Archive of Our Own

In the middle of the night, Sam wakes to find himself alone in the lumpy, sway-backed motel room bed and rolls over. He lays there, his eyes searching the small room and is not all that surprised to find Dean propped up in a corner with his knees drawn up, sleeping with his head on one bent arm and a gun in his hand.

It’s been happening like this more and more often since Dean found out about Ruby and the demon blood. It’s happened every single night in the last week since Dean killed Ruby and they watched Lucifer rise. Sometimes Dean wakes him up talking and shouting in his sleep, shaking from his nightmares, but mostly it happens like this; with Sam waking up because Dean’s always been so warm and the bed is so strange and cold without him. Still, when they check into a new place and Sam says two beds when the receptionist asks, Dean still automatically says one and he’s willing to stand there and argue if Sam has anything to say about it.

Sam lies there watching Dean sleep, thinking how uncomfortable it looks with his neck bent way down at such an angle. He stretches an arm out and runs his hand over the cool cotton sheet just for the hell of it and wonders if he should go to him and wake him up or just leave him there to sleep this time.

Sad and tired, Sam admits to himself that he can’t do that. It’s not just because if he did, he’d never get back to sleep himself, just spend the night watching and worrying about Dean. No, it’s a little bit more than that. What bit, he’s not entirely sure, but he thinks it probably has a lot to do with letting go and letting shit lay and he’s always been really bad at that.

And if Dean’s going to shoot him, Sam wishes he’d just do it.

He rolls out of bed and the springs make a strained whining sound of protest. A few weeks before, that sound would have brought Dean out of sleep like a slap to the face, but he sleeps right through it. He doesn’t stir until Sam kneels before him and gently takes the gun from his lax fingers. Then he jerks awake with wild, frightened eyes and Sam makes sure to put the safety on the gun and hold it by his side, away from Dean.

“Come back to bed,” Sam whispers. He watches Dean relax by degrees, but still there is that animal caution in his eyes as he regards Sam. “I won’t bite,” Sam promises, and the hell of it is, he’s only half joking.

Dean gets up and walks around Sam to find his clothes and start putting them on. Sam watches him for a minute then puts the gun in the nightstand drawer with the motel bible.

“What are we doing here, Dean?” Sam asks. He still keeps his voice low because the darkness seems to somehow demand it.

“We’re hunting something that’s killing little kids, Sammy,” Dean says, his voice a little sharper than Sam thinks the question or answer really warrants. “We’re doing our job.”

“Yeah and that’s not what I meant,” Sam says. He sits down on the edge of the bed with a squeak and watches Dean, fingers fumbling and shaking, try to button his shirt. “I think you know that’s not what I meant.”

Dean takes a deep breath, lets it out, and lets his hands drop to his sides. “I can’t fix you,” he whispers fiercely. “There’s no medicine or magic to cure what you are. I can’t… I want to, but I can’t seem to deal with this shit, Sam. It goes against… everything.”

“I’m not broken,” Sam says softly. He stretches out across the bed and snags one of Dean’s back belt loops, lightly pulling to get him to sit down.

Dean sits, but he doesn’t turn around to face him and Sam sighs.

“I don’t need to be fixed,” Sam says. “I’ve always been this way, you know. That blood’s always been there. What’s different now?”

But he knows what’s different. It’s the difference between knowing and not knowing; simple as that and now that they know, they can’t unknow. And Dean… well, he was as bad at letting go and letting shit lay as Sam was.

“I’m going out,” Dean says, bending down to get his boots and put them on.

“Fine,” Sam says, knowing going out was Dean’s way of saying he was going to a bar, probably to get drunk, possibly to pick up a girl. Or boy. The former doesn’t irritate Sam nearly as much as the latter. Drunk he could handle, but the idea that Dean needed to fuck someone else to get Sam off his mind—and was willing and eager to do it—pisses Sam off in a way he can’t really explain. It isn’t jealousy exactly, but it’s damn close.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Sam says as Dean finishes tying his boots.

Dean freezes and his shoulders tense. In a weird way, it’s like he’s been expecting Sam to say something like this. Sam can see it in the anticipatory tightening of his jaw.

“Doing what?” Dean whispers.

“You can’t keep sneaking out of bed to sleep on the floor with a gun, leaving me to go fuck someone else and forget about me for a little while… I love you, man, but no way in hell,” Sam says. “I’m fucking tired of walking around you on eggshells, feeling guilty. You’re so scared I’m gonna do something that you can’t stay in bed with me, fine. We get two of them from now on. You can keep the gun under your pillow. Who knows, maybe you’ll accidentally blow your head off.”

When Sam stops talking, Dean seems to relax. He shakes his head and stands up, takes his coat from where he threw it down on the table and puts it on. “No,” he says simply.

Sam rolls off the side of the bed and walks over to him, invading Dean’s space in a way that makes him want to take a step back. The only reason he won’t is that he’s a stubborn ass. “Fuck you, tell me no,” Sam snaps. “I’m tired of this shit and I won’t do it anymore. And you know what? At the risk of sounding like a complete girl, if you walk out that door now, I’m gone, understand?”

Something bleak and dark skitters through Dean’s eyes and Sam sees this is what he’s really been afraid of and now it’s out there. Thrown down like a cast-iron gauntlet between them. An ultimatum and a little bit of a challenge.

“What do you want me to do, Sam? Pretend it’s alright?” Dean asks. He runs a hand over the back of his neck and Sam doesn’t miss that his hands are still shaking—maybe a little more now.

“It is alright,” Sam says. He pokes Dean in the chest with his finger for emphasis. “I’m still me, damnit. Nothing’s changed except now you know what that really means.”

Dean runs his tongue over the back of his teeth thoughtfully. “So what is this?” he asks. “You want me to lie down beside you and sleep like everything’s just dandy? Like…”

“Like you’re not scared?” Sam suggests. He puts his hand on Dean’s shoulder and runs his fingers up the side of his neck to cup his jaw. “Like you’re not afraid to look me in the eye and surprised every time you do and I’m still in here? Like you’ll never have to put me down? Like that?”

Dean swallows and his tongue clicks against the back of his throat. “Yeah, something like that,” he says. “And if I can’t do that?”

“Then we get separate beds,” Sam says. Dean’s already shaking his head no as it comes out and Sam grits his teeth in annoyance. “Then I’m gone,” he says.

“No,” Dean says. His hands automatically come up and he grabs Sam’s forearm, holding him there with his hand against the side of Dean’s neck. “No… I’m sorry. But… there’s got to be another way.”

“Yeah, you can forgive me and you can forgive yourself, we can stop fighting and angsting over this and we can move on,” Sam says. He draws his hand back, taking his arm out of Dean’s grasp. “I’m sorry for what I am,” Sam says softly.

“Sam, don’t—”

“No. Shut up and let me finish,” Sam says. He scratches his arm, fingernails ticking over the long scars running to his elbows and paces away from Dean to start getting dressed as he talks. “I’m sorry for what I am,” he repeats. “No one should ever have to say that, but I am. I know what some of these monsters feel now when we hunt them down—not for any reason other than because of what they are. I didn’t choose this. Given a choice, don’t you think I’d have chosen something else?”

Dean licks his lips and nods slowly. “Yeah, I know that,” he says.

“Do you?” Sam asks. He pulls on a pair of jeans and sits down to put on his socks. “Because most of the time you don’t act like it. Most of the time you act like I sat up in my cradle and sold my soul to the Devil.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean whispers. He feels in his coat pocket for his cigarettes and a lighter. He can’t find his lighter, so he lights the end of his cigarette with a match from a matchbook he picked up in a bar in Wisconsin. “But what am I supposed to do, Sammy? I can’t… you are what you are and what you are is… everything I can’t deal with. Everything I…”

“Hate?” Sam says, looking up at him as he’s buttoning his shirt.

“No,” Dean says instantly. “God, no.”

“Look,” Sam says, standing up to cross the room to where Dean is. “I’m not trying to punish you for what you feel or think. Yeah, it sucks and I hate that it has to be like this, but I guess it does.”

“Sam—”

“Dean,” Sam says, his tone suggesting that he shut up again. “Either you sleep with me, without the gun, in the bed. You stop trying to punish me for this shit because there’s nothing I can do about it and I’ve said I’m sorry as much as I’m going to. Or you sleep alone in a separate bed and we do our jobs and try not to get in each other’s way too much. Or—and this is the really big one, Dean—I leave. We go our separate ways. I guess that might mean you’d hunt me, though, huh? Really do it, not just think about it.”

“No… I… I wouldn’t—wait, you’re not leaving,” Dean snaps, his eyes going sharp. He flicks his cigarette aside without any regard for where it drops and stalks over to Sam. “You’re not leaving,” he repeats, growling it a little like he’s ready to fight with Sam over it if it comes to that.

Maybe he is, Sam thinks and is surprised to find how much the idea pleases him. “Maybe I want to,” Sam says.

They both know what a crock of shit that is so Dean doesn’t even dignify the statement with a reply. “You’re not running from me again, Sammy,” Dean whispers fiercely. “I won’t let you.”

Sam rolls his eyes and shakes his head. “I didn’t run from you the last time, you idiot,” he says. “I thought we were done having this conversation.”

“Well maybe I’m not done with it,” Dean says.

“You are,” Sam says. “This isn’t about me and Jess and Stanford, so don’t try to make it into that. That dog’s been dead. You’re stalling, Dean.”

Dean opens his mouth, probably to protest, then just closes it and frowns down at his shoes.

Sam goes to find the cigarette he threw away and puts it out before it can burn a hole through the mattress. He’s too late to save the sheets, though he doubts if that matters with all the stains and holes already in them.

“Fine, I’m not leaving,” Sam says. He watches Dean relax a fraction and says, “But that leaves us with two other options and I’m really not willing to compromise.”

“Jesus,” Dean mutters. He looks down at the bed where Sam’s still kneeling as he crawls backward off of it carrying Dean’s smothered cigarette butt. “I can’t, Sammy.”

Sam throws the cigarette butt at him and reaches out to grab Dean’s shirt front, but Dean stumbles backward and almost falls over his own feet in his haste to retreat. Sam lets his hand fall back to his side with a withered, sick feeling in his stomach.

“Fine,” he says, gritting it out through his teeth. “Fine, I won’t touch you. But you’re not sleeping on the floor even if I have to tie you down, got it?”

Dean’s jaw clenches with anger at the order, but he doesn’t say anything. He chews his bottom lip a little, turning it dark and puffy then turns away and walks for the door.

