Current mood:

enthralled

SPN fic: Not With a Leap, but a Series of Staggers, Pt. 1 (Sam/Dean)
TITLE: Not With a Leap, but a Series of Staggers, Pt. 1
PAIRING: Sam/Dean, some Dean/OFC
RATING: NC-17
GENRE: Angst/Drama (with a happy ending)
NOTES: AU after Everybody Loves a Clown. First half of this Part is from Sam’s POV, last half from Dean’s.
WORD COUNT: 10, 425 (clearly I’ve been possessed)
Summary: Reeling in the wake of their father’s death, things change.

Dean turns his head slightly, looking over at Sam with one lazily arched eyebrow, like Sam can’t possibly be serious. But there’s no life in it, no sparkle. It’s like, with Dad dead, a light’s gone out inside of Dean. His eyes are dark, haunted hallways to empty rooms, heavy circles beneath like shadows of blame. And Dean’s looking at him, but Sam isn’t sure Dean sees him anymore, and that hurts more than he expects, because Sam remembers a time not too long ago when he was all Dean could see.

Not With a Leap, but a Series of Staggers

Sam

Day 6 on the road from Bobby's

“Were you really gonna marry her?” Dean asks, apropos of nothing as they barrel down route 66, hell bent for leather with Led Zeppelin jamming on the speakers.

The sun is high in the sky, and Sam stares out the window over the desolate flat land of middle country, finds his thoughts tangled in the tumbleweeds that blow across the land, drifting lost and wispy.

Dad’s dead. Dad’s dead and they’ll never argue or fight or hug him or see him smile ever again. Dad’s dead, Jess is dead, Mom’s dead, and all he has is his big brother and this car, driving cross country on an eternal road trip toward damnation, blasting classic rock and grasping for anything solid to hang onto.

“I wanted to,” he finally says, remembering golden blond warmth and generous smiles, chocolate chip cookies and the feel of skin on skin. “She took… care of me, you know? She really… she wanted…” And Jess is all tangled up with Dad, and Mom, and all the other things he loved so much that he’ll never, ever get back. He trails off, words sticking in his throat.

Dean waits a moment, and when Sam doesn’t speak, doesn’t finish, Dean reaches over, cranks up the music and slams on the gas, pushing the Impala to her limits.

*

Day 11

“Do you think you would have asked Cassie to marry you?” Sam asks, chasing his peas around on his plate with his fork. It’s been four days since Dean asked Sam about Jess, and Dean’s hardly said four whole sentences to him since. The silence is starting to wear Sam’s nerves down to thin, transparent wires.

Dean, not even bothering with the pretense of eating, is staring out the plate glass window of the restaurant. His face seems to loll toward Sam, a slow, liquid turning of his neck. That’s the only reason Sam knows Dean is looking at him, because Dean is wearing his big, black sunglasses, the ones Sam is really beginning to hate because he misses seeing his brother’s eyes.

“What?” Dean pauses, seems to rewind and replay the question in his head, and then shakes his head. “No.” A hesitation, and then, more quietly, looking back out the window. “Maybe.”

“Do you ever wonder... If maybe the two of you could still—“

“No,” Dean says dully, with finality.

“But I thought you just said—“

“That was then. Things were different.”

“Different how?” Sam asks.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, Sammy.”

“What? You’re the only one who gets to ask annoying, inappropriate questions? That’s such bullshit, Dean.”

In the distance, thunderclouds gather, pressing down against wide open plains of green that fade away into the distance until they turn purplish-blue, the color of bruises where they meet the sky.

Dean smirks, the corner of his mouth turning up just the tiniest bit. Keeps his gaze trained on the window.

“You’re as much girlfriend as I can handle.”

And it’s a joke… but there’s something there in his brother’s tone, something that feels old and heavy, like something Sam should recognize. But he can’t place it, so he just looks out the window instead, watches the rain start to swirl down from a slate gray sky.

*

Day 13

Deans sighs, then shifts around on the bed like a kid who needs a large dose of Ritalin.

“You know, for a Jim Carrey movie, this sucks.”

“It is kind of interesting though. Don’t you think?” Sam cuts Dean a look, and Dean just shrugs. Bothered by Dean’s lack of response, Sam goes on. “I mean, it poses some interesting questions. Like, if you could have your memories erased, would you? Should you?”

Dean turns his head slightly, looking over at Sam with one lazily arched eyebrow, like Sam can’t possibly be serious. But there’s no life in it, no sparkle. It’s like, with Dad dead, a light’s gone out inside of Dean. His eyes are dark, haunted hallways to empty rooms, heavy circles beneath like shadows of blame. And Dean’s looking at him, but Sam isn’t sure Dean sees him anymore, and that hurts more than he expects, because Sam remembers a time not too long ago when he was all Dean could see.

Sam shrugs with one shoulder, turns his eyes back to the screen where Jim Carrey is listening to a tape of himself badmouthing his forgotten lover.

“Sometimes… I wish I could forget Dad. And Jess.” He stops, swallows hard. “Just… not forever, but for a little while, sometimes, you know?”

And it’s true, but he normally would never say so to Dean—at least, not without Dean pushing him to talk. But he wants, really needs, to see Dean care about something, and Sam’s still programmed to expect Dean to sit up, edged with anger and full of impassioned righteousness. To tell Sam, Don’t talk about Dad like that!, and explain to Sam how their memories make them who they are, and the fact that they remember is what keeps Dad and Jess alive. That they have to go on living, remembering them, for any of it to mean anything. But there’s nothing. Emptiness. Silence, as Jim Carrey on the screen goes on listening to his recording.

He turns to look at Dean, to see if there’s understanding, anger, anything in his brother’s face. But Dean’s staring at the TV again with a blank expression, like he didn’t hear a word Sam just said.

When the movie’s over, Dean gets up and goes over to the other bed without a word, turns on his side away from Sam, and curls up under the covers.

Sam thinks maybe Dean is broken. Broken, and Sam doesn’t know what to do because all his life Dean’s always been the one who knows how to fix things.

Dean always said Sam was the strong one, but Sam can’t feel that, can’t touch it, doesn’t know how. There’s an empty, ragged hole in his chest that cries out Daddy and an ache across his heart written in the name Dean, and for the first time in his life, Sam feels completely alone.

And it’s terrible, and selfish, and completely unfair, but he wants Dean to take care of him, give him comfort, just like Dean’s always done.

