Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me."
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

 

Their dad's investigating some haunting in a town nearby. "Sounds like there's a poltergeist for sure," he tells Sam and Dean over canned chili dinner. "Stories of a ghost train, too. If that pans out we'll have a real haunted town job on our hands."

Still, it's nothing worth them all moving up there for, not as long as the ghost train rumor stays just a story. But then John calls back from a payphone, says the sheriff department's got increased strange animal behavior and a body found in the woods. The critters are more than spooked – that's normal for a haunting, of course, which Sam knows all right, Dad doesn't need to tell them.

"Looks like chupacabras," Dad goes on. Dried up, eyes gone, the sort of mutilation they'd come to expect from cattle when the shriveled rat-dogs (as Sam describes them, or as Dean says, 'hellish chihuahuas') attack in rare packs when the game is plentiful.

"Too far north for a chupacabra," Sam says

But Dad says "What else could it be?"

"Dunno, something, but chupacabra doesn't make sense."

Dean grabs the phone. "We'll find out what it is," he says.

"Good boys," says their dad.

Sam sneers, ducking behind his bangs, hating that it still pleases him to hear it.

-

Dad makes the day's drive back and has got a place to stay lined up for all of them after a few calls. It's an old cabin on a lake right up in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountains, not too far from Lake Tahoe actually. Sam's thinking of flashy boats and movie-star cabins half glass and half timber, but then Dad tells them the name of the place.

"Hell Hole Reservoir," he says, and Sam sees Dean pause his gun-cleaning and raise an eyebrow.

"Seriously?" Sam says.

"Well, after Jim and I got rid of the poltergeist in it, the owners suddenly didn't want the cabin any more. Not too eager to sell it, either. Superstitious, but honest folk. This was all years ago. Anyway, they say we're free to use it. They got a gasoline generator and old firewood, if it hasn't rotted, but there's running water."

Sam hates this plan. The town they're in now is tiny, but trading this for the middle of the woods? He hates being isolated, but Dean and Dad are fucking looking forward to it.

Dean gives his job two day's notice. Sam wonders at how he doesn't seem to care about his professional cred. "What if you need a recommendation from the guy?"

"Recommendation? Reference? I'm a hunter, not a mechanic. Man, the garage knew I wasn't sticking around. Mikey said he hated to see me leave and if I ever come back in town and need some work to give him a call, which is better than a recommendation. Recommendation, watchoo talkin' 'bout."

Sam rolls his eyes but laughs a little. He's glad to see the back of this town and the only thing he wants to take with him are some stolen library books.

He'd been up to his neck in the town libraries since high school ended and they'd gone on the road again. Due to his reluctance to go out on long hunting trips – after some faking sick too – Sam's spent some hours being Dad and Dean's research gofer at the local library. Shitty, but he felt free after that to read his own books. He had to catch up, was certain Stanford would be full of kids who'd already read and understood Faulkner and Donne and knew Hemingway by heart and had read at least one thing by Dostoevsky. He was working on that one.

Sam knows he won't ever be back in this town, and the county won't hunt him down to claim the books, so he takes out Lolita, more Dostoevsky, a Faulkner novel collection, This Side of Paradise which he fucking loves even though Amory is sort of an idiot. His obsession with becoming someone but achieving nothing is shallow and, as he reads, Sam swears he's going to do something fucking useful with his life. Useful in a way he wants to be useful. Hunting's not the only useful thing in the world.

-

Two days before they're supposed to leave town, Dean crashes his motorcycle. He's lucky to escape with nothing more than a few cuts and bad bruises, hell he's lucky to escape with his life, but Dean winks when the nurse tells him that, in her and Sam's general direction. Their dad is pissed as hell at Dean, didn't give a shit about the bike but can't believe Dean would drive that recklessly, and Dean smarts at the dressing-down he gets. Sam can't help but agree and his fear is replaced with the dull burn of agreeing with Dad. Dean never takes safety seriously and it's gonna end him one of these days.

Of course, to Dean, the bad news is that the bike itself is destroyed.

"Son of a bitch," Dean says when they go to the tow yard to see the wreck of it. "I fixed that thing up and was gonna make a good sale. Now it's a piece of fucking scrap." He leans on Sam now and then, elbow on his brother's shoulder, and Sam props him up when he's wobbling on his sprained ankle.

Sam almost feels bad for him then, but Sam didn't even have a way to get away from this stupid cabin out in the middle of the woods, and now Dean will suffer the same fate as him. But, hell, he'll probably like it, he'll be bagging monsters constantly and making Sam feel like he's got to pick up the slack.

Summer is monster season, the Winchesters have learned, when things come out of hibernation and the heat drives beasts wild and people into wild beasts. Morbid, but true.

Sam hopes they find nothing at all. Usually he'd count on Dean to distract him in between irritating him with his fanaticism, but Dean's ray of sunshine is a little dimmed too now.

"Man, camping" Dean groans. He's lying on his back on the bed, full of advil for his scrapes and sore spots. Sam's packing his duffel; Dean's is packed, if throwing all his newly clean clothes in mashed in a ball counts as packed.

"This cabin's better than camping. Camping is a pup tent in the rain," their dad says. Dean chuckles. They remember that.

"Sam smelled like wet dog," says Dean.

"Shut up, jerkface, that was you."

"Boys," Dad warns, which shuts them up.

But then Dad gets some statistics and weather graphs in the mail, which Sam tries to ask him about, except their dad just sweeps them away into a bag and says "Change of plans, boys, I've got some stuff to investigate."

Now and then, whatever news he got, whatever plans he was making, no questions would pry it out of him. Omens, he'd say, and Sam would ask what kind of omens, and John would say weather omens. His tone was one that said he had nothing more to tell them on the matter, and while that would never be enough for Sam, he could see Dean nodding, Dean always nodding along, though Sam knew Dean was already bitter about the loss of his bike - just that much more trapped.

Sam misses Dean's bike too, now. He's sure now he could've convinced Dean to let him borrow the thing. Now they're both gonna be stuck, together.

When they're on the road out of town, Dean leans over the back of the seat and asks him if he brought any Vonnegut.

"No," says Sam.

Dean groans.

He's gonna drive Sam crazy.

-

Dean asks if Dad needs his help more than once, which shows he's anxious to not be stuck in a cabin for weeks. Hey, Sam isn't keen on it either. Dad says, "And what, leave Sam? No, Dean."

"Then Sam can come with."

Sam glares at Dean. That's worse. "Thought I was doing important research, right, Dad?" His tone is, as always, dripping with bitter sarcasm. It's toned down a bit now that he sees the imminent possibility of getting dragged out on what he thinks of as the worst kind of hunt: the kind where you're walking all day and sleeping on cold hard ground at night – in the mountains, cold is freezing cold. And you're spending plenty of time hunting in the dark. No, no thanks.

Dad says they'll be fine here and they can cover the chupacabra stuff in the woods, they can't ditch a job they already dug up. They're not kids anymore, they can take care of this with a salted and warded cabin to stay in. There's a paved road a couple miles down, and then within a mile in either direction there's an emergency payphone.

He gives them a roll of quarters. "Don't waste these, these are for calls, understood?"

"Yeah, Dad."

Sam grumbles, "Don't know why we couldn't just find somewhere not in the middle of nowhere. Could do research there."

Dad chews him out. They should be thankful, he says. It's good luck that they've got a place to stay that he barely has to pay for, and it's done honestly, too, no breaking and entering. So no one's going to find them up here, and it'll only be as long as this case lasts, which Sam estimates will be too long, three weeks, a month, something awful and interminable. Dean and him'll be stuck tracking something through the mountain woods.

"I'll still be close by, Sam, don't know why you're complaining about time to yourself."

"That's not even close by, you're just going to call us from the road phone"

"No, Sam, you're my boys and you'll be safe up here. These signs I've found… could be big. And it's killed three, probably five people already. It'll be two, maybe three weeks."

Which, Sam glances at Dean, and Dean looks down, means more like a month.

-

They get there in the early afternoon and scope out the place before John heads off. There are wool blankets in a trunk with plenty of mothballs, and the dry mountain air has kept them in okay condition. The cabin is mostly waterproof - there's a place where the roof is a bit crumbled through, nests here and there, so Dean boosts Sam up there on his shoulders while Sam grabs the nests. They're empty but Sam's still careful as he can be. Leaving their scent, they know, probably means no birds will return to them, so they set them in a row outside the cabin.

After Dad finishes taping salt down around the windows and doors, they all go find wood to burn in the stove. They carry kindling, take turns chopping the larger logs into woodstove-sized pieces, till they've got a sizeable pile.

"Bout enough wood for a week, more if it don't get too cold at night," Dad says. They check over the rest of their supplies: a twelve-pack of D batteries for their flashlights, which have to last the whole time, so keep 'em dry and don't waste 'em. Tinned milk and a can opener, canned green beans, canned corn, canned beans with weenies, a couple jars of peanut butter, a couple loafs of Wonder Bread that'll never get moldy. A couple sub sandwiches they picked up on their way out, that's a treat that'll last them for the next couple days. Then Dad heads out, leaving them to the chirping otherwise-silent woods.

Sam sighs. Dean goes inside and says "Dibs on the bed!"

There are two cots in the cabin but they're cheap and had rusted, and by now both Sam and Dean have hit six feet, meaning their calves hang half off. The springs stab them in the back – one canvas rips just as soon as Dean opens it up, the other busts loose a couple springs and a hook on the frame when Sam sits on it.

"Seriously?" Sam whines, his ass sunk down on the side where his hips would rest, old sheet from the closet rumpled halfway over the cot frame.

Dean laughs and Sam gives him the stinkeye. "You expect me to sleep like this?"

"I dunno," Dean says. "We can't both take the bed." He looks at it sidelong, as if it too will probably collapse.

It turns out to be a really comfortable king-sized bed, which is unfortunate, because then they actually have to fight over it.

"King is big enough for two people, come on, Dean."

Dean still looks dubious, so Sam kicks the cot frame gently, hoping a spring will pop out. "Sharing a bed with your brother can't be half as bad as these things. It'll close up on you in the night."

"You mean it'll close up on you in the night."

"No way, I will fucking climb in there with you while you're sleeping. I am not sleeping in these death traps."

"Fine! Fine," Dean huffs, and flops back on the bed. "I'll dump you out if you kick me in your sleep. Hmm. Firm mattress," he muses aloud at Sam and the empty cabin. "The best kind of mattress for summer, besides a hammock."

"Sleeping in hammocks sucks too," says Sam, bouncing on the end of the bed. "At least a cot lets you lie flat. Hammocks elevate your legs and are hard to get out of and give you a crick in your neck."

