Archive of Our Own

We are all a little weird and life's a little weird,
and when we find someone whose weirdness is
compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall
in mutual weirdness and call it love.
— Dr. Seuss

Dean’s always been steady and sure-fingered. He can disable an alarm in under twenty seconds, assuming it’s a standard one without anything fancy to trip him up, he can pick a lock almost as fast as Sam can and he almost never misses his target when he shoots. Then one night after they’ve dispatched a particularly nasty witch, Dean idly picks up a glazed clay pot and his hand spasms.

They watch it fall like it’s happening in slow motion until it bursts on the floor like an over-filled water balloon. The contents whoosh out like the fire of an a-bomb and fill the room. The powder, glittering and so fine that they don’t even feel it in their throats as they breathe it in, tastes like burned sugar.

Sam and Dean exchange a knowing, panicked look and Dean is already running for the nearest window to let it out and let in some air when Sam grabs his arm and stops him.

“Sam, shit--Don’t touch me,” Dean says, but it’s too late. The imprint of Sam’s fingers, the scalding touch of his skin, slithers up Dean’s arm and into his flesh like sweet poison. “Oh God,” he whispers, trying to jerk away.

Sam’s hand tightens on his arm, that same poisonous lust creeping through him. “You can’t… open the window. It has to settle or it’ll… spread,” Sam says, panting as his blood heats with want. “Oh God, Dean, I’m sorry.”

Dean’s jaw clenches and he twists his hand and finally breaks out of Sam’s grasp. The agony of the lost contact is like ripping a chunk of their living bodies away with tenterhooks. They both scream and fall to their knees, more of the gleaming fine fairy dust puffing up around them as they fall, clinging to their skin and coating their tongues with sweetness.

“Dean,” Sam chokes out. He reaches for him, but Dean falls backward on his ass and crawls away from him, one hand up to hold him off if he should come after him. Sam watches him and he’s shaking with the need to follow him, to lay his hands on Dean’s skin, to do… Oh God. To… “Dean, we have to,” Sam manages.

Sam gags and falls forward on his hands and knees, not even noticing Dean scrambling back from him, pained sounds of distress in his throat as his breathing hitches and catches. “Dean… you know what this stuff is, right?” Sam says, looking up at Dean through his tumbled hair.

Dean looks back at him and there is such terror in his eyes that Sam hates himself for the desire filling up his body, riding the back of the spell kept in the dust on their skin and in their mouths. Dean stares back at him and there is such ravenous want inside him that he can hardly stand it, but he won’t do that to Sam--or to himself. They’ve only just started to be okay. Something like this could ruin them forever.

“We have to,” Sam whispers, and he shifts toward Dean, raising one hand to reach for him.

“No,” Dean hisses. Sam catches the leg of his jeans and Dean kicks out at him to get him off, get him away. “We’ll… we’ll just leave. We’ll find a couple of girls. We won’t die before that. Hell, we can get a couple hookers for the night and--”

“No,” Sam says, shaking his head. “We can’t do that. It’ll only spread.”

Dean catches himself staring at Sam and admiring the slant of his cheekbones, the bow of his mouth. He swallows and looks away, disgusted and ashamed as cramps suddenly rip through his insides like his entrails are being wrung out. “Fuck, oh fuck,” Dean gasps, collapsing onto his side in pain.

“Dean--”

“Fucking boy scout,” Dean says through clenched teeth. “So it’ll spread. Who cares.”

“We can’t… We can’t let it do that,” Sam says. He ducks his head again, retching as his own cramps make his abdomen clench. “Shit. Oh shit. Dean, come on, man. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but there’s… we have to. It’s the only way.”

They had never encountered fairy dust themselves, but they’d both read about it in John’s journal and heard about it from other hunters. The only way to neutralize the love spell was to yield to it. Then and only then would they be immune to it and able to leave without contaminating someone else. Then and only then would it stop hurting them without killing them. If there were anyone else in the room with them, they could both fuck that person and be done with it, but there isn’t anyone but them.

“Sam… I love you, man, but no. I’m not going to fuck you,” Dean says. He grits his teeth and pulls his legs up as his stomach starts to tighten with the cramps.

“Dean… I love you, man, but I don’t want to die,” Sam says, painfully making it the few feet over to where Dean lays on the floor. When he touches Dean’s arm, Dean tries to twist away from him. Sam raises his hand to his face and rests his palm on Dean’s cheek. “I’m sorry, but there’s no other way. You know there isn’t.”

Dean shakes his head no, but he’s already leaning up into that touch of skin on skin. The soft caress of Sam’s hand on his cheek makes his eyes fall closed as a soft moan slips from his mouth. “Oh God, Sammy, no,” he whispers, his voice raw with despair.

“I know,” Sam says, but he’s pulling at Dean’s shirt, working it up his body. “Lift your arms.”

Trembling from the close way Sam’s body gives off heat when it isn’t even touching him, Dean opens his eyes and watches him, focusing on Sam’s face as he does what he asks and lifts his arms for Sam to strip off his shirt. For some irrational reason, he has the idea that if he doesn’t take his eyes away from Sam’s face, it won’t be that bad. It won’t be like sex or incest at all, just another way to break another spell.

Sam yanks his own shirt off and lays over him, his arms going around Dean to hold his body close. The skin to skin contact is like a soothing balm and they both moan from the slight relief even as it sparks new lust from them both.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Dean,” Sam whispers to him as he fumbles with the button and zipper of Dean’s jeans. He gets them open and slips his hand inside to rub lightly over his stomach once, then lower to close his hand around Dean’s cock.

Dean hisses a breath through his teeth and flushes with humiliation as he tries to push Sam away again. He’s hard, but only a little. Only enough that Sam knows it’s from the spell, not honest arousal. The knowledge makes him feel guilty, like a rapist, but the sickness and death hanging over them both is there in the back of his mind, so he doesn’t let Dean go.

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam tells him again, and starts to jack him off.

Dean shakes his head no and grasps Sam’s bicep to hold onto something. “Not your fault,” he says. He shivers and closes his eyes as his dick goes hard in Sam’s hand. “Stop.”

“No, Dean, we have to--”

“I know what we have to do,” Dean says, eyes snapping open and going sharp. “I know, alright? And look, I’m all ready to go, so let’s get this over with so I can start trying to forget about it.”

Sam nods shortly and takes his hand off of Dean’s cock. He scoots down enough to tug the laces on Dean’s shoes loose and pull them off, then pulls Dean’s jeans and underwear down his hips as he crawls back up. He darts a quick, uncertain glance up at Dean, then moves to kneel between his legs as he opens his belt.

“Dean, I don’t… I’ve never had sex with a guy before,” Sam confesses, feeling ridiculously embarrassed about it now for some reason.

“What, and you think I have?” Dean asks, eyebrows shooting up.

“No,” Sam says instantly. “No… I just… I don’t know how to do this.”

Dean sits up a little, bracing himself on his elbow to get a good look at Sam. He runs his eyes down Sam’s body and tries to not let imagined images of what that body is going to be doing to him in a few minutes invade his mind. It doesn’t work that well.

But Sam is nervous--no, Sam is a little scared--so Dean does what he always does when it comes to Sam.

“It’s okay,” Dean says. He sits up a little more and makes himself touch Sam, lets his hand stroke down his side, trying to soothe him. “It’s okay. It’s just sex. It doesn’t have to mean anything and it’s damn not your fault. I’m the dumb ass that didn’t keep his hands off of shit.”

And that is such a lie. It may not have to mean anything, but they aren’t just two guys stuck in an impossible situation. They’re them and uncommonly attached to one another, so it will mean something and they both know it. This will change them and Dean can’t really blame Sam for suddenly being afraid to move.

“Here, let me…” Dean says, tentatively reaching for Sam’s cock. He closes his hand around it and watches Sam’s face as he gently squeezes. “Fuck, this is so sick. I’m sorry, Sam. Are you--?”

“I’m fine,” Sam says. He is so completely not fine that it’s laughable, but he’ll make it. He puts a hand on Dean’s chest and gently pushes against him to get him to lay down. “Can we just get this over with?”

Dean nods and lets Sam push him back down on the floor. Sam runs his hands searchingly over Dean’s body, down his thighs and along his hips. When his hands finally stray near Dean’s ass, Dean is shivering again and becoming impatient. When his fingers only touch along the crack of his ass, Dean huffs out a breath and lifts his hips a little, moving toward him encouragingly.

“What are you--?”

“Put your finger inside me,” Dean tells him. He bites down on his bottom lip, flushing with humiliation at having to even say that.

“Wait… Why?” Sam asks.

“Because my ass is not a vagina,” Dean says calmly. “Because I don’t habitually poke things up there and now you have to fuck it. I don’t want to be hurting when this shit is over.”

Sam stares at him in stunned silence for a moment, considering that, then swallows thickly and nods. “Okay, so what do I do? Just… put my finger inside you and…?”

“I don’t know, just do it,” Dean says.

Sam nods and won’t meet Dean’s eyes as he presses the tip of his finger against his hole, then slowly pushes his finger inside. Dean draws in a breath on a curse and tenses and Sam can feel his body tighten and clench around his finger, light pressure against his fingernail.

“I think you have to relax,” Sam says, eyes fixed on where his finger is gripped inside Dean’s body. He carefully rocks his hand against him and pushes his finger deeper, drawing a soft sound from Dean that makes Sam look up and fix his gaze on Dean’s face. “Dean?”

“I’m trying to,” Dean says harshly.

“Dean… we have to hurry,” Sam says, breath catching. “My heart… it’s beating too fast.”

Dean nods and throws his hand out to reach for his jeans, which are too far away for him to grab. “Get… There’s a condom in my pocket. It’s lubricated. It’ll have to do because if you fuck me like this, all it’s going to do is hurt like hell.”

“But we can’t… There has to be contact,” Sam says, but he’s reaching for Dean’s pants and feeling around for the condom anyway.

“Yeah, so use the lube, not the condom,” Dean says, his heart thundering painfully in his throat. “Hurry up.”

“I got it,” Sam says. He tears open the little package and squeezes it to get the lubricant on his fingers from the condom. Hand shaking a little with urgency, Sam pushes his finger, now slick with lube, back inside Dean’s ass and works it in and out of him. “Shh, I’m sorry,” Sam murmurs when Dean jerks and makes a startled sound of protest. “I’m going to put another finger in you, okay? It‘s too tight. I can‘t--”

“Just… do it,” Dean says, panting. He pushes his hands down hard against the floor, his fingers clenching and unclenching against the wood, scraping a little. “Come on, do it, Sammy. I forgive you. I do. Come on, hurry.”

Deeply disturbed by it, no matter what Dean says, Sam adds his second finger and thrusts them both. Dean tenses up again and jerks before gradually relaxing. “You okay?” Sam asks him.

“I am so far from okay,” Dean says. He closes his eyes, throat working, and nods for Sam to continue. “Go on. Let’s just… do this. God, I fucking hate witches.”

Sam opens his fingers and twists them inside him and Dean makes a startled grunting sound, his eyes opening in surprise. “Sorry,” Sam says, watching him shaking on the floor.

