Chapter Text
Running off to find Dad provides the perfect excuse to leave. There are hurtful words on both sides, of course, and anger, and Sam can all but see the wounds reopening inside of Dean’s chest, but this is better. It’s safer.
Sam clearly can’t be trusted to control himself around Dean.
Dean clearly can’t be trusted to take care of himself where Sam’s concerned.
As he watches the taillights of the Impala disappear in the distance, Sam shivers a little. He has never felt so alone or cold or hollow. There’s relief, too, but it’s bitter and small. Flavored with the salty tang of tears.
He makes it almost two full days before caving, and of course Dean welcomes him back. Dean welcomes Sam with relieved eyes, a stoic expression and a joke: the Winchester equivalent of open arms. Sam looks at the sunset bruise on his brother’s eye, the curve of his lashes, the sensuous lines of his mouth. He looks at the hooked, white scar at his brother’s temple, which is all the more noticeable right now for the reddened, irritated skin around it where Dean can’t seem to leave well enough alone.
But Dean smiles at him. Dean smiles and lays his hand on Sam’s shoulder and squeezes gently before laughing and climbing into the driver’s seat.
If sheep were this trusting when wolves slunk around their enclosures, they’d have been extinct long ago.
In Nebraska, Dean nearly dies. Sam’s not talking about it.
Cassie is a kick to the groin when Sam is already down. She’s petite and beautiful and intelligent, and Sam hates her on principle. He hates her more when he notices the way that she looks at Dean: warm and familiar and fond. She looks at him like she has a right to him.
Worse, Sam has caught his brother looking back.
He doesn’t want to know, not really, but there’s some deep, masochistic streak that makes him push for the information anyway. He manages to wait until they’re alone, at least, getting ready to interview some sources at the docks, and then, as casually as he can, broaches the subject.
“I’ll say this for her—she’s fearless.”
Dean, fussing with his suit, doesn’t so much as glance over. “Mmhmm.”
Drop it, Sam tells himself. Just finish getting dressed, go interview some dockworkers, solve the case, and get out of here. Problem solved.
“I bet she kicked your ass a couple times.”
That gets him a look, just like he knew it would, but Dean’s ‘fuck you’ expression doesn’t tell Sam anything he wants to know.
Forcing down the painful lump in his throat, Sam continues, “What’s interesting is you guys never really look at each other at the same time. You look at her when she’s not looking, she checks you out when you look away.”
Now Dean’s expression is more useful, if indefinable. He looks … uncertain, maybe? Intrigued?
“It’s just an interesting observation,” Sam hastens to continue. “In a, you know, observationally interesting way.”
Dean’s jaw firms and he turns away. “I think we might have some more pressing issues here.”
“Hey, if I’m hitting a nerve—”
“You got a question, Sam, just ask already,” Dean mutters, pulling his jacket on.
As if this is that simple. As if anything between them has ever been that simple.
But there’s no reason not to give it a try now that Dean’s called him out. “I was just wondering when you two got together. I mean, I know it was while I was at Stanford, I was just—”
“You want to know if I rode Cassie before I got ridden,” Dean says, turning back to face him. His voice is flat. His face unreadable.
Sam flushes, but he isn’t backing down now. “Did you?”
“Does it matter?” Dean asks. He’s watching Sam carefully, and Sam doesn’t know what’s going on here, but suddenly it’s difficult to breathe.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Sam struggles with that question for a moment before confessing, “I don’t know.” It’s the truth: he has no idea why he cares so much. All he knows is that it’s vital that Dean met Cassie after the movie, when he wasn’t just damaged but broken.
Dean nods like Sam’s answer actually means something to him—which, if it does Sam wishes he’d let Sam in on it—and starts for the door. “Let’s go.”
“Dean,” Sam says softly without moving. Just that, but the plea is clearly audible. If Dean turns around, he’ll be able to see Sam’s need written on his face in stark, desperate lines.
Dean pauses with his hand resting on the doorframe, but he doesn’t turn around. “Before,” he says over his shoulder. “I met her before.”
Except ‘met’ isn’t what he means.
