Archive of Our Own

On the morning that Sam woke up, Dean ran five red lights on the way to the hospital, his half-empty coffee cup sloshing in the holder. Everything was moving too slowly: there was an accident on Marshall; in the parking deck, he got stuck behind an old lady in a Cadillac who couldn't decide which stall to turn into; the elevator lights blinked obediently down to the third floor and then stopped there for an eternity, unmoving.

The doors peeled open, finally, the steel interior beckoning. Dean realized he was clutching his cup in his left hand and his keys in his right. He put his keys in his pocket and punched Door Close.

Sam's room was on the eighth floor, overlooking the freeway, the passing cars with snow crusted on their roofs. Dean paused in the doorway, his hand clenching on his coffee cup and warping the styrofoam. He hated the smell of hospitals, and their sterility, the way the fluorescent lights made everything seem not quite real.

A nurse passed behind him in the hallway and touched his shoulder. "You can go in," she said gently.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Thanks."

Sam's eyes were closed, but he opened them when Dean settled himself in the chair next to the bed, its cheap plastic seat creaking in dismay. He looked—he looked fine, he looked like nothing had happened; even the long suture on his chest was fading from its original lurid red, the few inches Dean could see of it before it vanished beneath Sam's hospital-issue shirt.

"Hi, Dean," Sam said.

Dean cleared his throat, set his ruined cup on the bedside table. "So. Looks like you finally decided to grace us with your presence."

"It wasn't that long," Sam said. "Dean. They told me it was three weeks, that isn't—"

"They didn't think you were going to wake up," Dean said, and the sound of his own voice surprised him, all thick and unsteady.

Sam blinked. "But I didn't—"

Dean propped one elbow on the bed and leaned his face into his hand, covering his eyes and breathing in harsh gulps. "They told me you wouldn't."

"Okay," Sam said. His hand touched Dean's hair, fleetingly. "Okay," he said again, softer.

"Okay," Dean said. He sat up. There was a newspaper on the table, opened and re-folded, but dated the day before, which was close enough for Dean. He flipped through to the classifieds.

"What are you doing?" Sam asked. He rubbed at his eyes.

"We're staying here," Dean said. "At least for a few months. So you can—"

"I'm fine," Sam said. "I really am."

Dean scowled at the paper. "You almost died, Sammy, I can't—"

"You want out," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said. "I do. Maybe not—not forever, just a few months. Okay?"

"Maybe until the spring," Sam said, and Dean had to take a deep breath to clear the sudden water from his eyes.

Sam was discharged the next day, at Dean's insistence and despite the doctors' protests. They wheeled him out to the front door, and Dean took over after that, Sam's arm slung across Dean's shoulders, Dean's arm around Sam's waist. Sam walked slowly, his feet hesitant on the sidewalk, but the car was close by and they made it.

"Really tore you up, huh," Dean said, easing Sam into the car.

"Yeah," Sam said. He winced and pressed a hand to his chest, right over his sternum, where he'd been split wide open. "I'm okay."

"Sure," Dean said.

"Where are we going?" Sam asked.

Dean turned on the engine and shifted the car into neutral; shifted it back into first. "I dunno," he said. He didn't—he hadn't thought further than Sam waking up, getting out of the hospital, being alive.

"Can we—could we not stay here, maybe?" Sam asked.

"Wouldn't want to anyway," Dean said, and lowered the parking brake.

They drove west on the interstate, and then south on a state road, and west again, into the farmland away from the city, empty tobacco fields interspersed with towns and woodland, everything dusted with a light coating of snow—the first of the winter, Dean had heard.

"Reunion," Sam said, reading off the road sign. "Seventeen miles. Let's stop there."

Dean snorted. "That's subtle," he said.

"Maybe it's a sign," Sam said. "It sounds nice. Let's stop."

"You didn't used to be so fucking superstitious," Dean said.

"Neither did you," Sam said, and reached out to touch the gris-gris hanging from the rearview mirror.

"That isn't superstition," Dean said.

"I rest my case," Sam said, smug, and Dean's hands twitched on the wheel, full of the impulse to smack the back of Sam's head. He kept them where they were. It would take him a while to really believe that Sam still had shape and form, was mendable.

Reunion was a three-stoplight town: post office, bank, grocery store, and not much else. Dean drove along the main street, going slow, watching women with their strollers, old men with their canvas jackets and knit caps.

It was getting dark, the winter light fading swiftly. Dean pulled into the parking lot of the first motel he saw, a one-story motor inn right off the main strip, its neon sign missing at least three letters—RE NIO OTEL.

"I like the architecture," Sam said.

"Oh, shut up," Dean said, and got out of the car to help Sam lever his injured ass off the seat.

Sam walked more slowly than he had that morning, probably all knotted up after being in the car for five hours. Dean wrapped an arm around Sam's waist and held him up, happy to bear his weight.

"You wait here," Dean said, propping Sam against the wall outside the motel office. "I'll go check in."

The room was nothing special: two beds, a shower stall, cable TV, no internet. Sam lowered himself onto one of the beds, wincing.

"You okay?" Dean asked, setting down their duffels.

"Yeah," Sam said. "Just a little sore."

Dean rubbed a hand over his face. "All right," he said. "Lemme see."

"Dean," Sam said, his eyebrows pulling together, "I don't think—"

"Let me see," Dean said, stepping forward, his hands reaching for the collar of Sam's button-down shirt.

"It's fine," Sam said, but Dean already had the first three buttons undone, and he could see the scar, puckered white and pink, and the tiny round suture scars where the doctors had sewn and stapled Sam back together.

"Jesus," Dean said, and opened Sam's shirt the rest of the way. The scar stopped just above his navel—too much of it, too many inches, and Christ, it was like it had happened yesterday, and Dean could still hear Sam's wet gasps, feel Sam's blood all over his hands.

"Hey," Sam said, his hand closing around Dean's wrist. "Dean. I made it. Everything's fine."

"Yeah, actually, it isn't," Dean said, but he let go of Sam's shirt and stepped back. He couldn't forget those endless weeks when Sam was in the hospital, when Dean had survived on cafeteria food and almost no sleep, sitting by Sam's bed and praying hopelessly for Sam to wake up. He hadn't thought it would work. He'd thought he would bury Sam in that city, or just leave him, come back a few times a year to watch Sam's chest slowly rise and fall.

"It's okay," Sam said again.

"Get some sleep," Dean said. "Tomorrow we're going house-hunting."

It was late by the time Dean woke up in the morning, but Sam was still asleep, face creased with lines from his pillow. Dean left him a note and walked to the diner down the street, read the classifieds over bacon and scrambled eggs. Reunion didn't exactly have a booming rental market, but there were still options, and he set up three viewings for the next day.

He spent most of the day walking around Reunion, looking for work. The auto garage wasn't hiring, and he'd chew off his own arm before getting a job bagging groceries or busing tables. Everything else wanted a BA, and Dean had pulled a lot of scams in his life, but no way in hell could he make his GED look like a college degree.

He'd find something. Maybe in the next town over. They could keep going on their fake credit cards indefinitely, but Dean was tired of that—if they were getting out, he wanted out all the way. He wanted money he'd earned, not stolen. He wanted a real life, under his own first name, for at least a few months. Until the spring.

Sam was still in the motel room, sitting hunched over the rickety Formica table, Xacto knife in hand. He looked up when Dean shut the door.

"You makin' the IDs?" Dean asked, toeing off his slushy boots.

"Yup," Sam said. "Dean Bartlett and Sam Hanson."

"Not related, then," Dean said.

Sam shrugged. "I mean, if the FBI's still looking for two brothers—"

"No, I get it," Dean said. His belly tightened—indigestion from the diner food. He rummaged around in Sam's duffel until he found the Tums, and chewed three of them, their various chalky flavors dissolving in his mouth.

Sam got him out of bed at 7:30 the next morning, interrupting a dream Dean was having about his blood-covered hands, Sam's intestines, and the wet, blood-sticky fabric of his jeans.

"You were really moaning, there, Dean," Sam said, his mouth twitching. "Nice dream?"

"Jesus Christ, shut up," Dean said, and stumbled toward the shower.

The first house they saw was a disaster, all moldy and cigarette smoke-infested, the back yard worn bare from the previous tenant's pit bulls.

"Dude, I think they cooked meth in here," Dean muttered, and Sam gave him a look that could've peeled the sagging wallpaper right off the walls, but they were out of there in under ten minutes.

The next place was better, but both of the bedrooms were on the second floor, and Dean didn't want Sam climbing that many stairs, not yet.

The third house was perfect, a little rancher a few blocks from the library, with a screen porch attached to the back and an old ping-pong table down in the basement.