Dean shakes his head. “No, it’s… that didn’t hurt,” he says. And that is the most upsetting thing about this. The idea that it might not hurt, that it might actually be good scares the hell out of him because how are they going to fix this when it is over? If they liked it, how could they say it was all the magic?

“Really?” Sam says. He does it again, blinking in surprise when Dean bucks against him and reaches for him. “Wow. Okay, I’m going to… um. You know.”

“You’re gonna put your dick in my ass and fuck me, yeah I know,” Dean says, his voice rough and shaking a little. Trying to ease the sting of his words, he pets his hand up into Sam’s hair. “Sorry. Just… come on. It’s okay. We gotta do it or our hearts are gonna stop. It’s gonna be okay.”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam says, looking down at him as he shifts forward, rolling his hips down on Dean as he pushes inside him.

Dean gasps and jerks against him, instinctively trying to get away as Sam’s cock slides inside his body, stretching him burning tight. “Oh Jesus,” Dean whispers, his mind rebelling at the strange, invasive sensation and the awareness of Sam’s presence. Sam’s body against him, Sam’s cock inside him, and it’s so much more wrong like that.

Sam shifts his hips and thrusts once, rough and deep until he’s all the way inside. Dean digs his fingers into Sam’s arms and buries his face against Sam’s shoulder, trying not to cry out. Sam bites down on a pleasured moan as Dean’s hot, tight body clenches around him and puts his mouth against Dean’s shoulder. He presses a calming, apologetic kiss there.

“Dean?” Sam asks, nudging him to try and get Dean to look at him.

Dean swallows and opens his mouth to speak, then just closes it and nods.

“I’m sorry,” Sam murmurs below his ear as he carefully starts to move. He takes Dean’s hips in his hands and holds him as he rocks against him, trying not to hurt him and sure that he is anyway. “I’m sorry,” Sam says again, moving his mouth along Dean’s jaw. “Don’t hate me later, okay? Please don’t.”

Dean catches Sam before he can move his mouth up to his and kiss him. He holds Sam’s face in his hands and stares intently into his eyes, then slowly shakes his head no. “No,” he says. “Not your fault, I know, but don’t you kiss me. Just do it, Sammy.” He pushes his stomach up, working his hips in Sam’s hands. “Move. Fuck me.”

Sam nods and holds Dean’s gaze as he starts to move again, faster, a little harder. Dean moans and thrusts against him as Sam’s cock touches, then slides over his prostate. With a low sound of triumph at finding it, Sam tilts Dean’s hips back more and strokes over that place again and again until Dean’s biting back cries that are slipping by as whimpers. His fingers flex against Sam’s cheeks and slide down to hold his neck, and both of them are shaking with the force of their physical reaction and their combined fear and shame over what they’re doing.

Sam drops his head to Dean’s shoulder as he moves, his breath in soft panting gasps on Dean’s sweaty skin. He closes his eyes as he hunches his shoulders into it, throwing his weight behind his thrusts until Dean’s biting savagely at his lips not to cry out. It feels amazing, such pleasure sparking and biting through them both that they can’t even deny that, but all either of them wants is for it to be over and that surpasses any animalistic drive for orgasm.

Dean finally cries out, tired and nearly mindless with the sensations screaming in his body, rising and falling with each beating, pounding thrust of Sam’s body inside his own. It echoes like a drum in his abdomen, the vibrations beating in soft, pleasurable pulses in his belly and up his spine. It’s so completely unlike fucking a girl to be fucked by Sam, but he likes it and he’s too busy liking it to really wish he didn’t.

Sam lifts his head to look down at Dean, watching him as he thrusts, working over his prostate until Dean’s writhing and bucking into each thrust, his fingers biting into Sam’s shoulders. There’s sweat on their skin, pooling on Dean’s stomach and sliding down Sam’s face, burning on his eyelashes and salty on his lips. The dust, glittering and bright as crushed rainbows, sticks to their skin and Sam raises one hand from Dean’s hip to touch where it’s coated Dean’s mouth.

Dean opens his mouth to that prodding finger and Sam watches with a pit of lust opening wide inside him as Dean licks. His tongue slides over Sam’s finger and everything tastes like hot burning sugar. “Dean,” Sam whispers, lowering his head to breathe against Dean’s throat.

Dean makes a low moaning sound of assent and opens his eyes. “What?”

Sam licks the underside of Dean’s chin, down to the base of his throat where his pulse is frantically beating, tasting the sweet fairy dust in the salt of his sweat. “I want to kiss you,” Sam tells him.

“Oh God, why?” Dean says. He tightens his grip on Sam’s shoulders and Sam snaps his hips against his ass, forcing a grunt from him at the force of it. Dean’s body tightens as pleasure squirms and rolls inside him like fighting serpents, but he holds Sam’s eyes with his own now. “Isn’t this bad enough? You want to… kiss me?”

“It’s not that bad,” Sam says, moving his mouth along Dean’s jaw. “It’s… different. It’s just--”

“I’m your brother,” Dean hisses. He arches against Sam, their stomachs sliding together in the sweat on their bodies, Dean’s cock trapped between them, stroked with the movement. “God, oh God… That… Even if this were… the time for some kind of doubts about your sexuality, I’m your brother.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He licks under Dean’s ear, catches the lobe in his teeth and laves it with his tongue until Dean shivers. “All I want you to do is come… so I can come and we can get the fuck out of here.”

“Then why--?”

“I don’t know,” Sam says. “I like the taste of this dust stuff and it’s all over your mouth.”

“Not good enough,” Dean says. “No. Just… hurry up.”

Sam huffs out a laugh and says, “Fine,” as he pulls Deans hips down, forcing his ass tight against his groin, pushing as deep inside him as he can as he snaps his hips in quick, hard thrusts. He watches with a low growl of triumph as Dean comes apart beneath him. Perhaps it’s a power thing, he doesn’t know, but when Dean’s mouth falls open, hitching cries of humiliated pleasure spilling out, his body trembling, shaking and tightening all around him, Sam likes it. A lot.

And Dean likes it too, he can’t even deny it. Despite the clinging way Sam’s cock sticks inside of him sometimes like he’s fucking right through the muscle of Dean’s body, and the way Sam’s strength in every hefting thrust or flexing slide of muscle makes him feel vulnerable to the point of breaking, he likes it. Maybe even because of those things, he likes it, and it would disturb him if he weren’t trying to grasp at the straws of his nonexistent control to keep from crying out.

It’s almost paradoxal how he wants to come more than he’s ever wanted to come in his life and yet doesn’t because that would prove something. A testimony in semen of how much he doesn’t hate his little brother fucking him in the ass. It would mean that he likes it and the confused line between it being them and it being the spell would grow that much thinner.

But neither of them have much say in the matter in the end. Dean’s back bows up from the floor and his blunt fingernails drag down Sam’s back as his orgasm breaks through him like an electric shock. He cries out and his lungs feel hot and constricted, flooded with warm honey, holding in those bursts of pleasure because he can’t exhale around them fast enough.

Sam shushes him, accidentally smearing more of the sugary glittering dust in his mouth and on his lips as he touches his fingers there. Dean licks his fingers, the calluses scraping on his tongue and against his teeth, and Sam moans. He leans down and presses his mouth against the backs of his fingers over Dean’s mouth, panting as Dean’s ass tightens around him with his orgasm. Dean bites his fingertips and Sam shakes his hair out of his eyes, watching him. Meeting those aware and very afraid, pleasure bright bottle green eyes staring back at him.

“It’s okay,” Sam murmurs, trying to get rid of that fear because it makes his chest ache with regret for what they’re doing. Dean closes his eyes, lashes trembling, and Sam has the irrational desire to kiss him there, over his eyes where those lashes would flutter against his lips like wings. “Shit,” he mutters, cursing himself for such thoughts.

Some of it’s the magic, but how much of it isn’t?

“Okay, okay, I’m going to just… I’m sorry, Dean,” Sam tells him, then pulls him up, hefting his weight, and bows his head to Dean’s chest as he quickens his pace. Dean curses and goes tense all over again, the post-orgasmic lassitude leaving him as Sam fucks him harder, rubbing against his oversensitive prostate until he’s clinging to Sam and biting his lips not to scream or beg him to stop.

“Fuck, this is so messed up,” Sam mutters, pressing reassuring kisses to Dean’s shoulder. Dean’s skin twitches under his mouth, his body shaking, but then Dean’s hands come up and stroke into Sam’s hair.

“I’m sorry, Sammy,” Dean whispers, stroking his hands down his neck, trying to comfort. “I’m so fucking sorry, man. Come on, now. Think happy thoughts and shoot your stuff up inside me… and we can go and pretend it never happened and--”

Sam gasps and grinds against Dean, his back arching as pleasure snaps through him, roused by the mental image provoked by Dean’s words. “Shut up, Dean,” Sam says, panting.

Dean draws a deep breath through his nose, his body over stimulated and worn out, and pets Sam’s hair some more. “I don’t know, I think we were getting somewhere there for a second,” he says. He groans when Sam pushes against him again, then turns his face into the side of his neck, his mouth just below Sam’s ear. “Come on, you can do it,” he murmurs, voice low and an embarrassed flush creeping over his skin as he speaks. “Come on, Sammy, I know you like it, even a little, huh? Got me right where you want me now, and look at how easy it was to just fall into. I didn’t even try to fuck you, did I? Because I know you and maybe it’s not about sex, but you really like having your dick inside me anyway, don’t you? A real fucking power trip, huh?”

“Shh, fuck, be quiet,” Sam hisses at him.

“Oh, I don’t think so. I think you’re taking too goddamn long pounding my ass and I’m not a girl, so I’m not gonna be ready for another go for another fifteen minutes at least,” Dean says. He licks under Sam’s ear, making him shudder and turn his head away. “You do like it, look at that,” Dean whispers. “God, that’s just filthy, Sammy. I’m your big brother, I carried you in my arms and bounced you on my knee, you took your first steps for me. All it takes is a little fairy dust on your tongue, though, and that doesn’t matter anymore. All you can think about is slamming your cock up in my ass…” Dean moans and jerks against Sam as he thrusts hard over his prostate again. He nips Sam’s earlobe and pulls at his shoulders. “I don’t blame you, I’ve got a nice ass. Come on, Sammy, come inside me. It’ll feel so good. It--”

Sam moves one hand up to cover Dean’s mouth, shushing him. “Dude, you are not helping,” he pants. His lips quirk in a sardonic little smile as Dean’s eyes spark back at him before he moans into Sam’s hand. “God, you’re going to be so fucking sore,” Sam whispers.

Dean whimpers and closes his eyes, lightly setting his teeth against Sam’s palm. Sam bends his head down and licks Dean’s mouth where his lips are around the flesh of his hand. Dean’s eyes spring open, but he doesn’t twist away. Sam licks over his teeth, thick pleasure making his skin feel tight and almost burning. Dean’s dirty talking encouragement has done its trick, though and Sam finally ducks his head against Dean’s shoulder as his own orgasm rips through him, vicious and hard like a blow to the stomach. He fucks Dean through it, moaning as Dean’s body contracts around him and the slickness of his come makes thrusting into him that much easier. Dean catches his breath and squirms uncomfortably, but he doesn’t push Sam off or try to get away as Sam holds him down and moves through it until every aftershock has faded away.

