I left my head around your heart

I see the blood all over your hands
Does it make you feel more like a man?
Was it all just a part of your plan?
The pistol's shakin' in my hands
And all I hear is the sound.


He was taking a chance. Always taking the chance.

Coming here and knocking on his brother’s door. Asking for help. Putting himself on the line. Showing his helplessness and it wasn’t that he couldn’t not do it on his own. He could always do it alone. Be alone. Bear it. Stand it. Fight and fuck and kill. Drive for miles and miles with nothing but the hard rock blaring and the powerful engine of his car purring under and around him, filling the void that had been left since John, since Dad left.

Left him alone … alone …

He was fine. Completely fucking fine. Alone. He’d handled hunt after hunt by himself since Dad had sent him out on his first one alone, when he was almost eighteen. But somehow, this was different.

This was both different and serious and Dean needed Sam. He needed his brother with all the meaning that one word contained.

Dean met the girlfriend. He made the appropriate comments and pretended to not notice the similarity to their mother as he compared them with memories and snapshots framed in his mind. Dean forced himself to not make some smartass comment about it. The blonde hair, the perfect breasts, the caring smile that could always mean more and usually did. Sex and the Madonna and the way Sam kept her in the room as if she would protect him from the darkness. From everything that Dean brought with him. From Dean himself.

They followed John’s trail up the coast. Arguing and sniping the entire way. Silent only when the music was too loud and the pain too sharp. When words that could never be spoken out loud were too close to the surface and they were both biting their lips. Covering up the tension with snarking and small talk. Memories that simmered under their skin and not one of them normal, not one of the regularly shared family problems and worries.

“I’m only here to help with this one thing, Dean.”

“I know that.”

The first night they didn’t get to bed until almost dawn. Didn’t get to sleep until after the sun had risen. Sam stayed away from their room; he stayed in the room that had their father’s imprint all over it and Dean waited in the bed. Shirt off, jeans on. Boots by the door and socks keeping his feet warm. His arms behind his head and his eyes were still open, glittering in the predawn dark when Sam finally came in.

“Find anything that will help?” Dean asked. His voice low and quiet and he knew that by the way Sam jumped, his brother had expected to find him already asleep. Probably had hoped to find him snoring and out and Jesus that hurt more than Dean expected it to.

“No.” Sam sat on the edge of the mattress and untied the laces of his tennis shoes.

“Find anything at all?”

“No, Dean. A bunch of cryptic scribbles and a hundred articles about this woman on the bridge. Nothing that said Here I am. Come and get me.”

Dean felt the cheap bed shift, the headboard cracked against the thin panel as Sam fell back. One arm over his face and his feet hanging off the edge.

When did his brother get taller? When did he build this wall?

Dean reached through the darkness, his fingers spread out. He touched the soft cotton of Sam’s T-shirt and felt the heat that came off his brother’s body in waves that Dean wanted to drown under.

“Don’t, Dean. I’m tired.”

Dean’s hand fell away. Though there was only two feet between them on the mattress, it might as well have been a hundred. A thousand. A canyon. It was two more hours before Dean slept and too soon when he woke up again.

~~

When they were heading back to the college, Dean tried again. He stopped at a rest area, parked under a tree away from the families that piled out of vans, retired couples in their RVs and the truckers that parked in lines to take naps, shoot up, watch porn.

They used the bathroom, bought a couple of Cokes from a machine and Dean popped the seal on a bag of Cheetos as they walked back to the Impala.

“I miss you.”

There was nothing but silence and Dean knew that he had whispered. But Sam had to have heard him.

“I –"

“Don’t, Dean.”

“We need to talk, Sam.” Dean hated the tone in his own voice. The need that came through, the way the word talk could be interchanged with touch, with kiss, with fuck.

“No.” Sam opened the passenger door and leaned on the hood. His eyes meeting Dean’s for the first time that day. “No, Dean. We don’t. We’ve already done all the talking that we had to.”

“Yeah, Sam. Okay.”

AC/DC took them back to Stanford and Dean didn’t know why he stood in the dark outside of Sam’s rented house. His back resting against his car, his ass and thighs absorbing the road heat that soaked from the engine through the metal.

He didn’t know why until flames poured from the bedroom window and lit up the night.

~~

Another night in a hotel and this time Dean had gotten them separate beds, he found himself with Sam in his arms. Wet face pressed to his shoulder and a shaking body against his.