"We'll take it," Dean told the landlady, a middle-aged woman wearing the same glasses she'd probably had since 1983.

"Fine," she said, and snapped her gum. "Five hundred down. And I'm running a credit check. On both of ya."

"Fine," Dean said, and looked at Sam, worried—he wasn't sure Misters Bartlett and Hanson even had credit histories—but Sam was poking at the garbage disposal, unconcerned, one arm held tight and low across his belly. Dean shoved his hands in his pockets and gave the landlady his biggest shit-eating grin.

"Move in on the tenth, if everything checks out," she said, flipping open her cell phone, her mind clearly having moved on to whatever she was doing next. "Six-month lease. Comes furnished. We done here?"

"We're done," Dean said, and went to pull Sam away from the self-cleaning oven.

They got the house.

"We can buy curtains," Sam said, right after they got the call. "And a tablecloth."

"Kill me now," Dean muttered, turning up the volume on the TV.

Sam got up and snatched the remote out of Dean's hand, hit the power button.

"Hey!" Dean said, grabbing for the remote.

"Dean, repeat after me: 'buying curtains will not make me a girl.'"

"Curtains are for chumps," Dean said. "Who needs curtains, we'll just put up an old bed sheet or something."

"Yeah, trailer-park chic is really the way to go, ass," Sam said. "Come on, we're going."

"No," Dean said, crossing his arms and scowling.

"Okay, I guess I'll have to go by myself," Sam said. "And carry all of those big, heavy bags. Maybe I'll hurt myself and have to go back to the hospital—"

"Jesus Christ, fine." Dean rolled off the bed and started looking for his boots.

They went to the Target in McCollum, a few towns over. Dean pushed the shopping cart, gritting his teeth every time he got a dark look from one of the other shoppers. He knew what they were thinking—two guys, shopping for housewares together; Christ, it was like he was on fuckin' Queer Eye or something.

"Don't do that," Sam said, the second time Dean surreptitiously gave the finger to a disapproving shopper.

"Freedom of expression, assface," Dean said, and kicked the wheel on the cart.

It was twilight by the time they finally left, and just starting to drizzle. Dean made Sam sit in the passenger seat while he loaded their purchases into the trunk. He looked out at the other stores along the highway, the bleak commercial strip on the south edge of the town, and then past it to the darkening fields, the dark blue sky edging into night. The air was clean and cold, sharp in Dean's lungs.

It had been a bad year, and another bad year before that—endless bad years of always missing someone, Sam or Mom or Cassie—but the bite of it was less, here in the rural nowhereness of whatever fucking state they were in, and Sam hurt but alive, and goddamn curtains in the trunk of the Impala.

He shut the trunk and went around the car, slid in behind the wheel. Sam was looking out the window, tracing meaningless patterns on the fogged-over glass.

"You okay?" Dean asked.

"Yeah." Sam smiled, lopsided. "A little tired."

"How about we get some pizza and see what's on pay-per-view," Dean said.

"No porn," Sam said.

"Naw, you couldn't handle it," Dean said, cuffing Sam on the head.

"You're a jerk," Sam said, and grinned.

They moved in on the tenth, a Thursday. It took Dean about fifteen minutes to unpack everything in his duffel and get his room situated. Sam took longer, because he wanted to fold all his clothes and neatly arrange them in the dresser drawers, and line up his three paperbacks on the shelf above his bed, and generally act like a big pansy.

Dean went out and stood on the back porch. The screening had a few holes in it, but he could fix that easy enough, just tear the whole thing out and replace it. The back yard was small, fenced-in, and an old vegetable garden occupied most of it. The whole yard was overgrown, though, and it would probably stay like that—Dean didn't know anything about gardening, and he hoped to God that Sam didn't, either.

The back door creaked open. "Dean?"

"Yeah, what is it," Dean said, turning.

"Let's put up the curtains," Sam said. He was holding a couple of the Target bags, and Dean knew he was in for it.

"Still think we should just use a fuckin' blanket," he grumbled, but he went out to the car to get his tool bag.

It was an overcast day, and warmer than it had been at the beginning of the week. The interior of the house was cold, but the baseboards heated up fast, clanking steadily as Dean moved around the living room, putting up curtain rods.

"I could help, you know," Sam said, hovering.

"Nope," Dean said. "Go cook me some lunch, bitch."

"What? No, I can—"

Dean swung the curtain rod at Sam, menacing. "Get outta here, I mean it. I want a sandwich."

"Make your own damn sandwich," Sam said, but he went into the kitchen, and Dean heard him rustling around in the grocery bags.

After lunch, he fed Sam some pain pills and put him on the couch for a nap. Sam went under easy enough, shifting against the cushions for a few minutes until his face went slack with sleep.

Dean put a blanket over him and went to finish with the curtains.

It had been years since he'd lived in a house for any length of time—not since he was still in high school, when Dad was still willing to make concessions; before Dean dropped out and Sam turned into a demanding bitch and Dad started moving them every couple of months, grimly, like keeping Sam from getting too settled in any one place would make him realize the error of his ways.

The places they'd lived then, during Dad's failed attempt to get Sam to shut up and accept it, had been tiny, run-down, full of peeling wallpaper and electric ranges that didn't actually work. It was no surprise, really, that Sam had gone to the other extreme as soon as he'd gotten the chance, settled into full domesticity with Jessica and their cheerful coffee mugs and flea-market artwork.

So Dean hung the goddamn curtains. It was the least he could do.

***

He got a job on a framing crew, two towns over. He hadn't worked construction since Sam was still in high school, but he remembered how to swing a hammer, and enough Spanish to know when the Mexican guys were making fun of him. Dean hung out with a skinny Guatemalan dude named Fernando, due mainly to their shared trait of not being from Jalisco, but it turned out they got along well. They ate lunch together and Fernando taught Dean how to cuss like a native.

Dean liked the work—eight hours a day with nothing to worry about except whether his joists were even and whether he should stop to dig the splinter out of his thumb or just suck it up. He felt calmer than he'd been in years, sun and sweat washing his head clean.

The first week, Sam was still asleep when Dean left the house in the morning. Dean wasn't sure what he did all day, but Sam had dinner on the table every night when Dean got home.

"You're wearing an apron," Dean said, the first time he caught Sam in the act.

"Shut up," Sam said, turning pink. "I don't want to stain this shirt, okay? Shut up and eat your casserole."

"Sure thing, Mrs. Cleaver," Dean said.

The second week, Sam was up more, moving around, going for long walks in the morning. He'd get back while Dean was eating breakfast, a little hunched over, his cheeks pink from the cold.

"You sure you should be walkin' that much," Dean said, worry like a hard fist right into his gut.

"I'm getting better," Sam said. "Dean. Really. I feel fine."

"Yeah, whatever," Dean said, and took a sip of his coffee.

He had dreams every night about Sam lying there on the floor, his naked heart pumping blood all over Dean's hands. It wasn't something he'd forget quickly: the panicked adrenaline throbbing inside him, and Sam's wet gasps, and the scent of Sam's blood, bright and metallic. The dreams had started that first night in the hospital; he'd fallen asleep in a waiting room chair and been woken by a nurse, hours later, her expression kind. He'd still had blood on his clothes.

Those first two weeks in the house, Sam shook him awake more nights than not, his hands rough on Dean's shoulders. "Dean," he said, the first time, "Jesus, I heard you screaming—"

"It's nothing," Dean said hoarsely. "Go back to bed."

"Are you sure? It sounded like—"

"It's nothing," Dean said.

Sam kept his mouth shut after that, and after a while he stopped coming in to wake Dean up—he'd gotten used to it, maybe, or invested in earplugs; Dean didn't ask. It wasn't like the dreams had stopped, and he didn't want to be the one who brought up that delightful topic of conversation.

Sam got a job at the front desk of the library at the community college in Greenville. Dean went in on his first day and checked out a huge stack of books about sex—Homosexualities, Love Between Women, What to Expect When You're Expecting, Breasts Through the Ages.

"Dean," Sam muttered furiously, turning pink and shaking his head.

"C'mon, you know it's funny," Dean said.

"Okay, it kind of is," Sam said, and shot a glance at the elderly librarian who was supervising him.

Dean went home and started reading one of the books. He learned about homosexuality in ancient Greece and how monks in Heian Japan apparently did a lot of ass-fucking.

He thought about Sam's pink flush and copied out the best passages on sheets of scrap paper, folded them up and stuck them in Sam's coffee mugs. He imagined Sam in the morning, shirtless and rumpled, innocently grabbing a mug off the shelf and finding himself confronted with the top five gay sex positions. Dean snickered to himself as he wrote.