Sam turns off the light, lays flat on his back, and listens to the sound of Dean breathing. He knows exactly when his brother falls asleep, a deep, regular pattern of in-and-out that Sam hears all too infrequently these days. It’s a sound that takes him back to childhood, when Dean’s slow, even breathing meant warm and safe and home. No matter how haunted Dean’s eyes may get, he still breathes just the same, and the sound makes Sam’s chest loosen, makes his eyelids heavy until the dull red glow of neon light from outside slips away and he drifts into dreaming.

And if those dreams are filled with strong arms that hold him, rock him close in time with the sound of a heart beat, surrounded by the smell of denim and leather, well, he really can’t be blamed, now can he?

*

Day 17

Sam’s laying in his lumpy motel bed, listening to Dean thrash around like he’s cutting a swath through the Amazon rainforest. He considers waking Dean up, but he’s not sure if it’s a nightmare or a… whatever the opposite of a nightmare is. Considering Dean’s temper at being woken unless somebody’s dead or dying, Sam’s just beginning to think about taking his chances and waking Dean up anyway, when he hears Dean whimper. Dean. Whimper. The foreign sound sends a shiver down Sam’s spine, and he sits bolt upright in bed.

He hears Dean gasp, sees his brother sit halfway up in the washed out moonlight, his hands scrabbling across the mattress. And then, he hears Dean sigh, sees him fall back down against the bed, and Sam lets go a silent breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

“Dean?”

“Just a dream.” Dean’s voice is gruff, filled with a pain Sam’s never heard before.

Sam lays there for a couple of minutes, listening to his brother’s shaky breathing, Dean’s whimper echoing in his ears. Whatever Dean had dreamed about, it had shaken him, scared the hell out of him, and there aren’t that many things that really scare Dean.

But Sam’s just added a new thing to his own “scare” list, and his heart’s still thudding in his chest.

He chews on his lower lip, debating, and finally slides from between the sheets of his bed.

“I told you it was a dream, Sammy. Go back to bed. I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

There are only certain ways that men who are not gay are allowed to touch each other. There are rules, unwritten and unspoken, lines that simply aren’t crossed, unless done deliberately for humor, and very much in public. They vary a little bit, maybe, from acquaintance, to close friend to family member, but never deviate beyond a certain, fixed point. All men know these rules and that point, intrinsically.

As Sam slides up behind Dean, fitting his upper body against his older brother’s back, they both know he’s violating every single one of those rules. He feels his brother stiffen, draw breath as if about to speak, and so Sam throws his arm around Dean, careful to angle his lower body away from his brother’s, and pulls Dean in a tight hug, holding him close. Dean tenses for a moment, and then all the tension drains out of him with a sigh. Dean falls over the edge of sleep within a few minutes, and Sam follows, shortly behind.

It’s the best night of sleep he’s had since he left Stanford.

*
Day 18

Dean doesn’t want to talk about it—Sam can tell right away in the morning. But that’s okay with Sam for once, because Dean suddenly seems more like ‘Dean’ than he has in weeks.

*

Day 20

They’re standing on a street corner in front of a Denny’s in Missouri City, and Dean’s putting change into the local newspaper box. Sam’s just standing there behind him, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, staring absent mindedly down the back of his brother’s neck.

Neither of them has showered since they left the last motel two days ago, and Dean smells like sweat and the leathery seats of the Impala. Which should be a lot grosser than it actually is.

“Sam?” Dean hasn’t moved, except to open up the newspaper.

“Yeah?”

And now Dean turns around, tilting his chin up at Sam, eyes filled with amused insolence. “You mind not breathin down my neck?”

For a second, Sam is caught by the white evenness of Dean’s teeth, the way his mouth moves as he speaks. And then, slowly, it dawns. “Oh. Sorry.”

And just then, with fortuitous timing, a cute little brunette girl turns the corner on her way to somewhere else, and smiles at them both. They both turn their heads to look at her, smile back, and she says, “Aw, you two are so cute together.”

Sam and Dean look back at each other, blinking confusion. And then it hits them both at the same time, how close they’re standing to each other, how Dean had been thrusting his face up into Sam’s.

In unspoken agreement, they both take a quick step back from each other.

They spend an awkward second in silence, eyes shifting, and then they both bust out laughing.

Dean claps him on the back, still chuckling. “Come on, ‘honey’. We’ve got places to be.”

*

Day 24

They’re somewhere in Kansas when it happens, and Sam doesn’t find that amusing so much as he does ironic.

There’s a story in the paper about a mysterious death; a little girl who’d died in the shallow creek behind her home. Dean thinks maybe it’s a haunting, and they go to check it out. But nothing else happens, and the little girl’s spirit rests quietly, and for once, they get to actually laugh and relax and not have it come back to bite them in the ass later.

They blow off some steam at a local pool hall, playing a couple rounds for fun instead of cash. Have a couple of beers, and by the time they leave, Dean’s expression is approximating something that might even be a smile.

They get in the car and Dean goes from zero to happy, humming and slapping a hand against his thigh in time to his own heavy metal mental montage.

“Put in Back in Black, Sam.”

Sam rifles through the box of cassettes, distracted and encouraged by his brother’s unusual (lately, anyway) happiness. He finds the tape and pulls it out, and apparently, Dean’s waiting for the music to start before he starts the car. Sam leans across the seat, and slides in the tape, his shoulder accidentally brushing against Dean’s, their arms resting against each other. Sam is violently aware of his brother’s warmth, the tiny touch of skin to skin for a split second before Sam senses Dean shift, senses something else, deeper, sharp and bright. Sam glances over to find Dean staring at him, something Sam can’t quite put a name to in his brother’s eyes. Something soul-deep and filled with years.

He smells like old denim and soap, gun oil and the open road, so utterly Dean. Like the only home Sam’s ever known, like safety, and life itself.

He doesn’t think about it. Just leans in and presses his lips against his brother’s.

And maybe all the time together on the road has twisted Sam’s head up inside out, but it all makes a certain kind of sense. The kind of sense that’s perfect, actually. And if this is what it takes to bring Dean back to him, to pull Dean back from the desolate edge he’s been walking on, then so be it.

Sam flicks his tongue out, tracing the shape of his brother’s lips, gliding over the soft, perfect swell, then presses deeper, opens his mouth.