“Where are you going now?” Sam says.

“I told you,” Dean says, not looking back at him, “I’m going out. You wanna come?”

Sam stares at his back as Dean stands there in the doorway holding the door open. “No, I don’t think so,” he says after a while. “I think I’ll just… read up on… whatever. Have fun.”

“Don’t fucking leave while I’m gone, okay?” Dean says, still not looking at him. Still stubbornly standing with his back to the room and Sam.

Sam gets his laptop out and sets it on the table by the window, then sits down to watch Dean, whose in profile to him like that and whose face has gone suspiciously white. “I’ll be here,” Sam tells him. He watches Dean nod once and then he’s gone, the door slamming behind him.

Dean comes back to the room about two hours later and Sam sighs in relief. It’s long enough for him to get so drunk he scrapes the key against the wood of the door five times before he gets it in the lock then falls through the door and almost knocks over the TV, but it’s not nearly long enough for him to have done anything else. Sam’s a little disgusted by how glad this makes him and he rolls to face the wall as Dean kicks the door closed and staggers to the bed.

Dean sits down on the side of the bed and cusses vehemently to himself as he tries to untie his boots and nearly falls over. He steadies himself with one hand on the bed then concentrates on untying his laces and finally gets them off without injury. It’s now, with his shoes off and as he starts to take off his shirt that he remembers their fight from earlier. Sam senses it in the way everything just slows down, even Dean’s breathing.

Then Dean gets up from the bed and goes over to sit down on the ratty brown sofa to stretch out. He leaves his shirt unbuttoned because it’s too much of a pain in the ass to refasten the buttons while drunk, but he doesn’t take his clothes off now that he’s remembered he can’t sleep with Sam anymore.

Sam lets out a deep breath, tired down to his tattered demonic soul and is quietly thankful that Dean didn’t try to relocate his gun. He’s drunk enough that he very well might have blown his head off and then what?

Then shit would be a lot more simple, Sam admits.

Sam sits at his computer at the table the next morning, drinking shit coffee from the one cup coffee maker as he reads about monsters and listens to Dean throw up in the bathroom across the room. He thinks he’s probably figured out what’s been killing all the little girls in the area and to top it off, he’s flying high on a kind of pure I-told-you-so satisfaction that comes with listening to Dean upchuck the sour contents of his stomach until he’s dry heaving.

Dean half stumbles out of the bathroom, wiping the back of his hand over his mouth and flops down on the bed with a sick grunt.

“You want coffee?” Sam asks him pleasantly.

Dean groans and lifts one hand to show him his middle finger.

“Oookay then,” Sam says. He sips his coffee and turns back to his computer. “I think I may have found our monster.”

Dean makes a sound low in his throat that could mean one of two things: ‘fuck off and die’ or ‘by all means, please tell me what you found’. Sam chooses to interpret it to mean the latter.

“Right. So, way back in biblical times—talking Adam and Eve or before that really—Adam was supposedly given this woman, Lilith, for his wife,” Sam says, explaining it just as though Dean had asked and was listening attentively. “Well, like with all first models, this one didn’t really work like God wanted. We’re talking Old Testament God here, so he was kind of a crazy bastard. Anyway, Lilith was cast out and cursed and she had all these demon babies.”

Dean mutters something into the coverlet and shoves himself up so he can lift his head to glare at Sam. “Get to the goddamn point, Sammy, please.”

Sam grins at him and sits back in his chair, cupping the bottom of his coffee cup as he lifts it to sip. “The point is, this thing killing these kids is one of those kids. One of Lilith’s demon babies. They’re called Lilim.”

“Okay, so what does this Lilim thing do?” Dean asks. He props his head on his hand and swallows down the need to retch. “Besides the obvious.”

“Lili,” Sam corrects him. “Lilim; plural, Lili; singular.”

“Fantastic,” Dean said. “Fucking geek. Whatever. What does this Lili do, exactly?”

“Lilith, Dean,” Sam says. “Come on. Fucking pay attention.”

Dean blinks at him and it still takes a minute, but then it clicks and his mouth falls open. “You mean our Lilith? Like the psycho Village of the Damned bitch you should not have killed—that Lilith?”

“Well, yeah, probably,” Sam says. He sets his coffee cup down and leans forward to scroll down the page. “I mean, I didn’t exactly ask her for a list of references, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s the same one.”

“That’s just… awesome,” Dean says, letting his face drop back down on the bed. “Bet her kids take after Mommy.”

“Uh-huh,” Sam says. “And I bet their pissed as hell with us.”

“So why are they killing the kids?” Dean asks.

“Um… that’s kind of more rooted in mythology than anything else so—”

“Dude, just tell me what it says,” Dean said. “I need some aspirin and some hair of the dog fucking pronto and you are holding up the show.”

“The what? Never mind,” Sam says. He shakes his head and sits back, tilting his head back and closing his eyes as he speaks. “Lilith was told that one hundred of her children would die every day that she refused to return to God. Of course, she refused.”

“She’s been refusing a damn long time,” Dean says, lifting his head again to give Sam an incredulous look. “That’s a fuck-load of kids. Wow. What a slut.”

“I don’t think it’s intended to be literal,” Sam says.

“Yeah? Well, what’s it a metaphor for then, smartass?” Dean says.

“I don’t know,” Sam says. He picks up his coffee again and drinks. It’s cold now, but he drains the cup anyway. “Does it matter?”

“Not really, no,” Dean says. He sits up, moves too fast and has to lean over and bite back a gagging fit. “Fuck,” he hisses. “Grab your shirt and lets go, Sammy. I need something for this or I swear to Christ I’m gonna die.”

“Don’t you want to know how to kill them?” Sam asks, getting his shirt to put it on. “And maybe what they’ll do if—”

“Yeah, sure, I want to know all about it,” Dean says. He snatches his coat up and gets his keys, which he throws to Sam. “Tell me over breakfast. You’re driving.”

Dean orders a giant slice of banana cream pie and a beer. He gets the pie and a funny look over the beer.

Sam orders sausage and toast with an omelet and a cup of decent black coffee. He has to watch Dean stuff his face, but is rewarded for this ordeal when, after eating it, Dean has to rush to the bathroom to throw it back up again. Sam doesn’t even want to imagine what banana cream pie tastes like coming back up.

“Is he going to be all right, dear?” the matronly waitress asks Sam when she brings the bill to their table. She keeps glancing at the door to the men’s room from which sounds of Dean’s vomiting had come a few minutes earlier. “It wasn’t something in the pie, was it?” she asks worriedly.

“What?” Sam looks at her. He grins and shakes his head no. “Nah. He’s just hungover.”

“Oh, well then he shouldn’t have ate that,” the waitress says. She puts the bill down on the table and crosses her arms under her big breasts, casting a last glance toward the bathroom before she moves away. “My Larry, he swears by tomato juice and Tabasco sauce. Nasty business, if you ask me, but he drinks it up and he’s right as rain.”

Sam smirks and stabs a cheesy section of omelet with his fork. He’s almost finished with his breakfast when Dean comes back and falls into the booth seat across from him.

“I hate you,” Dean mutters. He snatches his glass of water off the table and drinks a little over half of it.

“That’s sweet of you,” Sam says mildly. He finishes his toast and wipes his hands on his napkin. “You want anything else?”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Dean says. He shakes his head, then groans and puts his forehead down on the table. “Just leave me. I’m dying.”

“Uh-huh, I’ll go pay this. You go get in the car,” Sam says, sliding out of the booth. “There’s a Shell station a few blocks over. They probably have beer.”

“Oh, thank fucking Christ,” Dean whispers, voice ragged from vomiting.

“Now there you go, savior of mankind, taking the lord’s name in vain,” Sam mock-scolds as he starts toward the counter to pay.

“Who’s taking it in vain?” Dean says, walking by him toward the door. “I was praying.”

That night, Sam lies there in bed alone, the sheets just as cold as they were the night before without Dean to keep him company and listens to his brother’s deep breathing. Dean’s sleeping on the sofa again after drinking enough beer to drown a pink elephant and he’s on his back, so he snores just a little bit.

The sound both annoys Sam and makes him hurt. It’s a homey sound, one that he’s gotten used to by hearing it in the chairs of a thousand motel rooms, in the back seat of the Impala on sunny days driving through the desert, in bed after sex when Dean’s drank more than he usually does that day. It’s a sound that is familiar and very much Dean and the fact that it’s coming from the other side of the room, not from right beside him, hurts more than Sam would like to admit.

The truth of the thing—the truth that hurts—is that he misses Dean. It’s more easily ignored by day because Dean’s more like himself. He’s awake and aware and on his guard, so it’s okay to talk with Sam, tease him and give him shit just like he always has. But when he lays his head down now, he chooses to do it alone, even if that means sleeping on a sofa with flattened down padding and a board under the cushions to keep the middle from sinking to the floor.

Sam tries to remember the last time Dean touched him—really touched him—and it takes him a few minutes, but he thinks it might have been right after he was dragged back from Hell, before he found out about Sam fucking Ruby. There had been a few other times, when Sam rolled over in his sleep and put his hands on Dean, where Dean had put him off. When that became a pattern, Sam stopped trying. He didn’t know what to think, except maybe years of brotherly incest had finally caught up with him in Hell and he’d decided he didn’t want to do it anymore. Or maybe Ruby had contaminated him in Dean’s mind in a way that no one else could. Sam wasn’t about to force the issue and there was a really big part of him that didn’t want to hear his suspicions confirmed, so he just backed off.

Now he has Dean sleeping on the couch like he’s in that metaphorical dog house and what he hates most about it is that Dean chose to be there.

Dean mutters in his sleep and turns over on his side, facing Sam. He has a beer bottle that’s down to just the dregs of saliva and backwash held loosely in one hand, ready to spill.

Sam thinks of running his hands up Dean’s neck, feeling the sleepy calm beat of his heart under his fingers, thinks how Dean’s mouth would taste sour from the beer and drunken sleep. Maybe Dean would open his eyes and up close they would be startling green in the dark, weary circles around them. They wouldn’t look at him with fear or rejection this time because goddamn it, this is Sam’s fantasy and he gets to have that. There would be that deep, patient acceptance again, that look that only comes from years of knowing a person in the most intimate ways. That look held years of fighting and making up, enemies vanquished, shared pain and loss. That look was Dean stirring crackers into his chili and Sam walking in on him fucking his prom date in their dad’s bed. That look was every nightmare Sam ever had that Dean told him wasn’t real… right up until he told him the truth. It was Sam losing his virginity to Dean on the matted shag carpet of a motel in New Mexico while Billy Idol sang “Rebel Yell” on MTV. That look was everything and Sam knew he had one just like it of his own.

