Chapter 2 Breaking all the Rules
I wish I owned these characters, but I only have my rotted out brain to blame for this.
Wincest, don't like it, don't read it, won't blame you.
Rule number two came hand in hand with Step 2, linked together like kindergartners who can't walk down the hallway at school without their partner.
If Dean never sees Butte, Montana again, he will die a happy man. Not really, he will die tragic, alone, and desperate, but as long as he isn't in Butte when it happens, he will manage.
They came to Butte on a werewolf hunt and so, despite the soul crushing feelings that seem to be Dean's constant companion since four days previously when he first saw Sam, he is there to do a job.
Dean likes the hunt, always has, likes outsmarting monsters in the dark, likes the feel of his weighted 9 mm with the silver bullets he made himself grasped confidently in his hand. He lives to rid the world of evil, only job he's ever had. He tries to not dwell on his own evilness too much, particularly the new kind that is threading throughout his veins like heroin more and more every moment of the last four days.
Dean isn't the smartest guy in the world, but he does know things, like how fucking wrong he is for feeling the way he was feeling. His inner voice is hoarse from yelling at him, and he isn't sleeping or eating nearly enough to sustain himself, especially on a hunt. The thoughts keep hitting his head like confetti falling from the sky during a parade. All the wrongness, the grossness, the awfulness that he innately feels towards himself, they all pale in comparison to the other, stronger feelings he is experiencing. Like the ones where he can't look Sam dead in the face anymore.
So, four days after Rule One is written, Dean has managed to keep Rule One intact for the most part. It isn't easy not looking at someone you spend 24/7 with, but Dean made a game out of it. He stared at Sam's nose instead of his eyes, his chin instead of his mouth, and whenever he could, he didn't look at Sam at all. It was pathetic, but it was working for him, and he felt good about not really making eye contact with the kid for almost four days. He was starting to breathe a little easier.
If Sam noticed, he never said anything, and he didn't act any differently towards Dean. They ate, they researched, they planned, they slept and Sam didn't seem the wiser for the carefulness that was now Dean. The tightly coiled package of keeping it together, it was working.
The night in the woods when they are finally catching up with the werewolf, Dean is feeling more like himself than he has in days. He is ready, eager even to blow the werewolf off the planet, and back to the rings of hell where it clearly belongs.
So you can't really blame him for not being ready for Step Two, or Rule Two. He is hunting a werewolf, after all.
Dean and Sam are crouched together behind a tree stump, trying to pick out the werewolf's location by listening to its persistent, squealing, ear splintering bays at the moon. In the dark, Dean can almost look at Sam, and he manages to mangle his own face into a grin, anticipating the hunt.
They hear movement in the forest and the baying has stopped, so Dean's pops out of his crouch into a half stand to check where the sound is coming from.
What happens next is no one's fault, really.
The werewolf bays again, and it is closer and much louder than the previous ones and Sam grabs the front of Dean's jacket and hauls him back down behind the tree trunk. Dean loses his footing in the process and lands half on top of Sam with a whoosh of breath and a whump of bodies hitting one another.
Dean's head clears a second after he hits Sam, but is gone so quickly again that he doesn't think it really cleared at all. Because he and Sam are face to face, chest to chest, almost groin to groin and Sam's arm is still latched to the front of Dean's jacket, and both of them are panting from the fall.
Dean feels heat radiating up from Sams body, it is searing his flesh because the kid is so fucking hot, in so many ways. Sam's chest is as solid as a brick wall and Dean's stomach is flip flopping like a fish that just got dumped on a bleached, old wooden dock from a casting rod. He is sure his heart rate has sped up to an explosively dangerous number, and hopes that Sam can't feel it radiating out of his own chest, but is acutely worried that Sam will.
Being so close to Sam's face is definitely a fracture of Rule One but Dean can't help himself, since he is still sprawled on top of him. His eyes dart capturing every feature, every line, every scar, memorizing the planes of Sam's face as efficiently as he would seize up any opponent, and he is terrified as he catches Sam's eyes with his own. Sam's are gleaming with an unknown color, enhanced by the full moonlight and Dean has no idea what his own are saying to Sam behind his back, because Sam's expression is a bit strange and confused.
Dean feels his body reacting to the proximity in a way that horrifies him down to his very bone marrow, as his cock swells to half mast inside his jeans. For some reason, that is the thing that shakes him loose of the situation, and he scrambles off Sam like he might die if he doesn't. And who knows, maybe he would die from it, because it was so good, so much better than he would have thought, and now he has a new layer of self hatred to examine for later.
Sam shakes his own head and jumps to his feet almost at the same time Dean does, and even though he isn't supposed to look directly at him, in accordance to Rule One, Dean breaks it to signal which way they should go, and is rewarded by a shaggy haired head bob from Stranger Sam.
Dean knows this isn't his brother Sam anymore, or maybe, he just can't see him as Brother Sam right now. Not if he plans to make it out of this situation in tact to any degree.
So step two has been reached. Dean has realized beyond any shadow of a doubt that his attraction to Sam is as physical as it is ethereal, and that it is almost crippling in its strength.
They catch the werewolf, both of them shooting it in unison, bury the body in the woods, and head back to the car.
Adrenaline is thrumming through Dean like he is still running, and he taps the steering wheel with his fingers in time to his own heart, trying to calm down. He drives them back to the god awful motel. During the drive, Rule Two is formed inside Dean's head. Touching Sam had to be kept at the barest minimum. Touching Sam would clearly lead to breaking Rule One as well as probably cause Dean to blow his own fucking head off.