“I just wanted a life, Dean. I just wanted something … normal. I loved her.”

“Shhh… shhh …”

Dean curled his fingers through his brother’s thick hair and let the boy cry out the sharpest pain of his grief. Felt the hitch of his chest and the hard grasp of hands that would leave purple bruises behind. Even though the fabric of Dean’s shirt and jeans.

Never get close, never get involved, never leave a trail that can be followed and never tell anyone what you have seen in the dark.

Never tell anyone what you have seen. What you have killed.

Not exactly a family motto, but near enough. Even if it went, for the most part, unspoken. Even if it had left them alone together too often. As boys, as teenagers, as young adults. Not a lot of time allowed for dating and none given to cultivating relationships. Sam had his books, Dean had his guns and John kept them both too busy and too distracted and too much in constant motion to learn how to play with the girls, to be social.

Something that Sam seemed to have overcome, Dean thought with a rueful smile. Not that he was surprised. Sam always had the innate ability to learn, to adapt, even when there was nothing around them. Even when there was nothing at all…

Dean’s breath caught in his throat when he felt Sam’s hand slide under and between the denim of his jeans and the shivering muscle of his abdomen.

“What are yo-"

“Isn’t this what you wanted?”

The tips of Sam’s fingers rubbed over the head of Dean’s cock and he couldn’t stop the sharp snap of his hips. It had been so long …

“It’s not. I mean, yeah … it is … it is. But there’s more.”

“Shhh …. Shhhhh …” Sam’s turn to quiet Dean. 

Sam’s face turned up, tears sparkled in his eyes, shining on his cheeks in the bare, pale light that leaked through heavy curtains. Street lamps and neon and Dean couldn’t hear the traffic that passed by the cheap nowhere hotel. All he could hear was the sound of Sam breathing. Low moans when dry lips pressed to his, quiet deep vibrations that could have come from either of them. From both of them.

“I need…”

“I know…”

“Please…”

“Yes…”

Shirts pulled over arm and heads and jeans unbuttoned and unzipped and pushed down to ankles and then off the bed and to the floor. Sudden rub of skin on skin, familiar and new as they touched each other. Silent and quick as if  they were still afraid of being caught. A million excuses running rampant through both of their minds as though the door were not locked and no one looking for them or at them.

Four years and they still knew each other as well as they did themselves. Remembered just where to touch and just where to tease. Just how to squeeze and kiss and lick, teeth scraping here and lips wet over there.  Dean’s fingers caught in Sam’s hair, bending his neck back to suck bruises down the center of his bared chest. The taste of skin in his mouth that was real and life and family. Safe.

Their hips moving together, cocks rubbing and bumping and Dean couldn’t help the sound that slipped from his lips when Sam’s hands pulled and pushed and moved him. To his stomach, face pressed to the mattress and this was something new.

“Sammy …”

“Shut up.”

Sam’s hands never stopped stroking Dean’s cock. Doing everything that Dean knew he’d taught Sam, doing everything that Dean did when he was alone. Pulling and squeezing and twisting between sheet and skin and Dean spread his legs, was up on his knees like he’d been here before. His mouth worked against the rough, cheap cotton of the pillowcase and he couldn’t choke the whimper when he felt the head of Sam’s dick, hot and hard and wet. Slick with lube and precome, between the cheeks of his ass.

Dean pushed back, rocked back. On his knees, hands fisted and mouth full of cotton and foam. His eyes closed and his scream was muffled into nothing at all. Giving everything to Sam, everything that he had never given, that he believed he would never give --  to anyone.

They slept on the other bed. The clean, dry bed and left two minutes before check out. Both of them damp from the shower they’d shared. Dean could still feel Sam’s hips shaking under the flat of his palms and the dig of his fingers and his cock was still half-hard. Four years was a lot of time to make up for, but Dean thought that they might be off to a good start.

“I’m only staying until we find Dad. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” Dean started the car.

He turned on the radio and pushed the tape into the slot until it clicked.

“I know that.”

~~

I love you
I hate you
I can't live without you.
I breathe you
I taste you
I can't live without you.
I just can't take anymore
this life of solitude
I pick myself off the floor,
and now I’m done with you.

Always
Always
Always.

~Lyrics from 'Always' by Saliva