"What kind of hammock are you thinking of? Cut it out, don't break this bed with your ass too."

"Shut up, I didn't break it - the stupid thing was rusted through."

Dean croons mockingly, She's a brick … howwwse! Sam does a backwards somersault at him and aims a kick at his head, growling, and Dean ducks to the side and smacks Sam's leg away.

At least it's a king. And it's summer, so they don't even spend much time sleeping at night. There's a generator and the full five-gallon gas container to give them some hours of light, though it only really gets dark near nine this time of year, and the after-sunset glow lasts outside maybe till ten if they let their eyes adjust. Plenty of firewood – for the woodstove only, John warns, and so do all the Fire Warning: EXTREME signs along the highway all the way up here.

Dean still plans on using the outdoor firepit, he tells Sam, since he and Sam are smart enough, the trees are far enough off, the ground is cleared and dusty for ten, twelve feet around. They're not going to throw a bonfire or anything. That'd be wasteful. No one will know, no one will go walking across the lake and be able to tell a firepit light from an incandescent bulb. They've got a lot of privacy. Fires are better outside. Sam agrees.

-

When they climb in that first night Sam sees Dean slip his knife under his pillow.

"No way, man."

"What?"

"Not in the bed. It's gonna slip and cut you in your sleep."

"Don't be stupid, Sam."

"YOU don't be stupid!"

"It's never happened before!"

Sam eyeballs him.

"What?"

"Oh come on, even I remember that."

"That was from shaving, shut up."

"Can you just put it under the mattress? You can still reach it quick, just, god, don't knife me in your sleep."

Dean grouches but he complies, then tumbles onto the bed, scratching his belly and yawning.

Sam crouches down to tuck his own knife under the edge of the mattress, handle-out. It's a neat sickle he really likes that Dean got him for a birthday. He's taking that one with him to Stanford as a sort of insurance policy – Dean said he'd ward it for him with some of the stuff Sam found in the Assyrian demonology books. He wants to tell Dean a lot of the time what he's planning for the future, how he got into Stanford on a full ride. He wants someone other than his guidance counselor and Pastor Jim to be proud of him. But that's a little kid feeling; he shouldn't need someone to be proud of him. They should be proud of him, and knowing that should be enough.

This secret feels like it's eaten him up sometimes, though. Like he can't appreciate his last summer all the way, he's just so anxious when he remembers he's secretly leaving and he has to keep it a secret until he breaks the news at the eleventh hour.

He's used to falling asleep with these worries on his mind, so it doesn't take him long to succumb to the peaceful darkness of sleep.

-

They wake up in the nearly cold clear dawn light. Sam rolls over and puts his head under his pillow, and feels Dean do the same. He was having a weird dream. The deer were conspiring, putting their heads together and watching him from a distance. Now it makes no sense.

He drifts off till he feels Dean jostle the bed getting out at some point, even though it's still too early to reasonably be up. Maybe he has to pee. Maybe he's making coffee. How was it you made coffee without a coffeemaker again? Sam's used to motels that come with them or have coffee in the lobby, and when they're camping there's no point in coffee, the outdoors wakes you up. This is a strange in between spot though, and he deserves the luxury of coffee. He knows Dean usually craves it.

Damn it, he's awake now. Pulling a blanket over his shoulders, he wanders to the cabin door and opens it to look outside.

There's Dean, facing the lake, jerking off into the rising sun reflected on the water. Sam thought he was pissing at first but the rhythmic jerking arm movement is unmistakable, framed by the golden morning light. It's fucking picturesque.

He thinks of Faulkner and the so-close-it's-raw intimacy of Quentin and Caddy Compson, of Darl when he knows his sister's secret pregnancy just because she doesn't say anything, how this is something Faulkner write about and pin the bizarre intimate intrusion just right. Sam's not intruding, he's just standing there, like Dean is just standing there. Sam knows he came out there to be alone, and yet Dean's standing there in broad daylight, performing for the empty world before him, the tiny house in the distance. He's a distant observer for a moment, but Faulkner has no distant observers, only interested ones, only twisted and selfish ones. He's really not a distant observer, he's Dean's brother. Of all the unwanted intimacy he thinks he's fleeing, now he wants to take advantage of this moment, just because it's here, because he's earned the right by putting up with claustrophobic family all these years.

Thinking about Faulkner haunts him. So he turns away and maybe Dean knows none the wiser.

When Dean comes in, Sam's got coffee in one hand and is rummaging through the closet. Sam keeps his back to him to give him some privacy.

"Look," he says, pointing at two boxes labeled books. "Maybe there's some Vonnegut in there."

"Thank God," Dean says. "No TV and a battery radio with no stations, but at least there's books. Hey, maybe there's sex in some of them."

Sam rolls his eyes as Dean wrestles open the box. Under a couple years' worth of National Geographics there's a stack of romance novels.

"Son of a bitch," Dean says, and Sam cracks up laughing.

"Maybe there's sex in them!" He leans against the wall to hold his stomach.

Dean picks one up. "Yeah, right. These are like PG-13, aren't they?" It's a stroke of luck that Sam's laughing too hard to correct him, which would only start a jag of teasing from Dean, that Sam's read porn for girls.

-

Sam is truly bored with this translating work Dad leaves with him. Akkadian, really? No one knows Akkadian. He spends maybe a total of an hour on it most days when Dean bugs him to by doing his workout indoors. It's gross but Dean says if he works out and Sam does the translating and transcribing, then they just have to spar and they'll be done.

Sam figures he's getting cheated though, since Dean doesn't have to do any of this research crap - "slave labor" he calls it, and Dean rolls his eyes.

After they do all that, Sam takes out his Dostoevsky, and Dean searches through the boxes of warped paperbacks till he finds, miraculously, a copy of Slaughterhouse Five. He flaps it around and the pages crinkle. "This lady had better taste than you, Sam," he says, and Sam tells him to shut up.

Unfortunately the only other non-romance novel is a Tom Clancy one that Dean's read twice and hated both times, so Dean digs through Sam's books.

"Man, there's nothing good here to jerk off to, why the hell would you steal these from the library?" he whines. "I'm serious, all the sex in here is awful. No cable, no Playboys, just National Geographic and fucking Lolita. The Trafalmagorians are my best bet around here, I swear to God," and Sam laughs but Dean still looks disappointed.

"It's literature," Sam says. "The sex scenes aren't about sex."

"That's just unhealthy," Dean says, and Sam shrugs, because it's kinda more interesting that way. More interesting than a stack of skin mags. "Anyway, I'm not gonna read that Lolita shit," Dean says.

"Then read the romance novels, I hear they're pretty raunchy."

"You think I'm some kind of housewife who reads romance novels?" but Sam ignores him, keeps at his Fitzgerald.

"You know, these things do have some good bits," Dean says, paging intently through a book with a long-haired fur-wearing Viking barbarian dipping a peasant girl on it to stare intently into her eyes. "It's better than reading Cosmo for the sex tips, but about the same as Playboy penthouse letters, in terms of the sex. Whoa – hoo, maybe better."

"Whoa there, Dean, can you just… keep that to yourself."

"Whatever, I'm basically pre-screening these for you, I know you're gonna go through them later. This one –" he waves the Viking-covered book, " – this has a pretty nice fantasy twist. I know that gets you going."

"Shut up," says Sam, his face hot now, jabbing his foot out to mock-kick Dean from a ways away.

-

After tramping out as far as they could go all afternoon, and turning back at the midway point, Sam's impressed with how truly out in the middle of nowhere they are. Sam's good with a compass and Dean's good at remembering landmarks, so they get their lay of the place, the hour it takes them to circle the lake, the couple hours it takes to go uphill to the ridge

They find normal animal tracks, some deer, plenty of possum, skunk, raccoon.

"But hardly any squirrels, did you notice?" Dean asks.

"Huh." They're sitting on some stumps near the fire pit, Sam stretching his legs after the long hike. "Not many large birds either. Maybe the population is on a down-swing."

"We're by the water, of course there would be large birds. No, it's probably some creature hunting, driving them out maybe."

"Sure," Sam says.

Dean doesn't offer up any creature ideas and Sam doesn't ask.

"You wanna light a fire here?" Dean asks, and Sam eyes their limited supply under the tiny lean-to roof.

"Let's try the old stuff, see if it'll catch. We shouldn't waste good stuff indoors. We got matches, right?"

"Yeah, and your library books for kindling."

"Fuck off," Sam says, and Dean flips him off, which is standard but annoying.

All day there's been some sound – birds, wind in the trees, background noise. When it gets to dusk, there's a bit more noise; when it gets dark, though, dead silent. Despite the relative calm and mild excitement of the night before, that second night is when Sam starts thinking of the whole situation as creepy.

Sam isn't the sort to get spooked by the woods but when the woods already contains monsters, well.
Sam's anxious about it when it gets too quiet.

The wood is old and the fire barely catches. It only burns two hours from start to finish, with a few rejuvenating attempts in the middle. By then they've had their second sub sandwiches from the cooler – Sam says goodbye to fresh greens and variety for a while – and it's too dark to read, and Sam is ready to pass out.

"I'm turning in," he says, and Dean nods, "mm," staring into the embers.

That night, Sam dreams of reflective eyes, herds of deer wandering towards him while he wants to back away, but he can't move, frozen in place. Sam thinks of deer with round beady black eyes like depthless pools, but these ones are real and the reflected glow flashing here and there comes like someone's shining a light in them. It's the headlight glow you see as you pass in your car on the highway. It's the glance right before impact, or before it leaps over your hood and crashes its hooves through your windshield.

These ones are still far away, but he keeps thinking, they're getting closer. Don't let them get closer. He doesn't know why, but when Dean climbs into bed and Sam becomes partly conscious, he's slightly afraid of them at the same time he realizes it's strange to be afraid of deer.

Dean's hand pats his shoulder briefly, like a blind man's touch in the dark, and it reassures still-mostly-asleep Sam in a way he would never let it while conscious.

-

Sam wants to spend the day reading, but Dean tries to convince him to go out with him into the woods.
Sam doesn't want to.

Dean says, "Well, what the hell are we doing here, then."

Sam snaps at him, "I don't know, so stop bugging me. If you want to go shoot some monsters then go do it."

Dean gives him a hard time – calls him a wimp, a pansy ass, a whiner. "You always have such a shitty attitude about this, Sam."

"Whatever, we've got ages, it's only the second day."

Dean says, "Well then, fight me or call it a day."

Sam looks up at him. Dean's sweating through the pits in his t-shirt. He looks restless as hell. It's a little how Sam feels after the dream last night, but Sam's dealing with his restlessness. He's ignoring it by reading and thinking about Stanford in three more weeks.