In this fantasy of his, Dean would look at him like that again and maybe it would be him reaching out for Sam. Sam would forgive him for being afraid and whisper his forgiveness into Dean’s ear as he fucked an apology from his mouth.

Dean mumbles something under his breath, grunts, shifts on the sofa and licks his lips. Sam watches his tongue trace over his lips and squeezes his eyes shut. His breath hitches in his chest and he makes a soft, pained sound in his throat because even with his eyes closed, he can see everything.

He runs his hand over his belly, then down, under the waistband of his shorts to caress the inside of his own thigh. He’s not touching himself yet, but he doesn’t pretend that’s not what he’s planning either.

In his mind, he sees Dean’s mouth, the way he frowns when he really means it, when he’s really pissed. It’s different from the frown he gets when he doesn’t, less severe and more playful or embarrassed, depending on the reason. The false frown can just as easily become a smile, teasing or mocking or just plain amused and right behind all of those smiles are smooth white teeth, every one of which Sam has run his tongue over.

Sam bites his bottom lip and turns his face into his pillow to muffle a whining sound of want as he wraps his hand around his stiff cock and gently squeezes. He pictures Dean’s throat as his head is thrown back, Dean’s body above him, astride him as Sam rocks up. He rolls his hips and fucks into his hand as he remembers a time in the Nevada desert when it rained.

Dean had leaned over him with rain sliding down his back and over his throat, rainwater caught in his short hair, steam rising up from the sand and sagebrush and that look in his eyes. There had been sand in everything—in their hair, on their backs, in their clothes. Sam had even found some in his pubes later that night in the motel shower. Everything had smelled like flowers and water and the piss scent of wet sage. Dean had put his head down and kissed the rain from Sam’s chest, then bit at his nipples until Sam pulled him up to kiss his mouth.

There had been nothing behind them and nothing ahead of them but highway and more monsters. No angels or devils. No higher calling or duty other than to find the bad thing and kill it.

Sam clenches his teeth, remembering the sounds Dean made, soft gasps that became moans, which became cries. His flesh was slick with water and Sam’s fingers had slipped on it no matter how hard he tried to hold on. Dean’s body shook as Sam threw his hips up into Dean’s riding movements and then…

Sam opens his eyes, the memory still stark and right there, pleasure bringing stinging tingles to the surface of his skin, sliding up his back and balling in his stomach. His mouth falls open as he pants and his eyes lock with Dean’s across the room. There’s another kind of look in his eyes as he watches Sam, but it’s no less intimate. It’s a look that says he knows a little bit of what Sam’s going through and probably has an idea of what he’s thinking as he jerks off. That same look says maybe Dean’s done the very same thing himself.

Sam whispers Dean’s name, the word escaping more as a hiss through teeth that want to clench with his pleasure and he comes. His orgasm is quick and his hips jerk against the mattress as he comes, holding his eyes wide open so that he doesn’t lose sight of Dean for an instant.

When he’s done, when it’s fizzled out like flat soda in his bloodstream, Sam slumps and finally closes his eyes. His cheeks are flushed, more from embarrassment than passion and he rolls away from Dean to face the wall.

Everything’s quiet for a long while, except for the sound of Sam’s own laboring heart and the soft puffing sounds of Dean’s breathing. Then the sofa creaks and there are footsteps approaching the bed. Sam listens to them, holding his breath to breathe through his nose, the distant hope of… something flaring to life.

Dean walks by the end of the bed, into the bathroom and closes the door. After a few minutes, Sam hears the shower start.

Sam sighs and relaxes a little. He listens to Dean in the shower, wondering if he’s in there jacking off. He closes his eyes, trying like hell not to imagine it and feels sick with the desire to either cry or scream.

Sam doesn’t get the chance to tell Dean what else the Lilim do or how to kill them because Dean pretty much stays drunk for the next three days while Sam hunts the thing down. From his behavior, Sam still gets the impression that he’s supposed to be walking around on eggshells feeling like a guilty asshole, but he refuses to do it. Dean won’t meet his eyes and he is talking to him less and less, but Sam makes himself busy trying to get the monster they’re after and he barely notices.

At least that’s what he tells himself.

On the third day, Sam walks into the motel room, slams the door behind him and throws a newspaper down on Dean’s chest. Dean’s sprawled on the bed and he jerks with a startled grunt, grabbing the edge of the mattress so he doesn’t fall off.

“Sammy, what the hell—?”

“Get up,” Sam snaps.

“I’m not really—”

“If you want to lie around and drink yourself to death in a fit of goddamn emo, you go right ahead,” Sam says. “I’ve about had it anyway. Retirement is starting to sound better and better all the time. We’ve still got this last job to do though, so get your ass up.”

Sam smacks Dean’s thigh, making him jump again then sits down in one of the table’s chairs and waits for Dean to sit up. Dean slowly shifts on the bed and sits up, taking the newspaper off his chest as he does, glaring at it blearily.

“What’s this?” Dean mumbles. He runs his tongue over the roof of his mouth and makes a face.

“Newspaper,” Sam says. “Look at the front page.”

Dean turns it over and squints at the front page headline. Bones of 4 Year Old Girl Found. He can’t read much beyond that as the text is too small and his eyes keep swimming out of focus, but he gets the gist of it. The bones of four-year-old Mandy Lee Baker had been discovered when the septic tank at the local public park had backed up. When they cleaned up the mess, they’d discovered the finger bones and a left femur sticking out of the muck around the swing set.

“That‘s disgusting,” Dean says.

“A dog found the other femur and chewed on it,” Sam says. He watches Dean’s face go white with a mild tinge of satisfaction.

“Dude, I really did not need to know that right now,” Dean says, looking ill.

Sam shrugs. “Well, I thought we should probably check out the park,” he says. “This sounds a lot like the Lilim might have a nest or whatever it is they have somewhere nearby.”

Dean nods wordlessly and gets up. He drops the newspaper on the table by Sam and starts toward the bathroom.

“Hurry up,” Sam says, picking up the paper to flip through it. “We don’t have time for you to jerk off in there.”

Dean turns his head to give Sam a flat look of pure anger over his shoulder. He shoves the bathroom door open a little harder than necessary and it bounces off the wall. “Jerking off is part of my hangover cure routine, so you’ll just have to deal.”

“Bitch” hangs unspoken on the end of that sentence and Sam finds himself smirking as he hears the shower start.

He licks his thumb, flips a page and settles down to read the obituaries.

“You’re not serious about retiring,” Dean says.

It’s almost dusk and they’re lying on their backs on one of those old metal merry-go-rounds with their feet hanging off in the sawdust. They found the “nest” of the creature they’ve been hunting earlier that morning in a small shed not too far from the playground where the grounds keepers keep half-used cans of paint, tubes of caulking, a few tools and what was probably at one time a leaf blower. The Lili was using it as a place to curl up and sleep, but it wasn’t home when Sam and Dean went knocking, so here they were hanging out in the park waiting for it come home.

Sam thinks the Lili probably looks just like a real person and wonders which one of the beloved town’s people it’s pretending to be. A teacher? A policeman? A priest? Another child? Someone that children wouldn’t be afraid of. Someone they might even trust and wouldn’t be scared to walk away with.

“Sam,” Dean says.

Sam tilts his head toward him. “Huh? Sorry, I was just thinking.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean says. “I said, you’re not serious about us… you know. About us retiring.”

“Sure,” Sam says.

Dean half sits and turns over on his stomach, propped up on his elbow to look over at Sam. “What?”

Sam shrugs. “I said sure,” he says. He meets Dean’s eyes and lets out a long sigh then rolls over onto his stomach, too. Beneath them the merry-go-round is warm from the sun of the day and it sways with their movement. “I’m tired, Dean,” Sam says honestly. “Don’t pretend you’re not. I’m burned out and it’s only a matter of time before something gets the better of me like this. I’d really rather… go a little more quietly into that good night, if you know what I mean.”

Dean frowns at him and leans his head on his hand, studying Sam thoughtfully. His eyes are bloodshot and his hands are shaking—something Sam has noticed has become rather permanent the last few months—and he looks tired. Sure, it’s the booze, but it’s also not. It’s also bone aching, soul-deep weariness.

“So what do you want to do?” Dean asks. He asks it softly like it’s something they shouldn’t be talking about and someone might hear. “Just… quit? Do you think we even can?”

“I think… I think it’s a lot easier to become someone else than most people believe,” Sam says, choosing his words carefully. “I figure if we can find them, we can hide from them, too.”

“And do what?” Dean asks, truly perplexed by the idea.

A soft wind ruffles Dean’s hair and blows up the back of his shirt and Sam has the skin-hungry urge to reach out and touch him, but he doesn’t. He looks away, eyes drifting to the swing set to watch the wooden seats sway and creek on their chains.

He lets out a deep breath and drops his head down onto his folded arms, moving the merry-go-round gently with a push of his feet on the ground. “I think a house, a little broken down maybe, in a small town outside of a big city,” Sam says. “Someplace small enough to disappear, somewhere the locals call you ‘eccentric’ and give you your space, but close enough to a place where you can find anything. Where we wouldn’t be bored and they have an all-night liquor store.”

“That sounds… nice,” Dean whispers, almost sounding surprised by it. “But you know we’d still put salt on the doors and windows and sneak holy water into everyone’s drinks when they came to visit.”

“So?” Sam says. “Better to be safe. We don’t forget what we know just because… just because we don’t go out looking for it anymore. That’s not what I mean when I say retire.”

Dean chews at his bottom lip and looks down at the metal of the merry-go-round where he’s laying. He traces a pattern of rust with his fingertip. “What if I don’t want to?” he asks. “What if… I’m not ready?”

Sam gives him a tired, resigned look. “Then you’re not ready,” he says. “You keep doing what you have to do. I’m going to do what I have to do. If you ever stop in, there’ll be a bed for you for however long you want it. If… If you ever want to quit, you’ll have somewhere to go. But I’m done, Dean. There are other hunters. Younger, older, hell, probably better. Let them do it, now. I’m done.”

Dean nods and sits up on the side of the merry-go-round to drag his hands through is hair. “Alright,” he says.

“There’s something I should tell you about the Lilim,” Sam says. He clenches his hand into a fist to resist the urge to reach out and run it down Dean’s spine, lay his palm over the small of his back where his shirt’s hiked up.