They lay there just breathing for a few minutes when it’s over, their heartbeats regulating and the sweat on their bodies going cold. Dean’s the first to move and when he does, it’s just to put his hand on Sam’s shoulder and push to get him to roll off. Sam lifts his head and looks down at him, then carefully withdraws from his body and slumps back on the floor beside him.

“Fuck being sore later, I’m sore right now,” Dean mutters. “Christ, I just got the hell fucked out of me like I’m some chick. You ain’t exactly a gentleman either, Sammy.”

Sam snorts laughter, a puff of glittering dust following the sound, and Dean turns his head to look down at him. “You think that’s funny?” he demands.

“A little bit, yeah,” Sam says tiredly.

Dean scratches his cheek with his knuckles and shrugs. “Yeah, I guess it is,” he says. “You want to hear something that’s not funny?”

“Not really,” Sam says, thinking this entire situation has the potential to be really fucked up and not funny at all.

“I’ve got your cooling abortion sliding down my thighs and you know, those are my hypothetical nieces and nephews dying and working their way back out of my ass,” Dean says, thoughtfully staring up at the ceiling of the witch’s house. “That’s not so funny, is it?”

“When you put it like that, it’s pretty fucking gross,” Sam says. He runs a finger through Dean’s come on his belly and wrinkles his nose at his glossy fingertip. “Okay, sharing time is over. Let’s get dressed and get the hell out of here,” he says, getting almost painfully to his feet.

“I can get behind that,” Dean says, and rolls over to get up.

Sam tosses Dean his pants and hits him in the face with them. “And please, for the love of God, don’t touch anything.”

They spend the rest of the night in the motel room they had rented before they went after the witch, Dean in his bed and Sam in his, both of them turned with their backs to each other. The fact that it’s shame that has them doing it, not anger, doesn’t do a lot to make either of them feel better. In fact, it’s worse. A lot worse. If they were mad at each other, they could fight it out, throw punches and yell, curse, kick, bite, and--rarely--threaten to shoot. But what do they do with this? Neither of them has any right to be angry, and neither of them really is, but they’re both sick with shame and scared as hell.

“Dean?”

There’s no answer for a few minutes and Sam thinks Dean might really be asleep. Then Dean shifts in the bed and rolls onto his back. “What?”

“We should talk about this,” Sam says.

Dean groans and throws an arm over his face. “No, we should not talk about this. Because this never happened,” he says. “We should go to sleep and wake up in the morning where this has never happened and go get breakfast. Then you should look through the obituaries in the paper where this never happened and find us another job. One without witches.”

“That… Dean, that’s not going to work,” Sam says. He sits up enough to prop himself on one arm and looks over at Dean, who is an indistinct lump of darkness in the other bed. “You can’t really think that will work.”

“Why not?” Dean says.

“Well, for one thing, because if it worked, we could have just forgotten it and we’d be asleep right now,” Sam says.

“I’d be asleep right now if you’d quit running your mouth,” Dean says.

Sam sighs and flops back on the mattress on his back. “Fine,” he says.

“Fine,” Dean says.

“Dean?”

“What?”

“We’re… We’re gonna be okay, right?” Sam asks. And he’s scared of a negative answer, they can both hear it in his voice.

Dean chews at the corner of his mouth, then he lowers his arm and nods. “We’re gonna be fine, Sammy,” he says.

He sounds honest and sincere, but even Dean doesn’t know if he is saying it because he means it and it’s true or if he is saying it just because this is what he always does where Sam is concerned. He soothes the hurt, calms the fear, tells him there aren’t monsters under his bed even when he knows damn well there are. If he could kill this particular nasty monster, he would in an instant, but it’s a different kind. It’s curled up in their minds and eating at their souls.

Neither of them sleep very much that first night.

The next morning, Sam catches Dean staring at him when he gets out of the shower. He pauses as he’s fastening his belt and they stare at each other like that for a few minutes, the unavoidable weight of everything that’s changed sitting there on the bed between them with Sam’s shirt and Dean’s duffel bag.

Dean looks away first and Sam follows him with his eyes as Dean crosses the room, snatches his keys off the table by the window, and goes outside to wait for him.

In the diner while they’re eating breakfast, they try to find a balance of normal. Dean orders a stack of pancakes and pretends he doesn’t see Sam’s raised eyebrow and look of disbelief because that’s another one of those things they don’t talk about. Dean won’t eat it all, though he would have once, and they both know it, but he still orders the same food and the same portions and they still don’t talk about it. But that’s normal for them.

This other thing isn’t, and Dean can talk about Hendrix with three different kinds of syrup staining his lips as he flirts with their fifteen year old waitress if that’s what he wants to do, but it’s not going to change. There is this uncomfortable sense of being watched now, even when they aren’t looking. And if that were all it was, they could ignore it and pretend until the lie was true enough to serve, but it’s not. There’s more.

“Dean, we need to talk about this,” Sam says again at breakfast.

Dean licks blackberry syrup off the back of his fork and returns Sam’s imploring look with a cold one of his own. “Nope, we don’t,” he says. “I thought we already went over this.”

“But we haven’t, that’s why we need to,” Sam says. He has a newspaper from the machine in front of the diner folded on the edge of the table and the plate his omelet and toast was served on sits beside it waiting for a waitress to pick it up. In frustration, Sam smacks his hand down on the tabletop and the fork on the plate rattles a little.

“Knock it off,” Dean snaps, dropping his own fork onto his plate of half-eaten pancakes. He wipes his hands on a napkin, then stands up. “Grab your paper. I’m gonna pay and we can go. We’ll find a job on our way.”

“Dean--”

“Sam,” Dean says, a warning in his voice as he stops walking. His shoulders are tense and he takes a few deep breaths before he makes himself start walking again. “Just drop it, Sam.”

Sam starts to argue, but he notices some of the people in the diner staring at them and one waitress watching them out of the corners of her eyes. He closes his mouth, picks up his paper and his shoulder bag, and leaves the diner. As he does it, he’s reminded of Dean walking out of the motel room the same way not that much earlier and he wonders if this is what it’s going to be like from now on. Dean doesn’t hate him and Sam doesn’t hate Dean; there’s no one to blame, or at least they can’t blame each other. They can blame themselves, though, oh yeah. Because people are better at forgiving others than they are at forgiving themselves and the Winchesters sure as hell are not the exception to that old rule.

About 120 miles east, Dean pulls the car over on one of those turn-offs used by truckers to sleep late at night or readjust their loads and they get out. Dean paces a little, drinking from a pint bottle of whiskey while he stretches his legs. Sam spreads the newspaper out on the trunk of the car to read the obituaries, weighing down the corners with pieces of shale, and pretends not to notice or care that it’s only noon and Dean’s already trying to get drunk. It’s just another one of those things.

When they get back on the road, headed for upstate New York, Sam gets behind the wheel because Dean’s hands are shaking, and they still don’t talk about it. About the drinking, the weight loss, the shot nerves, Heaven and Hell, or about the one thing they both are thinking about, following behind them like a rotting corpse tied to the bumper of the Impala, stinking up the highway and every mile along the way. They just don’t; it’s a bad habit to fall into. Knowing that doesn’t change anything.

The next night when they stop, they don’t say a word about it, but by mutual agreement, they get separate rooms. Around 10:15 p.m., the Impala’s engine roars as Dean leaves the motel alone. He doesn’t ask Sam to come with him and doesn’t even tell him where he’s going or why, but he comes back less than an hour later and he’s not by himself.

Sam lays in the center of his bed staring up at a watermark on the ceiling that looks a lot like Felix the Cat while the box-spring of the bed in the next room competes with the girl Dean’s fucking for who can squeal the loudest. At least the box-spring isn’t faking it, Sam thinks as he gets up and turns on the TV, twisting the dial to get the volume up as high as it will go.

In the morning, Sam’s leaning against the passenger door of the car sipping coffee from a Dunkin Doughnuts paper cup while Dean kisses his lady of the night good-bye. When she’s gone, Sam pushes away from the car and goes by Dean into his room.

“What are you--?”

“I hope you at least gave her cab fare,” Sam says. He sets down another cup of coffee on the table and drops a bag of doughnuts beside it. “Here, breakfast.”

“Well come right in, why don’t you?” Dean says, closing the door.

Sam shrugs and drinks the rest of his coffee.

Dean watches him warily for a little while, then goes over to the table and digs in the bag until he comes up with an apple fritter. “Did you eat?” he asks, and takes a big bite of the glazed pastry.

Sam shakes his head no. “Didn’t sleep much either,” he says pointedly.

Dean catches his tone, but only interprets most of it. He grins and takes another bite of his doughnut. “Yeah,” he says. “Sorry about that. These walls, you know. Like paper.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. He watches Dean eat and his eyes fix on his mouth as Dean licks crackled sugar glaze from his lips with honest enjoyment.

He takes another bite and picks up his coffee to sniff it like it might be a trick. He’s done that forever and it’s always seemed odd to Sam, how Dean will smell something before he drinks it no matter who gives it to him, but he’ll chow down on whatever is put in front of him without a second thought.

Sam starts walking toward him, moving slow and almost casual, but Dean must sense some intent in his posture because he tenses and his head comes up. “So, hey, thanks for breakfast,” he says, taking an involuntary step backward as Sam moves into his personal space. “We should try to get on the road by--”

Sam crowds him back against the wall by the table and crushes his mouth to Dean’s in a bruising kiss. Dean makes a startled sound of protest and tries to jerk his head away, but Sam’s hand comes up to cup his cheek and he’s right up to the wall with nowhere to go. Sam nips Dean’s bottom lip and licks into his mouth when he gasps, stroking his tongue over Dean’s with the flavor of doughnut glaze still caught on the back of his teeth. It’s not fairy dust, but it’s just as sweet. All the sweetness with none of the potency. For a moment only Dean yields to the kiss, his body starting to relax against Sam’s, his own tongue sliding over Sam’s a little as though tasting or testing something. It’s a few seconds is all, but Sam moans into the kiss, a shock of real sexual desire singing through him.

Then Dean growls and bites him.

“Shit,” Sam hisses, turning his head and breaking the kiss as he brings his hand up to his mouth where his lip is cracked and bleeding.

Dean shoves him back and twists out of his hold and beyond reach. “Goddamn it, Sam,” he says, breathing harshly around the words.

“You bit me,” Sam says, still not quite believing it.

Dean glares at him wrathfully. “Well you kissed me,” he says. “We‘re even.”

“We‘re--There‘s a difference, you ass,” Sam says.

“Not much of one from where I‘m standing,” Dean says. He folds his arms over his chest and scowls at Sam, his bright eyes alight with anger and something else.

Fear is what it looks like to Sam. “Then why don’t you come over here and let me bite you, too,” Sam says. “Make it even, you dick.”