Looking at Dean and thinking about Stanford makes Sam kinda feel like shit, like he's getting away with something he's not sure he should.

Dean says, "We could go on a run if you don't wanna fight. Spar, I mean."

Sam blinks. "Yeah, a run." He looks at the lake. "Okay."

So they do, and it gets Sam's mind to shut up for a while, and he can absorb it all – sun, sweat, dry air, pine tree smell, the sound of him and Dean breathing and not much else. When they get back Dean sits down to sharpen his knives, and Sam goes back to being confused about the events of Absalom! Absalom!

Dean wanders off into the mountains by himself after that, and gets back when it starts getting dark. When Dean comes back he wants to go night swimming, but clouds have rolled in, and heat lightning flickers inside them.

"I didn't think they had weather like this in California," Sam says.

"Not that I know. Maybe it's a lake effect."

"Huh." It doesn't make sense to Sam, lake effect or anything. But he likes summer storms, and they both know swimming in a tiny lake with lightning is a terrible idea.

So they lie in bed in the cabin's heat and the strange stuffiness of the charged clouds, blankets kicked off, just in their boxers. Sam lies on his side facing away from Dean. Dean doesn't reach out to touch his shoulder tonight.

"Do you hear howling?" Sam asks. It's distant and strange, a yowling bark. Could be a dog or a wolf, though it's much deeper than a coyote's yip. Yelping.

Dean says, after a few seconds, "I don't hear anything."

"There it is again."

"Can't hear it."

Sam sighs and turns his pillow over to the cool side.

-

The next day when they're sniffing out animal tracks in the midday sun – better to find a chupacabra now than get surprised at night, Dean says; or find a den, Sam says, and Dean nods – they hear something in the woods

"Is that a dog?" Sam asks.

Dean shakes his head.

But then Sam hears it again, and a dog comes from over a hillock, walking right up to them, mouth open and panting.

Sam and Dean stare at it.

"You see any dog tracks?" Dean asks

"No," Sam says, and holds out a hand.

"Careful," Dean says, putting a hand on Sam's shoulder to keep him from approaching the dog. They are hunting, sure, but the dog walks up to Sam and sniffs his hand, then whines.

He's weird looking, red-brown ears and a red tail on a white body. Biggish, sorta like a sheepdog, the ones that are black and white, but with different coloring. He's got regular dark brown doggy eyes.

"He looks normal. And he's thirsty," Sam says, and pours a little of his water into his hand for the dog to lick up. "See, his nose is dry."

"You sure that's not rabies?"

"Come on, Dean, he's not staggering or anything. Look, there's a dent where he had a collar. I think he's lost."

Dean ducks his head to look. "You mean she."

"Oh. She, then."

"So her owners can't be anywhere near, can they? There's nobody out here, Sam. Middle of nowhere?" Dean waves his hand indicating the vast empty mountains Sam's been complaining about for days.

"Maybe she wandered around the lake, or from the road. Maybe someone's backpacking out here and she slipped her collar and ran off. Maybe something we've been hunting scared her." The dog pants serenely, despite Sam's defense.

"All right, all right. Well, shoo!" Dean waves at the dog, who is unfazed. Sam makes a face, which Dean sees and rolls his eyes at. "He's gotta go back where he came from."

"He's lost."

"What are you, the dog whisperer?" Dean sneers. "We can't track anything if we've got this pet hanging out with us."

"Then let's head back."

Dean looks at Sam. Sam makes a face.

Dean picks up a stick from the forest floor, waves it in front of the dog a bit to get her attention. The dog looks at him calmly. "You wanna fetch? Go on, fetch!" Dean throws the stick off where the dog came from.

The dog tracks it with his eyes, then looks back to Dean, then sidles up to Sam. Sam laughs and scratches her ears.

"Well it can't be anyone's dog if it doesn't know fetch," Dean complains, and the dog just looks at him.

Sam is still laughing at Dean.

-

Of course, Sam's the one she follows home.

They step inside and Dean heads to the kitchen for lunch, but the dog stops outside, standing stock still till Sam says, "Come on." Then she steps over the threshold and trots into the kitchen where Sam's holding out a piece of lunchmeat. "Come on," Sam says again, and the dog takes the meat and wolfs it down there on the kitchen floor. Of course, then the dog won't leave.

"Great," says Dean after they try to lead it back into the woods. "This sucks."

"You just don't like dogs," Sam says.

"Damn straight."

"She's not even bugging you!"

"Yeah it is, it's gonna eat all our food."

"Not if we get her dog food."

"You got money?"

"Yeah," says Sam. "I'll see if I can hitch somewhere down there… or I'll go around across the lake and see if it's their dog, or if they've seen it before. Or if they're making a grocery run."

"Yeah, yeah, sure. At least make her sleep outside."

Problem is, the dog just won't budge from in front of the woodstove, no matter how Sam cajoles or nudge it gently.

"Fine," Dean says. "It can stay here."

Sam sees him keeping an eye on the dog all night, as if he's afraid she'll walk up and use him as a fire hydrant or make a mess on the bed. Instead the dog just curls up on the tile in front of the empty woodstove.

-

Dean is already up, again, when Sam gets up. Sam's a teenager still, he gets an excuse – he remembers when Dean would sleep inordinate amounts and he'd be the one Dad had to jostle out of bed. Sam himself used to be worse when he was going through his high school growth spurt, but it seems to have basically stopped. He might have gained an inch last year, not quite another this year. He's about as tall as Dean, which rankles Dean, but Sam's still not as filled out so Dean still beats him at most sparring.

Anyway, Dean's not there in the bed when Sam wakes up, and when Sam sits up the springs squeal and the dog at the hearth lifts its head to look at Sam, alert.

Sam had almost forgotten. It's a weird thing, having the dog there. It's nice. "Hey," he says in soothing tones. The dog doesn't look bothered, though. Sam gets up, and the dog stands from its place by the fire and follows him into the kitchen. Sam grabs some Wonder bread from the bag and puts peanut butter on it, no coffee sitting in the pot today so he foregoes it, and gets himself a cup of water from the open five-gallon jug. He feeds the dog a piece of jerky, which the dog wolfs down at Sam's feet. He waits while Sam pets him as Sam eats his peanut butter sandwich.

When Sam gets up to go outside, he calls "Come on, Regina, let's find Dean." Sam's going to call her Regina, because he's always wanted to call a dog Rex, but she's a queen, not a king. But Regina goes back to the fireplace to lie down again.

"All right," Sam says, and walks outside.

Apparently Dean has a schedule, because he's right there, only a couple yards from the cabin door, with his dick in his hand. He's leaning back in one of the deck chairs in his sunglasses, a book in one hand and the other, in the middle of some intense self-loving.

"Whoa!" Sam says, but Dean just goes "What?"

"What? What do you mean, what, you're kind of out in the open here, Dean. Can you just… put that away." Sam pointedly does not look at Dean's dick.

"Why? You interrupted me."

"You're right in front of the cabin with your dick in your hand. Seriously?" Sam tries to saturate his voice with the annoyance he feels right now.

"The neighbors can't see us, Sammy."

"I can see you!"

"Then don't look at me! Jeez, I'm just over here minding my own business, and you stomp up and tell me to stop whacking it? Who's the perv?"

Sam sees the book Dean's got resting on the chair arm. "You're reading Long Hard Ride?" There's a cowgirl on the front giving the reader a come-hither look, with a stomach-baring cropped western-style shirt and some huge pushed-up breasts.

Dean gives Sam the finger. "Yeah, and you would too – though maybe you won't, I may have got something on it." Dean leers.

Sam makes a gagging noise.

"Anyway, it's not like you've never seen any of this before, hell you've touched -" Dean sort of swallows his remark, and Sam stares blankly at him, not getting it till suddenly he gets it.

Apparently Dean forgot the memo he issued himself years ago, that they did what they did and don't talk about it. Sam knew it was the sort of shame you don't think about or repeat. Touched. What a euphemism. He rolls the word on his tongue still trying to swallow it, then pinches the tip in his teeth and walks back inside.

Sure, Dean's right. But they don't fucking talk about it. It's been years. They've grown out of it, or at least Sam's been counting on that. He's had a serious girlfriend and some real experience under his belt by now. He and Dean don't need any help from each other in that department.

Sam realizes that the hot twist in his gut is more than shame at what Dean brought up. He's kind of turned on now, the thought of jerking off here in the open air where no one could see. He tries to tell himself it's not at the sight of Dean's dick, but the best he can manage is the excuse that responding to something that pornographic is basically Pavlovian in any teenage boy.

-

One day Dean finds a bottle of whiskey in a trunk in a closet, and they decide to get drunk and swim under the light of the three-quarter moon that night. It's not a full moon, they stay in on those nights, reasonably spooked by the noise of the animals and the knowledge that they're not just there for a summer vacation, but a hunt for something deadly out in those very woods. Could be any kind of were-creature out there. It's the responsible move.

They build a small fire in the pit outside and roast some weenies. Dean wishes out loud they had s'mores and Sam says he'd kill for some chocolate. They kick the fire down so the coals are open and let it cool, then Dean pisses on the logs and watches them steam. With the glowing beacon that will stay for a while, they decide to go night swimming.

Their eyes adjust to the dark once they're out on the water, kicking and splashing at each other, and they race to the island. Sam wins because one year they were in a high school with a pool and he had to take PE, so he took swimming, and he manages to do more than compensate for the fact that he sinks like a stone.

"Rematch!" Dean shouts, and Sam laughs. He'll give it to him.

But then as they're starting off on a race around the island, Sam gouges his shin on a rock. "Fuck!" he shouts, rolling over onto his back and drawing his knee up.

Dean shouts back at him, taunting till he sees Sam's stopped, then heads towards him. Sam sticks his leg up on a rock to see the cut. It's dark so the blood there is barely visible, the dark hairs on his shin standing out strong but the red washed out and streaming down his leg, diluted by the water. Sam swipes at it with his hand as Dean comes closer. He holds his hand up to the moonlight and it's clear that what's washed over his shin is blood, all right, dark and shining wet.

"How big's the cut?" Dean asks, reaching for Sam's calf easily without asking. Sam lets him out of instinct and reflex, like a million hunts they've been on where any of them got hurt, and even before that when Sam was a kid it was half the time Dean who looked at his injury and told him whether to man up or let him fix it.

"Not too bad?" Sam guesses. He hisses when Dean touches it, gently. "Hurts like a bitch."

"Yeah, I bet," says Dean, but he doesn't take his hand away or let Sam's calf go.

"Seriously, it's bruised, stop touching it."

"Eh, you've had worse. Climb out and let it dry."