Dean’s stays closed for split second, warm, and trembling, and then it’s like a flood breaks inside him. His mouth opens, hot and eager, groaning up into Sam, fingers clutching in Sam’s hair and fisting, pulling him in deep and tight and closer, closer. Dean kisses like he fights; uses his whole body, all the force of his strength and every ounce of his passion, and kissing him back is like kissing fire, bright and consuming, devouring Sam from the inside out. Hands in Sam’s hair, pulling him closer, and he’s rising out of the seat, one hand on the back of Dean’s head and the other digging deep into his brother’s hip, and God, why had he waited so long to do this?

“Fuck, Dean.” Whispered molten heat against his brother’s mouth, wet sweetness—

And then suddenly he’s back on the other side of the car, spine shoved up against the cold door of the Impala, mouth empty, but still slick and hot and tasting like Dean.

“What?” Sam asks, breathless.

Dean’s so beautiful, all sharp angles and gold skin full of need, lips kissed red and full, eyes glazed with desire burning bright and sharp, and Sam’s reaching for him again before Dean can even catch his breath.

He twists from Sam’s grasp, catches Sam’s hands by the wrists, shoves him back against the door.

“Dean? What the hell?”

“I was just about to ask you the same thing!” Dean says, still breathing hard, not giving an inch, and Sam didn’t leave a mark on him, but he can see the bruises rising in his brother’s eyes.

“I—“

“You kissed me!” Dean snaps before Sam can even form a sentence.

“You kissed me back!” Sam snaps back, patience leaving him.

Dean arches a brow at him. “What are you, two?”

Sam sets his jaw, glowering at his big brother from behind his bangs. “You kissed me back, Dean,” he repeats with finality.

And finally Dean’s eyes stutter, and he looks away, out the dusty glass window.

They sit that way in silence for a while, not looking at each other, hardly even moving. All around them, outside, Sam can hear the low hum of insects rising in a choir, feel the warm summer breeze cresting in through the window. Summer. He’s always loved summer. Days and days in hot, bright sunlight, sticky with sweat and swelling with laughter, just him and Dean, their whole lives ahead of them.

“So. You want to stop for a late night dinner somewhere?” Dean asks.

Sam stares at him incredulously. “No. I do not want to stop for a late night dinner.”

“Okay, then.” Dean nods, reaches for the ignition key. “We can just keep on driving till morning, find a diner or something once the sun hits.”

“Dean—“

“Toss me some Metallica, Sam.”

“Dean. We have to talk about this, we can’t just—“

“Talk about what, Sam?” Dean’s voice is hard, and cold, and for the first time ever, Sam wishes Dean would go back to calling him Sammy, instead.

“You kissed me back, Dean,” he says softly. “Like you meant it.”

Dean makes a low sound that might be a growl, warning Sam away, and despite himself, Sam feels a dangerous thrill shoot through him all the way down to his toes. And that reaction is new, but Dean’s response isn’t, and Sam plows right through the warning.

“So why are you sitting there like it never happened?”

“You’re not gonna let this go, are you?” Dean says with a sideswiping glare at Sam.

“Come on, Dean. Tell me you’ve never thought about it.” He looks over at his older brother, all defiance, stomach flip-flopping on the inside where no one can see it.

“Thought about what?” Dean demands.

Sam just arches his brows at his brother and puts on his best ‘Don’t pretend to be a fucking idiot, okay?’ face.

“Christ,” Dean mutters under his breath. “You’re a sick puppy, Sam, you know that? You think I –“

“I’ve seen the way you look at me, sometimes, when you think I’m not paying attention. And sometimes when I am.”

Dean closes his eyes like he might be dying. “Christ,” he says again, covering his face with his hands.

“Dean—“

“Don’t you dare tell me this is okay, Sam!” His head snaps up and he looks fiercely at Sam. “Nothing about this is even close to fuckin ‘okay’.” Dean cocks his head and slants his eyes at Sam, sick and grim. “You’re my brother.

“I know,” Sam replies quietly, meeting Dean’s eyes. He wants to say more, so much more, but Dean sounds like he’s going to keep talking, and Sam really wants to hear what he’s going to say.

“This life’s taken too much from you already, Sammy.” Dean turns his face away, profile caught in the half-light of the moon—so fucking gorgeous. Can’t he see? Doesn’t he know? “I can’t let it take… this, too.” Dean shakes his head once in firm denial. “>I< can’t be the one to take it,” he says, voice low.

“What?” Sam can’t quite hold back the tiny laugh that escapes him, though there’s no humor in it. “No, Dean. You don’t ever take anything. You’re the one that gives. You always have been.” Eyes wide, beseeching. “You give. Jesus, Dean. Don’t you know that?”

A muscle in Dean’s jaw twitches, his eyes hard and brittle, unmoved and elsewhere as they stare out into space somewhere across the darkened landscape.

“I was glad when Jess died.”

Sam stops, frozen as if he’s been slapped, breath catching like ice in his chest. “What?”

“When she died, I was…” Dean hesitates, stumbles over the words. “Part of me was glad.” His voice takes on a thick quality that Sam knows is equal parts emotion and disgust. “Jess died, and I got you back. And I thought that was fair, because I needed you more than—“ he breaks off, shakes his head, takes a deep breath. He turns an agonized gaze on his brother, his soul in his eyes, naked and ripping apart before Sam’s eyes. “Part of me was glad.”

“Dean…” Sam just stares, ache in his heart. “You didn’t—“

Dean cuts him off, roughly. “Don’t. Don’t try to make this right. You can still have a normal life, Sam. The kind of life you were meant to have. You’d be… I dunno,” his hand makes an angry motion at the air, “good at it. Me, all I’m good for is this.” He pins Sam with fierce eyes, brilliant and burning. “And we both know how this life ends.” Pain, destruction. death staring out at Sam, and Dean’s eyes are filled with liquid fire. “You don’t deserve to get dragged down with me.”

“So you’re gonna save me from yourself, is that it?” Sam demands, voice rising, anger blazing like a thin bright wire inside his chest, constricting his breath, squeezing his heart. “Damn, Dean. I knew you had a martyr complex, but this—“

“Don’t you get it, Sam?” And now Dean’s yelling, leaning forward into Sam’s face. “You deserve a better life! One day, you’re gonna realize that—or you’re gonna stay here and die. You’re gonna die or you’re gonna leave, and either way it’s gonna kill me!”

Dean stops abruptly, as if shocked by his own words. His eyes are wide, flecks of gold caught in helpless green.

“Either way, it’s gonna kill me,” he says, more softly, and his voice spills out like broken glass, ragged and harsh. “But this… Sammy…” his fingers touch his lips where Sam kissed him, “this… makes me want to die.”