“Nuh-huh, you don’t get the moral high-ground this time, Sammy,” Dean says, jabbing a finger at him. Sticky pieces of his squished doughnut still cling to his fingertips. He sees it and puts the tips of his first two fingers in his mouth to suck them off. “What the hell was that anyway?”

Sam takes a few deep, steadying breaths, then shrugs and yanks open the door. “Doesn’t matter,” he says, walking out. “We’re not going to talk about it anyway.”

And they don’t. After that, Sam even stops trying to convince Dean that they should.

The next time they stop, Sam leaves the motel and walks down the highway to a bar where he picks a fight with a biker over a game of pool. He’s pissed off and tense from riding three hundred miles in the passenger seat of the Impala with Dean singing along to Bad Company right beside him. He’s tired from lack of sleep and this constant feeling like he’s walking on a frayed tight-rope just waiting for it to snap. He’s sick with shame and want that only compounds his shame and it all comes back full circle to him being pissed off and spoiling for a fight.

But the biker he decks just happens to have a whole lot of his burly biker buddies with him and Sam came to the bar alone. So Sam’s on his back over the pool table with a cue under his throat making it hard for him to breathe and two other guys holding him down when Dean hits the guy strangling Sam over the back of the head with a Jack Daniel’s bottle.

The guy slumps down on Sam, unconscious and limp, and Sam struggles under his weight to the sound of cursing and flesh pounding on flesh. The biker weighs about as much as Sam does even if he is about a half foot shorter, so it takes him a minute, even running on the high of adrenalin to get him off of him.

“Sammy!” Dean calls from where he’s holding off two of the unconscious man’s friends with his empty whiskey bottle in one hand and a knife in the other. “Hey, Sammy! You gonna lay there on your back all night like a bitch or get your ass up and, yanno, assist me?”

Sam struggles underneath the unconscious man and finally shoves him off. He rolls off of Sam and, dead weight heavy, slumps to the floor, hitting his head on the edge of the pool table as he falls. With a growl of annoyance in his throat, Sam hops down from the table and fumbles in the unconscious guy’s pocket for his wallet, which is hooked with a series of ridiculously pointless chains to one of his belt loops. He doesn’t count the money in it, just takes everything, counting anything extra as his due for pain and suffering, then picks up the biker’s dropped pool stick and snaps it across the back of another guy’s head just as he starts to move in on Dean.

“’Bout goddamn time,” Dean says as Sam joins him.

“Yeah, well,” Sam says. He shrugs and tosses the two pieces of the broken cue over his shoulders as he walks by Dean toward the exit. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

Dean eyes the two men closest to him that he’s holding off and keeps backing up toward the door, still not sure. When he sees the jukebox in his peripheral vision, he knows about where he’s at and how far it is to the door, and throws the Jack Daniels bottle at the nearest biker before he turns and runs after Sam.

Sam has made it halfway across the parking lot at an easy, unconcerned stroll when Dean dashes out of the bar, trying to juggle the knife still held in his hand while he tries to find his keys and not slice his belt in the process. Sam glances around to see him coming and also see that no one has bothered to follow them, and reaches out to catch Dean, hooking his arm around his waist and hauling Dean against him as they reach the car. Dean instinctively fights him, still running on the adrenalin of the expected chase, and he ends up shoved against the side of the Impala with Sam’s fingers tight around his wrist, keeping the knife in Dean’s hand away from him.

Dean has to take a few deep breaths before he starts to relax. When he does, he’s shaking with the effects of the adrenalin high and he’s eye to eye with Sam, who is staring intently into his face. Dean swallows and Sam’s gaze flicks to his throat to watch it move with it, then right back to Dean’s eyes.

“Sammy, maybe you aught to let me go before they call the cops and--”

“Why did you follow me?” Sam asks him.

Dean shrugs and has to make himself look away from Sam, his stomach like a net full of butterflies with him holding him like this, touching him this way, staring at him in a way that makes Dean not quite sure whether Sam’s thinking about killing him or fucking him. “I don’t know,” Dean says after a minute. “Thought you might not mind the… company.”

Sam chuffs out an incredulous laugh and suddenly lets him go. “Didn’t think you wanted my company,” Sam says. He takes the keys from the pocket of Dean’s jeans himself and doesn’t even give the knife he’s still holding another look. “I’m driving,” he says, though that’s pretty clear from the way he is already getting behind the wheel.

Dean stands away from the side of the car, his mind suspiciously fuzzy considering how he hadn’t been all that drunk when he left the motel, and he stares down at the knife in his hand. “Ah… okay.”

“Dude, come on, the cops probably are coming,” Sam says. He starts the car and the Impala’s familiar roaring engine makes Dean tense. “And put the fucking knife away before you cut yourself.”

Dean glares at him as he slips the knife back into the sheath on his hip and goes around the trunk of the car. “Whatever, bitch,” he says, getting in. “I’ve been playing with knives since you were shitting your diapers, so what-ev-er.”

Sam rolls his eyes and backs the car out, making Dean grip the door as he sprays gravel. “Whoa, what’s the fucking hurry?” Dean says, gritting his teeth against the desire to yell for Sam to pull the hell over and let him drive.

“The 7-11 down the road closes in fifteen minutes,” Sam says, like that is in any way an excuse.

“So?” Dean demands.

“So… I still want a beer,” he says. He slants his eyes at Dean and his lips quirk. “They probably got condoms and shit like that if you’re not serious about keeping me company. You could still go pick up a girl.”

Dean scowls at him and slumps down in his seat. “What makes you think I don’t got my own?”

Sam snorts and brakes at a red light even though there’s hardly a soul around. “Nothing, I guess,” he says.

“Well, I do,” Dean says.

“Fine,” Sam says easily.

“Fine,” Dean says, feeling really uncomfortable with this topic of conversation all of a sudden. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to let you get me drunk and take advantage of me.”

He means it as a joke because that‘s what Dean does, and it is funny, Sam even laughs. But it’s not funny now for the same reason it would have been funny before and as soon as it’s out of Dean’s mouth, they both feel that. There’s an awareness between them now at the mention of such things that would not have been there before. The awareness comes from knowing how the ridiculousness of the joke doesn’t come from the fact that they have never, but that they have.

Before. There’s a before and an after now and they both think of it that way without needing to discuss it. They see things as before that night and after that night and that’s the map they measure their relationship by now. They’re in the after right now and so far, the after is a pretty frightening and uncertain place.

Sam pulls up to the 7-11 and kills the engine, then turns to Dean. “Dean, I really--”

“I’ll get the beer,” Dean says and gets out of the car.

He doesn’t run, but he doesn’t have to. Sam watches him go into the little store and just lets his head fall back against the back of his seat with a sigh. “Fine,” he mutters.

They go back to the motel and Dean carries the case of beer he bought at the convenience store into Sam’s room without even thinking about it. Without thinking about it, they both sit down on the bed with the case between them and watch a late night showing of Casablanca. Toward the end of the movie, Dean makes Sam laugh by trying to mimic Humphrey Bogart and they’re still not talking about it, but for the first time in days, they’re not thinking about it either. Things almost feel good again, normal again--at least by their standards--and they get drunk together sprawled out right there on the same sagging mattress like brothers.

Sam wakes up the next morning on his back with the sun slanting through the ragged curtains into his eyes and Dean’s face pressed right into the curve between his neck and shoulder. He lays there for a long time, feeling Dean’s breath puff warm and soft along his throat and tries to decide what to do about it. He knows what he wants to do about it, and he’s also pretty sure that if he pressed the issue, Dean wouldn’t put up much of a fight about it, but he doesn’t do anything because it’s way more complicated than that. It can’t ever be just about sex with them and they both know that; that’s what makes it so scary.

“Dean,” Sam says softly, jostling him lightly by jerking his shoulder.

Dean makes a soft whining sound of protest and Sam stills, closing his eyes with a deep breath as that sound echoes in his mind, bringing with it sensory memories that go straight to his dick. For an instant, there is a taste like saline and sugar on his tongue and Dean’s voice whispering filthy things in his ear, Dean’s voice catching and hitching and his lithe body straining under Sam‘s, gripping him tight.

Sam bites down on his bottom lip against a moan of heavy, constricting want. He opens his eyes and shifts, intending to ease out from under Dean and get up; put some distance and at least one more layer of clothes between them. He finds Dean looking back at him, his eyes sharp and aware with that same aching look of desire on his face, and Sam goes still.

“Hey,” Sam says after a minute. He doesn’t know what else to say.

“Hey,” Dean says back. His voice sounds strained and rusted.

“This is so weird,” Sam says, and he doesn’t have to explain that.

Dean’s lips curve in a lazy smirk and he shrugs one shoulder. “Figure you’ve just got this crazy repressed Oedipal complex,” Dean says blandly.

“Dude, you are not my mother,” Sam says, but his own lips quirk in a faint smile.

“And thank God for that,” Dean says. “You’d also be into necrophilia then, wouldn’t you?”

“Uh huh,” Sam says dryly, his eyebrows raised. “And all of this would be because of that fairy dust shit, then?”

“Probably,” Dean says. “Unless you’re trying to say you’ve always had the hots for me, Sammy.”

Dean’s grin is quick and mocking as he pushes up from the bed and rolls over to grab his shoes.

Sam follows him with his eyes, catching himself as he’s admiring the flex of lean muscle under the soft skin of Dean’s really fantastically pretty back. He’s never done that before. He’s seen Dean in every state of undress imaginable over the years and he’s never done that before.

That should probably come as some kind of comfort--that he’s never looked at his brother and found him attractive like that--but it doesn’t. They’re both fairly certain that the dust wasn’t just some magical excuse to do something they’ve always wanted to do anyway. It wasn’t a catalyst for something that was going to happen eventually. It wasn’t the straw that broke the back of the thing or the last shove they needed for what they secretly wanted. Fucking Dean hadn’t been an opportunity, not really, until after the fact.

“I was picking that glittery crap out of my eyes in the mornings, can you believe that?” Dean says as he pulls the laces tight on his shoe and ties it.

“Yeah,” Sam says. “I had some in my ear and it took me two days to get it all out of my hair.”

Dean coughs out a soft laugh and looks at Sam over his shoulder. There’s a moment where his smile is honest and genuinely amused, then it freezes and slowly, like it’s melting, slips away. There’s a high-charged tension of sexual hunger in the way he looks at Sam then and it still surprises them. It still makes their skin prickle with the strangeness of it all even as Dean twists back around and leans over Sam.

“Dean, we need to talk about this, man,” Sam says, his voice soft and unsteady in the confusion of it all.

“No,” Dean says. He stretches over the bed and runs the back of his hand up the side of Sam’s neck, lightly stroking. “It’s like the cat in the box, you know? So we can’t do that.”

“Dean, what--?”

“As long as the cat stays in the box and we don’t peek, it’s not really dead,” Dean says. He drops his head and presses a quick, forceful kiss to Sam’s mouth.

Sam starts to respond and just that quickly, Dean’s gone again, moving across the room to get his coat and find his keys on the table.

“Schrödinger's cat?” Sam says, dazed. He sits up and watches Dean head for the door.

“That’s the one,” Dean says.