Dean looks at him over his shoulder and his eyes fall on Sam’s fisted hand where the knuckles have gone white. He lifts a brow and meets Sam’s eyes. “Yeah, what’s that?”

“They’re like… succubae… incubi,” Sam says. “You wouldn’t listen before, but I’m telling you now. Be careful.”

“That would explain all the goddamn breeding,” Dean says. He stands up and gestures Sam up. “Fine, get the bag; make sure you’ve got everything. Let’s go stake this creepy-crawly so we can get you your little house on the prairie.”

Sam stands and throws the bag at Dean, who catches it in front of his face and lowers it with a glare. “Jerk,” Sam says. He climbs over the merry-go-round and jumps down, holding one wooden stake in his hand.

“Wait a minute—” Dean starts, but Sam keeps going, turning the stake in his hand so the point is down to get a better grip. “Dude, come back. Don’t be a—”

“Shh,” Sam hisses, waving at him to shut up.

“What?” Dean whispers, coming up behind him. “What are you doing?”

“I’m hunting rabbits, you asshole,” Sam says sarcastically out of the corner of his mouth. “What do you think I’m doing?”

Dean rolls his eyes, but he stops talking as they move into the bushes and trees surrounding the playground and start toward the shed they found earlier. Twigs and dry leaves crunch under their feet and sound ten times louder than they really are because they’re trying so hard to be silent. The sounds of little animals in the trees make them tense as they draw closer to where the shed is.

Sam draws up short and puts a hand back to keep Dean from walking into him. His hand presses against Dean’s lower belly and he takes it back as though burned by the contact. The flat muscle under a thin layer of flesh against his hand has scorched an impression into his palm and Sam softly curses to himself.

Something he needs right now more than he needs retirement and that little house; he needs to get away from Dean. This separation is killing him.

“There’s a light,” Dean whispers.

His breath is in Sam’s ear and Sam jerks his head away, want stabbing into his belly, making his heart leap. It’s ridiculous, they’re supposed to hunting down a child murdering sex demon and that should be the first thing on Sam’s mind, but it’s only the second.

Dean’s hand casually touches Sam’s arm as he cranes his neck to see and Sam grits his teeth. “Dude, stop touching me,” Sam growls.

Dean looks at him, startled and then looks down at his hand resting on Sam’s arm like he’s only just become aware of it. “Ah… okay,” he says, taking his hand away.

“I’m serious,” Sam insists, like Dean doesn’t believe him. “Don’t.”

“I’m sorry, alright?” Dean hisses. “Now shut up or it’ll hear us.”

Sam bites the inside of his cheek and keeps quiet then as the light Dean saw draws nearer.

It’s a woman. It surprises Sam a little and he doesn’t really know why, but he had half anticipated the thing to be male, but it’s female. It’s beautiful; slender, pale, wraith-like, and heavily pregnant. In its arms, it’s carrying a sleeping human child—a little boy. As it walks, moving calmly as though floating, its gown moves around its ankles like folds of shadow and smoke, bathed in the moonlight and taking on its silver hue.

Softly, Sam hears her singing to the boy in her arms. It’s a lullaby and he doesn’t know where he recognizes it from because no one ever sang them to him, but he knows it enough to make out some of the soft words.

“…Come little babe, come silly soul… thy father's shame, thy mother's grief…born as I doubt to all our dole… and to thy self unhappy chief: sing lullaby and lap it warm… poor soul that thinks no creature harm…”

“Well, that’s fucking creepy,” Dean whispers under his breath.

Sam fully agrees. He nods and grips the stake in his hand tighter. “We’ve got to go now,” he says, watching the woman-thing lay the boy down in the grass beside the shed. “She’s going to eat him.”

He doesn’t know where this knowledge comes from—there wasn’t anything about it in his research—but he’s suddenly sure this is exactly what the Lili intends to do. What she’s been doing all along. He wonders if the medical examiners found teeth marks on the bones of the children’s remains, then decides probably they did. That would be something the police would keep out of the papers.

“Wait, Sammy, don’t go off all half—”

Sam shrugs Dean’s hand off as Dean grabs for him. He catches Sam’s jacket, but Sam just twists out of his grasp and starts across the small clearing to the woman kneeling over the sleeping boy.

“Shit,” Dean snarls and Sam can hear him following right behind him. He’s not happy about it, but for better or worse, he’s there.

The Lili catches their scent and hears Sam’s purposeful footsteps and looks up through her fallen down hair as they approach. Her eyes widen briefly, bright blue and electric with feral hunger then her lovely lips curve in a knowing smile and her sharp teeth flash. “Little Sammy Winchester,” she croons.

Sam halts, curious despite himself. “Do you know me?”

The creature sits up a little and shakes her hair back from her pretty face. Sam catches himself watching the silver blond hair slither over her smooth white neck as she tosses it back and makes himself stop. He senses Dean’s presence behind him and knows that he shouldn’t have to make himself not notice her. If this creature were a woman, he damn well wouldn’t notice.

“Do I know you,” the Lili whispers, her voice taking on a coy edge as she smiles. Her long fingers trail down the chest of the boy child on the ground beneath her and Sam’s eyes follow. “You were such a pretty baby. Look at you now, still so full of life. I could suckle my young with the life in you for a week or better.”

Even with whatever magic glamour the monster bitch had wrapped around her working its sexual power on Sam, he grimaces with disgust at the mental image this statement evokes. Apparently Dean agrees because he mutters, “Fuck this,” under his breath and starts toward her, stake in one hand, tossing the bag down as he approaches.

“Dean, wait—”

The Lili cocks her head to one side and grins, her razor sharp teeth gleaming in the moonlight, and watches Dean come toward her with anticipation.

“Dean—”

“Shut up, Sammy, let the big kids work, alright?” Dean says.

“Dean Winchester,” the creature hisses. “You have all the subtlety and finesse of a jackhammer.” As Dean curls his lip back and comes at her, the Lili turns, the movement almost like a dance and is out of his reach. “Tell me, Sammy, is he like that in the sack?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sam snaps, the reaction automatic.

“Ah, language,” the Lili chides, wagging her finger at them both. “There are children present. Do try to watch your tongue.”

Dean bares his teeth at her and circles around her. They resemble two wild cats preparing to fight and Sam watches it for a minute before he sees Dean jerk his hand—the one not holding the stake—signaling him to get around at her back.

“Bitch, I am going to rip your tongue out,” Dean promises the creature. “Then you’ll be dead and I’ll be happy and it won’t be a fucking issue.”

The Lili bares her own teeth, which are much more impressive, back at him and darts her head out to snap at him only a few inches from his face. Sam tenses, ready to jump her if she touches him, but she just laughs and whirls away again and they go back to circling.

“Mind your manners, if you please,” the Lili says, her eyes flashing and angry despite the sweet tone of her words.

Dean swings at her with the stake in his hand, driving her back toward Sam. The creature’s smile never falters and she backs almost right up to Sam, turning her head to look at him sweetly over her shoulder as she draws near.

Sam backs away from her, lifting his own wood stake and looks at Dean over her head. He mouths Where? at him and Dean lifts his brows and shakes his head. I don’t know, wherever.

The monster whirls toward him then turning her back on Dean like he’s nothing and his deadly sharp stake is a blunt little twig. She starts crooning a lullaby under her breath, swaying in front of Sam and drops her hands to cradle her pregnant belly as she moves. It’s like watching some intensely beautiful and ethereal ballet.

Sam doesn’t even know that he’s dropped his arm to his side until Dean shouts his name. Startled, he brings his hand back up, but it’s too late. Like a snake, the Lili spits in his face.

Sam’s hands go to his face automatically and he bends over, the venom stinging his eyes. Some of it’s in his mouth and he swallows before he can think what else to do. It tastes like sugared violets and he nearly gags on the sweetness.

Something—a hand—coasts along the back of his neck and he shudders. Under his skin, in his blood, there’s an itching tingle like insects trying to gnaw their way free of his body. Distantly, he hears Dean shouting curses and the Lili screaming at him, but all he can think… all he can do is feel. It’s an intensely empty feeling, a wanting, yearning, sexual hunger. And it would be so much better if it were only sexual, but it isn’t. There’s an ache like a hole through his center that has nothing to do with fucking.

Something touches his back and Sam cries out, jerking away from the contact so violently that he stumbles. His skin blooms to life under that light touch and he turns fevered eyes to find Dean standing there, one hand outstretched, the other holding a wooden stake slick and black with blood.

He looks at that blood and lets his eyes linger on Dean’s long, beautiful fingers wrapped around the knife-carved wood. He swallows, feels a catch in his throat, and slowly backs away from Dean, terrified to look into his face even as his eyes are drawn there without volition.

There he is and Sam could just kill him if he didn’t want, more than anything, to reach out and touch him. More than he wants to draw another breath, he wants Dean’s hands back on him, blood, sweat, grime and all. Everything. He is everything and not for the first time in his life, Sam wonders at the kind of omnipotent higher power that would place soul mates within the same womb then rip them apart. But he only thinks about it for a second, it’s a thought that flashes, barely realized, through his mind before he’s putting up a hand to warn Dean to stay back.

“No,” he growls. “No. I will not. Not like this.”

He takes several deep breaths, his blood racing, his body shaking, his dick hard and painfully sensitive against the denim of his jeans. He wants to grab Dean and throw him down right there in the monster blood and dirt and fuck him. If there are tears, he wants to lick them, if there are screams, he wants to feel them hum against his mouth as he bites and licks Dean’s throat. He wants to lay his hands on Dean’s thighs and see the difference in their skin color, his pale, tender places to Sam’s darker, rougher hands.

What he wants is not new or something invented by the creature’s venom. It’s an old, deep, abiding hunger being dragged over the coals. The desire is not new, but it’s intensified to near mindlessness and the only thing that keeps him from pouncing on Dean and fucking him like a crazed animal is the certain knowledge that it isn’t what Dean wants and if he did, Dean might not forgive him. What he wants is not what Dean wants and while that still matters, Sam looks up at him through his sweaty, fallen hair and holds out one of his hands.

“Don’t touch me,” he hisses before Dean can even move. “Don’t you dare. There’s a phial… holy water. Give it to me and please, God, don’t drop it and break it.”

Dean drops the stake and fumbles in the bag for the phial. He finds it and rushes to Sam, moving too fast for Sam to quite deal with and Sam falls down on the ground on his ass with a grunt.