For a moment, there is only the sound of heavy breathing as Dean stares Sam down, something sad and fleeting in his face.

Then, Dean turns away, cranks the ignition key, pops into gear and jams on the gas.

*

It’s all different, after that. Color, vibrancy and sound spill out of Dean, slopping over the edges. He’s too bright, too quick to make a snide a remark, too prone to crack a joke in poor taste. It’s like Dean looked around and figured out he’d better start dancing and entertaining Sammy again, jerking his way clumsily through some kind of clown dance, hoping his little brother might be distracted enough to forget that a few days ago, he’d had Dean’s tongue shoved halfway down his throat.

It’s sweet, in its way, at first. But then the glint in Dean’s eyes starts to get feverish, and then desperate, his smiles too wide and too tight, and Sam can’t shake the creepy feeling that he lost Dean somewhere back down the road and ended up with this facsimile that’s been photocopied so many times that it’s more like a caricature than the real thing.

They’re sick. They’re sick, and they’re broken, and neither one of them knows how to put it all back together.

*
Day 27

At a tiny, run down excuse for a diner, Dean flirts outrageously with their waitress, and Sam thinks he might have gotten some bad orange juice, because he feels slightly ill and Dean’s just going on and on and on, laying on the charm and laying it on thick, and Christ, does this woman ever stop giggling?

Georgia—yeah, that’s her name—grins at Dean and bats her lashes, bounces off in cut-off shorts that barely cover her ass to go get their food, and Dean watches her go, tilting his head to take in the view.

She comes back and leans in, long blond hair brushing against Sam with the faint scent of strawberries and bubble gum, arm grazing his as she sets his plate down. Dean’s taking advantage of the opportunity to stare down her tank top, and Sam eyes his poached eggs, feels his stomach twist again.

Dean watches her go, grinning like an idiot until she’s out of sight. Then he leans in, lowering his voice. “So… Georgia. Whaddaya think, Sammy? Think she tastes like a peach?”

He rolls his eyes at Dean, tries to think of something to say, but comes up blank. Finally settles for glaring at his brother disapprovingly from the distance on the other side of the booth.

He eventually caves to his hunger, actually manages to eat a few forkfuls of cold eggs before Georgia returns, scrap of green-blue diner bill in her hand. Sees her signature at the bottom, rounded and girlish, the “I” dotted with a circle. Phone number scrawled beneath. Jutting her hip and smiling at his brother like she’d like to add him to the menu.

So easy. It’s always so easy for Dean. Those cheekbones, that mouth, those eyes.

When Dean asks her out, she giggles like a school girl, and Sam excuses himself to the restroom.

Christ, he really is going to be sick.

-

Dean’s whistling on the way back to the motel and Sam tries to shut out the sound, glaring at his brother from his slouch against the passenger door. But Dean’s oblivious—or at least, he’s pretending to be—so Sam decides to really slouch and settle in for the long term, just when they arrive back at the dilapidated white and mint-green tacky hotel building.

He lopes in after his brother, lays face down on the coolness of scratchy cotton pillows, and listens to Dean hum and sing absent mindedly as he gets ready for his date. It’s like clockwork, such an ingrained habit that Sam doubts he could thwart Dean’s Pavlovian response to said date, even if Sam wanted to try. It was just… so Dean.

He thinks about Georgia, his hips pressing uncomfortably into the slightly sagging mattress. Adjusts his position, gasping lightly when his dick scrapes across the sheets through his clothing. He stills, listens carefully as Dean finishes his ritual. Listens as his brother picks up the keys and opens the door, barely breathing as he hears Dean say goodbye.

After Dean’s gone, Sam rocks his hips slowly into the mattress, thinking about Georgia and the all the things Dean wants to do to her. Deans mouth, Dean’s hands, Dean’s cock, all over her, on her and inside her—

He comes, spilling into his shorts and mouthing Dean’s name into the pillow.

*
Day 28

By the time Dean gets back in the morning, Sam’s already almost finished packing. He winds up the cord to his laptop, easily imagining Dean’s state of dishevelment from the night before. He’s seen it enough times; Dean’s hair, plastered down around his forehead, spikes sticking out at every angle, eyes bleary and tired, puffy around the edges but bright at the center, like he’d just spent the entire evening accepting an Academy Award for his stellar performance. Big, silly grin plastered on his angular features, like a little boy with a favorite toy, warm afterglow lingering on his skin for hours afterward.

And maybe he knows just a little too much about his brother’s sex life.

He hears Dean stop in the room and waits, holding his breath.

But then Dean’s footsteps move toward the bathroom, and Sam is relieved and disappointed all at once. Something tightens in his chest, and he finds the words leaving his mouth before he has a chance to think them through.

“Did she taste like a peach?”

His cheeks flush hot and he lowers his head when Dean asks him to repeat the question. Sam’s a gentleman, he doesn’t ask questions like this—EVER—but he feels a truly burning need to know, if for no other reason than to dig under his brother’s skin, and God, things are definitely not okay.

And all Dean says is, “No.” Just one word, and then he’s gone into the bathroom, lost to the sound of the shower, and somehow, the fact that Dean told him the truth instead of making a crass joke hurts worst of all.

They’re not going to make it through this.

*

Day 29

There’s a case in Oklahoma that sounds like it’s right up their alley, and Sam’s actually glad to have something else to focus on.

He really should have known better.

*

Dean

Day 6

“Were you really gonna marry her?” Dean asks, because sometimes, demons said things that were true if they thought it would do maximum damage. And Dean doesn’t want maximum damage. Dean wants his Dad back. Wants his brother back, whole and unbroken. And all Sam does is stare out the window, forehead pressed against the glass like the little boy he used to be, watching the last town fade into the distance behind them.

“I wanted to,” Sam says after a pause so long that Dean has already decided his little brother isn’t going to answer. Deans fingers tighten, knuckles turning white around the steering wheel. It’s all he needs to hear. But Sam isn’t finished.

“She… took care of me.”

Sam says a few more words after that, but Dean doesn’t hear any of them. Just stares out at the road through his sunglasses and waits until he’s sure Sam is finished, and then cranks up the radio until he can’t hear or think anything else but Led Zeppelin.

*
Day 11

Dean’s staring out the window at gathering thunderclouds that remind him of a farm they’d stayed on out in Montana years ago, where the storms sprang up so fast in summer that you barely had time to hike up your pants legs before your boots were soaked. The sky would burst open like a ripe fruit with the sound of a deafening thunderclap, and the horses in the barn would whinny and rear, kicking dust up off the wooden gates of their pens.