Before. I loved her before.
There are two things to remember about drinking your troubles away. The first is that it gets to be habit if you do it enough. The second is that it doesn’t work.
Sam acknowledges the first fact as he orders a couple of kamikazes at the bar, and he doesn’t want to go down that road any more than he already has: doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps any more than he already is. But he can’t be sober while Cassie takes Dean away from him—while she fucks him and reminds him what pleasure is, and happiness, and love. He needs the liquid help to numb the hollow ache in his chest.
It isn’t until he’s stumbling back to their room, weeping the whole way, that he remembers the second fact.
Fuck, he actually feels worse now than he did before he started drinking, which he didn’t think was possible. He pauses outside the room, leaning against the wall with one hand pressed to his forehead. The world spins around him, empty and cold and hostile, but it’s better out here than inside. Inside, Dean’s absence will be painfully obvious, and Sam is going to have to get used to it because this is how things will be from now on. This is his life, he has to accept it, he—
“Sammy?”
The voice doesn’t penetrate immediately: Sam’s sobs are too close and immediate. Then Dean is right in front of him, Dean is running concerned hands over Sam’s body and saying, “Fuck, man, where were you? You okay? Sammy?”
Sam blinks, opening his eyes to find his brother peering up at him, the door to their room gaping wide behind Dean’s broad shoulders. “Dean?” he hiccups.
Dean frowns, intent, and swipes his thumbs over Sam’s cheeks, wiping away the tears. “C’mon. Let’s get you inside.”
Sam follows docilely, stunned by the fact that Dean is here, that Dean is guiding him over to the bed and sitting him down and pushing a glass of water at him and running his hand through Sam’s hair.
“You gotta stop doing this, dude,” he says as Sam downs the water.
“Thought you’d be gone,” Sam tells him. “I thought you were gonna be with her.”
“What,” Dean says, taking the glass back and setting it on the table. “And miss out on all this blackmail material?”
“Not funny,” Sam protests, reaching up and getting a fistful of shirt. Dean lets himself be pulled close, leaning one hand on the mattress to prop himself up.
“Sure it is,” he says, one hand going to Sam’s and gently trying to pry his fingers loose.
Sam ignores the attempt and insists, “No. No, you were. You were s’pposed to be with Cassie. You were gonna. You said ‘don’t wait up’. Why’re you here?”
He wishes, desperately, that he wasn’t drunk. Wishes he could read the emotions flickering through his brother’s beautiful, green eyes. He realizes suddenly that they’re only inches apart, that he can feel Dean’s breath ghosting over his own lips. The scar at Dean’s hairline is shiny and pale, and Sam wonders whether it would taste any different than the rest of him. He wonders what Dean would do if he tried to find out.
“Lie down, Sam,” Dean says. Giving up on disengaging Sam’s grip, he pushes lightly at Sam’s chest.
Sam clings tighter, resisting. “No. Answer me. Dean, you have to tell me, you have to.” It’s stupid, and he’ll probably be embarrassed about it later, but he’s so desperate that he’s crying again. “Please, Dean, please.”
“I don’t know why I’m here, okay?” Dean says, and now he’s trying a two for one: working at Sam’s fingers with one hand and pushing him back with the other. It must be hell on his lower back, bending over like this without any support. Must be putting him off balance. “Now drop it and just—”
Sam yanks his brother closer and kisses him.
Dean tastes good: his lips, his tongue, his mouth. Dean is warm and wet and welcoming and he chose Sam, he’s here—and then Dean jerks his face to the side.
“No,” he says.
Something deep inside of Sam’s chest crumples. “Please. Dean, please. Just—just this, just let me kiss you, just—brothers kiss all the time, s’okay, s’alright.” He unlocks one hand and paws at his brother’s face, trying to turn Dean back toward him, to get at those lips again.
“I didn’t come back for this,” Dean says, but he isn’t trying to get away, and he’s letting Sam kiss the graceful arch of his neck.
“Just this,” Sam repeats. “Just this, please.”