Dean holds it out to him and drops the small thing into Sam’s hand, which is shaking so bad he almost drops it himself. Sam takes it, tugs the cork out and catches a whiff of Dean’s maddeningly familiar scent of cigarettes, leather, beer and under that… skin. Clean skin and sweat. There would be salt on Dean’s upper lip right now, Sam knows it and the stubble of his unshaved skin would rasp like tiny nettles over his tongue when he licked it.

“Sam,” Dean snaps.

There is a tone of fear in his voice that brings Sam reluctantly back into focus. He tips the phial into his mouth and the holy water hits his tongue like scalding hot coffee. It burns all the way down and it’s bitter as stomach bile in his mouth. He swallows it anyway, cringing at the way he imagines it sizzling down the length of his esophagus when he swallows. It burns cold; cold to cleanse, fire to purify.

Sam gags and throws the phial away from himself, sure that he’s going to throw up, biting it back as long as he can so that the holy water can mingle with the Lili venom and destroy it. He chokes, grits his teeth and staggers to his feet.

That’s it. That’s the longest he can hold that rancid mixture inside him. Sam bends over and vomits into the grass.

When he stands back up, he’s steadier and he can look at Dean without wanting to touch him. Well, no, but no more than usual.

He wipes the back of his hand over his mouth and runs his tongue over his teeth, tasting the disgusting holy water in the traces of vomit in his mouth. “I need a drink,” he mutters, and walks by Dean to pick up the bag from the ground and heft it on his shoulder.

“Ah… yeah, I could use one myself,” Dean says, following after him as Sam makes his way over to the little boy who is miraculously still sleeping. “Drugged?”

Sam kneels and picks up the little boy’s arm, puts it around his neck to lift him and the child hangs limply in his arms. He’s deadweight, but thankfully not dead.

“Yeah, I think so.” Sam gives the bag back to Dean and holds the boy against his chest. “I’ll take care of this,” he says. He nods back toward the playground, where the Impala is parked in the parking lot. “You take that. I’ll see you in a while.”

Dean stares at him, then shakes his head. “No way,” he says. “I’m not leaving you here alone. There could be another one of those—”

“There isn’t,” Sam says. “We know there isn’t. We checked all around. There was just the one, alone.”

“She could have like… a mate or something,” Dean says, looking around like he expects to be ambushed by this hypothetical mate.

“She doesn’t,” Sam says. He gives Dean a look, one that’s trying to be patient but not succeeding that well at it. “Remember what she did to me? She doesn’t need a mate.”

“Sam, I’m not—”

“Dean, I want to be alone right now,” Sam says. He just comes out and says it because yeah, the Lili was right, Dean’s not subtle and he just doesn’t get subtlety either. He’s not stupid by any definition of the word, but shit like that goes right over his head most times.

“By ‘alone’, you mean ‘away from me’,” Dean says, his eyes sharp and perceptive.

Sam looks away from him, his gaze falling on the ground where the grass has flattened under the weight of the sleeping boy. The Lili venom is gone and the holy water is an unpleasant numbness on his tongue, but he still remembers the intensity of feeling—the desire so strong that it could overpower and rip through reason and love like they were the gossamer of fly wings.

“Yeah,” he says. “I need that right now, okay? It’s… it’s not personal, it just is.”

“Alright, fine,” Dean says, and he’s pissed, but he’s going to let it go for now. Sam can tell because he picks up the bag with all their shit in it, gives the little boy in Sam’s arms a last, blank look then starts for the trees. “Let the cops pick him up somewhere, Sam. Don’t take him in. I ain’t bailing you out of jail.”

Sam draws in a deep breath, his first instinct to tell Dean he could go fuck himself, then he lets it out without saying a word. In his arms, the little boy makes a sleeping puppy sound and shifts against Sam’s chest.

The bar Sam walks into is a shitty little roadhouse about two miles from the park with chicken wire in front of the stage and a broken jukebox in the corner. It’s a fucking dive if he’s ever seen one and Sam’s seen enough. There isn’t any sawdust on the floor or a toothless hooker at the bar, but he half expects it as he walks in and that’s just fine. The place is home to drunks, junkies and lonely, slutty women. Sam wants the dirt and smoke of this place, nothing five-star will satisfy his restless mood now, just whatever’s on tap and maybe a pool cue or a handful of darts.

He sits down at the bar next to an old man whose half slumped over a nearly empty bottle of Corona. The neck of the bottle dangles perilously from his fingers and Sam reaches over to take it from him and set it on the bar in front of him. The old man jerks awake with a snort and a curse, eyes Sam suspiciously and drinks the last warm dregs of his beer.

Without a word, Sam turns his attention from the old man to the bartender, who’s taking glasses and mugs off a drying tray to stack on the shelves. “You want a beer?” he asks Sam.

Sam nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Maybe a whiskey chaser.”

“Bad day?” the bartender asks, taking the mug he was about to put away over to the tap. It’s nothing personal, it’s in his job description to ask.

“Yeah,” Sam says.

“You wanna talk about it?” the bartender asks. He puts Sam’s beer down on the bar and turns to grab a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and a shot glass.

“Nope,” Sam says. He drinks his beer and lets his eyes wander through the room.

“Fair enough,” the bartender says. He puts the shot glass down in front of Sam, considers, then leaves the bottle.

“Thanks,” Sam says dryly, “but it hasn’t been that bad.”

“Well, I’ll just keep it here ‘cause it’s handy then,” the bartender says and winks at him.

Sam blinks, then sighs. He sincerely hopes the bartender isn’t trying to hit on him. He really just wants him to be friendly and annoyingly nosy. He’s not against being hit on, per se—that’s a little part of why he’s here in the first place—he’s just not in the mood for that kind right now. That and the bartender isn’t his type, not even a little bit.

A hand slides over his shoulder and Sam instinctively tenses at the touch. He looks up at the mirror over the bar and sees a woman standing there at his shoulder. A woman with pale skin, faun brown hair down to her waist, and long, lovely fingers. There is just enough sensory memory left over from the Lili venom that Sam’s still really damn horny and he’s still not drunk enough to have forgotten how pissed off with Dean he is, so he smiles at the girl’s reflection in the mirror.

“You waiting for someone?” the girl asks him, sitting on the barstool beside him.

Sam shakes his head and finishes his beer. “No, it’s just me tonight,” Sam says. He tosses back the shot and puts the glass down with a sharp clank on the bar.

She smiles at him and Sam likes her smile. “Well, alright then, buy me a drink,” she says. “I’m Trisha.”

“Sam,” Sam says. He waves a hand at the bartender and points to Trisha. “She wants a drink.”

The bartender shrugs and takes the woman’s order. When the drink comes it’s something with a maraschino cherry floating in it and a lot of soda. Sam gets another beer and another shot and listens to Trisha talk about herself and her ex—who was apparently a sonofabitch—all the while thinking that “Trisha” sounds like the name of a woman who gets fat after she turns forty and starts going by “Trish” never thinking how much the name sounds like “squish” and therefore is revoltingly unattractive. He’s thinking how it’s his good fortune that he met Trisha before she became “Trish” while she’s still young and pretty enough for him to notice because he really is pissed at Dean for being such a complete fuckhead and there is just enough residual sex demon venom hanging out on the back of his teeth for it to be worth his while.

He buys her another drink then cuts her off mid-sentence to suggest they move to the pool table. She claims to not know how to play and Sam pretends to believe her so he can press up against her while he shows her how to slide the stick over her fingers. It’s a sleazy thing to do and he knows it. He wouldn’t be doing it at all if she hadn’t more or less asked for it and if he didn’t know perfectly well that the only reason women like her hang out in shit bars like this is to get laid.

Less than an hour later, with two more drinks in her, Trisha’s shooting pool just fine on her own and even manages to win a game. Sam’s amused and a little suspicious, but he doesn’t let it show. He knows he’s been played, but that’s okay. Trisha doesn’t know it yet, but so has she.

Sam’s leaning out over the table, lining up a shot when the outside door opens and he catches a glimpse of familiar dark leather and even more familiar dirty blond hair out of the corner of his eye. He takes the shot, misses and curses under his breath as he stands back for Trisha to take her turn.

Trisha knocks two balls into different pockets, gives Sam a sly look over the table, and swats his ass as she passes him on her way to the other side. Sam doesn’t mean to, but he flinches. He can feel Dean’s eyes on him and he hates it. It’s like having fire ants crawling all over him, making him hyperaware of every move he makes.

Trisha misses this time, knocking her target ball harmlessly to the other side of the table. She huffs out a breath and tosses her light brown hair out of her face, nearly pouting over her disappointment. She walks around Sam as he leans down to take his turn and he feels her hand slide up his back, her long fingers pushing his shirt up. She makes an appreciative sound in her throat and Sam’s marveling over how very fucking subtle she’s being when he hears her gasp.

He turns, already half positive he knows what he’s going to find and comes almost nose to nose with Dean. Dean flicks his eyes to Sam briefly then turns his glaring eyes back to Trisha. He has her wrist held up in one hand and his grip isn’t shaking now.

“Dean—”

“If you don’t want to be counting your teeth with broken fingers, I suggest you stop,” Dean snarls at Trisha. He throws her hand back to her and she backs away from him.

Her wide eyes go between them, watching Dean because she’s scared and Sam because she expects him to defend her.

“Dean, knock it off,” Sam snaps and he’s not defending her. Despite his words, that’s abundantly clear to anyone listening.

“Ah… I’m just going to…” Trisha says, edging around them to leave.

“Leave, yes, that’s a brilliant fucking idea,” Dean says, backing up to let her pass. “Why don’t you do that?”

“Stop it,” Sam hisses at him. His hand is clenched tight around his pool cue, but when he notices Dean’s gaze flick to it, he puts it down. “You can’t do this shit, Dean. You don’t own me.”

“Do you really want to have this conversation here, Sammy?” Dean says.

Sam looks around at the nearly empty bar and spreads his hands. “Why not?”

Dean glares at him and for the first time—and he doesn’t know why it took him so long—it occurs to Sam that he’s probably drunk. “Because we’re not,” Dean says.

He turns to leave the bar, moving like he knows Sam is following him and Sam watches him for a minute before he actually does. When he gets outside, when the cool night air hits his face and there’s nothing but miles of parking lot and buffalo grass for a full mile in every direction, Sam grabs Dean’s arm and makes him stop.

“Here,” Sam says.

“What?” Dean says. He jerks his arm out of Sam’s grasp and stumbles a little.

“We’ll have it here,” Sam says. “That conversation.”