He and Sammy used to go up there and hide when it stormed, stare out the open door of the loft into the thrashing wind and sluicing rain, hair blowing back from their faces, grinning and wild and free, hay scratching at their bodies and making them itch as they lay side by side.

He remembers Sam’s face, turned up at him and laughing, his arms thrown high and wide as the wind swept through the barn loft like a banshee, laughing like it was the best thing in the world and it could only be better if the wind picked him up and carried him off through the skies. Now-Dean gazes down at his Then-little brother, thinking he’s never seen Sam so happy, before or since.

He vaguely understands that Now-Sam has actually said something to him for the first time in four days (not that he’s counting), but it takes a moment to pull from the memory, from the infectious bliss of little Sammy’s smile and the Then-and-Now bursting pride of an older brother.

“What?”

Do you think you would have asked Cassie to marry you? The question registers belatedly in Dean’s head, and the answer springs immediately to his lips.

“No.”

He turns back toward the window, remembers Sammy standing in the doorway of the loft, storm raging behind him, his tiny face scrunched up in a frown that clearly dared Dean to try and stop him from standing there. Remembers Cassie looking up at him in much the same way, so many years later.

“Maybe.”

Sammy’s being such a girl. Wanting to know if Dean ever thought about “could be’s” or “what might have been’s”. Of course he has. He’s human, isn’t he? What kind of person does Sammy think Dean is, anyway? He just doesn’t hold onto to those thoughts with the kind of death grip that makes his entire life angst-filled and miserable, like some little brothers he could name.

But things had been different then. He hadn’t had Sammy anymore, hadn’t really ever had Dad at all. And oh, he knew Dad had loved them both well enough—the best that he could—he just hadn’t had much leftover to give either of them at the end of the day. And Dad had known that better than any of them; when Mom had died, he’d taken vengeance as his bride and never looked back, except to smile occasionally at his boys with a tight sadness and the lines in his face that always read “I love you so much, but there are things more important than either of you.” But it didn’t matter to Dean, had never mattered Dean. He’d loved his Daddy and always given him the proper respect a father deserved. He’d thought, if he loved hard enough, tried hard enough, then maybe… but it had never been enough, and that had hurt. But bad as it was, it was a bee sting compared to the pain when Sammy left. And Cassie had been so vibrant, so alive, such a pain in the ass… so much like…

He remembers how he and Sammy both had stood in the doorway of the loft, their arms lifted up toward the sky, hands clasped, wind buffeting them and shoving them dangerously close to the edge, their uncaring laughter snatched away by its shrieking sound.

“You’re as much girlfriend as I can handle.”

And it’s a joke, just a stupid joke to get Sammy to leave him alone, but somehow, it doesn’t come out quite right. There’s a thickness to his tone that he doesn’t quite recognize, a reverberation in his chest all at once familiar and strange.

He turns his face up, watches the rain fall.

*

Day 13

Dean sighs and bunches the motel bed pillow up, letting his chin fall on the crest, and tries his best not to look bored out of his skull.

“You know, for a Jim Carrey movie, this isn’t very funny.”

“It is kind of interesting though. Don’t you think?” And Sam’s got that look like he’s digging around in Dean’s brain, looking for things. Dean knows that look a mile away, knows exactly what it means, and he’s not gonna touch it with a ten-foot pole. He shrugs his shoulders at Sam, eyes fixed dully on the bleary TV screen.

“I mean, it poses some interesting questions. Like, if you could have certain memories erased, would you? Should you?”

Dean turns his head slightly, arches a brow at Sammy. It’s not like Dean hasn’t been sitting here for the last hour and a half or whatever, thinking about his own memories and what might be cool to get rid of. He’s not in the mood to talk about it though. In fact, this is the part where he’d usually crack some witty joke and change the subject. But considering the gravity of the memories he’s been thinking about doing away with, he’s not much in the mood to joke. He looks back at the TV without saying anything to Sam, suddenly wishing he hadn’t spoken at all.

“Sometimes… I wish I could forget Dad. And Jess.” Sam hesitates. “Not forever, but for a little while, sometimes, you know?”

Dean’s heart thuds in his chest, and he freezes the neutral expression on his face, trying not to let Sam see just how hard that hits him in the gut.

Because Dean wouldn’t mind getting rid of those memories himself. Hell, he’d like to throw Mom in there, too, and while he’s at it, maybe give Sammy a full brain scrub and an actual chance at a real life. Right now, it would be the sweetest thing he could imagine, just to be able to forget for a while. And there’s no way he can tell his baby brother that. Not when Sam’s looking to him to be the strong one. Hell, if he says anything at all, he might just lose his pile of chips completely, and he can’t let Sam see that.

He doesn’t hear a word of the rest of the movie, gets the gist, though, the message, as it were. He knows. Memories make us who we are, we learn from them, need to keep them in order for those things to have meaning.

But he just can’t make himself okay with that right now.

He gets in his own bed and turns on his side, draws his knees up and closes his eyes.

It’s a long time before sleep comes, and when it does, he thinks maybe it’s only because he knows Sammy’s still awake, listening to Dean breathe, waiting for Dean to fall asleep.

Maybe in the morning things will look different.

*
Day 17

Sammy’s walking down a dark highway, the pavement so black it could be made of coal. White lines tick down the center of it, smooth and perfect as they lead off to the horizon, meeting the steel gray sky that swirls like a vortex. It whirls and yawns like an open mouth above Sammy and the land spreads out below, flat and barren in every direction. From within the maw of the sky, lightning erupts in sprays of bolts that race through the air, weaving through it like lattice.

Dean knows, knows before it happens. He runs toward Sammy in slow motion, arms outstretched, trying to scream, but no sound comes from his chest, and the sky growls like a living thing. The lightning converges all at once, becomes a single bolt of force that shoots straight down and hits Sammy in the back, driving him to his knees.

Too slow, too slow, and by the time Dean reaches him, catches him in his arms, he can smell charred skin and ozone. Holds Sammy tight and rocks him close, trying to ignore how wrong, how broken his brother feels in his arms. Screams his rage at the swirling sky, and the sky stares back with yellow, slitted eyes. He hears a sound like laughter in the distance, and then Sammy’s body twitches, coming alive in his arms.

