Heart beating like a trapped bird in his chest, Sam sat up and peeled off his shirt and hoodie with shaking fingers. His lips tingled hot where Dean had kissed him. By the time he'd stripped the rest of his clothes off, his whole body was trembling, not with cold this time, but with nervous, exhilarated anticipation. He watched Dean, eyes wide.

The flame floated over his skin, the hollow of his throat, the wide muscled chest, the curve of the hip bone, mapping Sam's body, Dean's hand lightly turning him to see better. Shadows bent with him, etching Sam's muscles in hard lines.

"I don't remember drawing that picture," said Dean, fingers tracing the length of Sam's leg, "But I wish I did."

The sheets hit the floor, the pillows balled up and stuffed behind Sam to prop him up. "Here." said Dean, placing Sam's left hand behind him on the headboard, and cutting an emergency candle into four and teasing out the wicks and arranging them to Sam's right on the table, Dean pulled out his journal and sat on the end of the bed.

"That old picture wasn't you," said Dean, digging for pencils, "I want this one."

Sam shifted slightly, his whole body abuzz. The kiss, that touch of Dean's hand on his bare skin, lying here naked with Dean's eyes roaming his whole body… it was too much, too much good after that terrible waking, and it wasn't nearly enough. He found himself short of breath.

"Dean, do you remember anything? About us?" he asked quietly.

Dean stared at the blank page. "No," he said, looking up and back for the first outline, "I wouldn't have even guessed til we started digging through the computers at Fort Cloud."

He narrowed his eyes, measuring Sam's arms, pencil scuffing across paper. "There wasn't a whole lot in that last recording. We talked. You sounded...unhappy, probably been unhappy for a long time," said Dean, Adam's apple bobbing, "And I made the first move."

Knowing this, that he hadn't pushed anything on Dean, relaxed Sam, and he nodded. After a few seconds, he said, "I remember this. I remember you drawing me. You looked… really happy. And I felt good, all tired and sweaty and lazy, like you do after you've been screwing."

Sam continued, "I remember the way your thighs felt." He closed his eyes for a second, and the smell of melting wax and the sound of pencil scratching on paper plunged him further into memory. "Wrapped around my hips."

The pencil didn't stop. The candles didn't explode. The window didn't burst outward in a shower of glass as though Sam's confession had ignited the room. Only in Dean's head.

Sam shivered as a chill passed through him, but deep in his core he was burning hot, and he wouldn't stop this for the world

The way their chests had slid together as Sam had crawled up to kiss Dean, his brother's mouth tasting faintly of blood. This was like a waking wet dream, only with Dean watching him, and that made it so much better.

"You were… "

Dean's silence gave Sam permission to say things that he perhaps wouldn't have had the courage to say otherwise. "You were so hard against my stomach. And you… " Sam felt his whole face go hot as the vivid memory of plunging into Dean swept over him. You were so hot inside. He gripped the headboard tight as all the muscles from his navel to his thighs contracted, and he felt himself swelling, lengthening against his hip.

"Jesus, Dean," he said, voice a harsh rasp. "You felt so fucking good."

Dean listened, filing all this away to the little black box in his head, where it would be ruthlessly exploited the next time he got drunk in the shower. He circled an x beneath Sam's collar bone where the tattoo would go, and moved on the shoulder. The tricep. The joint. Only little things. If he took in all the things at once, if he took in all of Sam stretched out on the bed with that look on his face, he would lose.

After several minutes, Sam's breathing slowed from big, chest-expanding breaths to normal. In a softer voice, he said, "Do you know what I liked most about it though? The way you kissed me. Like you wanted me just as much as I wanted you."

"Did I say anything?"

At Sam's puzzled expression, Dean looked at the ceiling and said, "I uh...I had a waitress in Iowa once, and afterward we were laying in bed and she said I never once called her 'darling' or 'beautiful' or anything I was supposed to call a girl. That I was a cold kind of player."

Sam's eyes went unfocused as he scanned through his incomplete memories of that night. "You said my name. A lot, like, over and over. Like it meant something. And… you told me I was yours." He watched the curve of Dean's mouth, then said, "I couldn't stop saying your name, either. I'd wanted to say it like that for so long, it just kept tumbling out of my mouth."

Sam paused. There had been a moment, one that had knocked the breath out of Sam, had squeezed a warm fist around his heart. "You called me 'baby boy,'" he said, feeling that warmth in his chest all over again.

Dean traced along Sam's face, first with his pencil and then with imaginary hands. Sam had always been a good fighter, with sharp reflexes and an instinct for guessing the opponent's strategy three or four moves in advance. Had any of that translated over? Had Sam read his body, moved with him in silent exploration, or had there been a lot of schoolboy fumbling?