Sam grunts, sighs. They're sobered but not brought down from the buzz of nighttime swimming. He crawls over the rocks up to the pebbly shore, looks for leaves that aren't stinging nettles or poison ivy to put on his shin. It hurts to press it but pressing is what you have to do.

Dean's grabby, trying to do it himself, but Sam swipes him away. "Get off, you're drunk and sloppy and you're gonna make it worse."

"'m not sloppy. Not a sloppy drunk."

Sam laughs, because Dean's face is belligerent and hilarious in this light. "Yeah you are," Sam says, because it's true. "I have seen you so messy."

Dean's face flushes – more blood seen under moonlight – and says "Shut up."

It's charming. Sam is very charmed by Dean right now, irritated and charmed and glad Dean is there to take his mind off the pain.

"Least it wasn't glass," Dean says, leaning back on his heels.

Sam thinks that he wants to see the stretch of Dean out under moonlight instead of just his chest. They're in their underwear right now, wet underwear, which happens to show a lot and cling and do things that Sam would usually be too embarrassed to look at, but they're both kind of drunk tonight and Dean was jerking off right in front of him just a day ago, so he fucking looks, all right?

Dean, heavy-lidded and lounging, more drunk and less focused, looks back.

"You know I learned how to do lifeguard stuff," Sam says. "That swim class I took. They did some lifeguard stuff in it."

"Oh yeah? Like what? How to run down the beach with your pecs jiggling?" Dean cups himself like he's got boobs and Sam groans.

"Like, unconscious tows, or how to keep someone who's struggling from grabbing onto you and pulling you down. Like if they're drowning, they're gonna climb up and force your head under trying to stay afloat."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, so you're supposed to duck down and go underwater. If you pull them down with you they'll let go because they're freaking out and they don't want to drown."

"That's a shitty thing to do."

"No, then you swim around behind them and pin their arms. Or you wait till they're too weak or unconscious and then you just pull them by the hand."

"That's still pretty shitty."

"You'd do it. Knock someone out for their own good, if you had to save them."

"Wouldn't make 'em think they were drowning."

"They're panicking! They don't even know what's going on"

"Whatever. You give any hot chicks mouth to mouth?"

"That's CPR, Dean, we didn't do that."

"That's stupid, you gotta know how to give mouth to mouth."

Dean looks at Sam and Sam feels belligerent and then realizes Dean is looking at him and glares and turns red. That would be stupid. "Gross, you're not teaching me mouth-to-mouth."

Dean smacks him lightly upside the head. Sam sees it coming and ducks. "Course not. You can figure that out on your own, you like being self-taught. You should show me those holds though, that sounds useful."

"Yeah," Sam says, so they swim out again.

Turns out Dean is really good at struggling – figures he'd give Sam a hard time. They end up wrestling a lot in the water more than having a teaching moment, and manage not to actually drown despite the alcohol. Sam can hold Dean the first couple times but eventually Dean starts breaking his holds, and then says they should switch so he can practice. Of course then Sam's too weak from swimming around all night to break Dean's holds.

"No fair," he says. "I've lost blood, I'm in a weakened state." Dean laughs.

"You feeling a little faint, Sammy? Need me to tow you to land?"

"Shut up," Sam says, and clings to Dean's back till Dean dislodges him.

-

When they get back, the dog is waiting for them on the shore. They rarely see it out at night; its eyes are strangely bright. Sam barely had the energy to notice, though. He's been wrestling in the water with Dean all night and he's fucking exhausted. Their underwear is soaked and so are they.

Sam is stumbling laughing right on Dean's heels and Dean is jostling him and they're supporting each other.

"What if I just went to bed now," Sam says.

"In your wet briefs? Gross."

"I dunno where the towels are."

Dean shoves Sam off of him and shakes his own head like he's a dog shedding water before they enter the cabin.

Sam shoves Dean in retaliation, and Dean snaps the elastic of Sam's briefs, and Sam realizes through the soreness of his muscles he's aroused, really physically turned on, half hard and he probably has been for a while now.

But it's dark now that they're inside, and nobody can really see much, just dim outlines. So Sam goes over to the bed, leaning on the foot of it with his hand, groping his way to the far side, his side, the away-from-the-door side. It's half to guide himself in the dark half because he's drunk and unsteady on his feet, but they're both nearly falling down wobbly-legged, it's nothing to be embarrassed about, is it?

He strips off his boxers and then Dean tosses him a shirt – maybe the shirt he was wearing earlier? huh, maybe, being drunk he can't recall.

"There, towel off," Dean says, and Sam snorts and dries off with it before collapsing onto the bed.

Here's his problem, though – he's still half hard and it's been ages since he's done anything about it. Sharing a bed with your brother tends to put a damper on that kind of behavior Sam really prefers to do in private, though it doesn't seem to have stopped Dean lately. Lying on his back hearing Dean shucking off his shorts, rubbing his legs and hair dry, barely able to see the movement in the corner of his eye in the dark, he moves his hand down to cup his dick. He lets it swing up against his stomach, and with his hand he holds it down, keeps it from bobbing around.

Dean grunts, flops down too on Sam's left. The mattress inclines towards the middle then, but Sam doesn't edge away. He's kind of touching himself, all right, and the jostling helps a little too much, and hell, fuck it, he needs to fucking take care of this and they're both gonna pass out in an instant anyway.

His elbow bumps Dean's as he strokes his dick.

"Dude," Dean says.

"Mmf," Sam grunts, something between faking sleep and "so what?" A guy has needs. Dean the outdoor masturbator should understand.

"I can feel your arm moving."

"Shut up," Sam says. The fact is he's exhausted and drunk, so even though this feels so very fucking necessary, and he's kind of burning white hot at any touch, even his own, he needs the pressure like he needed air when Dean was holding him underwater earlier, and with his drunken tired technique he is not exactly blowing his load in thirty seconds. And maybe that's even despite the fact that he's thinking of how Dean would do this and not give a shit who saw, how free and easy this can be, not caring if Dean sees or maybe letting him… God, and the way Dean's body felt against his, all moving muscle and skin, fuck, it's been a while.

"You're drunk," Dean says.

"So?" Sam pants.

"So you're just…"

The slip and fap of Sam fisting his dick sounds in the dead quiet where Dean pauses. Let him hear it for all Sam cares. Not giving a shit is awesome.

"You're not gonna…"

Sam makes a frustrated noise in his throat.

"Shit, come on already," Dean says, and then his hand is on top of Sam's, then sliding under towards Sam's balls to hold him at the base. He pushes Sam's hand away by sliding his own under and up, grip tight and firm, tighter than Sam's but good, wow, fuck, apparently this is what Sam needed. Sam groans and Dean's hand moves steady and hard on him, callous of his thumb rough against the crown of his dick, Dean's breath gusting hot on Sam's shoulder and his arm firm against Sam's naked stomach, shit. Dean's thumb sliding around to rub across the slit, and the squeeze and twist of his technique is more all over the place than precise and efficient, out of sleepiness and whatever it is making Dean bite his lip between his teeth, so close Sam can see it.

Dean's hands feel all over the place and Sam fucking loses it then – "Jesus fucking Christ," he says, body stiffening and arching with his come landing hot on his stomach, definitely hot, he can hear Dean hiss at its touch. Dean's arm over his stomach weighs him down to the mattress, his back damp with sweat wrinkling the sheet as Dean strokes him through it. Maybe Sam's hallucinating but through the roar in his ears he thinks he hears Dean say something mindless like "That's it, there you go."

When Sam stops arching and twitching and making embarrassing drunken noises he swears he doesn't normally make, at the exact moment when he might begin to reflect on the fact that his brother just got him off, like they're kids experimenting again except they are so not, Sam is seven fucking teen and Dean way older than that – that's when Dean takes his hand off Sam, and rolls over and away onto his stomach on his side of the bed.

Sam is still gasping, not having entirely processed what just happened, caught by surprise in a way he hasn't been in a long while. And then he hits sleep like a wall.

-

Sam dreams that night about Dean bending down over him, pinching his nose and sealing his mouth over Sam's airtight. Sam is living underwater and Dean brings him sustenance from the surface. It's not that he's ungrateful, but he'd really like to breathe right now, he's fine now, he can do this on his own.

But Dean's fingers are still hard on the bridge of his nose, his lips are still molded around Sam's lips, not like a kiss but Sam can feel it burning like a brand, wet but not too wet, warm and life-giving and painful.

Dean's not breathing into him, though. Sam's chest is heavy, it's hard to breathe, he's struggling up but the duckweed of the lake wraps around his ankles, his legs, like the lake is a monster trying to pull him down. He looks down but it's Dean, and he yells at Dean to cut it out, what does he think he's doing?

Sam wakes up hot and tangled in the sheets which he'd somehow stolen entirely off Dean's side of the bed. His legs are struggling and kicking to move, and he's ended up with his arm trapped against his chest and down against his stomach, which he's lying on, which is probably why he was struggling to breathe in that dream. He's half hard, in the way that he sometimes is waking up.

It comes back to him now – the cut on his shin throbbing, and the realization that he's sleeping nude, which he never does. The night they spent swimming, the rescue holds and Dean insisting that none of that was any good if you didn't know CPR, mouth breathing and chest compressions that can break your ribs. His gorge rises as he thinks of it, and then his hand brushes against his bare dick and he remembers that Dean jerked him off last night.

Sam untangles himself and sits up, trying to shake the dream from him by shaking his head, rolling his shoulders, like shedding water from his hair and off his back. He can hear Dean pumping water outside.

Sam's hung over and he figures so is Dean. They move about slowly and in relative quiet. The sun is really fucking bright and hot at midday, but the cabin is too stuffy, and it's all too much. Sam wants to say fuck it, and take a dip, but his leg still hurts anyway and swimming might make the queasy feeling in his stomach turn to outright nausea.

He goes and kneels by the edge of the water, trying not to press his cut shin against the ground hard, and ducks his hair just under the surface. He whips it back and gets water all over his face, but it feels good, a relief.

He does it again, and shivers at the cold drops splashing on his bare back and shoulders, dripping down his neck. He feels more awake now.

Dean's still inside or wandered off somewhere, so the deck chair is fucking his.

Sam sits and unzips his shorts, and pulls his dick out. The air on it feels cool, his hand hot, as the blood flows to it. He closes his eyes and thinks of nothing at all.

He's fully hard thinking only of the comfort of the heat, the feel of his own hand on his dick, a good rhythm, when he hears Dean's voice.

"Oh, so it's okay for you to jack off in the open," Dean says.

Sam doesn't even bother opening his eyes. "Shut up," he moans, a little too far gone to have any kind of conversation right now.

"What about the neighbors, Sam?"