Sam frowns at his back as Dean is fumbling with the chain lock and wonders where the hell Dean ever learned about the paradox of Schrödinger's cat. Sometimes he says shit like that, just out of nowhere like everyone should know these things and it’s no big deal, and it strikes Sam how really smart Dean actually is. And how good he is at hiding it.

“Ah… Dean?” Sam says, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck as Dean starts to step outside.

Dean leans back in the room, his hand still on the door, and looks at Sam inquiringly. “Yeah?”

“About the cat…” Sam says.

Dean huffs out an impatient breath and starts to leave again. “It’s a metaphor, analogy or whatever. There’s no cat. I’m gonna take a quick shower before we get--”

“No, I know,” Sam says quickly. “It’s just… It’s not alive either.”

“What?” Dean says, peering back in the room at him without opening the door again.

“Schrödinger's cat,” Sam says. “It’s not dead but it’s not alive either… When it’s in the box.”

Dean holds his gaze for a long, drawn-out minute because he gets it. He knows what Sam’s doing, that he’s just carrying on his metaphor to make his own point. Then Dean rolls his eyes like he doesn’t know what Sam’s talking about because Sam is the biggest geek on the planet and says, “Whatever, dude. Get dressed, I’m hungry.”

He closes the door on whatever Sam might say next and Sam slumps, feeling a little defeated. He sits on the side of the bed with his face in his hands for a little while, then sighs and gets up to go shower.

Weird as it is, as little as they understand it, and as much as they struggle with it, Dean doesn’t pick up anymore girls after that morning and Sam doesn’t go to anymore bars alone. Like taking separate rooms, it’s something that happens through mutual understanding and agreement, and they don’t talk about it.

In New York, they take out the angry spirit of a young woman’s murdered grandmother, then they head back south toward Maryland, following the obituaries. The New York job’s nothing but a standard salt and burn, but in Maryland, Sam almost loses an arm to a spectral dog when Dean misses the shot and has to reload his shotgun with shaking hands. Sam doesn’t say anything about it, but he knows Dean didn’t miss because Dean never misses and his hands weren’t shaking after just because he was drunk or hung-over. In the end, they get the dog and save the day, but it’s been a long, long time since the job made them feel like heroes, so instead of celebrating, they just move on. Better to put something like that with a memory of nearly dying in the rearview mirror and do what they’re best at; don’t talk about it.

In a motel somewhere on their way through Birmingham, Alabama, Dean calls for take-out Chinese food and lays back with his sesame chicken to watch some softcore lesbian porn thing playing on late night Cinemax.

The day before, when they were in Roanoke, Virginia, just for an experiment to see, Sam had flirted with the boy behind the counter at the Chevron. The kid’s eyes had gone shockingly wide, but once he caught on, he flirted right back. Sam had walked out of the gas station looking confused as hell and just shook his head at Dean when he asked how the experiment went.

“Wow, really?” Dean said, getting into the car. “I would swear that kid was gay. I mean, he would not quit staring at me when I was in there.”

Sam nodded. “Yeah, he’s gay, I’m pretty damn sure,” Sam said. He raked a hand through his hair and shook his head in bewilderment. “But I’m still not.”

“I think my tonsils, which you were licking this morning, would beg to differ,” Dean said, but he hadn’t sounded surprised by it.

Because he is not surprised by it. They still are not gay. They aren‘t sure what that makes them, though.

On the TV, the more attractive of the two girls moans and runs her hands up her own body to hold her breasts for the camera. Dean licks sweet oriental sauce from the corner of his mouth and frowns. He still thinks it’s hot, he still thinks the one girl is a little too pretty to be doing shitty porn on late night TV and the other one isn’t pretty enough, but it’s two women rubbing against each other, so it’s still hot and his body and mind are still interested.

Except the parts that aren’t interested because they’re thinking about and wanting Sam. The girls on the TV moan and gasp, but Dean closes his eyes and he’s on that floor again. He’s on his back with Sam’s strong, rough hands holding him, bruising him. Sam’s skin slips under his fingers and Sam’s smell, like new paper and old leather, wraps around him, creeping into his mouth and nose as he pants. There’s a taste like salt in his mouth, but it’s sweet, and there’s an ache in his body that makes every muscle hum with pleasure.

Dean moans and rolls over on the bed, reaching around to set down his food carton and snatch up the ugly flesh colored motel room phone. He feels like a perverted prank caller even as he dials the number for Sam’s room and Sam picks up.

“Dean?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. He rolls onto his stomach again and closes his eyes, lets the cadence of Sam’s voice slide down the line right into his belly.

“It’s past one in the morning, what are you doing?” Sam asks.

“Same thing as you are; not sleeping,” Dean says. He moves his free hand down his side and over his hip, wriggling his fingers to get his hand between the mattress and his body.

Sam is quiet for a minute, then he says, “Are you watching porn?”

Dean grins, realizing he forgot to turn it off before he called Sam and Sam can probably hear it over the phone. He shakes his head and says, “Nope, I’m talking to you. Porn’s just what’s on the TV.”

“So what do you want to talk about?” Sam asks, his voice going a little warm with amusement.

“I don’t know,” Dean says. He’s trying to keep his voice level and even as he finally gets his fingers under the waistband of his jeans and slowly starts to rub. “Just wanted to talk. We… We don’t do that a lot anymore. Last month or so. Have you noticed?”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Sam says.

Dean’s breath catches and he turns his mouth away from the phone a little, trying to hide it. “So talk to me,” he says.

“Okay,” Sam says and maybe it’s just Dean, but he sounds a little suspicious. “It’s really nice weather here for this time of the year. I’m surprised. It’s even a little colder than I expected it to be this far south with--”

“Dude, are you serious?” Dean says, blinking at the phone.

Sam’s quiet again for a minute and Dean starts to think he’s done and he’s going to hang up now, then he sighs. “Dean, what are you doing?” he says. “Hell, what are we doing?”

Dean closes his eyes again and rolls his hips against his hand on the bed, letting that familiar, beloved, warm voice shiver down his spine. “I don’t know,” Dean says roughly. He almost tells Sam what he’s doing right then. Almost opens the door for that conversation, which couldn’t be avoided if his brother knew he was on the phone masturbating to the sound of his voice.

“Dean, this isn’t like the cat in the box, man,” Sam says. “This is different. It doesn’t matter if we know whether it’s alive or dead, it only matters that it’s in the fucking box. We’ve got to talk about this.”

“Maybe we don’t,” Dean says softly, almost pleadingly.

“If we don’t… Fuck, Dean, this could break us, you know? And that scares me. After everything, does this really matter anymore?” Sam says.

There’s a low pulse of sadness now in the pit of Dean’s stomach right beside the hollow rise of his orgasm and he bites his bottom lip on a moan. The sound that escapes is soft but unmistakably sexual anyway.

“Dean, are you jerking off?” Sam says, startled and close to laughter at the realization.

Dean huffs out a breathless laugh. “I might be,” he says.

Sam doesn’t say anything for a little while, then he says, “Do you want me to come over?”

The invitation and what it means is pretty clear and that line between what they’ve been doing and what they’re not doing cracks a little more at the offer. Dean rests his forehead on the pillow and moans without trying to mask it this time. On the other end of the line, Sam catches his breath at the sound.

“I’m coming over,” Sam says.

“No,” Dean says quickly, his voice cracking on the single word. The wrong word because every bright orgasmic cell in his body is screaming Yes.

“Alright,” Sam says.

He sounds disappointed and Dean’s nearly writhing on the bed, grinding his hips against his stroking hand, with the words that would bring Sam running to him right there on the tip of his tongue. Then he comes and cries out softly as the pleasure of it washes over him. There’s a sting of dissatisfaction mixed with the pleasure because it’s not what he really wanted, but it’s enough. For now, it’ll do.

“G’night, Sammy,” Dean murmurs into the phone.

“Good night, Dean,” Sam says, and he hangs up first.

Dean frowns sleepily at the phone and reaches over to put it back in the cradle. He’s loose and content with spent pleasure and not even remotely interested in the TV anymore, so he rolls over to find the remote control, intending to cut off the lesbians mid-coitus.

Castiel is standing at the foot of the bed, watching him with his head cocked slightly to one side.

Dean scrambles off the side of the bed, turning his back on the angel while he re-fastens his pants. “You have got the worst timing,” he says. “And seriously, you have got to start knocking on the door and shit because this is just rude.”

Castiel blinks at him calmly and looks around the room. “I did not wish to interrupt you,” he says.

Dean turns back to him, scowling and really uncomfortable now that his pants have come in them. He’s okay with pretending this is a little bit Castiel’s fault. “So instead you stand there at the foot of the bed like a creepy ass stalker and watch?” he says. “That was a private… conversation.”

“You were discussing the weather with Sam,” Castiel says. “I fail to see how that is a private conversation.”

“I…” Dean hesitates, remembering that Sam had been the only one talking about the weather, then he glares at Castiel. “What are you doing here?”

“I believe this is what you call ‘checking in’,” Castiel says. He frowns thoughtfully. “Or perhaps that was ‘checking up’?”

“Either/or,” Dean says, still frowning at him. “Did you hear the rest of that,” he asks, gesturing at the phone.

“Yes, though I don’t think I really understood it,” Castiel says. “Sam sounds like he is very concerned about some cat trapped in a box and this is serious enough that it could… break you? Though I understood perfectly what he meant by ‘jerking off’.”

“You…” Dean stares at him. “Wait, you do?”

Castiel gives him a patient look and smiles faintly. “Yes,” he says. “Though as I understand it, every generation believes it’s something new they have invented themselves.”

Dean watches him in silence for a minute, but Castiel just watches him back calmly and finally Dean huffs out a breath and says, “And the fact that I was doing it because of my little brother doesn’t bother you at all?”

Castiel blinks back at him in confusion. “Why would it?”

“Why… Because it’s incest and it’s sick,” Dean says.

“You were not touching, so technically it is not incest,” Castiel says. “It’s incestuous.”

“Yeah, except that was more like a quickie follow-up,” Dean says.

“I don’t understand you,” Castiel says.

“I mean we actually did the deed, just not this time,” Dean says.

“Oh,” Castiel says. “Well, that’s different then.”

“Yeah, I thought it might be,” Dean says.

“I’m very glad I did not interrupt you that time,” Castiel says.

Dean coughs out a laugh and sits down on the side of the bed with a shake of his head. “You really don’t care, do you?” he says.

“As I’ve already said, why would I?” Castiel says.

Dean looks up at him, surprised. “Well, for one thing, we’re brothers--you know, related?” Dean says, watching Castiel for a reaction. “For another, we’re brothers--as in two guys. Doesn’t Heaven really frown upon that kind of thing?”

Castiel eyes him thoughtfully for a minute, then smiles a little, almost a smirk. “Heaven frowns upon nearly everything either of you do right now, I don’t think this one thing is going to make much difference,” he says.

“But it’s right there in the bible like a hundred times how--”

“Six times,“ Castiel says, instantly correcting him. “In the time it speaks of when it speaks of that, the continuation of the species of man was very important and not certain. Incest between male and female relations was--and still is--harmful to the race. It breeds mutations. Sexual relations between men or between women meant no children were born of the union. That is not very important anymore. I believe your planet is currently overpopulated--and increasing.”