“Sam,” Dean tries, but Sam can hear surrender in his name, and when he tugs again Dean comes. Sam rolls them, getting Dean on his back, and Dean lets him. Dean lets Sam pull his shirt off and then lies there and strokes Sam’s hair while Sam licks and nips at his chest, tracing the memory of rock salt before latching onto one nipple and sucking.
Dean bucks at that, breath stuttering, and Sam can feel his brother’s cock hardening. He shifts, pressing his thigh solidly against the bulge in his brother’s jeans, and Dean’s hand tightens in his hair. Lifting his head, Sam says, “Let me, let me, let me.”
“You—” Dean’s voice cuts off in a gasp as Sam rocks against him. “You said just kissing. Sam—”
“Want to make you feel good,” Sam begs. He understands, distantly, that he shouldn’t be doing this, but he can’t help himself. “I can make it feel good, Dean, I can, let me show you, let me, love you, fuck, love you so fucking much.”
He makes himself shut up then and Dean doesn’t respond. But the absence of a yes isn’t a ‘no’, and when Sam rolls them again, drawing Dean on top of him, Dean doesn’t fight him. Sam pushes a hand into his brother’s pants to cup his ass and Dean shudders, legs falling open as Sam drags their lower bodies snug together.
“C’mon,” Sam pants, nipping at his brother’s neck while thrusting up. “Just like this. Rub against me, it’ll feel good, come on.”
His hand shifts on his brother’s ass, fingers searching for the entrance he knows is there, and Dean jerks as he finds what he’s looking for.
“Shh,” Sam soothes, pushing one finger inside. “Shh, feels good. Feel so good. C’mon, move, you can, want you to.”
Dean shudders again and then leans forward, upper body sliding against Sam’s and rucking his t-shirt up. Sam imagines what it would feel like to have Dean’s skin sliding over his and wishes he dared stop long enough to get his own shirt off. He doesn’t want to chance breaking the moment, though: not when Dean has started to move against him in tentative thrusts.
Dean’s cock, which wilted when Sam’s finger first penetrated him, is beginning to swell again, and his breath is coming faster. Sam uses his free hand to maneuver his brother’s face into position and starts kissing him again, fucking his tongue into Dean’s mouth while he feels around in his ass for that shocky, pleasurable spot he knows is there. Dean gives another full-bodied shudder when he finds it, moaning into Sam’s mouth, and Sam has never heard anything so hot. Fuck, Dean sounds so much better in person than he did on film.
Now that he has found it, Sam makes sure to rub repeatedly at his brother’s sweet spot as they rock against each other. Dean’s breathing is ragged now, and he’s sweating, making little pleasure-pain noises that are going straight to Sam’s cock. He releases his brother’s lips so that he can hear them better, settling for licking his earlobe and neck.
Dean’s ass is still tight—unbelievably so, after what Sam saw him take in the movie—but it’s loosened enough that he manages to work a second finger in beside the first. At the addition, Dean’s hands come up and clutch at Sam’s biceps. Sam would be concerned except for the fact that Dean also drops his head down, bracing his forehead against Sam’s shoulder and rocking his hips faster. Sam can feel his brother’s heart racing where their chests are pressed together—knows Dean is close, so close. His brother makes a choked noise, shifting his head, and Sam’s eyes fasten on the white, hooked scar centimeters from his lips.
“Come for me,” Sam murmurs, pumping his fingers more quickly in and out of Dean’s ass. “Come on, baby, come for me.” He darts his tongue out, running it over smooth, raised skin, and Dean jerks.
“Sam!” he chokes out, stiffening.
Pressed together so snuggly, Sam can feel his brother’s cock twitching as he comes, and a moment later Dean collapses against him, breathing hard and trembling slightly. Hooking his left leg around his brother’s body, Sam thrusts up while driving his fingers in deep again (warm and tight and his) and then comes himself with a low moan. Panting, he lets his leg slide free and lies there waiting to come down from his high.
After about a minute, he can smell it in the air—the salted musk of semen—and the sticky mess in his pants is going to start cooling off and getting gross really soon, but he still doesn’t want to move. His head is spinning pleasantly with orgasm and alcohol and Dean is warm against him. Dean’s ass is snug around his fingers. His Dean. All his.
