his voice. Dean reached up and effectively put him in a triangle neck hold and hauled him down on top of him.

Sam fought the hold, the weight an albatross around his neck, rearing back. He had been brought to his knees on the rolled edge of the mattress and it hurt. With both arms flat palmed against the bed to hold himself off his brother's body, he growled into Dean's face, "Let go."

"No."

"Fine." Sam unlocked his elbows and let himself fall to the side of his brother, wedging his thigh between Dean's legs, rolling his hips on top of Dean's, putting his weight into it.

Dean's fingers were keyboarding up and down his ribs, beneath his arm. Sam watched the digital clock on the table between the beds, red lights illuminating the minutes spent lying on top of his brother, both of them squirming around the place where their heated erections met.

"You put this in my mind, Sam. You did this."

"It doesn't work like that, Dean."

***

"Dammit!" Dean spit out, tossing his wallet down onto the small motel desk in their room. "I just had it, Sammy, and now it's gone."

They had spent the past quarter hour tearing the room apart, looking for a scribbled name and address.

Dean sank into one of the chairs and shook everything out of the wallet. Plastic cards, business cards, banknotes, the spare Impala key, a condom, no, two condoms, and a tattered piece of folded paper slid across the desktop.

Sam leaned down and fished out the folded paper. "This it?"

"No!" Dean grabbed for it.

"What is it?"

"It looks like a mile of mind your own business," Dean said, standing and reaching for it again but Sam held it over his head, well out of his reach.

Dean backed off; arms crossed angrily, the expression on his face injured.

Sam sat down on the edge of one of the beds and smoothed open the creased and folded and yellowed piece of paper on his thigh. "It's a Valentine's." His finger traced the childish scrawl, "'Sam, be my Valentine. I love my brother. XOXOXOXO, Dean.' You drew me a Valentine Card."

"I was in the first grade."

"Yeah," Sam's voice had gone low, "I can see that." He held the paper up and tilted it slightly; the drawing was fading into oblivion. "Is this," he touched the picture gently, "you and me, holding hands?"

Dean shrugged. "Just give it back, okay."

"That's a lot of x's and o's. Look, there's a sun," petting, finger-tracing over the childish rendition of a smiling sun, "that's a pretty happy sun. You're, like, taller than me." His voice was catching now and Dean made another move towards him, but he held up a warning hand. "And, oh god, Dean. All these flowers, we're standing in like a meadow or something, and all these flowers are smiling, too. Look at how much we're smiling." He had begun to cry. "There are some trees. I think those are trees, could be telephone poles. But no house, huh."

"Sam," Dean whispered hoarsely, "don't. Just fucking do not."

Sam wiped a desperate hand across his face. He looked up at Dean and then away. He folded the paper with care, his hands were shaking. "We look pretty happy. That's good. Yeah." He was nodding. "That's good. And you carry this around in your wallet."

"No. I do not carry it around in my wallet. Bobby found it a few years back inside one of Dad's books..."

Sam handed back the folded square, fingers tented on his forehead, sniffing loudly. Dean took it and looked from the paper back to Sam; he tossed it onto the desk and went down on his knees. He buried his face in his brother's lap, his shoulders shaking.

Sam reached out for him and held him still. His voice was choked. "You're okay, you're okay," he murmured. He could feel, through the thin fabric of the t-shirt, how close Dean was to flying apart beneath him. "Come here. Dean, come here." He reached down under his brother's arms and coaxed him up onto his chest, lying back on the bed, wrapping Dean into his embrace, holding him fast against the long length of his body. One strong hand moved to the back of his neck, the other snaked around his waist. Using one foot on the floor for leverage, he rocked them and hummed softly against the side of Dean's head.

***

"This isn't a game for me, Sam."

"I know that, Dean."

"I'm not trying things out, trying something on, testing the waters."

Sam nodded. "Yeah."