“Ah… Cas, you did not just give me the green light to fuck my brother,” Dean says, feeling like his eyes want to cross from all the implications of what Castiel just said--and the fact that Castiel said it.

“No, I did not,” Castiel says.

“But you’re not saying I can’t,” Dean says, watching him with suspicion.

Castiel’s faint smile widens ever so slightly. “That is the beauty of free will.”

“Which, according to that dickhead, Michael, we do not have,” Dean says.

“Precisely,” Castiel says.

Castiel is turning to look at the TV as the phone on the table by the bed rings and Dean picks it up.

“What are you doing?” Sam says on the other end.

“Um… right now?” Dean says.

Castiel frowns and tilts his head to peer at the screen better.

“Yeah, right now,” Sam says impatiently.

“Watching Cas watch lesbo porn on my TV,” Dean says, grinning at the perplexed look on Castiel’s face. “I don’t think he gets it.”

“What’s to get?” Sam says.

Dean shrugs, forgetting that Sam can’t see him, and says, “So what do you want?”

“That’s a pretty dumb question,” Sam says.

Dean tears his attention away from Castiel, who’s lost interest in the movie itself and is now playing with the tuning dial so that it looks like twin Smurfettes writhing on the TV, and focuses on Sam’s voice in his ear. “Oh yeah?” he says. “Why’s that?”

“Tell the angel to leave, I’m coming over there,” Sam says.

“No, Sam wait--”

“Is it important?” Sam asks.

Dean thinks about that and still isn’t sure what it means. “What?”

“The reason he’s over there, is it important?” Sam says.

“Uh… I don’t think so,” Dean says. “Hey, Cas?”

“Yes?” Castiel says, turning his attention away from the tuning dial to look at him.

“Is… Um. Sam wants to know why you’re here,” Dean says.

“Checking,” Castiel says. “In and up, I thought I already told you.”

“He says--”

“I heard him,” Sam says. “I’m coming over.”

“Wait, I--” The dial tone rings in his ear and Dean curses. “How did you even find us?” he demands of Castiel when he puts the phone back in the cradle.

“I followed you,” Castiel says. He frowns at the TV and pokes a button randomly. The screen flicks from the lesbian porn to Tom & Jerry, the quick switch-over making Castiel blink rapidly.

“Followed us from where?” Dean asked.

“From Tennessee,” Castiel says. He smiles a little at the cartoon cat and mouse on the TV and steps back to watch it. “Before that, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York--”

“Alright, I get it,” Dean says.

“What is an ‘accent,’ by the way?” Castiel says, glancing at Dean over his shoulder. “A very strange woman with dark skin and gold teeth told me that I have one.”

“Lack of one is more like it,” Dean says. “Just the way you talk, that’s all it means.”

“I speak no differently than you do,” Castiel says, puzzled.

Dean snorts and shakes his head. “Yeah, you do.”

There’s a knock on the door and Dean goes very still, his eyes darting to it. “Ah… shit. Cas, you’re gonna have to go, man. That’s--”

But Castiel is already gone when he looks around for him. Dean sighs and goes over to the door, but he doesn’t open it. “Sam, this isn’t a good idea. Go back to bed and sleep it off,” he says through the door.

Sam laughs softly and it sounds a little smothered, like his face is close to the door. “I’m not drunk, Dean,” he says.

“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” Dean says, skin crawling with Sam’s nearness. “Christ, this is so… so weird.”

“Dean, I’ll pick the lock,” Sam says.

“They’re using cards now, not keys. Go ahead,” Dean challenges him automatically.

“I’ll kick the door in,” Sam threatens.

“You will not,” Dean says, supremely confident in this.

“I’ve kicked in doors for less,” Sam says.

Dean scowls at the door and says nothing, torn. He both wants to let him in and desperately does not want to let him in. He knows why Sam’s there and what will likely happen if he opens the door to him now, and he wants it. He’d be lying to himself to say he didn’t, but he also does not want it because it changes everything.

“Dean,” Sam says, voice warning. “Open the damn door.”

“Why?” Dean says, and sure, he’s buying time, but so what. “We’re not talking about it, Sam.”

“I’m done trying to make you talk about it, just open the door, man,” Sam says tiredly.

And it’s that, the sound of rough exhaustion running through his voice, that has Dean lifting his hand to grab the knob and twist it. He’s tired, too. “Fine,” he says. “But Sam--”

Sam walks into the room once the door‘s open, grabs him, and pulls Dean against him. “Shut up, Dean,” he says and he kisses him before Dean can stop him or avoid it.

Dean immediately tenses against Sam, a hand flat on his chest to push him back that he never puts any force behind, a moan humming in their mouths as all of his tension and resistance just seems to fall to the pit of his stomach. He finally tilts his head back enough to break the kiss, panting. When Sam leans over him, trying to reach his mouth again, Dean puts his hand up to his mouth, blocking him and holding him back.

“What?” Sam says, voice muffled against Dean’s hand.

Dean huffs out a soft laugh at that and shakes his head. “I’m not gay,” he says.

Sam rolls his eyes. “I’m not gay either,” he says. He nuzzles Dean’s hand out of his way and catches his bottom lip with a sucking nibble as Dean once more jerks his head back. “Dean.”

Dean laughs at the strain of frustration in Sam’s voice. “The door,” he says. “Close it.”

Sam kicks the door closed with his heel, the sound of it slamming back into the frame like a gunshot. “There. Happy now?” he says.

“Yeah, sure,” Dean says.

He may not be entirely happy about it one way or the other, but he does finally seem to be on board. He starts to tug at the buttons of Sam’s shirt, but his hands are shaking and at last he just grabs it and pulls it up Sam’s chest. Sam takes it from him as Dean’s pulling the shirt over his arms and throws it aside.

Sam catches sight of the TV over Dean’s shoulder as he’s walking him backward to the bed and pauses. “I thought you were watching lesbian porn,” he says.

Dean blinks at him, then twists around to see what the hell he’s talking about. Tom is still chasing Jerry through the cartoon house. “Cas changed it,” he says, turning back to fumble with Sam’s belt buckle.

Sam looks away from the cartoon to watch Dean’s slim, shaking fingers on his belt. “Why are they blue?”

“Dude, what difference does it make?” Dean says impatiently. He gets Sam’s belt open, tugging to get the tongue free of the buckle, and is a little surprised when Sam nudges him and the backs of his knees hit the bed, making him fall.

“None,” Sam says, looking down at him, his hand idly fingering the flap of his belt.

He watches Dean laying there, runs his eyes over him, and Dean’s breath catches at the predatory gleam in Sam’s eyes. As much as he might wish he could deny it, his stomach clenches in a fluttering, excited way, and he wants so bad it’s nearly painful. This time it’s all them and they both know it. The awareness of that lays there with Dean on the mattress, it’s standing right there beside Sam, whispering in his ear. They look at each other and there is still time to put a stop to this, to change their minds and put their clothes back on, but that knowledge rests right there beside the need. It’s keeping company with the knowledge that they won’t do that. They’ve come this far and they want what they want anyway.

Still watching Dean, like he half expects him to hop off the bed and bolt for the door anyway, Sam lifts one leg to put his foot on the side of the bed right there in front of Dean and quickly plucks at the laces of his boot until he gets it untied and off. Dean glances that way when Sam tosses it on the floor, then returns his attention to Sam as he does the same with the other boot. There is all the time in the world for him to put a stop to this. He has every chance to run.

Dean licks his lips and swallows, a slight click in his throat because it’s suddenly dry, but he meets Sam’s gaze and he doesn’t move from the bed.

Sam smirks and stands back from the bed to unzip his fly and take his pants off. There is a beating in Dean’s throat from his pulse racing and he can see it, but Dean just waits for him. Sam starts to get onto the bed, then he pauses, thinking. He‘s seen Dean in some fucked up situations and he rarely ever freezes, and never out of fear. If he‘s that scared, truly terrified, he‘ll just run. But he‘s still now.

“Do you want to not do this?” Sam says.

Dean shakes his head.

Sam sighs and starts to get back up, but Dean scowls at him and grabs his arm. “What are you doing?”

“What?” Sam says. “You said no.”

“No, I didn’t,” Dean says.

“You shook your head then,” Sam says.

“Yeah. No I do not want to not do this,” Dean says. He speaks emphatically but softly, like even if he might want to, he still worries someone will know about it. “I want to do this,” he says. He closes his eyes briefly, as though it hurts him to say that a little, but when he opens them again, his expression is almost stubbornly determined.

Sam grins back at him and settles back on his knees on the bed. Dean lays there looking up at him for a minute, his breathing a little more rapid than normal, but not frightened. He suddenly moves, fumbling with his own jeans to get them open and Sam laughs, which gets him a dirty look as Dean gets his pants off and yanks at his shoelaces. Both shoes and jeans hit the floor with a heavy thunk.

As soon as he’s naked and lays back, Sam climbs over him and leans down to kiss Dean’s mouth. Dean tenses up instantly, but more in surprise than anything else. He looks back into Sam’s face and he knows that if he told him no, about this one thing, Sam wouldn’t push it. But Sam wants that, too and Dean knows it because it seems like every time he turns around these days, Sam’s trying to put his tongue in his mouth and the thing is, it bothers Dean because kissing can be so much more intimate in all the wrong ways than sex can. But then it’s them and if they can fuck, they better be able to kiss because once they do this, this is never going to go away.

Dean slides his hand up the side of Sam’s neck, around to the nape and into his hair, fingertips gently pressing to bring him back down. Sam’s eyebrows lift in a curious way and Dean smiles to see that expression on his face here and now.

“This is so weird, you know?” Sam says, but he’s smiling back as he leans into the press of Dean’s hand.

“Yeah,” Dean says. He lifts his head just enough to catch Sam’s mouth with his own and pulls him down on him, and sure it’s weird, but it’s not that weird.

Sam pulls out of the kiss, drawing Dean’s full bottom lip through his teeth as he leans back, and Dean growls at him and pulls his hair to make him stop. “I jerked off when I was on the phone,” he confesses, panting lightly.

Sam laughs softly and shrugs. “I know,” he says. “You still smell like sex.”

Sam twists around and leans over the bed to snatch up his pants from the floor. He fumbles around in the pockets looking for something and Dean lifts his head to watch him. “What are you doing?”

“Lube,” Sam says. He finds the tube of it and makes a triumphant sound in his throat as he holds it up. “I bought it at the convenience store down the street.”

“You did, huh?” Dean says. “What, were you planning this?”

“Nope, planned to use it for beating off,” Sam says and Dean can’t tell if he’s joking or not. “But this is better. And hey, it smells like cinnamon candy.”

Dean chuffs out a soft, mocking sound at that, but he watches with keen interest when Sam flips the top open and squeezes some of it out onto his first two fingers. He smears it over his fingers with his thumb and his eyes go to Dean’s face, searching.

“How do you want to do it this time?” Sam asks him. “Do you want to… you know?”