“Sam,” Dean says in an odd voice. “I need you to get your fingers out of my ass.”
“Don’t wanna,” Sam murmurs, wiggling his fingers just to feel Dean twitch. “Wanna stay here ‘n go to sleep with you.”
“Sammy—”
“You’ll get up and go away.”
“I just—” Dean breathes out heavily and then says, “I just want to get my pants off. C’mon, dude, this crap’s gonna crust. I don’t want to have to peel my boxers off my dick tomorrow morning.”
Sam’s pretty sure that his brother is lying, but he also isn’t wrong about the whole crusty boxers thing. It’s a dilemma. Absently, he rubs at Dean’s prostate while he considers the problem.
Dean squirms against him, breath hitching. His hands, which are still gripping Sam’s arms, tighten. “Sam!”
“Okay, fine. Gotta stay.”
“I will. Fuck.”
“Promise,” Sam pushes, still sliding his fingers around. Dean is getting hard again. Interesting.
“I promise, okay? Now s-stop fucking around and get your fingers out of me.”
Grudgingly, Sam obeys. As soon as he tugs his hand free, Dean is off the bed and heading for the bathroom, unzipping his pants as he goes. Sam figures he’s got the right idea and clumsily opens his own pants. He manages to get them down around his ankles before they catch on his shoes. After a moment of blinking down at the problem, he shrugs it off and drops back against the mattress, closing his eyes to wait. Dean will help him out when he comes back from the bathroom.
When Sam opens his eyes again again, it’s morning. His pants aren’t around his ankles anymore, and he isn’t wearing his shoes, but his shirt is still on and he isn’t under the covers and Dean is gone.
Dean is …
Dean …
“Oh my God,” he blurts, pushing off the bed and stumbling into the bathroom. He just manages to make it to the toilet in time. When he finishes puking up what little was left in his stomach, he rests his head against the cool porcelain and shuts his eyes.
In his mind, he can hear his own voice, slurred and begging and insistent. He can hear Dean’s responses.
No.
I didn’t come back for this.
You said just kissing.
And Sam had—he’d—fuck, he’d violated Dean. He went and got drunk and then put his hands all over his brother and Dean … Jesus Christ, Dean …
The ring of his phone jars Sam out of his misery and to his feet—Dean’s ring, unmistakable. Dean calling him.
Sam rushes out to the main room, barking his shin on the bed as he goes, and snags his phone off the table. Hopping awkwardly on one foot while he rubs at his aching ankle, he catches the call and blurts, “Dean, I’m so fucking sorry, I—”
“The mayor’s dead,” Dean cuts in.
“What?”
“You heard me. Cass and I are out on Route 6. Just look for the flashing lights.”
When Sam gets to the scene, there’s no time to talk. He can’t figure out if that’s because Dean is manipulating things or if it’s just chance. It could be avoidance that has Dean sending Sam home with Cassie while he follows in the Impala, but then again it might just be Dean worrying about his ex-girlfriend’s safety.
Or maybe this is Dean’s way of getting back at him.
“You don’t like me very much, do you, Sam?” Cassie asks quietly as she pulls away from the crime scene.
Sam is too busy trying to watch Dean in the side mirror to bother dissembling, but he does manage to mutter, “I like you fine.”
“No, you don’t.”
Sam sighs. Thus far, he hasn’t seen any evidence of Cassie taking Dean’s shit, so there’s no reason to think she’d take his, either, but he was still hoping.
“Fine. I don’t.”
“Mind if I ask why?”
“It’s not because you’re black, if that’s what you’re thinking.” He realizes a moment after he says it how condescending that came out. Cringing a little inside, he glances over at Cassie and finds her smiling. It isn’t a happy smile, but it isn’t exactly hostile either.
“It’s not,” she tells him. “Although I think I’d prefer it if it were. Prejudice I know how to deal with.”