Sam opens his eyes to glare at Dean. Dean glares back.

"You're serious? This bugs you?" Sam has slowed down, gone from jacking himself to fondling himself obscenely, and he can see Dean's eyes flicker down to his crotch. "After last night?"

Sam knows he's being bold as brass, that this is something that should not go acknowledged or remembered. It's rash of him but he doesn't care, he's leaving in a few weeks and then this will be a molehill transgression next to the mountain of abandoning the family. More simply, he's never shied away from pushing Dean's buttons, and they're the only two people out here, and hell, nothing's going to happen if Sam doesn't push some damn buttons.

Dean looks Sam in the eye, and Sam's expecting the anger the but he doesn't expect Dean's outright fear. It's not like they haven't done this before. It's a terrifying expression, honestly, considering the few yet drastic contexts in which Sam's seen Dean like this. Sam is frozen in it like a deer in headlights. All he can do is glare back – sardonic anger, his defense against everything now.

Dean's face is red, though it may just be sunburn. "You little…" Dean says, and rubs a hand over his eyes. "We're gonna hunt tonight, all right? So I'm gonna clean my guns and take a nap." He walks to the shore and slaps cupped handfuls of the cold water onto the sides of his head, back of his neck, then goes inside without looking back at Sam.

Sam watches his brother's broad shoulders and swagger as he leaves, and then thinks about the scene he's making, and it doesn't take long for him to finish. Stamina be damned. He hopes Dean is at the window, if only because he has that desire which lives in every little sibling, to push back harder, irritate his brother and drive him crazy.

-

Sam falls asleep in the shade.

He keeps having dreams that are so strange they must be anxiety dreams. He does feel anxious. The worst case scenarios for when he finally leaves for Stanford keep imprinting fear on his mind. The anxiety must work its way out of him sometime somehow because of this, his success at repressing it, and the general oppressive heat of the summer, the lazy wordlessness of the day. He finds himself thinking of the creatures in the forest when he wakes up, thinking of the near menace of monsters that doesn't touch them yet, the strange world of wilderness they've only barely tamed.

Sam thinks he hears thunder storms but they aren't there. He dreams it's rocks falling in the mountains, avalanches, packs of wolves falling all over each other, the lowing of buffalo trampling over the plains. The roar of the Pacific Ocean on cliffs.

The rumble and thrum keeps him sleeping poor but hard, like the dreams don't let him rest. Dreams of boredom and the undercurrent of tension riding through him, the crescendo towards final action all coming soon and to a head when he'll leave for good.

Sam wakes up with the sun moved and a burn stinging on his skin, feeling nervous about hunting that night, and then some.

No one knows about Stanford but him, his girlfriend Mandy, his guidance counselor, and Pastor Jim, who Sam confided in and who said he'd hold on to Sam's mail, every acceptance and rejection passing through his hands. Jim wished him luck and told him to keep in touch during school, and Sam will if he can, because he's afraid he'll find little help from his father.

He has no clue what Dean will say. It might be driving him more than a little crazy. Sam oscillates wildly between worrying his ass off and refusing to worry. Out here he won't deny himself anything, every moment a parting gift, and that means Dean too, anything Dean will give, though he doesn't know, though he's insisting on making it weird. It's a fucking weird thing, all right, but Sam's suddenly got what feels like a world of perspective and the thought of not having to face any consequences if he leaves.

He feels like shit when he realizes he's thinking about it that way, but then again, what happens happens. They're both going a little crazy out here in the woods.

-
-
-

"They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered."
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise

 

Dean went off on his own for a while to cool off. Sam fucking drives him crazy. Dean suspects he fell asleep in the deck chair, or went on doing what teenagers do, jerk off to pass the time. He ends up passing the time doing what they should both be doing together – the difference is Dean doesn't mind this, hunting stuff, while Sam will complain the whole way till Dad barks at him to quit it. Dean is intent on finding somewhere nice to sit, away from everything, and whittle idly.

When he gets back, it's late afternoon and he and Sam get their gear ready. They don't talk, but Dean suspects the afternoon was restful for both of them, because he doesn't get that hostile, tense vibe from Sam or bubbling up in him either. They're just going out to do recon, find what they can find, and get back before it gets too dark. Last night and this morning are off the table, and Dean thinks they're both happy to keep it that way.

They go that evening as soon as the sun's rays start slanting low and the hills' shadows lengthen. It's when the animals get really active, and they work better with some light still, let their eyes get used to the dark.

The dog, who Sam is calling Regina now, follows them, despite both Sam and Dean's efforts to tell her to go back to the cabin. She's quiet, though, which Sam points out is a plus, and Dean points out is a bit suspicious. Sam bristles defensively but Dean says, "All I mean is, we don't know anything about this dog, you know?"

"Maybe she's a hunting dog," Sam says.

"Funny looking hunting dog."

"You're funny-looking," Sam grumbles.

Dean snorts. "Seriously, lame."

They see birds flying to and fro, squirrels, small creatures rustling in the underbrush. Sam assumed they'd scare off anything big with the crunching of their boots, but they actually run into a couple adult deer and a juvenile fawn walking slowly through a thatch of bushes, eating the leaves from them.

An involuntary shudder runs through Sam. Dean looks at him funny. The dog, though, is completely calm.

The deer are calm, too. They look at them, and slowly walk away like normal deer. Sam and Dean don't follow.

Fifteen more minutes of walking and nothing interesting – some deer tracks, some raccoons, and Bonesy calm the whole time, strangely un-doglike in her lack of interest.

Then she bounds up ahead, and Sam and Dean freeze, whisper-shout, Hey! There's a thrashing in the brush, and they run towards it.

Regina's got a chupacabra by the neck and is shaking it to kill. The neck is already snapped.

"Drop it," Sam says, and the dog happily does so, wagging her tail.

"Well, shit," Dean says, surprised. "Maybe she is a hunting dog after all." He uses the muzzle of his rifle to turn the body over. "Not the biggest we've ever seen, but not bad."

"Good dog," Sam says, petting her wide white head. Dean bags the chupacabra to use as bait.

They catch another, the dog chasing it down, and then the dog chases a fox around and around and catches and shakes it, but lets it go in the end, which Sam sighs at and Dean laughs. Then, of course, thunder begins to rumble.

"Again?" Sam whines. The dog whines too.

On their way back, she doesn't even blink at the lightning, but when huge drops of rain start to fall she suddenly turns and bounds away, away from the cabin, back into the woods they came from.

Sam turns to chase after, but suddenly Dean grabs his shoulder. He can hear the vicious sounds of a dog fighting, snarls and yelps far worse than. Sam's face shifts into fear as he hears the noises too, and he shouts after her, "Reggie!" and runs despite Dean's warning yell. Dean chases after Sam, and finds that the dog isn't far. Its whole face is dark now, blending with its red ears now, muzzle bloodied and teeth sunk into the throat of a deer.

"The hell?" Dean says. This dog is really fucking weird. "All she was interested in were chupacabras before. We saw those deer."

The lightning goes and by the flash, they can see on the dead animal the gleam of nasty fangs, downward-curving, white and red and sharp in the blue-green light.

"Shit," Dean says as it goes dark again, and then the dog growls more into the distance.

"Never seen those before," Sam says.

"Nope," says Dean, and then lightning strikes near, the crack making them both jump. Rain starts falling hard and heavy, and the dog snarls a bone-chilling snarl. Dean drops the bagged chupacabra and they run back to the cabin.

-

They barely escape another soaking, and despite the freaking weird deer they just met, Dean feels pretty damn lucky. He rubs his damp arms and shivers, still thrumming with adrenaline but with nowhere to put it and his legs are feeling sore after their trek and spring back. The air has a chill that makes their shaken nerves worse.

"What the hell was that?" Sam

"I don't know. We'll ask Dad when he calls."

"Yeah," Sam says, looking doubtful. "But that's in two days."

"We'll go look at the body tomorrow. I got no clue, though, Sam." Dean sticks his head out the cabin, no sight of the dog. He grabs some kindling and a log from the small pile sitting near the door, dry in the overhang. He's going to build a fire and get warm.

The dog returns soaking wet before long, muzzle bloodied. Dean' shouldn't be surprised; as feral as the thing seems now, the dog seems to have adopted them, having already come back time and again. It probably likes the company, and what Sam feeds it. Sam points at the lake and says, "Go wash up!" Dean scoffs, but the dog actually listens, and comes back clean except for her muddy feet.

"Aw, Sam!" Dean's about to tell Sam to clean her up, but then she shakes in front of him, showering him with water, and he groans as Sam smirks. Then the dog lies down in front of the stove fire.

"Whatever, you're already wet," Sam says to Dean, who goes on grumbling about being covered in dirty dog-water.

Dean kneels in front of the stove to load a small log in, kindling and paper. He nudges the dog with his knee. "Move. Please."

"Her name's Regina."

"You made that up. Come on, Reggie. Move your butt."

Reggie doesn't budge.

"C'mon, Regina, come here," Sam calls. Of course the dog goes to him.

"You are the dog whisperer," says Dean. "Freak."

"You're welcome." Sam looks smug. Dean rolls his eyes and returns to building his fire.

Once Dean is done, the dog, of course, claims the front row seat. Even from further back, though, Dean can feel the fire's heat while sitting on the floor, his back resting against the foot of the bed.

"Now that's the way to do it," Dean says. He looks up at Sam, who is slouching on the bed above him, posture giving away his sleepiness, eyes dark and glittering orange, lost in staring at the flames.
Dean gets up to sit on the bed when the heat gets too strong, and after he rolls over to his side of the bed, Sam drops off almost instantly, fully clothed, boots on and all. Dean'll wake him up when he puts out the fire. He'll pull Sam's boots off and that'll probably wake him up enough for Sam to decide whether he needs to take his clothes off to sleep or if he's just going to let it be.

Dean wonders about those deer out there. Maybe they could figure something out without having to wait till Dad calls the pay phone in a couple days, whether the deer is just another animal or if it needs something special, if this dog is even a normal dog.

For all that Sam hates hunting, he's surprised Sam didn't get upset when the dog killed another animal. But that's what hunting dogs do, and Sam hasn't been too bad about this hunt. Undoubtedly since Dad isn't there.

Dean doesn't know how he feels about it, knowing that most of what Sam hates about hunting is Dad-related. That if Dad isn't around, maybe Sam could get used to it.

Dean sure could.

This summer they've been tying up loose ends and going from hunt to hunt in the hot season. Autumn will bring haunts on the tail of the monsters, and if Dean starts working on a plan to get a reliable car, something to carry gear for at least two - then he and Sam can set off on their own, not just Dean on his motorcycle but the two of them. It's basically the same as what Dad's been planning on, them getting their own cars eventually. Sam's getting too huge for the backseat of the Impala for sure. But while Sam was in school they were all three of them in the car less often, and Dean ended up spending a lot of time by himself anyway.