Sure enough, the next morning he heard Sam come down the hallway the cabinet door open, and then Sam's startled bark of laughter. Sam came out to the back porch, folded-up paper in hand, hair all messed up, forehead wrinkled. "Dude, why'd you stick this in my coffee cup?"

Dean rocked the porch swing with his heels, sipped his coffee. "I mean, you're the one who's always talkin' about self-discovery and experimentation, I figured it might come in handy—"

"This is the stupidest prank ever," Sam said. "You've sunk to new depths." He was grinning, but his ears were pink and he wouldn't quite meet Dean's eyes. "I'm just—of all things, Dean, you decided—gay sex, man." He hitched up his boxers.

"What," Dean said. "It's funny. You don't need to get all worked up about it." His gaze flickered down, caught on the pink seam running down Sam's chest. "Does that—"

"It's fine," Sam said, and crossed his arms. "Next time you wanna prank me, try something that isn't totally lame, okay?"

The scar ran all the way up to the hollow of Sam's throat, right between his collarbones. "Whatever," Dean said. "Go drink your frickin' coffee."

"Dickface," Sam said, and smacked the side of Dean's head.

Dean sneered.

He bought a vacuum cleaner, and a toilet plunger, and a non-stick frying pan. It all just accumulated somehow: the trappings of regular life that Dean had never thought about or needed before, but that were suddenly necessary and unremarkable. He bought placemats. Pink grapefruit-scented dish soap.

Sometimes, watching TV with Sam in the evenings after dinner, he could almost convince himself that no time had passed; that Dad was hunched at the kitchen table, scowling at his notebook, and that Dean was helping Sam with his homework before bedtime; that he and Sam were still one person, in every way that mattered, Dean leading and Sam following a step behind, close as a shadow.

Sam usually fell asleep during Jimmy Kimmel, all curled up on the sofa with his feet digging into Dean's thigh, and Dean would watch him, the steady lift of his chest, the soft part of his mouth. He felt his heart gradually sputtering to life inside him, like it was a car that had been up on blocks all winter and needed a few tries and some gentle coaxing to get it to start up again.

The things he didn't know about ordinary life could have filled an entire goddamn encyclopedia. Until Sam left for Stanford, he'd managed to fake it pretty well, going through the motions of school and part-time work, but it was all just a cover for the hunting; it wasn't real. But all of a sudden he found himself working a steady job, seeing the same people every day, buying groceries, and that was all there was to it; he wasn't doing anything else, it was all genuine, it was his life.

He got a subscription to Popular Mechanics and had it mailed to the house. He got a valued member card at the local grocery store, and he flirted with the checkout girl every week, letting her show him pictures of her little boy. She wasn't pretty until she smiled, but then she did, and Dean couldn't look away.

"What's your name," Dean said.

She pointed to her name tag. "What, you can't read?"

"Illiterate since birth," Dean said, grinning. "Okay, Miranda, see you next week."

After a month, she asked him out for coffee. Dean froze for a moment, panicking—he'd never really done the dating thing, not since Cassie, and he wasn't really sure what to say. "Uh," he said, running a hand over his head.

"Say yes," Miranda said, smiling, and Jesus, he couldn't resist when she looked at him like that.

"Yeah, okay," Dean said. "When's good for you?"

"I get off in fifteen minutes," Miranda said, and that was how Dean found himself sitting at a rickety table in the town's only excuse for a coffee shop, drinking something with steamed milk in it and listening to Miranda talk about her ex-husband. What scared him was that he liked it—Miranda had the kind of dry sense of humor that Dean had always loved in a woman, and she smiled a lot and touched Dean's arm, and then she kissed him in the parking lot when he walked her out to her car.

"Maybe we'll have to do this again sometime," she said, and Dean, feeling like he'd been hit over the head with a board, said, "Yeah, I'd like that."

He went home and found Sam scowling at a cookbook, his laptop open on the counter beside him, the speakers blaring some guy whining about his hair and why nobody loved him. "I went on a date today," Dean announced, shutting the back door.

Sam looked up, eyebrows raised. "Dude, seriously? Are you serious?"

"Yup," Dean said. "Her name's Miranda. She's the checkout girl at the grocery store."

"Huh," Sam said, and smirked. "Did you get any action?"

"Sammy!" Dean yelped. "She's a lady."

"Sure thing, Casanova," Sam said. "Turn the oven on for me, would you? I'm baking a cake."

"You're a fuckin' disgrace to men everywhere, is what you are," Dean said, but he turned on the oven. He really wanted some cake.

He took her out again the next week, on Saturday night. They went to the Mexican place in Walton, and Miranda had a huge margarita and turned bright pink and laughed a lot, played with her hair, acting girlish in a way Dean hadn't seen from her before. He was charmed.

"Oh God," she said, staring at her empty margarita glass, "I can't believe I just drank all of that. Dean! Why did you let me drink that!"

"I don't think I could've stopped you," he said.

"I'm all drunk now," she moaned. "Let's get more chips, okay?"

"Okay," Dean said.

She took her heels off in the car on the ride home, and when he dropped her off at her house, she came around to the driver's side and bent down, shoes in her hand, and kissed Dean through the open window.

He slid one hand around the back of her head and held her there, tasting her mouth's sweet tequila burn.

"I had fun," she said, when he let her go.

"Me too," Dean said. "Do you wanna, uh."

"Maybe next weekend," Miranda said, smiling.

Dean sang along with the radio the entire way home, drumming on the steering wheel with both hands. His car smelled like Miranda's perfume, all floral and spicy.

Sam was lying on the couch, reading a book with a bright red cover. He sat up when Dean came in and tossed the book on a coffee table. "How was the big date?"

"Good," Dean said. He took of his jacket and boots, flopped down on the couch next to Sam. He was strangely reluctant to talk about it with Sam—strange, when he'd spent his entire adolescence giving Sam vivid details about every conquest.

"You gonna go out with her again?" Sam asked.

Dean shrugged. "Yeah, maybe. What's on TV?"

***

On Wednesday afternoon, Fernando somehow shot himself in the foot with his nail gun, and Dean ended up driving him to the emergency room, cursing the shitty drivers while Fernando shook and bled in the back seat. Then there was a huge, messy ordeal about Fernando not being entirely legal, and by the time Dean dropped Fernando off at his house and went home himself, it was past 9:00.

Sam was in the kitchen, eating a plate of lasagna. "Hey," he said. "Where've you been? There's dinner in the fridge."

"That stupid son of a bitch Fernando put three nails in his foot," Dean said. "I spent all evening in the goddamn emergency room. That bitch owes me a six-pack." He pulled open the fridge. "You made lasagna?"

"Eat some of the salad first," Sam said.

"Fuck salad," Dean said. "I want something with meat in it."

"Well, so eat the lasagna," Sam said.

"Fuck you, maybe I will," Dean said, and viciously scooped some lasagna onto his plate.

They are in silence for a while.

Finally, Dean sighed and set his fork down. "Shit. I just—I had a fuckin' shitty day, and there's blood all over my car, and Fernando's probably gonna get deported, and—"

"Man, I'm sorry," Sam said. "That really sucks."

"Yeah, well." Dean picked up his fork. He didn't know what words he could use to tell Sam how little anything else mattered, as long as Sam was waiting there in the kitchen with leftovers in the fridge.

He went to bed early that night, before Sam did, and woke up some indeterminate amount of time later, his eyes blinking open in the dark room and the nightmare still sharp in his head. Sam's hands were hot on his shoulders, pressing him down into the mattress.

"Dean, man, this has to stop," Sam said. "I've got the freaky nightmares thing covered, okay?"

"You went in there," Dean said, "you stupid fucker, you didn't listen to me, I thought you were gonna die—"

"I didn't," Sam said. "I didn't. I'm okay."

"Jesus," Dean said. He rubbed one hand across his eyes, feeling them prickle hot and itchy.

"Hey," Sam said. "Hey, shhh. It's okay." Dean recognized the pitch of his voice, low and soothing—it was the same voice he'd used on Sam after countless childhood nightmares, trying to ease him back into his own bed and sleep. Most nights, Sam had refused to go, and they'd ended up curled together in one twin bed, Sam's lumpy stuffed rabbit squished between them.

"Sammy," Dean said, and groped at the front of Sam's t-shirt, half-expecting to feel it soaked through with blood.

"Shhh," Sam said again, and he turned back the covers and climbed into bed with Dean, holding him close, and Dean gave in to it, then, and shook with the hard, tearless sobs he'd been holding back for months, since that day in the barn with Sam dying slowly on the blood-wet straw.