She knows, Sam thinks. Despite the chill permeating the cab of Cassie’s truck, a trickle of sweat runs down the back of his neck and into his shirt. His stomach lurches around completely independent of the road while he wonders how she figured it out, whether Dean told her. Whether Sam left some sort of evidence on Dean’s body. He didn’t notice anything back at the crime scene, but then again it was really fucking difficult to look at Dean at all back at the crime scene, so maybe ...
Cassie is still waiting for some kind of response. Sam considers categorically denying everything and then, clenching his jaw, sits there with his mouth shut. After all, he can’t walk into a noose if he doesn’t move.
“I’m not trying to take him away from you,” Cassie adds, and after a split second of complete and utter terror, Sam realizes that the declaration is missing the disgust and anger it should hold if she meant it the way he thought she did. Cassie does think he’s jealous, but only in the normal, ‘he’s my big brother I come first in his life’ kind of way.
Of course, relaxing from the terror of discovery leaves Sam free to get annoyed about her interference again.
“Even if I were,” Cassie continues, oblivious. “I don’t think that’s possible. I just … I care about him, Sam. I don’t know, maybe I even love him.”
It’s funny how quickly Sam manages to go from annoyed to pissed off these days.
“You don’t deserve him,” he blurts before he can censor himself. He doesn’t deserve Dean either, of course, but anger leaves little room for rational thought or fair play.
“And here I thought you liked me fine,” Cassie says dryly.
“You want to know what I think?” Sam answers. His hands clench into fists where they’re resting in his lap. “I think you lost any right to Dean the second you threw him away. You don’t get hurt him like that and expect him to come crawling back to you.”
“No, only you get to do that.”
One short statement and Cassie has cut right to the heart of what Sam hates most about this situation, about his life, about himself. His chest constricts, or maybe that’s his anger swelling, and Sam can’t figure out whom he wants to lash out at. Dad’s pretty high on the list, and Dean for letting both of them fuck him up so thoroughly, and then there's Sam himself, of course. The tension gets bad enough that it’s either scream or hit something or explode and so Sam grits his teeth and slams his fist against the dash before looking back out his window.
Cassie’s reflection jumps in startlement at his outburst, but her voice is steady when she says, “I’ve made my share of mistakes, Sam, but letting Dean go—having it end like that—that’s the only one I truly regret.”
Must be nice, Sam thinks. Regret. He’s getting way too familiar with the way that particular emotion tastes in his mouth: bitter and sad and wasted.
“Are you fucking him?”
It takes a couple of seconds for the question to penetrate, but when it does Sam jerks like he’s been electrocuted, whipping his head around to stare at Cassie with wide eyes.
Cassie’s eyes are steadfastly focused on the road, but even so there’s no way she could have missed his reaction. She taps her fingers against the steering wheel with a nod. “I thought so.”
It takes a minute, but Sam finally manages to unglue his tongue from the roof of his mouth to ask, “How did you—”
“Know?” Cassie smiles again: cynical and a little sad. “I’m a reporter, Sam. It’s my job to read people.”
“We aren’t—Dean and I, we haven’t—”
“But you want to.”
Sam can’t deny that. Hell, he shouldn’t really be denying the sex. Not after last night.
“Dean would do anything for you, you know,” Cassie continues after a moment. “What I was wondering was whether you’d do the same for him.”
Sam knows where she’s going with this and wants to open the door and jump out of the car before she can get there. He wants to punch her before she can open her mouth and say it. Wants, childishly, to plug his ears with his fingers so that he can’t hear her when she does.
But he’s a grown man, no alcohol in his system to blur the lines of conscience, and so he sits there quietly and waits for Cassie to damn him.
“Let him go, Sam. For his own sake, let him go.”
Dean seems to sense that something happened when they get to Cassie’s—Sam can read the question in his brother’s eyes—but he looks away without answering. He doesn’t know what to say. Right and wrong and need and desire are all tangled up in his head.
All he knows is that he loves Dean. He loves Dean and last night he defiled him. As good as raped him.
So what if Dean hadn’t said no at the end? Once should have been enough, and like Cassie said, Dean would do anything for him. Dean would do anything for him, and God help him Sam knew it when he started begging last night.