Dean wants a car for him and Sam, though, not a motorcycle for just him. Maybe Dad doesn't know that, but he knows he'd rather his boys were together looking out for each other, not striking out alone.
He stares at Sam on the bed, the way the light falls on his face and makes shadows there. Maybe Sam would rather be alone, and he knows it hurts Dad, even though he doesn't talk about it. Maybe Sam would push away. But this summer, this hunt – Dean's resolved to not give Sam too much shit, so Sam can see how things can be good between them. Dean might be the needy one here, though.

Dean does that, he needs company. It happens for him quicker than for Sam, who always seems most comfortable with his head in a book, ignoring the rest of the world. Sam's too sharp for everyone else, too cutting. He just wants to be left alone, which isn't what Dean wants to do, but he wants to give Sam his space. Doesn't want him running away again, like Flagstaff, what a miserable fucking disaster.

Dean stretches and groans happily with this thought. It's gonna get better. They're going to find the thing that killed mom and kill it, and then the whole world will open up.

-

The morning is hot already and Dean sits in the shade, mentally goes over supplies, how far they've gone. The schedule to call Dad. The tally of days he's notched on the exterior cabin wall in a hopefully inconspicuous place. The recon he's done – nothing majorly impressive but some wildlife tracking practice they'd picked up from their dad and his various friends. If he had to shoot and kill something to feed them he would, but they'd have to be pretty starving.

"You think those fangy deer taste any good?" Dean asks after telling Sam this idea of his.

"They're probably carnivorous, so no. But that's very My Side of the Mountain of you," Sam says.

"I remember that book. Didn't the kid get a hawk or something?"

"Wow, good one, Dean," Sam mocked.

"Asshole," Dean says, and Sam flips him off.

Dean's sitting half shade of an evergreen, etching protective runes into a knife blade. Maybe it wouldn't do anything against most of what they hunt, ghosts least of all, but Sam says it's supposed to work against Nordic things, so maybe one day they'll meet a frost giant and Dean will be prepared.

He's got a plan he tells Sam about, to make iron knives out of railroad spikes.

"It's illegal to take those, you know. They're private or federal property, they crack down hard on that." Sam's stripping off his shirt.

"What? Nah, what if they're not even in the tracks? I'm not gonna pry them up out of the ground." Dean would definitely pry them out of the ground.

"Well, how do they know, if they catch you with them in your hand?"

"You're such a goody two-shoes. How do you even know that, anyway?"

Sam shrugs. "Read it somewhere."

He looks distracted, staring into the middle distance somewhere to the right of Dean. At the fire pit, maybe. Sam hooks his thumbs inside the hem of his shorts, and hesitates, shoulders tensed, biting his lip.

Somehow Dean is held in the same suspense, though he doesn't even know what it is, doesn't think Sam's even noticing him anymore. There's a pale strip of skin showing over the waist of those shorts. Dean knows it, though he hasn't seen much of it in broad daylight before – well, except for Sam's brief moment jerking it in the deck chair. The sun makes his paler skin seem softer, thinner, more delicate. Fragile, even and Dean isn't so protective of Sam that he has a weird need to cover him up, but right now he feels the urge to conceal that pale under-skin and the rest of it that extends beyond his sight. Keep it from the sun and the dirt and the dry wind. He wants to bring Sam close and draw a blanket around not just him but around them together. He remembers how Sam's bare skin glows in the moonlight and how the contrast looks then, his pale thighs next to his darker forearms. Though he tries not to look anymore, tried for a long time not to, since it would be too weird.

But here in the harsh light, the golden-gilding thick sunlight of the heat of the day, Sam is brash and careless after two plus weeks without seeing another soul, other than Dean. And Dean is brazen, because nothing can hide, in this bright midday sun, and so why look away, why act like you can't see something when it's standing right in front of you.

"Something" is Sam, stripping off his shorts right there, five feet from Dean and slightly further from the water's edge. Jesus, Dean isn't into conspiracy theory or superstition, but why right there, why not the ambiguous midpoint or the definite water's edge? Does Sam know what he's doing? What this could look like, what Dean sees?

No, you dumbass, you asshole, he curses himself.

Sam is still ignoring him, still gazing at the middle distance, tossing his shorts onto a log near the fire pit and walking towards the water, naked as a jaybird. He's looking at the lake now, turned away. Dean thinks, this is not some goddamn show he's putting on for you. He's your little brother. If he's buckass naked it isn't a show for you, it's fucking normal. But Dean can't take his eyes off Sam's back, the small of it, his ass and long thighs.

Maybe it's entirely reasonable for Dean to be freaked out about this. For starters, they never were the casually naked types. They always spent too much time in each others' space, and with life on the road and in shared motel rooms, privacy became a big deal. Sam got really shy when he was about ten and still the smallest in his class. He wore his heavy coat to school every day. He was shy when puberty hit, shy when his testosterone-given muscles didn't kick in same time as the others, and then shy when they did, late bloomer that he was. Shy about being suddenly clumsy, shy about the attention girls weren't and then suddenly were paying him – and this was only ending in the last couple of years.

So yeah, for Sam to strip naked right in front of Dean's face, that's not normal for them. And if Dean feels really weird about it, then that fucking makes sense.

It's been a few years since their arrangement. They stopped when Sam started talking about this girl he wanted to ask out, and Sam is serious about the girls he likes, he's serious about everything. So when he stopped coming over to Dean's bed at night Dean got it, no explanation needed. He supposed it made sense, even though Dean hadn't thought about stopping despite the few things he had going on with a few girls in every town they'd been through. It was different, what he did with Sam. It was separate. It wasn't often, and they hid it from Dad of course, knowing that he wouldn't want to know what his boys got up to with their right hands at night. But on nights when Dad was away or where they got a treat and had their own room to themselves, once the lights were out Sam might crawl into Dean's bed and they'd jerk each other off, or Dean would hear Sam and offer, "Want a hand?" And Sam would say "Yeah," and Dean would go give him one.

If Sam wanted to stop, though, Dean didn't mind. This was something plenty of kids did, then grew out of.

Except now, it's been a long while since anything, and Dean hasn't been with a girl he really liked in ages. Sam and his girlfriend broke up when they left town at the end of the school year just in time for Sam to finish classes – they mailed his diploma to Pastor Jim, who said he'd hold on to it. Said he was real proud of Sam, and Sam stammered saying thank you, and Dean didn't get how high school was such a big deal to Sam since it all came so easy to him. Could've just gotten a GED like Dean.

Sam didn't seem that torn up about leaving Mandy, even though, like Dean said, they'd been serious and all. "She's going to college, we knew we'd both be moving on, bigger stuff ahead – hunting, you know." Dean had smiled, slapped Sam on the shoulder a couple times till Sam twisted away. He said "Well aren't you so grown up about all this. Mazel Tov, Sammy."

Dean's pretty sure though this means it's been months since either of them has gotten laid. He knows it's true for him. And Sam, Sam's too serious to have a little fun.

Sam's up to his thighs in the lake, shoulders tense and arms spread for balance, wincing at the cold meltwater as he dips his junk in it. Dean laughs on the shore. Sam can apparently hear him, since he flips Dean the bird without turning around. His back is muscular, and he's fit, nearly starting to get built, except his metabolism's so fast he probably won't catch up to Dean in muscle mass for a bit.

The pale strip is showing again as Sam gets hips-deep, then disappears as water laps the tanned, fuzzy-haired small of his back.

Dean knows he's staring but only then does he realize he's got a hand on his crotch, the heel of it pressing down against his dick. He freezes, hand still there, feels his own cock warm and good. A pleasure-seeking thing between his legs with a mind of its own. He sighs.

Sam, apparently having reached the point where the deeper waters unreached by sun become too cold, flops onto his back, sending a splash up before he rose to float at the top, his chest thrust out to keep his skinny ass afloat, everything else only scarcely bobbing to the surface as he lazily kicked, his dick floating and soft in plain sight, nestled in a thatch of dark hair.

Dean looks down at the curved blade and the steel hand graver in his lap, so Sam doesn't catch him staring. Still, Dean's palm is on his crotch, pressing on his jeans.

He closes his eyes to the blinding sight of Sam naked and floating in shimmering gold water, and contemplates falling asleep in the heat, letting it all drift away, too much to deal with right now.

Dean's twenty-two. He's old enough to know not to do this, smart enough to know too. That you are wishing hell down on yourself, the wrath of heaven and the life of an outcast, if you fall in love with and fuck your baby brother. It's damning.

But maybe, then again, he knows his family's seen enough shit to have a different perspective on how much you should love your brother, and what evil really is.

None of that relative morality shit. He's no Humbert fucking Humbert. Dean shakes himself, half purposefully and half out of the heeby-jeebies, and gets up to lie on the ground so he isn't facing Sam in the water.

-

Honestly Dean is just minding his business, he doesn't know why Sam comes and finds him all the time. Dean'll complain but if he's honest he's not complaining too hard about this whole vacation so far.

"You're such an exhibitionist freak," Sam says, and Dean snorts in disbelief, too relaxed to give a shit.

"Me?" The nerve. "I'm sitting here in a chair. You're the one walking around in his underwear."

Sam would normally redden but this new, middle-of-nowhere, no-Dad-around Sam has got a smartass look on his face, refusing to be ashamed, intent on making this about how Dean is being gross and violating human decency. "I don't touch myself where everyone can see!" He flings his arm towards the lake, where, across the water, there's another cabin much like theirs.

"I haven't seen lights on there for a week. Look, I could barely tell if someone over there was jerking off, I don't know why I gotta cover up if I come out here – by myself! – and take a little me-time."

Sam snorts at the euphemism.

"It's the fucking middle of the woods, Sam. If you don't wanna watch me jerk off, go somewhere else, because there's a lot of space here in case you hadn't noticed. I'm gonna jerk off when I want." Maybe he's messing with Sam but Sam messed with him first. Pulling that gig, stripping to go swimming.

But Dean feels disingenuous, thinking that. Sam may have started the acting out but it was before then, that second day, when after swimming the sun set and Dean found Sam in the plastic lounge chair, way over in the last patch of sunlight. Sam had dragged the chair over away from the cabin and fire circle and Dean to sit and watch the lake, shoulders stretched and dry and lit orange in the leftover sun.