Sam was gone when he woke up. Dean slumped into the kitchen, embarrassed as fuck, and pointedly ignored Sam while he poured himself some coffee.

"There's nothing to be embarrassed about," Sam said. "It was a nightmare, man, I mean, you weren't even all the way awake—"

"Can you please shut the fuck up," Dean said. "It never happened. I've wiped it from my mind. You took advantage of my frickin' moment of vulnerability or whatever."

"Whatever makes you feel better," Sam said. "You want some eggs?"

"Only if you put tomatoes in," Dean said.

"I think I can probably do that," Sam said.

That was Thursday. Dean went to work, gave the boss the news about Fernando, smashed his thumb with his hammer, came home and cooked hamburgers for dinner while Sam sat at the kitchen table and babbled about the book he was reading, about dinosaurs and evolution or something. Dean wasn't really paying attention.

"So anyway, the whole aquatic ape thing is essentially bullshit, but it's cool to think about," Sam said. "What the hell happened to your thumb, man?"

Dean glanced at it and winced. His thumb had been throbbing all day, and blood was pooling under the nail, turning it dark purple. After dinner, he brought his tool belt into the kitchen and stood over the sink while he drilled a tiny hole in his nail.

"That's totally disgusting," Sam said, hovering at Dean's shoulder.

"Yeah, so don't look," Dean said. Blood slowly welled up through the little hole, and he sighed as he felt the pressure ease.

"Dean! You're so gross!" Sam shouted, and staggered away dramatically, one hand clapped over his eyes.

"Shut up, you pussy," Dean said, and snapped Sam's ass with the dish towel.

He saw Miranda again on Friday. They went out for dinner and a movie, and Dean held her hand in the movie theater, his thumb rubbing the soft skin below her knuckles.

When he dropped her off, she leaned over until her mouth was brushing against his ear and murmured, "Come inside with me."

Dean thought about it: slowly unrolling her stockings off her legs, putting his mouth to that mole in the crease of her elbow; and he thought about Sam, waiting up for him, with dinner slowly cooling on the stove; and he said, "I, uh, my cousin's sick, I need to get home."

Miranda sat back, straightened her skirt. "Oh," she said. "Well. Okay. Goodnight."

She shut the car door very quietly, and Dean winced at the sound, the finality of it.

He cursed himself all the way home. There was no reason for—he should've gone in with her. She was wonderful, and he really liked her, and Sam could goddamn well take care of himself, twenty-four and a grown man and everything. But he remembered the hopeful, eager look on Sam's face when Dean had come home from his date the week before, and thinking about it made something soft and painful curl inside his chest, like a dried leaf.

Sam was on the couch, reading, and he swung his legs onto the floor when Dean came in, sat up, smiled. "How'd it go? You're back early."

"Yeah," Dean said. He sat down on the disintegrating armchair and loosened his necktie.

"Well, so what happened? Did you, uh."

"No," Dean said.

Sam snorted. "What? Why not?"

"I don't know," Dean said.

Sam leaned back and crossed his arms, chewing at his lip. "So, why'd you—"

"Not talking about it," Dean said.

"Whatever," Sam said. "Leno's on."

"I fuckin' hate Leno," Dean said, but he turned on the TV anyway.

He spent the next day hiding. He told Sam he felt like reheated ass and skulked around in his room, reading Popular Mechanics and furtively jerking off. His belly was doing that strange fluttering thing that always pissed him off so much. He felt giddy and shaky and irritated. The weather cooperated by raining furiously all day, flattening the early crocuses that were blooming in the back yard.

He shuffled down the hall at dinner time, squinting blearily and scratching at his throat.

Sam was reading a book with a monkey on the cover. "You feeling better?" he asked.

"Kinda," Dean said grumpily. He coughed into his fist. "What's for dinner?"

"What's for—Dean, I'm not your house boy!" Sam said.

"You're not?" Dean said.

Sam started laughing. "I hate you."

"Yeah, well, feeling's mutual, Bigfoot." Dean went into the kitchen. He hadn't eaten since breakfast, and his stomach was tying itself into knots and rumbling periodically.

He heard Sam get off the couch, his big feet making the floorboards creak. "Are sure you're okay, man? You've been acting weird all day—"

"I'm fine," Dean snapped, and opened the fridge. Sam was walking toward him, and it made Dean twitchy, like there was a wild animal in the room doing its goddamn best to kill and eat him.

"You're really not," Sam said. His hand settled on Dean's shoulder, thumb catching at the fabric of Dean's t-shirt, and Dean—his stupid body—fucking shivered.

"Cold in here," Dean said, his knuckles going tight around the fridge handle.

"Dean," Sam said, and his voice cracked right down the middle.

"Shut up, shut up, shut up," Dean said. He twisted away, knocking Sam's hand off his shoulder, and kicked the fridge closed with his foot. "If you say anything, I swear to God I will punch you in the face."

"I'm not saying anything," Sam said, but his face, when Dean turned toward him, had that wide-open, nervous look that Sam got sometimes when he wanted to be happy but was afraid of it.

"Stop it," Dean said. "Sammy. Knock it off. I'm so serious."

"I'm not even doing anything," Sam said, "Dean, I'm not—"

"Yeah, you are," Dean said. "So just—you need to stop it." He pulled away, then, away from Sam's grasping hands, his stricken face, and stomped down the hall toward the back of the house—still hungry, and his head reeling.

It was one of those Pandora's Box things—once Dean started thinking about it, he couldn't stop; it just rolled around and around in his head all day, while he was in the shower, bullshitting with Fernando, fooling with the car, cleaning his guns—underneath all of it, there was Sam.

He saw Miranda when he went grocery shopping that week: he stood in line with his green peppers and his Golden Grahams, and grinned wide at her when she rung him up.

"How are you, Dean," she said.

"Good," he said. "I'm doing good. Hey, uh, so I was thinking—"

"Let's not," she said, smiling at him, but only with her mouth. "It's okay. I understand."

"I just thought—"

"Let it go," she said. "You don't have to be kind to me. That's sweet, though."

Dean shoved his hands in his coat pockets, waited while she bagged his groceries. He wasn't relieved.

Well, maybe he was.

He hid from Sam, mostly, going for long runs in the morning before work, claiming exhaustion in the evenings and slinking into his room. Sam kept his mouth shut, though, and after a week or two Dean managed to relax, stopped twitching around the house like any second Sam would accost him and make him talk about his feelings.

Spring came. The crocuses bloomed, and then the daffodils, and then the dogwood tree by the front porch started up, and by then Dean was wearing just a t-shirt to work every day, his flannel and jacket abandoned. It was a warm spring, humid and sunny, and after Daylight Savings, he started sitting on the back porch with a beer most nights after work, listening to the spring peepers in the ravine down by the river.

Sam was completely healed by then, or close enough that he could fake it. He started joining Dean on his morning runs. They'd go four miles, five; and Dean kept a weather eye out for any stiffness, any signs of pain that Sam showed, but there weren't any.

They didn't talk much.

Sam worked on perfecting his German chocolate cake recipe. "Do you think it needs more walnuts?" he asked, hovering.

Dean took another bite. "More coconut," he said.

"I put in twice as much as the recipe calls for!" Sam said, still wearing his apron.

"I like coconut," Dean said.

"This isn't just about indulging your twisted desires, man," Sam said.

"Whatever," Dean said, and scraped up some of the icing that had fallen onto his plate. "Who else is gonna eat it?"

"I guess," Sam said, and the next time he made it, there was more coconut.

Dean bought a grill at Lowe's and started barbecuing on the weekends, steak and fish and vegetable kebabs. They'd sit on the back steps to eat, licking sauce off their fingers.

"I can't wait until there's corn on the cob," Sam said.

"Yeah," Dean said, and Christ, corn wasn't until the summer—that was months away, and the idea that Sam was counting on them still being in Reunion made Dean's belly feel all weird and tight.

They started watching Wheel of Fortune every night after dinner, like a couple of old people, but it was a thought that Dean would never speak aloud. Sam was good at solving the puzzles; Dean was better.

"It's my sharp and analytical mind," Dean said.

"Sharp and analytical my ass," Sam said, laughing.

"You're just pissed 'cause I won again," Dean said.

"Yeah, well, why don't you go on the show if you're so good," Sam said.

"Maybe I will," Dean said, and Sam hit him in the face with one of the throw pillows, and they ended up breaking the coffee table right down the middle in the ensuing wrestling match.

Dean won that, too.

***

He woke up one Sunday night, shivering under the sweat-damp sheets, and Sam was sitting on the edge of the bed, his face obscure in the dark room.