Dean looks down just as his brother looks up, Sammy’s yellow, slitted eyes glaring at Dean, his grin brighter and sharper than Dean’s ever seen.

No. Not Sam. He can’t lose Sam, too.

He jerks awake, grappling with the bed in the darkness, then realizes where he is and heaves a sigh, slumping back down against the mattress.

“Dean?”

“Just a dream,” he answers.

Just a dream. But the feeling stays, and he lies there in the darkness, breathing heavy, staring at the wall with wide, sleepless eyes.

He hears Sammy move after a few minutes, get up and walk over to Dean’s bed.

“I told you it was a dream, Sammy. Go back to bed. I’m fine.”

“No you’re not.”

And then Sammy’s sliding under the covers with him, pressing his chest against Dean’s back, and Dean’s suddenly reminded of when they were little and they used to share a bed.

Yeah. When they were kids, which is normal. This, is not normal, and they’re crossing at least half a dozen lines right now—

Sammy throws an arm around him, pulls him in tight, and Dean freezes for a second, suddenly freaked out by the whole thing. The dream was bad enough, but this… this is just wrong.

Except… it’s Sammy, and how that could really be wrong, Dean isn’t sure. And the second Sammy’s body touches his, Dean feels the cold, sleepless thing in his soul settle down, feels his chest fill with warmth, and his eyes slide closed.

There are no more bad dreams that night.

*
Day 18

He wakes up with Sammy tangled all around him, and damn, the kid always was a bed hog. He extracts himself, carefully, without waking Sam, and walks to the bathroom.

They don’t talk about it. But after that, things get a little better.

*

Day 21

Dean’s putting change into a local newspaper box in front of a Denny’s in Missouri City. They haven’t been driving with any kind of mission for the last three weeks, just driving down the highways and the back roads, trying to leave behind the feeling that something vital has been lost forever. The newspaper feels good in Dean’s hands, familiar and understood, and it feels like a step. A little like betrayal but a lot like relief, and he’s beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, the world might go back to spinning at a normal pace.

That is, if Sammy would stop standing so close behind him, breathing down Dean’s neck. He’s seriously invading Dean’s personal space in a way Dean doesn’t usually mind, but Sammy’s breath is warm, tickling the hair on the back of his neck, and it’s a little bit like—

“Sammy?” he says, and then turns around, leaning up into his brother’s face a little. “You mind not breathing down my neck?” And there it is, the start of little smirk settling in on Dean’s mouth that feels more like starting to move on than anything else he’s done so far.

But Christ, Sam’s just staring at him, like he’s never seen Dean before, and Dean’s about to snap his fingers to drag Sam out of wherever Sam’s lost right now, when his brother finally answers him.

And hello, cute brunette at 4 o’clock. He turns his head to smile at her, and then she opens her mouth and says the strangest thing Dean’s heard all day.

“Aw, you two are so cute together.”

He looks back at Sam, both of them confused, and then it strikes him how close they’d been standing, how he’d been lifting his face up to—

Quickly, he steps back and so does Sam.

The brunette’s already gone, and how weird is it that the strangest thing that’s happened all day feels more normal than anything else has in weeks?

“Come on ‘honey’,” he says, laughing.

*

Day 24

There’s a story in a local paper in Kansas about a mysterious death; a little girl who’d died in the shallow creek behind her home. Sam’s all gung-ho to go check it out, so Dean makes the customary arguments against the minimal evidence, and then tags along. But nothing else happens, and the little girl’s spirit rests quietly, and for once, Sam actually chills out and relaxes.

It’s Dean’s suggestion to go to the local bar, and amazingly, Sam actually agrees. Dean has a couple of beers and some onion rings once they get there, plays a couple rounds of pool with Sammy and then cons a few guys out of some cash while Sammy’s off playing pinball in the back room.

By the time they leave, Dean’s feeling pretty damned good about the night in general. He’s thinking maybe some AC/DC might be in order, to celebrate. He slides into the seat of the Impala and tells Sammy to find Back in Black, already playing the title track’s guitar solo on his thigh with one hand, when Sammy leans over to slide in the tape cassette. Their shoulders brush, arms touching, and even though it’s happened a thousand times before, Dean is abruptly, completely aware of how close his little brother is.

Sam looks over at him and Dean feels a familiar tugging in his heart, like a dream half-remembered. He can feel the heat of Sam’s skin right through the long sleeved shirts he’s wearing, smell the mint flavored toothpaste on his brother’s breath, the scent of faint sweat and musk buried just beneath that. And Dean feels something pass between them, racing under his skin and along his nerves like lightning. Realizes that he’s holding his breath like waiting for a summer storm, like he’s been waiting his whole life for this moment to arrive.

And then Sam’s kissing him, licking along his mouth like it’s sugar coated candy and there’s a prize if he can lick his way all the way through. There’s a few seconds of shock that feels like eternity as Sam opens his mouth and tries to press his tongue inside Dean’s—and then it hits him. Hits him literally like a ton of bricks, and he’d always thought that was a metaphor, but it isn’t, because his mind explodes, his knees go weak and his cock stiffens, stirring in his pants, and he wants this—wants Sam, Christ—so much. Too much. Such a deep, all-consuming need that he wonders how he buried it all these years. It rises up now, a monster ravenous and devouring, its teeth sharp and slicing deep into Dean’s heart, reptilian tail flicking with the twitch of Dean’s dick. So hot, taste of Sam in his mouth, and the smell of Sam filling him, surrounding him, and he needs more, every inch of Sam’s skin pressed against him, and everything is Sam, Sam, Sammy, Sam. It’s the one perfect word that sums up everything in Dean’s life worth keeping, and it’s been this way since the beginning. Him and Sam against the world, side by side and back to back, always together and never apart.

“Fuck, Dean.”

And the world spirals around Dean, crashes to the ground. Real, this is real, not some guilty dream that’ll fade once he’s had some coffee and put a few miles behind him. He shoves Sam away, gasping for air. Something in his heart cracks, crying out, and he has a moment to wonder if it’ll ever fit in his chest right again—and then Sam’s coming at him again. And God, if he lets Sam touch him again—

He twists away and shoves for all he’s worth. Sam’s angry, demanding to know what Dean’s problem is, and Dean can’t help but fling back in his face whose idea this whole sincerely screwed up situation had been. But Sam’s not having it, calls Dean out, and finally Dean has to look away, out the front window of the car.

There’s a fine grit of road dust and pollen covering the glass, and through it, he sees not the dark hulking shapes of trees, or the twinkle of stars in the night sky, but the past; clear, sharp and gut wrenching.