"If we go there, we can't go back. We're not going back. You got that, right?"

"Dean..."

"This already moves us into territory that, I don't know...people have been stoned to death for just thinking about what we're thinking about." He rubbed a hand across his eyes. "And I'm not even talking about the truly twisted aspect of this whole thing. You think we've kept secrets before? This is the fucking mother of all secrets."

Sam smiled shyly. "I thought I was the one who talked too much?"

"I'm over-thinking this thing, aren't I?"

Sam thought about it for a moment, then simultaneously shrugged his shoulders and nodded.

"Thanks for letting me do that."

***

"Sam?"

The whisper crossed the sea of space that lay between them, three am.

"Yeah. Dean," he answered, turning over on his side, pillowing his head on his arm and staring across the divide between the motel queen beds. Dean mirrored the movement, each looking at the other.

All the unsaid things between them had slowly but with certainty become unspoken promises of love and vows of loyalty.

"C'mere," Dean said softly and lifted the sheet.

And with not a moment's hesitation but with great care and intent, Sam moved out from under his own coverings, through the cold air separating the two beds, through the gloamy darkness of the motel room, shucking his boxers, pulling the t-shirt over his head, then dipping down, lowering himself beneath Dean's arm, into the heat, the promise, the ocean of possibility that called to him. With both hands, he reached out for this other body; this soul he knew as well as he knew his own. He pulled him into a fierce embrace and nuzzled his face against his brother's head, mouthed into the whorl of his ear, "beloved secret."

And with a deep, held breath Sam met Dean's lips with his own, and together, together, they sank into each other. One into the other, they descended.

***

Someone was kissing him awake. He rose up out of the depths, feeling the temperature rise as he kicked himself upwards through the black, then blue, then topaz light, into the morning, up and out of sleep and into Dean's arms.

"Hey," he whispered around his brother's mouth, through his lips. And in answer, Dean only nodded, pressing his tongue deep into Sam's mouth, sliding it warm and tasting of sleep and last night against his teeth.

He murmured as Dean's ear moved past his mouth, reaching for it with teeth and lips and tongue. Dean was laving from his own ear, down the long length of his throat, across the collar of bones, into his armpit, teeth pulling fiercely at the long underarm hair and Sam's surprised giggle became another moan. His head went back hard, mouth gasping open as Dean moved into the soft inside of his elbow and sucked bright red marks into the tender flesh there.

Then Dean was moving down his body, straddled knees carefully but purposefully moving across Sam's thighs, between his knees now and Dean knelt back onto his heels, strong hands beneath Sam's hips, pulling him forward against his own hips, into his erection.

Sam was already half-hard and his legs fell open, shoulders pushed back into the mattress, his eyes shuttered by lust, looking up at his brother. "You're the king."

Dean nodded, somewhere else, listening to his voice but not his words. Lower lip tight beneath his top teeth. Concentrating on feeling, on breathing. Sam reached out for both their cocks, wrapping his hands just there, grasping them together in his fists, tips of his long fingers pressing into his brother's flesh. He was rewarded with Dean's eyes slipping closed, exhalation long and low and Sam closed his own eyes, stroking the hard lengths.

"Oh, fuck. Sam."

"Right here. Right here, Dean."

Dean leaned down, one hand on either side of Sam's head, reaching for his mouth again, kissing into the corner of his lips. "Yeah, but where in Hell is here. Where are we, Sammy?"

Sam reached up and held Dean's face firmly. "I know you think I'm a cornball, but we're right where we need to be. I believe that."

And then Dean was kissing all the words and justifications into silence and Sam swallowed them down willingly and kissed him back. With a slow movement, all muscle and yearning bone, Dean slid both his arms behind his brother's back, slid his knees down the mattress, settled into the cradle of Sam's open thighs, whispering now, "We just don't need to talk about it anymore, huh?"

"No," Sam kissed his eyelids, his brow, across his temple, "we just don't."