"Don't," Dean said, "Sammy, don't—"

"You're shaking," Sam said. His voice was quiet, muffled by the room's close confines or the late hour.

"I had a bad dream," Dean said.

"I know," Sam said. "I heard you yelling." He sighed. "C'mere."

"What? No!" Dean pulled the covers up to his chin, scowling.

Sam rolled his eyes. "You wanna be like that? Okay, fine—" And then he was crawling over Dean, and flopping down in the narrow space between Dean and the wall, and worming his way beneath the blankets.

"What are you doing," Dean said, his heartbeat kicking up a few notches. "Personal space! Get outta my bed!"

"No," Sam said. "You wanna keep doing this, acting like nothing's wrong, that's fine, but I'm kind of getting sick of listening to you freak out every night, okay?" He grabbed one of Dean's hands and shoved it up underneath his own t-shirt, and Dean bit his lip as his fingers skidded over Sam's hard belly, his small tight nipples.

"This is so gay," Dean said, "this is, like, really, really fuckin' gay, Sammy—"

"Shut the fuck up," Sam said. "You feel that scar?"

And Dean did—oh God, the ridged edge of it beneath his fingertips, and he broke Sam's grip on his wrist and yanked his hand away. He couldn't—he couldn't.

"Christ, Dean, what's your problem? I'm trying to show you—"

"Don't you fuckin' make me," Dean said, low and brutal, tucking his hands beneath his armpits.

"It means I'm still alive," Sam said. "Okay? You saved me, we got out, the—the demon's dead—"

It was the first time either of them had said the words, and Dean cringed to hear them, as if saying it would somehow render it untrue. "Don't say that," he said.

"Why not?" Sam demanded. "It's over, Dean."

"I guess," Dean muttered.

"God, Dean, why can't you just—"

"It's not over for me," Dean said. "Okay? It's not."

"I don't know what to do." Sam rolled onto his side, the mattress shifting with his weight, and he pressed his face into Dean's neck, breathing there. "You've got to let go of this, Dean, it's all over now, we don't have to do anything but live here and—and—"

"Sammy," Dean said, the word like a fish bone in his throat.

"I know," Sam said, "I know, it's okay." He nosed at Dean's earlobe, and Dean twisted, meaning to get away, but somehow his head turned the wrong direction and Sam tilted his neck a little and their mouths slotted together, terrifying, half-expected.

The first wet press of Sam's mouth was like a gunshot, the way it shocked Dean into stillness the instant it hit, and then released him again into motion. He fisted his hands in the worn fabric of Sam's shirt and opened his mouth. Sam made a soft noise and jerked a little, like he was surprised. His hand touched down on Dean's hip, lifted away, touched down again more firmly, his hand clasping the ridge of bone.

Dean sucked on Sam's lower lip and didn't think. It was easy, there in the dark room, both of them tucked into the warm, humid space beneath the covers, to pretend that there was nothing wrong, that it was a dream or not real or that it somehow didn't count.

He'd had dreams like that before.

He lost track of how long they lay there, trading slow kisses, so tentative and easy that it made Dean want to grab onto Sam and never let him go. Sam rubbed patterns on Dean's back, slow and soothing.

After a while, his heart pounding, Dean tucked two fingers into the waistband of Sam's boxer shorts, and Sam squirmed away, catching Dean in the stomach with an elbow.

"Dude," Dean said.

Sam sat up. "Sorry." He ran one hand through his hair. "It's just—it's kind of weird, okay?"

"Kind of—" Dean started laughing. It had a slight hysterical edge to it, but he hoped Sam wouldn't notice.

"Well, this is all a little new to me, assface," Sam said, and he sounded so affronted that Dean just laughed harder. "Yeah, keep laughing. I'm going back to my own room."

Dean pulled him back down, kissed his wide mouth until Sam gave in and wrapped his arms around Dean and kissed him back.

***

They fell asleep at some point, because Dean woke up in the morning with Sam hogging three-quarters of Dean's pillow and another one of his own. Dean rolled onto his back, the early sunlight casting golden squares across the bedspread. He didn't—he'd tried to stick his hand down his brother's boxers last night, and the thought propelled him out of bed and into his running shoes, and by the time he'd done six miles and come back, Sam was awake and drinking coffee with the paper.

"Uh. Hi," Dean said, shutting the back door behind him.

"Hi," Sam said. "There's coffee, if you want any."

"Yeah, I. Uh. Thanks," Dean said, and poured himself a mug. Sam didn't seem like he wanted to talk about it, but Dean kept a wary eye on him as he fixed a bowl of Golden Grahams and took it over to the table, carton of orange juice tucked under one arm.

Sam let Dean eat in peace for about two minutes, and then he said, "We need to talk about this."

"No we don't," Dean said. "We don't need to do anything, there's no, like, no fuckin' rule that says we have to talk about it—"

"Well, I think we should," Sam said, and he folded the paper elaborately, tucking all the sections into each other, the way he did when he was nervous and looking for something to occupy his hands.

"I think we shouldn't," Dean said, and shoveled another spoonful of cereal into his mouth.

Sam sighed. "Look, man, I know you hate all this touchy-feely stuff, but we can't just pretend like nothing happened—"

"I don't see why the fuck not," Dean said, and shoved away from the table, stomped toward the bathroom for his shower.

He didn't see Sam again until dinner. Sam didn't get off work until 7:00 on Mondays, so Dean stopped at the store on the way home for a six-pack, and cooked stir-fry and rice. It wasn't that he disliked vegetables; it was just hard to eat fresh food on the road, but now that they were settled down for a while, Dean was really learning to appreciate broccoli and carrots with a little soy sauce and peanut butter. It was like he was a whole new frickin' person.

Sam came in the front door about 7:30. Dean heard him set down his keys, take off his shoes and his jacket, sling his girly messenger bag over the chair in the hall. Dean shuffled the stir-fry around with his spatula and didn't look up, even when Sam's footsteps moved down the hall and into the kitchen.

"Hi," Sam said.

"Hey," Dean said. "I'm, uh, makin' some dinner."

"Good," Sam said. "That's good."

He was just hovering in the doorway—Dean could see from the corner of his eye, and it was making him nervous, so he said, "Set the table, huh?"

He was tired of all this goddamn domestic bliss. Things had been a lot easier when they were washing their clothes in laundromats and periodically having near-fatal run-ins with things that wanted to kill them. There had been less kissing back then, for one thing.

He turned off the burner but left the pan there, sizzling dimly as the coils cooled down. He didn't want to sit at the table and eat and watch Sam, have Sam watch him—

"Dean," Sam said, and he was right there, at Dean's shoulder; his hand was on Dean's shoulder, turning him, and Dean went ahead and turned, the spatula still in his hand.

"What is it, Sammy," Dean said, keeping his eyes fixed on the wall behind Sam's head, the tacky gold-and-green wallpaper that must have been there since the 70s.

"You really wanna go ten rounds on this? You know I'm more stubborn than you," Sam said, and his hands settled at Dean's waist, tugging at the fabric of his shirt.

"No," Dean said. "Get your hands off me or I will beat you with this spatula."

Sam snorted and leaned in, nosed at Dean's ear. Dean smelled awful after eight hours of hard labor and no shower, but Sam didn't seem to care; he pressed his lips to the tiny patch of skin right behind Dean's earlobe, and his fingers slid up underneath Dean's shirt, rubbing right along the waistband of his jeans. "It's okay," Sam said. "Dean. It's okay to want this—"

"No it's not," Dean said, and jerked away, crossed his arms. "It's not okay, I don't know how the fuck you think it ever could be—"

"So, what, are you saying you don't want it?"

Christ. Dean dropped the spatula into the sink. "I didn't say that."

"So what's the problem, then? I mean, I know it's weird, Dean, but this can't have come as a shock to you—"

"Yeah, well, it actually fuckin' did," Dean said. "There's a word for this, Sam, and it doesn't involve any happy fluffy bunnies, okay?" He grabbed the pan off the stove and took it over to the table, slapped it down on the trivet. "Get the rice."

"Whatever," Sam said, but he brought the pot over.

They ate in silence. Dean could feel Sam watching him, the little bastard, and his stomach was fluttering along, the way it had been all fuckin' day, like something amazing was about to happen; but Dean's belly clearly didn't know anything, because it wasn't amazing, it was terrible; he felt sick with guilt and desire.

After dinner, they washed the dishes—Dean washed, really, and Sam dried, and at one point Dean was seized by some stupid impulse and leaned up and over, his hands still in the soapy water, and kissed Sam's mouth.

Sam jerked away, flushing, the plastic plate in his hand clattering to the floor.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Dean said grimly.

"It's not—Dean." Sam ran one hand through his hair. "You gotta give me more warning than that, man."