Two brothers, one too young to know anything and one just old enough to understand, lose their mother one night in a rain of blood and fire. The older one carries the younger one from their burning house, saves his brother’s life that night and keeps right on saving his brother’s life. Memory of liquid fire burning behind his eyes, the feel of his little brother in his arms, the only thing he can keep, the only thing he can see, and it’s all he has, all he can hold on to, his whole life long, because both of them spend their lives on the road following a father who traded his love for a mission and who never had room for anything else in his heart and who never knew how much that hurt them both.

They’ve only ever had each other. They lost their Dad years before he died, and somehow, that only makes his death hurt worse. But now, Dean is all Sam has left, and Dean is not allowed to fuck this up. He is not allowed to fail.

He does the only thing he can do, the only thing he’s good at. Sweeps it from his mind, shoves it kicking and screaming back inside the box in his heart that it came from, nails it shut.

“So. You want to stop for a late night dinner somewhere?” Dean asks. He doesn’t feel even a little bit better, not at all, but at least he can breathe again. And screw the AC/DC, what he needs right now is some Metallica. Ride the Lightning, Master of Puppets, it doesn’t really matter. Any pre-Load port in a storm.

Sam’s giving him angry puppy eyes like he thinks Dean’s being insensitive and badgering Dean to share his feelings, and he just can’t deal with this shit right now, it’s too goddamned much, and if Sam keeps poking him, prodding him—

“Thought about what?” Deans snaps.

Sam gives him one of his patented pansy looks, and Dean wishes to God he could ignore it, but since it’s pretty much Sam’s patented look that specifically says they both know Dean’s a goddamned liar and to quit being full of crap, Dean decides to try retreating instead.

“Christ,” Dean mutters under his breath. And no, no, no, just… no. His baby brother is not--

“Don’t you dare tell me this is okay, Sam!” His head snaps up and he looks fiercely at Sam. “There’s nothing about this that’s even close to fuckin ‘okay’.”

Sam says something, but Dean is too caught inside his own mind, tangled in his own personal demons. He knows better than anyone how much this lifestyle has taken from Sammy; both his parents, the woman he loved; the happy, normal life he wanted more than anything else. And Dean can’t take this from him, too. Not Sam’s last dying hope of killing this yellow-eyed demon and maybe finding that white picket fence after all.

Sam’s spouting some crap about how Dean’s so giving and noble and whatever, and Dean bites down on the inside of his jaw, sucks in a breath. Noble. Right. The guilty coil around his heart flares, and he remembers being glad when Jess died. Not completely glad, of course. But all those years she’d gotten to spend with Sam that Dean had missed, the way Sam had looked at her, like she was the most important thing in the world… He hadn’t wanted her to die, but after she did, he’d held Sam while his brother cried, Dean’s arms wrapped around him tight, face buried in his brother’s hair, a tiny icicle of bitter glee lodged in his heart.

He wants Sam too much. Needs him, too much. And Sam doesn’t need him at all. Not anymore. Dean can’t let him stay—can’t make him stay for this dysfunctional mindfuck of a relationship that’s starting to happen here. Because if Dean does let him stay… Dean’s never going to be able to let him go. He already loves Sam to the point of stupidity and back. And if Sam kisses him like that, looks at him like that, wraps long, goofy Sam arms around Dean and loves him like that, Dean really IS going to die. He can barely breathe as it is.

Sam is staring at him with wide hazel eyes, an expression on his face Dean doesn’t think he’s ever quite seen. Rejection, surprise, overwhelming emotion, and Dean wants to hug him, tell him, No, Sammy, baby, no, it’s okay but, shit, if Sam starts crying, he’s gonna start crying too, and then what the hell are they gonna do?

And he can’t touch Sammy again right now, be that close to him… he just… can’t.

Hands shaking, Dean cranks the ignition key, pops the Impala into gear and jams on the gas.

*

It was better before Sammy knew, before Sammy wanted it too and Dean was allowed to know that he wanted it. Every day is torture. The light brushes up against each other that make Dean’s heart speed up, make his skin tingle. Sam coming out of the shower with a white towel slung low and lazy around his hips like nothing’s changed between them at all. And who knows? Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe Dean is crazy. Or maybe his baby brother is one hell of a cock tease, and Christ, that falls into the category of really hot things he’d be a lot happier not knowing about his brother. Lays awake at night listening to Sam breathe, hips pressed against the mattress, not quite daring to move, and the first thing he sees when he wakes up in the morning is the slow sprawl of Sam’s long limbs, lean muscles curving in the sunlight, dark hair curling down over his cheek.

He’s strangling on Sam. Choking with him.

*

Day 27

The waitress is cute, long muscular legs all the way up to the cut-offs that Daisy Duke would be proud of, and stacked nicely up top just like Dean likes them; not too big, not too small. She’s the best thing he’s seen of the female persuasion in the last couple of towns, so he turns on the charm and gives her his best, toothy grin. Tilts his head up at her and looks at her with interested eyes, asks about the town, and her hobbies, throws in a few sweet compliments, and pretty soon, she’s giving him the eye and smiling right back, and for the first time in days, Dean can focus on something other than Sam’s mouth, Sam’s hands, the slight inner crease of Sam’s hip just before it disappears into his towel.

When she walks away, Dean tilts his head to enjoy the view, then turns to his brother, trying to lighten the heavy mood Sam’s been in for days.

“So… Georgia. Whaddaya think, Sammy? Think she tastes like a peach?” And for a second, Dean is proud; it sounds so normal. But then Sam just makes a disgusted face and flops back into his booth, staring out at Dean sullenly from beneath shaggy bangs.

Georgia returns with the bill, and predictably, her phone number. Dean decides to save her the wait time and asks her out on the spot. And hey, maybe Sammy is finally feeling better, because he gets up to go to the bathroom, leaving Dean alone with Georgia to work out the date details and work in a few more lines.

He’s whistling as they leave the diner and head back to the motel. Sam doesn’t say much, pleads a stomach ache and folds himself into the car, leaning away against the door for the entirety of the two minute trip.

Dean runs a wet comb through his hair and spikes up the tips, practices his best Blue Steel look a few times, and then flicks off the light to the bathroom. Grabs the keys and opens the door, pausing for a second in the doorway.