“Sammy, I don’t know what… Just… Let’s go, okay?” Dean says. He starts away, but this time Sam doesn’t follow him.

“I know what,” Sam says. “You want to have your cake and eat it, too. Or not, which is really the problem, isn’t it? You’ve decided on a vow of celibacy and now I have to abide by it? Well that’s bullshit, Dean.”

Dean turns back to him, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides and walks back. “I don’t want to do this, Sam,” he says roughly. “Not here.”

Sam lifts his hands and spreads his arms to encompass the parking lot. There are two cars, besides the Impala, and one motorcycle parked at the very back near a sycamore tree. “Then when would be good for you, Dean?” he says, lifting his brows. “Where would be better?”

Dean curls his lip in annoyance and doesn’t say anything.

“We are not doing this shit anymore,” Sam snaps, dropping his hands back to his sides. “You want to cash it all in and sleep on the couch, fine. But you don’t get to put a cage around my dick to make you feel better about it.”

Dean’s right hand whips out and he hits Sam, his knuckle breaking Sam’s bottom lip open against his teeth. Dean curses and takes a step back, shaking his hand and looking shocked at what he’s done.

Sam shakes it off and, licking the blood from his teeth and lip, eyes Dean with angry calculation. “Well I hope that was good for you,” Sam whispers then he hits Dean back. His fist makes a heavy meat-packing sound against Dean’s cheek and Dean is thrown to the ground so hard it knocks the breath out of him.

Sam looks down at him and there is a soft, disgusted thrill of satisfaction in the sight. Dean’s drunk, unsteady even sitting on the ground and there’s a bruise blooming over his left cheekbone. It’s a pathetic sight and Sam takes a moment to enjoy it before he starts to feel bad.

“Look, Dean… Man, we can’t keep doing this. I don’t know how many times I need to say that, you stubborn ass, but…” Sam looks away from him, his voice trailing off. It’s while he’s staring off toward the road watching the cars go by that Dean trips him.

Without a word, just an inarticulate growl in the back of his throat like an angry junkyard dog, Dean shoves a knee into Sam’s belly and hits him again. His fist connects with Sam’s chin and Sam’s teeth clack together in a way that makes his jaw flare with pain.

It takes Sam a moment to get his head around what’s happening, but when he does he throws his weight to the side, grabs Dean around the waist and rolls him onto his back. Dean struggles and curses, but Sam’s stronger, bigger and a lot less drunk, so he eventually gets him to be still. He’s on top of Dean with his legs holding Dean’s legs down, his hands trapping his wrists, holding his hands down and his body pressing Dean’s back into the gravel.

“See what I mean?” Sam says, locking gazes with Dean, who calls him a fucker before going limp and letting his head fall back on the ground. “We’re not good for each other anymore, Dean. Not like this. This shit is just going to get worse until we’re at each other’s throats constantly and eventually we fuck up somewhere and it kills us. You know I’m right.”

Panting, Dean picks up his head and looks at him, fear rising up under all of that sudden anger to choke him. “You want to leave, then go,” he says, his eyes betraying him and pleading for Sam to stay. “I can’t save you anyway.”

Sam’s eyes narrow and his fingers tighten painfully on Dean’s wrists. “Yeah, because I’m just a bloodsucking freak, right?” he whispers, lowering his head to snarl it right in Dean’s face. “A monster. A vampire.”

“No,” Dean says. Then something in Sam’s tone clues him in and he scowls. “I didn’t say that.”

“You did,” Sam says. “You wanna listen to yourself say it? Refresh your memory?” He releases one of Dean’s wrists to slip his hand between them into his pocket for his phone. He flips it open and Dean bangs his fist against the underside of his forearm, knocking it away.

“I don’t have to listen to whatever bullshit you’ve got on that phone, Sammy,” he says, and grabs Sam’s hair to pull his face down, make him meet his eyes and believe him. “I didn’t fucking say that.”

Sam smiles humorlessly and rolls his shoulder in a shrug, allowing Dean to keep his hand in his hair because he likes it despite himself. “It’s not anything you didn’t say in a hundred different ways a thousand times before,” Sam says. His face is close enough to Dean’s that he can see his eyelashes individually in the faint light from the signs in the bar windows. “I’m a freak. I should be hunted. I… You’re done trying to save me.”

Dean shakes his head no and swallows around the fear that’s risen in his throat to kill his anger. “No.”

“Yes,” Sam says. “You’re saying it right now. I wake up and you’re huddled on the floor like I’m going to do something to you in your sleep. You get drunk just so you can stand to be around me, then pass out on the couch in the motel and I know that’s not comfortable.” Sam sighs and looks away from his eyes, fixes his gaze on a button at the center of Dean’s chest that’s straining at the buttonhole from the way they’re laying. “I don’t even remember the last time I touched you and you didn’t flinch.”

“I do,” Dean says. His hand has gentled in Sam’s hair without his realizing it and he pets his fingers to the back of Sam’s neck before taking it away. “Minnesota, after…”

“The ghouls,” Sam says. It should probably bother him to remember that time, how those creatures had bled him until he was sick for days after, wearing the faces of people their father had loved and lied to them about. It doesn’t though because he suddenly remembers Dean kissing the scars they left on his arms, never a thought for the demon blood in his veins. “I remember now.”

“Good,” Dean says. He squirms a little under Sam, then winces. There’s a rock poking him in the back. “Sammy, get off me.”

Sam starts to, then stops and shakes his head. “No.”

Dean narrows his eyes at him and pushes his body up against Sam’s trying to throw him off. “Yes.”

Sam takes Dean’s hand away from his neck, grasps his wrist again and holds him back down. “No,” he repeats. “This doesn’t change anything. You’re still going to act like I’m the monster in the bed and so I remember when you didn’t. So what?”

Dean sighs and shifts restlessly. Sam’s breath catches and Dean’s eyes go sharp and aware. He clears his throat and stops moving. “What do you want me to do about it?” he asks. “You’re not leaving.”

“You can’t stop me,” Sam says. He’s breathless with wanting, having Dean so close, Dean touching and right up against him and it’s been a long, long time, but somehow this has to stop. Sam levers himself part of the way up and lets go of Dean’s wrists to brace himself on the ground and stand. “I think I’ll walk,” he says.

Dean barks out a short laugh and grabs Sam, one hand digging into his bicep, the other arm going around his neck to pull him down. Surprised, Sam resists and they end up tumbling to the side in the dirt and gravel as Dean, with a soft sound of frustration, shoves his mouth to Sam’s and kisses him.

It’s a kiss that lacks tact or skill, but as soon as Sam realizes he’s not being attacked again, he takes over. The kiss becomes an outpouring of desire and emotion with tongues and teeth, biting, licking, sucking, fingers pulling at Dean’s jaw like Sam could kiss him any deeper than he already is. There’s a sound in his throat, a hitching, frightened whimper that’s begging Dean without words to Please, don’t stop. Please let me have this. Please. Want you, need you, missed you so much. Every time Dean’s tongue slides over his own, Sam expects him to stop. Every single touch is going to be the last, he just knows it. He didn’t know it last time in Minnesota, so he didn’t cling to every moment like he should have, but now he does. Now he’s so sure that Dean’s going to push him away that he memorizes the texture of his skin, the shape of his mouth against Sam’s, the way his hipbones have become more more prominent since the last time and Sam can fit there so perfectly.

When Dean moves his hand from Sam’s arm and pushes against his chest, trying to pull away and break the kiss, Sam’s disappointment rises up and comes close to gagging him, but he stops. He tears his mouth away from Deans and sits up fast, already moving away from him when Dean sits up too and grabs the front of his shirt, stopping him.

“Shit, Sam, where do you think you’re going?” Dean says, panting. His hands are shaking and Sam’s body is shaking and it all makes the world seem to slip in and out of focus. Dean sees the look on Sam’s face and the way he’s trembling and reaches out with his other hand to cup the back of Sam’s neck and draw him back. “Hey,” he whispers. “Shh, come here. Just let me catch my breath, alright?”

Sam turns into the touch of his hands, presses his face into the side of Dean’s neck, pressing licking kisses into the hollow below his earlobe, right over his pulse. “Want you,” he whispers, leaning into Dean so that he has to lean back a little for him. He hesitates to say it now as he hasn’t hesitated to say it in years, but he thinks of Dean huddled and afraid on the floor or drunk on the sofa and can’t think of a more obvious form of rejection. “Dean…”

Dean sighs and lets go of Sam’s shirtfront to stroke his hand down Sam’s back. “The car’s right over there,” he says.

Sam shakes his head without looking up, still kissing and licking at Dean’s throat. “No,” he says. He knows that’s what they should probably do. They should get in the car and go back to the motel where no one will accidentally come upon them in the parking lot, but Sam’s afraid to let Dean go for that long. The drive was more than long enough for Dean to change his mind. “No, here,” Sam says, kissing up to Dean’s mouth to nip his lips lightly. “Here, right now.”

Dean’s hand is once again on his chest trying to push him back and Sam slips an arm around his waist to pull him close as he bites Dean’s chin with a soft growl, leaning over him so much that he has Dean lying back over his arm. “Now, Dean,” he murmurs, nipping his way down Dean’s throat to his shoulder, where he sets his teeth lightly. “Please… Or say no. But please don’t say no.”

Dean huffs out a breath with a soft laugh and pushes Sam back enough that he can sit up and start unbuttoning his shirt. “Are those my only options?” he asks.

Sam’s eyes follow his fingers, each long, slender digit as it plucks the buttons free and he hears the question, but it doesn’t matter. He recognizes acceptance and consent in the removing of Dean’s shirt and grabs him, hands on his hips to turn him over, as he pulls the shirt from Dean’s back, down his arms and throws it aside. Dean gasps at the sudden force of Sam’s actions and tries to turn back to face him, but Sam wraps his arms around him tight from behind and crowds up against his back, nuzzling his face into the back of his neck so that Dean has to drop his head down for him.

“Sam… Sammy, take it easy,” Dean says. He puts a hand back on Sam’s thigh, lightly strokes as though to ease a cramp from the muscles there and Sam just shifts closer, breathing against his neck and shoulders.

Sam moves one of his hands around to run it up Dean’s spine, splaying his fingers over his back as he raises it to between his shoulders. He can feel the way Dean’s breath moves inside him, harsh and deep. His heart pounds with excitement and Sam doesn’t like to think it, but probably with fear, too.