"What, so you can brace yourself?" Dean snapped.

"Dude, honestly." Sam bent to pick up the plate he'd dropped. "You act like you're the only one who's unsettled by all this. I'm really—I don't know what's going on either, Dean, but at least I don't lie to myself all the time, like certain people I could name—"

"Are you, what, are you sayin' I'm in denial?" Dean said.

"Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I'm saying," Sam said. "You are just—you're the most infuriating person I've ever met. I don't see why it's so hard to just admit that you want this, and we can work it out together, like—maybe we could actually talk about it, like normal people—"

"Oh yeah, 'cause fucking your brother is the hot new trend in middle America," Dean said, and that shut Sam up pretty fast.

They didn't watch Wheel of Fortune that night. Dean skulked away to his room and jerked off, looking at the porn mags he had shoved in his dresser drawer, the spread pink cunts and round tits and—oh Christ, Sam—

He woke up when his mattress shifted, and he went for the knife under his pillow, not thinking; but then he remembered that they were safe, there was nothing coming after them, and the only person who would be crawling into his bed in the middle of the night was Sam.

"Thanks for not stabbing me to death," Sam muttered.

Dean closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep.

"You can pretend you're not awake if you need to," Sam said. "That's fine. I just want you to listen to me, okay? I'm—Dean, I love you, all right, and I'm choosing this, I'm choosing to be here with you. I know you probably don't believe it, and you're still mad at me for, uh, the stuff with the demon—but I made it, and we're here now, and I want you. I can't explain it, and it terrifies me, but I'm just—Dean, I want this. So just let me know when you've gotten over your big gay freakout or whatever it is that's going on with you."

He climbed off the bed and left. Dean lay awake for a long time, his chest aching, imagining that he could hear Sam's even breathing in the next room, that steady rhythm Dean had missed every night since they'd moved into the house, except for one.

He wanted it. Christ, he wanted it, but what he wanted didn't matter. Sam was his goddamn baby brother, and Dean had been taking care of him all his life, and he was not gonna go down that road—he just wasn't.

Sam was right, though: he was a hell of a lot more stubborn than Dean. And devious. Sneaky.

He came home after work on Tuesday with a soccer ball.

"What's that," Dean said.

"It's a soccer ball," Sam said.

"Yeah, assface, I can see that," Dean said. "I meant why do you have it."

"I played," Sam said. "In college. Just club soccer, but. I played the whole time I was there."

"I didn't know that," Dean said. Sam had always wanted to join the soccer team in high school, but they'd moved around too much for it to ever really be an option—coaches wanted commitment, and experience, and the ability to be at practice every afternoon instead of off in the woods shooting at targets with your dropout brother.

"So let's play," Sam said.

Dean shrugged, and put the box of pasta back in the cabinet. "Sure, if you wanna get your ass beat—"

"You talk big," Sam said, kicking the screen door open with one foot.

It was still daylight. The spring peepers hadn't started up yet, waiting until nightfall to begin their noisy festivities. The trees were covered with pale green leaves, delicate-looking and still partway folded, and every single one of them a hotbed of evil hell-pollen. Dean sneezed violently and wiped his nose on his shirt.

"You're so gross," Sam said.

"Fuckin' hay fever," Dean said. "Are we gonna play or what?"

Sam was good. He dribbled the ball up and down the yard, evading Dean's attempts at getting it away. Dean had always been more of a football type—he liked grabbing things and tackling people, and all this pansy-ass footwork just irritated him.

"Don't even think about it," Sam panted. "No tackling."

"I wasn't gonna!" Dean said.

"You've got that look in your eyes," Sam said. "I mean it, Dean, don't."

So of course Dean was obligated to tackle him, then. It was the rules.

They ended up sprawled on the grass, Sam on top of Dean, rubbing his sweaty face against Dean's shirt and bellowing about cheaters and playing dirty.

"Get off me," Dean snapped, pushing Sam away, but Sam was enormous and heavy, and he clung to Dean and kept shouting.

"—not allowed according to the rules of international gameplay! Also, you stole my favorite comic book when I was six! And you fucked Tricia Waters!"

"I fucked—dude. Sam. She was like, eight years older than you!"

"So what!" Sam yelled, and Dean gave up struggling and just lay there on the grass, laughing until tears rolled out of his eyes.

"It's not funny!" Sam said, but then he started laughing too, his body shaking against Dean's.

It felt so good to be doing something normal with Sam that Dean let it go on longer than he probably should have—he let Sam cling to him and laugh and wipe his tears on the sleeve of Dean's shirt, and it wasn't until Sam started biting at his jaw that Dean rolled them both and stood up, dusting off his dirty hands on the seat of his pants.

"What is it," Sam asked. He was all splayed out on the grass, sweaty, flushed with joy and exertion, and all Dean wanted in the whole world was to drop to his knees and shove a hand down Sam's shorts.

"Nothing," Dean said. "Get up, let's go eat."

They didn't talk about it—about anything, really, but Dean thought about it constantly. Sam started wandering around the house in his boxers, the sweetest torture Dean could imagine. He would snuggle up to Dean during their after-dinner TV—actually snuggle, like he was a dog or a fourteen-year-old girl or something, one hand curled around Dean's wrist and his head resting on Dean's shoulder. Dean was twitchy all the time, high-strung and antsy, and he hadn't jerked off so much since high school.

Mid-April, Sam got the stomach flu. Dean woke up before dawn to the sounds of retching, and he staggered down the hallway to the bathroom, his eyes crusted with sleep.

"Sammy? You okay?" He knocked on the door.

"No," Sam croaked, and vomited again.

It lasted for almost a week. Every morning, Dean made sure Sam was all set with tissues, ginger ale, and an empty wastebasket next to his bed. It would have been funny if it weren't so pathetic—Sam curled up with a book, pale and clammy, periodically staggering to the bathroom to throw up again.

What surprised Dean was how much he missed Sam. It wasn't like Sam was gone, even; he was just down the hall, no more than a thirty seconds' walk from the living room. But Dean made dinner by himself, watched Wheel of Fortune by himself every night, and it wasn't the same—he missed having Sam next to him on the couch, his big feet on the coffee table, his hair tickling Dean's nose.

The fourth evening, Sam appeared in the doorway, wrapped in a blanket. "Dean?"

"Yeah, what is it, Sammy," Dean said, turning off the TV.

"I'm out of ginger ale," Sam said, and coughed weakly.

"Okay," Dean said. "Go back to bed, all right? I'll bring you some more."

Sam was buried under the covers when Dean pushed open the door, liter of soda tucked under one arm. He sat on the edge of the bed and switched on the lamp.

"I wanna die," Sam moaned.

"No, you don't," Dean said. There was a glass sitting on the night stand; Dean filled it up and passed it to Sam, who clutched at it with both hands.

"I can't sleep," Sam said.

"You want some Nyquil?" Dean asked. "I think we're out, but I can run to the drugstore—"

"No," Sam said. He drained the glass and gave it back to Dean. "I dunno." He rolled over, flopped onto his belly. "I'm just—this sucks, man. I feel terrible."

"Yup, well, stomach flu will do that to you," Dean said. He sat the soda bottle on the floor and swung his legs up onto the bed, leaned back against the headboard.

"I'm gonna sleep now," Sam said, and let out a long breath, pressing his face into the pillow.

Dean sat there for a long time and rubbed Sam's back, the way he used to when Sam was little and sick, or scared after a bad dream, or missing Dad. After a while, he started singing "Baby Beluga," very softly so he wouldn't wake Sam up. It had been Sam's favorite song as a kid, and Dean had sung it to him most nights before they went to bed, the only lullaby that would actually put Sam to sleep.

And that was it, right there, the thing that had been holding Dean back: he couldn't fuck Sam knowing that he was the little brother Dean sang to sleep when they were kids. He couldn't.

He dreamed that night of Sam with his chest split open, and the Colt rising into the air, steady, aimed perfectly, and with no hand to guide it.

***

The last week in April, Sam managed to set the stove on fire—Dean never did figure out how he'd done it—and they had to repaint the wall and put in a couple of new cabinets. It cost half of Dean's paycheck, and he was mad as hell; he'd been planning on spending it on new tires for the Impala.

"I really am sorry, man," Sam said, for about the ten millionth time.

"Still don't see how the fuck you did this," Dean grumbled, shaking out the drop cloth. "The hell did you do, set it on fire with your freaky brain powers or something?"

Sam shoved his hands in his pockets. "Uh. Something like that."

"Jesus Christ, I do not want to know. Don't tell me anything," Dean said, and pointed at Sam with his paint brush. "No more setting stuff on fire."