They'd swam, and then Dean had gotten out and toweled off to go get some dinner. Sam had stayed in, not yet tired, maybe wanting some time alone as Sam often did, and Dean got something to eat because he knew he'd be starving soon and so would Sam, and he didn't want to put hp with Sam's bitching

Dean, dry and newly clothed, had gone outside to tell Sam there was food, when he saw Sam stretching his legs out on the deck chair, over in the last corner of sun further up the shore. The light splotched Sam's shoulders in orange glow. Sam looked like a carefree kid again for a moment, and Dean took a bit to appreciate the sight of his brother in some peace, when Sam had spent most of his life always restless, angry.

Sam'd had a rough time being a teenager. Technically he still was one, and technically things were still kinda rough between him and Dad, but all that was gonna change. Now without schools to stick around and the car becoming a bit cramped for three grown men, they'd get another one, Sam could get some time away from John, he and Dean could go out and do recon together or even some of their own hunts. Sam talks like he hates hunting but Dean sees Sam light up sometimes when he gets his hands on a really old book, and when Sam rattles off the myths and legends, cryptography and cryptids, well, who the hell doesn't love reading about cryptids? Anyway, Sam would research them, and Dean would kill them, and Dad would find the thing that had killed mom and they'd take it down together. They were already a great team, Dean could see it. It was only going to get easier from here on out.

Sam stretched his arms up, then curled up and wrapped them around his knees. His hair, being still slightly damp, curled at the nape of his neck, and (walking closer), Dean could see the pebbling of goosebumps, Sam's fine hairs lit golden and standing on end, running over the scar above his shoulderblade there that Dean had helped bandage himself. He winced but also saw the ripple of Sam's muscles under the scar tissue, how it had faded in time, become part of Sam, Sam's growing unbeatable vital body that Dean knew so well.

Sam shivered. Dean wanted to put his warm hands on Sam's goosepimpled skin and press the shivers back down, smooth it out till Sam's muscles were relaxed and supple under his hands.

He gulped and said, "Food's inside if you're hungry."

Sam looked over his shoulder towards Dean, not quite able to put his eyes on him but getting him in his peripheral vision. "You trying to sneak up on me?"

Dean felt guilty. He hadn't meant to. That kind of thing just happened.

Sam wasn't accusing, didn't even dwell on it. His legs had been under him for a while and seemed to be pins and needles. He stood up and tried to balance against the chair, but the frame was light and the back wobbly, so Dean reached out to grab his shoulder and right him, and Sam grabbed as he stumbled. Sam's shorts, a pair of swim shorts from the Salvation Army and not a old pair of boxer-briefs like Dean had set aside as his designated swim shorts, were still wet and dripping from being sat on.

Dean said, with a laugh in his voice, "You've got goosebumps all over, you're gonna want to dry off before your junk freezes."

"Yeah, duh." And Sam let go of Dean to gingerly walk across the twigs and pine needles and pebbled dirt in his bare feet to the cabin. Dean didn't manage the easy chuckle he would have liked. He looked down at the empty chair and then out across the lake, and thought of how vastly empty their weeks would be.

But that was before they found this dog and this bizarre deer creature. Honestly, at first, Dean had doubted they'd find anything really interesting in the woods, despite their Dad's assurances. They couldn't go as far without overnighting in the woods, which Dad had forbidden and Dean wasn't that interested in doing anyway, considering the wildlife.

Now Dean's interested, all right, but the wildlife seems even more dangerous than he'd thought. He'd rather sit here by the lake most days, and watch their sunburns progress over the week.

It's not like Dean has a thing for Sam's shoulders. He just notices them because they're out a lot, and occasionally they get burnt, and okay, they're really much broader than they used to be and it's weird to see your kid brother growing up and getting big when he's been a shrimp all his life.

Dean's got his t-shirt and sunglasses on sitting in the chair in the sun now, and from behind the safety of the dark frames he can see Sam out there sitting on a rock sunning himself, absurdly like some fucking Narcissus or, what, Hylas? The guy the nymphs drag underwater. Well, more butch than that guy. The one Zeus wanted for his cupbearer. The one the sun god wanted to pull his chariot. Or was he his son? Fuck. Dean can't stop looking. He's given up on reading his book, which is one of Sam's, which is Lolita, horrifically. He thought he wanted to read it before he really knew what it was about and before Sam made it uncool, gave it his geek cred by bringing it. It's not really a rewarding book. His interest peaked when Dolores climbed on Humbert's lap and Humbert secretly got his rocks off to it – which is sick, and disgusting, and creepy as fuck. It both summons and poisons every school girl fantasy he's ever entertained, and all the action he's not getting this summer makes him want to whack off to them horribly, as if to see them one last time before Vladimir Nabokov ruins them forever. Then he'll never pick up Lolita again and he'll judge everyone who reads it as hard as he's judging himself right now.

One of the most memorable nights of Dean's life was in high school when he first had real, more-than-blowjob sex with Julie, the hot volleyball star of their town high school. She was a good couple years older than him, and she rode him one night in the back of her car, good and hard, and he came back and told Sam all about it in every buzzed and vivid run-on detail. Seeing Sam's face as he took it all in made Dean realize that the pleasure he got from this, bragging about not just his game but the specific weirdly educational nature of his game, giving Sam the play by play - it was all because one day he wanted Sam to do this. Maybe he wanted Sam to tell him about it, and maybe he actually wanted to share this with Sam and Sam's awed face. One day he didn't just want to replay it to Sam but replay it with him, for Sam to get this idea in his head now and let it stew –

But that's not what their thing was about, back then. Their mutual agreement, the you-scratch-my-ears and I'll-scratch-yours arrangement that Dean feels creeping up in desire again with the mutual sexual frustration going on in the middle of nowhere.

It wasn't supposed to be about wanting Sam.

Dean was supposed to just want relief, relief and entertainment. He wasn't supposed to want stuff to actually happen.

-

It's the end of the three weeks Dad planned on them being there, so Dean builds a fire with the last of the already-chopped wood and he and Sam pass around the last of the bottle of whiskey. There's not that much left, Dean thinks ruefully. He was really hoping he could get drunk again tonight. Get both of them drunk – see this solitary vacation out with a bang, have one last fling before the yoke of Dad's presence weighed down on Sam and made him go back to being that curdled, sour kid that causes them all so much grief.

He doesn't say the last part to Sam but does say, "Wish we could get really drunk."

"Like last time?" Sam asks. His eyes are shining bright in the dusk and Dean can tell by that look, his smile, that he's already buzzed.

"Sure," Dean says, thinking of the swim in the lake and the roughhousing until Sam smirks, leans back against the big stump and stretches his legs across the ground, splayed wide like he's showing something off. Dean flushes. "We already drank more than half the bottle, though. So probably not that drunk."

"Yeah, sure." Sam says, looking off into the distance over the flames, into the darkness of the trees. "Gonna miss all this getting away with anything."

"Like you weren't complaining about coming here."

"Yeah, yeah," Sam shoves the bottle at Dean, leaning way over to reach. "Shut up and take another drink."
Dean does.

"I guess I miss people," Dean says. "People to play pool with. Bars full of 'em. Hot chicks," and he waggles his eyebrows suggestively at Sam.

Sam rolls his eyes. "Of course."

"Don't you miss your girlfriend? What was her name? Misty?"

"Misty!" Sam laughs, as if that's a hilarious name to have. "Her name was Mandy. I guess, sure. She's probably doing fine, though. Kinda out of my league."

"I coulda told you that."

"Shut up." Sam stretches again and Dean notices how far his shirt rides up over his belly. Kid's always getting taller, stretching out. A hand, maybe two hand-widths of bare skin there, and Dean squeezes the neck of the bottle and tells himself, not that drunk.

"Nah, I mean, you miss her –" Dean makes a crude movement, something between an s-curve with one hand and a smack with thither, rocking back and forth on the log he's sitting on making it thump rhythmically.

Sam snorts at Dean's pantomime. "Gross, dude."

"She let you tap that, yeah?"

"Oh my god, Dean, you don't even know."

"No, come on, now you gotta say!" Dean's laughing and so is Sam. He looks smug. Well, hell.

"Like, all the time. She was crazy about it. Crazier than me."

Dean snorts. "Well, that's saying something."

"Asshole." Sam rubs at his face, but the smoke's going the other direction.

"She ever blow you?"

"Eh, nah."

"Mm, shame."

"What?"

"You mean you never had one?"

"I – no, I've never had a blowjob, Dean."

Dean kicks his heels at the log with gleeful thuds. "You're missing out!"

"You tryna rub it in?"

Dean ignores the tone of that. "No, dude, they're great. You ever go down on a chick?"

"Uh. A little once."

"Damn! And no blowjobs? Let me tell you, going down on a chick is the best, I don't know why they don't like BJs more than they do." Dean cracks a grin at Sam's snicker. "Look, next time we can get you in a bar, I'll find you some action."

"I don't need you hooking me up at bars, Dean, you know I think that's creepy."

"Fine, if you're gonna continue to be against sex with strangers."

"Yes, thanks."

The fire crackles.

"My point is, if going down on chicks and getting your dick sucked is awesome, I wonder what it'd be like to give one. To suck dick, I mean."

Sam looks at Dean, flustered. "Really?"

Dean shrugs, trying to make it nonchalant. "Yeah, I mean, but who'm I gonna offer, huh? I don't wanna go around offering to blow dudes at bars, looking to get my ass kicked. 'Sides," he says, taking another swig. "It's not a gay thing. Just curious."

A pause stretches out. Dean cocks an eyebrow, waiting for Sam to react.

"You're such a freak, Dean." But Sam scoots up against his log again and crosses his legs, lets a hand fall into his lap. "I dunno, convince me."

"What?"

"Like, am I really missing out? Are you just winding me up?"

"Sammy," Dean says, his skin starting to prickle and tighten from the fire's heat. He gets the distinct feeling Sam's trying to wind him up, which is just what he's suspected for a week or two now, but it's too strange to mention.

"It's like, well, you know what sex with a girl is like. Warm and wet and tight, you know, hot and sweet when she squeezes around you, gets her legs around you. Now imagine her sweet lips and wet tongue around you – yeah, and she gets you all wet with her spit and you're not wasting time putting a wet spot in your shorts, huh. It's the suction too – that's more than tight, and she's got a hand squeezed around your dick and another one fondling your balls – you like that, right –" and suddenly Dean, who's been gazing off over the fire to avoid thinking about the fact that he's giving a sex monologue to his little brother, feels a hand on his knee, jerking it to the side.

Sam's there kneeling with his hands braced on Dean's legs, holding himself so he can stretch up, his face right under Dean's nose nearly poking his chin, and as Dean looks down and starts to say "What the hell" Sam cranes up and bites his bottom lip.

Dean gasps.