He looks at the span of his large hand over Dean’s back, how even in the moonlight he can see the difference in their skin. He remembers Dean’s skin when it was paler and not as rough. Though they’re not old by any means, they have aged and it has started to show in their bodies over the last couple of years. It’s little things like this… Dean’s skin being almost as dark as the tan on the back of Sam’s own hand, how when Sam slides it back down his back and around his waist again to stroke his belly, there aren’t as many scars on Dean’s body as Sam’s used to.

Dean rolls his head back onto Sam’s shoulder and lets out a deep breath, trying to relax. Sam smiles against the skin of his shoulder and nuzzles up to a spot just below the curve of his jaw. Dean’s face is rough, scratchy with stubble because he hasn’t shaved in a while and Sam rubs his cheek lightly against Dean’s, feeling it scrape him.

“What do you wanna do, Sammy?” Dean asks, looking at him over his shoulder. He rocks gently back against Sam, pushing his ass against his groin. It’s more a question of Sam’s intentions than a temptation, but Sam rolls his hips against him and just like that, the question is answered and Dean doesn’t stop moving.

Sam moves his hands up Dean’s belly, over his chest and back down to grasp his hips as he grinds against him. “Want to watch you,” Sam whispers into Dean’s ear. “You bite your lips when it feels good and your face flushes pink. I remember and I haven’t seen it… in forever. Dean?”

“What?” Dean whispers back. He’s shaking pretty hard now and it’s not just in his hands anymore. “What, Sammy?”

“Wanna fuck you on your back,” Sam whispers, his voice cracking. He drags his fingers down Dean’s chest, over his stomach and grabs the tongue of his belt. “Let me?”

Dean pants out a breath then nods and Sam pulls, opening his belt with a tug that makes Dean’s hips jerk. When his hands smooth down his hips, under the waistband of his underwear to the tops of his thighs, Dean shudders and turns toward him. Sam meets him halfway, grabbing his hip in one hand and wrapping his arm tight around Dean’s waist to turn him. Then Sam’s hands are down Dean’s pants, pulling his body tight against him as he kisses him.

“Sam,” Dean hisses between kisses, tilting his head back to speak as Sam sucks and licks down his throat to nip at his collarbone. “You’re gonna have to let me go… I need to get some of… my clothes off.”

Sam fumbles at Dean’s fly with one hand, still holding him close with the other, and spreads it open so he can push Dean’s pants down his hips. He lifts his head and scoots back, dragging at Dean’s pants until Dean lays back to let him pull them down. Sam pauses to tear at the laces of Dean’s boots then gets them off and yanks his pants and underwear away.

Effectively stripped, Dean watches him from where he’s reclined in the gravel on his elbows, his eyes running over Sam like a touch as Sam crawls on his knees back to him. His eyes are burning and intense, but completely human, completely Sam. Dean puts a hand out to him and is surprised when Sam takes it, licks a line from the ball of his thumb to the tender underside of his wrist, then moves closer until he’s kneeling between Dean’s legs.

Sam sets his teeth lightly over the soft skin under Dean’s wrist then lets his hand go so he can unfasten his own belt and work his zipper down. While he’s doing that, Dean unbuttons Sam’s shirt, making quick work of it even with his hands shaking so bad. Then Sam’s laying him down, making low growling, panting noises as he lays over him, holding Dean’s hips up, his thighs over Sam’s thighs so Sam can move against him and feel their skin stick in their sweat and Dean’s cock rubbing against his own.

The pleasure that rushes goose bumps along Sam’s skin is as much about touching, oh finally touching and Dean being right there and willing, his hands sliding up Sam’s chest and around his back, his body shaking under him. The best part isn’t Dean’s dick against his belly with his own right beside it and his legs wrapped around Sam’s waist, heels pressing against the backs of his thighs to hold him close. That part’s great and Sam rocks against him, enjoying that so much his skin shivers and twitches at the contact, but the best thing, the very best is Dean kissing his face, his mouth, whispering his name into Sam’s ear. The best part is he’s not pushing him away and god; Sam’s missed him more than he was truly aware.

Sam pushes two fingers into Dean’s body, feels the stick of his muscles as they tighten around his fingertips, and Dean bucks up with a startled, pained cry, his fingers dragging down Sam’s back at the pain. Sam makes a soft, apologetic sound in his throat and kisses him then withdraws his fingers from Dean’s ass and licks them.

“That’s disgusting, Sammy,” Dean breathes out, laughing brokenly.

Sam grins at him around his fingers and moves them in and out of his mouth lewdly. He takes them out of his mouth with a last lick and his smile widens as he watches Dean watching him. “At least I know where they’ve been,” he says.

“Yeah, in my ass,” Dean says. He’s shivering and clamps his legs tight around Sam’s waist to still himself.

Sam chuckles and shifts to work his hand back between them. “And they’re about to go back there, too,” Sam murmurs, pressing his lips to Dean’s as he speaks. “And I’m gonna kiss you,” he whispers, tongue darting out to lick over Dean’s panting mouth. He pushes his fingers inside, feels the catch, but it’s less than before and Dean tenses, but he doesn’t shout, so Sam works them deeper. “Later… if you’re not sleeping or back to hating me all over again—”

“I’m not—” Dean starts.

“Shh, I’m trying to gross you out here, be quiet,” Sam says. He nips at Dean’s mouth, then kisses him quickly, once, twice, a third time before he whispers, “Later, on that motel bed with all the stains on the mattress and burns on the sheets, where the whores and junkies have fucked their scent into the fabric, I’m gonna roll you over on your stomach and open you up with my fingers…” Sam strokes his fingertips over Dean’s prostate and Dean moans, pulling at him. “… Then I’m going to slide my tongue inside you and lick until you beg me.”

“For what?” Dean asks, his voice breathy and hitching as Sam works his fingers inside him. He‘s so fucking turned on by the image in his mind and Sam‘s maddening, deep voice humming against his lips that he wants to beg right now. “What do you want me to… to beg you for, Sammy?”

Sam smiles a little, baring his teeth against Dean’s lips, and twists his fingers inside him. “For whatever,” he says. He doesn’t say forgiveness. He doesn’t think he needs to.

He opens his fingers and Dean arches against him. His shoulders scrape in the gravel and Sam knows that has to hurt, but he’s shuddering and panting like he doesn’t even feel it. Like all he feels is Sam’s hand. Sam withdraws his fingers and lifts Dean’s hips, forcing his legs wide open as he moves against him, then pushes inside. Dean goes still, his breath shallow, sharp eyes fixed on Sam’s face, and Sam watches him back with a deep, relieved sense of ownership as he snaps his hips against Dean’s ass and slides in deep with one thrust.

Dean twists his hands in Sam’s hair and pulls his head down to kiss him, crying out into his mouth, soft, hitching, whimpering sounds that barely escape his throat because of how heavily he’s panting. Sam growls into his mouth, taking those sounds, running his tongue over Dean’s to taste them if he can and he shoves Dean’s left leg up so that his knee hooks over Sam’s elbow, raising him up, opening him wide as Sam thrusts into him hard and fast.

There’s a sound somewhere not far off, like the sound the hinges on a screen door make when it’s opened, then a faint bang as it snaps closed again. It brings their surroundings back into focus a little, but Sam doesn’t stop or even slow down. It’s not the first public place they’ve done this in—there are restrooms, hallways and storage rooms all over North America with their sweat and come staining spots on the floor—and neither of them are all that afraid of being caught at it.

They’re too far gone in what they’re doing to care anyway.

There’s a dog barking across the field. There are cars passing and the very faint, smothered sound of Hank Williams on the jukebox in the bar.

The only thought Sam gives any of it is that he is almost positive that jukebox was broken.

This thought skitters through his mind to the sound of Dean’s breath catching, the sensation of his body squeezing around him, the rise and fall of his chest and the taste of his sweat in his mouth. It makes him laugh a little, but he’s kissing Dean when he does and it slides down Dean’s throat as a low vibration. Everything is crashing around him with a frantic, frenetic weight and Sam both loves and loathes the way every touch, taste and sound is like a homecoming.

Dean breaks his mouth away, gasping out a curse as he wraps his arms around Sam’s neck and throws his hips up, meeting his thrusts. He says Sam’s name, soft and hissing through his teeth like it’s something both dirty and beautiful, and arches off the ground with a cry as pleasure breaks through him. Sam feels it happening and thrusts harder, faster, each plunge of his hips shoving Dean’s back over the jagged gravel of the parking lot. He knows he’s hurting him, knows that it’s scraping the hell out of Dean’s back and that he’ll be cut up tomorrow, but he also knows that on the edge of orgasm, Dean won’t even notice. Then Dean’s orgasm snaps through him and his body contracts and Sam’s pulling at him, lifting him up as he fucks him through it, forcing throat-ragged sounds of pleasure from Dean’s open mouth.

It’s as Dean’s coming down from his that Sam’s own orgasm cracks through him like a whip. He clutches Dean to him tightly and shudders as pleasure marches under his skin like the poison of venomous spiders, tingling and sharp. He moans and presses kisses to Dean’s shoulder to muffle the sounds as they’re wrenched from him. Dean shivers at the feeling of Sam’s come filling him and Sam moving still, thrusting against him, inside him, forcing spasms from Dean’s pleasure-weary body. Sam strokes his hands up Dean’s sides, up and down over his ribs like he’s petting him. As the pleasure that’s built in his belly and along his spine finally dissipates, stretching out like the claws of lazy cats to die out in his fingertips, he goes still, holding Dean tight, shivering and panting, sweaty with a faint coating of gravel dust.

“Goddamn,” Dean says, breathing the word out on a sigh as they both slump to the ground.

Sam rests his forehead on Dean’s chest, his back still slightly hunched, body trembling. He feels Dean’s fingers stroke through his hair, catch once on a tangle and pet down his back, through his cooling sweat. The sensation makes him twitch and shiver, but he likes it and nuzzles into Dean’s shoulder, glad to have that instead of Dean’s hands pushing him away.

“Fuck, let me up,” Dean says. He sounds reluctant, but he starts to sit up and Sam pushes himself up to let him.

Dean winces as he gets up to gather his clothes and put them back on, but he doesn’t say anything about it, so neither does Sam. Sam watches him dress with his back against the passenger door of the Impala, buttoning his shirt; a little surprised all the buttons are still there. When Dean’s dressed he walks over and gets in the car, sitting with his legs outside the driver’s side door to put his shoes on.