"It was an accident!" Sam said.

"Yeah, that's what they all say," Dean said.

Two days after that, Dean came home to find the table set, lasagna in the oven, and two six-packs in the fridge.

Sam wiped his hands on his apron and gave Dean a crooked smile.

"I can't believe you're still wearing that thing," Dean said. He knew an apology when he saw one, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to make Sam squirm a little. He reached to tug on one of the dangling strings, unravel the neat bow Sam had tied.

"It's high fashion," Sam said. He grabbed Dean's wrist and spun him, had him pinned against the counter before Dean could do more than raise his eyebrows in alarm. His arms were warm along Dean's sides, trapping him, and his hands clutched the edge of the counter beside Dean's hips.

"Nope," Dean said, shaking his head vigorously. "We aren't doing this."

Sam slid one foot between both of Dean's, his thigh not quite touching down but close enough to make Dean really fucking nervous. "You can't make this all go away, Dean. It's happened already. I just—I don't understand why you're fighting it so hard."

"Yeah, well, you wouldn't," Dean said.

Sam frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Whatever," Dean said, trying to wriggle away, "it doesn't matter, can we just—"

"It does matter," Sam said. He pressed in harder. "Something's bothering you, and you won't tell me what it is, and I'm so—Dean, you're making it into this huge, dramatic issue, and it doesn't have to be like that, you can—"

"I can't," Dean said. "It doesn't matter if I—how much I want it, Sammy. I'm supposed to take care of you, and this ain't exactly included in the definition."

"Is that it?" Sam snorted. "Man, I'm almost twenty-five, I'm not exactly your baby brother anymore—"

"You are," Dean said. "Jesus Christ, Sammy, you always will be, even when you're fuckin' eighty, if either of us make it that far with this death wish you've got going—"

"Whoa, hold on," Sam said. "Death wish? What the hell are you talking about?"

"Whatever," Dean muttered, looking around for something he could use to fend Sam off. There was a wooden spoon by the sink, but he didn't think he'd be able to grab it before Sam stopped him.

"Is this still about the demon? You gotta let go of that, man. I wasn't trying to get myself killed, I was trying to save both our asses." Sam sighed and dropped his forehead to rest against Dean's shoulder, bone digging hard into bone. "I'm trying so hard, here. You've gotta give me something to go on, Dean—we can work on this together, okay, but I need to know—if you really don't want this, you need to tell me."

Dean swallowed hard, and finally, finally drew his hands up, hooked his fingers in the front pockets of Sam's jeans. "I want this," he said, his voice cracking.

Sam turned his head, and his smile took shape against Dean's neck—Dean could feel it. "I know you do," he said.

"You smug fucking bastard," Dean said, and thought about the smooth patch of skin right above Sam's waistband, how Sam would shriek like a little girl if he put his fingers there—

"No tickling," Sam said, his words a current of air against Dean's skin.

"You know, that really freaks me out," Dean said.

"Too bad," Sam said. He lifted his head and kissed the corner of Dean's mouth, light, teasing kisses, again and again, until Dean made a noise in the back of his throat and turned his head just enough to fit their mouths together. Sam cupped Dean's head with one of his hands and slid his tongue into Dean's mouth—and it was good; Christ, it was good, and Dean dug his hands into the hard muscle right above the swell of Sam's ass and kissed him back.

He pulled back after a while, shaking. "Maybe we should, uh. Eat the lasagna."

"The timer hasn't gone off yet," Sam said, leaning back in.

"Two minutes," Dean said, and it was true: he could see the egg timer on the counter by the sink, and the knob had almost reached the top again, its ticking already dying down.

"It's good lasagna," Sam said.

"It's not even out of the oven, how the hell would you know?"

"Trust me," Sam said, and grinned.

After dinner, they watched Wheel of Fortune and Sam stroked his fingers along the inseam of Dean's pants until Dean was about to jump out of his skin from it, guilt and anticipation warring inside of him, two crushing forces he couldn't escape, and wasn't sure he wanted to.

God help him, he didn't move Sam's hand away.

That night, he didn't have any nightmares, only dreams of Sam's mouth, Sam's bare chest pressed against his, broad and hot as the sun.

***

"I found a hunt," Sam said, coming in the front door.

Dean looked up from the paper and frowned. "You found a. What?"

"A hunt," Sam said. "You know, that stuff we used to do? Saving people, et cetera?"

"Well, yeah, but." Dean blinked. "Do you, uh. You wanna do that?"

"Sure," Sam said, shrugging. He dropped his keys on the hall table.

"Huh," Dean said. He scratched his chin. He wasn't—he'd mostly been thinking of Sam, of letting Sam get better, of what Sam wanted—and hunting hadn't factored in to that equation, not really. If Sam wanted to spend the rest of their lives in Reunion, Dean would do it, and be thankful every fucking day that Sam was still there to make Dean live in whatever crappy town he wanted them to live in.

"It sounds like it's just a haunting," Sam said. "Probably not a big deal. We can leave tomorrow morning. I mean, if you're up for it."

"Sure," Dean said. "Yeah, okay, sounds good."

That night, after dinner, he pushed Sam's legs off his lap and slid down onto the floor, feeling the yellow pine cool and solid beneath his knees.

Sam struggled up onto his elbows. "Dean, I. What are you doing."

"Just shut up and enjoy it," Dean said, and unzipped Sam's pants.

Sam wasn't hard, but he swelled in Dean's fist, his cock flushing, and he made a strangled noise when Dean started sucking on the head. "Dean," he said. "Dean—"

After, Dean got up to rinse his mouth at the sink.

"Dude, what's going on," Sam called from the living room.

Dean turned off the tap. "Nothing," he said.

"Yeah, whatever," Sam said. He appeared in the doorway, his jeans still unzipped, his hair dark with sweat. "You're clearly freaking out about something—"

"You just got head and you're bitching?" Dean said.

Sam frowned. "I'm just, Dean, it seems like you're—"

"I'm going to bed," Dean announced, and Sam didn't try to stop him when he brushed past.

In the morning, they packed up the car and headed out.

"It's about fifty miles from here," Sam said. "West on the highway."

"I got it," Dean said.

He found the house easily enough. It was beginning to slide into disrepair, a few shingles missing on the roof, the windows in need of repainting, the shrubbery overgrown. Dean recognized the look, could imagine what had happened: somebody had died, probably, the owners had moved, and nobody else wanted to buy the place.

"So what's the story," he said.

"Just rumors, really," Sam said. "It's kind of the hangout spot for local teenagers, and they disappear sometimes. The cops have been blaming it on underage drinking, but it sounds like spirit activity to me."

"Huh," Dean said. "Okay. You stay in the car." He shoved the door open and got out. It was a beautiful day, sunny, clear, a light wind rustling through the trees. He wished he'd brought his jacket with him.

Sam's door swung open, shut again. "Stay in the car? Are you crazy?"

"No," Dean said. "I mean it. You're not comin' in with me."

"Like hell I'm not," Sam said. "If you think I'm letting you go in there alone—"

"That's exactly what you're gonna do," Dean said. He opened the trunk and started rifling through the stash—he needed salt, his EMF reader, flashlight—

Sam grabbed him, spun him, slammed him up against the side of the car. His voice, when he spoke, was uneven, like he was having trouble getting the words out. "If you think, even for a moment, that—Dean—I'm not letting you do this alone."

"I did it by myself for four years," Dean snapped, bracing his elbows against the roof and kicking at Sam with his steel-toed boots.

"Yeah, when I wasn't here," Sam said, and pinned Dean's legs with his own, keeping him still. "Except I'm here, now, so that's kind of a big flaw in your argument, Dean—"

"You're not going in there," Dean said, "because I'm not letting you get your stupid ass killed, and you don't exactly have a great fuckin' track record with that sort of thing—"

Sam slammed him again, hard and jostling. "I had to go in there by myself," he said. "Do you understand that? I couldn't wait for you to get back, I had to go right then—"

"I told you to fuckin' wait," Dean snarled. "I told you it'd be fifteen minutes and then I'd be back and we'd go in together and take care of the son of a bitch—"

"We didn't have fifteen minutes," Sam said. He pushed until Dean was bent backwards over the roof of the car, his spine arched uncomfortably. "I had the Colt, and the demon wasn't gonna stay put for much longer, and I did wait, Dean, I did, but you weren't there, and I thought—I thought something had happened to you—"

"There was a fucking traffic accident," Dean yelled. "You stupid asshole, I thought you were gonna die—when I got there and you weren't outside, and then I—I went into the barn—and—" He sucked in a huge breath, his throat tight and aching. He'd remember it for the rest of his life, every detail painfully sharp: Sam and his blood, his naked ribs, his pulsing heart, and the demon laughing, the Colt firing, the frantic, miraculous drive to the hospital.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, "Dean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He buried his face in Dean's neck, and Dean wrapped his arms around Sam's back and held him, helpless, not sure what else he could do.