“Don’t wait up, Sam.” He half-whispers it, not sure if Sam is asleep or not. When Sam doesn’t move, still planted face down in a pillow, Dean hesitates a second more. Remembers chicken soup and bed time stories, Sammy staring up at him with huge hazel eyes, feverish, or his nose running, looking at Dean like he’s the coolest thing Sam has ever seen.

Dean turns away, closes the door behind him.

-

She doesn’t taste like peaches; her mouth tastes like spun sugar, gritty and sweet, and her skin is salty, faint scent of sweat and grease beneath the floral soap. They’re on the bed in seconds flat, and Dean peels off her clothes and shucks out of his own with urgent grace. Slides a hand down her thigh, snakes his fingers around one of her tanned, muscled calves and folds her leg up and pushes it to the side, runs his tongue across each nipple, leaving her gasping and arching, trailing his way down her body until his face rests between her thighs. Licks and sucks her like the sugar and limes they’d had with tequila shots at the bar. Licks until she mewls, slick against his fingers. Sucks until she comes, crying out, hips rising up off the bed and shoving hard against his chin.

He’s up the bed and on top of her before she can even catch her breath, kissing the last whimpers from her mouth. Then he’s rolling the condom onto the curve of his dick and thrusting inside her, sheathed in tight, wet, soft heat.

“Fuck. So good,” he breathes against the angle of her cheekbone, licks a line along the sensitive underside of her jaw down to her mouth. Liquor running high in his veins, blood running hot and furious, buried deep inside silken heat, and shit, he’s already about to lose it. Stares down in to her eyes, (blue, thank God, blue not hazel), pupils blown wide and glazed, thrusts and twists his hips and watches her gasp, eyes fluttering shut, and it’s easier then, twisting and thrusting and—oh, sweet christing fuck—

He thinks there might be a name there, whispered on his lips in the moment he stiffens and pulses inside her. That’s never good. Worse, he’s pretty sure it’s not hers. And for a split second, even worse than the mortification he feels at who it might belong to, is the sudden, blinding fear that Georgia heard him dare to utter someone else’s name while fucking her and is seconds away from trying rip his dick out by the root. But turns out it doesn’t matter, because she’s got her own litany of words streaming, most of them of the four letter variety at top volume as she seizes around him again.

After, he rolls over and falls into the bed next to her, collapsing in a sweat-soaked heap. As he descends into drunken sleep, he feels weight shift next to him, skin, naked and warm pressed along his length. Beginning to dream, he slips an arm around the body next to him and pulls it close, dream mouth shaping the name he’d spoken aloud only minutes ago.

*
Day 28

He wakes up with his cock rock hard, hot, tiny fingers teasing him, sliding a condom on, palm pressing down against him with delicious pressure.

He rolls over to where she’s already wet and waiting, pushes inside her with one quick thrust. Covers her mouth with his, hot and slick, bites her lip and whispers baby—but his heart betrays him, whispers something else, and he squeezes his eyes shut, kisses her harder. Fucks her long and hard until she screams, his whole world narrowing to the point of his cock as her muscles clamp down against him, milking him dry. Slides down her body and licks her clean. Sucks her clit, twisting and pinching it between his lips until her hips buck and she comes again.

Makes his exit with a hasty smile and a quick kiss, sliding sunglasses onto his face as he walks out the door. Gets into the Impala and starts the engine, mouth thick with the taste of her. Tries not to think about the bitterness at the back of his throat, and why it haunts him so much more than the sweetness she left on his lips.

*

Sam doesn’t speak to him when Dean gets back to the motel. Just keeps winding up his laptop cord in the thin gray light filtering in through the windows and keeps his back turned away.

Dean debates the wisdom of saying something, hesitates for a moment in the middle of the room, then wonders what the fuck he could possibly say that wouldn’t be asinine and completely irrelevant (and why that should stop him now when it’s never stopped him before). Because the only thing Sammy wants to talk about is what happened between them the other night, and not only is that the last thing on a very long list of things that Dean does notwant to talk about, but there’s also definitely nothing Dean can say to make this okay. Not enough words in the world to make this okay, to turn back time to a place where he’d never kissed his brother. Where he’d never felt—

He turns, heads for the shower without a word, wanting to wash the smell of sex off him.

He stops just inside the bathroom door, stilled by the sound of words he thinks he might have imagined.

“What?” he almost whispers, the word catching in the roughness of his throat.

“Did she taste like a peach?”

He can tell just by the tone of Sammy’s voice that Sammy isn’t looking at him. Can imagine him standing there in limp gray light, his back still turned to Dean as he towers over his zipped suitcase.

Half a dozen replies flit through Dean’s head, flip and crass and exactly the kind of words Sam would expect, exactly the kind of words Dean would usually let fly from his mouth without running them by his brain to check for possible consequences first.

He parts his lips, runs his tongue over them, slowly shakes his head.

“No.”

The click of the bathroom door shutting seems very loud to Dean’s ears.

-

It’s not until he’s in the shower that he remembers what he’d been thinking before Sam spoke.

Turn back time? He pauses, struck by the thought. Was it possible? He’s heard stories, but he’s never paid them much mind since they don’t really apply to the shit he usually finds himself up to the neck in. Maybe he can find a spell to turn back time. Take away the memory of Sam’s tongue, soft and hot, licking inside his mouth—

No. Then he’d just forget he’d had it once and do it again like in that girly movie with Jim Carrey that Sam had made him watch the other week, and then maybe next time things would end up even worse and besides… fucked up as it is, much as it’s killing him, it’s kind of a nice memory, and Dean doesn’t have too many of those.

And suddenly he isn’t sure what’s more disturbing; the fact that he has that memory at all, the fact that he finds it comforting in some weird way, or the fact that it’s making him hard.

Water pulsing, beads dripping slowly down overheated skin, he can feel them slide between his legs, over his nipples.

He closes his eyes, puts his palms flat against the tile and breathes, shower beating his back red with heat. In his mind’s eye, he can see Sam finish packing, imagine his muscles moving under the layers of shirts he always wears. Broad shoulders and lean body, narrow waist and hips…

He pushes away from the wall and shuts off the water, climbs from the tub and dries off hastily.

They’ll get through it. Put enough time and distance and women between what had happened, and whatever this rift is between them will start to heal.

They’ll be all right.

*
Day 29

There’s a case in Oklahoma, and Dean’s more grateful than he’s ever been for something to distract himself.

Of course, that’s when everything goes straight to hell.

Literally.

*

TBC…

I expect to have the next part finished in the next couple weeks—and only that long because I’m so busy. This story is really pouring out.