Let him go, Cassie urged him—is still urging him with those dark, knowing eyes. And she’s right to demand it of him.
As Sam turns away, cradling his aching hand close to his stomach, he knows that he doesn’t have it in him to obey.
Cassie is ‘kind’ enough to lend Sam her truck so that he and Dean can split up to do some more research, so Sam’s plan for a long, heartfelt apology is postponed yet again. He’s both relieved and anxious as he drives her truck back down toward the dock where, for some reason known only to the inhabitants of Cape Girardeau, the town records office is. Between his trip to the docks and Dean’s visit to Cassie’s newspaper, they manage to narrow their suspects down to a list of one: Cyrus Dorian. What they don’t know is why he’s so pissed off or where to find the son of a bitch’s body so they can burn it.
Sam is supposed to meet Dean for dinner back at the room—where they’ll hopefully get to discuss more pressing matters than killer ghost trucks (fuck, his life is weird)—but instead he gets a frantic call from his brother telling him to get over to Cassie’s right away. Sam shows up on Dean’s heels, just in time to see a tearful Cassie open the door and fling herself into his brother’s arms. She’s clearly frightened—still shaking enough that Sam can’t manage more than a dull mix of annoyance and jealousy as Dean leads her back inside. She fits in against his side perfectly, Sam notices, like they were made for each other. She fits against him far better than Sam ever will.
“I’m gonna make some tea,” he mutters as Dean sits Cassie down on the couch.
Dean kneels at Cassie’s feet without acknowledging the statement. Resting his left hand on her knee, he reaches with his right to cup her face, rubbing the tears away with his thumb. Cassie puts her hand over Dean’s, leaning into the touch, and Sam turns away before he can see any more.
He knocks his hand against the doorframe in his haste, setting off the dull ache in his fingers again, but it hurts less than his chest does. At this point, having all of his skin ripped off would probably hurt less than his chest. Sam doesn’t cry as he searches through the kitchen’s fifteen-odd cabinets for the kettle, though. He won’t cry here, in her house. Won’t cry while he listens to Cassie’s soft murmurs and his brother’s lower assurances that ‘everything’s gonna be fine’.
He’s so focused on not crying that he doesn’t realize anyone is in the kitchen with him until the sound of someone clearing their throat makes him jump and whirl, hand dipping to the gun tucked at the small of his back. Sam actually has his fingers on the plastic grip when he realizes that it’s just Cassie’s mom. He eases off immediately, releasing the gun and schooling his expression into something reassuring.
“Oh, hey, Mrs. Robinson. I was just trying to find the tea kettle.”
“Let me,” she says, reaching past him into a cabinet he’s sure he already searched. If he did, he must have done a sloppy job because she emerges with the kettle and brings it over to the sink. As she turns the water on, she clears her throat again and says, “Sam, I have to ask you a question and I need you to be honest with me.”
Oh crap. Conversations like that never end well.
Sure that the woman is going to ask if he intends to try stealing her daughter’s boyfriend, Sam reluctantly says, “Okay.”
Mrs. Robinson doesn’t ask immediately. Instead, she finishes filling the kettle, puts it down on the counter beside her, and turns off the water. Then, turning around, she asks, “Is this truck real? Is my daughter in danger?”
She’s looking at him with the expected concern and fear, but there’s something else there as well. An emotion with which Sam is increasingly familiar these days.
Guilt.
She knows something, he thinks, tensing. The tightness in his chest eases as years of training kick in and he focuses himself on the job. On looking earnest and competent and safe so that he can get the information he needs to save a life. Cassie may be ripping Dean away from him, and Sam might hate her a little for that, but she doesn’t deserve to die just because Dean loves her.
“Yes,” he answers. “Crazy as it seems, it’s real enough to kill, and if it showed up here then it’s after Cassie. Dean and I need to find Cyrus’ body and burn it. After that, she’ll be safe.”
Mrs. Robinson’s mouth purses and her chin trembles in a way that Sam associates with tears. She doesn’t cry, though. Just takes a deep, shaky breath and nods.