"You're all I have," Dean said. "You're. Sam. You're all I've had since the day you were born. And I thought I was—I thought you were gonna die, I thought I would have nothing." The confession broke from him like an arrow, a clean snap away and the relief of tension, like the effort to keep it inside had been knotting him up for months and months, and then everything came loose in one instant.

"I know," Sam mumbled. "I know. I'm sorry." His face was wet, pressed there against Dean's skin.

"Christ," Dean said. He kissed Sam's hair, smelling his stupid girly shampoo. He wanted to sleep for twelve hours, and then maybe eat some pancakes, and sit on the back porch with a six-pack and Sam—Sam, who was still alive, after it all. "Let's go kick some ghost ass."

Sam laughed. "Yeah, okay." He pulled back, wiped his face with the hem of his shirt.

"You're such a fuckin' girl," Dean said.

"Oh yeah, look who's talking," Sam said, and rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," Dean said. He handed Sam a shotgun and a bottle of lighter fluid, a pack of matches, and they went into the house.

***

They got home early Sunday morning, sweaty, covered in ash, but uninjured—uninjured, and that was the part that mattered.

"I'm gonna sleep for a month," Sam said, staggering toward the front door.

Dean followed Sam down the hallway, two steps behind him, and followed Sam into his room, and into his bed. They didn't talk about it. Sam pulled the covers up over both their heads, blocking out the morning sunlight, and Dean fell asleep listening to Sam's breathing, the steady in and out.

He woke up at noon, showered, brushed his teeth, ate a bowl of cereal while he read the sports section. He heard the shower start up again, the pipes rattling. Sam came into the kitchen while Dean was watching some talk show host with big teeth and bigger hair.

"My sheets are dirty now," Sam said. He was wearing a pair of Dean's sweat pants.

"So throw 'em in the wash," Dean said.

"I guess," Sam said. He scratched his belly. "You want waffles?"

"Yeah," Dean said.

After his third waffle, Sam said, "I'm gonna go sleep some more."

Dean thought about it: the wide mattress, the warm room, Sam's body sprawled next to his. "Yeah," he said, "me too."

They fell asleep in Dean's bed, that time, lazy and full of waffles, and Dean dreamed about his car, and swimming through clear water, a million fish streaming above him.

He woke up because Sam was touching him, tracing his fingers along Dean's belly, beneath his t-shirt. Dean grunted and batted at Sam's hands.

"You're awake," Sam said.

"No I'm not," Dean said, his eyes still closed. "What time is it?"

"I dunno," Sam said. "Late afternoon, I think."

"Wake me up when it's time for dinner," Dean said. He was limp all over, his arms and legs feeling glued to the mattress, weighted down. If Sam would just leave him alone, he could probably sleep clear through until the morning.

"No," Sam said. He pushed Dean's t-shirt up toward his arms, and Dean felt Sam's mouth on him, little bites along his hipbones.

"What are you. Sammy," Dean said, squirming.

The mattress shifted. "Look at me," Sam said.

Dean opened his eyes. Sam's hair was all tousled. Dean slid one hand into it and tugged Sam down for a kiss, still not awake enough to process more than the fact that Sam was near him and half-naked.

Sam bit at Dean's lip, sucked on it, his hand skimming along Dean's side.

"Quit biting me," Dean said, when Sam pulled away.

"You like it," Sam said. He bit Dean's collarbones, one and then the other.

"Mmmm," Dean said. "Feisty." He got one arm around Sam's ribs and rolled them, landing Sam on his back on the mattress. "I'm in charge now."

"Yeah, man, whatever you say," Sam said, smirking; and that was a challenge if Dean had ever heard one, both of them trying to downplay what they were doing, ignore the fact that they were scared—or Dean was, anyway, and he hoped Sam was, too; he ought to be.

"It's natural to want to test my authority," Dean said, and his pulse was going so fast, with that extra kick of terrified adrenaline to really make things lively. Sam's scar was still pink, shiny. Dean looked at it for a moment, considering.

"You can touch it," Sam said, his voice quiet.

Dean shook his head, mute.

"Come on, man," Sam said. "It's not a big deal. It doesn't even hurt anymore. It's pretty cool, I can feel all the scar tissue underneath—"

"Dude," Dean said.

"Hey, shhh. It's okay," Sam said. He took Dean's hand in his and placed it on his belly.

Dean swallowed, feeling that ridge beneath his palm. "I don't—"

"Come on," Sam said. "It's okay. I made it, Dean, I'm still here—"

"Yeah," Dean said. "I. Sammy. I know you are." He brushed his thumb against the harder knot of tissue right at Sam's navel, the dense beginning.

Sam made a face.

"Does that hurt?" Dean asked.

"No. I can't feel it, actually. It's just—it's kind of weird." Sam pulled his arms up over his head, bent his elbows on the pillow.

"Hmm," Dean said. He leaned forward and stuck his tongue in Sam's navel, feeling how the circle of it was broken by the beginning of the scar. Sam made a noise and jerked against the mattress; Dean grinned, held down Sam's hips. "You like that?"

"I. Maybe," Sam said.

Dean licked along the whole length of the scar, slowly, taking his time, making detours to Sam's nipples, the left and then the right. By the time he finished, his mouth pressed in the hollow of Sam's throat, Sam was panting, and his cock was hard inside Dean's sweats.

"Christ," Sam said, "Dean, come on, please—"

"Tell me what you want," Dean said, trying for a commanding tone and failing, too unsettled and amazed by the sight of Sam squirming around beneath him.

"You," Sam said, "anything, Dean—"

"Okay," Dean said, "okay, I got you." He shoved one hand down Sam's pants and wrapped it around Sam's cock, squeezing at the base, feeling the hard pulse of the vein.

"Yeah," Sam said, "Christ, Dean, yes," and he tugged at Dean's boxers, sliding them down over his ass, and Dean kicked them the rest of the way off; and then they went to work on Sam's sweats.

Dean settled himself between Sam's spread legs, his dick bumping haphazardly against Sam's, and Sam wrapped his legs around Dean's waist, arching his back, their hips fitting together just so. It took Dean a moment to realize that the moaning was coming from him; he'd thought he was past noise, that any sounds he could have made were rendered unnecessary by the feeling of Sam's hands on his skin.

They rocked together slowly. All Dean could see were the white sheets and Sam's golden skin; and then Sam locked his arms around Dean's neck, holding him close, and Dean closed his eyes and he didn't see anything at all, then. He felt his orgasm build, higher and higher, and then rush out of him like water from a broken levee.

"Dean," Sam was gasping, "oh, oh, oh Dean—"

"Shhh," Dean whispered, his lips pressed to Sam's shoulder. He wormed a hand between them and stroked Sam through it, listening to Sam's desperate little noises, Sam saying Dean's name over and over again, the sweetest incantation Dean could imagine.

***

In July, their lease was up.

"We could, uh. Do another six months, I mean. If you want to," Dean said, reading through the crumpled lease paperwork.

"Nah, it's time to get on the road, I think," Sam said. He opened the oven and peeked in, for about the tenth time in three minutes. "Unless you want to stay here—"

"We should probably get going," Dean said. "Places to see, demons to exorcise. I'll go stir-crazy if we stay here much longer. Is that cake done yet?"

"Almost," Sam said. "Maybe if we. I don't know, maybe if we need a break again, we could—"

"I'm not comin' back here," Dean said. "Reunion, Sam? Really?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "Not here. Just, you know. Stay somewhere for a few months."

"Hawaii," Dean said.

"You realize you have to take an airplane to get to Hawaii," Sam said.

"That's not true," Dean said. "We could take a boat."

"Dude, I'm not going to Hawaii on a boat. Do you know how long that would take?" Sam opened the oven and pulled the cake out, set it on one of the stove burners.

"Whatever," Dean muttered."Maybe Florida."

The day they left, they packed up the Impala and Dean drove around town tying up loose ends: he put in a forwarding address at the post office, gave his favorite screwdriver to Fernando, collected his last paycheck. He drove back to Greenville to pick Sam up at the library and kissed him right there in the fire lane, his hands in Sam's pockets, ignoring the looks they were getting from startled patrons.

"You ready to go?" Sam asked, pulling away, all flushed and beaming.

"Yeah," Dean said, and headed for the car, tossing his keys up into the air and catching them one-handed. "Let's hit the road."