Dean props himself up on one elbow and catches the back of Sam’s neck to pull his face down close to him. “Do you want me to fuck you, Sammy?” he asks, murmuring against his ear.

Dean lets his hand stoke down Sam’s back, along his spine, and Sam shivers, but he turns his head to nudge Dean back and kiss his mouth quickly. “No,” he says. He’s thought about it, though, and the idea isn’t repulsive to him so much as a little frightening because before sex with Dean became an issue, the idea of being penetrated had never held any appeal for him. “No. I don’t think… Maybe later if you want to, but I want to fuck you. No magic this time.”

“Then that’s how we’re gonna do it,” Dean says.

Sam smiles at him. “Yeah?”

That smile is so, so Sam. It’s every bit his little brother and he hasn’t seen much of that smile in a long time. Too long. It has Dean hesitating, the wrongness of it all suddenly like a cut in his belly, but then he leans back in and kisses Sam’s mouth, drawing him into it, deepening it.

They’ve come a long way and they aren’t the same people they once were. Maybe what they’re doing is a sin and maybe they won’t be forgiven for it, but maybe it just doesn’t matter like it would have once.

And maybe they need to stop over thinking it because it’s just sex and it’s not a big deal.

“It’s still kind of a big deal,” Sam says and Dean realizes he said what he was thinking aloud.

“I know,” Dean says.

Sam eyes him thoughtfully, then shrugs and shoves Dean back down on the bed. “Okay,” he says. He lowers his head to nuzzle under Dean’s chin, along his jaw to his ear. “Don’t forget to relax,” he says.

Dean’s eyes go wide and he tenses up immediately as Sam starts to press a finger into him. “What? No foreplay?” he says, and he’s going for humorous, but he’s not really amused either.

“Ah… well,” Sam says. He twists his finger and Dean lets out a huff of breath, forcing his body to relax and take it. “Well, not really. I mean… Shit, I don’t know. This last week’s been nothing but a lot of foreplay.”

Dean has time to think that only they could argue like brothers and still do something like this without laughing or being sick. Which is just a bit fucked up. “Sam--”

Sam hooks his finger against Dean’s prostate and rubs and Dean’s hips jerk, lifting for Sam, as he presses with his finger, and Dean’s mouth falls open on a gasp. Sam watches him with a thrill of desire so deep and sharp that it has him trembling, his breath coming a little faster as he continues to stroke his finger over that spot and Dean moans, rolling his hips up into it.

“You are… amazingly responsive,” Sam says. His tone is comically observant even if his breath does hitch and his heart is racing.

Dean chokes out a laugh and opens his eyes to look back at him. “Thanks,” he says. “I think.”

“It’s a compliment,” Sam assures him. He pushes his second finger into Dean’s ass with the first and works them both over his prostate, slow dragging strokes that make Dean moan and pant, his hands going to the bed to grab at the covers. “I thought it was the fairy dust,” Sam says breathlessly.

Dean bites his bottom lip, whimpering and moaning around it, and releases the bedcovers to snatch at Sam, catching his arm, then his hip to pull at him. “Sam,” he says, panting it. “Sammy.”

“What?” Sam says. He twists his fingers as he pushes them deep and Dean bucks, fingers digging into Sam’s skin, and he curses around his hitching breath. “You’re the one who wanted foreplay.”

Dean bares his teeth at him briefly, then wraps both arms around Sam’s waist and throws his weight to the side, rolling them. If Sam were braced for it, he never could have moved him, but Dean catches him by surprise and Sam falls off him onto his side with a grunt.

Sam instantly pushes himself up on his elbows and turns to frown at Dean, but Dean’s right there against his side, his hands petting over Sam’s stomach, down his thighs. Sam turns to him and reaches out, only hesitating for a moment before he cups Dean’s hip in his hand, fingers pressing into the flesh of his ass as he pulls him closer. Dean goes to him willingly, not resisting it anymore, and Sam is nearly stunned by this. He’s stunned by all of it, but he’s completely floored by Dean’s responsive, needy behavior.

Stunned and completely turned on.

He pulls Dean tight against him and kisses him, quick, hungry, nipping kisses that trail along his jaw to his mouth, and Dean gasps and pants, trying to catch his breath around it as Sam begins to move. He rocks against Dean, getting a little friction between them as their cocks are pressed between their bodies, but it’s nowhere near enough and not even close to all that they want. Still pushing his hips against Dean’s, Sam starts to move over him again, but Dean shoves him gently back.

Sam makes a low sound of frustration. “Dean, what--?”

Dean rolls away from him onto his side and squirms back against him, pushing his ass back against Sam’s belly. “You’re the smart one, Sammy. I’m sure you can figure it out,” Dean says, looking at him over his shoulder.

There is a kind of cautious awareness in the way Dean watches him and Sam tries to figure that out even as he moves up against Dean’s back and kisses his shoulder. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he says.

Dean smirks at him. “Damn right, you’re not,” he says. He turns away to pat at the covers, searching for the tube of lube. “Where the hell did you drop that candy smelling crap?”

Sam shakes his head, still kissing and nipping along Dean’s shoulders. His skin jumps under Sam’s mouth and he smiles. “I don’t know. Somewhere.”

Dean finds it under one of the pillows and reaches behind himself to push it at Sam. “Use it,” he says urgently. “Sam, take it. Put some on.”

Sam takes the tube, but he doesn’t stop licking and lightly biting along Dean’s back as he fingers it open. Dean rolls his head against his shoulder, the warmth of Sam’s breath and the little pinches of his teeth making him shiver.

“Look, are you gonna fuck me or are you gonna eat me?” Dean says, reaching back again to shove Sam lightly.

Sam barks out a surprised laugh into Dean’s skin and Dean smiles in response to his amusement. “Impatient,” Sam whispers to him, chiding.

“Goddamn right I am, hurry up,” Dean says, but now he’s grinning and this is better. This lightness between them makes everything a little bit better. A little easier. This is all still them, it’s just them with sex now thrown in.

Sam squeezes lube onto his fingers and the room suddenly smells strongly of cinnamon. It smells like cinnamon bear candies and there are a few childhood memories associated with that smell, but that’s okay. They’re mostly good memories.

Sam kisses the back of Dean’s neck as he spreads the sweet smelling lube over his cock. When Dean turns his head to kiss him instead, Sam kisses him back, smiling softly into it. “You have a pretty back,” he murmurs.

Dean raises a brow at him. “You’re just flowing over with compliments, aren’t you?”

“It’s true,” Sam says. He nudges Dean’s shoulder with his nose and mouth, then puts his arm around his waist to hold him as he moves between his legs. “Open your legs,” he urges.

Dean tenses with acute desire at the warmth of Sam’s whispering breath against the back of his neck, feeling debauched and intensely vulnerable, but he spreads his legs for him and when Sam starts to push inside, he lifts the one and hooks his foot over the back of Sam’s calf. It’s easier like that and Sam sinks into him deep, his breath quickening when Dean‘s body instantly contracts around his cock. Dean makes a low, keening sound in his throat and shudders, biting at his lips to keep from moaning at the uncomfortable sensation of his muscles reluctantly stretching around Sam’s dick inside him. Sam hears the strain in the whine of his voice anyway and nuzzles him, panting into the back of Dean’s neck where the fine hair there ruffles and tickles his face.

Dean rolls his hips back, shivering at the strange sliding feeling inside him, and Sam wraps his arms around his waist and thrusts back into him. Dean chokes on a moan of surprise and stops, but Sam’s already moving, holding Dean tight against his chest as he fucks him. Dean’s breath hitches and he shivers, rocking back into Sam’s hard, deep thrusts, trying to find a rhythm he can keep up with.

Sam runs one hand down Dean’s waist, over his hip to hold his thigh, arm hooked under Dean’s leg to hold it up, hold him open. He’s panting into the flesh of Dean’s shoulder when Dean reaches back and grabs Sam’s hip, pulling him hard against him.

“You’re not going to last long,” Dean murmurs, turning his head to find Sam’s face right there. He licks his mouth and works his hips back, moaning into his mouth when Sam kisses him. “You won’t. Not… like that.”

“God no,” Sam agrees. His cock strokes over Dean’s prostate and Dean reacts like he’s been shocked, jerking against him and crying out. Sam takes his hip in his hand and holds Dean in place, pulls back on his hip as he thrusts into him, and Dean’s hitching breath turns into moans and hitching cries. “Maybe you won’t either,” Sam says.

Dean laughs brokenly and shakes his head, then bites back a pleasured moan. “Maybe I will,” he manages.

Sam rocks his hips up as he thrusts and pulls Dean down on him, taking his breath. He laughs breathlessly and mouths kisses up Dean’s neck to his ear. “Will not,” he says. He licks the back of Dean’s ear and flicks the lobe with his tongue. “Touch yourself,” he whispers.

Dean shakes his head no but he releases Sam to wrap his hand around his own cock anyway, squeezing lightly when Sam thrusts into him, slackening his grip when he withdraws. It has waves of pleasure building to a pulsing, nearly painful crest inside him and Dean’s breath comes in soft, hitching cries.

Sam watches him over Dean’s shoulder and bites little bruises into the back of his arm, love bites that make Dean’s skin twitch. “You are so… beautiful. How the hell did I never notice before?” Sam asks him.

Dean can’t answer, his jaw is clenched, sounds of pleasure humming in his throat, but he doesn’t know what he would say even if he could. Sam’s been beautiful to him for years, but never, ever like this. Not in this way and never quite as beautiful as he is now, all naked, golden skin stretched over sleek muscles, glittery with sweat, smelling and feeling, no matter where he touches or looks, like the best sin Dean’s ever committed. In a moment of stupidity, he opens his mouth to say something along these lines, but then everything those pulsing waves of pleasure promised him breaks somewhere inside him between his belly and the ends of his fingers. His orgasm is like the snap of breaking glass and his back bows, intense pleasure ripping a shout from him.

Sam smiles with his face in the side of Dean’s neck, kissing and licking at him as his pleasured cries fade to whimpers and moans. The sounds are in Sam’s mouth as Sam fucks him through it, fucks him until every shaking bit of pleasure has slipped away, and Dean moans and twitches against him. As he watches him, Dean raises his hand from his cock and licks his own come from his palm and that’s it. Sam closes his eyes on the sight and rests his forehead against Dean’s back, but he sees that in his mind anyway. Dean’s hands, wide of palm, long-fingered, a little gunpowder under his nails that never washes away and his tongue sliding flat over that hand, slick come that Sam forced out of him in his mouth, being lapped up. It’s filthy and disgusting, but erotic as hell and Sam comes inside him thinking about it.

Sam stays that way for a while and doesn’t withdraw from Dean’s body until his cock goes soft. When he does move, he just shifts his hips back and settles right back against Dean’s back. He waits for Dean to push him away, to throw his clothes at him and make him leave, but Dean just lays there with his back to him, his breath calm and easy.

“Do you want me to leave?” Sam finally asks him.

“Nuh-uh, I want you to shhh,” Dean mutters. “I’m sleeping.”

“No you’re not,” Sam says instantly.

“Well, I was trying,” Dean says.

“Just like that?” Sam says.