“Then there’s something you should know …”
“You know we’re going to have to dredge that body up from the swamp, right?” Sam asks an hour later.
He and Dean are outside standing by the car. They’re alone for the first time all day—have been for the last ten minutes—but Sam hasn’t been able to bring himself to apologize. Dean hasn’t brought last night up either, but Sam can tell that his brother is thinking about it because his hand keeps going to his temple before he realizes what he’s doing and puts it back down. He won’t look Sam in the eye, either, and he keeps shifting his weight and pacing around in a tight circle like a tethered dog.
They’re going to have to talk about it soon.
“Yeah,” Dean says. He pauses, grimaces, and then opens his mouth as though he’s going to say something else. Cassie’s sudden emergence from the house distracts him, though, and Sam resists the urge to scowl as his brother leaves him leaning against the car to meet her.
“Hey,” Dean says.
“Hey,” Cassie answers, offering him a wan smile. “She’s asleep.”
Sam guesses that Mrs. Robinson will stay that way for a while, too, considering the tranquillizers she took after she had told her story for a second time—this time to her daughter. She had held up okay when it was just Sam, just a stranger, but telling your only child that her father was a murderer is always going to be more difficult—no matter how justified the murder in question. He has to admit that Cassie is dealing with the news pretty well.
Now, outside, he watches her stick her hands into her pockets and ask, “Now what?”
“Well,” Dean answers, “You stay put and look after her. And we’ll be back. Don’t leave the house.”
Cassie fixes Dean with a no-nonsense look, but her voice is playful when she says, “Don’t go getting all authoritative on me. I hate it.”
“Don’t leave the house, please?” Dean corrects himself. Sam can’t see his brother’s face, but he can tell from his voice that he’s smiling.
Cassie slants a look past Dean’s shoulder at Sam, smiles herself, and then grabs Dean’s face and pulls him down into a kiss. Sam straightens and takes a step forward before he knows what he’s doing. When it hits him—when he realizes that he’s a heartbeat away from doing something unforgivable (something else unforgivable)—he draws up short. Then, with a dull pulse in his head and an acidic taste in his mouth, he stands there and watches as his brother’s hands flutter over Cassie’s body.
Dean’s own body is tense, surprised, and he can’t seem to figure out whether he’s supposed to be touching her or not. It looks awkward as hell, and satisfaction is tugging Sam’s lips up when the tension suddenly drains from his brother’s shoulders. A moment later, Dean’s hands settle on Cassie’s hips and she goes up on her tiptoes, deepening the kiss. Dean holds her there, his hands flexing in a languid, easy rhythm, while he kisses her back.
Suddenly, it looks comfortable—looks familiar—and Sam’s stomach burns. He can’t fucking watch this. Cutting his eyes away, he lets out a loud, pointed cough.
Dean immediately breaks the kiss to say, “Yeah, coming,” which is gratifying, but his hands linger a moment longer and he gives Cassie’s waist a quick squeeze before stepping away and strolling around to the driver’s side door. He doesn’t so much as glance in Sam’s direction. Cassie’s looking at him, though. She’s watching Sam the way a cat might watch a cornered mouse.
“Take care of him, Sam,” she says, folding her arms across her stomach.
Sam tightens his jaw and gets into the car without responding.
Sam isn’t going to have this conversation. Not now. Not when he can’t figure out if he’s jealous or guilty or angry or scared. Not when Dean’s kiss with Cassie is stuck on replay in his head. He isn’t stupid enough to get into such an important discussion when he’s already so far off balance he might as well be flat on his back.
So, of course, they make it almost all the way to the swamp in silence before he says, “Dean.”
“No,” Dean says.
Sam taps his aching fingers against his leg for a moment and then says, “You don’t even know what—”
“You were gonna apologize for last night, and then you were gonna promise it won’t ever happen again, and I don’t want to hear it, Sam. We’re in the middle of a fucking case, get your head on straight.” Dean isn’t rubbing his scar, which might be a sign that he isn’t as upset as his voice indicates, but then again that might be because his hands are white-knuckled on the wheel.