Sam looks back at the bar once then gets in the car and waits while Dean finishes with his shoes then starts the car and pulls out. Neither of them says anything and with a stomach-sick, sinking feeling, Sam thinks nothing much has really changed at all. The idea makes him grit his teeth in a combination of anger and sorrow, but he doesn’t bring it up. He doesn’t say a word, and all the way back to the motel, neither does Dean.

Sam is half asleep in the motel bed listening to the water run in the shower. His thoughts are a jumbled mess that has him in a semi-trance of contemplation. He’s thinking about the monsters they hunt and that house that he wants to buy, probably somewhere just outside of Vegas or Reno, where it’s dry and hot and people leave you alone. He’s thinking about getting a few five-gallon glass bottles and a vat to make his own wine in. Maybe from apples or peaches. Bobby had a recipe once upon a time for the stuff and he remembers how sweet it tasted and how drunk he’d gotten. He’s thinking about falling asleep on a porch swing with a chain that squeaks when you rock and how one day he’ll be laying there, listening to the crickets and rattlesnakes and here will come some angel, making its sanctimonious way through the sage and dry grass, telling him what to do. Because they’ve gone their own way and continued hunting the regular monsters, but Sam knows that somewhere out there, there’s a big bad, pissed off fallen angel with a chip on his shoulder and they’re going to have to deal with that someday.

He’s also thinking about Dean and every few minutes, his eyes drift to the couch where Dean threw down his coat and sat to take off his shoes. He wants to know what that means, but he thinks he knows. His mind is all over the place, but it all comes back around in its way and he’s not thinking so hard that he doesn’t notice when the water turns off . It makes him smile a little. Dean, who has been taking longer and longer showers over the last few weeks, hasn’t even been in there ten minutes.

Dean walks out of the bathroom wearing sweats, drying his hair with a towel and swats Sam on the ass with it as he passes. Sam makes an annoyed grunting sound, but the gesture, foolish as it is, pleases him and has him relaxing a little bit.

“Your turn, man,” Dean says. He goes over to the sofa and sits down, feeling in his coat pockets for his cigarettes and a lighter.

Sam catches himself staring about the same time Dean does and rolls over to go into the bathroom. “Is there hot water?”

“Should be,” Dean says, speaking around the filter of his cigarette. “Wasn’t in there that long.”

“I know,” Sam says, giving him a knowing look as he leaves the room. “I sorta… broke your routine.”

“I’m not hungover,” Dean calls after him.

Sam laughs and turns on the shower. As he’s getting in, he hears Quiet Riot singing “Cum on Feel the Noize” with the static overlay you get from a bad radio signal and shakes his head with a grin. Some things, thankfully, don’t ever change, he thinks, and steps under the spray.

Sam falls asleep with Dean wrapped around him, naked and warm. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to sleep at all with all of the things running through his head, nibbling at his mind like goldfish at the bottom of a deep tank, but he does. He falls asleep with Dean’s breath puffing softly against his shoulder and the smell of his Marlboro Light cigarettes in his clean, damp hair. Sam breathes it in and holds Dean tightly to him and slips into sleep without even realizing it.

He comes awake suddenly, already rolling to the side of the bed and going for a gun before he realizes that the screaming is coming from right beside him. The screams are coming from Dean.

“Fuck,” Sam hisses, raking a hand through is hair to shove it out of his face. He’s shaking from the adrenalin rush of being woken up like that, but he’s gentle when he reaches across the bed for Dean. Sam’s hand slides down Dean’s back and he can feel him jerk at the touch. “Dean?”

Dean twitches away from him and shakes his head. Sam can feel him do it in the way the bed shifts and see the faint outline of his profile as he sits up and starts to get up from the bed. At least he’s stopped screaming; even if he is breathing so hard that Sam’s afraid he’s going to hyperventilate.

Sam snatches at Dean and grabs his arm. “Dean, don’t,” he whispers. He doesn’t know why he’s whispering, there’s just something secret and foreboding about the way Dean’s acting. “Dean… please.”

Dean sits back down and lets out a deep breath, clearly trying to calm himself down. “I can’t… I can’t do this, Sammy,” he says. His voice cracks and Sam squeezes his arm tighter, not even caring that he might bruise him. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I thought… but no.”

Sam lets out a deep breath of his own, a feeling like he’s just been gut-punched bringing bile to the back of his tongue. He grits his teeth and swallows it back then reaches out and grabs Dean’s other arm, hauling him back onto the bed. Dean tenses like he’s going to struggle, but Sam wraps his arms around him from behind and pulls Dean to him until his back is right against Sam’s belly and chest.

“Sam… let me go,” Dean says, squirming and wrenching against Sam’s grasp, trying to free himself.

Sam just holds him tighter and puts his face up against the back of Dean’s neck, in his hair, where he nips. When Dean makes a soft yelping sound of surprise and twists his head to the side to escape, Sam nuzzles him and makes low, wordless comforting sounds against his skin.

Slowly, by painful degrees, Dean begins to relax.

“You can’t leave me… you can’t run away from me every time you have a nightmare,” Sam whispers against the back of Dean’s ear. “That’s not fair. It’s not.”

“It’s not about being fair, Sammy,” Dean says, his voice dry and grating. “I’m… I’m a little fucked up in the head, alright? I just… I don’t think I can do this anymore. I don’t think… Fuck, I don’t know.”

“I’ll leave this time,” Sam whispers back. He presses his face into the flat place between Dean’s shoulders and makes a soft, pained sound. “I’ll leave. I really will. I can’t do this either. Not anymore.”

Dean forces himself to relax in Sam’s arms and Sam loosens his hold on him to stroke a hand up to his neck to touch his hair, feeling the short, soft hairs brush over the pads of his fingers.

“I’m sorry,” Dean tells him.

“You should be,” Sam says simply. He puts an arm around Dean’s waist and pulls gently, coaxing him back to the middle of the bed. The springs in the mattress creak under their weight, but with everything the bed has likely been through over the years, Sam’s sure it will hold them both for at least one more night. “Lay down with me and tell me your dream,” he says.

Dean lets Sam lay him down and even shifts closer to his body, comforted by his smell and his warmth. Sam runs his fingers lightly up and down Dean’s back, feeling the little scrapes left there from the gravel in the roadhouse parking lot. The tiny pangs of pain make Dean catch his breath, but Sam knows he likes it and Dean doesn’t tell him to stop.

“Tell me about it,” Sam says. “Did you dream about me? You did, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Dean says.

“What did I do?” Sam asks. “Must have been something really horrible.”

“No… it,” Dean licks his lips then blurts, “You were singing.”

Surprised, Sam laughs. “That bad, huh?” he says, teasing him. “Was it karaoke or acapella?”

“Shut up, asshole,” Dean says, shoving his arm. He sounds tired, but also a little amused. “That’s not what I meant. I’m trying to tell you, and it’s kind of… embarrassing, okay? So just let me tell it and then you can laugh if you want.”

“Sorry, go ahead,” Sam says.

Dean sighs and lays his head down, closing his eyes as he speaks. “It was just you. Your face like in a vision or something. You looked at me and smiled and you were you… then your eyes disappeared. Caved in and filled with… something black. Like tar or oil.” Dean swallows and lifts a hand to trace light patterns on Sam’s chest. “You really want to hear this?”

Sam ducks his head to kiss the corner of Dean’s downturned mouth. “Yes.”

Dean nods, takes a breath and says, “You… were gone. There was… It was your body, but it was like it was possessed. Worse than possessed.” He frowns and shakes his head, his hand pausing on Sam’s chest. “I don’t know what’s worse than that, though. But then… you started to sing. Not with your voice, either. You were singing with the voice of that… that thing I killed. Singing that lullaby… softly like a woman.”

Sam makes a face in the dark, disturbed by the images Dean’s describing, but not all that surprised by them. He chalks them up to subconscious mind vomit and lays his head down beside Dean’s. “I don’t even know that song,” he says.

“I do,” Dean says. “I do now.” He clears his throat and softly starts to whisper-chant the words. “Come little babe, come silly soul… thy father's shame, thy mother's grief…born as I—”

“Stop it,” Sam says, cutting him off. He has goose bumps running up his arms and a chill along his spine. “Just stop. I’m not… that hasn’t happened. It’s not going to. I’m not like that, I’m fine. I’m me, okay, Dean? I’m not… I would never hurt you. You have to stop being afraid of me.”

“Sometimes I’m not,” Dean says tiredly. “But then I think I see yellow or black in your eyes and… I can’t help it. It’s not up to me. And I dream… God, that dream. It was like you were taking me over. I would have done anything you wanted, anything you said, except I couldn‘t move.”

“That wasn’t me, Dean,” Sam says, running soothing hands over his back. “That wasn’t real. It was a nightmare, that’s all.”

He silently resolves to wear contact lenses if his eyes should ever go black or yellow. If that’s what it takes he’ll do it and he admits, though it frightens him, that it’s still a possibility. Even if they retire and walk away, it could still happen.

He doesn’t tell Dean this, though.

“I know that,” Dean says. He turns his face in to Sam’s chest and breathes deeply. “You think I don’t know that? It still… it scares the shit out of me, alright? I don’t want… I can’t even think… I couldn’t bear to lose you like that. You’d be gone, but still walking around. But like dead.”

“Dean, but I’m not,” Sam says. “I’m not and you didn’t get up and leave this time. You didn’t go sit in the corner or sleep on the couch. You’re right here. That has to be some kind of progress, right?”

“I’m screaming myself awake,” Dean says. “That doesn’t sound like progress to me.”

“But you’re telling me why now, huh?” Sam says. He nudges Dean’s cheek with his nose affectionately. “Just stay,” he whispers into Dean’s ear. “Stay with me, okay? We’ll get a little run down house somewhere and there won’t be any demons. If any angels come knocking, we’ll… throw bibles at them until they go away. You can play with the car in the backyard all day until you’re so sunburned you have blisters and I’ll get Bobby to show me how to make wine out of overripe fruit. In three years, we‘ll drink it. Or it‘ll have turned into vinegar and we‘ll have to dump it out, but we can hope for wine.”

“And what’ll we do?” Dean asks. “For a living I mean?”

“Who says we have to do anything?” Sam says. “No one forges better documents than me. We can live fine. Or you can fix people’s cars and I could… work in the library. Something to keep busy.”

“That sounds really boring, Sammy,” Dean mumbles. He’s slurring sleepily and envisioning them as old men in coveralls and straw hats. The idea amuses him and his lips twitch.

“Yeah?” Sam says. “I think it sounds nice.”

Dean shifts against him, snuggling into his warmth with a sigh. “I think it sounds really great,” he says. “Like a plan.”