Dean sighs and looks at him over his shoulder. “Would you like a sonnet, Sammy?” he says. “Flowers? Candy? Pillow talk?”

“Ah… But, you… we are dirty. We’re like… nasty. We should at least shower or something,” Sam says.

Dean lays his head back down with a meh sound of dismissal. “Bed’s already nasty. The whole thing is like this great big wet spot. So just fucking go to sleep.”

Sam lays back down and stares at the little bruises he made with his teeth on Dean’s back. There’s a hickey on his left shoulder and spots that would fit Sam’s fingers perfectly if he pressed them there. “This is so weird,” he mumbles.

Dean snorts out a soft laugh and closes his eyes. “Go to sleep, Sam.”

“Well, it is,” Sam says.

“Dude, don’t even start that shit again, okay?” Dean says. “Who the fuck came over and forced their way into whose room, huh?”

Sam makes an inarticulate grumbling sound under his breath.

“Excuse me, what? Didn’t quite catch that,” Dean says.

“Nothing. I said I was just saying,” Sam says.

“Yeah, well don’t,” Dean says. He snatches up a pillow and throws it over his shoulder at Sam. “And next time I’m on top, bitch.”

Sam takes the pillow away from his face and shifts around to put it under his head. He puts his hand out and pets his fingers down Dean’s back. Dean catches his breath at the touch and Sam feels it against his hand when he tenses with this new, strange awareness. “Jerk,” he mumbles, then closes his eyes.

They sleep through the night like that, curled up together in exhausted stillness. In the morning, around 11:00 a.m., housekeeping bangs on the door and Dean answers it wearing nothing but the bed sheet, which is obviously soiled and impossibly wrinkled. He’s half asleep, bleary-eyed, his hair, though short, still managing to look tousled, and there are bite marks and hickeys along the side of his neck and the slope of his shoulder.

Sam watches from the bed as the housekeeper stammers and tells Dean he has to check out. Dean gives her a sleepy smile, says they’ll be right out, and closes the door in her face as she’s trying to peer around his shoulder.

“What are you looking at?” Dean says when he turns back around.

“Nothing,” Sam says.

Dean yawns and crawls back on the bed.

“Ah… Dean, we’ve got to go,” Sam says, gently prodding his arm.

Dean groans in protest and opens one eye to glare at him. It’s pretty hard to glare with just one eye though so he gives it up and sits back up. “I’m getting too old for this shit,” he mutters.

Sam stares at him as he gets up from the bed again, leaving the sheet this time, and heads for the bathroom. It takes him a second to register what Dean’s said and when he does, he feels like weirdo for ogling him. “You’re not that old,” he says.

Dean pauses outside the bathroom and looks at Sam with raised eyebrows. He notes the faint flush of embarrassment to Sam’s skin and smirks, though he flushes a little himself because it’s going to take more than one or two rounds of sex with his brother before he really feels comfortable about it being his brother.

Still, he can‘t help feeling a little smug about it all, too, especially when Sam‘s trying really hard not to check him out and failing miserably. “Didn’t hear any complaints from you,” Dean says and goes into the bathroom. “Besides, that’s not what I meant.”

The water in the shower turns on and Sam hears Dean curse as he steps into it, too impatient to wait for it to warm up. “Dean, we should talk about this!” he calls to him.

“Can’t hear you! I’ve got water in my ears!” Dean calls back.

“Right,” Sam mutters. He rolls his eyes and flops back on the bed to wait for his turn in the shower. “Liar.”

After they check out of their rooms, Dean insists they eat because he’s hungry and when Sam doesn’t jump at the idea right away, he gets this cute, pleading look on his face that never, ever used to work on Sam but now he finds he can’t say no to. And he starts to wonder about this because really, when sex is taken out of the equation, they aren’t much different than they ever were and there is no logical reason why he shouldn’t be able to just say no, let’s get out of here and have lunch in the next town instead. Except that’s not what he does and Sam remembers something about formulas and equations; change one single thing, large or small, and everything changes.

“Don’t look at me like that, we’re going,” Sam says, throwing his duffel bag in the back of the Impala. “Jesus, man, you don’t even eat that much. How can you be that hungry this early?”

“It’s noon, Sammy,” Dean says. He walks ahead of him, going toward the diner down the block and Sam catches up with him. “I missed breakfast completely, slept right through it. I don’t know why you’re bitching about this.”

Sam doesn’t say anything, just watches his own feet as he crosses the street with Dean.

“I mean, are you trying to deprive me of nourishment?” Dean says. He yanks the door of the diner open and a little bell over their head tinkles to announce them.

“I wanted to talk,” Sam says, scooting into the booth at the back of the diner.

Dean sits down across from him and gives him a blank look. “We’re talking now,” he says.

Sam understands the underlying tone of just drop it in Dean’s voice, but he chooses to ignore it. “I’m serious, Dean. This changes stuff, you know.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Dean hisses at him. The waitress that stops by their table looks between them and frowns, but Dean gives her one of his practiced, charming smiles and she smiles back.

“Special today is the cheddar cheese burger with your choice of salad, fries, baked potato, or macaroni and cheese. Can I get you anything to drink before you order?” the waitress asks them, pretty and professional, except for the flirtatious way she looks at Dean after she finishes speaking.

“I’ll take the special,” Dean says, smiling back at her. “Fries and a beer. Bud Light if you’ve got it.”

Sam makes a dissatisfied grumbling sound in his throat and orders a grilled chicken sandwich, salad on the side, and a Coke. “Okay, fine, Dean. If this… this changes nothing, then what do we do if it doesn’t work, huh?”

Dean blinks at him. “Why wouldn’t it?”

“Dude,” Sam says, like he should just come right out and call him a moron. “Are you kidding?”

The waitress comes back with their drinks and they both shut up until she’s gone, then Dean leans over the table and says, “Fine, you want to talk about this so bad. No, I’m not kidding.”

“Dean… we just started being okay again. This has bad idea written all over it,” Sam says. “And not just because of the… you know. Incest thing.”

“It’s all about the incest thing, Sammy,” Dean says, and it’s his turn to roll his eyes. “If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be having this stupid “conversation” to begin with.”

“Okay, but that’s my point,” Sam says. “What if it doesn’t work? I mean, you can’t really break up with your brother, you know?”

“Sure you can,” Dean says. He sits back with his beer and the glass the waitress brought him and carefully pours the beer from the bottle into the glass. “We can’t stop being brothers, but we can totally break up. Wow, I can’t believe I just said that.”

Sam chuffs out a soft laugh despite himself and shakes his head. “You’ve thought about this,” he says.

“Yeah, a little,” Dean says. “Kinda hard not to since… you know.”

“And you don’t think we’ll be all fucked up later if we keep on doing… this. Like, if we fight or something?” Sam says.

“Yeah, Sammy, probably. I mean, we are fucked up. We fight. All the time,” Dean says. He drinks his beer and looks like he feels a little better. “But anyway, no. I don’t think it’ll break us or anything like that.”

Sam’s quiet for a long time, staring at his hands on the table in front of him while he thinks. “I’m still not gay, you know,” he says after a while. “I know that’s fucked up, but this doesn’t make me gay. I don’t… like men. I just… um…”

“You just like me. I get it. It’s alright, Sammy. I am fine, I totally understand,” Dean says. Sam looks up at him and Dean grins back at him. “I’m not gay either, so chill. Besides, even if you were, it‘s not an issue.”

Sam frowns at him. “You don’t think that’s a little…?”

“Weird?” Dean finishes for him. “I guess. Except not really. I think maybe sometimes it’s got nothing to do with man, woman, gender, preference, orientation, whatever the hell you want to call it. I think sometimes it’s just who you love.”

“Yeah,” Sam says thoughtfully. “I just never thought of you… you know… like that.”

“Me either,” Dean says. He finishes his beer and sets the bottle with the glass on the side of the table. “And now I do. To me, that’s the weird part.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees.

Dean picks up the napkin his beer had been sitting on and laughs. He shows it to Sam and there’s a girl’s name with a number beneath it written in red pen. “Our waitress,” he says.

Sam sighs and sips his Coke.

When the waitress brings them their food, she brings Dean another beer and leans down a little farther over the table than necessary. Not one to ever pass up a good opportunity or freebies, Dean looks down the front of her blouse and smiles to himself.

Sam scowls and stabs through a cherry tomato with his fork without saying anything.

“What?” Dean asks him. He picks up a couple of fries and pokes them into the ketchup as the waitress walks away. “You’re making that pouty face. What?”

“Nothing,” Sam says. He shrugs and picks up half of his sandwich to take a bite.

“My ass,” Dean says. “I still like girls, I thought we just established that.”

Dean picks up his burger and takes a bite, but it’s huge and everything inside it starts to slide out as he bites down. He manages to get a bite and chews while he rearranges his burger and puts it back together. “I can still look and dammit, I will look. Fucking hell, I’m gonna have to eat this monster with a fork.”

“Fine, so look,” Sam says. He finishes half of his sandwich and watches Dean attempt to eat some more of his burger without everything falling out of the bun into his lap. Sam laughs at him and Dean sticks his tongue out at him, the tip of it yellow with mustard. “Gross.”

“Mmmph,” Dean says, chewing with a smug look on his face like he just won some kind of battle with the burger from hell. “It’s awesome, though. And hey, it’s just looking, so calm down, honey.”

“Dude, do not call me honey,” Sam says, a look of disgust on his face that makes Dean laugh.

“Darling?”

“No.”

“Sweetie?”

“God, no.”

“Sugar pie?”

Sam snickers at the way Dean says that with a deep southern drawl, but he shakes his head no.

“Ummmmm… Princess?”

Sam flicks a garbanzo bean at him and Dean swats it away, laughing. “No.

Smiling, Dean leans over the table a little and puts his hand on Sam’s hand around his Coke glass. “How about Baby or Hot Lips?” he says softly, eyes alight with mischief.

“Absolutely not,” Sam says, but he smiles back at him.

Dean runs his index finger back and forth over Sam’s thumb and they stare at each other for a long minute, saying nothing. “Sammy,” Dean says at last.

Sam has to look away from him then, a soft shiver of want running goose bumps along his arm. That annoying baby name, endearment, whatever Dean thinks of it as, has never sounded quite like that. He kind of likes it.

The waitress clears her throat beside the table and they look up at her. “Sorry, I just… um. Here’s the check. I hope you enjoyed your meal,” she says. She puts the check down on the table and bolts.

“Oops,” Sam says, his tone flat and amused. He picks up his Coke and drinks the rest of it, Dean’s hand sliding away from his hand down his arm instead, trailing condensation on his skin. “We scared her away.”

Dean shrugs. He takes his hand back and tries once again to eat his burger. He’s managed to eat half of it and it looks like he’s actually going to attempt to finish it all for a change. “Who cares?” he says, his tongue darting out to lick away some ketchup.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, nasty ass,” Sam says, and throws a napkin at him.

Dean picks it up and it’s the napkin with the waitress’s number on it. He looks at it, then deliberately uses it to wipe his mouth. He balls it up and throws it at Sam’s head, once again sticking his tongue out at him.