He's already hard, and jerks reflexively when Sam grabs for his fly, brushing Dean's hardon with his hands, opening his jeans up right there.

"What're you doing?" Dean says, somehow completely off-guard and unprepared for this.

"What do you think?" Sam butts his head against Dean's chest to push him to sitting up. Dean can feel Sam's hands not on his knees now but the tops of his thighs, nearly at the joint with his hip, and the pressure there is just sending his blood skyrocketing. He is so fucking turned on he can barely think but he manages to blurt out something like "Don't – you don't have to – you were right you shouldn't –"

"Shut up," and Sam takes Dean's dick out of his pants. Sam's hot bare calloused hands on him, that shuts Dean up pretty well.

Sam looks at Dean's dick where his hand is wrapped around it, not tight, just holding the weight of him. Dean looks too. His mouth is dry, and he can feel his own throat working like his protests are still trying to get out. Sam grins up at him, wicked as sin, and starts giving Dean long hard strokes with his fist.

Sam's leaning down but isn't sticking his face in it, but he's getting close, shit, Dean can't stop thinking about it. How he wants sam's mouth on his dick, wants him to rub his cheeks on it. It's dark and he's hidden in Sam's shadow from the firelight, but Sam's face is hidden too and Dean is both desperate to see and to know if Sam's okay, check in on Sam, know what the hell is going on, and desperate to tip his head back and close his eyes and not look and push his conscious mind far, far away.

Gradually he can hear Sam babbling, "Fuck, you're really freaking out, aren't you? What would you even do if I did blow you? Shit, Dean, that what you're thinking about?"

Dean hunches over and rests his face on Sam's shoulder, breathing and mouthing wet against his brother's cotton t-shirt and the warm thinner-than-his-own shoulder underneath it. He can't hold himself up, and he's not touching Sam, he's gripping the edge of his seat like if he touches his brother with his hands, on purpose, right now he'll be implicated in this crime. This is not a scene he planned on. Not one he asked for. Fuck, what is Sam thinking?

Sam's just got both hands working at Dean, forearms braced on top of Dean's thighs, and then Sam moves a hand and leans down and Dean's pulse is going a mile a minute.

Sam spits on his hand and then rubs his thumb over Dean's crown, slips his other fingers down to touch Dean's balls inside his shorts.

Dean makes this wholly undignified high-pitched noise. "Shit, Sam, gonna," and Sam pulls back, but keeps jacking Dean. Dean spurts over Sam's hand, jerking and twitching hunched over Sam's shoulder, and just like Dean had done to Sam the last time, Sam pulls Dean through it, wringing every drop till Dean knocks his hand away, swearing.

Sam gets up and, while Dean is still hunched over, still breathing hard, still unable to look his brother in the eye, puts a gentle hand on the side of Dean's jaw and neck briefly. Before Dean can knock that away too, he leaves. Dean's left tucking himself back inside his shorts, staring at the fire.

It takes a storm breaking overhead, dry but so full of lightning the cracks and booms shake even him, to make him knock the fire apart and bury it in the dirt.

Sam's fallen asleep on the bed with a book, and Dean doesn't know how he can sleep through this noise, but he lies down curled on his side and drifts in and out of sleep, chased by dream phantoms. He thinks he hears the dog barking up a storm but when he looks she's gone somewhere, and the only sound is the wind in the trees.

-

The next day they're supposed to go get a call from Dad at the highway phone. Dean and Sam go together. On the way they talk a little about the fanged deer, the chupacabras, but most of it is in silence.

They get Dad's call. It's short.

"He's coming back tomorrow," Dean says to Sam. "And then we'll go."

"What about the weird deer? And the dog?" Sam says as they walk back.

"We don't even know what they are. We'll go out again tonight. And your dog can take care of herself. Seriously, Sam, you've seen her hunt." Looking at Sam's sad face makes Dean sad. It's not that he likes the dog that much.

"I just feel responsible for her."

"She'll be fine," Dean cajoles, and resolves to not mess with Sam too much for the foreseeable future, as much as he can help it. With Dad coming back and not knowing where they're going next, Sam's got a stressful time ahead. Dean doesn't want to make it any worse for him.

They go out into the woods again that evening, with the sun setting behind them, toting guns and following the dog.

They don't manage to find anything they're looking for, deer or chupacabra, no matter how far they go, and the dog just chases squirrels the whole time.

It'd be crazy to think that was the only one, but Dean doesn't know what else to think. He'll tell Dad when he comes, maybe he knows what they are, if they would ferret them out. Maybe the dog will help.

"They must've left," Sam says.

"Left? More like we just can't find them."

"I dunno," Sam says. "Reggie isn't finding any. I've just got a feeling."

"You're just full of feelings," Dean jokes, and Sam punches his shoulder.

That night Dean says to Sam in the dark "Kinda gonna miss this."

Sam makes a skeptical noise, but then says, "Yeah," and pushes his nose and forehead against the muscle of Dean's shoulder.

They lie there, close in a strangely normal way, and fall asleep like that.

-

The next morning there's a rumble of a motor, and Sam groans, but then the barking of dogs approaching the cabin, and Dean opens the door. Dog stays at the hearth.

A man's there, with a muddy yellow-brown beard, a bandana on his head with a camouflage-and-deer print on it, riding a loud motorcycle followed by a pack of dogs. They look just like Reggie – same markings.

"I've come for my dog," the man says over the engine's roar.

Sam and the dog come up to the door and the dog sits by Sam's leg.

"Thanks for looking out for her. What's your name, kid?" The dog lifts her head to be pet by Sam, then goes to the biker guy to get pet down by his heavy hand.

"My name's Sam. It was no problem," Sam says

Dean thinks the dog looks content. This doesn't seem shady, just… weird.

"Well, Sam, I owe you one," the guy says, then guns his engine. "Be seeing you."

"What's her name?" Sam shouts.

"She don't got one!" the biker yells back, and roars off, the dogs in hot pursuit.

They're left watching the trail of dust and listening to the happy yelps and barks of the dogs.

Dad gets them a few hours later. Their bags are packed, and the empty whiskey bottle is stashed in the back of the closet where they found it.

"Where to?" Dean asks.

"Northwest," Dad says.

Sam sighs a little relief. The hot weather that had held them in suspension breaks as they move down out of the mountains towards the Pacific coast. They're in the middle of a cloud bank, the precipitation barely precipitating. It hisses against the windshield and the tires, it soaks into Dean's dried-out sun-heated skin, cooling him and giving him the occasional chill. Dean can see Sam shivering in the back seat. This air is like a cool cloth on a fevered forehead.

-

When they stop that night in Oregon, Sam announces that he's leaving for college at Stanford. Tonight. Dad's barely had any time for some shouted ultimatums, Dean no time to catch his breath, before Sam's out the door, bags still packed.

Dean's driving after him now, after the delay of the shock, Dad's questions and accusations still ringing in his ears - Did you know he was going to do this? What happened while I was gone? What does that boy get up to? He didn't say anything? Not even to you? That foolish -

He hopes he'll find Sam before he decides to leave the road or finds a ride that isn't Dean.

Dean finally spots Sam on the roadside, nearly hidden in the darkness and mist. Sam's got his thumb stuck out, but when Dean approaches he seems to recognize the sound of their car and draws it back, tries walking further away from the road.

"Sam!" Dean shouts out the window. "It's just me."

Sam doesn't respond.

"Come on, at least let me drive you there."

"No."

"It's nighttime, there aren't any other cars coming by. Come on," Dean pleads

Sam keeps walking, Dean keeps driving alongside him.

After a minute or two of this, Sam still won't get in, so Dean pulls over, sending Sam scrambling off the shoulder yelling "Watch it!". Dean's not trying to run him off the road, he just parks, gets out and goes after Sam on foot. Sam faces him dead-on and yells, "Just leave me alone!"

"Come on, Sam." Dean tries grabbing Sam's shoulder but Sam pushes his hand off. "You're not getting anywhere, I'm the only goddamn car on the road."

Sam keeps pushing and shrugging Dean's hands off .

"Please," says Dean. "I'm beggin' you."

Sam's face goes from angry and stony to twisted and sick. Like only anger had kept the fear and desperation and confusion at bay. Confrontation was what he was running from; now Dean gets past his shrugging, right as Sam's backed against a tree. He grabs Sam's shoulder, then takes his face between his hands roughly and kisses him.

Sam's thrashing against his grip, confused and biting both their lips, before Dean lets him push him off. "What the hell, Dean?"

"I can't – Sam, you can't go. I…" Dean can't finish any of his "I" statements. He has no fucking clue what to say about himself, so practiced in putting family first, family first, family first. There's a pull and a hurt and a need in him that he's slowly realizing has nothing to do with family right now and it's making him sick.

"Are you drunk?" Sam asks.

It feels possible. "No." Dean reaches for Sam again and Sam flinches away. It's like a lightning bolt hits Dean, from above, like damnation from God himself.

"Dean, I can't." He's deathly calm and reasoning and it only makes Dean feel crazier. "You have got to let me go. I'm leaving."

Dean covers his face with his hands and runs them up and down, scrubbing at the wet in his eyes. He opens them and all these multicolored dots are flashing over Sam, who's looking at him from the higher ground of the tree roots, pitying and pleading and exhausted, like he has no energy for any other feelings. He's not running. He's not walking away. He's waiting for Dean to say something, give some sign. Later Dean will look back on this observation with hope, that Sam will not hate him for this all his life.

"Can I at least give you a ride?" Dean asks.

A long pause: Sam isn't sure. Dean hates him so much right now, for being unsure about accepting a fucking ride. He hates Sam for making him love him, for making him crazy enough to stalk him out, for leaving all dramatic and shit and not give him or Dad any time to react. For running away like a child now, trying to walk away without saying goodbye.

"Yeah. Thanks," Sam says, after looking down the road where Dean came from. No more headlights. "Town's a few miles away. They have a bus there I can catch."

Dean opens his mouth. He's gonna try to persuade Sam to let him drive him all the way to the gates of Stanford. He'll make sure Sam's roommates aren't shitheads and make sure Sam has enough money for books and, shit. He'll promise not to touch Sam ever as long as he can see him again. He'll grovel for it. But nothing comes out, and Sam pointedly looks only at the road straight ahead.

They drive in silence for half an hour.

Sam gets out at a bus depot under a shelter, and Dean just waits at the curb in the car till the bus comes, staring at Sam the whole time to get him to get back in the car, it's raining, come on, I'll drive you to San Francisco or wherever.

The bus comes, and Sam gets on it.

After the bus is no longer in sight, Dean lets panic wash over him. Eventually, his vision clears. He runs the wipers for a couple passes, then puts the car in drive and heads back to his father.