Dean lay the paper and pencil aside. "It's getting late," he said, gently pulling the blankets over Sam, "You should sleep."

Dean lay beside him on top of the coverlet, tracking Sam's eyes, holding him there. Even with dawn two hours away, trucks were already pulling out for the morning deliveries. Foghorns sounded to one another in the dark, loud enough to cover the noise when they kissed and said each other's names and Dean's hand slid under the sheet and circled Sam's leaking cock and wrung it in one hard wet squeeze.

Sam made a high, hurt noise in his throat and thrust up into Dean's hand, pressing his open mouth against the corner of Dean's lips.

"Now you listen, you do whatever you have to do to kill those sons of bitches tomorrow, but you come back to me," Dean hissed, "You have to live."

"I will," Sam said breathless, eyes closed, and he focused on his brother's hand on his cock. He'd wanted Dean to touch him ever since Dean had stormed in and told him to strip, hell, ever since Dean had come to pick him up at Stanford, and it was perfect, the way Dean touched him, like he knew exactly what Sam needed. He gripped the back of Dean's shirt, then slipped his fingers under the hem to skim his hand along Dean's hot skin.

He could feel the hard shape of Dean's cock through the coverlet, and he pressed his hip against it, wanting.

"Dean," he moaned when Dean gave him a twisting, slippery squeeze, and he turned his head to find Dean's mouth again. Dean coaxed him through it, Sammy, Sammy, into Sam's mouth, the gentle words in stark, perfect contrast to the way Dean handled him; rough, the calluses on his palm sliding along Sam's slick cock creating a friction that had Sam at the edge far before he wanted to be.

He dug his blunt fingernails into Dean's back, and "Call me baby boy," he breathed, and when Dean whispered it in his ear Sam came with a wordless cry, arching and spilling hot all over his brother's hand.

"I promise I'll come back to you," he said once he could speak again, words soft and slurred, eyelids heavy. Dean kissed him one more time, lips gentle and clinging before they drew apart.

They listened to each other breathe, Sam fast fading against the pillow, and when his eyes fluttered into dreamless sleep, Dean showered and shaved and walked to the corner diner and walked back listening to the wind in the trees like they had a secret for him.

Sam woke hours later to the blare of Go Go Godzilla in the parking lot. Coffee steamed on the bedside table with SAM scrawled on the styrofoam.

Sam crawled out from under the covers shivering. He found his clothes lying in a heap on the floor and pulled them on. He felt loose and relaxed as he sipped on the hot coffee, despite the knowledge of what they might be up against today, and the words swarming at the edges of his consciousness. He stilled, cup half raised to his mouth, when he realized that they'd been gone ever since Dean had walked into the motel room and kissed him, and were only just now coming back.

He dressed for cold weather, double socks and a long-sleeved thermal under his layers. Leaving the beds a mess, he walked outside. He smiled when he saw Dean leaning against the Impala, the morning sun bright on his face.

Dean got right up to him, stepping on his toes. He wasn't smiling, but his eyes glittered green and he pressed the tip of his tongue to his upper teeth like Sam had seen him done on a thousand cute bartenders. "Car's packed," he whispered, conspiratorial, as if they were sneaking out while John was asleep, "You ready to roll?"

"Just about," Sam said, and he grabbed Dean by the nape of his neck and kissed him hard on the mouth. He didn't care that they were out in the open. Didn't care that anyone could see them.

"Okay," Sam said, a little breathless. "Now I'm ready."

Dean's lips parted, cheeks and the tip of his nose pinked by the winter wind. He'd never had many high school sweethearts, none that lasted, but he knew this was different. His fingers found Sam's right hand hanging by his side, their breath steaming in the parking lot.

"I um, I got you something," said Dean, standing close so Sam couldn't see what he was getting out of his pocket, "I haven't used it in years, and it's only good for opening beer bottles, and you don't have to keep it..."

Dean took his wrist, his touch gentle, his eyes on the ground, as a ring slid onto Sam's finger "...But I meant to give it to you a long time ago."

Sam stared down at Dean's ring on his hand, and a smile spread over his face. He'd missed Dean's ring, the clink of it when he'd opened bottles, the tap of it on the steering wheel, the way Dean fiddled with it when he was nervous. It had been as much a part of Dean as his freckles, as his green eyes. Now it was as if he was wearing a part of Dean on his hand, a part that fit perfectly around his finger.

"Thank you," Sam said quietly, and repressed the urge to kiss Dean again, suddenly shy about it. Then he reaffirmed the vow he'd made hours before, this time fierce and determined: "I promise I'll come back to you. No matter what happens."

Dean didn't meet his eyes, the poor macho bastard, but he held onto Sam a little longer and ducked his head and let out his breath and turned toward the car. "I'll take the first leg."