“Just let me—”
“Been there, done that, not happening again. Now shut your goddamn cakehole.”
“Dean,” Sam tries one last time, and his brother slams on the breaks. Sam reaches one hand up to the dash automatically as he lets out a startled swear. Dean puts the car in park and turns off the engine and then swings sideways in the seat to glare at him.
“Are you deaf or just suicidal?” he demands.
Sam is still a little breathless from thinking his head was going to go through the windshield, but he still manages to get out, “We need to talk about this, Dean!”
“No, Sam. You need to talk about this. I need to forget it.”
“How can you just forget something like that?” Sam demands, and suddenly he’s crying. They’re weak tears, more leaky faucet than downpour, but that doesn’t make him feel any better about losing control like this. He should be used to it by now. After all, losing control is getting to be a habit. His tears come faster at the thought, and he wipes a hand miserably across his eyes.
“Jesus Christ, Dean, how the hell am I supposed to—I hurt you. I—you said no, and I just—I—”
Dean doesn’t reach out and comfort him like he used to, but he doesn’t yell again either. He just sits there quietly while Sam cries himself out. When Sam’s tears finally start to taper off, Dean fixes him with a look and says, “I could have stopped you, Sam. I didn’t. It wasn’t rape. Stop angsting.”
He turns back to the road and reaches for the ignition.
“It was,” Sam insists. “Dean, you don’t—you don’t know how to say no to me.”
Dean laughs harshly, dropping his head. He lets it hang for a moment, forehead just brushing the wheel, and then says, “You are a real piece of work, you know that? No matter what I say, you’re gonna twist it into Sam the Martyr hour, and I’m not gonna play that game with you.” Straightening, he continues, “So listen up, Sammy, cause I’m only gonna say this once and then we’re gonna go toast us a corpse.”
He pauses, staring out the windshield at the dark road ahead. He looks eerily beautiful in the reflected glow of the dashboard lights. Looks young and fragile. When he speaks, though, his voice is as strong as ever—harsh and almost angry.
“You’re my brother, man, and I love you. I’d kill for you, and I’d fucking die for you, and you know that. But I told you no when you finally manned up to what you wanted from me in California, and I didn’t let you rape me in Rockford.” He turns finally, trapping Sam’s gaze with his own as he asks, “So what the fuck makes you think I’d let you do it now?”
Sam blinks at Dean because everything he just said is true. Cassie’s words and his own selfish actions have gotten him so twisted around that he forgot about Rockford, about Dean’s refusal in California. He doesn’t know how to fit those puzzle pieces together with the Dean from last night: the Dean who let Sam finger him open and kiss him. Has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to read into Dean’s willingness to let Sam touch him one minute and his announcement that he wants to forget the whole thing the next.
And Dean is grimacing now, rubbing at the too-familiar spot on his temple as though there’s a wound there instead of a scar. As though there are jagged sparks of pain shooting through his skull.
“Are you okay?” he asks, reaching out to lay a hand on his brother’s shoulder.
Dean shrugs him off. “I’m fine,” he says shortly, and the hand at his temple shifts up and back to rub through his hair before coming to rest on the wheel. “Look, I’m not saying that I want you or anything. Like that. You know, for sex. I’m still.” Grimacing, he glances at the road and swallows. “I’m not interested in that kind of thing, okay?”
Let it go let it go let it go
“You looked pretty interested with Cassie.”
Fucking idiot.
But instead of snapping at Sam or declaring his undying love for Cassie, Dean only says, “You know what they say about old habits,” in a deadpan tone of voice that Sam can’t read. Then, giving himself a little shake, he continues, “Last night was … whatever it was. It’s not something that’s gonna happen again, but I don’t want you beating yourself up over it either. You hear me?”
God, how can Dean say that? And what the fuck is Sam supposed to be taking away from this conversation? Is it a promise? A warning? Is this what Dean’s forgiveness looks like these days?
“Sam?”
“Yeah, I hear you,” Sam says, although if anything he’s more confused than he was before this little heart to heart.
“Okay then,” Dean says, starting the car again. “Let’s go fry Casper.”